Ring in 2010!!!

Happy New Year from my party animals! 2009 ended with a fabulous, food filled party, featuring paella, sparkling wine (although we did determine that one person did bring actual champagne), Dungeness crab, roasted beef, lumpia, cheese fondue, homemade pasta, and homemade butter almond and pine nut ice cream.

Note that the KitchenAid pasta extruder is a wonderful, wonderful invention. And so is the KitchenAid ice cream maker. Expect some more blogging about it.

It was hard to believe that just a week before the year's end, the household was running in slow motion due to a chicken poxy adult (pssst, if you haven't had chicken pox yet, there is a vaccine now - spare yourself the itchies), holiday preparation, and a work schedule that was unsympathetic to the aforementioned issues. However, everyone here has nicely recovered thanks to a week off of work, a vacation to Pismo, and loads of reading and knitting.

Reading, how I have missed thee. My knitting obsession carved a huge chunk out of my reading habit, but I am starting to find a bit more balance to my hobbies. I was convinced that a Kindle would solve my reading dilemma by helping me ingest more books during the blobs of time in between other commitments, although I realize that this logic does not hold up under scrutiny because a regular, old fashioned book could do the same. Let's face it: I just wanted a gadget. The other day, I was really craving a fun, quick read during my vacation, and I wanted it NOW. I discovered that I don't need a stinking Kindle because the iPhone has a free Kindle app - I test drove this app by reading The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. I was number 749 on my library's hold list, and although I'm patient, I'm not that patient. This book is total junk food for the brain with fun puzzles thrown in, and while there were some annoying features to this book (does the reader really care that one student is blond and that another had a slightly Tibetan look?), I was successfully sucked in and useless to the world for a day. It's amazing that I can read 528 pages comfortably on a small screen, but it didn't bother me at all. I'll have to try another ebook app, Stanza, soon. I've heard that Stanza comes with a free download of Alice in Wonderland, a book that I've been meaning to read again.

Much slow cooking has been going on in these parts, too. A house elf stayed with us for a week, and he was lamenting the dusty crockpot that he had every intention of reviving. So, he experimented on us and made an Indian butter chicken (chicken makhani) that was adapted for the slow cooker, and I had a revelation: the slow cooker recipes I've tried in the past were gross not because of the method, but because of he ingredients! There's no need to use your slow cooker for gelatinous Velveeta concoctions. You could have a delicious Indian chicken stew, like this lamb vindaloo! I'm currently simmering a pork vindaloo dish in the slow cooker - so far, it smells good. Here's my before picture:

Tonight, we'll get to eat the results and I can share an "after" picture.

The chicken poxy boy managed to make some very sweet gifts for our mothers during the 4 hours of lucidity had each day. He made two, identical pillows using silk we purchased during a trip to China. Red on one side,


and black on the other.


You can't see it in these pictures but he made the pillows easy to slip on and off by sewing a slit in the middle of the black panel. I'm constantly amazed that he can just whip up these things without a pattern. He's only had the sewing machine for a year, but he's a quick study. I heavily hinted that a skirt would be a lovely thing for him to whip up next. For me, of course.

There are some gift knitting items I'd love to share, but for now I have to wait until the giftees get back into town. Soon, hopefully, soon...

Cats love chicken pox

When someone gets the chicken pox, he lays in bed all day. Fifty
thinks this fantastic!

Knitted Beverage Cozy

I spied these knitted cozies at Starbucks. I still maintain that
knitted cozies are tacky, although I do like the green and maroon
color combo.

Marathon Cooking and Eating

This year, we did more marathon eating, but we did manage to make a few dishes.

This is all the fixings for a traditional sticky rice stuffing (nuo mi fan) that my family makes in addition to bread stuffing. If you are lucky enough score an invitation to a Cantonese banquet, one fancy banquet food is a deboned, whole chicken stuffed with nuo mi fan, and then deep fried. In my family, when we make this at home, we skip the whole stuffing of the chicken, or turkey, and simply serve the nuo mi fan alongside the roasted poultry. I've turned my in-laws onto this traditional food, too, and they request "sticky rice" at the holiday table now.

I also made a couple loaves of whole wheat bread, sans starter (it died!), but I didn't bring them to the dinner table because they turned out like hockey pucks. I could've sliced it up and said it was German bread, but I suspected that there would be plenty of other carbs for us to enjoy. We speedily made some coconut pumpkin pie ice cream in place of the bread. No one seemed to mind the substitution, but homemade ice cream does have a way of covering a multitude of cooking errors.

I don't think I've posted this yet: the boy's first sweater. He knit the parts on the knitting machine, and it took me about twice as long to seam the sucker up. And, apparently, it takes me a million times longer to post the finished product. He is almost done with another sweater, but I told him in no uncertain terms that I am not seaming it again, so this one will be seamed by sewing machine. He sealed the deal (of me not seaming) when he said that it would only take him 10 minutes to seam up his sweater. Fine. Knock yourself out, kiddo.

A Hiss and a Purr

Hiss:

Whole wheat tortillas? FAIL! I milled the flour too course because attempts at a fine, pastry flour resulted in a blown electrical circuit. Next time, I need to supplement the whole wheat flour with some high gluten flour.

It's a shame that these were so thick and dry, because I had freshly rendered lard that went into them. The lard came from the fat scraps from hunk of pork butt cut into chunks for chile verde, because when I put the chile verde in the oven to stew, I threw a cast iron skillet full of the fat scraps in there as well so the fat was rendering alongside the meat stewing.

