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Just doing a show, and if you are local you should come!
The poster was done by Susan, one of the member of the women's chorus (and an alto, which is extra terrific).
It felt like it was so far away, but opening day is Friday! Prod week is eating my soul (or the small swatch of knitting I keep where my soul was reportedly located), and tonight is Cue to Cue. I love seeing the show come together from the disparate pieces into something cohesive and entertaining.
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Thanksgiving is on Thursday. It is the cook's holiday, and I intend to make the most of my opportunities this year (I started a set of no bake cookies last night, because easy things were all I had energy for after work and rehearsal). And while the holiday is only a single day, the spirit of being thankful is supposed to last all year long. Many people I know have celebrated a month of thanks, a laudable notion, though I've been having a hard time committing to anything other than the show.
In no particular order, I'm thankful for:
1. My husband. He's put up with my constant absense for the show and it is going to get worse before it gets better. We aren't the neatest people, but the house hasn't devolved into nothing but mess in my absense either. It's good to get home and not immediately want to pull my hair out with the amount of cleaning that needs to be done.
2. Victor. Mr. Victor McBarknsniffs is our little general. (Note: that page is also my husband's fault.) Lately he's been staying in his crate to snooze in the mornings for as long as possible. I cannot completely blame him for that. I think I will get a lot of sleep on December 2nd, because that's pretty much what I took the day off for.
3. Saru-chan. Saru-chan is my furry little monkey cat. She is soft and will cuddle next to me when I start making waking up sounds in the morning. I love petting her and getting monster purrs. (Note: that page is also my husband's fault.)
4. Warm woolies. It got cold yesterday, and my new mittens helped immensely. The same could not be said for my scarf, but it wasn't the scarf's fault. It cannot warm me if it isn't with me.
5. The internet. While I do love my cookbooks, the internet is a veritable treasure trove of tested recipes with full color (and black and white) photos. And while there are recipes from published books and magazines, the greatest ones are the people who just make things and tell us how they did it. Their own recipes from their own heads. While Smitten Kitchen is my favorite, I read a ton of food blogs and they all make this time of year easier.
6. Leftovers. Good food choices are always easier when there is good food to be had. Nom, nom, nom. Right now we're almost out of leftovers from the birthday party, which is good because how else are we going to fit the thanksgiving leftovers in the fridge otherwise?
7. The cast and crew of Sorcerer. No matter how much we are doing prayer hands or bobbing up and down, the good humor and intensity of the group makes the long hours worth it. The show has also been a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with people I haven't seen since the first show I've done.
8. The heat. Oh, natural gas, how do I love you. I wish you were more environmentally sound, but once it starts getting cold I have to admit that I stop caring about the environment as much as I ought.
9. The piles of leaves. We did some raking and there is definitely more raking in our future. Rake, rake, rake. The current piles and bags and barrels of leaves are an indication that we did work over the weekend. It might not be glamorous, but at least we are attempting to do the useful things home owners do.
10. My kitchenaid (and new island). This was a group gift from my friends and it is a near constant companion in the kitchen. The kitchen island might not be in the best spot, but it lets me interact with people in the living room while still doing useful things in the kitchen. I have about 4 more recipes that will use the kitchenaid this weekend, so thank goodness for this tool. So darn useful.
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About 2 years ago I burnt myself out on exercise and healthy eating, and really let myself go. It's been affecting my general health, and I'm tired of my clothing feeling tight. I've had weeks here and there where i tracked the food I ate and did some exercise, but I've not been very motivated.
Well, this week I decided that the worst thing that could happen (in a facetious way, because there are certainly worse things that can happen) is that I could gain more weight during Sorcerer. So, I've been concentrating on making healthy food choices, because exercise is hard to manage around the show schedule. This week I've managed to lose almost 3 pounds through a small amount of exercise (walking mostly) and not eating every sweet thing that happens across my path.
I'm hoping that I can keep up most of the efforts over the holidays, because it would be nice to have another year where I don't gain weight over Thanksgiving and the season of making Christmas cookies.
So, it's time for me to go to set build where I will be probably doing nothing but painting tons of flats. How much exercise is painting flats worth?
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I've been working on super secret knitting, eeking out a row here and there while at rehearsal. It's not the most ideal of situations, especially if you are like me and working on a pattern using either the words lace or cables.
I have a sweater that I started during a hockey game last month, but I need to pull the ribbing out and decide if I am going to start over with smaller needles (ideally not in that order). However, I am cold all the time and I am thinking fingerless gloves for the office, a head band or a hat for indoors, a new hat for outdoors. Of course, being cold all the time is at least in part my fault.
I got a hair cut. It is for the show (so I can look more like a boy rather than someone who just desperately needed a hair cut), and is the first time in at least 9 years that my hair has not been some shade of red. Yup. This is my natural hair color. You can also see the awesome job I did cropping out the background, because no one needs to see how messy I keep things around here.
