Toum (garlic sauce)

This is the delicious garlic sauce that you get at Lebanese restaurants. After having it at lunch one day, I wanted to see what was in it, and discovered it's really very simple - garlic, oil, lemon juice, and salt. Some recipes also included egg whites, but I decided that it would just be a bit safer without worrying about raw egg in the sauce. I followed
http://www.mamaslebanesekitchen.com/dips/lebanese-garlic-dip/ (of course I'm going to trust a Lebanese mama on this one) and that link has a lot of background, chemistry, and videos about making this sauce.

Ingredients:
3 heads of garlic, peeled
4 cups of canola oil
1 lemon, freshly juiced
1 teaspoon of salt

Add the garlic and salt to the food processor. Pulse several times, stopping to scrape down the sides, until it turns pasty and looks crushed. After this, the food processor will stay on until you're done. Add the first 1/2 cup of oil in a thin stream to the running processor. Let this mix for a few seconds and add 1/2 teaspoon of lemon juice. Wait a few seconds until this incorporates and then alternate 1/2 cup oil and 1/2 teaspoon of lemon juice until it's all added. This will take about 10 minutes. (If you go slowly with added the liquids then they should be completely emulsified and the sauce won't separate.)

I used three-and-a-half heads of garlic because a couple of the heads seemed a bit small. I tried peeling the garlic by tossing them around in a container (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d3oc24fD-c) and it did work for most of the cloves, but it took me longer than 10 seconds and there were some that I still had to "manually" peel. I used a plastic container with a twist on lid because 1) I don't think I have two bowls the same size that could easily be held and 2) I'm likely to let go of those bowls in the shaking process and I'd have garlic cloves flying everywhere.

The one lemon gave me about 1/4 cup of juice, and it was in the process of measuring out the oil that I realized how much 4 cups really is and that it's not going to disappear, so I was going to have a lot of garlic sauce to share when I was finished.

Here is the garlic with the salt...

And then pulsed a few times to small bits...

And then to the paste.

After the first 1/2 cup of oil and 1/2 teaspoon of lemon juice it really starts to send the aroma up the chute.

This is about 2 cups of oil.

And this is how full it was when I was done.

It has a texture like mayonnaise, so if you want a bit of a thinner sauce (such as for dipping), just put some in a bowl and slowly add water while you mix.

I needed air-tight containers for the sauce and I wanted glass jars because this sauce is definitely strong enough to make plastic smell forever. I had one ring jar, an old salsa jar, and one from Caesar salad dressing. Pick nicer jars if you're going to gift this :)

My first use was with roasted potatoes, but so far I've had it in biscuits, pasta sauce, and mashed potatoes. Anywhere that you'd use garlic and oil you can use a bit of this sauce. As a dipping sauce I find it has a bit of fresh garlic "bite" at the end, so I think next time I'm going to roast the garlic a bit first to get a sweeter flavour. I'm excited already!

~Lisa

Rustic Farm Table

I have always wanted a farm table.

I wanted it to look old, distressed, and worn-down. I wanted it to be sturdy and heavy. 

And I finally got it!

A few years ago my parents torn down their barn. It was over 100 years old, and sadly it was starting to show its age. For the safety of everyone in the family, it had to be "put down". The good news of all this is? I now had, literally, tonnes of old barn wood at my fingertips! I kinda wanted to make my whole home look like an old barn! Like, do some paneling on the walls, build some shelves, hang a massive old barn door...  My husband said "no" to those ideas, but did agree to help me build a dining table.

My very own rustic farm table built out of old barn wood!

We looked at many different plans. Searched online and Pinterest. Browsed through Restoration Hardware and Urban Barn. 

We came up with our own plan, pulling together all our (my!) favorite features. 

We were going to build a heavy sturdy table, with chunky legs, and a simple stringer. The top would be thick, made of wide planks. I wanted to stain the top dark and white-wash the bottom. The final dimensions are 36" wide by 74" long, and 32.5" high.

And so we began!

We sorted through piles of wood to find pieces long and wide enough, and in good shape. I was able to be picky (there was lots to choose from) and found wood without rot, minimal warping, and just enough raw edges. 

First we cut the legs. Normal table height is about 30 - 32 inches. I have a bit of a tall family, big people with long legs, so we cut our table legs at 32.5 inches. 

Then decide how wide you want the legs to be apart. Ours are 24 inches apart at each end. You will need the 4 leg posts and 2 spacers cut at this time. 

The wood looked great on the inside. I was really pleased at its condition for being 100 + years old!

