i work near a bagel shop and yesterday, when coming back from a meeting, i got a hankering and decided that a bagel made a perfectly nice lunch. so what if it was only 10:45am.
yes i know it's green. but doesn't it look great with the strawberry cream cheese? very spring like.
yeah, because if not for the green bagels, you'd never know that yesterday was the first day of spring.
monday, i was so grumpy, i actually considered quitting blogging. or at least taking a break. "bah!" i thought. "i can't handle the pressure!" and i thought of other things, but i won't go into them here because then i would be participating in over-excessive navel gazing and woe-is-me pity-partying. like i tell my 2 month old niece ... "there's no crying in [fill in activity here]."
but today i'm better. good enough to give you my list of "things i like monday "on wednesday.
1. i like that dunkin dunuts, in honor of it being the first day of spring, is giving away free iced coffee. i love iced coffee. and when it's free, it's even better. i picked one up on my way to work this morning. i'll stop by on my way home. woo-hoo.
2. don't tell anyone because people will think i'm crazy but i kind of enjoyed our little snow storm this weekend.
and let me tell you why. because i could hang out in my sweatpants at home guilt free. i mean, i couldn't get the car out of the driveway, let alone drive safely down the road. so i stayed home.
i baked bread. and i baked brownies. the bread was good. i hear the brownies were too.
"hey! where do you think you're going with those brownies?"
and while sitting on the couch i knit and i crocheted. sometimes almost simultaneously -- one row on the blanket, one row on the sock, that kind of thing.
the old -- my ripple blanket.
the new -- socks.
3. by sunday, the driveway had been cleared and the roads were clean so i got to spend time with the inlaws and my niece, eating corned beef and cabbage. lots to like there. (i love cabbage. when that happened i haven't a clue.)
how creepy is that doll? guess which one is real? heh heh
finally, napoleon thanks you for all of the birthday wishes. or he would if he were not a cat. so on behalf of my old cat who tends not to really give a crap about anything except for tuna and cold fresh water (in protest to his water not being cold and fresh enough he's taken to straddling the toilet bowl and trying to drink out of it.) i would like to thank you for the wonderfully warm birthday wishes.
have a good wednesday!
Today's "Things I Like Monday" is easy most notably because of reason number one.
1. Today is a holiday so i didn't have to go to work. I like not having to go to work. Droopy cat had to go into the vet this morning because of bit of a health emergency over the weekend, but she's better and her feline leukemia test came back negative.
2. I like cake. And my inlaws loved Crazy Aunt Purl's Oma's Chocolate Cake recipe. My inlaws like to celebrate birthdays (this weekend we celebrated J's) and i've been instructed to bring Oma's cake back again. Thanks Laurie for sharing this wonderful recipe.
3. And i like cake ... yarn cakes of all of my handspun yarn.
here's the bittersweet skies shetland
some grey wool of unknown sheep origin (the wool was a very generous gift from maggie).
and some blue faced leicester. who needs to go to SPA?
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my sock contest is now closed. i'll be awarding two prizes. one winner will be selected at random. the other winner will be the one combo that causes J's eyes to burn the most. his taste tends to be a little conservative so this should be fun, for me anyway. i hope to announce the winners in the next couple of days.
grumperina's got the look down with her beautifully made apron, high heels and pearls. but i've got the mad skillz (ha!). this weekend, i made bread. my mother would be proud (although probably skeptical--she's always amazed whenever i accomplish something domestic).
over the holidays i decided to give the no-knead bread recipe a try. my first two tries were mediocre at best. my dough didn't rise sufficiently most likely because the temperature of my kitchen was less than 70 degrees (i solved this by putting the bowl of dough on top of the fridge -- you know heat rises) and also i kept removing the plastic wrap to watch. i also may have put too much flour. but the third time may have been a charm.
the experiment started friday night when i mixed all of the ingredients.
there's 3 cups of flour, 1/4 teaspon of instant yeast (the kind you use with bread makers) and 1 1/4 teaspoon of salt in there. that's it.
here's what the dough looked like after adding water and doing a little stirring. i covered the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough sit on my refridgerator for .... 18 hours.
this is what the dough looked like saturday afternoon.
the dough was rolled into a ball, allowed to rise between two kitchen towels for two hours again and then lightly brushed with cornmeal.
then the dough was thrown into a pre-heated dutch oven seam side up and baked for 30 minutes with the lid, and 15 minutes without the lid at 450 degrees.
ta-daa! bread!
isn't it pretty?
this isn't wonder bread though. it's crusty and chewy and it's quite possible that it should be lighter and i still haven't gotten it right. but it is pretty good. and it's easy as pie. hell, it's even easier than pie.
so while my boston girls were on their way down to nyc to buy all of the yarn and eat warm chocolate cake and look at the rockefellar center big ass CHRISTMAS tree (and i wasn't) i decided to do something proactive this morning.
writing up the lists in my last post got me thinking about STUFF. you know, the stuff that clogs the brain and makes you feel sorry for yourself, the stuff that hurts. plus with my birthday coming up --- 17 MORE SHOPPING DAYS PEOPLE!!!! COUNT 'EM! -- it was/is clear that although there are many things that i have no control over, there are some that i do. being fat. i can do something about that.