Underneath all of my hair dying for the past 9+ years I am a blonde. It's funny, but when my hair is red the blond roots almost look brown, so I'm a little surprised at how blonde I still am.
Cue the stupid blonde jokes (I have heard more than my hair share already).
So, it is the season for indoor cowls, indoor mitts, indoor hats, and a new cardigan so I can wear something other than the few cardigans I have, and losing a few pounds so I can more easily fit some of the sweaters I already have.
I have yarn for two separate cardigans, plus one I started in 2010. One is a beautiful grey cabled sweater, which is probably too hard to do in between going on and off the set, so I should instead concentrate on one of the new sweaters. I have yarn for a reverse stockinette cable (but just one mondo cable) cardigan and yarn for Shalom. One is bright green and orangy yellow and the other is mottled grey blues. Any suggestions?
Or should I just dig out my Ravenclaw scarf months early and bundle.
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See all the cuteness!
One of the commenters on Mochimochiland earlier this week linked to one of these videos, and I was hooked. They are short, cute and, well, did I mention short? All 20+ videos take under 15 minutes to watch. Great as a tiny cure for the grumps.
From my husband was this cuteness!
Now excuse me. I'm trying to update my iPad, so I can have Scribblenauts on it. A game that is cute even if you (like me) never make it past the title screen. (Also, I'm being attacked by my husband and Saru-chan teaming up by rubbing her jelly beans on my arm. Pretty cute.)
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Our house has a two level roof with the living room having a roof with skylight that is one flight lower than the rest of the house. I don't know if it is the roof construction or something else, but everything that touches this section of roof echoes into the living room below. Rain that is barely noticeable in the upstairs bedroom sounds like a torrent when we are in the living room.
We were doing some housework upstairs when we saw this poor bedraggled squirrel. This roof, because it is protected on two sides, tends to collect leaves and seeds a bit longer, so there are often squirrels and other wildlife taking advantage of the easy food source. It is theoretically getting colder (right now it is bouncing between nice and frigid). Pretty much every critter that doesn't pass their time in the south is doing nothing but eating to get through the big cold.
This photo is from Thursday, the later in the week we had more visitors. We noticed them out of our porthole window and snapped our pictures. They were used to people enough to ignore our sounds from the other side of the glass. Later, I was in the living room and I heard tromping going across the living room ceiling. Tromp! It sounded like a herd of elephants (or a group of people trying to run across one of the platforms during a show). I didn't think it was Saru-chan, though it is conceivable that I would heard her running like a crazy cat upstairs.
But no. It was what we've dubbed the Squirrel Family.
Saru-chan was completely curled up in bed, loafed out and oblivious to the world and downstairs I was laughing about our noisy neighbors.
tromp.
Tromp tromp.
Tromp Tromp TROMP.
It was about 20 minutes of them skittering around before either they stopped or I was too busy to notice it anymore. I was making brunch (curried home fries, bacon and sausage, eggnog french toast, spinach and parmesan strata, pumpkin oatmeal) and I don't remember if this was when I was making brunch or making cheesecake, and just stopped having time to notice the hilarity of our little outside furballs.
I love the wildlife and soon it will be that time of year when I try to remember to put out the bird seed. We have a feeder in the front yard, but it was put in place in the most useless spot for birdwatching. We should move it, because now you put seed in and you cannot see the feeder from the living room windows unless you carefully position yourself. The best spot to watch is near the fence in the back yard. At least moving it would give Saru-chan a different station for her cat TV.
Not that she really watches the squirrel family. She is a champion loafer, and watching the squirrel station is more effort than she wants to put out.
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This weekend was the last of my free time (barring Thanksgiving Day weekend), before our show gets insane. There are six rehearsals this week. Friday night I might go swimming with the new local pool membership, but it is just as likely that I'm going to go home and sleep until my brain stops exploding with all the stuff we've practiced for the show. Sunday was the Sitzprobe and we didn't finish. As irritating as it would be, I kind of wish we had just kept going until we were done.
This weekend was busy for a number of reasons. My husband turned 33 on 11/11/11, so he had a big party. It involved games and food on Friday (with cake and cheesecake) and brunch followed by curling on Saturday. I had medicine on Friday morning that precluded vigorous activity, so I took pictures of the curling through the glass in the warmer area while my husband and our friends engaged in various pratfalls and attempts at sport.
It was fun and Saturday night after the curling was over I mostly slept the rest of the day away. I needed it.
But cake. Really, this is all about cake. Someday I will get out a pretty plate and actually stage the food recipes rather than showing the cake on the cake board.
My husband wanted a marble cake for his birthday and he wanted one of the colors to be orange. Now, marble cake is really easy to make, but it does have a few tricks. Most recipes are for chocolate marble cake. The general idea is that you make a vanilla cake batter that is enough for a two layer cake and then you take about a third of the batter and add either melted chocolate or melted butter mixed with cocoa powder or something similar. You layer the two batters in a pan and then run a knife through them without stirring to get the traditional flavor and color mixing.
