AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

wanna unsee this?

One of my friends posted a link to the Huffington Post on Twitter yesterday...

This just makes me feel so educated while also making me want to pluck out my eyes. It's still hilarious though!

This treat's for the dogs

Ice cream for people can be made in a ton of different ways: eggy custards, milk and cream thickened with cornstarch or things like xanthan gum, sweetened condensed milk, or no dairy at all and a bit of carageenan or similar substance to keep the mixture smooth and scoopable. Eggy custards feel the most traditional and are a very forgiving dessert. Ice cream for dogs? Well, dogs shouldn't have sugar and while they can eat certain human foods it is always best to keep their treats in moderation. Homemade ice cream for dogs is going to freeze pretty hard, because without sugar and fat it is hard to keep it soft.

1. Doggie Ice Cream, 2. Doggie Ice Cream, 3. Freshly churned doggie ice cream, 4. Tiny scoops only

Making doggie ice cream is about mixing things dogs can eat. I used this site for the list of things Victor could eat. I also remember from when Victor had some stomach problems last year that he can eat eggs and a number of other things that weren't on the list. I made Victor a custard-style ice cream, without all of the sugar. Here's the recipe!

Cinnamon Apple ice cream (for dogs!)

1/2 cup water
75 grams baby carrots (or a well packed half cup)
160 grams apple, pealed, cored and chopped (or one medium granny smith)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 whole milk
4 egg yolks
1 cup 2% greek yogurt

Boil the first 4 ingredients over medium heat until the apple is very soft and most of the water is gone. The carrots will still be a bit crunchy. Puree the mixture with a stick blender or food processor. Add the milk and warm it gently. Add the egg yolks and stir constantly until thickened. Normally I would temper the eggs, but Victor (and likely any dog you meet) is not going to care if there is a small amount of scrambled egg in the treat. Once the custard base is thick (you should be able to make a line on the back of a spoon without any bits dribbling in), remove the custard from the heat and add the yogurt.

The mixture needs to be chilled thoroughly before churning it in the ice cream maker. The ice cream maker adds air to the mix, making the resulting mix (even after it freezes like a rock) much lighter and fluffier looking. Once it is cold, churn in the ice cream maker for 30-40 minutes. Because this mixture has more water and less fat in it than normal, you will have freezing along the sides of the container. The majority is scoopable however, and can be stored in a tupperware in the freezer for doggie fun time!

I used Daily Burn and estimated that there were approximately 36 tablespoon-sized servings (or the smallest cookie scoop which is what I used for his first serving). According to Daily Burn, eat little serving should be about 15 calories. Just right for a doggie treat!

Guess what? He likes it!

running around in the sprinkler

Victor and I were outside for a bit this morning, enjoying the fact that because the house retains heat it is cooler outside than in this morning. He was running around while I played in the sprinkler.

It is already in the 80s and the high is projected to be just shy of 100 today, so I punted going to the gym in favor of cold salad for lunch, water and extra cold showers. I do not want to be one of the people who gets heat exhaustion or stroke, and I have a hard time drinking anything while I work out.

I am going to my office where the air conditioning says "Wear a sweater, you doof!" and I'm going to knit mittens over lunch and enjoy touching wool.

Maybe this weekend we will pull out the homemade slip and slide and I will scrub the doggie pool and fill it with water and wash Victor and sit in cold water. Maybe we will bike to the beach and swim in the ocean and enjoy the Labrador Current. Or maybe we will enjoy ice cream and a movie to keep the temperatures cool.

It's summer and keeping cool is important! It's time for grilling, because cooking outside is better than cooking inside, and cold salads and soups. It's time for milkshakes and ice cream and cold water. It's time to actually make ice cubes again. What are you doing to keep chilled during the summer heat?

doggies!

Two of my friends gave me a belated birthday present last week, the Knit Your Own Dog book. I love it. It has 25 patterns for different breeds of dogs.

For one of my friends, there is a Westie. I love how realistic these patterns are despite being made of nothing more than yarn, some stuffing and maybe pipecleaners (for some of the dogs' legs, like the Whippet).

Most of the dogs are 6-8 inches long, which is a nice size for a stuffed animal. They are done in pieces, which I know will be my bane. There is a lot of sewing up to be done.

One of the things that I find a little odd though, is that the collars are knit flat and also seamed. My husband suggested that maybe they wouldn't go over the head, but the instructions clearly state that they are sewn together and then placed on the dog. It's weird, but super easy to cast on fewer stitches and to knit it in the round. Easy peasy.

My favorites are the ones with the interesting fur, like the Westie above. The afghan hound and the old english sheepdog with their gloriously fur look much more realistic than the ones where you can see all of the stitches.

Mr. Victor is in there, sort of. There is a wirefox terrier and a miniature schauzer, and the combination of the two would create our little bud.

I think I have a list of ones to make. English bulldogs for a pair of friends, a whippet for my friend with the greyhound (because there isn't a separate greyhound pattern), an afghan for me.

