Science Fair for November 12th-18th

This week is a rather domestically-themed Science Fair, all baking soda and vinegar. A little home economics never hurt anyone:

-From Baking Bites, curried wheat bread for those who are inclined to bake their own bread on those cold winter nights. I am not one of those blessed with yeast bread making skills, but HOT-DAMN that looks like some delicious sandwich bread.
-From How About Orange..., the cutest, geek-chic-iest DIY pencil cup ever made with felt and an empty soup can.
-Sew, Mama, Sew! is posting a list of great handmade gift ideas, with examples of adorable fabrics and how-tos. This week is all about coasters, the one household item my grandmother swears by besides her sixty-year-old rice cooker. Having just come into about twelve pounds of fabulously great chinoiserie and jacquard household fabric samples myself, I'm tempted to use my Thanksgiving food coma to make piles of matching coasters and placemats for gifts. Which member of my familly would enjoy chinoiserie placemats and coasters, I cannot say. The wee owl applique is just too cute, I might make it and keep it!
-Maki at JustHungry/JustBento makes fluffy cushions of whole wheat pita bread at home, using a pillowcase and a frying pan. Oh, yum.
-Chowhounds say, Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle your bacon fat! Personally, I love bacon but hate having to deal with the fat popping and congealing everywhere (like my belly), so I try to tear off as much of it as I can before frying it in a pan. A little bird called the Food Network keeps telling me that cooking bacon strips on a rack in the oven works pretty well, maybe that'll be my new trick.
-Finally, since we're all amped for Thanksgiving, the New York Times has a whole page devoted to the meal and its various accoutrements. I am immensely happy to see brussels sprouts with pancetta on their list of recipes, because my goodness! Those much-maligned little cabbages have never tasted so good, believe it.

Now for me to indugle in a bit of Miss Marple thanks to PBS, despite never being an Agatha Christie fan I do love the made-for-TV versions. So many great British actors! So many TOTALLY AWESOME period hats and costumes! The big country estates, the old-lady chic, all of it is great.