AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

[10 Tuesday] the joys of a long weekend

This week's 10 for Tuesday is what we did this weekend. In the United States, this past weekend was Memorial Day weekend. In the past, it is a weekend where I ran a half marathon, but those days are at least temporarily behind me.

This weekend instead of running involved almost a trifecta.

1. We tried to see the Sox play on Friday, but while the game itself wasn't rained out, I was. It was wet and cold and I took my pregnant body home rather than see how long I could hack it. I guess that means I couldn't hack it very long.

2. Replaced my Fuel Band. I love my Fuel Band, but I was getting an 802 error. So, Friday I walked to the Nike Store and dripped on their floor while they replaced it for me. I love the replacement policy on these little devices. Of course, mine is set to 3000, which for someone who wears it all day long is a little low. Even one moderate length dog walk gets me a third of the way there.

3. Walk the dog. Even when it was raining it still needed to happen and so out I went.

4. Knitting. It was the Knitter's Brunch at Gather Here, and I found my gift certificate and bought fabric for a class at Squam and a single 50 gram skein of sock yarn to help finish my Breezy Cardigan. I got a fair amount of knitting done, and by the end of the long weekend had finished my second sleeve.

5. Made cookies. Specifically spicy olive oil chocolate chip cookies.

6. Made barbeque flavored vegetable burgers (is it me or does it sound pretentious to spell out vegetable in this context instead of using veggie). I base mine on the recipe in Angry Chicken. The latest batch was a little vegetable light and so it made 8 burgers. I am planning to make another batch using some more of the great northern beans I cooked up.

7. Went to a barbeque. I brought the veggie burgers and 10 of the cookies and almost all of the cookies went. So, apparently 1 tablespoon of ghost chili olive oil wasn't too much after all.

8. Researched recipes. I made this fluffy white cake today, but I spent a decent chunk of the weekend looking for a recipe. Just a note. If you try to make the entire recipe in a deep 9" pan, then expect it to take at least 50 minutes before you need to check it. I started checking at 30 minutes, and then again every 5 minutes. I eventually got tired of that and instead checked it every 10 minutes. I estimate that I finally pulled it out at about 65 minutes.

9. Cleaned. What? We thought for a while that we were having an open house this weekend, so cleaning was definitely on the list of things to do.

10. Ate ice cream. My friend made this amazing rocky road (not chocolate based) ice cream that she will be sharing next month. Of course, this makes me want to make the Nutella Rocky Road ice cream again. I have all of the ingredients for it, though after tonight's cake making I also have 7 egg yolks to use up.

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Mexicana Chocolate Chip Cookies

0300 hours

Mexicana Chocolate Chip Cookies

Squam is in under two weeks. For the past two years I have made cookies to share with the cabinmates and cookies to have out at registration. So, today I started out making cookies.

This will be the smallest batch of cookies, because they might be too traumatic for other more normal people.

I made olive oil chocolate chip cookies (the things I find when i decide I want to add more things to Pinterest).

My cookies are not the same even though almost everything matches. It is the additions that make them unique.

The nice thing about the olive oil cookies is that they do not contain butter and if you forgo the optional milk and use dairy free chocolate chips, then these cookies are dairy free. I, however, have plenty of milk to use up, so I used a tablespoon of milk. Low enough dairy that some of my lactose intolerant friends could eat it unmedicated, though admittedly not all of them.

My cookies?

Ghost chili infused olive oil.

My friends and I were going to do a hell night in March, which never panned out. However, to prep for my part, I started infusing the olive oil last year (July or August, though my memory is a bit rusty). I've got about half of the bottle left. I have used the oil in granola (I love it there), and I have used it in my favorite bread recipe, and I have given some of it away. It isn't hard to make. 

Ghost Chili infused olive oil

Ingredients
1 750ml container of cold pressed virgin olive oil (I used Il Grezzo, because it has a relatively wide recappable mouth)
4-6 dried ghost chili peppers

Instructions
Yes, two ingredients. Most infused olive oils are labors of time not of ingredients.

Remove about 1/4 cup of olive oil from the container and set aside. Cut the ghost chilis into strips and put the strips into the olive oil. Top off with the remaining olive oil. It might not all fit depending on the available headspace. Store in a cool dry place for at least a month before using.

