Dear Santa . . .

I know it’s a little early.  As Thanksgiving is not yet upon us, it is therefore not even Advent yet, so why am I contemplating Christmas wishes?

Well for one, I’ve been working on Christmas presents since July or August.  Also, I’ve been assaulted of late by a barrage of sweaters and other toasty knitted lovelies that has inspired a bad case of knitting lust.  So to stave off my impulses, I’m putting in a request.

Santa, next year I would like to knit the following:

Greenway

Leaving

Chambord

Blair

Skalva

Cadence

Mythos

Milly

. . . and a whole lot more. Now, I can come by yarn pretty easily, patterns too. What I need you to do is to flex some of your time/space continuum bending powers in my favor so I can have the time I need to knit them all and still work and sleep and take care of things. I know I’m asking a lot, but I hope we can come to a mutually acceptable arrangement.

Yours,
Queue

Experiments in Soda

So I got it in my head a while back that I wanted to make homemade ginger ale and root beer.  I poked around the net for a while and found several similar sets of directions for “brewing” soda at home.  Yup, brewing.  I gave it a try.  I followed a recipe for ginger ale.  It wasn’t terrible, though I found it fairly weak in the flavor department.  What I didn’t like was that if I wanted to keep it around I’d be going through that process about once a week as over time the yeast would keep making a little alcohol.  I’m not great at incorporating new chores into my routine, and with mediocre results I wasn’t motivated to try.

Then it dawned on me the other day – Italian soda would be easy.  Just add syrup to some kind of fizzy water and go.  So I’ve started making syrups from time to time – way less fussy and super quick.  A roughly 1 to 1 ratio of the liquid of my choice and some sugar in a pan on the stove for a minute or two and I was all set.  Give it a try – it’s pretty awesome!

So far I’ve tried:

Pappy’s Sassafrass Tea Concentrate (awesome root beer!!!)

Fresh Ginger steeped in boiling water (very nice, ginger teabags would work too)

A couple of pureed peaches (my little chopper left them a bit chunky, so the soda had floaties because I opted not to strain)

Bottle of Pom Wonderful straight up Pomegranate (not bad, but next time I’ll just buy a couple pomegranates and juice them, pasteurization changes the flavor a bit)

Nearly anything could work – any juice, tea, or infusion you like.  If you like it as much as we do, you too may be thinking about finding one of those old seltzer bottles and some CO2 cartridges.  Cheers!

Leave a Comment

Bree – defender of the stash

For any of you out there who may be wondering about alternative methods for deterring moths around your wool – I highly recommend a puppy. No, seriously.

A moth (not likely the dangerous kind, for one it was a bit too big) just landed on my knee.  We see a lot more bugs in this apartment than we did in the last one (probably because I count an ant infestation as one single bug), perils of being out in the country.  I’ll trade more bugs for the semi’s that used to rattle our walls, any day!

Anyway – the moth didn’t stay long on my knee, and shortly made it’s fatal error – it flew across the puppy’s line of sight.  That was it – it was toast.  She pursued it through the apartment with the single-minded focus of a zealot.  First paws, then teeth, and finally (I believe) she ate it.  A few more of those and she will have totally made up for the times she’s tried to eat my yarn!

Make Ahead Day

I’m not subbing today, so I planned our meals for the next week and went to the store.  When I got home I proceeded to make two dinners simultaneously, neither of which are for dinner tonight.  I got my receipts this week from Smitten Kitchen. I love this blog – she does great recipes and her photography is stellar!  I want light that good in my kitchen.

Today I made Spinach and Cheese Strata, which needs to chill overnight before cooking anyway, and Stuffed Cabbage Rolls which I intend to bag and freeze for sometime next week.  Tonight we’re having Tomato and Sausage Risotto.

It was a fair bit of prep work – though not as labor intensive as some things I love to cook.  But now I’ll have two nights of reheat dinners, basically.  Tomorrow is another subbing day, so the strata will be an easy dinner after a longish day.  Friday is birthday dinner for the boy, so we’re having (by request) fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and hopefully asparagus.  The asparagus at the store today was HUGE and a bit past its “expiration date” if you know what I mean.  Ew.  And to top all that oh so healthy food off, I’m making him a Cappuccino Fudge Cheesecake.

There may have also been some knitting.  I started spinning a 4 oz. braid on Saturday, finished the singles on Sunday, plied, soaked, and dried on Monday.  The braid was three large sections of color.  I split each color into sixths and spun them in such an order than when I wound the singles on my ball winder and plied starting from the two ends and working towards the middle I’d get stripes.  Then I proceeded to cast on a hat.  I’m working a top down toboggan type loosely based on Brooklyntweed’s Turn a Square.  I’m going to keep going ’til I run out of yarn, so this hat may have a sizeable “cuff.”

