I'll Fly Away

If you were to ask me what my favourite colour is, I would say purple. While my preference is for the bluer, darker purples, I like all colours in the purple family. And most people, when I ask their favourite colour(s), say green or red or whatever. They don't get incredibly specific and say emerald green or scarlet... That is most people. However, recently when I asked a friend what his favourite colour is, he said "sky blue." Since I was planning on making him a quilt, that made it rather challenging. What I would consider sky blue and what he would consider sky blue are not necessarily the same thing. I rummaged through my fabric stash trying to come up with what would be sky blue, which only increased my unncertainty. I actually googled "sky blue" and that just made things more confusing because it came up with multiple colours. 

"Sky Blue" from Wikipedia

Then I thought, well if he wants sky blue, I will give him sky blue. I have several "sky" fabrics in my stash. Initially, I was going to make him the dolphin quilt, which includes both sea and sky fabrics and is on my quilting bucket list. But then I thought I don't have time to mess with applique, and I'm not sure which fabric to use for the dolphins. This was before Christmas and I had to finish 3 quilts I was giving as Christmas gifts, in addition to wanting to get this friend's quilt finished as well. The dolphin quilt became a UFO and I decided to try something different. I decided to pull several sky fabrics from my stash, figuring he could pick which blue he liked as "sky blue" out of the various blues in this quilt top.

I didn't have a metre or yard of each, so I couldn't use a 3-yard quilt pattern. Instead, I devised my own pattern, using stash fabrics. And I think it turned out pretty nice. I "borrowed" the blue minky dot fabric I was going to use as backing for Eccentric to use as backing for this one. (I then used some black minky from a UFO to back Eccentric). 

As for the quilting, I picked Airplanes in the Clouds, and that's how I got the name for the quilt, I'll Fly Away. 
Just a doctrinal note about the song by that name, I'll Fly Away. It's actually not Biblical because we don't go straight to heaven when we die. We go to heaven when Jesus returns and raises His followers to life. To learn more about this, you can read, Are the Dead Really Dead? Or click on Ghost Truth or Hell Truth in the sidebar on the right. 
And my friend liked his quilt and said it was the right colour. 

Moving on from quilts to my kitchen, in the world of economics, there is a principle called "economies of scale". In a nutshell, that means the bigger the customer base, the lower the prices. So, in a country like the United States, which has a population of over 333 million, it's only logical that most things are less expensive there than in Canada, with a population of 41 million. And that things in Ontario (population 14 million) are generally cheaper than in Alberta (population 4 million). But customer base not only affects prices, it also affects availability. Recently, in my small town in rural Alberta, I looked for wasabi powder and tamari. I couldn't find them anywhere. 
Just one of my pet peeves about too many of my cookbooks: price and availability of ingredients. And it came up because I made the Beet Burgers from this cookbook: 

Don't get me wrong - I really appreciate the work of the authors in producing this cookbook.And so far, I've been enjoying it. But I'm sure that it's a lot easier to find wasabi powder where they live than where I live. And it may be fine for them to put a whole cup of nutritional flake yeast in a recipe of 10 or 11 burgers (Wow!), but nutritional yeast is not cheap where I live. 
So, using expensive and hard to find ingredients is one of my biggest cookbook pet peeves. 

As for the burgers, they weren't bad, but not great. I used horseradish instead of wasabi powder, and maybe I should have used more. And I only had about 2/3 cup of nutritional yeast left, so that's all I used. Perhaps those contributed to the fact that I found them rather bland in taste, even with ketchup and mustard. I think they could have used some salt. But, for the most part, the recipes in this cookbook do not use added salt. 

Beet Burger with Grilled Pineapple, saurkraut and alfalfa sprouts

Which brings me to another pet peeve. Too many whole food, plant-based/vegan cookbook authors seem to think that flavour mostly consists of "hot", as in spicy hot: chili peppers, wasabi, black pepper, hot sauce, etc. And I'm not a big fan of "hot". I actually enjoy the flavours of lentils, chickpeas, navy beans, and seasonings like oregano and sage, flavours which just disappear in the onslaught of "hot". I remember years ago, after visiting a vegan restaurant, discussing it with a fellow vegan, and I told her that the food had been too hot. She responded that she felt that too many vegan cooks seem to try to make up for the absence of meat by the use of hot spices. Maybe that's it, because the fat in meat carries flavour. But I've eaten lots of delicious vegan food without it singeing my tongue. 
I had really wanted to like these Beet Burgers (and I still have 9 left) because they are so nutritious, but they are fairly labour-intensive for a burger I just found rather bland. In my many cookbooks, I have lots of burger recipes, many I know that I like, so I don't think I want to buy wasabi powder or play around with other seasonings to try and give these ones more zip. And using a whole cup of nutritional yeast seems rather excessive as well as expensive. So, I likely won't be repeating these burgers.