Bling! January- Garnet

SheKnows.com

Oh so sparkly and pretty!

I'm sure this has been done but I thought it would be fun to take a peek at the birthstone for each month as we move through 2011. I'm not a gemologist or an amateur jeweller (so our peek will be pretty basic). I just like sparkly things!

There is a great deal of folklore and history and personal significance connected to birthstones. Those things are interesting and we will certainly explore them each month. However, let me just say right up front that I don't believe a chunk of rock, no matter how pretty, brings us luck or healing, endows us with patience, protects us from evil, or gifts us with wit and wisdom. I'm just not one of those folks. But the lore, I suppose, is part of the allure.



PrecisionGem.com



So with that bit of a disclaimer out of the way, I'm sure we can agree that there's no escaping being enchanted by their sparkle and beauty. What girl doesn't fall for that? Come on- you know you've sparkled your engagement ring in the sun while stopped at a traffic light. You notice, with a bit sparkle in your own eye, when someone's earrings throw a flash of jazz out at ya. And you've noticed how flashy your jewellery looks in that neat restaurant lighting. It's all about the bling, girl!

So, let's launch into January with ...

GemSelect.com



... the garnet.

Garnets are a silicate mineral, the largest rock-forming minerals, and contain silicone and oxygen. Garnets are formed in the presence of  outrageously high temperatures and pressure and geologists are able to use garnets found in the field to determine the temperatures and pressures under which the garnet-containing rocks were formed. The different types of garnets are a result of variations in their make up.

Nature Beds

Garnet gets it's name from the Latin garantum, which means "seed" or "grain", so named because of it's resemblance to the pomegranate seed. Garnet jewelry has been found in graves as early as the Bronze Age (3000 BC) and was thought to provide protection in the afterlife. It was also thought, at one time, to stop bleeding.



GemstoneArtist.com



January's birthstone is said to give the wearer victory, chastity, truth and fidelity. It signifies friendship and trust. Garnet is also know as the traveler's gem as it is supposed to ensure a safe return home and has been a traditional gift for someone going on a trip. It may also be given on the 2nd and 6th wedding anniversary.

Garnet is known for it's deep, almost mysterious, red color yet actually can be found in any color. The deep red color that most of us traditionally think of as being garnets are called pyrope garnets, or "Bohemian Garnets". It's color is spectacular.

Some of the Victorian era Bohemian garnet jewelry is stunning.



Georgian Jewelry



House of Francheska



But let's not forget the rest of the color wheel.

Pink Rhodolite Garnet

  ArtFire.com



Purple Rhodolite

RubyLane.com

Cinnamon, or Hessonite

The Jewlery Blog

Yellow mali garnet

GemSociety.org



Light green Tsavorite garnet

Deleuse Jewelers

 The brilliant green Demantoid

Toranj-Gem

The very fun orange Mandarin Garnet.

Brigitte Designs



Even blue garnets, previously thought not to exist, have recently been documented (late 1990's) in Madagascar. These have replaced the Tsavorite as the rarest and most expensive garnet.



Nordskip.com

 
OK- we could go on eyeballing beautiful garnets all day.

Care- Garnets are fairly durable but variations in hardness do exist depending upon its chemical composition. RubyLane states: "The hardness of Garnet varies a bit, due to the differences in actual composition, ranging from 6.5 to 7.5 on the Moh’s Scale.  Steam cleaning should never be done to garnet jewelry. Ultrasonic cleaning is considered to be normally safe, but the presence and type of inclusion in the stone may have an effect on durability, and we do not recommend the practice."  Warm water and a mild dish liquid will work just fine. Be sure to rinse your garnet(s) very well, with the drain closed. Though durable, garnets are only as hard as silica, which is what makes up sand, soil, even dust. Do not wear your garnet ring when working as they can be scratched.

Garnets have, in the past, been relatively inexpensive and were often used in "affordable" jewelry. However, with all of the beautiful colored stones now available, garnet's reputation is taking an upward swing. Garnets generally range from $40 to $5000 per carat.

Gem Soul

That's about it for our little look at January's incredible birthstone. It's been fun and sure makes a girl wanna spend that Christmas money. Keep an eye out for February's birthstone. And hey...

Happy Birthday all of you beautiful January Babies !

