As important as it is to feed our bodies, we also need to feed our souls. What feeds your soul?
A collection of the blooming daffodils from our yard.
Flowers feed my soul. The beauty of them calms & centers me. The scent brightens my mood & brings a smile to my face.
My roses are blooming their heads off.
Knowing the importance of flowers to me, I have always filled my yard with them. With a fairly new house & yard, there are lots of nooks begging for flowers to be planted in them. Last year, I was too overcome with grief to add more than a handful to the yard. But this year, I have felt Jim nudging me to plant. He has been reminding me that one of the reasons we bought the house was all the places it had that I could plant flowers. It has seemed that the plants themselves are echoing Jim.
Even though it was a 3 year old plant tuber, I got ONE bloom all of last year from this peony plant.
I planted lily bulbs last year in pots. A mixture of Oriental lilies & Asiatic lilies caught my eye last year & I brought them home. Carefully planted them in pots & watched & waited. Nothing! Most of them didn’t even sprout any greenery! The ones that did only grew about 4-5 inches tall & refused to do anything else. The pots were as barren as my soul. But this year — all those barren pots have grown lily plants! They vary in size but all of the pots are full of lush green stalks. They are also loaded with flower bulbs. I no longer remember which bulbs were planted in which pots so it will be delightful surprise after surprise as they bloom.
THIS is one of pots of lilies that didn't even sprout last year!
Having watched all of this and knowing my feelings about flowers, Sarah bought me plants for Mother’s Day. While we were having our enjoyable day together yesterday, we went round to several places & I picked out flowers. There is a strip between the ditch at the bottom of the hilly front yard and the road that is a pain to mow or weedeat. My plan is to eliminate that strip of weeds with a little grass. Slowly I’m replacing the unruly weeds with daylilies.
The lily bulbs had multipled so much, one of the bulbs was forced up in the air. So it grew sideways & produced this lovely flower.
I’m not planting your common orange daylilies. I’m planting glorious reds, yellow, fragile pinks & bi-colors. I picked out 2 different colors of daylilies. Kept eyeballing some Knockout Roses. Everybody keeps telling me they need very little care. I’m about to find out! I picked out 2 of them & they are going to join the daylilies in transforming that ugly weedy strip into a thing of beauty.
Tags: daylilies, food, food for the soul, Jim, lilies, roses, Sarah
It’s the first week of January. January, the traditional diet month is not likely to be a very busy month at the shop for me. After all, I haven’t seen any diets that feature cupcakes or cookies. Realizing this, I have made plans. Plans that include testing new recipes, getting photos ready ahead of time for the holidays coming up in 2010 & playing with some of the toys I bought when I attended ICES last August.
This is Geraldine's small fondant mat. It's the perfect size for this project!
Today is a great day for playing with one of the fondant molds I bought. I’m excited about it & quickly gather everything needed. Not sure what colors I want or what colors I already have, I grab some unopened fondant & the bags of leftover fondant. (Good fondant is very expensive & way too expensive to waste. Save any pieces you don’t use on a project. When you have time, you can make flowers, leaves or geometric shapes to use on a future project. Those are words of wisdom Norman Davis gave us at ICES.
Rolling out the fondant to use in the mold.
I have a wad of yellow fondant a little bit smaller than a half dollar & a wad of orange fondant about the size of a quarter. That looks to me like a good place to start! Place both pieces of fondant in the microwave & heat them just a few seconds. Even after being carefully wrapped in several layers of Saran Wrap & placed in Ziploc bags, fondant will get stiff to rock hard. A few seconds in the microwave will soften it enough to knead. Be careful though not to heat for anything but very short bursts. It is sugar dough & will get too hot to safely handle. Heated long enough it will even start to melt.
Gently place the fondant over the mold. Be careful to cover all sections of the mold!
Butterflies are not a solid color so I knead both pieces of fondant together until they are soft & pliable but not completely blended. I then take my 6-inch fondant roller out & proceed to roll the dough out on my mat. (I will do another post on the mat. It’s that good.) Once the fondant is rolled out to 1/8 thickness, I pick it up & gently lay it on the bottom part of the mold. Previously, I had taken my finger & dipped it in powdered sugar & rubbed it on the inside of the mold. Then I shook the mold so almost all of the powdered sugar was shaken out. With my fingers I gently pat the fondant into the crevices of the mold. Once I have a pretty decent impression, I pick up the top 2 pieces & lay them on top of the fondant lining them up on the indented fondant. Then I take the roller & firmly roll the top pieces into the fondant & bottom piece of the mold. If this is done properly, you get an almost clean cut of the butterfly pieces. Pull the top pieces of the mold off & you’re ready to gently push the fondant out of the mold. Now you have two beautifully impressed butterfly wings. I’ll use them in the future on a cake or some cupcakes.
In this photo, the top of the mold has had gentle pressure applied to force the fondant into all crevices of the mold. Excess fondant was carefully peeled away.
You can see the impressions from the mold once you removed the top portions of the mold. Then turn the mold over & gently tap to remove the butterfly pieces.
After removing the butterfly half from the mold, use a tapered spatula to do detailed removal of small bits of excess fondant. Do NOT use a knife as there is too much danger of nicking your mat.
After making a few of these, I pull out a small piece of blue & a small piece of green fondant. Knead both of these into the leftover fondant from making butterflies & make some more butterflies. The mold only needs to be rubbed down with powdered sugar after the fifth set of butterfly wings. That’s how well this mold works. It’s been a good afternoon. Played with one of my new molds until I’m very comfortable using it. As a result of using the mold, I have several beautiful fondant butterflies to use.
A pair of orange & yellow butterflies drying on a wire rack.
A multi-colored butterfly half ready to have the excess fondant gently removed.