Jedi Costume

I was commissioned to make a Jedi robe to be worn at a ComicCon. This was a really fun project, I'm happy with the final product and so is my client.

This was the inspiration - a playable character from the Star Wars online game:

 Final product - hard to get a sense of it on a hanger - it really needs some shoulders in there.

Robe and shoulder piece - belt is not pictured

detail of the belt 

I also got to make my first-ever pair of gloves. I was staying up late to finish them and ran out to the store. When the clerk mentioned how tired she was, I commiserated and added, "Yeah, me too - and I still have to stay up late making gloves." I'm still giggling over it and the look on her face.

Here's the outfit in action:

Found a really awesome fabric that looks like leather but is in fact a lightweight washable knit. Love this stuff!

Belt tubing is made of irrigation parts plus silver and black spray paint.
I love, love, love making costumes!

Honey Whole Wheat bread - what you should eat instead!

If you haven't read about Frankenbread, take a minute to do so. You'll understand why I was motivated to figure out a better way to have bread in the house!

And because I like problems to have solutions, here is my recipe, inspired by Great Harvest Honey Whole Wheat. If you have a Great Harvest bakery nearby, I highly recommend visiting. They grind their own flour, give excellent samples, and are generally awesome.

This is super easy if you have a KitchenAid or other stand mixer with dough hook attachment. If you don't, I'm sure you could knead it by hand for the same amount of time. A little more work, and a counter to clean up, but absolutely doable. 

Things I love about this bread:

• It is really, truly easy. 
• Makes the house smell amazing.
• It is real food - 5 non-weird ingredients.
• Satisfying and delicious - it has changed the way we eat bread. More open faced sandwiches, and a simple slice of this with butter elevates even the most ordinary salad to a wonderful dinner.
• My husband used to make himself 4 slices of toast, with this he has one. 
• It is inexpensive and has actual nutrition.

I've tweaked this recipe to fit my schedule, you can do the same for yours. You can adjust the amount of yeast depending on how long you have to let it rise. 

Typically I start this while my kids are eating their cereal in the morning. Dough is ready to rise by the time they are finished. 

Honey Whole Wheat Bread

Add to the bowl of your mixer, in this order:

• 2 c. warm water (however hot it comes out of your faucet is fine)
• 1/3 c. honey
• 1 tsp. yeast *
• 3-4 c. whole wheat flour
• 1.5 tsp salt 

Mix it with the dough hook until a sticky dough forms. You may have to add more flour, I like to get it to the point where it sort of all clings together in a lump instead of sticking to the sides of the bowl. Humidity can affect this, so add flour 1/2 c at a time.

 Once your dough has formed up, let that sucker knead on medium/medium low speed (maybe level 4 or 5) for a full 5 minutes. I stick nearby as this sometimes makes my mixer dance around on the counter a bit.

 Cover it with plastic wrap or a damp (and clean) towel. Forget about it for a while. This is where the yeast variation comes into play - if you use a bit more yeast (1.5 tsp instead of 1 tsp) it will rise faster. I sometimes like a slow rise so I do 1. Check back in an hour or so. The only way this part can really go wrong is if you leave it too long - like all day.

It should look like this when you come back - at least doubled in size:

 Now stab that sucker until it deflates! I kind of stab/stir it for just a minute and plop it into a loaf pan that has been sprayed with cooking spray:

Spread it out so it reaches all the corners and is relatively even:

Then spray just a bit of cooking spray on top, and loosely cover with the same plastic wrap from before. Let rise again for about an hour. This time, I would check after about 30 minutes. I find that if it gets too poofy it can be unwieldy to slice (but still delicious).

When it looks about like this, remove the plastic wrap and bake at 350 for 40 minutes.

Let it cool in the pan on the rack for about 10 minutes, then pop it out and let it cool completely.

So to review, we let the machine do the hard work (5 min kneading), and then it's basically a matter of periodically checking on it and maybe doing something to it for a minute. Easy peasy!

I store ours in a large ziplock bag, keeping it sealed shut. The bread will stay fresh for about a week, but to bu can fully appreciate how amazing your home smells.