For some of the children I know, I would forgo the idea of realistic and knit these with bright cheerful washable yarns in bright pinks and purples. Almost all of the kids I know love pink and purple regardless of gender, which makes me really happy.

Which breeds would you want to knit?

ice cream success

One of the ice creams I made for the party was a coconut lemongrass. It went over well amongst the people who like coconut, and I had a couple of requests for the recipe.

Hrm.

Of course, it was one of the last ice creams I made when my note taking skills were less than stellar and measurements were much more... fluid. So, despite the vast quantity of ice cream left in the downstairs freezer, I will be making this again this week. It will be good to make sure that it works as well the second time as it did the first.

Of course, to make another ice cream first we have to finish one, so I will have tupperware for ice cream storage. The party went through pretty much everything from a 1 quart container on up. Chris and I are still working our way through the leftover ice cream sandwiches first.

lazing about

Today's blurry iPad photo is brought to you by a bug on the other side of the window. This activity makes Saru-chan the most active member of the house.
I was going to knit after making dinner, but this morning we talked about the large # of hours we spent playing the Disgaea games, and instead of being useful I leveled Tink (the licky one) to level 228. Only 772 more levels till I can get the Tink ending, and won't have anything to do with knitting.

japan - usa

So, after the party and the chatting and the cleaning, there was soccer tonight. We watched the Women's World Cup match. We are in penalty kicks. It is beautiful. The game is almost over.

I love soccer. Japan's keeper is doing an amazing job on the penatly kicks.

compost ice cream

I finished churning the compost ice cream tonight. Sounds foul doesn't it?

The ice cream is conceptually based on the Momofuku compost cookies. I didn't make those cookies for this however. I made these awesome gluten free chocolate chip cookies. I made them small for ice cream sandwiches and broke the leftover cookies into the batter with chopped up Rolos and crushed Fritos blended into the ice cream at the end. The salty sweet combo is scary addictive, and the ice cream promises to be as tasty as the original cookies.

Tomorrow is my ice cream party. I still have a single ice cream to churn in the morning, because I decided to nap this afternoon. My goodness I needed that nap. I wonder if I can manage to find time for another nap tomorrow before the party.

c'est fini!

I'm participating in Camp Loopy, which is a fun KAL sponsored by The Loopy Ewe. The first project is supposed to be finished by July 15 and posted to their site. Well, I finished the knitting over July 4th weekend, but it took until yesterday to finally weave in the ends and block it. Yeah, I'm a bit slow on the finishing.

I had a hard time taking pictures of this project. It is a shawl. I'm home by myself wearing an old racing T and have no desire to put on a nicer shirt just for the photo op. The camera, battery guzzler that it is, has no batteries and I don't remember where we put the rechargables. So, I took the pictures with the iPad, sent them to myself via email, and did my normal Flickr routine with them.

Thank goodness that the iPad has a camera on both sides. It made this task 100% easier, though I don't normally want to splash the Intarwebs with my mug shot.

Sweetly Worn by Natalie Selles is my first striped shawl. I bought the pattern (and far too much yarn) at the market night for SAW. I had seen one or two around the workshop and they were all attractive and very comfortable.

There is one thing I wished I had done differently: make bigger loops at the color changes. When I was blocking it out, because my blocking surface wasn't big enough I folded the shawl in half along the center increase line. The two wings of the shawl did not line up however. My loops which felt generous while I was knitting the project were not enough to allow it to stretch to the same extent as the other side. It is a fairly big difference when you are blocking it or just sitting it on a chair, but it is subtle when you are wearing it.

I made mine is Cascade Heritage Silk (the yellow) and Hand Maiden Swiss Silk in Melon (oh my the deliciousness). It reminds me of summer sunshine, and pink grapefruits and lemons. I love that my "neutral" color isn't white or black or grey, but something cheerful. It may not match anything in my wardrobe ever, but I don't care. It's why I wear black afterall.

a dreadful miscalculation

So, I thought I had ordered extra cannisters for my ice cream making on Sunday. Well, today they still hadn't arrived when I got home so I went through my email.

Now, I've been having a bit of computer trouble. Safari decided to give me the white screen of death, and apparently the order never went through. I called the company and I should have these on Friday. It is almost a day late dollar short, but I will still be churning ice cream. It's just a difference in what I need to make for batches on Saturday.

Today I churned mega rocky road (otherwise known as a Paul killer). It is my nutella rocky road layered with a separate peanut butter rocky road (peanut butter ice cream with chopped peanuts, mini chocolate chips and marshmallows). I had too much to fit into the tupperware I use for storage, so I got to taste test. Yum.

I also prepped the pink grapefruit-champagne sorbet tonight, which necessitated a walk to the local alcohol/minimart during the half time of the Manchester United-New England Revolution game. I love making this, because while the large pink grapefruits were pretty difficult to squeeze my hands smell so wonderful I don't care. It is awesome and makes up a lot of mistakes I've made in party prep this week.