An Object Lesson in Crafting - Spiral Coil Bowl

Six hours for spirals.

I know many women crafters.  Everyone of them has a UFO story.  No, not flying saucers.  In crafting, a UFO is an unfinished object.  The object may be unfinished because at some stage it looks as if it will not turn out they way the crafter hoped, or another project may have captured the crafter's attention so the first project was set aside to for "when I get around to it."  However, many projects are not completed because the item is taking so much longer to create than the crafter had thought it would.  It can be difficult to determine at the start just how much time a project will take to complete.  Sometimes projects look simple, but are deceptively time consuming.  Today I am blogging about such a project.  Hopefully, readers can learn something about estimating the time a project will take from this.

It all started when I saw a small bowl made out of paper on Pintrest.  The blog post said it was a good way to recycle magazines.  It looked simple enough.  I thought I could make one.  I did some internet searches to find some instructions on how to make spiral paper art.  There are many methods for making the craft.  During my search, I came across a blog post on someone's spiral paper art frame.  I wish I had saved the link because her post on this was both informative and humorous.  Her project was also a much more child friendly project.  Basically, she said that the project took hours and days longer than she expected.  Since she figured she was not going to talk you out of trying the craft, she went on to describe her technique, which used tape to secure the spirals.  She was probably right.  I should have walked away from this project, but I did not.  This project has becomes the project that has eaten up hours of my time with the end nowhere in sight.  I think if I had started estimating the time from the start, I would have taken her advice.

There were a number of different methods for doing this type of project on the internet.  Taping the spirals, using basic papier mache' techniques, and hot glue to name a few.  I also tried to recycle a magazine as part of the project.  Well, I have recycled most of one magazine.  I think I will take the rest of the magazines to the library because I don't see my making more than one of these bowls.  Anyway, I tried a couple of different methods of construction to see which worked best for me.  More about that below.

Before you begin a project, you need to decide how much mess you can tolerate on a project because that will factor into the time equation.  Some methods of construction can be quicker, but may entail a lot of mess.  Some methods are slower, but aren't as much of a mess.  Cleanup factors into time as well.  I tried the tape method because that seemed like it would be quick.  I did not like the result.  Tape was showing on the parts of the project that would be visible.  I tried a regular papier mache' method.  Trying to spiral the paper left it, my work surface, and me covered in sticky flour paste.  Finally I tried a modified method where I smoothed glue onto the spiral with the tip of a skewer.  That worked well, added the strength of the glue to the card stock, and kept mess to a minimum.  It was not as fast as the other two, but I think that overall, it looked better than the tape without as much mess as the flour paste.  It just takes longer.  I also found that coiling the paper into a spiral in advance helped make it easier to create the spiral when you were dealing with the glue.

To start with, the spirals are made of paper, but quilling paper was too thin at 1/8 inch.  I felt that I needed each spiral to be about a quarter inch deep to have enough strength to hold up to several levels of spirals glued on top of each other.  And regular magazine paper was a little flimsy.  I decided to try making the spirals out of card stock.  I cut 12 x 12 inch card stock from  coordinating colors into 1/2 inch (12.7 mm) strips.  I tried to cut three sheets of card stock at once with a craft knife and ruler (Using scissors did not make as even a cut), but three sheets at a time did not work very well.  It worked much better using only two sheets at a time.  Turns out that it took about eighteen minutes to cut the strips.  Eighteen minutes netted me 24 strips per sheet, so 48 in one cutting.  It takes two strips to make a coil about 7/8 of an inch wide.  I also cut half inch strips of magazine pages and folded them as well.  The flimsy magazine paper coiled much easier than the card stock, but you had to pay more attention to the fold because the paper tended to slide.

I folded each strip of card stock in half then rolled each strip into a spiral. Again, I did not ask myself how long was this going to take.  I never have measured how long it takes to coil an individual spiral.  What I can tell you that five sheets worth of 1/2 inch (12.7 mm) strips took about six hours.  I started making the coils when my husband and I watched television in the evening.  Once the spiral is started, you can basically make the spiral by feel.

Then I started gluing the spirals together.  Just so you know, you have to keep an eye on the spirals to make sure that they are not stealthily spinning outward into a cone on the other side while you are rolling them at this point.   I would spread glue on about a four inch section of the  folded card stock, roll that into a spiral, then add a few more inches of glue and roll some more.  I found that if I did more than a few inches at a time of the glue that I was covered in it when the paper whipped around.  Once I had the card stock glued down, I added  a strip of the magazine paper, then another strip of card stock.  It was slow going at first, but I picked up speed as I went along.  Speed is a relative term however.  Now that I have my method down, I can create spirals at the blazing rate of six per hour.  You read that correctly, at the rate of one every ten minutes.  The photo shows some rows of coiled spirals.  That is another six hours worth of work, on top of the six hours that it took me to coil the spirals in the first place.

