First yard and fruitcake

As expected, yesterday I got the warp threaded, sleyed, and tied on.  I’ve woven nearly a yard so far, and hope to do another 1-2 yards today while waiting for a phone call from the company I interviewed with Monday.  (Still no word, though I’m told to expect to hear something today.)  It’s going surprisingly well – I broke five threads early on in the weaving, but for the last 18 inches or so I haven’t had a single broken thread (knock on wood!).  This warp is around 16 yards long, so I expect to get about 15 yards of fabric out of it, after accounting for loom waste.  I anticipate it will take about two weeks to weave up.

And I made fruitcake yesterday!  An old family friend gave me her treasured recipe, and I’ve been meaning to make it for months now.  I even had the ingredients stacked up in the living room, but decided to wait until the poison ivy was healed up to do the baking.  So yesterday I chopped up nearly three gallons’ worth of dried and candied fruits, and tossed them into a huge pile in an impromptu mixing-bowl:

Yes, that is a LOT of fruit!  Over fifteen pounds of the stuff, if I recall correctly.   Dried apricots, golden raisins, flake coconut, slivered almonds, dried papaya, candied ginger, and – remember the frenzied bout of candying I went through a few months ago?  Yes, homemade candied Meyer lemon peel, and citron, Seville orange, bergamot peels too, plus those candied sweet cherries and candied sour cherries.  Plus 20 eggs, 8 cups of flour, and 2 pounds of butter.  It should be delicious.

Anyway, that vast mound of dried and candied fruit went into an even bigger batch of batter (I had to use that 40-quart plastic tub because it wouldn’t fit in any of my bowls or stock pots!), then into the oven at 275 degrees for nearly 3 hours.  I now have 11 fruitcakes in big aluminum loaf pans.  (Hey, anything worth doing is worth overdoing, right? )

So this morning I sprinkled the fruitcakes with 1 tablespoon of amaretto each, wrapped them tightly in plastic wrap, and set them aside.  From now on, every week for the next 6-8 weeks, I’ll unwrap the cakes, sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of Southern Comfort, and rewrap them.  After 8 weeks they’ll be fully soaked, but could use another month or two of aging.  I figure it should be ready just about Christmas time, just in time to hand out to relatives.  I can’t wait to taste them!