mmmmmm....

Sometimes you just need to take a little break from the oatmeal/granola routine.

I went to my first Zingerman's Mail Order Friday warehouse sale yesterday and bought two packs of the Arkansas peppered bacon ($7 each, normally $16). Man is it good. I don't eat bacon that often (for which my heart thanks me) but when I do, I like to make sure it is the good stuff. Occasionally I get it from the Farmer's Market or pick up the Niman Ranch bacon that Trader Joe's usually has. But this stuff is even better. It probably won't be as appealing to my kids--more for me!--because it is heavily peppered, which I love. But we'll see. They aren't awake yet, despite the bacon fumes wafting through the house.

At the sale, I also bought a pound of the Ig Vella's Dry Jack cheese, something I remember from being a kid in the Bay Area ($10 instead of $24), a half-pound of the 1-year cheddar ($4 instead of $7) and two packs of the Vampire Gummies for my kids ($3 instead of $5). The girl critter happens to be on a Vampire kick (she disguised two of her stuffed Pokemon with fangs and wings and brought them along to the sale) so I couldn't resist. And hell, if I get bacon, they can have some candy, though I did have to draw the line at the Italian Chocolate Cigar that she wanted and that was still $12 (normally $20).

Click here to see a list of what was on offer yesterday. It changes weekly (I signed up for their weekly e-mail while I was there) and I can see a new Friday tradition beginning. The stuff at the sale still is expensive when it comes to my regular food budget, but considering the quality and the discount and the treat factor, it seems like a pretty good deal. Not to mention all the samples the girl critter managed to stuff into her squirrel-like cheeks...

Loving Ravelry

It took me a while to get into Ravelry, but now I'm finding it more seductive in the time-wasting department than even my Bloglines feeds.

It has a fantastic database that allows for all kinds of searches: by yarn weight, by pattern type, by just-about-any-search-term-you-can-come-up-with. You can read reivews of yarns before you buy them and find out which are evil and pill almost instantly or that split while you knit and drive you to distraction. And the pattern galleries have helped me make some decisions--you can see what the sweater looks like on real bodies, read about alterations people made, and find out if the pattern was well-written or made people swear a blue-streak.

Thanks to Ravelry, I have FINALLY found a pattern to use up my huge stash of Rowan Biggy Print Yarn:
Unlike many sweaters made with superbulky yarn, the people wearing the resulting sweaters in the Ravelry gallery did not look like they were drowning in wool. I have a tendency to get claustrophobic in bulky yarn sweaters and feel like I'm being swallowed up by a not-entirely-friendly sheep who wants its coat back.

I'm still searching through the Ravelry database for something to do with all the Swish Worsted yarn that I bought to make a wrap sweater (got 3/4 of the way done and realized that I look like I'm wearing a bathrobe when I wear wrap sweaters and ripped it out). I might divvy up the yarn and make this gathered pullover for me and some sort of sweater for Fiona who has commented lately on my selfishness as a knitter.

I am prepared...

...for the great mustard shortage.
Impending global mustard shortages are the only explanation that I've come up with for the bounty of mustards I found when I cleaned out the cupboard. Pictured above are the members of the un-opened stash. Not in the photograph are the 5 bottles/jars that are already in use and housed in the fridge.

Cleaning out the cupboard was an interesting exercise in self-analysis. I'm still trying to understand the reason why I purchased and stashed away two large jars of capers, 3 cans of green chiles (I don't know what I'd use canned chiles for, much less why I have three cans of them) and enough canned chickpeas to keep us in copious quantities of hummus for at least a month. What particular anxiety disorder can be blamed for compulsively stocking up on weird stuff? It would be one thing if it meant we just have too much food lying about, but in my inventory I also discovered big gaping holes for foods that I consider staples. I was sure there would be two or three cans of Muir Glenn diced tomatoes since I love them and use them all the time. There were none. Nor any tomato sauce. Nor a spare jar of peanut butter. But hey, I can bury any dish in an inch of mustard...

Thankfully the freezer purge was not so disturbing. There was a bag of ancient frozen strawberries and one wrapped piece of mystery meat that were discarded but otherwise, most of the effort was in organizing and inventorying what was in there but hard to find.

I made two check lists, one for the cupboard and one for the freezer items, that I'm going to try and see if I can use to stay on top of what is in the house.
I put down the stuff we often have and then made a column to list how much of it there is. Then I laminated them so I can use a wipe-off pen to log in quantities. And there are blank lines where non-regular items can be listed. Of course, I haven't been grocery shopping since making the lists so the test will be whether I log in the new stuff or just ignore the lists and render them useless.

I'm taking the cure...

..the Kitchen Cure, that is.