The base of the bowl is a slightly different story.  I started making the base from 2 inch (50.8 mm) magazine strips.  Rather than folding them in half as I did the card stock, I folded them in half, opened out to the full width, then folded each end into the center.  Opened out the paper, smeared the strip glue, and refolded the paper.  That way, both the top and bottom had smooth edges.  The card stock, only folded in half, has one side that has smooth edges, and one side that shows the raw edge of the paper.  I coiled the paper around and around gluing each piece to the next until I reached about the size of the base that I wanted for my bowl.  Then I started working with the spirals to see how many I would need to go once around the base.  I wanted stripes of color to spiral around the base.  Turns out that my base was already to large, so I decided that rather than make the stripes wider, I would use one color twice.  After I had the base the right size, I gave the whole thing a couple of coats of Modge Podge to completely seal it.  One thing I did find is that the colors of the magazines get a little muddy when the glue soaks in.  The spiral of colors looks nice, but it might have been more colorful if I had used card stock instead.

Once my base was complete, I started to hot glue the spirals around the base.  This is the first set of 12x 12 sheets made into spirals and glued onto the base.  It only took about twenty minutes to glue them on.  The bowl is nowhere near finished.  At this point, I am at least thirteen hours in on this project.  I have cut and made the initial coil on  a second set of card stock papers.   Of course, this project is being done in my "spare time."  Eventually, the bowl will becomes a vase.  Each layer is going to be set slightly inward so that it will not be as wide as the base.  So, it may take three or four more sets of coils to get it looking like I want it.  I want it to be tall enough that you will be able to really notice the spiral of colorful stripes going around it.  This project is going to take a while. 

If I had taken the time to estimate how long it was going to take to make a coil, and how many coils I expected it to take to complete the project, I would have understood just how long the project was going to take.  I did not, because I thought it was going to be a very simple project.  Now I know better.  This project is so simple that it would be something you could do with a child, but I think a child would know better.  She (or he) would get bored with it and walk away.  

Cabin - Food and Cooking Part 2

In the last post I was blogging about some of my cooking strategies for the cabin.  It is not much of a vacation if you spend a lot of it in the kitchen.  I try to cook once and use leftovers to make other meals.  The previous blog post was about using smoked chicken.  In between those chicken recipes I served other meals so it would not seem like we were eating so much chicken.  I was also blogging about how to scale up the menus in case we had guests for dinner or were invited to a pot luck.  Today I am blogging about the meals served in between the chicken meals.

A day or so after I smoked the chicken, we cooked a London Broil (a.k.a. flank steak) on the grill. It was covered with a dry rub for beef before grilling.   I bring a large London Broil, much larger than we can eat.  Usually two or three slices each is enough.  If we are inviting people for dinner, there is always plenty left over.  Along with the steak we generally have some bread that was cooked on the grill before the steak was cooked.  I also serve a salad called Mississippi Cornbread Salad.  Altogether, it makes an attractive, delicious meal.  There will be plenty of leftovers from the steak and salad to use for future meals.

We actually cook the bread on the grill.  A few years ago, making pizza on the grill became popular.  We had to try it, and it does work.  That was the impetus for us to experiment with making bread on the grill.  My husband really enjoys making and cooking the bread.  He uses a basic Italian bread recipe.  After the bread has risen according to directions, he flattens the loaf out to a half-inch (12.7 mm) thick round disk.  We found that cooking the bread on a tray that is used to grill vegetables works better than just cooking it on the grill itself.  The bread browns more uniformly.  Once the bread is browned on one side, he flips it over and browns the other.  He checks the temperature of the bread with an instant read thermometer to make sure it is completely cooked through. The bread is done when the temperature is between 200 and 210 degrees Fahrenheit (93.33 to 98.88 Celsius).   It has a smokey flavor to it.  Usually, we have half the loaf for dinner and use the rest for sandwiches the next day.

There are plenty of recipes online for the salad under its title name and also under the search words Cornbread Salad or Southern Cornbread Salad.  It is somewhat of a regional food.  I use a recipe I found in a magazine a few years ago, more or less.  I add or subtract ingredients, depending on what I have on hand.  It is also a stacked salad, so if placed in a clear bowl, it can be very attractive if you are looking for a fancy looking food to take to a potluck.  I have posted a link to a recipe that is pretty much identical to the one I use here:  http://www.midwestliving.com/recipe/mississippi-corn-bread-salad/

The Mississippi Cornbread Salad is great if you are feeding a crowd.  However, I find that the recipe goes a long way on its own.  I usually only make half a recipe, and we can eat it as a salad for four days sometimes as a side for dinner, sometimes for lunch.  The cornbread salad is actually a full meal in itself.  I am actually thinking about scaling down to making a quarter recipe when it is just the two of us.  If I were going to downsize to a quarter recipe, I might save half the corn and pinto beans and put it in the pot of chili too.  The more vegetables the merrier. 

