Awash in apples

Through our local social network, this fall we picked up four buckets of black walnuts at one place, and considerably more than that of apples at another.

Last year, we brought home enough apples to last into spring, aside from the ones we cooked or preserved in various ways.

This year was also a good year for apples, although not quite of the quality of last year's bumper crop.

We were out picking after dark with headlamps, and I was surprised to see how many moths were going after the bruised apples on the ground.

I found a new recipe, not with apples but for apples, from an old community-fundraiser cookbook.  It is a topping for an apple cake, and it looked so weird that I figured it had to be good.  We are using it for a dip for apple slices, although it is rather drippy.  As the original recipe says, "Texture may be funny and brown flecks may appear":

Topping for Apple Cake/Dip for Apples

1 Cup sugar

1/2 Cup sour cream

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Combine ingredients in saucepan, and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until it boils.   

The brown flecks are from the sugar beginning to caramelize, which doesn't take long, and the result tastes like caramel and almost like marshmallow.  I found that leaving it in the pan after cooking resulted in more of the sugar caramelizing, and tending to crystallize on the sides and bottom of the pan, along with making the overall color more brown.

Easy bird feeder, breadsticks

I was looking for DIY bird feeder ideas, and found lots of cute ones.  Then I had an idea for re-purposing a plastic hanging lantern that I've had for some years.

It looked very suitable, which turned out to be because it actually was a bird feeder.

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A child and I have developed a tag-team approach to making cheese-topped breadsticks:  I make the dough, and the child puts it onto the pan, does the toppings, and bakes it.

The dough is very simple, 6 cups flour, 3 cups very warm water, 2 tablespoons yeast--I usually use 1 and 1/2 tablespoons.  This covers a large cookie sheet thickly.  Halving the recipe or doing one-third of it is advisable.  

The lack of salt in the recipe and the relatively high proportion of yeast (best bought in bulk) helps the dough to rise more quickly than most bread doughs.  The recipe's source recommended 10 minutes of rising time.

We've been topping it with melted butter, mozzarella cheese, and garlic powder, and maybe also Parmesan cheese, and then baking it for about 20 minutes at 375 degrees.  It's good hot out of the oven, not so good cold.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Preparations

The little papier-mache birds that I made took a day or two to dry.  Then I took the two best of them, drew eyes on them, and left the rest in a primitive, unfinished style.  I put them up on the wreath and I like how they look there.

Jackie Clay's Pantry Cookbook has a recipe for dipping chocolate made of chocolate chips and food-grade paraffin that I am going to try out before the holidays.

I whittled another cedar branch coat hook, but haven't put it up anywhere. It only took a few minutes to make.

Things around my house are coming together in various ways, and it has been nice to see things looking pretty.

Messing around

I finally caught up enough on housework and big projects that I had time to do more creative things.

Family dropped off some cedar branches over the weekend, and I experimented and made a few wreaths out of them.

Then one of the wreaths seemed like it needed a little bird, so I experimented with papier mache and made three.  One has a little cedar stick in its neck to connect a head and a body of wadded paper (with papier mache over all), and the other two are more two-dimensional, built up around pieces of cardboard.

The paper I used was notebook paper from the school supplies, which just falls apart when it gets wet, so it wasn't the easiest material to work with.  For glue, I just whisked some flour and water together.

Another recent experiment was putting sliced apples and brown sugar (or white sugar plus molasses; same thing, nowadays) in aluminum foil and baking them in the oven.  The juice from the apples steams the apples and combines with the sugar to make a sort of apple syrup.  The result was only a moderate success, though; it came across to the family as a poor attempt at making applesauce.  The apple juice -> apple syrup angle is worth pursuing in the future, though. That part of it was delicious.

Slices

The "Quick bar cookies" recipe on this post, which is actually a recipe for chocolate chip blondies, is very forgiving. I've recently tried substituting vegetable oil for the butter. This works all right, but comes out a little drier, as butter contains some water that the oil doesn't. I also tried adding cocoa powder and peppermint extract to make something more like a brownie. The family liked the result, and didn't realize that it was almost exactly the same recipe. Rolled oats were not in the original recipe, but I almost always add them, for nutrition.

