AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

today is a new day

Yesterday was full of little setbacks, and I lost a bit of my cool. I feel like this July is much hotter than last July, so doing dishes over a steaming sink, cooking over the stove and baking are all tasks I enjoy. However, they take so much more effort with the heat over 90 degrees.

Yesterday's mistakes included:
I left out the milk and sugar and tea mixture for earl grey ice cream all day long. I don't care that it might have been OK. I just couldn't serve that to people knowing it had been out.

The power went out while I was making dinner, derailing the potatoes I had par-cooking in the microwave and putting a stop to the egg white-heavy frittata thing I had in the oven (no really, I had 11 egg whites and 2 whole eggs in that thing).

The ice cream cannister I used last night wasn't quite cold enough, so I didn't manage to churn any ice cream last night.

Things that are fine? I bought the mega ton of flours (Good Health is an amazing shop. They had them all.) and larger container of xanthan gum, so I made the dough for these cookies. The dough is certainly as tasty as regular wheat-based cookies, but unlikely to make one of my guests have stomach pains for hours. The dough is covered in plastic wrap and sitting in the back of the fridge for Thursday. I'm really hoping that Thursday is a bit cooler, because baking and making ice cream sandwiches really will go better in under 90 degree heat.

I boiled the sweet potatoes for the sweet potato pie ice cream.

I'm down to vegetables from only 2 weeks in the CSA.

I finished the first sleeve for my husband's Hufflepuff House sweater and started the second one.

Now, it is time to put dishes away, wash more dishes and block a shawl. It has only been waiting for its turn for over a week now.

[10 Tuesday] oh Harry

Today's 10 for Tuesday is near and dear to my heart and my husband's as well. While we have not gone to the midnight movie releases, we did make one of the book releases when we were right down the street from a Borders in Braintree. I have knit three of the super thick house scarves (Hufflepuff for my husband, Slytherin for one of my friends who is now a lawyer and Ravenclaw for me). I have a. Hufflepuff house sweater on the needles for my husband to finish before we go see the final movie later this month.

We are in deep. It's funny though, because I resisted the books for a long time. I was working at a transportation consultation firm when the books became big. Everybody at work from big wig consultants to people in the accounting department were raving about these books. I don't do well with the high expectations given for books or movies (or anything) and resisted reading them. You have to read this, just doesn't work for me. I didn't start until sometime after book 4 came out.

Here are my top 10 things about the Harry Potter books.

1. There is nothing wrong with being intelligent. Hermione shows over and over again that being smart is cool. Both boys and girls need to know that. Some of her intelligence is taken away in the movies, but in the book she is the one both Ron and Harry turn to when they need to know something.

2. The books age with the children. I love that the books grew with their target audience. Books 5 and 6 are too dark for the average 11 year old, but Book 1 helps get them there. I love this series if only it encourages children to read, and a number of adults too.

3. This series encouraged publishers that children's and young adult books do not need to be short. My favorite YA author, Tamora Pierce, thanks the HP world in either Squire or Lady Knight for making her publshers realize that she can have a book over 300 pages. Most of her books since have been much longer. It is awesome!

4. The writing and plotting are not stellar. I know that shouldn't be a bonus, but they are just good enough to show people who want to write how to craft a story and make interesting but bad enough that you get to the sweet spot of "Maybe I can do better." A great example of this in my opinion is the epilogue, which feels very tacked on.

5. The corrallary to #4 is that this series, much like Lord of the Rings, has spawned a tremendous amount of fan fic. I don't read fan fic anymore (The Silver Millenium made my fan fic enabled brain turn into Mary Sue pudding), but it is a great way for people to practice. I mean the world building is already done, which allows people to focus on only a couple of aspects for making good stories.

6. They grow up. I love that I can tell the difference between them from book to book. Of course, that meant I hated Book 5 until I went back and reread Books 1 to 4. Without rereading, Harry's angry angst felt like it came out of the blue. With the reread, it spread as a natural consequence of the ending of Book 4. I love that the stories carry like that. So many series are only not standalone by the carrying of plot and it doesn't feel like it affects the personalities of the characters.

7. The side characters are important too. I love that their importance rises and falls based on how well they mesh with the core 3 and that at least in part each house is represented.

8. Dementors. Unlike the portrayal in the movies, they are not the Nazgul. My interest in the Dementors probably stems from our Harry Potter game that we played umpety years ago. Our keeper of the quote book could list them all out, but at least 2 of our best quotes from that game were Dementor based.

9. I love that JK Rowling is willing to kill off characters. You get to love them (or not as your preference dictates), but no one will necessarily be spared. It makes the conflict more real, because it is war. Heroes are not exempt from the horror.

10. I love that this is the last movie. I shouldn't care, but I do. This has been an impressive franchise, and I will be glad when the movies are over. I'd love to see what the actors do going forward. Unlike Brent Spiner, who I felt never got enough opportunities to move past the role of Data in TNG, the series has encompassed enough emotional time that I don't think they will get pigeonholed. For these young people, that is a wonderful thing for their careers, assuming they are going to keep acting.

