Another hat

For those days when a fish-on-my head is not the look I'm going for, I made this Floppy Fair Isle hat. It was really fun to knit, I made it all from yarn in my stash (which gives me a thrifty thrill) and it is nice and loose, so doesn't create horrible hat head. I only used four colors of yarn, rather than the five called for in the pattern because the other worsted weight yarns in my stash clashed, but I think the colors and patterns turned out fine with four.

This hat works great for me, but I have a big head and thick, curly hair and I can imagine this hat being way too big and sliding over the faces or off the back of the heads of people with a smaller noodle circumference or who have fine, silky hair. As the name says, it is quite floppy, so much so that Brian commented that it would be a useful hat to wear when produce shopping in case you need a place to store an extra cantaloupe.

I'd love to make another one of these for someone, but need to find a big-headed, big-haired recipient who is fond of cantaloupe.

The pattern can be downloaded here.

Valentine's Day Breakfast

Breakfast for my sweetie.

It grossed me out to be molding hearts out of pork sausage first thing in the morning but hey, I did it for love. The girl critter stuck the toothpicks through to make them look like Cupid's arrow which made for authentic looking hearts, but slightly dangerous eating.

In the past, I've free-handed shaped pancakes, but this time I pulled out some cookie cutters and sprayed the hell out of them with cooking spray.
Flipping was a little tricky because it involved working the spatula under the pancake and using tongs to remove the cookie cutter before flipping the pancake.

Ta da!

It helps to use a thick pancake batter so it doesn't seep under the edge of the cookie cutter and luckily my standard go-to pancake recipe fits the bill. It makes thick cakes and there's just enough batter for each of us to have two decent-sized pancakes.

Sour Cream (or Yogurt) Pancakes

1/2 C white whole wheat flour
1/2 C all purpose flour
3 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
1 T white sugar
1 C milk
1 egg
1/4 C sour cream or plain yogurt
1/2 t vanilla
2 T canola oil
some blueberries or mini chocolate chips (optional)
a little powdered sugar for dusting on before serving (optional)

Mix all the dry stuff in one bowl. Mix the wet stuff in another. Add wet to dry and stir until just combined. Cook the way you would any normal pancake.

The friend that gets you through it

I don't want to return this book to the library. It would be like dumping a friend after they got you through a rough patch. And oh my, have I been through a rough patch. A big old comeuppance.

For those of you who have tolerated my comments these past few winters about how healthy my family has been (despite my kvetching about my kids' crappy diet), today is the day you can sit back and say HA! Because the nasty, nasty norovirus hit us and hit us hard. And that is not a virus that you expose your friends to unless those friends are made of paper. But if your friend is The Art Student's War, by Brad Leithauser, then maybe you will get through without losing your marbles (while you continue to lose your lunch).

I won't go into the fascinating details of all the puking and mopping and digestive discoveries we have made over the last few weeks (except for this one--it is way better to puke up ginger ale than to have the dry heaves. Nuff said.) But I feel like I've been through the wringer and without this book I'm pretty sure I would have also gone crazy. Or more accurately, crazy in a lasting, she-might-not-be-ok-until-Spring kind of way.

This is a wonderful book (though I realize I've now wrecked it by making you associate it with puking...) that managed to distract me from my misery. It is NOT a fast read which is particularly good when you are not recovering quickly. The prose isn't impenetrable, but it is rich and layered and you want to savor the observations. It doesn't have a driving sense of plot--it is gentler than that and will wait patiently while you collapse and moan for a while.

The title seemed very accurate for the first part of the book, where we are following Bea Paradiso from her art classes in Detroit to her USO volunteer work sketching wounded soldiers. Her artist's eye is a wonderful perspective from which to view the strange vibrancy of Detroit in this period. When I moved into the second half of the book which takes place after the war, where Bea is married with kids and rarely has time to do any art, it wasn't immediately clear why the author had chosen the title. But it made sense in the end. The war defined who she was for her whole life--it wasn't just an episode that took place and then was in the past. The fact that she was an art student during this momentous period in which she defined herself and became aware of who she was gave the title a poignancy. She may never have become a full-fledged artist, but she will always have been an art student during the war.

I think this book would have a whole other level of richness and meaning for people whose parents lived in Detroit in this period. By the time my family moved to Michigan when I was 7, Detroit was post-riot and not a place we went except to scurry inside the DIA or some such cultural institution and then scurry back to our safe little enclave. I occasionally got a glimpse of people's affection for the city through some friend's parents who knew the old Detroit. I remember being taken to Eastern Market for the first time on a Saturday by a friend's family and being awed that such a teeming, alive place with amazing food (yes, I liked food a lot even back then) existed in a place I had heard referred to as a wasteland on weekends. I particularly appreciated the fact that the author, who clearly loves the city, does not overly romanticize it. He lays down the sources of the later riots, shows the bubbling ethnic mixture of the city and how the war both led to prosperity and excitement and also set down certain patterns that were later to explode.