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We've been very busy, and I was looking for a quick and fun project, and decided to paint one of our stump tables. The stump is a chunk of a large pine tree that my husband brought home from the county yard waste site last year. The wood was very green, and quite wet, so I kept it in the garage for months to dry it out, turning it occasionally. It picked up some dirt during that time, and lost over twenty pounds of weight, maybe as many as forty--I weighed it early on, and then later, but I don't remember the exact numbers.

Eventually I brought it in, and debarked it in the kitchen. There was some mold growing under the bark, so it had to come off.

The stump found a home in our living room/indoor parkour course. I counted the rings; the tree was sixty years old when it was cut down, and more than two feet in diameter.

Anyway, I mixed some paint to approximate a color that would fit into the decor, and painted the sides, just wiping the paint on with scrap fabric. I very soon had several eager helpers.

The color came out a bit bright for the room, so I plan on wiping on another coat at some point.

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A child wanted to learn to make angel food cake, after a lady from church brought us one. I had never made a foam cake, but our efforts were successful.

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Our resident papier-mache artist is thinking ahead to Halloween, and has made a good start on armatures (support structures for the papier mache) for upper and lower skeleton jaws, made out of milk jugs and tape.

Some traditions don't go back very far

The potato was originally a New World food. This quote is about the late 18th Century Denmark:

But then those were strange days and ways. That new American delicacy, the potato, had not yet done heavy duty as a staple and was being served as a dessert, hot and salted in a napkin.  -- Dale Brown, The Cooking of Scandinavia

Early days

We got our new, improved internet; no trouble getting the appointment, although the guy had some technical difficulties as he was working alone to install the glass fiber cable, and there were delays as the place he had to call in to for testing the upgrade at each step was short-staffed.

The previous DSL line, presumably copper, had survived being snagged and pulled a couple feet out of place by the tree removal guys. The new cable is much more fragile, and certainly would not stand up to that kind of treatment.

The older children have decided on some sewing projects, including plushies from free patterns here, using fabric that we already had.

They've also been using our popsicle molds to make lots of popsicles.

The state of "Burn the Calendar!" that I had been telling my husband that I wanted, earlier in the winter, has nearly been achieved. Events have been cancelled, and the schools and library are closed. Church is doing services online, with a phone-in option. The grocery store has reduced hours; I'll have to see what is in stock by the time that I get there.

The recipe for "Ezekiel bread", in Ezekiel 4:9, has come to my attention a couple of times recently:  wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and fitches (in the KJV). Most of those ingredients we already have, although I'm sure that the plants that we have today are not exactly the same as what were grown in Ezekiel's time, roughly 2500 years ago. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "fitches" is an archaic form of vetches, usually referring to Vicia sativa. This plant is also known as the common tare, and is a legume that produces pods similar to a pea. Not the same thing as a sweet pea, though, which I've been told is poisonous! From the map at the link, it doesn't appear to be very common around here.

The usual

My life lately has mostly consisted of maintenance:  the usual cleaning, tightening loose screws, and troubleshooting appliances.

I also finished knitting the hat I am giving for a Christmas present, and I looked up how to make the pompom for it. I have an additional little knitting project going on with the leftover yarn.

I cut another jar's worth of kitchen wipes, from fabric that I have no other use for, with the assistance of a tiny human who was happy to have the job of putting them into the jar.

The older children have been taking on some of the snackmaking work; wacky cake and popcorn, so far this week.

Wacky cake is very easy to make, and doesn't require milk or eggs, although we do use milk in ours, instead of water.  The recipe I use is in this post.

My husband's work had some kind of a catered lunch, and he brought home quite a bit of leftover pasta and salad and bread from it, easily enough for two meals.

One of his co-workers has the interest, time, ability, tools, and space to work on cars, and has been helping him do some of the work that needs to be done on our aging vehicle.

Caramel popcorn without corn syrup

A child wanted to make caramel popcorn, but we were out of corn syrup, so I found a recipe online:

Caramel popcorn

10 Cups popped corn
1 Cup (2 sticks) butter
1 Cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Melt the butter in a saucepan, mix in the brown sugar, and bring to boil on medium heat.  Boil for 4 minutes without stirring.  Add the vanilla and boil for one more minute.  Remove from heat and stir in baking soda.  Pour over popcorn and stir to coat.