Interior Storm Windows



via Sciencephoto.org

We've all seen those thermo heat loss images that show how a home transfers heat from the inside to the outside. The idea is to show us places in a home where heat is leaking away from us and into the cold winter night so we can plug those leaky areas in order to save on our energy costs.

The more blue and green an image is, the better that home is keeping the heat where it should be- around our chilly toes. The more yellows, oranges, and reds we see, the more heat is being lost. The image above shows windows as a notoriously weak spot in our defense against the winter chill and an empty wallet.

via Ecofriend.org

This home above, all rosy and bright, has heat loss issues.

We live in an "antique" house that is pushing 200 years in age. We've added insulation where we can, caulked until the cows came home, left, and came back again, and have generally done what we can. Still, I can only imagine what a thermo image of our home would look like.

We keep the thermostat on 58 degrees. No, I'm not kidding. We have three floors but most of our activity takes place on the first floor. So we turn down the thermostat, put on snuggly socks, and close the door to the second floor. We use a vent-less gas fireplace on the first floor to supplement the boiler. When we use the upstairs computer, play in the sewing room, or read on the enclosed porch we have room heaters for those areas. It works for us, mainly because in spite of our efforts we're still a pretty drafty old homestead and it isn't in our budget to heat the neighbor's yard.



by DonkerDink via Flickr





This fall we had the pleasure of replacing our natural gas heat source with propane. You can go to this post- I've Got Gas & I Couldn't Be Happier- for all the sordid details. With natural gas, you have a pipe that comes into your house and there's always gas (unless of course things go for you like they did for us). With propane, you have a tank which contains a finite amount of liquid propane. I can't shake that uneasy feeling that we're about to run out of propane. And in spite of what the websites and pundits we consulted told us, LP is more expensive. It's price fluctuates with petroleum prices, which have gone up recently. Lucky us.

We've been known to tape the particularly leaky windows with painters tape.

Crude but semi-efficient.

So my husband decided to abandon the sporadic use of window plastic and painter's tape and make interior storm windows. He's a pretty clever guy and very committed to saving money because we have 15 windows that seriously needed attention. These aren't the original single pane windows but some "mature" replacement windows. A houseful of new windows isn't the in the budget right now either and truthfully may never be in the budget.

Here's what it takes:

1 x 2 lumber
2 1/2 inch drywall screws
Shrink film
Foam tape
You also need some sturdy two-sided tape
Clear packing tape- on a dispenser roll is super handy

If it's 18 degrees outside, set up a makeshift work bench in the already crowded Utility Room.

Stack the picnic table on its benches for an equally makeshift work area outside on the screened porch because the workshop in the garage is 50 yards from the house and each window has to be measured and cut separately and it's 18 degrees outside and a guy just can't be running back and forth that much. (Whew)

Each window is done separately because we've learned that when our house was built 200 years ago there were no standard sizes for anything. Even if there were, over the years previous occupants "did things" to the house, and a house settles after a couple of centuries as well. We highly suspect it also tilted ever so slightly when the long-wall mine went past a few years ago. Not that anything was plumb and square before that. Oh, it's been an adventure.

Run outside and cut the wood.

Each window needs 2 vertical pieces of wood and 3 horizontal, one being a cross brace in the center.

Secure the corners with a brace, drill a couple of pilot holes, and secure the frame with the drywall screws.

Run the two-sided tape around the entire frame, lay the frame out on the plastic, carefully pulled out any wrinkles (it won't be perfect), and pull off the top layer of tape.

 

Carefully pull up one of the short sides and wrap it up over the end of the board. Smooth it out and then lay the plastic back. Do both short ends and then both longs sides. Your plastic will come to a mitered-looking corner. Kind of like hospital corners when you're changing the sheets on your bed.

Trim off the plastic so that there isn't any extending beyond the wood frame.

Now- turn the frame over and repeat so that you have plastic on both sides. Tape, wrap, trim. This makes an air pocket inside the frame which helps with insulation. It's a double-paned storm window.

OK- now run clear packing tape around the entire frame. Cut the corners and fold the flaps down. This seals the entire frame. Remember, the point is to prevent heat transfer so get all of the leaky spots sealed up or it's not worth the effort. These windows are fairly labor intensive, in case the handyman in your life hasn't already pointed that out to you.

Just like you do when you put plastic directly onto the windows, use a hair dryer to shrink and firm up the plastic on the frame.

