woolythyme

yum yum yum....

I'm still obsessing over Joanna Gaine's Magnolia Table.....

It was biscuit day.

Mix them up.... (yep...that's mostly butter)

Cover and refrigerate...

(You DO use Bees Wrap, don't you?!?)

 

Cut....and bake (and of course, brush with more butter!)

And enjoy.  Yum. 

We ate them before I remembered to take a picture.

And they can double for strawberry shortcakes!  What a versatile little recipe.  Simple.

So why did I end up with such a mess? 

(Note:  there IS a little prep for a carrot casserole in there, too.)

Yum.

Have you guessed what it is yet?

Another hint?

You got it now, right?

Lemon lavender shortbread cookies.  YUM.  (Picked the lavender a couple weeks ago at Shawnee Hills Lavender Farm)

I hadn't bought a cookbook in quite awhile.  But, I caved....and bought Magnolia Table on impulse.  Everything.....and I mean e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g... I've made so far has been delicious.  Every recipe uses every day ingredients.  I had every single thing on the list of recommended pantry items in my pantry.  No weird ingredients that you can only find in specialty stores. 

Welcome home cooking mojo. 

(It left about the same time knitting mojo disappeared, so maybe they'll be reunited soon.)

I made a mess.....

Bet you thought it was Freddy posting, right?

Sorry.  Just me.

Strawberry jam day here.

 

Six jars full.  Only six.

 

Do I really want to make that mess all over again?

What do you think?

Yum.

A Monday Moment...

A random moment from the week....through the lens of my camera

 

a daily routine::fresh fruit::healthy start::a little sunshine peeking through the clouds::the promise of spring::snow?!?

the bread saga continues....

I actually had two loaves of bread to take to book club.  (phew)

Where we left off.....my mixer was going to knead the bread for me....for 20 minutes.  Check.  And the motor didn't blow out or anything.

The dough was not looking exactly as Vivian described, but she kept saying how sticky the dough was ...and 'do not add more flour'!!!  I didn't.  I'm following directions, remember?

Let dough rest 10 minutes.  Check.

Incorporate 1/4 of the caramelized onions into dough by pulling each of four 'corners' of the ball (does a ball have corners?) of dough over the pile of onions in the center.  Let rest 15 minutes.

Repeat three more times.

Let the whole sticky mess (my words, not hers) rest and rise an additional 2 hours and 40 minutes.  (I'm seriously running out of time by now.)

Dump risen dough onto floured board (boy am I glad I didn't leave out the 'floured' step! sticky, ooey, gooey!) and divide in half.  Let rest 10 minutes.  (This bread got a whole lot more rest than I did.)

Shape into round loaves.  At this point, I had two sticky lumps of dough oozing all those caramelized onions.  No way was I going to be able to shape them into doughnut shaped loves with a hole in the center.  I skipped this step.  But, I did let them rest again.

Into the oven....each on its own baking sheet, one in the upper third of the oven, one in the lower third.  15 minutes...switch.  Another 15 minutes.  (Have you been counting how many pots, pans, baking sheets this recipe tooK?)

Ready or not.....Just a quick photo op and I'm out the door to deliver bread for the dinner.  (If you aren't following this whole thing...read the previous post!)

Everyone liked it....most everyone wanted to take some home.    To me, it needed more flour and more baking time. It definitely didn't need to rest any more.  

It was OK.  

Would I ever make this again?  NO.

In the amount of time it took to make this, I could knit another pair of these.

 

 

cooking for bookclub...

Book club meets tonight.  About 3 times a year, we review a cookbook, cook from it, and break bread together.  Tonight is cookbook night.  Deep Run Roots by Vivian Howard is our book, and I haven't read it.  Fortunately, I did read my recipe Saturday....and discovered I had a two-day project ahead of me.

The sweet potato onion bread was not my first choice for recipes.  In fact, it wasn't a choice at all. But by the time it got around to me to choose, it was obvious that no 'bread' had been picked; I'm the 'bread-maker' of the group, so I got 'assigned'.  

Join me on my adventure.  Yesterday evening.  Make the starter. OK. I probably need to preface this whole post by saying...I'm not a  'by-the-book' kind of cook usually, but in this case, I plan to follow the recipe like it is a chemistry experiment (which for me, it sort of is).

