Slippery Slipper Solutions

Slippery slippers are the worst. I have always just lived with them, but now that I have a baby to think about, I don't want to fall.  I really don't want to fall on my wood stairs with a glass door and stone landing at the bottom. Not good.

So a slippery slipper solution was much needed.

Add Tread to Your Slippers

I love these slippers. They are warm, and oh so comfy. As you can see, they are also quite slippery. 

1. Buy puff paint

I decided to go with the basic black, and just a hint of red (for some flair). Pick any colors you want. I could totally see someone doing this for dancing shoes at a wedding (something blue?).

2. Decide on a design, and lay any ground work. 

I decided to do dots. They seemed like the best way to get a good grip. I also wanted a little "fun" thrown in, so I added a heart. I put the heart right over the ball of my big toe.

I made the heart first. Then added the dots.

3. Apply your pattern all over the sole of your slipper.

I used the already delineated shape of my foot as shown from normal wear. It was pretty easy to see where my foot touched the ground. If these are new slippers you could lightly outline your foot with a pencil. or guess. It is the bottom of your foot. 

4. Let Dry

The instructions said to dry the paint for 7 hours. After 7 hours I put them right on. Ahh warm toes again!

That's it! No more slippery slippers. I have been wearing these for a couple of days and they are fine. I lost one dot to my wood floor, and the peeks have worn down a bit. Overall, not bad. And.... I like the hearts!

Homemade Seitan (Wheat-Meat)

I grew up a vegetarian. I remember the first time my father fed us chicken. He snuck us out to "town" and brought us some chicken soup. When my mother heard that we had been "tainted" with meat she chased my father down the street. Or, at least, that is the story my father used to tell us about our first meat experience. 

As an adult, I have developed a taste for meat, and will usually eat it if offered at a friend's house. I eat most types of meat, but have never been able to stomach straight beef. Beef is just not appetizing to me. However, in general, I prefer most of my meals to be vegetarian.  

My husband and I really like seitan (pronounced SAY-tan, not to be confused with the devil: satan). It is a kind of chewy, meaty, wheat based protein that cooks well, holds it shape, and tastes really good. We have breaded and baked it, fried it, and, my current favorite, put it in a vegetable stew. 

Now I have to warn you, seitan is made from wheat, and not just any wheat but wheat gluten, so if you jumped on the gluten free bandwagon then this is not a meat alternative for you. I am not a gluten free fan myself. I like bread, I like gluten, and I like seitan. I think that bread consumption should be limited for my waistline, but I don't have Celiac disease and I don't plan to go gluten free any time soon. If you are gluten free this recipe is not for you.

The only problem with seitan is that it is expensive. My husband and I can buy a pint container of seitan for $7 in the health-food store. That is one meal for two people. That's fine to pay once in a while, but we can't do that every week. So we decided to make our own. It is actually really easy, and SO MUCH cheaper. My husband (the mathematician) figures it is about one-eighth the price when made at home, and the more you make it the lower the price gets. The hardest part is getting the ingredients.

Without further ado, here is the recipe I use. I have adapted the recipe from 1,000 Vegan Recipes by Robin Robertson (a great book by the way even if you are not vegan).

Homemade Seitan

Ingredients:*

1 3/4 cups vital wheat gluten (that's 0.6 lbs)

1/4 cup nutritional yeast (which is very different from baking yeast)

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp onion powder

1/4 tsp paprika

1 1/2 tablespoon olive oil

3 tbls tamari (gluten free soy sauce, just because it makes us giggle)

1 2/3 cups cold water

*a note on ingredients: Vital wheat gluten is the protein from wheat. I buy it at my local health food store. I usually have to buy sever small packages of it to get enough to make the seitan. Nutritional yeast can also be found at a health food store. It is quite salty. I have seen it used in many vegan recipies, but my favorite way to eat it is on popcorn.

Simmering Liquid

2 quarts water

1/2 cup tamari

4 garlic cloves

1. Make the seitan dough: 

In a food processor mix vital wheat gluten and rest of ingredients through paprika. Blend with a couple of pulses.  

Mix oil, tamari, and water, then add to dry ingredients while processor is running. Process for a full minute until dough is formed. It should look like the image bellow.

Turn onto a lightly floured cutting board and knead until smooth and elastic, about 2 minutes. This part was fun, I like kneading dough. My dough was a bit wet, so I sprinkled a bit of flour on top.

2: Simmering Liquid:

Combine all Simmering Liquid ingredients in large sauce pan. I use a 2 1/2 quart pot and it is a bit tight, but still fine.

3: Cut the seitan dough into four pieces.

