Yay, Amy Karol's second book, Bend the Rules with Fabric, is officially out. I have a copy and I really like it.

The book talks about all the things you can do to decorate and personalize fabric for purposes of clothing, accessories and toys. The beginning of the book talks about supplies and techniques, and I was especially pleased to find that none of them require you to buy a huge amount of expensive equipment.

She covers things from dying fabric to printing on fabric using your home computer printer. One of my favorites is using freezer paper to put silk screen like effects on fabric. I like these sheets:

The book is full of simple but stunning ideas for decorating everyday things including undies:

and shoes:

and some simple stitching to make a plain shirt into something that looks very nice indeed:

I've focused on the projects that appeal immediately to me, but the book is full of projects for kids and ones you can do with kids, including transferring drawn images onto clothing and making custom printed dolls.

Amy Karol's blog is Angry Chicken where she documents life and gives instruction all sorts of great projects. Her first book, Bend-the-Rules Sewing, is equally as awesome. I talk about more here.

Here is another think I make in bulk and freeze so I can have something very nearly ready to go at dinnertime. By the end of the day I have no imagination left for dinner so often our nutrition suffers (Annie's mac and cheese again? yay!). But, I can be virtuous and lazy if I have kale in my freezer.

If you would have told me two years ago that I would fall deeply in love with kale I wouldn't have believed you. I only tried in initially because I felt guilted into eating better (see: Annie's mac and cheese). However, preparing it for dinner can seem like it would just take too much effort what with all the washing and chopping. It took me way too long to realize that I could blanch it to freeze and have ready to go. One note: I did find bags of frozen kale for sale at Amazon Fresh but they are cut the same way that cut frozen spinach comes, roughly and too small, and I find it rather unpleasant to eat.

Below is step by step instructions on how I get it ready. I put it here because I figure I cannot be the only person who has no idea how to do this. I used the instructions from Pick Your Own, and these here are what I've figured out in order to do a lot of kale in batches as efficiently as possible.

If you just freeze greens they get bitter, but if you dunk them in boiling water for a few minutes, then stop the cooking abruptly you kill of the enzymes that create the bitter flavor. This is called blanching and except for watching Martha Stewart do it to green beans years ago I never knew much about it.

I usually buy four bunches of kale, which is a lot of kale. First, start boiling water in a huge stockpot. (My electric kettle gets a lot of work here.) Put a large bowl in your sink and fill it with water. Dunk the kale around to wash it. If you bought it from your local organic market look closely for little buggies. Sometimes they just hug the stem and you can get rid of them in the next step. I usually don't find bugs but there was this one time when I just re-fused to throw out four whole bunches of kale and had to work carefully.

Next, trimming. The easiest way to trim out the stem is to fold the kale leaf in half lengthwise with the stem facing away from you. Run the tip of a knife along the stem to separate it. (I learned this in Everyday Food, I think.)

Then you can leave the kale where it is and quickly chop it. Now move that into a bowl and do the next one. If you develop an assembly line rhythm at this point you can get through all your kale pretty quickly.

(Let's talk briefly about knives. I have an expensive 8" chefs knife, but I nearly always reach for my Oxo Santoku Knife, which is $20. Just saying. Good stuff.)

Now get the following things ready: a huge pot of boiling water with a lid, a huge bowl of ice water, a strainer you can use to move the kale from the boiling water to the ice water, a salad spinner, a large kitchen towel laid out flat on your counter and a kitchen timer set to two minutes.

When the water is boiling dump a bunch of the kale in it, put on the lid (the steam helps cook the bits bobbing on top) and let it cook for two minutes. I usually just stir it once.

When the time is up quickly lift the kale from the pot of water into the ice bath. You'll reuse the boiling water for the next batch. The water turns progressively darker green with each batch but I cannot imagine that would hurt anything. Bet it would be great for making vegetable stock. Someday I'll make stock of some sort.

Now we need to get it dry. I spin it in a salad spinner. (The OXO Salad Spinner still totally rules. I have the little one and it works fine for two people.)