If I am only using half the cornbread that has to be cooked for the salad, I save the rest and serve it on a different night with some chili.  If chili is not on the menu for the next day, I will wrap the cornbread and put it in the freezer and thaw it when I plan to use it.  I always like to find ways I can cook once and have something at dinners two or three times.  If I were going to downsize to a quarter recipe of the cornbread salad, I might save some of the corn and pinto beans and put it in the pot of chili too.  The more vegetables the merrier.

The rest of the flank steak gets the leftover treatment as well.  A fairly large London Broil might actually give us another night of steak dinner if we were eating by ourselves.  After that second dinner, the leftovers can be thinly sliced and served on a flour burrito wrapper with some fried onions and peppers to make steak fahitas.  The cornbread salad is a great side dish for this recipe also.   So once again, a little cooking has gone a long way.

I did not take photos of the meals while they were cooking this last trip.  I am sure that I have posted photos of the steak and bread cooking in other blog posts, but I am unable to find the pictures in my computer.  I could spend hours going through the thumbnail pictures trying to find them.  I have looked, but at the moment they are not coming into view.  I am sorry that I don't have photos today.

So to wrap this up, a little menu planning can help you spend more of your vacation time on vacation rather than being chief cook and bottle washer.  Using leftovers in creative ways can make it seem as if you have had many different types of meals rather than eating the same thing over and over.  Another benefit of cooking in this manner also helps keep the cost of food from going over budget.  All in all, it is a win all the way around.

Next blog post is going to be about the craft project that I have been working on for quite some time.  It will be a project that I haven't shown before. It has taken a lot of time to get it to a point where I have had something to show for my work.  Sometimes the prep work for a project is much more work than I anticipated.

Cabin - Food and Cooking

Smoked turkey tostadas/nachos.

I've been remiss in posting again.  Things have just been too hectic and something had to give.  In my case it has been working on my crafting and blogging.  I do have some crafts that are coming along and I will be blogging about them soon.  In the mean time, I wanted to put up another post about life at the cabin.  It is about cooking at the cabin.  A vacation is not really a vacation if you spend a lot of time cooking. Over the years I have tried various strategies to provide nutritious, flavorful meals while at the cabin.  Perhaps readers will profit from those experiences.  This might take a couple of blog posts to cover thoroughly.  I don't want to try to cram it all in one post. 

We have electricity at our cabin, which is fortunate because it gives us more options for cooking.  I do not have a regular stove there.  I have a wood fired cook stove.  It is wonderful in cold weather because we can heat the house and also put on a savory stew that can sit on the furthest metal plate on the stove and cook all day.  The problem with cooking up there comes in when the weather starts to warm up.  When the cast iron stove heats up, it stays warm for a long time.  By the afternoon, the heat can roast you right out of the cabin.  I can still cook, using an electric frying pan, our Coleman stove, microwave, toaster oven, roaster oven, or grill.  However, the cooking situation is less than ideal.  The Coleman stove has to be used out on the porch due to problems with carbon monoxide.  Also, it leaves a black residue on the bottom of your pots.  When you set the pot down it gets black soot all over everything and it is really hard to clean off.  The toaster oven and microwave are small and are usually used for heating things rather than cooking things from scratch.  The roaster oven works okay, but it functions best when you can cook long and slow.   The grill is great as long as it is not raining.  With those options, plus all the cooking time, it is necessary to find some way to balance what I can cook with all the other factors of making food.  I guess the good news is that once we upgraded the electricity we can operate the toaster oven and the microwave at the same time.  That greatly sped up meal production.

Meal planning goes beyond just having a menu for us.  I also have to plan for such contingencies as being invited to a pot luck with our friends or spontaneously inviting someone over for dinner.  My menus need to be able to scale up or turn into something I can take along if necessary.  I really don't have the option of running to a store if I need something.   If I need something that I could buy at a convenience store, it is a trip of about 45 minutes each way.  If it is an ingredient that could only be purchased at a grocery store, the trip is about an hour and a half each way.  Usually, unless it is something really critical, if we ran out or did not bring it we do without it.  Menu planning is essential.  When I make my list for what to pack for the trip it not only includes what meal for what day, but every single ingredient that goes into that meal.  I find that if I do not do this, I always leave something out.  Then that meal turns into whatever else I can make with those ingredients that are available.  Sometimes "chef surprise" turns out well, sometimes not.

