Homemade Power Bars version 1.2 MOCHA

I'm just back from a whirlwind visit to New York. Before I left, I made a batch of power bars so I could bring some to Andrew. I finally made the recipe with mini chocolate chips. I added ½ cup to the dry ingredients. When I poured the hot syrup on, as you would expect, the chocolate chips melted. There was no visible evidence of the chips when all of the syrup was incorporated. The interesting thing was that the coffee flavor was enhanced. Two tasters asked whether I had increased the amount of ground espresso. I had not. I would not say that the flavor was chocolate-y with this amount and this kind of chocolate (I used Nestle’s minis because I felt the scale would be right.)

I will try it again with other kinds of chocolate, like Ghirardelli dark chocolate (baking bar) because I love that chocolate. I will roughly chop it but I suspect it, too, will melt. There is no advantage to using chips except ease of mixing and I’d rather go for great flavor.

Version 1.2 adds 400 calories to the recipe or 25 calories per bar if you cut it into 16 bars.

Homemade Power Bars -- Update

Well, I did the calculation and it's not as bad as I feared: I made 16 portions from the recipe and I calculated that this would amount to (drumroll, please!)

230 calories per bar.

I haven't done a real nutritional analysis but I feel better about them now that I know this.

I found this link about snack bars that provides some perspective. This was written by a nutritionist.

So in summary, these bars have whole grains, protein, fat, simple and complex carbohydrates, and are simple to make.

Homemade Power Bars

I’m always looking for something that I can make and send to my guys. Steven is in Santa Barbara and Andrew is in New York City. I discovered Big Sur Power Bars at 101 Cookbooks and I think it is a winner. In addition to the recipe, there is a video that shows how easy this recipe is. I’ve made it several times as written and I am about to make some modifications for all of the chocoholics I know. I can’t decide between mini-chocolate chips and cacao nibs. I guess I’ll just have to try the recipe both ways. The bars would be great as “emergency” food – to have in the car; for a quick “breakfast” bar; or as a pick-me-up late-afternoon snack.

Don’t be put off by the coconut if you are not a fan. I had doubts and I would ordinarily omit it in a new recipe. Maybe my tastes are evolving. It doesn’t really taste coconutty – the coffee flavor is what predominates.

The most economical source that I have found for brown rice syrup has been Whole Foods. My Trader Joe’s does not carry it. I haven’t checked at the Berkeley Bowl yet but all of the ingredients are on my Bowl list. All of the items are readily available at my nearest health food store. I think the theory of this recipe is to use more natural, whole foods. Instead of using all sucrose, or high fructose corn syrup, raw sugar and this rice-derived sweetener with more complex sugars, is used. Here is another link for brown rice syrup written by a self-identified consumer advocate.

The only problem with these bars is that it’s hard to stop eating them! And I’m afraid to do the nutritional analysis – they are so yummy!

I'm Back!

I’ve been very productive but have nothing to show for it. I’m working on another monoprint in my tree series for the Gang of Four Vernal Equinox challenge. I’m quilting my entry for Voices in Cloth, 2008 EBHQ show. I had jury duty for two days last week. I’ve started some basil seeds and I’ve been weeding the garden. Ah Spring!

Mole poblano

The reveal for the current 12 x 12 group Chocolate Challenge is today, February 1. I was so inspired by the work this group was doing that I decided to set a goal for myself to do a journal quilt every week. Most of my journal quilt work has been 12 inches square. It was so fun to read about the groups' research that I started thinking I might take the chocolate challenge. I started this last week, when I was stuck for a journal quilt idea. I had been thinking about skinny strips and decided to do some piecing. The first thing that came to mind was mole poblano. We honeymooned in Mexico and I had a personal goal of tasting as many preparations of this wonderful sauce as was possible. A quick check of Wikipedia has this:

Mole poblano is prepared with dried chile peppers (commonly ancho, pasilla, mulato, and chipotle), ground nuts, spices, Mexican chocolate (cacao ground with sugar and cinnamon) and a variety of other ingredients. Mole de guajolate (turkey) is widely regarded as the country’s national dish.

My version has chocolate, dried chile peppers, and fresh red and green jalapeños.