i wrote about that issue probably around this time last year -- set up a blog to track my progress and everything -- and failed miserably. failed so badly that i'm 5 pounds higher than i was at my highest! so now this is my highest! i also took down my blog.
so it's time to re-activate the blog -- and admit that i can't do it alone.
so this morning i joined weight watchers -- not just the web version -- but the real live go every week and get weighed and sit through the meetings version. i'm committing to 7:30am every saturday meetings. they're convenient to my home, i get them over with, i'm up anyway, and i even met a few members who seemed friendly.
anwyay -- wish me luck.
so this is what i woke up to this morning.
i love snow, especially on a day when other than going to my sister-in-laws for thanksgiving dinner later on today, we really have no where to be, or anything to do.
dolly likes snow too. (and oregano -- she's standing in my kitchen herb garden)
i'm having a lot of fun making these little dolls. this one is probably going to a niece. (with a few extra dresses i think)
why is dolly smiling? because she also likes pie.
i offerred to make something in chocolate for thanksgiving, but i had been craving my mother's apple tarte. (my mother is an excellent cook, but not much of a baker -- not that she can't bake, just that she doesn't like to all that much -- but she's known in her 'hood for her apple tarte) so i decided to try and make one myself (i did buy brownie mix in case this bombed). i made the crust myself (thank you martha stewart for giving me the correct proportions of butter to flour) and i'm hoping for the best. the inlaws are traditional (and sometimes a little boring) in their food choices so it's quite possible that even if this tastes almost as good as my mom's, that i'll be the only one eating it, but who cares. more for me.
that "thing" in the middle is a turkey by the way.
have a happy thanksgiving everyone!
finally, pictures ....
i've gotten a couple of requests for the recipe for the rigatoni -- or rigabony (as martha stewart calls it during halloween time). yes, it's one of her recipes,but instead of making the sauce from scratch, i used jar sauce. and i used 1 lb of ground beef instead of the sausage. super easy and yummy.
since i'm a member of 3 knitting and crochet rings now (i'm such a "joiner") it's imperative that i show "stuff" so i'm going to improvise.
FOs (yeah FO right back at you!!!!)
this poncho is finished and all ready for the fall (or when it gets insanely cold in the office). although i do love that green color, i made it instead using amore TLC in Lake. much more flattering to my complexion.
from that same issue of FCEK i also tried the obscenely easy knitted belt using self-striping sock yarn. although that worked ok, i decided to adapt the pattern to crochet which i think worked much better. the crocheted piece had a little more heft. again, obscenely easy. i used a crochet hook recommended by the yarn manufacturer and just did a little swatch to get correct belt width. i shall post a picture some time soon. although these belts are not meant to hold up your pants, they are kind of retro preppy looking. i think my teen-aged nieces might like them. if they don't, they can tie up their pesky little brother with them.
WIPs (although i'm really almost done)
these pillows are from interweave knits fall 2004. my friend luisa and i have this long standing chicken type joke thing. i could tell you the story, but you'd only think i was smoking crack or something. anyway, her birthday is coming up and i thought she'd like these brightly colored pillows.
finally, on a totally different topic: just because i now live in the suburbs doesn't mean i don't know how to party in the city. last night 2 friends of mine and i ventured to harvard square and had dinner at Mr. & Mrs. Bartley's Burger Cottage. i had the John Kerry Burger (swiss cheese, mushrooms, lettuce, tomato), one friend had the John Edwards (the menu referred to it as the "pretty burger") another friend had the Shrek (some sort of chicken sandwich). yes, there is a George W which the menu describes as having the beef but missing the WMD. anyway, it was all very good. for shits and giggles i dug up a review of the place. most reviews were quite good. but i think this guy has bigger issues:
"Burgers are tasty and juicy, but thats about all the good news I can offer here. If you want to be treated like cattle, this is the place for you. Droll, sarcastic and unleasant is the way to describe the help. Typical of Boston though. Onion rings were greasy and tasteless. Not crisp and puffy like the ones you get in Salisbury Beach. The prices are way out of line- but again, you would expect to pay high prices in a snobbish little town like Cambridge. If you want good food and service, walk around the corner to the chinese restaurant. there you can get a great luncheon special for under $6. I would not waste my time or money at Bartleys, not because of the food, but becasue of the Boring Bostonians who work there."
it's not that i'm a lousy cook. first of all i'm french, and well with us, being a decent cook is genetic. i just tend to get a little distracted. tonight while sauteing chicken, i almost burned the house down. i just kind of forgot. it's all part of the ADD i think. anyway, burning the chicken is certainly not something Pascale, a french blogger who writes about cooking, food, and searching the city of paris for just the right ingredient, would do. even if you don't read french, her photos are literally a feast for the eyes.
another feast for the eyes ... the summer edition of IK. which i just received...weeks after everyone else did ... weeks after it was out on newstands. the bastards. anyway ... look what else i found, two new not yet released books on crochet: Hooked on Crochet, and Hip To Crochet. you know what's getting added to my amazon wishlist.