Last step- the foam seal around the edges. This lets your frame slide into each window sill and adds that final degree of insulation. Start the foam even with an edge and end the first side you do even with the other end. Start the next side by lining up the foam so that it is even with the outside edge of the foam on the side you just did and end it even with the frame. Go all the way around. If you just wrap the foam around the corners without cutting them you are more likely to get a leak on the corners.

And unless you are absolutely certain all of your windows are the same exact size, label each storm window so you know where it goes next year.

Finally, cheer your fella on as he puts up the storm windows and if he even hangs the curtains, well, he'll need special rewards.

In an ideal world we would have painted all of the frames before putting on the plastic. However, the logistics of where to paint and dry all of those frames inside the house was rather daunting. Secondly, it was already winter outside and things were beginning to cool off a bit in the house.

There was an immediate difference in the comfort level in our house, especially noticeable on the windy days. And in the spring I won't have to go around cleaning off sticky tape residue from the windows. Bonus!



via Solvent-Free Paint

The challenge will be figuring out where to store all of these frames over summer!

You can find countless Internet resources on building your own storm windows. My husband used information from Art Tec and his directions are much more detailed than those given here. This fella, Guy Marsden, has all kinds of neat things on his site from Levitation kits to electronic artwork to building a canoe to solar heating to custom furniture to, of course, interior windows. Go check him out.

You can also find vendors who will sell you ready-made or custom windows. The options are mind-numbing: plexiglas-based windows, acrylic, glass, magnetic, snap-in, etc forever. Since our old house has non-conformist windows, we would have been into custom windows almost exclusively. When we first moved in we priced them at about $120 each but that was 14 years ago and no doubt they are more now. Purchasing custom was just never an option for us. Mr Marsden estimates $9 per square foot.

Anyway, it's not every girl that gets 15 custom made interior storm windows for Christmas. Goes nicely with the 500 gallons of propane that I got for my birthday.

Thanks for stopping in today and please--

stay warm.

New Year's Resolution

The top New Year's Resolutions, year after year, according to USA.gov, are:

•Drink Less Alcohol

                                                  •Get a Better Education
                                                  •Get a Better Job
                                                  •Get Fit
                                                  •Lose Weight
                                                  •Manage Debt
                                                  •Manage Stress
                                                  •Quit Smoking Now
                                                  •Save Money
                                                  •Take a Trip
                                                  •Volunteer to Help Others

If you click here you can visit the site and check out the links provided for each resolution. There is a ton a helpful and enlightening information for each resolution.

I'm not one for New Year's Resolutions. I know my limits. Approximately 30% of New Year's Resolutions are abandoned within the first week, and a full 97% are never achieved at all. I fall somewhere in that continuum.



via The Wardman Wire

But it is helpful to set a goal that is realistic and personally meaningful. Those are the keys to achieving success- realistic and meaningful. I gave up trying to lose 20 pounds this year (it wasn't a New Year's Resolution) and instead focused on losing 1 pound. And you know what? I did it! AND, I've done it 10 times now. No, not the same one pound ten times- ten separate, independent pounds. It has taken 10 months but I'm not complaining. I'm the tortoise of weight loss!

But it's been quite some time since I've made a true New Year's Resolution. Instead, a few years ago I made a Life Resolution. Sometimes- let's be honest- things just stink. I'm not talking about the big losses and heartbreaks that happen in life- that's an entirely different post. I'm talking about the ka-gillion events and situations in life that simply stink and over which we have zero control. But what are you gonna do? Wallow in it?  Refuse to be happy? Let it define who you are? Do you want to be known as the complainer?



via Cartoonstock.com

Zippy and I had one of our "big conversations" the other day and the title could have been "Things Are What You Call Them." We were discussing attitude and I was telling her about a dear friend who has a not-so-dear habit of calling every little bump in the road, every unexpected or unplanned blip, a disaster. Generally, they aren't disasters. Clean up the spilt milk, re-schedule the appointment, get the tire fixed, pay the late fee-- whatever. But it's not a disaster. Someone else got your dream job, your kid didn't win the cross-country meet, you don't like the new benefits package your work is providing. Why let that define you? Get over it.