This is the next step, to make it look like this:

I thought it would be easier if I show you this first, then you have a pretty good idea of what I'm talking about, and what we are working towards. 

Taking the 4 posts, we drilled into each one so that we could insert the spacer to create the end frame of the table. I measured it to be 6 inches off the floor, and in the middle of the post.  My husband drilled 2 circles in each leg (you can see the center marks) and then we used a chisel to clean up the rest. Trying to make it into a rectangular hole. 

I don't have a picture of it (sorry, we were in the groove and totally forgot to keep taking pictures!) but we made a "peg" end on the spacer to fit into the chiseled out hole. Just cut down the edges of the spacer so the end will fit nice and tight into the space. Then, put the "peg" into the "hole". 

Secure this connection with a long screw. I mean LONG! The screws we used were 6 inches long! We first drilled some pilot holes to prevent the wood from splitting on us, and so we could sink them in, out of sight. 

So here it is. The legs are 24 inches apart with the spacer. 

Now we had the 2 ends of the table base!

Select the piece of wood for the stringer. This will be the long piece that holds the two ends of the table base together. And somewhere to rest your feet on!

Cut it to the desired length. Ours is cut at 36 inches. 

We drilled some pilot holes in the end spacers, and some countersink holes too. This is where we attached the stringer.

To make these holes in the correct place, we marked center on the spacer and drilled holes 2 inches either side of center. Pre-drill some pilot holes in the stringer too. Again, mark center and drill 2 inches each side of center. 

These are the holes in the spacer:

And here is where we are about to drill in the stringer. See the line at center? And those + marks are measured 2 inches off center, in the middle of the height of the board. Drill through the + marks. 

Now attach the stringer to the spacer using those long screws again. 

Repeat for the other side. And the base is nearly complete! 

Using NEW wood we created a top frame. This holds the legs in place, making sure it won't twist on you. We used new wood in this step so we could be sure it was straight and square. Even though we picked through piles of boards and found some really great pieces, they were ALL a bit weathered and warped. A bit of new wood was needed to hold it all in square secure position. 

Staring to look a bit like a real table, eh?

To build the table top... unfortunately no pictures of this either! You would think I am new to this blogging thing or something....sorry!

It is pretty easy though. Start by gathering together the planks that you want to use as the table top. Lay them out together and see how you like the width. I ended up using 4 planks 5.5" wide and 2 planks 7" wide. This makes my table 36 inches wide. 

Cut them all to your desired table top length. Mine are all cut at 74 inches. 

Now, just secure them together by screwing a narrow piece of wood into each plank. We used 1.5 inch screws and put 2 into each plank. You can see how we made the tabletop in this photo:

I know some of these tabletop planks look new in the photo. They are not, they just look like it on the bottom here! We did have to run a few of the super rough, thick, planks through a thickness planer to get them all to be the same thickness. I wanted a rustic looking tabletop, but I still wanted it to be functional for meal time!

We decided not to attach the tabletop to the base. Both pieces are super heavy. The tabletop just sits inside the base frame. It does not move! If you wanted, you could easily screw the two pieces together, just be sure to have at least 6 people on standby anytime you want to move the table. It really is HEAVY!

Now that the building of the frame and tabletop was complete, I began the finishing work. 

Lots and lots of sanding! My whole garage was filled with sawdust!

Now here is how it looked after much sanding and the addition of a frame "facing" to hide the new wood around the top.

And the top, now all sanded smooth:

I wanted to white-wash the base. I used basic white paint (sample sized pot from Home Dept) and put some in a small container. It was water based paint, so I added some water to it and thinned it down. This was my "white-wash" for the base. The legs, spacers, stringer, and frame got two coat of this. 

Before:

Put on a thin coat of my homemade whitewash paint:

Rub it around a bit and remove any excess with a cloth:

Here it looks like rustic old wood, but just a bit whiter!

I repeated this process again, putting on a second coat. 

Thin coat of white-wash on, rubbing it off, leaving behind  a "whiter" wood look. 

Same thing for the frame, before:

After:

Now here it is all white-washed:

I love it! I like that the subtle wood grain is still visible through the white-wash!

I stained the top using a single coat of Minwax dark walnut stain.

 Just paint a thin layer on, and then wipe it off. 

Here you can see the difference just one coat made:

To seal the tabletop, I used Minwax® Paste Finishing Wax. Just rub it in to the wood to create a moisture barrier and a layer of protection, it also added a bit of lustre. I put 2 coats of wax on, waiting 24 hours between coats. 

Here is the finished, waxed tabletop:

And finally.... My new Rustic Farm Table!

~Jess