Impress Me

Who hearts lettepress?  On Saturday my friend Suzanne and I took an introductory class at Studio on the Square with Mindy Belloff of Intima Press.

What is it about letterpress?  

One classmate said it was "delicious", another that in a world of flat screens and flat pages, it's nice to be able to feel something tactile and real.  

OK, that second person was me, but still...

in just a few hours Mindy taught us about the history of the art and the incredible amount of detail and attention involved in setting type.  

I always love seeing the tools behind the craftsmanship.

It was a little scary working the huge press, but Suzanne did a great job!  

We definitely want to go back to get more practice and learn more.

But we were very happy with our first efforts!

You can go to Mindy's blog to see how how she recreated the Declaration of Independence -- all set by hand!

Fun with Fruit

Happy November!  I've been so inspired by lots of fall fruits and events lately, everyone is as busy as little bees....I really enjoyed Pie Party Live hosted by Jackie & Ken -- great job, guys!  I even won a copy of the Sarabeth's Bakery Cookbook, hurray!!

I'd been meaning to make a pie (or 2!) but being sick for the whole month of October threw a wrench into my plans.  Eventually I got back to canning with some black grapes and red plums from a recipe in Canning for a New Generation.

Love how the kitchen smells when fruit is simmering...

Winnie suggested a way to use up a bunch of kumquats: 

candy them with cinnamon sticks and star anise, yum.

I also love her post because she rounds up some great DIY gifts.  

One of my favorite things about canning is that it makes such nice, little presents.

Back to the grape plum filling: got this Wilton pie press at Sur La Table 

and (I admit) used store bought pie dough to save some time -- NOT as good I agree, but infinitely faster.

And pretty quickly we had a bunch of hand pies!

They were best right out of the oven of course.

But I had to wrap up a few

for little breakfast presents the next day.

More canning adventures soon, I'm having so much fun!