Add dough to pot of simmering liquid. Bring to a boil and then lower heat and simmer for one hour turning occasionally. (I had a screaming baby at this point so it boiled a bit more than it should and it only got stirred twice, it was still fine).

Turn off heat and allow to cool in liquid. I just left it right on the stove.

Once it was cool and I had a minute to myself I put the seitan in containers. 

Each quarter of the dough fits in a small plastic pint container (I reuse ones from our local Chinese restaurant). Store the seitan in its simmering liquid. We use one pint per meal, so I save one for the week, and freeze the rest. Then I have seitan for one month. 

Sometimes one piece will be bigger than the rest, that is pretty normal.

I also like to save any remaining simmering liquid for any soups or stocks I might need. There is a lot of flavor in it. 

There you have it, four pints of seitan for a fraction of the price you might pay in stores. This recipe is also quite easy to double, and I will have to do that next time because I promised to bring some homemade seitan to a friend. 

I think the homemade version is so much better. In stores it comes cut up, and I never like how they do it, and the taste is not quite as good either. With our version we can cut up the seitan as we like, depending on the recipe. 

4. Use in your favorite recipe. 

Many chicken and tofu recipes can be made with seitan instead (you just might have to play with the flavors. Seitan does not have a strong flavor on it's own) Try: [Baked!] Chicken Fried Tofu over at Peas and Crayons (I love her) but use seitan instead. So good (but not vegan: be warned). 

I made a vegetarian stew from one of my favorite Mooswood cookbooks, and added cubes of our seitan. It was delicious, easy, and a one pot meal. Maybe I will give you guys that recipe (I adapt it) another time. 

Seitan is a great protein alternative. Sure you can eat beans and rice for protein, but why when you can eat something so much better? I always thought seitan was only something "rich" vegetarians could eat, but now I see that it is quite attainable for anyone. 

Go, make seitan, and embrace a new kind of vegetarian protein, or meat, alternative. And once you have tried it, come back and let me know what you think.

My Baby Paul Arjun

I have not written a blog post in a couple of months (not including the one I just wrote on cranberries). Any guesses why? If you said because I had a baby, you are right (and you have been following my sporadic posts pretty well).

Meet Paul Arjun Santos.

My beautiful baby boy was born November 24th, 2013. He was a whopping 9 lbs, 21 inches!

The name Paul came from my father who passed away in 2010. Arjun is a nod to my India background. Arjun (or Arjuna, with an "A") is a Hindu warrior from their sacred texts.

I had the birth at home. This was a very personal decision, and it was not made lightly. My hubby was a little skeptical at first, but once he understood how professional my midwife took everything he knew this was the best way for us. I'm not going to talk about the benefits of home-birth (there is enough info on the web about that) but I will say that I'm very glad I did it this way.

My birth went very well, it was quick and exactly how I wanted it. My midwife, doula, and everyone at the birth were so great. I love them all! Thank you!!!!

Baby Paul is now three months old. So here is a quick montage of his growth and changes.

Paul at birth. He is about ten minutes old in the shot above.

This one was about a week after his birth.

Again about a week later, he had some baby acne.

Paul at one month.

I got those stickers at Babies R Us. I like to keep track.

Paul at two months old.

You can see he has gotten some more expression in his face and body. I also started taking a photo with him lying down on the bed. I love the gold background.

Finally, Paul just last week (three months old).

The shot above just made me laugh. So I added it. I have others of him in the chair that are a little more "cute" not so funny.

He was not in such a playful mood this time.

What an amazing gift it is to have a baby. This little boy is so cute, so sweet and he just warms my heart with every smile and snuggle. I absolutely love him with every fiber of my being. They say you won't understand until you have one and "they" are right.

My life is now all about diapers, spit up, sleep habits of babies and trying to stay sane in it all.  The cold, snowy winter has not made it any easier. But, I have made some new "mom" friends as I call them. They are all nice ladies.

I'm working on his nursery (he still sleeps in our room right now), a book of all the cards he got over his gestation, and I made the cutest family tree. All of these projects will eventually become blog posts. Lets see how it goes. I would really like to get at least one blog post a week going regularly again. Wish me luck.

Cranberry Recipes I Can't Wait to Try

I love cranberries. I have always loved them. When I was a kid, it was my job to make the cranberry sauce, and I loved to do it because I got to "taste" along the way. My mom was always warning me not to 'taste" it all.To this day I eat cranberry sauce with a spoon. When I taught in India, I always made sure I had some dried cranberries packed in my suitcase from home.

