So many hobbies!

I cooked all day today

In an effort to not buy any food at work this week (except for Chinese Thursday!), I was in the kitchen almost all day today.  Cooking was interspersed with doing the dishes... over and over again.  At the end of the day, I have 4 servings of chili, 4 servings of Tuscan White Bean Soup, a batch of Morning Glory muffins for breakfasts and a batch of corn muffins to go with the chili.  I also made a batch of vegetable broth that went into the Tuscan soup.  Man, I am really tired.  And I still need to do a load of laundry before bed.  Hey, aren't weekends supposed to be for resting after the work week?

Granola

I started the year with homemade granola.  I'm not sure how much I like this recipe, which combines oil, molasses and brown sugar.  This concoction is heated until the sugar melts then poured over the oat mixture and mixed.  I may still be searching for the perfect granola recipe.  The stuff in the picture has rolled oats, sesame seeds, ground flax seed, sunflower seeds, chopped almonds and pistachios, dried cranberries and cherries and date bits.  I like the base ingredients, I'm just not sure about the molasses, which is add since I love molasses anything.  I take after my dad in that respect.

I was so productive over the holidays and now I've crashed and burned.  I slept badly last night so I have no drive to do much of anything except go to bed EARLY.  The cats, of course, just want to play.  This is mostly exhibited in the yarn they've used to string up the house.  Tyr is currently laying on some unfinished quilt squares and Galen is in the bathroom hoping I'll come and turn on the water.  This is the lull before the storm.  As soon as they find the aforementioned yarn I've wound up, again, they'll be at it again.  I'd been letting them sleep with me but I inevitably sleep badly when they do.  (No, they didn't sleep with me last night.)  Just about the only time I let them sleep with me now is on nights when I don't have to work the next day.

Everyone seems to make resolutions for the new year.  I've found that resolutions never last much past January.  I'm making some changes but I don't really know what to call them since they had better last more than 31 days.  We'll just leave it at that.  I'll tell you about them later once the habits have sunk in but I find if I talk about things I want/plan to do, I never actually do them.  Hey, something to look forward to!

Going to bed now...

I want my two dollars!*

I finally broke down and bought white miso paste to make my miso soup.  To make it more traditional, I also bought kelp to add to the soup.  It tasted fine but I think the yellow miso would have been much more flavorful.  I'm still searching for yellow miso.  Here's a shot of my mostly-yummy soup:

I also added shiitake mushrooms and tofu, just like in Japanese restaurants.  There were little bits of miso floating around so I don't think I disolved/mashed the miso quite enough. 

Sunday I exchanged gifts with my parents and opened the combined gift from both my sister and my grandparents.  When I blogged that I wanted one of these for Christmas, I honestly didn't believe I'd get one.  You know, it's like when you were 16 and you added a car to the Christmas list you gave your mom.  You didn't actually think you'd get a car.  Same thing here except this time it actually worked.  Behold:

The Stauch Petite.  Isn't it beautiful?!  I've even made my first bat, modeled here by the handsome Galen:

More carding will have to wait until after Christmas however.  Bummer.  I have a house to clean and a bit more baking to do before Friday.

I've been toying with the idea of finishing as many works-in-progress as possible.  I've got about 3 quilt tops to finish (the actual quilting will have to wait), some yarn to dye, and 4 or 5 bats to spin.  I guess you can say I'll be doing a Finish-a-thon.  Start the new year with the old year's projects done.  Join me?

 

*This will make sense if you've seen the movie "Better Off Dead."  It's hilarious.  Plus, it's an inside joke for my sister.

This and that

I made a very cool discovery yesterday:  I can knit without looking.  I haven't tried purling yet, I'm still impressed with myself that I can look out the window on the bus ride home and still keep knitting.  It's not complete muscle memory yet, meaning part of my concentration is always on the knitting.  I don't think I'll be taking socks to movies any time soon.

 

This was my dinner tonight.  The first of my fingerling potatoes cooked in a little butter, a couple of scrambled eggs added and then a little cheese.  Man, was it good!  I'll post a picture of my potato harvest on Sunday.  Mmm, home grown potatoes!

 

This is the binding for my wonky squares quilt.  I'm still hoping to have the quilt bound by the time I leave for Houston on 11/5.  My cousin is a quilter and I want to show off my quilted quilt.  All of my previous quilts were tied.  I'm starting to get more excited about the quilt show.  I've never been to one before and this is a big one.  I'm anticipating seeing some amazing quilts.  And hanging out with the cousins.  I can't wait!

Ginger, glorious ginger!

