The bunting I promised my neighbor Annie for Paint the Town Pink week is finished. And I love it so much, I told Adam to be prepared for homemade bunting strung from every possible surface at all our parties from now on. Seriously, it was a breeze to cut out thanks to the Purl Bee’s tutorial, and I was able to use up tons of scrap fabric and fat quarters that had been growing dust in my stash for a while. Tomorrow afternoon people are officially gathering for the “pinking” of Annie’s house, and I can’t wait to see this bunting up there.
Archive: April 2009
I’ve been furiously trying to read the 2009 Newbery books I hadn’t gotten to so I could about them. I haven’t had time to do it yet this year, but I just finished The Graveyard Book and have just one more to go. Last year I never posted about the Newberys because I read everything but Elijah of Buxton and didn’t want to post without full completion of the list.
Last Friday I made this recipe, which I’d originally seen on America’s Test Kitchen on PBS, and it was awesome. I just wanted simple, good food and this fit the bill. A great Friday night meal.
I served it with some crusty bread and a really great caprese salad. Whole Foods is starting to get some flavorful tomatoes in again. They always have tomatoes, they just taste better in spring and summer. Really good in summer, but these tomatoes were pretty good. And they always have excellent mozzarella made locally. I used my tangerine balsamic and meyer lemon olive oil from Carter & Cavero. So good, we couldn’t get over how good the caprese is now that spring is here.
And then there’s the main event. We used Finlandia vodka because the show suggested using the best quality vodka you have available. The flavor really makes a difference, apparently, and this was delicious.
Penne Alla Vodka (from America’s Test Kitchen)
So that the sauce and pasta finish cooking at the same time, drop the pasta into boiling water just after adding the vodka to the sauce. If possible, use premium vodka; inexpensive brands will taste harsh in this sauce. Pepper vodka imparts a pleasant flavor and can be substituted for plain.
My neighbor Annie is participating in our town’s Paint the Town Pink event for breast cancer awareness. She’s obsessed with pink, she’s even painted her entire porch bright pink. So I volunteered to make some bunting that she can hang from her porch for this Saturday’s judging. I’ve had more than a week to get started, but I just got rolling cutting out the fabrics last night. I’m now seeing the lack of wisdom here, since I have a lot of porch to cover and not many days left to do it. The judging is Saturday, so really I need to get this to her by Friday so she can hang it up. We’ll see how I do, I haven’t even started sewing it yet. I’m using The Purl Bee’s Party Garland as the pattern. I’ve cut out several more fabrics since this photo, but I’m not having great luck with my photo software today. I’ll update more as I get closer to finishing.
So I was convinced that today was my 1-year blog anniversary, but it turns out it was actually April 16th. I really need to pay more attention to dates, this is not the first time that sort of thing has happened.