So as soon as cranberries hit the stores in November, I stock up. Each time I shop I make sure to throw a couple bags of cranberries in my cart. Many recipes indicate that stores will have cranberries in the freezer isle, but I can never find them in my area. I can't understand why stores don't carry them all year. Unlike most people. I like my cranberries all year long. I have been known to eat a can of cranberry sauce in July. Lucky for me they freeze well. I just throw the whole bag in the freezer for later.

My love of Cranberries combined with my love of baking has led me to find several cranberry recipes I would like to try. Because of the new addition to the family, (more on that later, I have to rewrite the post due to a saving problem) I have only been able to make one of these recipes, but I hope to make many more. I might even make one this week.

Cranberry Orange Bread

Click on the picture to get to the link

I made this bread twice in a one week, and only a couple of weeks after the birth of my little one. It was that good. I ate the first loaf  pretty much by myself - in a couple of hours.

Don't be fooled, this quick bread does not rise much. When I saw how full my loaf pan was from the batter I thought maybe it was a double loaf, then had two very short loafs instead.

I love that this cake has LOTS of cranberries.

Cranberry Clementine Coconut Bars

Click on the picture to get to the link

These bars are next on my list. They not only look amazing, they sound amazing. Cranberries, coconut and clementines? Sounds divine to me. I have pined this twice on Pinterest, that means I really need to try it.

Cranberry Bread Pudding

Click on the picture to get to the link

I admit, bread pudding is an acquired taste. I believe being brought up by my Australian mother has given me that taste. The kind of taste that likes bread all soggy and mushy. After years of watching me dunk my toast and cookies in my tea my husband said to me: "You know you don't have to dunk everything in your tea." It was not a question. It was a statement from an American who never thought to dunk anything but cookies in milk, and maybe the occasional biscotti.

I would like to make bread pudding for my husband, because after nine years with me, he does sometimes dunk a cookie in his tea. Unfortunately, this is not the one. Hubby does not like cranberries.

This cranberry bread pudding would be fun Christmas morning, or any morning for that matter. :)

Cranberry Tart

Click on the picture to get to the link

I'm not good at tarts. I'm not sure why. I can do pies, I can do cookies, I can do cakes, I can even do souffles, but tarts escape me. I hope to tackle this tart one day. Heck, I hope to make a sucessful tart one day of any sort. It sure looks good.

Cranberry Red Wine Sorbet

Click on the picture to get to the link

I love me some wine, add cranberries and I'm in heaven. I have been wanting to make red wine sorbet for quite a while. Maybe this recipe will inspire me to actually make it.

Cranberry and Orange Flavored Vodka

Click on the picture to get to the link

In true Martha Stewart fashion this recipe not only sounds good, but it is well packaged. This vodka would be fun to make as gifts for my lady-friends at Christmas. It even comes with a Cranberry Cosmopolitan Cocktail Tag to print with the vodka.

My taste for cranberry deserts and drinks has matured, but my appetite for cranberries has not. As the cold February wears on there is nothing I want more than some nice bright cranberries in my diet.

What childhood foods do you still love (if in new ways)?

Christmas Wrapping Themes

I have been seeing a lot of different themes for wrapping Christmas gifts on Pinterest which reminded me of my own Christmas gift wrapping themes I have done over the past two years.

It turns out I have wrapped the gifts, made labels, and photographed these themes for two years, but I only wrote an actual blog post about one of them. So this year I have two different themes for Christmas presents I want to present: Red and White, and Brown Paper with Baking Twine. Both have handmade labels.

Brown Paper with Baking Twine Wrapping Theme

This theme was fun. I already had plenty of brown paper from a huge roll I bought at a clearance sale for an office supply store. By the way, buying that huge roll of paper was one of the best impulse purchases in my life. I have used it as drop cloths for painting, and table covers that can be drawn on among many other uses. 

I then added a touch of class with the red and white baker's twine. I used a double thickness of the twine to really make it pop. 

Each gift had a tag with the recipient's initial on it. I printed the initials on card-stock and then punched the labels out with my hand puncher.

I really love the look of these gifts with their labels and the baker's twine. Baker's twine is so much fun. I may have chosen this theme so I had an excuse to buy the twine. ;)

Red and White Wrapping Theme

Last year I decided to go with normal wrapping paper in red and white. I wanted to make the gifts a little more festive and less "1940's book package." The previous year was fun, but I wanted to get a little more traditional.

I used several predominantly red papers, white ribbon and black lettered  labels. 

With the new addition of my nephew last year I had to add a second letter to my labels (we now have two family members with the first initial "A".)  I used the same label punch with red paper. If had a color printer I would have done white card-stock with red initials for the red presents, but our color printer died earlier that year. 

