woolythyme

yarnalong...

This really is a book review.

I'm in a fun, new book club....and we decided that every few months we would read a cooking/memoir book, each chose a recipe to make, and gather for dinner to discuss the book.  (In between cooking months, we're just an ordinary book club.)

My Kitchen Year by Ruth Reichl was our first dinner book.  Last month we chose what we would make so we didn't end up with all desserts...you know that would happen, right?  We had a nice variety, and I would make every single recipe again.  Yes.  Everything was that good!

My contribution was the No Knead Bread....and while you absolutely had no kneading, you did need a whole lot of prep time---more than I allowed.  The first rising took 18 hours, punch down the dough, let rise, punch down, let rise, punch down, let rise....I stopped here, but Ruth suggested doing this two or three more times (I simply ran out of time).  The bread was still good---real good.

The menu:  broccoli rabe bruschetta, gazpacho, london broil with sauted onions, corn pudding, my bread, chocolate cake, and apple crisp...all from the book.  The book was based on a journal Ruth kept following the year after she found herself without a job when Gourmet Magazine abruptly shut down.  A nice read.  A good cookbook.  

We have to wait until December for the next book club dinner when we do Molly Wizenberg's A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table.  I read this one years ago and remember loving it, but never making anything in it.

Current reading?  Well, I'm listening to Britt-Marie was Here by the same author who wrote A Man Called Ove. Both little gems.

and queued up....

the sequel to Waiting for Snow in Havana that I read last week.

 

Knitting?

I started a birthday sock for a friend.

 

 

 

+ two more already started = 6 socks!!!!

 

Would you refill that wine glass, please?

Food, Family, Friends, and an FO....

 

The weekend...

Food...

Roasted rosemary pecans

 

pumpkin (shaped) rolls 

 

and, a rafter of turkeys  (most are blind, others have distinct eye problems, and those feet!!  UGH. I am sooo bad at this kind of crafty thing!!!)  

 

::Met some friends for a morning of knitting. 

::Hosted more friends for part of a progressive dinner.

 

And of course, there was knitting.

Minutes after Loop 10 arrived in the mailbox a couple months ago, I rummaged around in the stash, found ample yarn, and cast on Islington shawl.  I was in love with it a day or two. I guess I thought the colours dull (what? beige and grey dull??), lost interest (MOI?), and put it in time-out (undoubtedly in favor a new love, although who knows what that might have been?)

Fast forward.  After a successfully completed old UFO, I decided maybe I could polish off another languishing, unloved, neglected project.  (Every once in a while I go through projects to free up needles and favorite stitch markers that have fallen into the black hole of unloved projects.  I'm sure you can relate, right?)

And there was Islington.  Unloved?  I wonder why?  Dull?  Really?  It was rather easy to fall in love with it all over again.  But what has made it one of the most satisfying knits in a very long time came as I was casting off...

 

I had never done this kind of crocheted cast off before, and I think it's really lovely.  You crochet into three live stitches, then chain 5, and repeat across the row.  A dainty scalloped border results.  Nice. Easy. Decorative. 

In spite of the fact that 20 people were coming for dinner, I had to drop everything and block it (in the middle of the kitchen...I had to be careful not to get flour all over it or set a hot pan on top of it---small kitchen, you know! but it IS my 'blocking' world first.)

 
It was sooooo worth it.

 

Now.  Back to previously scheduled Christmas knitting.

 

joining Karen for weekends.

you asked for it.....the 'book list'

The list does NOT include my contributions to the list....the books I've read this year are usually mentioned somewhere on my blog.

 

In no particular order other than who could shout out titles the loudest...

 

A Man Called Ove *

Hold Still

Wonderstruck

Toast

Baseball Haiku

A Person of Interest

City of Light

Someone

A Fierce radiance

Art of Fielding *

Most Famous Man in America

My Own Medicine

Calebs Crossing

Say You Aren't One of Them

Brookland

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry *

What She Left Behind *

Shape of Mercy

Secrets of a Charmed Life

Children's Crusade

The Dive from Claussen's Pier

The Nightingale **

The Nazi Officer's Wife

The Gilly Salt Sisters

The Quaker Cafe

Maude

Everything I Never Told You *

The Pecan Man

Boston Girl

When I Found You

Assembler of Parts

War Brides

American Elegy

Got Set a Watchman *

Book of Speculation

Fever 1793

* indicates a really good read (or possibly a newly read book that is still resonating)  There were actually a few others that I immediately cut as not appealing to me.  Sorry.

 

I'm still working through a 2013 and 2014 list.  I've rarely been disappointed with any book on 'the list'.    Hope you enjoy some of these titles, too.  Many, I've never heard of, but anxiously look forward to reading.