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That is the full recipe.  What I do is to halve the caramel part of it, to get caramel popcorn that is less gooey and sweet and liable to stick to little teeth.  I leave out the baking soda, which makes the caramel foamy and more spreadable.  If needed, caramel popcorn can be put over low heat in a pot on the stove or a pan in the oven to soften the caramel and help it spread; stir as needed.

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We also accidentally tried a version with 1/2 Cup butter to 1 Cup brown sugar.  This made a very hard caramel, almost like peanut brittle without the peanuts.

Egg substitutes for baking

From the Tightwad Gazette books I knew that soy flour could be substituted for eggs--one tablespoon soy flour plus 1/4 cup water per egg, if I remember rightly.

Some time after we got our Komo brand electric grain mill, I started wondering about whether flour made from other kinds of beans would work as an egg substitute, too.  The Komo mill can grind dried beans into flour, but it takes two passes through the machine:  one on a coarse grind setting, and then one on fine grind.

I tried this in recipes that called for one or two eggs, and it seemed to work all right. Today I put it to a bigger test, using bean flour in place in 7 eggs in a doubled puff pancake recipe (which can be found through the Recipes tag at the right).

That definitely came out differently, which is not really a surprise. Bean flour plus water doesn't have the viscosity of raw eggs, and so the pancakes didn't really rise at all. Usually they rise quite high, well over the tops of the pans).

The kids mostly liked the pancakes, though, and some of them preferred them to the original recipe.

DIY microwave popcorn, and chocolate chunks (not together)

We've been doing some experiments with making different things at home.

I found a microwave popcorn recipe online that works well enough for a child of a certain age to prepare for themselves (although it doesn't scale up well for a family of our size; if it's all of us, we might as well make popcorn on the stove in the stockpot like we usually do).

Homemade microwave popcorn:

1/4 cup popcorn kernels
1/4 teaspoon vegetable oil
about 1/4 teaspoon or so of salt
a paper lunch bag

Mix the kernels, oil, and salt in a small bowl, and put in bag.  Fold the top of the bag over twice, firmly, and set the bag upright in the microwave.  Microwave for two minutes MAXIMUM, and stop sooner if fewer than two kernels per second are popping as the popping dies down.

We also experimented with making homemade chocolate chunks, as a substitute for chocolate chips. The two recipes I looked at used either coconut oil, or a mix of coconut oil and butter as a base. So I doubt these are cheaper than store-bought chocolate chips.

One of the recipes used a 1:1 ratio of oil to cocoa powder; the other a 2:1 ratio.  I tried 1:1, which seemed rather strong (bitter and possibly containing enough caffeine to interfere with sleep), and which needed a fair amount of additional sugar to make kid-palatable.

With the warm weather this week, the coconut oil is completely liquid, so I didn't bother heating it up before mixing. The chunks also tended to liquefy a few minutes after being removed from the freezer; the bar cookies that we used them in were somewhat marbled with melted chocolate.

I can't give an exact recipe for how we made the chunks, but I was aiming for a yield of about 1 cup, so it was something like:

Homemade chocolate chunks

3/4 cup coconut oil
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla

Heat coconut oil on low heat to melt, if solid. Mix in other ingredients. Add additional sugar to taste, if desired. Pour into a shallow pan and freeze. Cut into chunks before using; keep cool until baked or eaten.

I thought of adding in a little powdered milk to stabilize them a bit, but I thought it would be too grainy, unless I ground the powdered milk into a finer powder. I might try that next time.

Homemade bread

One of the things I have been working on lately is getting back to doing my own bread baking. I baked bread regularly when I was single, and occasionally after I married. For a while we had a bread machine. The reasons I gave it up were that I didn't find a bread recipe that my much-pickier-than-me husband really liked, and that I had more important things to struggle with accomplishing, once the babies started coming.

Now that I have the luxury of several older children in the house, along with the luxury of a mellow baby that loves to sleep, I can make bread if I really want to.