To compliment the red presents I also wrapped some of them with white paper and red ribbon. This was not as successful because the white paper needs to be doubled over if you don't want the gift showing through. I'm not sure what happened to the rest of the presents wrapped in white, but I didn't get any pictures of them.

I also had a lot more presents last year. I bought a bunch of little presents to go with the big ones. So I had to get a little creative with the red paper. In the end I used some pure red, and some red with Santa. It worked out well.

I think the red is nice and festive under our tree. This year I'm all ready for the next theme with wrapping paper, but I have to think about the labels and ribbon.

Do you like to wrap your Christmas (or Hanukkah) presents with one theme of do you have a different system all together? Or maybe no system at all?

Wine Charms Number 2

I really love to make these wine charms. They are like little jewels that you can put on your glasses. I made a set about a year ago. Then this winter I started a set for my friend's birthday. It took me a long time to finish them, but once I did, I had to do another photo shoot. Go here for the full instructions to make your own.

What I like about these guys is that each is different, each is special and each one actually feels as great as they look. The resin layers on both sides protects the decoupage and adds a bit of class.

This time around I used all gold glitter and numbers for the "back" and some really beautiful paper for the front. My friend loves the color blue, so I made half of them with blue tones, and the other half with red. I always imagine my friend's hubby would like the red ones.

For the final touch I also made a little case. I recycled an old card I had for the cover. I first added a single layer of card-stock to hide the impression from the "Altoids" box. I then glued the old card for the design. After gluing it with Mod Podge I coated the whole thing with more resin.

I'm not sure if you can tell in these pictures but there is a good layer of thick resin on top of this box. I managed to eliminate the "Altoids" impression and make a nice cover for the box. I also love that the gold in the paper carried through to the gold on the backs of the charms.

I decided not to paint the rest of the box. It looked good enough and I was late on my gift.

The simple silver ring holds them onto the glass stem.

These little guys are not so cheap to make. I thought about selling them but they would probably not sell for even the cost of supplies. Instead only very special people get them. I must say, they are worth the work for a loved one. In the end they look so beautiful.

Even though my birthday gift was six months late, my friend was very excited to get this little gift (or she was just very gracious, she is quite a gracious lady). Let's hope I'm a little better with the timing next year. :)

The Power of Sunshine

Getting the "Funk" Out of Old Shirts

My husband likes to wear black undershirts to work. In fact, he really loves his little black shirts and wears them all the time. We buy the bags of shirts they sell at Target and he's happy. 

The problem is that after a while the shirts develop a strange smell. A "funk" if you will. I don't leave his clothes in the washer wet, and my washer is not funky either. In fact, none of our other clothes have this funk at all. I don't even really smell it myself, but my husband swears that some shirts have it, and some don't. He does a smell test before he puts a shirt on, if the shirt has this funk, he puts it back in the drawer (that's a man's idea of fixing the problem I guess).

In the past we have thrown out the old shirts and just gone out and bought new ones. This year, with a little one on the way, I decided to try something new. Operation de-funk was under way one summer day (ha I'm a poet, JK, not really).

Step One: Wash

I took all my hubby's shirts out of the drawer and washed them in the washer on high with both my home-made detergent and a half cup of white vinegar for good measure. Vinegar is known for it's disinfecting properties. 

Step Two: Dry

Now, this is wear the "summer day" part of my plan comes in. Growing up, we always took our bedding out in the spring and put it in the sun. I was never sure why we did this, but my mom assured me this would help "air it out" and clean our mattresses and comforters. I didn't really have a choice, but they did smell better by the end of the day so I figured she was on to something. 

Twenty years later, I'm reading the tag on my down comforter and it advises me to put the comforter in the sun twice a year. With a little research I found that the disinfecting power of the sun is a real thing, and my mom is not a nut-job that just liked to watch us drag our mattresses around every spring (sorry mom, I was a teenager).

With all this in mind, I took my husband's newly washed undershirts and hung them in the sun. 

They hung out in the sun for most of the day. 

Boy, do I love my clothes line, every time I look at it I'm happy (thanks hubby!). By the time I got around to taking these pictures the sun had gone behind the trees, but believe me, they were in the sun for at least a couple of hours. 

Step Three: The Result

I brought them in, and gave them to my hubby for the final test. Success! The funk was gone. Although I'm sure the vinegar helped, I KNOW the sunlight made the final step to really get those shirts clean and smelling good again. 

I don't really like a lot of harsh chemicals or super smelly detergents, this proves they are not needed. It has been five months, I went back to washing them the normal way (with a dryer, not on the line). They still smell fine. 

It's funny how it takes years to fully appreciate the knowledge your parents passed down to you as a child. Maybe because I'm having a child, I'm relearning all these little tricks.