I read somewhere that in today's food culture, baking your own bread is a truly revolutionary act. It's true. You are rejecting the need for a factory to provide yourself with honest, actual food. It is cheaper and better for you. You will want to share this with everyone.

Go on with your revolutionary self!


I store ours in a large ziplock bag, keeping it sealed shut. The bread will stay fresh for about a week, but to be honest, toward the end of that week I am mostly toasting it. And then, because it is actual food, unlike the monster that is still in my pantry - it will indeed go bad. :)

*a note about buying yeast:
It is cheapest in those little packets if you're just trying this out. But I think you are likely to get addicted to the beauty of fresh bread (as I did), so when you're ready, buy your yeast in bulk at Costco or somewhere similar. You will pay less there for 1 or 2 pounds than you will spend on the jar at the grocery store. Keep it in the freezer or fridge and you can measure it out yourself instead of the little packets.

Meet Frankenbread

We used to buy our bread from the grocery store. Once upon a time, we went out of town without opening the fresh loaf on the counter. We were gone a while, so when we got home I bought a "fresh" loaf. I was going to throw out the old one, but my husband stopped me.

"We'll feed it to the ducks. It will be fun."

So it sat on our counter. For a few weeks. 

Again, I tried to throw it out. 

"No, don't throw that out, the ducks will love it."

(We do have ducks down the street)

So again, it sat on our counter, next to the bread we would actually eat. Weeks turned into months.

I got tired of looking at it. I wanted to throw it out. But for the ducks, I put it in a cabinet. We forgot about it. 

About 6 months later, we came across it again. We were shocked. 

You can picture in your mind what 6 month old bread should look like. This was not that. It was... perfect. Soft. No mold or spoilage. We squeezed it and remarked on it, showed it to a few friends, and put it back in the cabinet. A year went by. Same condition. Showed it to more friends. They are always amazed and horrified.

It's been about 2 years now, and the bread is finally starting to show some age. No spoilage, mind you, just age. It is a bit dry, and we have squeezed it to determine how soft it remained, so it's been handled a bit roughly and it shows. The outsides of the slices have started to crumble off, but by god it still looks edible. Dry but edible. Like toast.

Now at this point you're probably wondering what kind of bread it was. And I will tell you: Nature's Own Honey Wheat.

Two year old Frankenbread!

I bought it because the label said the following things, in big bold letters:

"Nature's Own" (this actually means nothing)

"Honey Wheat" (just refers the the flavor)

"No Artificial Preservatives, Colors or Flavors" (BS!)

"No High Fructose Corn Syrup" (nor should there be!)

And in small letters, it also said this:

"enriched flour"

"dough conditioners" (scary)
and lots of other unpronounceable ingredients. yikes.

And nowhere on the package is there a date or even lot #. No way for me to verify the age of this bread. I'm sure this is not an accident. It is produced to appear "fresh" for a (very) extended period of time.

Which makes me wonder - how old was it when I originally bought it?  What is all that crap in it? 

Here's the ingredients, for what it's worth:
unbleached enriched flour (wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, honey, sugar, whole wheat flour, rye flour, wheat bran, yeast. contains 2% or less of: wheat gluten, salt, soybean oil, vinegar, cultured wheat flour, dough conditioners (contains one or more of: sodium stearoyl lactylate, calcium stearoyl-2-lactylate, monoglycerides and/or diglicerides, calcium peroxide, calcium iodate, datem, ethoxylated mono- and diglycerides, azodicarbonamide), yeast food (ammonium sulfate), mono calcium phosphate, calcium sulfate, enzymes, soy flour, soy lecithin.

Perhaps I will google some of these and find out what they are, but for now I am content with the decision to not eat them. I only recognize a couple of ingredients as actual food. The rest might be edible, but they are not food. 

We did not give up bread. Oh, no. But I started baking our own. I'll share in another post my favorite recipe for easy, idiot-proof, delicious and nutritious honey whole wheat bread. 

I'm considering buying another loaf and making a more scientific study of it, with precise dates and video. Because this is just too weird! Try it yourself!