 

another canister

Today I did math. I have 11 ice cream bases to make and 15 ice creams to churn. Before bed I will churn one more ice cream (vanilla), but that is still at least two ice creams a day all week. So I ordered the Kitchenaid ice cream bowl, so I can make swirled ice creams like my mega rocky road at the same time.
I love ice cream time, but I should have started churning last week!
Completely unrelated, I churned today the energy drink ice cream I've been threatening to make with Blood, an energy drink I was given as a gag gift. It tastes kind of like fruit punch with a multivitamin thrown in!

Today is for pie

I'm standing in the kitchen next to the ice cream maker. Pie from the farmer's market care of Ever So Humble Pie Company is dessert, and I am writing my first post via a nice shiny new iPad.
It is a good day to be a geek!

Camp Loopy project 2

Project 1 is in my bag, waiting for me to finally weave in the ends. However, I have been thinking about project 2 (mittens, gloves or socks with cables) for over a week now since Sheri first announced the project.

I wasn't ready to leave behind 2 color knitting and I've been looking for a doable project that won't be too time consuming, so I can work on other things too. I think I have finally found it.

2 color cabled mittens from the February Lady lady, Pamela Wynne. They are made of awesome and the world needs more fun mittens. I just placed my order for enough yarn to make 2 pairs (sounds decadent, but hey Cascade 220 is super affordable). A purple and yellow pair for me and a Black and yellow (well, goldenrod) pair for my Hufflepuffer. I might attempt to make one of the pairs convertible, but I am often cold enough that I will simply wear a pair of gloves underneath regardless.

In other news, I finished the front and the back of my husband's Hufflepuff house sweater. Sleeve 1 is underway. I need to finish sleeve 1 by the end of the weekend if I am going to do sleeve 2 and finish the sweater before we go to see the last Harry Potter movie. Repeat after me: Sleep is a crutch for the weak.

some foods need not be photographed

A couple of days ago I made rhubarb compote. Compote (according to wikipedia) is a dessert made of cooked fruits and spices, but in my little mind that is just too narrow a focus. I have spread compote on pancakes in lieu of syrup, which I admittedly don't use anyway. I add compote to plain or vanilla yogurt as a snack or light lunch. I use it to top ice cream, or I decadently eat it right off the spoon.

Today I used my rhubarb compote to make thumbprint cookies. Thumbprint cookies are excellent vehicles for fillings. I have had them a la hamentaschen with poppy seed paste or apricot preserves (which reminds me, does anyone have a good hamentaschen recipe. I love those cookies so much!). I have had the very similar cookie with a hershey's kiss plopped where delicious jam should be. Really any sticky filling that won't really spread can be used, like rhubarb compote.

Compote is not a photogenic food. It is a slumpy mess of stewed fruits (or vegetables in the case of rhubarb) that just happens to taste delicious.

Rhubarb Compote

about 1 lb of rhubarb stocks, washed, trimmed and cut into about 1-2 inch pieces
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon grand marnier

Add rhubarb, water and sugar to small pot (I used a 1 quart pot, which is too tiny for lots of things. The rhubarb started out almost all the way to the top of the pot). Bring to a boil. Lower the heat to medium, cover and cook for 20-30 minutes. The rhubarb should lose its shape and the mess should be nearly the consistency of preserves. Turn off the heat and add vanilla and grand marnier and stir. This is fine to eat warm, but it is summer in my part of the world so I put it in tupperware and eat it cold.

Ah, my tiny iPod photo. I'd blow it up bigger, but boy does it look grainy at that resolution!

Rhubarb Compote Thumbprints (adapted from this recipe from Good Housekeeping)

1/2 cup butter, unsalted
1/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp dried orange peel (or 1 TBSP fresh orange zest)
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 cups cake flour
about 1/4 cup rhubarb compote or your favorite preserves 

Preheat the oven to 350° Fahrenheit.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and the sugars until fluffy. Add the orange peel, vanilla and eggs and mix until incorporated. The mixture might look curdled or bubbly, which is fine. Add the flour a cup at a time, mixing thoroughly.

Using a small cookie scoop or a teaspoon, measure a small amount into your hands and roll it into a ball. The dough should be sticky. Place on either a silpat or parchment lined baking sheet. Continue until all the dough is used.

Push a clean thumb into each cookie. Try to get the full length of your thumb imprinted into the cookie dough, which will allow more space for your filling. My first couple were more the point of the thumb. Using a small spoon, carefully spoon compote into each cookie. Bake for about 15 minutes or until golden.

I found that the cookies I baked on the silpat both spread less (these cookies are not spreaders, so you don't need a ton of space on the sheet) and did not brown on the bottom the way the cookies on parchment did. My parchment cookies were almost dark brown on the bottoms when both sheets came out of the oven. I made around 2 dozen cookies.

a new favorite

 

It makes me giggle and it is stupidly catchy. I was wondering if it was too ironic if I forwarding this video to any of my friends and relatives.