Purr:

Greaseball is allowed on the couch, but not Mingus. The only reason he got away with it was because these two were being so stinking cute. It's a rare moment when the two brothers snuggle up together.

Forget the wine and the beer

I have Straus eggnog and Pumpkin Spice Silk! If these two beverages were to go head to head in a steel cage death match, the eggnog would devour the soy milk. It's not that the soy milk is bad, but it cannot compete with the sinfully good Straus milk.

Both were acquired at Berkeley Bowl West.

A Slouch for Fall

A bit of stash busting happened this weekend, along with a bit of Mingus snuggling. I knit up another Slouch for All Seasons (.pdf link) for an old friend who visited us this weekend. She picked out the yarn on Halloween, and I blocked it and snapped a quick photo before she left today.

I used about 3/4 of a skein of Cascade 220, and it was knit up on size 5 needles for the band, and size 7 needles for the body. Other than those changes, no other modifications were made to the pattern.

Colorway and dye lot information are long gone. I probably recycled the ball band in one of my purging fits, but no matter. This yarn was meant to be something for her.

Palate Cleansers

My saffron is here! So far, I have 9 stamens from three flowers. A paella's worth of saffron it is not, but hopefully more of the crocuses will flower soon.

This is one of two measly garlic bulbs that we planted who knows how long ago - it never separated into multiple cloves. The garlic bulb has been curing on my counter for the past 3 weeks, and I chopped it up last night to add with some Marin Sun Farm chuck roast. Next time, we'll buy garlic intended for planting in this climate. I'm pretty sure that the boy just stuck two cloves of garlic into a pot after I told him about how envious I was of Pam Pierce growing a 6 pounds of garlic on a small 3x3' plot.


Since I'm between sweaters right now and I want to reduce my yarn stash of single balls, I'm knocking out some small projects as palate cleansers. The hats featured above, true color being the brownish red in the second picture, are for a friend and his son who recently moved to Chicago. The pattern is The Boyfriend Hat from Stephanie Likes to Knit.

And since I'm actually posting about knitting, let's revisit an old topic: Irish Cottage Knitting. I am exclusively knitting lever-action style now, and it has improved my pace and reduced wrist pain. To switch, I had to go cold turkey and not knit in my old English style, which pained me since I had so many big projects I wanted to start but couldn't due to lack of reliable gauge. Purling was a challenge, and what I finally figured out was that I had to keep the angle needles obtuse (wider than 90 degrees) when I purl, and acute (smaller than 90 degrees) when I knit. If you take a look at this video, she actually does change the angle of her needles for a knit and purl stitches. Wider for purl, narrower for knit.

Squeeeee! Cardigan Accomplished!

Do you ever finish knitting something, step back, and think to yourself, did I seriously just make this? I am crazy in love with this Tangled Yoke Cardigan from Interweave Knit's Fall 2007 issue, and if it wasn't still oddly warm here, I'd be sleeping in it.

Since I'm a shorty, knitting sweaters for myself involves a lot of math because I can never knit the patterns as written. Even more calculations were needed because this was stash yarn, GGH Wollywasch, with a different weight than the Rowan Felted Tweed specified in the pattern. I had about a page of calculations, and even though I knew my math was sound (math is awesome!), I still was second guessing myself as I plugged away.

Knitting sweaters is like baking. In baking, I make tweaks all the time before I throw the concoction into the oven, and I never know if my changes are good or not until my finished product is cooled down and ready to eat. For sweaters, I am holding my breath until I can try on my garment after blocking. Relief washed over me when I wore the sweater and was able to fasten all the buttons - my main concern was that I designed too much negative ease in the waist shaping, but I was aggressive in my shaping because past sweaters had been too baggy around my middle.

Speaking of buttons, I was able to use the vintage buttons from my grandmother's stash! My aunts and mom gave me some of grandma's knitting notions and yarn stash since they thought she'd want me to have them. Unfortunately, all the yarn had icky poopy carpet beetles in them, resulting in me vacuuming the house about 10 times that day. Luckily, the buttons were immune to the icky poopy carpet beetles, and the buttons are fabulous, so I was waiting for the right project to come along to honor her memory. I'm so happy I got to use them.

Project details are on my Ravelry project page (rav link).

Local Saffron? I Haz It!

After nurturing (or ignoring, depending on who you ask) these saffron crocuses for 2 years, we're getting flowers! Each flower will yield three measly stamens of the revered saffron.

Someone tried to burst my bubble the other day, telling me that I could buy a huge bag of saffron for $3 at a Persian grocery market, but he failed to quell my excitement. I've never claimed that my hobbies save me money or time. I could buy a $15 sweater at Old Navy or a $2 loaf of bread, but would it have soul?

Near the bottom of the picture, you'll see some little gem lettuce growing. Huh? Little Jonny Salad Seed thinks that any empty pot needs a sprinkling of lettuce greens, and he must have forgotten that the "empty" planters actually held my revered crocuses.

My other exciting crop is some mystery choy from my grandmother's seed collection. No one knows exactly what type of choy it will yield. Choy sum? Bok choy? Who knows? Who cares? We eat it all over here. Since my grandmother passed earlier this year, one of my aunt took it upon herself to divide up my grandmother's seed collection - all harvested old school from plants she let go to seed - so we could all try our hand at growing some of her wonderful vegetables in her memory. I'm going to try to cultivate the seeds from these plants, too.

PSA: If you live in or around Berkeley, it is a great time to grow salad greens, parsley, cilantro... We had a great yield last year that lasted us all through winter.