I am using a basic traditional 2-loaf white bread recipe, but adding in sunflower seeds, and also some wheat berries and oat groats (both coarsely ground).  For a grinder, we have a Komo grain mill (I am not an affiliate of anything) which was very expensive, but which works well and should last, although I believe it is possible to grind these grains in an old-fashioned meat grinder as well.

I went with my husband on the grain mill purchase because of some homeschool mom's book that I read (I may have the title and author written down somewhere, but not in my head), which said that the two best dietary changes she made for her family were to reduce their dairy consumption, and to switch to whole-wheat flour.

I figured that since her family in the book sounded like mine, that her advice was likely to work for us. And I believe it does, although we can't always afford to stock up on wheat or other grains (which we mostly order online from Breadtopia, or occasionally buy under the Bob's Red Mill brand at the grocery store; I am not an affiliate of anything).

I found that sunflower seeds from the bulk section were cheaper than the pre-packaged ones.  (I should probably write a post sometime about how I do math in my head at the grocery store.)

Since we have other bread-eaters in the house now, besides my husband and I, we can easily get through two loaves of homemade bread in a day or two.

My goal here is to get back into the practice of breadmaking far enough to be able to whip through making a batch without having to think about it much.

I believe Friday was the traditional baking day in the Wash-on-Monday routine, and Friday (or Saturday) works well as a baking day for our family.

Strawberry glob update

The lady who made this dessert for us was kind enough to share the recipe with me. My guess on the ingredients was far off. Also, the actual name is "Strawberry Glop", not "Strawberry Glob".

The recipe is as follows:

Strawberry Glop

2 10-ounce packages of quick-thaw strawberries
6 ounce strawberry gelatin
3 Cups whipped topping

Put gelatin into 2 Cups of boiling water.
Add strawberries.
Stir until berries separate and gelatin thickens.
Stir in whipped topping.

Homemade ricotta cheese

I had been wanting to try making homemade ricotta for a long time, and finally got around to it.

I used this recipe and method from The Kitchn. In short:  1/2 gallon of milk (not skim or ultra-pasteurized), 1/3 C of lemon juice or vinegar, 1 teaspoon salt. Heat milk to 200 degrees F, stir in your acid, let sit for 10 minutes, strain through cheesecloth to remove whey (which can be used in place of water in baking later; haven't tried that myself yet).

Other recipes recommend heating the milk to 180 degrees F, or to "starting to simmer". I found the latter much more useful, as it was a pain to keep checking the milk temperature over and over with the thermometer.

There was also a wide variation in straining times; it depends on how dry you want it to be at the end. If you drain it overnight and press it together, it is basically a farmer's cheese. (You can also get a sort of cheese by straining plain yogurt overnight; may not work as well with low-fat yogurt).

I tried it once with lemon juice, and another time with vinegar. Lemon juice gives it a better flavor, but they both work.

For straining, the first time I used a clean piece of white cotton fabric (and threw it away afterward; not worth the trouble to wash it with the appliances and plumbing that we have) and a colander--actually, the steamer basket of our main stockpot. The second time, I used an unprinted paper towel, which also worked (and didn't seem to shed fibers into the cheese).

The yield comes to about two cups of ricotta, and a quart and a half of whey, for one half-gallon of milk.

My husband approved of the ricotta, but the children didn't like it...so there was more for us!

In terms of time needed to make the cheese, it takes some time, and a bit of hands-on time, so it is not something that I plan on doing often. But it is nice to know about and be able to do. 

Quick Valentine's dessert: Strawberry Glob

A couple from church brought us a meal after the baby was born, and something they called "strawberry glob" for dessert. The internet doesn't seem to know what that is, but it was delicious, and I made something similar to it today for Valentine's Day dessert.

Basically, it is strawberries mashed up and mixed into some sort of a creamy base with some sugar. For mine, I used mostly plain yogurt, plus some sour cream. We had several almost-empty containers of yogurt that needed to be used up anyway, and a package of strawberries in the freezer. I thawed the strawberries, mixed them and mashed them in, and added sugar to taste.

I am going to request the real recipe from them, and I will post it if it is much different than my guess.

