Corny Biscuits and the Kapok Tree

I provided my wonderful biscuit recipe in an earlier post.  An easy improvement – BUY NEW BAKING POWDER.  I used up the old and bought a new can, and I am simply amazed at the difference in quality of the biscuits.  The previous can was a bit old, but it had never been opened so I thought it was probably OK.  Nope.  The new biscuits are so much lighter they almost float.

While sorting through postcards I came across some of the Kapok Tree in Clearwater, FL.  We had gone there for some Important Family Occasions when I was in my early teens.  My Aunt lived just north of Clearwater and when we came to visit everyone would get all dressed up and we would drive down, park, and enter the lovely sculpture and fountain-filled gardens.

I remember the extravagant dining areas and coordinating restrooms.  And the corn fritters.  I was making biscuits one day and thought about making corn muffins with corn and jiffy mix.  Opened the can of corn and then got down the box of jiffy mix.  Uh Oh.  It was too old.  In the trash.  Was not in the mood to eat corn as a vegetable so I thought corny biscuits!

Corny Biscuits

1 cup all purpose flour

1 Tbs dry milk powder

1 1/2 Tbs baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1Tbs dried onion flakes

2 Tbs sugar

1/2 can of corn – about 7 oz

drain corn juice into measuring cup and add milk or water to make 3 oz

1 oz canola oil

mix, and make drop biscuits.  Bake. Makes 1/2 batch.

They are delicious and I’ve made them several times.

Back to the postcards.  After seeing the Kapok Tree postcard, I remembered how much I liked the CORN FRITTERS they served family style with every meal.  I think we would have been happy with individual plates of corn fritters.  The recipe is online, and I checked.  The only difference between my corny biscuits and their fritters – they add an egg and 1/2 the sugar and deep fry them.

I feel almost virtuous.  No deep frying here!

Adventures in Knitting-Secret Revealed

The recipient received her package and loves the bag!  It is a dark fuchsia/pink and felted so it is nice and thick and feels substantial.   Big enough for a lunchbag, purse, or project tote!

This item was felted by hand.  I wanted full control of the process and worked in the sink with hot tap water, a bit of dish soap and a lot of squishing, squishing, and MORE squishing!  Everything shrank except for the handle and I swear it grew.  The bag shrank more vertically than horizontally, but I like the shape.  A bit of visual interest was added with some buttons out of my collection.

I also included several smaller items:

a pink sheep out of the same yarn (Lion Brand Feltable Wool).   The pattern was easy to follow and was found on the Flutterby Patch blog.  Hers have faces…not sure why I decided not to make a face…

It’s only about 2 1/2 inches tall, shown against a backdrop of one of my vintage Florida Postcards.

Stitch markers

in a little bag out of Peaches & Creme in Pink Lemonade.  How about this for bright colors?

Spinning

I have always been interested in spinning.  Turning fluff or plant fiber into yarn or thread?  Magical!  No wonder it features in fairy tales…Sleeping Beauty or Rumpelstiltskin, anyone?

As I child I would sometimes take a cotton ball, tease out a few fibers and twist them into a “yarn” only to have it become a strand of fibers once I let go.  Then I learned that when you let it twist back on itself, a short length of yarn resulted.  But it was a short length, and you couldn’t really do anything with it.

Foxfire books fascinated me with the tales and stories of how to make a living from the land in the Appalachians.  This was a part of my heritage! (one branch of the family traces their lineage back a few hundred years in that area of the country)  Spinning and weaving were important skills to provide warm clothing for the family from your sheep.

But I lived in the era of polyester double knit and acrylic yarn.  Grandmother crocheted exquisite cotton thread lace tablecloths.  The other grandmother passed away when I was quite small, but I still have a warm crochet hat trimmed in ribbon she made for me.  She also knitted, sewed, and cooked with artistry.

I had crochet right in front of me so I was more interested in making things with the hook.  Different eras of life I picked up and put down various hobbies or interests.  Most recently crochet, and I joined a Knitting Group  as a crocheter.  The other women offered to teach me to knit and I took to it like a duck to water!  It is not dull and there is always something new to learn, or a technique to perfect.

In sneaks spinning.  Several knitters writing blogs I read are also spinners.  Some even have their own pet sheep, or farming operations.  Did you know they put jackets on their sheep to keep the wool a bit cleaner?   wow!

Can you see where this is going?  I learned an interesting factoid from the blogs, that the wool from Bluefaced Leicester (BFL) sheep is good for learning…a woman I met knitting is also a spinner and she encouraged me to learn drop spindle (less $$ investment) spinning.

A drop spindle can be made from a dowl and a wodden wheel for a toy.  Hmmm.

Ebay.  I bet they sell wool roving.  And wouldn’t you know, I also found some BFL at what looked to be a good price.  Checking around some websites confirmed that it was a GREAT price (yeah, yeah, I know, buyer beware).  The seller had good ratings and their own website too.  I leaped and bought some.  It came today.

Guess what I did…opened the package and pulled out a small wisp of BLF wool.  Then gently pulled it, twisted and made…YARN!

My time this weekend is pretty well filled through Sunday, so will be looking up some DIY websites to see what instructions I can find.

These look interesting:

http://www.joyofhandspinning.com/HowToDropspin.shtml

http://www.handspinning.com/lollipops/spininst.htm

If any of my readers have spinning or knitting sites to recommend, don’t be shy!