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Archive for May, 2012

As Pictured Below: Saying goodbye to a family relic

Posted in Home, Huntsville, Photographs, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on May 21, 2012| 3 Comments »

Yesterday, we hustled this beast of a piano into a rental truck for a short trip across town to one half of The Owl Sisters, two Huntsville ladies who refinish old furniture. After they remove its incredibly heavy harp, one Owl Sister will move the piano (which will really be a former piano at that point) into her home, where she’ll probably turn it into a bar. Or, possibly, something even cooler.

I’ve learned that old pianos are essentially worthless unless they’ve been completely reconditioned, a process that can cost just a thousand dollars or two less than the newly reconditioned piano’s value. I’m not taking that wager.

In the past, I’ve called this the accidental piano. When I was helping my dad clean out his mother’s house, it seemed like a good idea to take it home, not because I had fond memories of it (or even played piano), but because I had always thought it was a groovy piece of furniture. I had no idea that nearly 10 years in Mobile’s humidity would render its delicate wheels virtually useless.

For me, it has held family photos and knickknacks, along with whatever objects happened to be attracted to a flat surface at any given moment. I will miss its unique addition to the general decor, but I won’t miss moving it to another house or worrying about it scratching/denting the new floor when we get around to ditching the carpet.

Au revoir, beastly piano. Enjoy your third life.

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Simply irresistible: Improved goat cheese balls get rave reviews

Posted in Eats, Photographs, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on May 14, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Late last week, I realized that I had never posted about my improvements to the recipe for Goat Cheese Pops with Herbs, Pecans and Bacon after I began experimenting with it last fall.

The worst part of this realization? The knowledge that the only record I had of said improvements was a marked-up piece of paper residing in either the kitchen (on a very busy cookbook shelf) or in my home office (a treasure trove of unsorted grad school stuff).

Luckily, the printout was right where I had sort of hoped that I left it, on the left corner of my filing cabinet in a short stack of unrelated papers.

Whew. Because these cheese balls drew rave reviews at a party this weekend.

I totally amped up the goat cheese from what the original recipe called for, resulting in a much bolder flavor. Although I also increased the measurements of the coating ingredients to account for more cheese balls (this recipe makes about 50 percent more than the original), I still find myself running short on coating when I have anywhere from five to 10 cheese balls left uncovered.

There are worse things than having five to 10 uncovered goat cheese balls awaiting you in the fridge, however.

Simply Irresistible Goat Cheese Balls
Makes 30-45

  • 9 slices bacon
  • 8 oz. goat cheese
  • 4 oz. cream cheese (not whipped)
  • 3 tbsp. chopped basil (divided)
  • Cracked black pepper
  • 1/2 cup pecans

Cook bacon until crispy. Place cooked bacon on a plate lined with paper towel and pat to remove excess grease.

Place the goat cheese, cream cheese, 1.5 tbsp. basil and a few twists of cracked black pepper in the food processor. Process until creamy and well-mixed.

Form the cheese mixture into small balls, about the size of the tip of your thumb. (Use food-safe gloves and avoid cleaning cheese out from under your fingernails later.) Place the cheese balls in the freezer for 10-15 minutes; you want them to firm up, but you don’t want to freeze them all the way.

Clean out the food processor (or use your second, smaller food processor). Crumble in the cooled bacon and add the remaining basil and the pecans. Process until the mixture is very fine and crumbly. Roll the cheese balls in the bacon mixture, pressing to lightly embed the coating into each cheese ball. (Again, break out the gloves unless you enjoy bacon shrapnel under your nails.)

Refrigerate until ready to serve. (I’ve always made these the day before serving due to time constraints — they’re fine, if not a little better, the day after.) Serve alongside toothpicks or stick the toothpicks in before placing the cheese balls on a serving platter.

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As Pictured Below: Cat jacket

Posted in As Pictured Below, Cats, Photographs, tagged , , , , , on May 11, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Yang deftly took ownership of my green jacket in December after I left it on the bed after boot camp early one morning. It’s an actual cat place now, as in “Yang’s been on green jacket since lunch.” (And it’s not even the green jacket. It’s simply green jacket, like Atlanta or Birmingham.)

He likes green jacket to be spread out on the foot of our bed, and he often demands that we escort him there from various parts of the house. He does not object to the laundering of green jacket, although I have to move quickly to get it back in place in a timely manner.

It’s good to be the cat at Casa Shaggerty.

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Finally, I put a bird on it

Posted in Crafts, Home, Photographs, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 2, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I’ve had several canvas art projects pinned to my Pinterest craft board for MONTHS. My favorites involved silhouettes, but the instructions invariably called for purchasing vinyl cutouts. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t just PAINT a silhouette onto the canvas, because, you know, paint is cheap. And in my garage.

Finally, I painted a clearance-rack canvas with a couple of coats of red that I had left from another project. (The canvas had cost like $2 at Target, and featured a starfish, which I somehow thought would look good in my guest bedroom, only no.)

Silhouette time. I can’t tell you exactly where I found the stencil, but if you make sure your virus protection is updated and  google “free stencils,” you’ll find tons of candidates.

I chose a bird, partly because it looked easy to cut out and partly because of Porlandia’s “put a bird on it” spoof.

I printed out the stencil and carefully cut out the design with scissors. I debated whether to try to transfer the stencil to wax paper or foil for cleaner painting, but decided that the paint likely wouldn’t go through the paper. And if it did, I could just paint everything black and make silver birds later.

Accidental Craftiness 101: Plan for Failure.

The design fit almost PERFECTLY on the canvas. I only had to cut out a 2-inch slip of paper to extend the branch all the way across. I folded over the ends of the branch and taped them down on the sides of the canvas.

After squeezing some black paint onto a Styrofoam plate (I know: paint in a tube – fancy, right?), I got to the messy part. Since I didn’t want to tape the edges of the design down on the front of the canvas (more from a fear of having the red paint lift off with the tape than concerns about the final design), I held down the edges of the paper as I painted around them. I made sure to move the brush out from the edges of the paper, rather than toward the edges, to avoid pushing paint underneath the paper. (And I’m not even sure how I knew to do that. It’s like the time I knew to stick straight pins in the drooping flowers at my future sister-in-law’s wedding shower and I was certain I had been possessed by Martha Stewart.)

I call this the messy part because HOW MUCH black paint did I get on my fingers?

A LOT. I probably should have taken a picture of THAT, only it wouldn’t be that much different from a picture of the normal state of my hands. Today, for example, I have eyeliner under two of my left fingernails. EYELINER.

After completely surrounding the silhouette pattern with black paint, I carefully pulled away the tape and lifted the paper off of the canvas. Voila … a sharp bird silhouette. My next decision was whether to try to leave a subtle black aura around the silhouette or fill in the rest of the canvas. I’m not good at subtlety, and even as I was telling the husband about my decision-making process I was filling the canvas with black paint.

A completed craft project with no cuts, bruises, broken fingernails or glue-gun injuries? WIN. Now I just have to decide where to hang it.

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