Packing the food is another issue.  We have a finite amount of space available in our vehicle.  Since we have been working for ages on repairing and upgrading this cabin, we are also packing building materials, a compressor, and tools.  If we are going up for several days, have to make sure what I am preparing can fit into a couple of coolers.  I try to plan foods so that leftovers from one meal can be integrated into another meal.  It just adds another layer of complexity to menu planning.

An example of blending one menu into another would be smoked chicken.   I told my husband that I was planning on bringing up chicken breasts to smoke on the grill.  I freeze the chicken for transport and thaw it in the refrigerator.  When they are ready we smoke them.  I had to laugh on our last trip to the cabin.  The chicken breasts were so large that we almost could not fit all of them on the grill.  My husband said, "When you said you were bringing chicken breasts, I thought you meant you were bringing two of them."  Well, here's a hint, if you are going to spend forty-five minutes watching a grill, cook more than two at a time.  You can freeze them after they are cooked or turn them into other meals a day or two later.  The first night we had smoked chicken, sweet potatoes (cooked in the microwave) and some asparagus.  Lunch the next day was a toasted, buttered English Muffin with a fried egg, asparagus, and some bacon.  For dinner the next night we added some of the smoked chicken to a meal we generally call "turkey tostadas" (more on that in a minute) and we had plans for a meal later in the week for corn cakes with barbecue chicken and coleslaw.  So for about an hour of cooking I had three meals worth of the food that took the longest to cook.  The other meals are also very quick and easy to make, which is also a  big help.

We usually make the turkey toastadas  (Recipe below.) with smoked turkey.  In fact, I had brought some smoked turkey from home for a meal the night before I smoked the chicken.  We had almost enough left over for another meal.  By throwing in some of the smoked chicken, it became another meal.  The difference in flavor between turkey and chicken was different enough that it did not even seem like eating the same meal a second night.  Years ago, when we started making turkey toastadas, we actually made our own corn tortillas from Masa Harina.  Those days are long gone.  So are the days of purchasing and heating corn tortillas.  We like to maximize our time.  These days we use tortilla chips.  I use Mission brand because they are much lower sodium than some of the other brands.  So I guess the dish should now be called turkey nachos???  Anyway, the recipes for the turkey tostadas and corn meal cakes are below.  A single can of tomato sauce will work well for two people with a barely any leftover.  If you need to scale the recipe up for company or for leftovers, add more cans of tomato sauce (a can for every two people) and more cumin.  Add a little cumin at a time.  You will know when enough is enough.  I don't add a lot of salt to my food, so you might need to add some extra at the table.  Just remember that the tortilla chips also have salt on them.  Some ingredients need to be measured, but most of the ingredients are done to what looks right for the number of people.

The corn cakes are even easier.  (Recipe below)  Top your corn cakes with some smoked chicken mixed with enough bottled barbecue sauce to coat the chicken.   Place the barbecued chicken on top of the corn cakes.  Top the chicken with your favorite coleslaw recipe.  I usually make my coleslaw fresh, but many people would want to purchase coleslaw to make the meal even quicker.  Dinner is ready.    The meals are simple, but bring a lot of nutrition to the table as well as being tasty.

Between these meals, I served other meals just so that we would have a break from chicken.   These meals are also worthy of blogging about, but I will save them for the next post to keep this one from going too long. 

Turkey Tostadas:  1 - 8 oz. can (or more cans as needed), 1 onion chopped and divided, 1 or more cloves of  garlic (to your taste), salt about a quarter teaspoonful or more to taste, one-fourth teaspoon of cumin (scale up slowly if adding more tomato sauce), smoked turkey or chicken - enough for two people (add more as needed),  torn lettuce, chopped tomato, shredded cheese (chedder, monterey jack, pepper jack, or any taco blend of cheeses), sour cream, and salsa.

Fry three fourths of the onion.  Save some raw onion to top the nachos.  When the onions are translucent, add the garlic, cook thirty seconds, then add the tomato sauce, salt, and cumin.  Stir until well heated.  Add the smoked poultry.  Heat through. 

Put some tortilla chips on your plate.  Top with the smoked poultry/tomato mixture.  Top that with lettuce, tomato, onion, cheese, sour cream and salsa.  Dinner is served.

Corn Cakes and Barbecue Chicken:  (This meal serves two with minimal leftovers.  Scale up as needed.)  1 box of Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix.  1 egg, 2/3 cups of milk 2 T. butter-melted, 1 can of yellow corn-drained, 1 pint of coleslaw, smoked chicken for 2 people, barbecue sauce. 

Mix the muffin mix, egg, milk, butter, and drained corn.  Fry as you would a pancake.

Mix the smoked poultry and barbecue sauce to taste.

Put the corn cakes on a plate.  Top with the barbecue coated chicken.  Top all of that with coleslaw.  Dinner is served.

Check back for the next blog post on cabin cooking strategies.