[10 Tuesday] herbs, now with less aspirated H

I just spent a little too long saying erbs and hearing HHHHerbs in response. It tickled my funny bone, and not the one that isn't funny at all.

I love to cook. I might not be the most stellar cook, and I certainly don't take enough photos for cooking to be a mainstay on the blog (I've just never gotten good at progress photos, which is something I love on a lot of food blogs I read). This weekend was a bit of proof for that: slaw, pesto, donuts, and an ice cream cake all made within a couple of days. It's a lot of cooking for some of this in the heat, but it was awesome to eat my own food.

I'm due for a restock on my favorite spices. I do a lot of ethnic cooking, which leaves me without a huge number of spices now. My spice favorites include:

1. cumin. I use it in everything. I love both Mexican-inspired and Indian food, so the cumin and my mortar and pestle are very popular. I think I'm completely out of cumin, but I haven't put together an order for Penzeys yet.

2. chipotle. Of all of the peppers, this is the one that is probably the easiest to work with. It is not hot, but it has a smoky flavor that comes through and adds a nice dimension to many a bean dish.

3. pepper. I go through black pepper the way some people I know go through water. It is another spice that is in nearly everything. I prefer freshly ground to anything you can buy in a jar. It just tastes stronger.

4. garlic. I have both regular garlic and the aged black garlic in the house. I love garlic so much that I tried to make a garlic soup once based on the memory of a recipe from a magazine. The soup was hideous, because it didn't have any flavor no matter how much escarole, pepper and garlic I added. Obviously my memory had a big hole where the recipe was supposed to be.

5. pizza spices. I love basil and oregano in about equal parts, though I cannot think about oregano without remembering tbe gals from the dorm upstairs coming down one night in giggle fits trying to offer us their special brownies. Yeah, I didn't eat the pot brownies. I probably wouldn't have eaten them if they had been oregano brownies either. 

6. cardamom. Not just for Indian food, I use it in many sweet preparations. It has a flavor that enhances other sweet spices.

7. cayenne and chili powder. These are handy and are a huge part of my favorite 'chorizo' recipe (I have the recipe cached, because the blog author changed her blog completely).

8. cinnamon. This spice is such a large part of baking that I go through it like it is going out of style. I love adding a touch of cinnamon oil to buttercream frosting. It makes the frosting feel less sweet, while retaining that desserty feel.

9. vanilla. I use both vanilla extract and vanilla beans all the time. At the con I had vanilla envy as someone came in with a king's ransom of vanilla beans: a bag with more than 20 stellar looking (and smelling) vanilla beans. 

10. ginger. I don't use ginger as much as I would like, but I do use it in pretty much every application: candied, syrup, whole and powder. Because it lasts a long time with a little care I have it in the freezer, though I will probably store the next purchase in the fridge. It is just too hard to chop the frozen ginger and I'm too lazy to either defrost in the microwave or wait while I am working on dinner.

happy 4th

Today is the birthday of the United States. The United States shares its birthday with a number of really cool or interesting people: Calvin Coolidge, Ulysses S. Grant, Ann Landers, and Koko the gorilla. It is also the birthday of one of my friend's children. It's an awesome day, and a great birthday. There are only so many days where your birthday present includes fireworks!

I'm not a super contemplative person, so I spent most of today hanging out with my husband and our pets. It was a great day for CSA cooking. I made these glazed beet donuts. I swapped out cardamom for the cayenne and added grand marnier to the glaze. I doubled the recipe, because 1/4 cup of beets wasn't going to use all of the beets I had left. However, my donut pan (which I picked up on Sunday) is either small or something, because I made 9 donuts. That's a ton more donut than i needed. I also made parsley pesto, using unblanched almonds in place of pine nuts and really light on the parmesan (I might have used 5 grams). Of course, I really should have looked for a blue pesto to go with the reddish donuts. 

That much cooking has made the house super warm, so I am eating chocolate mint ice cream cake. I love desserts even more in the summer.

date time!

I've been out and about for much of the last month: vacation time in Maine, Squam, Ice Cream topia. My husband has been alone with the animals, enjoying (but not much) his developing tribal society where he was hopefully king over the cat and dog.

Today we went on an awesome date in Boston. We walked from the Kenmore area to the Pour House and had pancakes and waffles for a late second breakfast (hey, doesn't everybody like second breakfast and elevenses?). We then walked around Boston and I got new running shoes at NikeTown. Not my normal shoe location, but I wanted to give another try at the barefoot, almost, running. The Vibrams are bad juju on my feet, causing blood blisters during my first half marathon with them. 

We saw some awesome stuff, which I will probably share over the next day or so.

I've seen this display a lot over the past month or so as I walk through Boston. It is both cute and disturbing! I love it. It makes me think strange thoughts and about Jeff-kun from Magic Users Club. Newbury Street is full of things I cannot afford, but I love it anyway.

We watched Mr. Popper's Penguins, because I wasn't really feeling up to carrying my stuff all the way to the aquarium to look at real penguins. It was a cute movie, funny and very feel good. It was almost as good as looking at real penguins.