Making

This week's Barefoot Bloggers recipe comes from Rebecca of Ezra Pound Cake. She chose the Barefoot Contessa's Real Spaghetti and Meatballs. Since I don't eat meat I made bean balls, which sounds gross but they're pretty good. I used black beans I had cooked and stored in the freezer, oats, spices, and an egg. It all gets mixed up until a little chunky in the food processor. Then I formed the balls and browned them in oil as in this recipe.


Spaghetti and bean balls doesn't photograph very well, but this was a tasty dinner. The sauce from the recipe is hearty and fresh. I served the spaghetti with a salad and garlic toast. The only change I would make is tossing the pasta with the sauce next time, instead of sitting the sauce on top. I've got leftovers in the fridge for lunch tomorrow or Friday too!

In other "Stuff I've Made Recently" news, I'm enrolled in a career development class at work. Besides a ton of reading and some written exercises, one of our assignments was to illustrate the path of delegation of authority all the way down to our level. The caveat to this assignment - be creative. This is something that can easily be shown using a flow chart, but they wanted creativity, so I made pyramids.

I had in mind something like nesting dolls (think: encompassing) and used this pattern for making a pyramid box. I needed to represent 8 levels, so I picked up 8 different sheets of scrapbook paper at the craft store. For aesthetics, I tried to use the bigger prints on the bigger pyramids, and the smaller prints on the smaller pyramids.


I photocopied the template 7 times, changing the size by 10% each time to stagger the sizes of the pyramids, so they would nest properly. Then I cut out the templates.


I traced the templates onto the back sides of the scrapbook paper, and then cut them all out. Fold on the dotted lines to assemble. The little tab is fiddly and doesn't really hold the paper pyramids closed, though the heavier-weight card stock pyramids fare a little better.


Then I put the smallest pyramid into the next smallest, and that into the next smallest, and so on until they were all nested inside the largest pyramid. I should have included something to show the scale of these pyramids. The largest one is 2.5" high and wide, so they're small. The tiniest pyramid is bit over 1". They're cute.


This project took a couple of hours. I listened to podcasts of the audiobook version of Max Brooks' World War Z and sipped coffee while I worked, so it was an enjoyable time. I hope the instructors appreciate my creativity.

Meanwhile, Ayla says, "Its cold!"


She curled up into as small a ball as she could to warm up. And it was just under 70 degrees in the house when I snapped this picture. Now you understand why she likes to sleep completely covered with a blanket every night.