a day of home improvements and baking

[kareina]

While we were at lord_kjar's parent's house this weekend one of the snacks they served with tea/coffee was "blåbärsbullar" (blue berry rolls). I had never seen these before, but enjoyed them, so I had to try to make some of my own once we got home. I didn't have time/energy for that on Monday, so this morning was the day, but since I was baking I got enthusiastic about it . I mixed up a fairly standard soft white bread dough, lightly sweetened with honey and, as is my usual habit, broke off about 1/2 cup of dough straight away, flattened it, spread it with butter, and baked it straight away for a mid morning snack while the rest of the dough was rising.

When lord_kjar got home for lunch I started the baking. First I took one cup of the dough and rolled it out to a flat round, then covered it with a large pile of frozen blueberries (perhaps another cup worth?) and lightly sprinkled them with sugar (about half a teaspoon). Then I folded the edges of the dough up over the berries, and pressed it together, giving a round loaf with an open top through which the berries showed. I did two of these, and put them into the oven straight away while going on to the next project.

The next item on the list was something a bit more savory, so I chopped some broccoli, tossed in some frozen spinach leaves, chopped some almonds and flax seeds in a food processor and added them to the vegetables along with one egg, a couple of spoons of Turkish style yoghurt, and a handful of pine nuts. I then made up some calzones using 1/2 cup of dough for each, rolling it out, putting 1/2 cup of filling on it, and folding the dough over the top, sealing them like pasties. By the time I had the filling made and the calzones assembled the blåbarsbullar were ready to come out of the oven, so I put them straight in.

While they were baking I ran some more almonds through the food processor and added some frozen raspberries. I then rolled half of the remaining dough to a large circle, spread the nut/berry mixture on it, and cut the dough into a dozen wedges and rolled them into crescent rolls.

Then I rolled out the last of the dough into a rectangle, spread it with a mix of butter, cane sugar, and cinnamon, rolled it up, and cut the tube into 16 rolls.

Not a bad collection of yummy food from one batch of dough. We ate one of the blåbarsbullar straight away, put the calzone into the fridge for tomorrow's lunch, tasted a couple of the cinnamon rolls and raspberry/almond rolls, and froze the rest. The real advantage of making different shapes for each type is that it will be easy to tell them apart in the freezer.

This evening would have been choir practice, but lord_kjar wasn't feeling well and had a bit of a sore throat. I am not feeling any symptoms myself (I rarely do), but I figure that whatever he is fighting off I have been exposed to, and while I don't show signs of it I could be contagious nonetheless, so I chose to stay home, too. He went to sleep pretty much straight after work, which he may well have needed even if not feeling under the weather, as both last week and this have been really full on at work (which is probably why he isn't feeling good--pushing oneself really hard is a good way to actually show symptoms when exposed to some sort of cold bug), but I was inspired to work on projects.

Last week we acquired a nice, large, metal cabinet which just fits into the open area in the bathroom, which is where we had previously stacked the various tool boxes and related stuff in a rather ugly pile that was sort of organized by setting some boards across a couple of chairs to create two tiers worth of space. Now all of that stuff is nicely organized inside of the cabinet, and the bathroom looks much better. However, the towel rack that came with the apartment happens to be on the wall behind that cabinet (which is a stupid place for it because it is as far as one can get from the shower without actually leaving the room), so we need a better alternative. The other walls are covered with the mirror and a medicine cabinet, and the door into the room, so there isn't really a good place to put a towel rack.

Therefore we are making one. Last week, while attending the Irish Music Session on Thursday evening I took apart a stack of old, broken, hard drives and extracted the magnets (which process is actually harder than that description makes it sound). Tonight I took a board which is a bit shorter than the width of the door on the metal cabinet and carved slots into it into which I have fitted some of the magnets. Once I got the slots the correct size, shape, and depth I added a bit of wood glue to hold them in place. Tomorrow (I hope) we will drill holes into the other side of the board, at an angle, and insert pegs into it. In theory we will then have a nice towel rack that fits on the outside of the metal cabinet. If it doesn't work the first time I can always add more magnets (the advantage of living with someone who repairs computers for a living is that there are always more hard drive magnets available for anyone willing to extract them from their casings).

Once I got that done and the glue was drying I had a bit of energy left, so I moved some of the things that have been living on the fabric shelves in the kitchen but more appropriately belong in the tool cabinet, and then reorganized all of the stuff on the fabric shelves. While I was at it I even typed up labels for the various boxes (Scrap Linen & Silk, Scrap Wool, Scrap Cotton, Wool Fabric, Linen Fabric, Projects in Progress, To Mend, and Patterns) The kitchen looks MUCH better, and I am quite happy with the result. I am looking forward to seeing his reaction to the improvement when he wakes up.

In other news, the box of "projects in progress" is really much too large--we really need to make time to finish some of these! If for no other reason I would love to start new projects with some of that lovely fabric in the other boxes...