For those of us interested in Detroit's future who weren't around for Detroit's past, this book is a very helpful way to envision the uniqueness that Detroit offered--it really wasn't like any other city I've ever heard of or envisioned--and to try and see how the best of this past can fit into its future.

And now, since I still have a cough and thus can allow myself to sit for another couple of hours, I'm going to go watch the new PBS documentary Beyond the Motor City.

The picky eater chronicles continue...

Photo from Wikipedia

Yesterday Ian got a good firm talking-to by his doctor about diversifying his eating choices so after the appointment we headed to the produce section of the grocery store for each kid to pick out a fresh fruit or vegetable they don't usually eat (which leaves pretty much everything but the apple aisle in play for Ian with the carrot section added for Fiona).

Ian picked out a big hunk of watermelon and Fiona picked out a star fruit. I don't know if there were any two fruits more out-of-season and non-local that the kids could possibly pick, but one battle at a time.

And through a great deal of wheedling, I got Ian to try the star fruit--and he liked it! And not for the novelty shape factor (which is why Fiona chose it--she took one bite and looked like she was going to hurl). Both kids ate some watermelon at dinner and Fiona even asked for seconds.

This small success balances out the fact that when Ian tried a spoonful of my red lentil soup on Sunday, he ran to the garbage can, spit it out and rinsed out his mouth with water at the sink with a great deal of theatrical spitting.

Happy Chunky Soup!

No photo for this recipe because I have discovered that next-day lentil soup is one of the uglier things on the planet.

But don't let that bias you against this recipe!

After devouring two bowls of this chunky sausage, lentil and spinach soup last night, I told Brian that I think this may be the first hearty, chunky soup that I really think is worth crowing about. I've had a number of successful experiences with smoother soups, be they Middle Eastern red lentil, creamy tomato, or other pureed varieties. And chlodnik is chunky summertime staple around here. But in the wintertime hearty, chunky soup department, I've been less successful. I've made edible, but not memorable, soups like minestrone, white bean and ham, or split pea. And they were ok, but nothing to rave about. It was more like the ingredients happened to be hanging out together, but didn't really meld into something more than their parts.

This soup is rave-able. It has a great balance of flavors that really complement each other--the vinegar at the end brings out the best in the lentils (like a good French green lentil salad) and the ketchup gives this just enough sweetness that it sets off the sausage flavor. The spinach makes you feel like maybe this isn't entirely bad for you. We had it with some homemade garlic bread--a half loaf of Zingerman's Italian bread sliced thick, brushed with olive oil that had a clove of garlic crushed into it and sprinkled with a little cayenne and fresh Parmesan cheese. Then the loaf was reassembled, wrapped in foil and heated in a 400 degree oven for about 10 minutes. You could also add a salad but since we were in hunker-down-and-try-and-get-through-January mode, we skipped the raw vegetables and just had a second bowl of soup.

And if you want a photo before you'll try the recipe, go to the Food52 blog (which I only recently discovered) and look at their pretty picture. I read through their recipe and used most of the same ingredients, but didn't really follow their instructions (which seemed focused on making it fast--since I made it in the morning that wasn't really an issue for me).

Lentil Sausage Spinach Soup
adapted from antoniajames recipe on Food52


1 large Andouille sausage (mine was about double the length of a normal sausage link)
1 smaller non-smoked sausage, Italian or something like that
1 T olive oil
1 large yellow or white onion, diced

4 cloves of garlic, chopped
3 carrots, diced
3 stalks of celery, diced
2 bay leaves
1/2 t dried thyme
1 and 1/2 cups French green lentils
1 can beef broth
1 can chicken broth
2 C water
3/4 cup sturdy red wine
3 tablespoons ketchup
2 packed cups fresh baby spinach
1/4 cup chopped parsley
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 T red wine vinegar

In a big soup pot, heat the oil and cook your sausages (may want to add a little water to steam them so they cook through without over browning). Once the sausages are cooked through, remove them from the pot and set aside. When they've cooled a little, slice them up.

In the same pot, saute the onion and garlic on medium heat (you may need to add a little more olive oil--it depends on how much fat your sausages gave off) until onion is translucent. Add celery and carrots and cook, stirring frequently so nothing burns, for another couple of minutes.