Today I'm cleaning out the canned food cupboard and the freezers. (Surprisingly enough, the fridge isn't too bad. I did a clean out and got rid of the scary stuff in there a couple of months ago and haven't been too bad about checking for mystery containers since then.) The freezer task is particularly necessary because last week I almost lost a toe to a quart of frozen turkey chili that leapt out of the freezer and bounced off my foot when I was digging for buried treasure trying to find something to make for dinner. Ouch. But hey, it got my attention and we ate the chili the next night for dinner.

I like the idea of the Eat This Week list that was posted on the Kitchen Cure blog. I try to menu plan by keeping a list of what I intend to cook in the coming week at the bottom of my shopping list so I don't forget key ingredients when I'm at the store or space out on what recipe I planned to use (before doing this I would spend a lot of time looking quizzically at some weird ingredient I bought but couldn't remember what I planned to do with it: Kate and the endive go head to head.) But this list is a little different because it serves as a reminder of what you already have in the house and what should probably be consumed soon (StillTasty is a good place to look when deciding whether to use or chuck something). I'm thinking of making a version of the list to post on the freezer that inventories what stuff is inside so that I don't have to rummage around (thus saving the toes) and (hopefully) wasting less food and making menu planning a little easier.

For example, tonight I'll be making a version of this Shrimp with Tomatoes and Feta because it uses up the pound of shrimp I just found in the freezer (don't know when the hell I bought them or what I originally planned to do with them, but they don't look freezer burned so they can't have been in there that long) and one of the big cans of Muir Glenn diced tomatoes that I have in the cupboard. If I find some frozen artichoke hearts in my excavation, I might chuck some in. There are probably some olives that have been hanging out on the condiment shelf in the fridge a little too long that might get chopped up and scattered over the top. And who knows what else I'll unearth today?

One thing is for sure--I'll be wearing close-toed shoes while attempting the freezer portion of my task.

The aliens...

...have landed on my toile.
The peeking one is my favorite:
And these little fellows are being fed mystery berries:
I got the idea for the aliens (and the blue one is roughly modeled after one) from these designs available at Sublime Stitching. There are some terrific ideas/designs available--I also really like the zombies and monsters series.

(For previous subversive toile entries look here and here.)

toast

My toast t-shirt that I recently purchased from Threadless (during their $5 sale) has been making me absurdly happy.

It is really hard to be a grouch, even on a day like today when it is pissing rain, when wearing this shirt. I just look down and smile at the happy toast spreading on the jam. What could be nicer?

And then I go make myself (another) piece of toast. Right now I'm working my way through a loaf of my new favorite bread-for-toast: Zingerman's 8-grain 3-seed bread, a bread that is equally good with thick cut orange marmalade and sharp cheddar cheese.

Maybe not such a good t-shirt for people on low carb diets, but awfully good for me.

Still relevant!

You might think that a sweater jacket made of chunky yarn would be irrelevant in April.

You would be wrong:
This is the view of the back deck. 6 inches of this crap fell on Sunday night and led to a snow day for the critters on Monday. In April! The snow was like wet concrete and broke some branches off of the large lilac (which was already budding) in the yard. I had already packed away the critters' winter boots in the attic and had to go rummage around and retrieve them. Grrrrr. It had better melt before Friday when the kids' spring break begins because I want to spend as much of next week as possible out of doors.

But the shit-load of snow was a motivator. I finally faced my zipper fear and finished my Urban Aran Cardigan. And I think it turned out pretty well.
The best decision I made was to double the length of the collar, fold it over and sew it down on the inside. This has given it enough heft to stand up properly and not flop outwards and look messy:
I got the idea for the collar trick from this zipper installation tutorial. I didn't actually follow her method for zipper installation though. I ended up basting the two fronts together using red scrap yarn. Then I pinned and basted the edges of the zipper to the cardigan (using hot pink thread so it would be easy to see when removing). Then I pulled out the red scrap yarn and sewed the sweater as close to the zipper as possible. I did all the sewing by hand because my sewing machine and I do not have a very trusting relationship. It took a little experimenting to find the best distance for the seam which would cover as much of the zipper as possible without letting the wool get caught in the teeth. Then I went back, pulled out the hot pink basting and sewed down the edge of the zipper (with black thread).

A knit buttonhole band would be much faster to accomplish, but I do really like the feel of the zipper with this particular sweater. It makes it more like a lightweight jacket. And, unfortunately, it looks like I'll get some wear out of this particular garment before packing it away for the summer.

Bitter cravings

It is a gray and rainy day but I have this in my belly:

Bitter Breakfast of Champions. Or Breakfast of Bitter Champions?