The starter was supposed to be very sticky, set for 12 hours, after which you should have 'lots of big bubbles'.  Well, my starter was on the dry side...and to me, those look like itty, bitty bubbles.  I'm already thinking I'll have to dump more yeast in the bread.

Moving on.  Today.

Caramelize 5 onions in 1 T oil + 1 tsp salt.  Check.  Maybe they need to be more caramelized.  I can do that later.

One cup roasted sweet potato puree.  ???  No where in the whole book does it say how they want the sweet potato pureed.  With oil?  Salted?  My hubby chimed in and said...'I'd open a can of sweet potatoes and put them in the oven for a couple minutes'.  (His idea of 'cooking' is making toast, so I didn't take his advice.)  

Mashed up sweet potato rounds that I roasted at 400 in a little vegetable oil and some salt.  Check.

Make the dough.

In the bowl of a mixer, fitted with a hook, stir together the flour (3 3/4 c)  and water (1 3/4 c + 3 tsp ...are you kidding me?!?); You will have a wet, rough dough.

Mine was rough and dry.  I'm batting 50%.  Good enough for me.

Let it set 10-20 minutes.  I can do that.

Oh, drat.  I think that was about 30 minutes ago.  I gotta go.  

My bread needs me.

(I avoided the obvious pun on purpose....apparently, the 'hook' is supposed to knead the bread for 20+ minutes.  Hope I don't burn out the motor!)

 

the week of the shawl....+ giveaway reminder

I've settled into a rhythm this week after a crazy cast-on one last week.  (Blame it on the *giveaway book...if you haven't entered for a chance to win, you can still post a comment here; Freddy will announce the winner next Monday.)

Shawls.  Yes.  Plural.  It's the week of the shawls.

 

I've been hopping among...

 

Abide (from the new Drop Dead Easy Knits...see *giveaway)--the leaf edging is knit into the body of the shawl; when the last stitch is stitched you are DONE.  A brilliant pattern.  And it truly is easy.

 

Kelpie-2 (a Jared Flood pattern). The body is mindless garter stitch with a yarn over decorative border stitch added every 4 rows.  I have miles to go before the border is added, which will alter this from a totally mindless knit, to a not-so-mindless knit that might end up in time-out (like Kelpie-1, which has been neglected well over a year).  

 

Finally,  Peppered Stripes Wrap (a Purlsoho free pattern), knit in the hated, boring, linen stitch which, I swear, takes twice as many rows/inch than any other pattern.  But, you can get into a rhythm, and this yarn is yummy, and I love the finished look.   I must not be the only one who struggles with linen stitch, because in spite of the fact that this is an incredibly gorgeous finished wrap, only 7 of us are knitting it (according to Ravelry) and only 1 has finished it. I want to be #2. 

All three patterns result is a classic, simple shawl. 

 

Reading....

I think I'm re-reading Dreamers of the Day, by Mary Doria Russell. Maybe I'm through the re-reading part and on the part that I failed to finish first time around. It's not a long book and it's really not bad.  (The story of a 40-year old schoolteacher from Ohio who takes her 'trip of a lifetime' in 1921 to Egypt, arriving just as the Cairo Peace Conference begins.  She's drawn into the company of Winston Churchill, T. E. Lawrence, and Lady Gertrude Bell.)

I've been listening to Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food. I LOVE everything Pollan has ever written, and somehow I missed this one (or read it in 2008 when it was published and forgot every single word...highly unlikely).  You would think that an 8 year old food book would be slightly dated, but if anything, I'm thinking that the industry simply hasn't learned a single thing in 8 years.  We still allow our choices to made through lobbyists and media (should we eat low fat? saturated fat? ban trans fat? low carb? high carb?) Shouldn't we actually be looking at the foods themselves???...oops.  (The meat and dairy industries won't allow THAT!)  Does it really take a rocket scientist (or nutritionalist) to see there is a serious  problem with eating manufactured food-like substances rather than real food?  In our western-culture attempts to 'improve' upon foods, we have created a diet that has resulted in the most obese, cancer-ridden, diabetic, heart diseased society in the world.

Pollan's advice:  Eat Food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.

 

Simple.  I like simple....in my knitting AND my food.

Hygga anyone?....

How incredibly, ludicrously, insane...two blog sites this weekend (here and here (Nov. 2 post), three if you count this rabbit hole I fell into, all talking about a word/idea/concept I'd never before heard of----yet had spent the entire weekending (let's face it...most of my adult life) striving for.  (How's that for 'ending' a sentence with TWO prepositions?  Pretty special, huh?)