Add your bay leaves, thyme, the lentils and all the liquids (broths, wine, water). Crank up the heat and bring to a boil, then simmer for about 1/2 an hour until the lentils are tender.

Season with the ketchup and salt and pepper.

Before serving, add back in the sausage slices, toss in the spinach and parsley and heat through. Stir in the red wine vinegar right at the end.

Big bowls

It's cold, the snow is coming down and I want to have my dinners in a big bowl. For one, big bowls of food are comforting and I need comfort in these dark January days. Even better, when you lean over a big bowl of hot food, the steam defrosts your face and unclogs your sinuses. Yeah! Multitasking! And I can feel my nose again!

Anyway, as promised, here is my friend Emily's curried bean thread noodles.

This is a master recipe with an infinite number of variations, all of which are relatively healthy, fast and tasty.


Bean Thread Noodle Soup
serves 4

1/4 lb bean thread noodles
1/2 lb boneless chicken breasts or thighs, thinly sliced, or a hunk of tofu cut into cubes
2 T Thai yellow curry paste (or red or green if that's what you prefer)
1 T canola oil
1 can coconut milk (light is fine)
1 can chicken or vegetable broth
1 small can bamboo shoots, sliced
2-3 cups of various vegetables--they can be fresh, they can be frozen, whatever you have. Here are some options: frozen or fresh peas, frozen or fresh green beans, sliced napa or regular green cabbage, mushrooms, sliced onion, red peppers, bok choi, broccoli, snow peas, canned baby corn, scallions, etc. I made the above version with snow peas, napa and frozen green beans.
4 T fish sauce
1 T soy sauce
2 T brown sugar
1/2 cup chopped cilantro, divided
1 or 2 limes sliced in wedges

Soak the noodles in hot water for 15 minutes, drain, and cut if you aren't big on slurping (I'm fine with slurping long noodles, but some people have more refined table manners).

Heat the oil in a wok or big pot and saute the curry paste until fragrant. Add the chicken or tofu and cook until chicken is opaque or tofu is well covered in the curry paste. Stir in coconut milk, broth, fish sauce, soy sauce and sugar. Bring to a boil. Add the bamboo shoots and vegetables and cook until for a minute or two until the vegetables aren't quite done.

Add the noodles and simmer for 3-5 minutes.

Serve in bowls with the chopped cilantro on top and a lime wedge.  Breathe deep!

Links and lists

I'm too low-January-energy to write a proper blog post so a link-heavy, list-type post will have to do.

Books you should read:

• Best book I forgot to blog about last year: The Gone Away War by Nick Harkaway. This is one of those books that I feel inadequate to comment on because it is so brilliant (sort of like my author hero worship where I approach a much admired author and stutter like an idiot.)
  
• Most quirky-fun book of poetry I've read in a long while: Dearest Creature by Amy Gerstler. The people around me had to put up with me reading this out loud to them.
  
• Amazing historical fiction I just finished: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. It has been a long time since I read such a compelling and elegantly written piece of historical fiction.  (And it is particularly good if you are a late-medieval/early-Renaissance English history buff. This made me want to see the whole series of Shakespeare's war of the roses plays again.)
  

Food you should eat, especially if you are doing a healthier-food resolution:

• This cauliflower cous cous combo. I substituted shaved Parmesan for the manchego and topped it with a healthy squeeze of lemon juice (which I think it needs). Serve with a spinach salad.
• Fish in a packet--take a piece of tin foil, spread a little left-over brown rice on it, slap on a piece of tilapia. Salt and pepper it. Top with abundant quantity of: scallions, chopped dill, sliced red peppers, halved cherry tomatoes, spinach and feta. Drizzle with good olive oil and a squeeze of lemon. Seal up packet and bake at 400 for 20 minutes. Slide onto plate.  Super fast and super good.
• My friend Emily's curried bean thread noodle bowl which I will post about soon since it deserves a recipe write up.

Dignity, always dignity*

 

The fish hat strikes again!

It serves its designated purpose--keeping me warm but not crushing the curls.  And I like to think it lends its wearer a certain elegant je ne sais quoi.

If you're feeling shy, it can help with that too.

* from Singing in the Rain, my favorite movie when I was 10.

My new love: Scrivener

Since the end of NaNoWriMo, I've been having a lot of problems with the organization of my novel-in-progress. Or I should say, the dis-organization. And the universe heard my frustration and answered with a tidy solution.

Here is the software solution to chronic disorganization:


Allow me to introduce you to Scrivener. (I even like its icon--the yin yang and quotation marks--perfect!)


