AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

Halloween is for brains

My husband has a work party later this week provided that the Frankenstorm doesn't work itself up into more of a tizzy. He wanted brains. Specifically he wanted brains that oozed a greenish (or very green) substance.

The last time I used the brain mold was last year for homemade marzipan. Now, these molds are huge. They are meant for large ice cubes and were definitely ridiculously large for the marzipan.

I made lime curd following the recipe from Martha Stewart for Key Lime Curd. The shell is candy melts in white, pink and brown. The result is definitely an oozing liquid center.

The tops after the first batch were double layered with candy melt, because the shell was initially thin enough that the brains were easy to break. I made two batches of curd, but the rest of the brains are going to be filled with homemade red currant jam. What, you don't want bleeding brains? It is a great tradition!

I submitted this photo to Thinkgeek for their customer action shots, and decided that meant I should decorate the image with my character from Kingdom of Loathing, where I am slowly making my way to level 30 Zombie Master.I don't know if they can take a picture with that much of a reference to another game/company, but I think it was cute.

Of course, this wasn't the only brain photo my husband took and that I then doctored. Heck, Kingdom of Loathing isn't the only game I play that lately involves zombies.

Yup. Plants vs. Zombies.

I think it almost looks like the balloon zombie is about to take a bite.

Happy Halloween!

Oh, and for using candy melts or chocolate in a mold, I used Chocoley's tip page. It worked pretty well!

Fall days

The fall to me is like the beginning of the year. Like many it is the hold over from school days. Fall signals a time when I should learn new things, do lots of old things and prepare for the winter up ahead. Orion hanging low in the sky is my favorite sight on early morning and late evening walks with Victor (and Pito). It is a calming sight reminding me of snowball fights in the dark, walks on the beach, and solitary times just looking at the sky. Others might have greater skill in scanning the sky and pulling out the constellations, but Orion doesn't care. He is clear and obvious even in the light polluted skies around Boston.

My baking has kind of gone into overdrive. I made a passel of sweets earlier in the week, but then yesterday I followed it up with Smitten Kitchen's pumpkin cinnamon rolls. Thankfully my husband didn't eat the entire batch, which I divided up into two pans as instructed and then wrapped one pan to store in the freezer until later this week. I plan on making lemon bars again later this week once the pumpkin cinnamon rolls are gone. A little bit of summer bliss as the weather tries to decide if it is going to cool down or not.

Of course, baking and knitting are the old things I'm doing a ton of, but I'm also starting to teach myself something new. I am a bit in flux, so I figured learning a new skill (especially a work marketable skill) is a good idea. So, I'm teaching myself a couple of new (to me) CMSs that I can use in web design work. The one that is more interesting to me is Drupal. I don't know how useful it will be to learn, but I still believe that anything learning is never wasted.

Or as my Dad said, "The more you learn, the more you earn."

Chicago Stuffed Pizza

A little over a week ago my husband and some of his friends had pizza delivered parcooked and frozen from Chicago. It was stuffed pizza from Giordano's. My husband loves deep dish and stuffed pizzas, and I have always wanted to be able to make a pizza that fits his requirements.

So, finding a recipe for a Chicago-style stuffed pizza dough is surprisingly difficult. I based my dough on a couple of different recipes. I paid particular attention to the comment in the Cookstr recipe, and made the following pizza dough. The pizza dough has passed the hubby test, so hopefully this is a good start for other people who cannot easily get Chicago-stuffed pizza.

Now that Cookstr recipe implied that it made a 9-inch stuffed pizza, which is a bit erroneous. More on that later.

Chicago Style Stuffed Pizza (dough)

Ingredients
2.25 tsp active dry yeast
1 tsp sugar
1.5 cups water (around 110° F)
3.5 cups all purpose flour (18 ounces), plus extra for kneeding
1 tsp salt
0.125 (1/8) tsp cream of tartar
0.25 cup unsalted butter, melted
0.25 cup canola oil

So, here is a little tip I have for getting water to the perfect temperature for proofing yeast. Set a pot of water to boil on the stove. Once it is hot, add about a cup of water to a measuring cup and add a candy thermometer. Add cold water until you have the temperature between 110° and 115° F. Remove the thermometer and then pour off any excess water (I usually have about a quarter cup extra).

Take the water, sugar and yeast and put in the bottom of a stand mixture and let it proof for about five minutes. In a separate bowl mix the flour, salt and cream of tartar. In a liquid measuring cup, melt the butter in the microwave and then add canola oil until the just over the 0.5 mark.

Add the flour mixture to the yeast at once and with the normal beater, mix for 1 minute. Switch to the dough hook and continue to mix for 2 minutes while adding the butter/oil mixture in a slow steady stream. The oil will not appear to be fully incorporated.

Flour a clean surface and kneed the dough for another minute or so. I used about a half cup of flour. Place the dough in a oiled or buttered bowl and covered with plastic wrap and a warm damp towel. The dough should rise until doubled, about 2 hours. You can also have a long slow rise in the refrigerator. If you rise in the fridge, then let it come to room temperature for about an hour. Preheat the oven to 450° F.