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Update:  Actual recipe here.

The year of the puff pancake

Last year, I learned how to make puff pancakes:  faster, easier, and higher-protein than regular pancakes. I found the recipe in an old issue of Quick Cooking; here it is, converted to my recipe formatting:

Puff Pancake

Oven temperature 425 degrees.

1/4 Cup butter (no substitutions)
1 Cup flour
4 eggs
1 Cup milk
a pinch of sugar (optional)

Put butter in a 10-inch ovenproof skillet [I use my cast iron skillet], and put it in the preheating oven to melt the butter. Mix the remaining ingredients until smooth; pour into skillet. Bake 22-25 minutes, or until puffed and golden brown.

Dyeing with tea

I had a new knit shirt in a sort of cold-oatmeal heather color that I wanted to make a deeper and warmer color. I bought some cheap tea, which costs about $2 for 100 bags, and brewed 30 or 40 bags in a stock pot. I took the bags out before putting in the shirt, and stirred it for a few minutes, until the color looked about right. Then I took it out and hung it up outside on a hanger, trying to straighten the fabric as much as possible--for more even drying and less streaking. After drying, I rinsed it and put it through the dryer. Since then, it has gone through the regular laundry without much fading. Things that I tea-dyed a couple of years ago have held the color all right.

With the same batch, I also over-dyed a colored sleeveless shirt, just slightly. It was much slower to pick up tea coloring than the first shirt was.

I've found that newer cotton fabrics work best. Next time I am going to do the rinsing and machine drying right away, because the first shirt that I dyed this time still came out a little streaky under the arms.

Granny's secret

Ever wonder how those little old ladies got to be so strong? One reason is that they stirred doughs like this cookie dough by hand. (The recipe makes ten dozen cookies.) Even a half batch takes muscle to stir.

A simple start in the kitchen: recipes

I learned to cook and bake from helping my grandma in the kitchen, from experimenting at home on Friday Serve-Yourself nights (when my mother refused to cook), from working in church and camp kitchens, and from cookbooks. Now my children are learning how to get around in the kitchen.

Here are some of my core frugal recipes. Abbreviations:  C for cup, T for tablespoon, tsp for teaspoon.  I buy yeast in bulk at the co-op (for around $6 per pound), so I generally skip the "proofing" step in making yeast breads, as I know that it is alive and will activate. "Cocoa powder" means baking cocoa, not hot cocoa mix. In place of baking powder I often use 1 part baking soda to 2 parts cream of tartar, when I can buy the cream of tartar in bulk.

On my own recipe cards, I write the baking temperature and pan size at the top, because preheating the oven and getting the pan ready is what I actually do first in baking.

These are mostly baking recipes, because baking requires more precise and definite recipes, while stovetop cooking is usually much more flexible in terms of ingredients and techniques. I'd advise getting a good basic cookbook (such as an older edition of The Joy of Cooking) that teaches the techniques of cooking and baking, in particular:  how to select and cook meats and vegetables, make a white sauce, make a basic soup and stew, how to knead, when to take your baking out of the oven. Some sort of primer on slow cooker/CrockPot cooking would also be good. Dried rice and beans and pasta and oatmeal have cooking instructions on their packaging; it is well worth learning how to cook these "from scratch", rather than buying the convenience versions. I keep some old issues of Taste of Home and Taste of Home's Quick Cooking magazines, to browse through when I get in a cooking rut, although they contain many recipes that could hardly be called frugal.


No-knead peasant bread

2 1/4 tsp (or 1 packet) yeast
2 C warm water
pinch sugar
4 scant C flour
2 tsp salt

Mix ingredients in bowl; cover and let rise in warm place 1 hour. Divide dough into two greased pans and let rise again for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 425 degrees, put pans in and turn oven down to 375 degrees; bake for 35 minutes.