I've been calling it 'nesting' or 'cozying' my space...but it's more than that. So much more.  Who knew?  It's hygga.

According to that last rabbit hole (which includes a wonderful short video)...

'In essence, hygge means creating a warm atmosphere and enjoying the good things in life with good people. The warm glow of candlelight is hygge. Friends and family – that’s hygge too. There's nothing more hygge than sitting round a table, discussing the big and small things in life. Perhaps hygge explains why the Danes are the happiest people in the world?'

So, my weekend?

:: Outdoor vacationing houseplants found new indoor homes.

:: Furniture was rearranged.

:: A wee bit of shopping in small, local boutiques.

:: Friends and family met.  

::Yarn wound.

::Knitting, knitting, knitting, knitting, knitting, knitting.  (yes, I really DID cast on 6 new projects this week-----and finished 0 WIP.)

::Spent time with another best friend.

:: Baked (and ate) and made the house smell wonderful.  Nothing better than the smell of baking gingerbread.

And..

:: cooked.

In my world, brussel sprouts count as hygga, too.

 

 

rain, rain....

• A trip to Memphis to visit our 'sister church'....same architect, same design---for the most part, same footprint, only our church is the baby sister.  It rained on us.

We came home with so many ideas and plans and hopes and dreams...but top priority will most likely be the gardens and ceiling tiles.  The rain certainly didn't dampen our enthusiasm!

 

• Garden Clubs of Kentucky recognized and dedicated the Monarch Watch Certified butterfly garden I've been involved with at Whitehaven; the only Monarchs to appear were eaten immediately!!  but this swallowtail made sure everyone knew we had a 'working' butterfly garden.

The dedication ended, we packed up our tables and goodies....and it rained.

 

• This was Pollinator Weekend at the Lake, so I had to make a quick trip up there to visit Alicia, owner of Ironweed Nursery where we bought the plants for the butterfly garden. She only deals in native plants; the way they took off and filled in our garden in only a year--it was actually a year to the day since we planted our baby plants!!!--- has made me a real convert, so of course, I had to buy a few for my garden.

(That was her table display....I wanted to buy that many, but didn't.  How could I have gotten them all to the car?  It was pouring!!)

 

• Between raindrops, I ran out to Mt. Kenton cemetery for my first photo assignment in the photography class I'm taking.  Something stationary.  Using a prime lens.  Camera set on automatic.  Definitely a case of a little tiny bit of knowledge making this assignment frustratingly difficult.  I always shoot in manual mode.  'Auto' stinks.  BUT...I've lived in this town almost 35 years and had never visited Alben Barkley's grave.  (He was vice president under Truman) I must admit, I was a bit disappointed; I thought the monument would be fancier and larger (I came equipped with an 8 foot ladder!! which I obviously didn't need!) But, I got to check off that local tourist stop and enjoy a few minutes of peace and solitude in a very lovely setting.  

 

And then it rained some more.  

 

And I was totally fine with that...

I baked my favorite blueberry coffee cake for Sunday School Rally Day this morning,

 

and then...

Freddy and I cozied up on the sofa and worked on yet another...sock yarn blanket.

I love rainy weekends.

yarnalong...

Bread Wine Chocolate: the slow loss of foods we love by Simran Sethi

A treatise on the loss of biodiversity in our food and the inspiring people and places around the world that are attempting to bring back the foods we love.  According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations...95% of the world's calories come from a mere 30 species.  Of 30,000 edible plants...we cultivate about 150.  Three-fourths of the world's food comes from just 12 plants and five animal species.  We overeat energy-dense foods while eating fewer foods rich in micronutrients, increasing our chances of becoming "stuffed and starved".  All this in the name of progress and modernization.  The industrialization of food production and food distribution---concentrating on those food that can be grown abundantly and can sustain long journeys to market and retain a long shelf life once there--have resulted in lower quality, nutrient-poor monocultures of fast food, and processed foods full of salt, sweeteners and fats.

An example she gives:  McDonald's fries, medium serving, contains 19 grams of fat, 270 milligrams of salt and 19 ingredients.  A "real" potato contains less than one gram of fat, 13 milligrams of salt and one ingredient.  Our industrialized food system is designed for efficiency and yield and profit..not nutrition, taste, or diversity.

A fascinating book so far.

 

Sea turtle....assembly required.