Divide the dough into two sections: 2/3 will be the main crust. Press the dough into a deep cake pan, at least 9 inches across. Raise the dough up the sides one last time before parbaking for 4 minutes.

Filling Ingredients:
3 broccoli crowns
1 large handful of spinach
olive oil and balsamic vinegar
1-2 cups pizza cheese blend
tomato sauce
parmesan cheese

Layer the cheese on the bottom crust. Top with the other filling ingredients. I topped with filling with tomato sauce, though that doesn't appear to be traditional. Stretch or roll the remaining dough over the toppings and cover with tomato sauce and parmesan. Bake at 450° F for 40-45 minutes.

One thing to keep in mind. You really need a cake pan ideally bigger than I used. Try for 10- to 12-inch pan that is at least 2 inches deep. The top crust should cover the topings but still meet up with the outer crust like a plan. It is delicious and filled most of Chris's criteria. To see the rest of the pizza pictures, go to Flickr.

the big round thing

It still mostly looks like nothing, but this is a sweater, I promise. I am almost ready to do the bind off, and then I will continue with the welt pattern filling in the bottom half of the sweater. There is just a small problem.

I don't have enough yarn.

That's not completely true. I don't have enough yarn here. I have another skein of Party Angel, but that is taking a fair amount of time to get through. I'm still on my second skein. However, the Berocco Flicker is another story. I have that tiny ball and one other with me. I am almost positive that I can get through both of those and then I will have to stop before starting the sleeve/bodice area.

The construction of this sweater is a bit more interesting than I initially gave the designer credit for. Most of the circle sweaters I've seen before are basically a circle with two holes where bind off and cast on stitches (or similar) and then pick up and work down the sleeves. With this, you leave a relatively small area bound off at the top and continue working, creating extra length through the body. After you finish the body, you then create a separate sleeve bodice piece that allows you to create a more defined back. The area at the top that you initially bound off is (if I am reading the schematic correctly) a shawl-like collar. I'm looking forward to making more progress on this piece. I am not really looking forward to the mondo seam I have at the end. But with the expected running out of yarn and lack of a good space to block something this large, I don't think I need to worry about that part.

It is a good thing that I have two additional knitting projects and cross-stitch. I won't run out of things to do. Crosswords, knitting, cross-stitch and a book. I have barely touched on these things, because I'm often busy. But during the down moments I'm speedily crafting my way.

And a second glamor shot because I just couldn't resist.

it's sort of a work from home kind of day

While I am away from home and there is plenty to do, this is a lot of downtime too (It's just not always at a useful time to have it). I have knitting, which is well and good; a book, which is not really happening right now; and some work.

I did some transcription work for one of my friends (and after finishing it found a tool that should allow me to do it a bit faster next time), and my husband asked for some graphic design work for BMAG. While I haven't really started (two crops and about 10 pictures to download isn't starting), it is good to have something to do that is outside of the day to day.

The quiet spots of my days lately have been spent in far too much window shopping on my computer. Put a skein of yarn in the shopping cart and then leave the window up for an hour or two, mentally petting the pretty yarn, and then closing the window. It is my version of being good. I have a large stash and I should be knitting it down, using it up, so on and so forth.

I'm still knitting Sheer Beauty and while I did prove to my satisfaction a couple of weeks ago that I had not twisted the stitches when I joined into the round I still feel compelled to check. It is that basic paranoia, though if I only found out now when I am on Welt 15 (I know this probably means nothing to people who haven't at least seen the pattern, but suffice to say that I'm at least 58 rows in) I would possibly scrap the whole thing. I'm pretty sure that frogging Flicker would be trivial, but Party Angel is a mohair-based yarn. I'm glad that I don't need to drive myself crazy frogging that!

When I get back home, I'm thinking of starting $5 in Paris, a simple top down raglan sweater from my stash. It is designed to use those mediocre yarns that you buy from Michael's and similar stores when you are starting. I'm sure I have Caron Simply Soft in my stash. It would be great to turn it from dead weight into something!

the best husbands

send their wives YouTube videos of the family dog when things are rough and sad. Well, things have been rough and sad and here is a video!

 

Now, it isn't completely clear what Victor is licking. My gut feeling (hopefully the Hubster will clarify) is that we are seeing a piece of plastic from a treat container was spread wth a bit of peanut butter and then Victor licked his merry way to a clean(ish) piece of plastic.

I only got about 2.5 hours of sleep last night, so I need a licking puppy to make everything all better (and so my vision will not go fuzzy on me)!

In knitting news, I got some more work done on Sheer Beauty. It looks like sheer wide lasagna noodles. Attractive maybe, but not yet a sweater! I have 3 knitting projects with me, but I cannot work on any of them until I have achieved either more sleep or gotten off my butt and gotten breakfast. Yeah, still only have a half banana and coffee in me.