I've gotten to the place in my life where I've figured out that life is hard enough sometimes without reinforcing the difficulties, without collecting and saving the memory of those difficulties. I try to let it go, even though that has not been an easy road to travel. I like to get my way and I'm a fretter by nature. Worry, fret, stew, stress. It's been a twisty path of re-learning my responses to life and I rely a good bit on my faith to get my over each bump and around each curve. Well, I have to rely completely on my faith because I can't do this on my own. And my faith gives me a reason to be happy, to move forward.



by Gregory Williams via Fickr



Don't get me wrong, there are some truly crushing events in life that make it difficult to move forward. But not impossible. And don't you think that how we respond to the smaller disappointments and loses in life gives us practice for the bigger ones?

So my Life Resolution has been to be happy in spite of it all. I don't mean that we have to be a Pollyanna (that's not realistic) but after awhile you begin to see that there really are things to be happy about: your kid ran their personal best in the cross-country meet, it's good to have a job, your husband may not do laundry but he comes home to you every night, the milk may have spoiled but the yogurt it delicious.

by qlinart via Flickr

So I issue not a New Year's Resolution but a challenge: look for one small thing today (remember, we're keeping it realistic and meaningful) that isn't so bad after all or something that turned out better than expected even though you expected it to be pretty bad. Look for something than is a pleasant counterpoint to and gives relief  to whatever frustrations you feel: a sparkle of sun on the snow, the flash of a cardinal at the feeder, the great wacky fun your kid had while dumping all the beans on the floor.

by ericarhiannon via Flickr

Just stop-

          take a deep breath-

                                 and say "Oh well."

And then do it again tomorrow.

I wish you a peaceful and happy new year.

Anyway.

Lefsa



When a load of potatoes are put on to boil in my mother's kitchen and the lefsa griddle comes out, you know it's beginning to look alot like Christmas. Though lefsa is eaten year round, for us, and many Norwegian-American families, it's an annual Christmas season tradition to gather in someone's kitchen and make lefsa. It's a relaxing afternoon because there is a certain amount of time spent waiting for things to cook so there's lots of easy-going conversation.

Germans have brautwurst, Mexicans have tortillas. The Thai have sticky rice, Australians have vegemite and Norwegians have lefsa.

Lefsa, or lefse, is a traditional Norwegian flat bread made primarily from potatoes. There are a few different kinds of lefsa- thick, thin, crispier, soft- and countless recipes. Unlike fruit soup (click here), lefsa recipes do vary across regions of Norway in the way they are made and eaten. All version, however, are thin (or thin-ish) and made from potatoes.

Lefsa isn't hard to make though it does require some special equipment.

Ideally, lefsa is cooked on a lefsa grill. This is essentially a round electric griddle. In the past, we used a large round, flat pan on top of the stove. After my dad bought Mor the griddle, that pan seems to have disappeared.

You also need a rolling pin and a turning stick. If two people are working together, it's super handy for each person to have their own.

Your rolling pin should be a grooved pin, with the grooves running around the pin. This allows you to roll the lefsa thinner without air pockets and gives the lefsa its distinctive grid pattern. This results in the yummy texture of the cooked lefsa. You'll see in a minute.

The turning sticks are for, well, turning the lefsa as you roll it out and cook it. These were made from the slats that are inside the bottom "pulling end" of roller-style window shades. Just shape and sand smooth one end. Oh, those clever Norwegians.


by commonculinarian via Flickr Creative Commons

Finally, you'll need a potato ricer. The one you will be seeing us use here today has been loved much more than the one pictured above.

My mom- "Mor" in Norwegian- uses a recipe from her mom. I love my mom's recipe box. It's stuffed full of these cards, most of them written by my Mor with notes added over the years. At the bottom of this recipe, you can see where Mor added a note in 1962 after talking the recipe over with Grampa. There are more notes on the back.

 

Before we get to work, a note to all my Norske friends out there. I know that chances are your recipe is different. Even for lefsa that is supposed to be the same type, the variations are countless. But, like with the Fruit Soup, our recipe is the right way to make lefsa. OK, you know I'm kidding. It's just the way that I suspect my Grandma learned it from her mom, who learned it from her mom, etc for generations back into the wild and mysterious Viking times of Norwegian history. Your family probably just lived in a different valley than mine.

So, let's get going on the lefsa.

Grandma's recipe says you need:

12 potatoes

1/2 tsp shortening for every cup of riced potatoes

flour

salt

Let's talk potatoes. Mor says to use Russet potatoes. Idaho Russet potatoes are preferable as you need a potato that will cook up dry and mealy.

