quilts, food, and miscellaneous

Today's mail brought me a lovely surprise: two small quilts that have been traveling for so long that I had almost forgotten about them. They were part of C&T's surface design trunk show and If you've seen my business card, you will recognize the fabric from this one, photographed before I used it to make a small quilt. 

This is the front of the other one, which I really had forgotten about.

and here is the back.

Seeing these two after about five years makes me think about printing again -- but not until I use up more of my fabrics.

In the meantime, I've been puttering in the kitchen again.  The market had a deal on tomatillos, so I couldn't resist.  I have a pot of cilantro on the deck, limes in the fridge, and on Monday I made one of my favorite things - fresh salsa verde.

 Tomatillos may look a bit like green tomatoes, but they are not.  The tomatillo (front and center) is covered with a paper-like outer layer. Once it is peeled off, it looks like the ones in the center of the cutting board.

I cut up about ½ lb of tomatillos, a small onion, a clove or two of garlic and threw them into the food processor with salt, a handful of cilantro, and the juice of a lime. You can find any number of recipes on the Internet, but I just estimate and use my judgement.

Here's what the salsa looks like after I've processed it.  Then I season to taste (more salt? more cilantro? more lime juice? - all of the above, probably).

And serve it with some tortilla chips (I like Trader Joe's the best).  Perfect with a drink on a warm summer evening.

Tonight's puttering was the result of an article in the NY Times which mentioned halvah ice cream. HALVAH ICE CREAM?? What a concept!!  I just happened to have about ½ lb of marble nut halvah in my fridge that has been there for maybe six months. (It doesn't go bad).  And while I didn't have cream, I did have low fat yogurt and my lactose-free  low fat milk, sugar, tahini, and all that halvah. 

 I threw a cup ofyogurt, a cup of milk, about ½ c. sugar, some vanilla, a spoonful of tahini (optional) into my Cuisinart ice cream maker and crumbled the halvah into the mixture.  Threw in a few pistachios for good measure and  ran it till t'was done. Oh, and I added a little vodka to keep it from freezing solid.

Delicious!!  It would probably have been to die for if I had had cream instead of yogurt, but at least I feel somewhat virtuous as I go to the fridge for another helping.

Oh, and before I sign off, please click on the blog tour icon at the top of the sidebar. All of us in the tour have reinvented our state's license plates to make them more fun/interesting.  And we all have giveaways for those of you who leave comments.  My license plate will be up in June.  If you can't be bothered to go to the top of the sidebar,

here's the thingie that will take you to the blog tour links and schedule.  

Catch up with the first ten and have fun!  It's amazing how creative people can be.