I know this may not look like much, but this, my friends, is a freshly baked gingerbread cake, with both ground and candied ginger.  Oh.  My.  Have you experienced that joy that is ginger?  If it's got ginger in it, I like it: Indian food, Chinese food, gingerbread, gingersnaps, ginger ale.  The original recipe for the cake comes from Cooking LIght magazine and called for blueberries in the cake and blueberry sauce on top.  Didn't like it with the blueberries so I leave them out and put whipped cream on top.  It's driving me nuts that I can't cut into it but this is our dessert Friday night when I hang out with the girls.  Now I just need the cake to cool so I can put it away and go to bed.  (Oh, and that's my new stove.)

Happy weekend people!
 

A nice relaxing Sunday

Once I finished my taxes that is.  After that, it was pretty low key.  There was a fair amount of snuggling and napping with Seli.  It was beautiful outside:  sunny with a clear blue sky.

Saturday I finished spinning the first cop of Targhee singles and wound them off onto my spindle Lazy Kate:

 

And then started the next cop.  My spindle box will be my constant companion for the rest of the week.  The white is finished and I've started the palest purple shade.

 

Even though I have way too much roving, I couldn't resist this one.  It's from Creatively Dyed Yarn purchased from The Loopy Ewe.  It's Merino and Seacell.  Isn't it gorgeous?!

 

I finally got around to the baking I wanted to do last weekend.  My hand of bananas was brown and shriveled and perfect for banana nut bread.  All I did was rip off one end and squeeze the banana out of the skin.  Easy peasy.  I want badly to slice off a piece but I'm saving it for my very lucky co-workers.  It makes Monday mornings a little bit easier.

The joy of the crock pot

Today was spent in the knowledge that dinner would be waiting for me when I got home.  I found this recipe while web surfing last week.  Man did the house smell good when I got home tonight.  Since I don't drink, I had to ask a few people if I could buy just one bottle of beer (the recipe calls for 1 cup - I added about a cup and a half) and bought a bottle of Bass.  Once it was done cooking, I pulled out the meat and pulled off all the visible fat.  The juices in the crock I poured into one of those measuring cups with the spout at the bottom, waited for the fat to rise to the top and poured all the good stuff back into the crock.  Then I put the meat back in and shredded it with two forks.  Dinner was served over pasta with some fresh-grated parmesan cheese sprinkled on top.  Yummy!

Did you know you can actually bake in a crock pot?!  Seriously.  You cook the same as you would for any other recipe except you stick a chopstick under the lid to let the steam out.  I'm going to try it this weekend. 

My iPod has been absolutely wonderful to have at work.  I have all my favorite music which ranges from Barenaked Ladies to Scott Joplin to Riverdance to Blue Oyster Cult.  It makes boring data entry a little more tolerable.  A couple of weeks ago I started uploading podcasts:  Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me; The Splendid Table and Sticks & Strings.  How did I ever manage without an MP3 player?

Strawberry-rhubarb jam

I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed making jam, and picking my own fruit for that matter.  It's very satisfying.  Saturday morning was beautiful and I had 10 pounds of berries picked within 40 minutes.  The picking conditions were perfect.  Naturally, I picked way more berries than I needed.  So, I made two batches of strawberry-rhubarb jam today and Tuesday I'll make two batches of just strawberry.  Personally, I prefer the consistency and flavor of cooked jam.  That's how my grandma made it and how Mom made it.  Freezer jam just seems like cheating.  Now that I think about it, I may need to skip spin night tomorrow to make the jam.  I don't want the berries to go bad before I can use them.  Oh, another thing, I seal my jam with paraffin wax and then add a lid once the wax hardens.  The current canning books tell you to process them in a hot water bath but I've always sealed with wax and I've never had a problem (same with Mom, same with Grandma).  Jam has so much sugar and acidity that nothing will grow in it.  Sugar is a preservative. 

Lazy day... mostly

My initial plan for today was to cook up a mushroom chicken dish in the morning (for work lunches) then after lunch, make the dessert I would take to Eric's.  This plan probably would have been carried through if I hadn't started reading "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver.  It's about a family's one-year commitment to only eat locally grown food... and it's completely sucked me in.  There's a lot of information in this book and most of it is a real eye-opener.  After you read it, you'll be shopping at your local farmer's market and by-passing the grocery store.  It's made me even more eager to grow my own food and even more frustrated that I can't.

That said, I bought out-of-season, imported sweet cherries and made this:

Eric, Terry and Alice all liked it, and it was good, but my taste buds wanted something more tart.  If I make it again, I'll use tart cherries, or maybe rhubarb.  Rhubarb would be fabulous. 

I finished up the last of the Border Leicester fleece today.  Hot, sunny days are wonderful for drying wool outside.  I only had to leave it outside for about 45 minutes and not only was it dry, it was hot.  I'd imagine white fleeces would take longer to dry but the dark gray wool dried super fast.

I know I said I'd have a finished skein of yarn to show off but I'm afraid I only got as far as these.  Tomorrow...