Now, it is better if you can swirl or mix it up every couple of weeks, but that isn't necessary. It is also unnecessary to remove the ghost chilis. I have been leaving mine in and it doesn't necessarily taste like ghost chilis, but it does taste like distilled spice. As such it can be added sparingly (if you have mostly normal spice tolerances) to anything you want to add heat to without interfering with the other spices.

For the olive oil chocolate chip cookies, I measured out a single tablespoon of the ghost chili olive oil and then topped up the rest to the 1/4 cup mark. The heat is not noticable at first, but is definitely present by the end of half a cookie. To round out the Mexican chocolate flavor, I added a teaspoon of ground cinnamon to the dry ingredients. I also used less chocolate chips, a scant cup rather than a heaping cup, but there is still chocolate in almost every bite (for smaller bites).

there are no good titles

I'm away and then back again and then away. It's not that I don't want to write on the blog, it is that I don't have anything to say or rather don't have anything I think I should say.

And even that isn't true.

I'm almost 23 weeks along (one of the stupid pregnancy counters helps me remember). I am feeling kicking, which is awesome. I am assuming that at some point it will become onerous, but I have been waiting long enough that I am pretty sure that even onerous painful kicks will be super welcome.

I am knititng. Right now I am knitting the Breezy Cardigan and have been for almost 2 months. It is a top down, seamless cardigan by Hannah Fettig. Mine has been mostly a stash busting experience, so it is stripy. And feels huge. I'm on the second sleeeve and after that I have the ribbing on both the left and right front and then the collar ribbing. I am hoping to be done in time for Squam.

I love Squam. It feels weird that I might be having my last trip to Squam. I know people come from all over, but I've always been a few hours travel away. This time next year I will be in Kentucky, and travel will be more complicated. I have to wonder if I will be able to make that difference, or maybe I will be able to convince my husband that he can come with and we can make a family trip of it (well, sans Victor and Saru-chan. Dogs aren't allowed).

But rather than borrowing trouble, or at least borrowing that trouble, I'm entering into that low grade panic. Our home is still on the market. I know people are seeing it. The latest group included a couple with two daughters, and our house is definitely perfect for a family. I don't need it to sell right away, but constantly thinking about it selling is just not fun. It makes for strange(r) dreams. What felt like far away (house shopping trip in June) is now countable on one hand (weeks, on one hand!).

So, to manage stress. Knitting, baking and cleaning. More of the knitting and cleaning and a bit less baking, but my house has to be spotless for showings after all.

There will be pictures next post and it won't be 3 weeks or more I promise. I just want to finish the current sleeve!

Three steps to putting a house on the market

Yesterday I mentioned that our house went up on the market. Now, we've had to do this before when we sold our condo, and it doesn't get easier.

For us, the steps usually go like this.

1. Realtor comes over and we walk her through the house/lot and have her tell us what things we should fix. She says declutter about 50 times, and notes a few minor repairs that will have a nice impact on the resale value of our home.

2. We get to the half way stage and have her come by to make sure nothing has changed. While we have obviously gotten rid of a ton of stuff, she says declutter about 30 times and we cry on the inside.

3. After 20 more trips to Good Will and 10 trips to free cycle stuff on the curb, we clean (and pay someone else to clean) our place to shining sparkliness and she comes by and tells us that we need a ton of new smoke/CO detectors, because the laws changed again.

4. We do all that and the house goes on the market. Profit?

If you are like me - and you'll know you are like me if any of the following words could apply to you: hobbyist, packrat, hoarder (but not like the TV kind), slob - then the first step is to take half of your stuff and put it in storage, or a pod. This is the high level getting rid of crap stage, and it is just the stuff you know without considering it that you want to keep.

That won't be enough. With the remaining half of the stuff, decide if you want to keep it, consolidate it into something else (I bought a pressure cooker/multicooker, so I could get rid of multiple small appliances), and get rid of/donate at least another third of your items. Buy trash bags and fill them. Make trips to the dumpster or curb.

Eventually you will be back down to the amount of stuff you had one or two dwellings ago, and that is probably closer to right. If you have a lot of things on your counters, move them into cabinets or drawers. No one wants to see even useful appliances out all over the place.

Scrub. Nope. It's not fun, which is why we hired someone to do at least the bulk of it, or it would have taken us another 2 weeks to get the house on the market.

What does that have to do with knitting? Well, I ran a stash sale and it is still going on. I also have more yarn to put up for sale. It's like the potential mess that keeps on giving. Now I'm going to procrastinate for a bit on touch up cleaning and knit.