Mor also says not to use milk or cream as these will cause the lefsa to blister when cooking. They blister a bit anyway and as you will see they tend to blister a bit more when I'm stationed on the grill. It's just yummy that way to me.

Alright, let's get going....

Clean your potatoes by giving them a good scrubbing under running water.

Take out any bad spots and cut them into quarters.

  

Cook them (covered) in a large pot with the skins on and just enough water to keep them from sticking. Add a dash or two of salt.

While the 'taties are cooking, admire Mor's sweet arrangement and the herb starts in her window.

Then the potatoes are fork tender, scrub out your sink really well and drain them right into the sink. OK- you can drain them however you like but this sure is easy.

Let the potatoes cool a bit- just until you can stand to hand them. You don't want them to be cold. Then peel them,

and push them through the ricer. Twelve potatoes will give you about 10 cups of riced potatoes.

For each cup of riced potatoes, add 1/2 tsp of shortening. We had 10 cups of riced potatoes so we added 1 Tbsp plus 2 tsp of shortening. Distribute the shortening around the potatoes instead of adding all in one clump in one spot. Doing so helps with getting it mixed in evenly.

Remember, Norwegians who may be listening and who make their lefsa differently, this recipe does not call for milk or cream.

Now add about 4 cups of flour and salt to taste and mix up the whole batch very well. You want a dough that is not too stiff and is easily handled. It should be just a bit- just a bit- dry and crumbly.

Now plop out some dough on a length of wax paper, shape it into a log, and roll it in waxed paper. Many folks will tell you that the dough should be formed into balls about the size of a tennis ball and chilled on a plate in the 'fridge. My uncle says to chill the dough overnight. Whatever, it all cooks up the same.

Anyway, we got five rolls. We just let it sit on the counter and cool its heels while we get everything together for the next step. About 5 minutes. Mor and I chilled one fo the rolls as an experiment while we worked on the others but didn't notice any appreciable difference.

You can roll the lefsa on a floured counter top but it works very well to roll it on a heavy, floured towel or pastry cloth. Mor has a round cutting board that she made a cover for out of a heavy weight muslin. It's just a circle with elastic around the edges to hold it onto the cutting board.

Working one roll at a time, cut a slice of dough about 2 inches wide or so,

 pat it out in your hand, (see, it's a ball!) and

... get to rolling. You want to roll it a thin as possible but not so thin it tears when you turn it. It's an art. Work back and forth and then turn the pin to roll perpendicularly. You'll get a nice cross-hatched texture. Keep your surface floured. In fact, if you don't end the day with flour over 99.9% of your kitchen, you haven't made your lefsa correctly.

Turn the lefsa with the turning sticks as you roll it out and then transfer to the grill. Turn it over once one side starts to brown up a little.

You can see the cross-hatching and some of the blistering texture. This recipe makes up about 40 lefsa. Give or take. And depending whether or not you count the ones eaten in the name of quality control. Well, somebody has to make sure it's fit to eat.

Cool the lefsa on a towel. Mor folds each piece in half and makes little stacks. Normally they are covered with waxed paper or another towel to keep them from drying out. I know, it doesn't really look like much, but that's some yummy stuff.

The most common way of eating lefsa is to spread it with butter, roll it up, and eat it just like that. This is called "lefse-klenning" and is how we usually eat ours. However, there are no rules for properly eating lefsa. Many people add sugar or preserves. You can add fish such as pickled herring or a raw fermented fish called rakfisk with onions and sour cream. Some folks add salami or maybe some sort of cheese. You can even dip it in the Fruit Soup. There's no right or wrong way- whatever gets you through the next 3 months of darkness to spring.

Making lefsa with Mor has always been not just a Christmas tradition at our house but a kind of right of passage, a grafting onto our family tree that goes deep into history and blossoms with love. It's a bonding. I've been running the grill for years but my older sister always got to do the rolling. Rolling is an honor. This year when Mor asked me if I wanted to roll, I choked. What if I messed up? I'm "of a certain age" now but still didn't feel grown up enough to roll. It somehow seemed so wrong for anyone but Mor or my sister to roll that I simply couldn't mess with tradition. I am the grill daughter, not the roll daughter.

Maybe next year.