It's a little harder with something so mildly different in color, but the idea is still the same.
This cake was an pumpkin-eggnog marble cake, and based on how skinny my top layer was I should have increased the batter. I took between a third and a half of the batter out and added some pumpkin puree, a tablespoon of pumpkin liquer (it is like schnapps and is bright orange), and a bit of pumpkin flavoring. It still wasn't very orange, so I added both red and yellow food coloring (just a couple of drops) to get it to be a more distinct color.
I'll probably be making this again. The recipe needs a bit of tweaking before I share, and not just because the batter was not quite enough for the two layers (in hexagon pans) I was going for. The flavor was pretty good in the pumpkin, but the eggnog flavor was a bit more lost than I like. The frosting was an awesome marshmallow frosting, which made too much from the Martha Stewart site. It was pretty good and only got better when I pulled out the torch and toasted the frosting right on the cake making the little spikes turn golden brown.
I'm making cake again this upcoming weekend (no rehearsal on Sunday unless they are calling everybody for the second bit of Sitzprobe), so maybe I'll find time to fit this in!
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Tomorrow is my lovely husband's birthday, and I have the day off (and today as well) to cook and clean (mostly cook).
This has resulted in the strangest proliferation of tabs in my browser.
Gmail (replaced Google+ when I decided I had too many tabs)
Facebook
All Romance Ebooks
Pretzel Shortbread Snack Crack Bars
Apple Cinnamon Coffee Cake
Zoo Babies (get your dose of cute today)
Google Reader, which just shows that some people post a lot and I'm super behind already
Pumpkin Cheesecake with a Ginger Pecan Crust
Garlic Knots (Emeril), which I am making with the pizza dough I used for tonight's mostly successful deep dish pizza
Marshmallow Frosting (Martha Stewart), which I'm using for Chris's pumpkin-eggnog marble cake
Fleaflicker (fantasy football)
And typepad.
Tomorrow is cake and finger foods, like veggie samosas (made with wonton wrappers, because I'm lazy), homemade mozzarella sticks, garlic knots, and pakora. There will be brunch on Saturday with bagels, pancakes, sausage, bacon and coffee cake (unless I make something else). And Saturday night will be my collapse with hopefully a very happy husband.
And round.
Ah well, that is what the treadmill is for.
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Last week was a good reading week for me. I finished 2 books and am a decent way on a third. One of the books was fairly standard paranormal fluff. A fun read, but not hard and thematically not interesting to write about no matter how much I enjoyed reading it.
The other book? Well, it was a book for knitters, sewers, and spinners. Of course, that was provided that you like science fiction and the distopian novel.
Yarn, by Jon Armstrong (© 2010), reads like the bastard love child of 1984, Zamyatin's We, and a bevy of fashion designers. Instead of the government controlling the lives of the people, it is a mega corporation, encouraging the population to endless consumption and reveration of the corporate state. While it isn't all bad, the crimes and horrors are omnipresent. The world is a giant mall with saleswarriors and tourists and "fashioning."
What made this story an interesting read for me was the timeline. The main thrust of the story takes place in about a day, maybe two. However, interspersed between the current action are the memories of the past, giving a lie to the beauty and freedom of the place, showing the hardships and horrors in both a stark light of reality and a rosy glow of memory.
It wasn't a hard read, though neither was 1984 or We, but it did make me think a little bit harder about consumption and the control of our lives and politics by the companies we use.
Oh, and it is a little alarming to me to see the back of the book use the term fashionpunk. Really, we have novels about probably everything.
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Tonight's dinner was chips and dip. So healthy sounding! My husband has been getting these pumpkin seed chips from the Whole Foods near where he works. I made pumpkin ice cream last weekend and I didn't want to the remainder of the can of pumpkin to go bad. I cannot be the only one who puts partial cans in the fridge only to find later that they have been fuzzy monster cans later.
So, I made pumpkin hummus. I know the picture isn't the most attractive. It's a dip!
Ingredients:
1 cup pumpkin puree
1 15 oz can navy beans, drained and rinsed
2 tablespoons tahini
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
freshly ground pepper
dash of chipotle powder
liquid smoke
1 tablespoon of demera sugar
juice of one lemon
1/4 cup olive oil
Add all of the ingredients except for the lemon juice and olive oil in a food processor. Before adding the lemon juice and olive oil, adjust the seasoning to taste. With the processor running, slowly pour the lemon juice and olive oil into the food processor. Makes about 2.5 cups of dip.
This is not nearly as thick as normal hummus, but it is very tasty. It is both sweet and salty, and worked really well with the pumpkin seed chips.
I'm planning on having some of the leftovers with the roasted butternut squash and beets from earlier this week. Yum!
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