 

It's been a very good day!

beach finds (those are 'heart' stones at the top, in case you can't tell)

and

lobster rolls

oops

lobster roll

(I didn't waste calories on the roll and fries)

because....

oh, yes.

Good night.

yarnalong....

Loving this book.

Hoping this yarn holds out the rest of the week.

 

 

Lighthouses...

Lobsters rolls....

 

and the unofficial meeting of 'The Book Club'....where my college friends and I spent an afternoon sharing our 'best reads' of the past year.  Two pages of tried and true 'winners'!!  

I'm in piggy heaven.

Magical bananas....

ICKY!

 

YUMMY!!!

 

GONE!!!  (Icky bananas disappeared.)

 

 

Easiest Banana Pudding...ever

 

1 can Eagle Brand condensed milk

2 (5.1oz) pkg instant vanilla pudding, made into pudding

12 oz Cool Whip, thawed

1 box vanilla wafers

5-6 yucky bananas no one will eat

 

Combine pudding, condensed milk, and Cool Whip.  

Layer wafers, sliced yucky bananas, pudding mix; wafers, bananas, pudding mix, etc....in a deep 9 x 13 dish.  Crumble wafers on top to decorate.  Refrigerate.

(I promised magical....not healthy!!!)

 

wet weekending....

 

It rained, rained,   drizzled, rained,  POURED !, rained some more, misted, ---the sun peeked out for a minute,  then, rain...rain...rain.  And then more rain.

 

The basement flooded (again).

The Arts and Music Festival got very very wet.

 

So the best part of my weekend was catching up with a friend at the local (dry) coffee bar.  

I talked so much, I dropped a stitch.

 

Joining Karen for Weekending.

radishes

The "harvest" is complete. 

 

They've been sliced and diced...

and pickled...

 

with enough left over to roast for supper.

 

 

I'll be planting these babies again!!!

 

Thanks to everyone who left cooking suggestions.  I never dreamed radishes were such a versatile veggie!  YUM.

off the needles and on the needles.....

Magrathea2 is finished thanks to two back-to-back road trips.  If there is any drawback to this pattern, it's that it knits up almost too quickly. It would never last as a vacation knit.  But, I was still engaged with the pattern to the very end.  That's saying something since I seem to be suffering from a very limited attention span lately.

I've dragged out both Twin Leaf and Intertidal and it's a toss up as to which is going to get knit on next.  My heart is sort of turning toward baby knits, but that would mean a yarn shop visit, and the babies I have in mind aren't due until late fall.  The babies and I can wait.  

Reading...

At Home in the Whole Food Kitchen and French Market Cookbook.  Both are full of great seasonal goodies and I know I'll use them both a lot.

 

Unfortunately, neither has been the solution to what to do with

a ba-gillion radishes that all matured at the same time.

Ideas, anyone?

Pi Day!!!!

I'm giving you notice!  Tomorrow is Pi Day....

March 14th..... 3.14   Pi Day!!

As of March 12, 2009, Pi Day has been 'official' in the United States...decreed by the House of Representatives.  (It must have been a slow day in the House.)  

 

Most years we simply 'celebrate' the magic of 3.14....but, this year (drum roll, please....)we can take it to 10 digits!!!

3.1415....9:26:53(am or pm)  (I guess if you were to be mathematically accurate---it should be 3.1415 at 9:26:54 since the 11th digit is a 5 and you should round up, right? but that would mess it up; going to 10 places is more fun than going to 9 any day.)  Isn't this the geekiest thing ever?

I really had planned to celebrate by casting on for a pi shawl.  Better yet, I should have planned ahead, and cast OFF a completed pi shawl.  Neither are going to happen.

 

So, let them eat pie.

PAllenSmith's Buttermilk Pecan Pie  Ignore the fact that it's called buttermilk pie;  it's sort of like a chess pie, sort of like a pecan pie.....but definitely yummy, yummy, yummy.

Plain old blueberry pie, with some lemon rind grated in.  Takes it to a whole different level of deliciousness.

What to dig into first?

 

Let's celebrate!!!

:)  

 

2 pies divided by

(xslices X ydays X zpeople) 2 =

too many calories no matter how you figure it. 

Black Friday backlash....the weekend

:: making cookies with my daughter  (you cannot substitute cocoa mix for cocoa powder....hee hee.  Guess how we know?)  This was round #2 of our favorite chocolate cookie recipe

 

 

 

:: decking the halls...

(with a helper)

 

:: and, knitting....of course.

 

with a helper who really wasn't a help.

 

Did anyone else manage to avoid the crazy Black Friday shopping frenzy?  Or do you thrive in that madhouse atmosphere?