Its like I have my own personal team of software developers who heard about my (writing) problems and created this software just for me--that is how perfectly it solved my (writing) problems. I downloaded it a week ago and have been using it happily all week.

Actually, that is an understatement: I have been **spazy** and **thrilled** to get to my computer each day and to get my paws on my story. It's like my computer now has a magic organizing fairy inside!

Instead of wading in the mire of folders that I had in the word processing program that I usually use, trying to find what I know I wrote last week and want to now incorporate into my master document, and tearing my hair out because I can't remember whether it is in the file titled "Scrap" or the file titled "Fearless Risk Taking Writing" (which I named on a day that I needed a little pep talk) or in the file titled "Rewrite" or the file titled "Gaps to fill". Scrivener helps me actually find what I am looking for pretty quickly.

It has even transformed my non-creative days into productive days. I did not write much new prose today--my brain was foggy and groggy and really not sharp enough to spit out sparkly words that anyone would want to read. But with my buddy Scrivener I was able to solve some other important problems that didn't require a creative mind: things like in which POV a troublesome chapter should be written, how to integrate the antagonists story in the flow of the plot (rather than my previous method of having a separate file called: "Bad Guy Stuff" with little stars inserted into the main document where I thought parts might eventually be inserted). I was even able to come up with some chapter titles. This is all stuff that I would have struggled to do with my word processing version--it was just too big, too long and too much of a mess.

And even better, since I was a NaNo winner, I got 50% off the regular (reasonable) price of $40. I can't even quantify how much the $20 I spent on this software has increased my productivity.

Coincidentally, the same week that I discovered and started to use Scrivener, I read a terrific book, probably the best book with an unreliable narrator I've ever read, called Liar by Justine Larbalestier. I'm not going to blather on about the content of the book because it does have a nifty plot twist that I didn't see coming and I don't want to ruin it for anyone else. Let me just say, it's a really well written YA novel that I'd bet a lot of adult readers would enjoy. The Scrivener coincidence came up when I finished the book and was reading the author's acknowledgments (I like reading these--does anyone else? Though I confess it bugs the crap out of me when they are positioned before the book begins. I think you should thank people at the end of the book). In it she says that she used Scrivener to write the book and didn't think she could have managed the complexity of her plot without it.

I started reading this book the day after I downloaded Scrivener and now that I have played around with it for a week I can completely see how it would make her novel much more manageable. Another reason for me to feel grateful for Scrivener since it enabled me to read a really fun book!

Now I just need to see if the smart people who created Scrivener have another program that will solve the rest of my problems. Anyone know of software that can tackle the problem of every horizontal surface in my house being covered with paper? Earlier this week I waded through a mountain of bills, catalogs, the girl critter's many drawings of dragons, the boy critter's homework that I have no idea whether or not he was supposed to turn in last month, scraps of paper with phone numbers but no names, coupons that I'll probably never remember to use, printed out recipes, book reviews, torn off pages from the Cute Overload calendar, business cards, school phone directories, and so on. I thought I did a pretty good job of organizing and recycling, but now that it is the weekend, I look around the sty house and it has all reappeared.

If someone can write a program that solves this problem, I swear I will drop this novel writing nonsense and devote myself to pitching your product until you have made your first million.

cookie swap

Warning! After viewing the following photo, you may feel a surge in your blood sugar level:
That's right, this past Friday was the annual Michigan Lady Food Bloggers' cookie exchange!

I brought lavender lemon shortbread and molasses raspberry cookies (on the big white platter in the photo).

It'll be a little easier to name the cookies with the photo below, which contains the quantity I brought home, minus the cookies I ate while at Patti's, minus the cookies I ate in the car, minus the cookies Brian ate when I came through the door... (The cookies I brought aren't in this photo because I gave all of them away at the swap. I froze some extra dough so we can have some once we deplete this vast quantity of sugar and fat...maybe sometime in April...)

Starting with the top left corner and working vaguely clockwise we have: apricot and raspberry linzer cookies, white chocolate cookies, pecan snowballs, ginger snaps and molasses cookies, three different kinds of 'bastards': Oreo bastards (the white ones), lemon bastards (the yellow) and peanut butter bastards (the chocolate), raspberry rugulach, Hanukkah dreidels and stars, Spritz cookies, mini carrot cardamon muffins, date walnut spirals, anise cut outs, chocolate crinkles, and chocolate macarons.

I love this tradition--it is the best way to get variety in your cookie selection and I get to hang out with a bunch of cool women for an evening and I don't get guilt-tripped by my critters for ditching them for an evening. When they saw this platter of sugary bounty their eyes went all round and they started treating me like God.