Pizza/breadstick dough

2 1/4 tsp (or 1 packet) yeast
1 C warm water
pinch sugar
2 T olive oil
about 3 C of flour; increase slightly for breadsticks
1/2 tsp salt

Mix ingredients and knead a few minutes to make dough smoother and more elastic. Put dough in bowl, oil it with a little more olive oil, cover, and let rise in warm place one hour. Punch down. Let it rise again (I usually don't).  Press into cookie sheet/pizza pan for pizza, or flatten, slice, and twist to form breadsticks. Pizza dough can be prebaked for 5 minutes before topping (I usually don't). Pizza:  add sauce and toppings. Bake at 375 degrees for 15-18 minutes for pizza, 12-15 minutes for breadsticks. Breadsticks: rub tops with butter. (This recipe originally called for a shorter baking time at a higher temperature, but I can't remember exactly what they were, and this is what I do.)


Fast pizza dough

2 1/4 tsp (or 1 packet) yeast
1 C warm water
2 C flour

Mix and press onto pan; top and bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes.


Simple chocolate pudding

2 C milk
1/4 C sugar
2 T cornstarch
2 T cocoa powder
1 t vanilla

Combine everything except vanilla in saucepan; stir and cook over medium heat until it thickens and boils. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.


Cheese sauce

(This is a variant of the chocolate pudding recipe.)

1 C milk
1 T cornstarch
2 T butter
1/4 t salt
dash pepper
about 1 C of shredded cheese, or a handful of diced cheese

Stir and cook everything but cheese in saucepan over medium until it thickens; remove from heat and stir in cheese until melted. Put back over low heat and stir if needed to melt cheese.


Tightwad Gazette's Generic Muffins (rewritten to put ingredients in order of addition)

2 to 2 1/2 C grains
Up to 1/2 C sweetener
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

1 C milk
Up to 1/4 C fat
1 egg
Up to 1 1/2 C additions

Mix dry ingredients in bowl; add wet ingredients and mix briefly, put into muffin pan (greased or lined with cupcake papers) and bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes


Wacky Cake

1 1/2 C flour
3/4 C sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
3 T cocoa powder

1 tsp vanilla
5 T vegetable oil
1 T vinegar
1 C sour milk

Grease an 8x8 inch pan, put in dry ingredients and mix. Add wet ingredients and stir thoroughly. Bake 30 minutes at 350 degrees.


Cream cheese frosting

8 oz. cream cheese
1/2 C (1 stick) butter
1/2  tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp lemon juice (optional)
powdered sugar

Soften cream cheese and butter; beat until combined. Mix in vanilla and lemon juice. Gradually mix in powdered sugar until it is the desired sweetness and consistency.


Popcorn on the stove

I use a stockpot for this, with its accessory steamer basket inverted over the top to act as a lid that lets steam out while keeping the popcorn in.

2 T vegetable oil
1/2 to 3/4 C popcorn kernels

Put oil in large pot with 3 kernels; cover and heat over medium heat until kernels pop. Add remaining popcorn, cover, swirl pan to coat kernels in oil, and continue cooking over medium heat until popping sounds slow down, occasionally shaking pan from side to side.


Homemade cocoa

2 C milk
1-2 T sugar
1 t cocoa powder
2-4 drops of vanilla

Stir in saucepan and heat over medium heat until steaming.


Potato wedges

6-9 potatoes
1 T mayonnaise, olive oil, sour cream, or plain yogurt
1 t salt or seasoned salt
seasonings as desired

Slice potatoes into wedges about 1/4 inch thick and put into large bowl. Add other ingredients and stir until wedges are coated. Spread in single layer on cookie sheets and bake at 375 degrees for about one hour.


Quick bar cookies

1/2 C butter (1 stick), melted
1 1/2 C brown sugar (or use white sugar and add 1/2 tsp to 1 tsp molasses, or just use white sugar)
2 eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 C flour
1/2 C dry oatmeal (optional)
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 C chocolate chips (optional)

Mix first four ingredients in bowl. Add dry ingredients and mix. Put in greased 9x13 pan and bake 20 minutes.

How to make a blank hardcover book, part 2

(Part 1 here.)

Here are the first, second, and third handmade blank books that I have made.

Continuing from Part 1:

Step 8:  Trim the text block. I skip this step, as you can see from the picture. As I recall, the best way to do this is to clamp the block firmly between two pieces of wood in a vise, and trim the edges with a very sharp chisel.