Blue Vase

Well, so much for staying focused. I spent Saturday with Yvonne Porcella ! Well, not exactly. I shared her with 20 of my closest EBHQ friends. Yvonne was the guest speaker for the January 28 meeting of the East Bay Heritage Quilters. She taught a class on Saturday on her methods of making quilts using fusible web and machine applique. This is the still life I did. On Monday she taught a wearable art class. I would have loved to make the jacket that she is taught on Monday but I am staying focused on quilts.

I didn’t get a lot done in Saturday's class. I find it hard to work with all of the distractions. I had been feeling bad that I was taking a class and starting another project instead of working on my big-ish piece. But instead, I decided that the class was a kind of warm-up exercise. I had been a little stuck for whatever reason. I am now putting "take a class" in my bag of tricks for getting over bumps. Of course I totally didn't plan it that way.

I really wanted to meet Yvonne and spend time in her class. For me, she is one of the founding mothers of the studio art quilt phenomenon. Her vibrant colors are not unusual today but they were when she began in the 70s. And how about those amazing kimonos!

Early Spring

This is still journal 3 of 2008 but I added hand stitching to the trees in an attempt to draw focus to them and away from the "background." I had been looking for a way to create what I "saw" in my walks in the woods, putting the emerging green of spring into softer focus. Coming upon this piece of fabric which had been screen printed was exciting. Quilting the line of the trees was interesting but didn't seem to be enough.

I'm not so sure about my "no rules" approach to my goal of weekly journaling but I am satisfied that I am making work.

Journal Quilt Week 3 of 2008

I thought about not making something last week because I am trying to get something done for my guild show. The East Bay Heritage Quilters have a show every two years. Every member may exhibit one quilt and one piece of wearable art. It’s an amazing guild. It’s a wonderful show. I’m not even at the point of having some pictures of the work in progress.

On Friday, while cleaning up my work space, I found a piece of fabric that I made in an EBHQ workshop with Kerr Grabowski. I cut it up and started quilting my tree shapes. This fabric was screen printed with thickened dyes, using Kerr’s deconstructed screen printing techniques. I had intended to do more hand stitching on this piece but I decided to take a look at it first. I mis-positioned it on the scanner bed and got this image. I’m going to leave it for now and get back to my EBHQ project.

Trying to stay focused

I always think I should have a photo to go with a blog post, so I haven’t been blogging much. I am trying to stay focused on my weekly journal project and I am working on a large-ish piece (about 36 x 48) for the 2008 EBHQ show, Voices in Cloth. The show is a little later this year, April 12 and 13, but it is still at the Oakland Convention Center. Here’s a picture of one of the Opportunity Quilts for 2009. This one is by Judy Jensen. Read more about it here

Resolution : Focus

The Gang of Four had our January meeting. We had selected Resolution or Resolve as our prompt. I have been much more interested in the tree thing I’ve got going than the concept of resolution. In the course of this project, I did spend some quality time thinking about the end of 2007 and what I accomplished. I have been subscribing to the EDM listserv (check out EDM Superblog) where there has been a huge discussion of goal setting for 2008. Somewhere I found a link to Christine Kane’s blog and I loved her idea in her December 28, 2007 post about choosing a word for the year, rather than resolutions.

I haven’t been drawing every day but I have been drawing and more importantly, I have been working in my sketchbook. When I am overwhelmed with a blank page in my sketchbook I will break the page down into boxes and doodle in the boxes. I took that approach in designing this piece. It was actually the only idea I had. I decided that the important thing was to make something that was 12 x 12, rather than getting caught up in the “making a masterpiece.” I enjoyed just getting it done. I knew what would go in some of the boxes. I finally settled on the irregular grid and filled in the boxes that I was sure of. I treated this quilt as a sketchbook page.

In my initial research, I had come up with ideas like fireworks, streamers, and confetti which I thought might be ideas for quilting motifs. As the piece turned out to be a kind of whole-cloth quilt, I didn’t really have space for extra quilting. But I did have that spool of metallic thread which I had never used. I was afraid of the issues that might develop but I experimented anyway. That was good. Our next meeting is in February and the prompt is crazy or love or crazy and love or crazy in love.

