Knitter in the Kitchen

In our den, we have two bright red armchairs. I love that they provide pops of color in a room filled with dark brown furniture, but I’ve been hunting for accent pillows to give them a more polished look. I really liked this pillow from Room and Board, but it was a little too large for the slim chairs. And I wasn’t willing to pay that much for a pillow, especially since I needed two of them. So I switched gears and started looking online at fabrics and pillow forms, and eventually ended up making two of my own 10×14 pillows.

I hadn’t sewn in more than a year, so it took me a few minutes to remember how to wind a bobbin and thread my machine! And I had to re-learn how to hand-sew a slip stitch (to close the opening) since I hadn’t done that in about three years. But it was fun, and now I’m planning to make accent pillows for our couch!

A couple of months ago I made chili for the first time, and I wanted to find an accompanying cornbread recipe. Beth suggested Grandmother’s Buttermilk Cornbread from allrecipes.com, and Hubby said it was a winner!

A very delicious blueberry crumb cake from Baking: From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan.

Last month I made cinnamon rolls for the very first time and discovered that I absolutely loved them. So much, in fact, that I actually made them twice in as many weeks. But the process was a bit time consuming because of waiting for the yeast to rise and refrigerating the unbaked rolls overnight. So I was intrigued when I came across a post by The Kitchn about Fine Cooking’s Fastest Cinnamon Buns recipe.

The dough portion of this recipe is made in the food processor and includes baking soda + powder, buttermilk, and cottage cheese. I didn’t use the filling and frosting instructions at all. Instead, I stuck with my previous version so that I could compare differences in the dough only. Hubby and I both thought that these turned out really well. The texture is definitely different — perhaps a tad chewier but still very light. I can certainly see myself making this recipe more frequently because it tastes great and is much quicker.

Now I just need to work on my dough-rolling skills. I am terrible at it, but I am determined to improve!

I learned recently that Hubby loves chili. I have only eaten it once in my life — just a few bites at a potluck last year — and I can’t even remember how it tasted. So I was searching for a “good,” simple chili recipe without exactly knowing the definiton of “good.” Luckily, I came across Smitten Kitchen’s post on a Red Bean Chili recipe adapted from Real Simple magazine. Kate raved about it as well, so I decided to give it a try.

It was fabulous. Hubby really liked the flavor, and I thought it was very good too (even though I’m not a huge chili fan in general). Best of all, it was super easy! Now I just need to find two things: a less expensive source of chili powder (because the 1/3 cup used almost my entire jar from McCormicks), and a great cornbread recipe to go along with the chili!