Step 9:  Cut the cover boards. (I make these from the heavy paperboard inside old three-ring binders.)  The cover boards should be somewhat longer and wider than the text block; if anything, I made them a bit too large on the most recent book. You may also, depending on your book, want to cut a piece for the back of the spine; I didn't.  A utility knife works well for cutting these, although it may take more than one pass. One source recommended slightly rounding the edges of the boards after cutting; I did this by burnishing (rubbing with some pressure) with a tool handle.

Interlude:  Making flour paste

Homemade flour paste is simple, cheap, and stronger than you might expect. The covers that I have glued on with it have stayed on, through months of daily use and abuse. PVA glue will also work for any of the gluing and pasting steps that follow.

Flour paste recipe:  1.5 cups cold water, 4 Tablespoons white flour. Whisk the flour into the water in a saucepan, and then stir constantly over medium heat until it boils. Let cool. This recipe makes far more paste than you need for a single book. Leftovers may be refrigerated and used later, until they start to get moldy.

Step 10:  There are different ways of dealing with the spine of the book at this point. The method that I learned is to make a flat tube of lining paper as wide and as long as the spine, and glue it to the spine.

Step 11:  Set cords into cover boards, and glue. (If you are using tapes, I believe they are simply glued to the outsides of the cover boards.) Make a hole in each cover board, about 1/2 inch in from the inside edge, for each cord to go through. (The cords will go from the spine to the outside of the cover boards, then in through the holes, where their ends will be glued down.) I used an awl to make the holes, a sharp nail would also work, or drilling. To keep from the cords from making bumps that show through the covering material, use a sharp knife to cut a shallow channel for each cord to run through to its hole. Then, one board at a time, bring the cords through the holes, trim so that there are two or three inches of cord to the inside of the cover board, and glue/paste the cords in place (on both sides). Since my cords are braided, I unbraid each end to the hole, and spread out the strands as I glue them down. Make sure the cords aren't pulled so tight that you can't open the book. Let dry.

Step 12:  Glue the outer covering onto the boards and spine. The outer covering is usually a single piece of material; leave extra to wrap around the edges of the boards, and to fold down in at the top and bottom of the spine. I find it easiest to cut the material on the large side, and trim it later. For the first two books I used suede and leather; this time I used denim.

Step 13:  Fold over the edges of the covering material, trim, and glue/paste down. I aim for 1/4 inch of material glued to the inside of the cover board, for each edge. I learned a handy trick for mitering the corners:  before you glue the edges, make a 45 degree cut at the corner, but instead of cutting this exactly at the corner, cut it two cover board thicknesses away from the corner. Or, you can bring the edges around, overlapping them at the corner, and cut through both layers at once with a sharp knife to make the miter.

Step 14:  Tip in end papers. End papers are folded sheets of paper pasted in before and after the text block; to "tip in" means to put paste or glue along the folded edge, and then press it into place. One source suggested doing this much earlier in the process, before trimming the text block; I tried that this time and wasn't happy with the result. Trim the end papers.

Step 15:  Line the inside covers. (If your cover material is thick, you may need to fit and glue something in beneath the lining first, to make the inside cover level.) It may be helpful to use scrap paper to keep paste/glue from going where it shouldn't.

Step 16:  Cover finishing. Fold the edges in at the top and the bottom of the spine, and perhaps glue them down, if you didn't already. With the most recent book, I cut the material too short here, and ended up sewing on extensions by hand. Decorate the cover as desired. In one version (middle book in the photo), I made a little loop of leather to hold a pen. But then I found that I prefer to use the pen to mark my spot, so that it is ready to use at all times. This time, with a denim cover instead of leather, I experimented with making corner protectors from sheet copper. I made a paper prototype/template first, cut and fitted the copper (which is from the art store and is thin enough to cut with scissors that I don't care too much about), and then secured each with a small copper rivet, through a hole drilled through the corner protector and the cover.

Somewhere in these later steps, the fancy stitching at the top and bottom of the inner spine that you see in real hardcover books can be done. I tried it with the first book, and failed to master it, and since then haven't bothered. Apparently this stitching is often faked, in commercial books.