I've been craving bitter flavors lately--I've made an eaten 4 batches of slow cooked greens this week (collards, turnip greens, kale and even some escarole). Big batches. And Brian has only consumed one serving. I've wanted hoppy beer and strong black coffee. So for breakfast today I made some cheese grits, topped them with a large mound of re-heated leftover greens and made a cup of black coffee (I'm holding off on the beer. For now.)

God it was good. And eating a bowl of bitterness has put me in a good mood so I am actually sweeter (temperament wise) than usual.

I'm not sure if this is some nutritional cry from my body or just a phase I'm going through but the good thing is that bitter flavor cravings are pretty cheap to satisfy. Vast quantities of collard, mustard and turnip greens can be had for very little money. Kale is only slightly more expensive. And escarole's price depends on where you shop--if it is thought of as an exotic produce item for yuppies in a market where the cashiers know what it is, then it is likely to be a little pricey. But if it is unlabeled, crammed into a far corner of the grocery store, and it stumps the cashiers, then it is usually pretty cheap.

Here's my master recipe for greens:

• either 1 T of olive oil or 1/2 slice of bacon, diced into small pieces
  
• one big fat garlic clove, cut into slices
• a shake of red hot pepper flakes
• a sprinkle of salt and grind of pepper
• two (or more!) big bunches of greens, stemmed and cleaned (no need to dry them) and cut into reasonable sized pieces
• hot pepper sauce
• juice of 1/2 a lemon

Get all of the above prepped and then in a big pot heat your oil or fry up your 1/2 slice of bacon. Toss in the garlic, salt, pepper and red pepper flakes and let sizzle for a little bit. Dump in your vast quantity of greens and give them a good stir. You might want to add a little water to the pot (depending on how wet your greens were). Slam on the lid and turn down the heat. If you are using relatively quick cooking greens like kale or escarole then you can come back in about 10 minutes and the greens will be ready for the lemon juice and/or hot pepper sauce. If you are using slower cooking greens (collards in particular) be patient. Go back and add a little more water. Set them on super low heat and let them soften up. Ignore them for an hour (just make sure the pot doesn't dry out because burning collards smell nasty). Then go back and add lemon juice, hot pepper sauce and additional salt and pepper to your taste.

The best thing about using collards is that the leftovers look about the same as freshly made (in other words, kinda ugly) so you can make a jumbo batch. Kale usually looks pretty when it is freshly made and then gets a little disturbing looking after exposure to lemon juice (yellowy-browny edges). It still tastes just fine but leaves a little to be desired in the aesthetics department. Then again, greens are not exactly a pretty-party food so who the hell cares.

Glutton for punishment

Despite its recent major feeding, I think my seam ripper might be getting a little peckish again. That's the only way I can justify my urge to sew again.

Did I mention that one time I actually gave myself a migraine from stress after a day of attempted sewing? It turns out that hunching over a torture machine with extreme tension in your neck for hours on end can trigger a migraine!

And yet, I want to try again.

Blame IKEA. They have a whole bunch of cool new fabrics and I really like one of the super cheap ones:
It has birds and leaves and is only $2.99/yard so when I screw it up, at least my wallet won't hurt (just my pride).

There's another more expensive fabric ($7.99/yard) that I also really like:
The good news is that the cheap one is presently out of stock at my local IKEA and I don't have the confidence to start with the more expensive one, so for now, the girl critter will have a little break from the swearing and ranting.

Writing mitts

I actually finished something! OK, it is something small. I made a pair of fingerless mitts for writing. My office gets a little nippy in the winter and my hands get cold easily so I'm hoping that these will help me keep my butt in my writing chair.

I picked a colorway I thought would cheer me up when it is gloomy outside and psych me into thinking that excellent writing would naturally flow from such cheerfully clad hands. They took less than once skein of Claudia Hand Painted Yarns fingering weight merino in colorway Summer Rose

I adapted the pattern from this one by Weaverknits, just made them a little shorter in the wrist and added some 2 x 2 rib around the edges so they don't roll. I like this pattern a lot more than the one other pair of gloves I have knit mostly because of the thumb shaping. It's a nice contour and keeps my thumbs from getting claustrophobic. And now I'm tempted to try the Neiman sweater pattern that Weaverknits had in the Fall 2007 Knitty.

A contoured thumb is a happy thumb.

It may officially be Spring now, but the weather decided that it would welcome my gloves to the neighborhood by snowing this afternoon...so yeah, those of you who had wet flakes slapping you in the face this afternoon can blame me. Just be thankful that I still haven't finished the Urban Aran cardigan (still frozen with terror at the zipper insert moment) which would have probably called forth a blizzard.