Leave a Comment

An Un-receipt*

Ordinarily I reheat something leftover from a past supper for lunch, but when I was hungry this afternoon I found the fridge devoid of all forms of previously made food.  It was time to improvise.

I cooked up the last of the 50% whole wheat penne – probably a cup and a half dry and saved the salty pasta water.   Whole wheat would certainly be fine if you like the stuff – I find it resembles cardboard a bit too closely.  Regular old “normal” pasta would also be fine – but I recommend penne or some other somewhat chunky pasta.  This is not a time for spaghetti.

I sauteed a handful of button mushrooms, which I quartered, and four pieces of acorn squash leftover from the previous recipe, which I cut into cubes, in some olive oil.  I added a little Italian seasoning and some chopped walnuts.

Once this was browned and crispy in spots I added a few tablespoons of heavy cream (half and half would totally work, didn’t have any – milk, on the other hand really wouldn’t) and a few crumbles of blue cheese.

Then I stirred in some chopped frozen basil and seasoned with salt and pepper.

Once the pasta was done, I added some of the pasta water to the creamy sauce stuff to thin it down (it was almost a paste consistency before I did that) and stirred it together with the pasta.

Sorry there’s no picture today – I already ate my bowl.  It was good.  I highly recommend you play with your food from time to time, the results can be really tasty!

* This is my attempt to practice some of the things taught to me by my mother/grandmother/great-grandmother.  To quote my grandfather’s mother, my Gran, “a recipe is for medicine, a receipt for food.”

1 Comment

For Supper Tonight

I don’t know about y’all, but I have a really hard time coming up with new and exciting things for dinner.  Sometimes I search the web.  Sometimes I hunt around the store for inspiration.  I pour through our myriad of cookbooks.  I buy more cookbooks.  This summer I’m hoping to sign us up for a CSA to keep myself in interesting produce for a while – it may help.  But eventually, I’m at a loss for what to cook.

So I thought I’d share the good dinner recipes when I have them.  And I’m hoping that the few of you that read this from time to time might chime in with some of your own.

So, without further ado, I bring you tonight’s supper:

Blue Cheese Burgers w/ Grilled Onion on Texas Toast

Really should make 4, possibly 5 burgers

1 lb. ground beef

A few  shakes of Worcestershire Sauce

A few shakes of garlic salt

A few twists from the pepper grinder

2-3 tbsp of cream cheese and a roughly equal amount of blue cheese

One large red onion

Six slices of garlic butter Texas Toast (make your own, buy frozen, or see if there are fresh ones in the bakery section – it doesn’t matter overly much)

Put the ground beef into a bowl and work in the Worcestershire Sauce, onion salt, and pepper with your hands.  I’m pretty sure I used a good tablespoon of Worcestershire, maybe more – it’s a taste thing, adjust it to yours.  Form this into eight or ten flatish patties that don’t quite cover the palm of your hand.  In another bowl mix the cheeses together with a spoon.  Spread the cheese mixture onto the middles of three of your patties.  Make beef patty oreos and pinch and press the edges together so you can’t see any cheese.

Slice red onion into 1/2 inch slices (or less, Seth asked for less next time) and rub a little olive oil on each side.

Cook the burgers by your desired method (I’m a grill girl myself) until they are as done as you like your burgers.  This will likely take a little longer than you’re used to due to the thickness.  Some cheese may ooze out, this is ok.  You can either grill or pan saute the onions right along with the burgers.  You can either grill or oven bake the texas toast.  I lit the webber and laid everything on there, pulling things off as they were done.  Once they’re all done, assemble and enjoy.

Roasted Acorn Squash with Sage Butter

1-2 Acorn squash

2-4 Tbsp. salted butter

1 Tbsp. rubbed sage (fresh would be better, we didn’t have any tonight)

Cut open your squash and scoop out the seeds.  Cut each whole squash into about six wedges.  Melt your butter and stir the sage into it.  Brush this onto the squash and let a little pool in the “bottom of the boat.”  Bake these in a 350 degree oven until the squash is soft when poked with a fork.  I put mine on a pizza stone in a cold oven, set for 350, and it took about 35 minutes.

I hope this helps someone who needs a good idea for dinner.  Feel free to pass it along to anyone who might like it; these are far from being entirely my original ideas, so share the love!

Leave a Comment

Thought

I’m becoming increasingly fond of the word damn.  I suppose it only makes sense, I’ve been using it since I was 18 months old.  Thanks mom!  But seriously, as far as minorly offensive low level swear words go, it’s incredibly versatile.

Well, damn.  Shut the damn door.  Dayum!  Damn, damn, damn!  There’s the instant whiny five year old: I want it now, dammit!  It can said in anger, impatience, or even glee.  Love that!

This is not the first, nor will it likely be the last, time I’ve gotten a little nerdy about language.  Welcome to my particular brand of insanity.  Admission is free.

You’re damn right! (or for you Asbury kids: You’re Dan Straight!)