Winter

This is the third journal quilt I've finished in the 12 x 12 inch format. My goal is to finish something every week for 2008. I continue to be interested in trees and line. In looking at my sketchbook, I noticed that trees have been a recurring motif. I feel as if there is much more territory to explore. Can this be a series? In this piece I experimented with monoprinting with acrylic paint on a Plexiglas plate.

Storm Update

I just went out and there are many downed branches. There is lots of flooding: clogged drains, trees downed, creeks rising. Power is still out in five neighborhoods in our village. The winds, which were the biggest problem, seem to have temporarily abated but heavy showers and thunderstorms are still predicted for the next day or two, and a “very wet pattern” will continue until perhaps Thursday of next week. The National Weather Service has issued a hazardous weather warning for the entire area. I emptied out the rain gauge which was up to 5 inches.

The Sierra Nevada is bracing for perhaps the biggest snowstorm total in the last 50 years.

Big Storm!

The big storm that forecasters have been warning us about, hit with full force here on the eastern side of the Berkeley Hills. We just regained power after a 2-1/2 hour outage. I suspect that we are one of the lucky ones. There are reportedly over 200 separate locations in the Bay Area that will require work. We have had very high winds and have had 4 inches of rain since yesterday. A portion of an old fence on our property blew down. We have two sump pumps going, now that we have power again, and so far so good. But there is a torrent pouring down the hillside behind us. If I get a chance, I will go out and take a picture of our “waterfall.” It is still blowing and raining and more rain is predicted. This is actually a series of three storms that are moving into California. We haven’t had such a big storm since the New Years’ storm of 2006. I hope Christine at Winnowings on her island in the Delta is okay. Now I’ll go check on the pumps!

Winter Solstice II

After finishing Winter Solstice I, I had an idea of simplifying the tree shapes using only lines. I was still fascinated with the greys. I had been in the garden and had noticed that there was a lot of green for late December: the lichens and mosses have sprung back to greenness; the freesias are popping up; the Daphne odora , with bright green calyxes, is loaded with buds and looks as if it is ready to burst into bloom. I was also having so much fun with the hand stitching that I wanted to do more.

One of my goals for 2008 is to post something that I’ve made at least once a week.

Winter Solstice I

The Gang of Four (pending some other appellation) met in early November for the first time. We are all young artists, at about the same place in our careers. We are close to each other in age but our children range in age from 13 to 24, so our parenting responsibilities are not the same. I believe that our goal, for now, is to encourage each other to make more art. We plan to meet about once a month. We were inspired by the Twelve by Twelve gang and have adopted that format with the idea that we might make smaller format work that we could show together.
We decided to challenge each other to meet in December with a fiber response to the winter solstice. It was very exciting to see everyone’s work. In addition to making more work, another of my goals is to do a better job of using my digital camera. This was another scan with my new scanner.

Seasonal Content

I saw this on the Mason-Dixon Knitting Blog and couldn't resist it. Those girls are hilarious. By now the post is buried in the archives but Kay wrote:

"I'm embarrassed to report: my interest in collegiate a cappella remains undiminished. (Symptoms d'une femme d'un certain age: fluctuation of estrogen levels, and yearning for harmony and rep ties.)"

And I thought I was the only one who loved this kind of thing.

Happy Birthday, Ludwig!

It's Beethoven's Birthday. We should celebrate!

Working Small

This is the first really small quilt I’ve tried. It's 6" x 7" I think of it as a prototype of sorts, as I have decided to work small for the time being. I love how Terry Grant (August 30 entry, Almost Finished) has mounted her work on fabric, so I have been experimenting with that.

This is the first time I’ve used my new photo scanner, an HP G4050. This would be a great step forward except that my latest obsession is with the 12” x 12” format I’ve been seeing and thinking about from the 12 x 12 blog. Inspired by their creativity, I’ve started a small group. We are doing a 12 x 12 about once a month and we are off to a good start. Pictures to follow.

This is a Test

This is only a test. It is always a test. This is what happens if you scan a quilt and then send it to Blogger with Picasa.

Now we know that the scanner works!

Rosegarden Quilt