Then I lay it flat on a kitchen towel. When all the batches of kale are done I roll the towel up...

and squeeze.

Then I lay the kale out on a sheet of parchment on a cookie sheet. Pop that in the freezer and in about 30 minutes it will be frozen enough for you to shake into your airtight container of choice.

And there you are, it's all ready to pull out of the freezer, saute in olive oil with a little minced garlic (I'm not ashamed to love my garlic press) just until it's hot, shake a bit of crushed red pepper and salt on top and, ta da!, excellent leafy green side dish that allow you to be smug about your eating habits and level of cleverness for the next 24 hours.

This is another in the series of foods I make in bulk and freeze. This recipe came from Oprah Magazine (I have lost track of which issue), and while there are a gazillion bolognese recipes out there this is the one that ended up in my routine. I have altered the instructions a bit. Note: It takes a few hours of simmering so make it on a day when you want to be hanging out at home.

Bolognese Sauce

• 1 medium onion [for some reason I find the gnarly yellow onions sold at my nearby hippie market to make the best sauce]
• 1 large or 2 small carrots
• 2 to 3 stalks celery
• 1 pound ground beef (not lean)
• 1 ounce pancetta, very finely chopped [I freeze it a bit first, helps to keep it from sliding around as it's chopped]
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1/8 tsp. freshly ground pepper
• Pinch allspice
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1 cup dry white wine [I always end up with Hogue Fume Blanc, probably because it's the only one at the hippie market that clearly states "dry white wine" on the label]
• 1 (15-ounce) can diced tomatoes with their juice [I usually use the fake San Marzano kind with the pretty label even though Cook's Illustrated proved they actually don't taste the best.]
• 1 pound pasta, such as rigatoni [I like the oversized chiocciole made by Bionaturae]
• Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, for grating

1. Finely chop onion, carrot and celery. [Right, I did that the first time, now I just run each through my food processor.] In a heavy-bottomed saucepan or Dutch oven over low heat, cook pancetta until all fat it rendered and pancetta is just beginning to brown. Add chopped vegetables, raise heat to medium, and cook, stirring frequently, until onion is translucent and soft.

2. [Don't forget to crack open some windows in the house, this is going to be simmering all day the smell, as good as it will be, will be strange when it's lingering in the tv room. Good job, why not crack open that wine and have a glass now that all the bits of cooking that involve sharp knives are done with?]

3. Add ground beef, breaking it up with a spoon, 1/4 tsp. (to start) salt, plus pepper and allspice. Cook until meat is brown. [Experience has proven to me that I don't need to obsessively break the meat into smaller and smaller pieces, though I do run a knife through it crosswise before it goes into the pot.]

4. Add milk. When it begins to simmer, reduce heat to low and cook at a gentle simmer, stirring occasionally until milk has mostly boiled away, about 30 minutes. [Experience has told me to add about 15 minutes to this and the next step. Am I not simmering the same way everybody else is?] Add white wine [you still have enough, right?] and cook as with milk, until it has mostly boiled away. Add tomatoes and juice, bring to a simmer. [I obsessively crush the tomato bits in the pot at this point, I bet it would be fine if you don't do that.] Cover pot, reduce heat to low, and allow sauce to cook very gently at barest simmer, 2 1/2 to 3 hours. [I swear there is a point where you check the sauce and suddenly it just tastes like everything came together, it's magical.] Season to taste with remaining salt.

5. Just before sauce is done, bring a pot of water to boil, salt it generously, and boil pasta according to package directions. Drain, mix with a third of sauce, then serve with remaining sauce on top with lots of grated Parmigiano cheese.

Makes 4 cups sauce. [Unless you double or triple the recipe. I cannot quite fit a tripled recipe into my 4 1/2 quart Dutch oven, clearly I need to buy a larger one.]

I allow the sauce to cool, then spoon into freezer bags, squeeze them flat, and freeze them on a cookie sheet until they are solid enough to be stacked on their own. When you are ready to eat you can pull one out of the freezer and run the bag under hot water to thaw. This is the easiest way to do it when you, like me, don't own a microwave.