This content shows Simple View
Today was a mostly usual day – work, chores, etc. – but then i got two different phone calls with much anticipated news. More on those in the next few days.
In the meantime, I feel like today’s jigsaw is an accurate representation of us attempting to decorate a Christmas tree, except instead of having a present hurled in from the window, we just have extremely excitable cats.
‘Tis the season for Holidailies.
We had tentative plans to put up the tree today, but instead, after work, we camped out on the sofa and watched holiday baking competitions and the latest episode of Mistletoe Murders. Which, while not as productive as planned, was still a nice way to end a day.
* * * * *
Much like these mice, I, too, would be very excited to receive a giant box of cheese.
‘Tis the season for Holidailies.
A couple months ago Knitty.com re-released one of their earliest patterns: Clapotis, for its 25th anniversary.
I’ve made a couple of these over the years, since it’s fun way to use up variegated yarn, and the pattern is simple enough that you can do it almost anywhere, without having to constantly refer to charts or text.
I have no idea where this yarn in my stash came from, but when I saw they had re-released the pattern, I decided it would be perfect for making a couple more of these simple shawls.
I finished this one in late November. I started this long before the election, back when we all had hope that our fellow Americans were smart enough to vote for the obvious better choice, but the aftermath of that have rather tainted this, due to the color (let’s just say that I certainly did NOT vote for the orange shitgibbon and his facist compatriots). But I am trying to keep my distaste from all things GOP separate from my joy over having a new finished object. So here it is in all its (unfortunately red) glory.
Sherman was absolutely determined to ‘help’ me with photographing this, as evidenced by the grey blur at the bottom of the second picture.
* * * * *
The expression on the cat’s face in today’s jigsaw puzzle is everything.
‘Tis the season for Holidailies.
I mentioned earlier that we traveled for the holidays. It was my younger sister’s turn to host, so while we were actually in the same place (instead of doing it in our own kitchens) we decided to tackle one of the Great British Bake Off challenge recipes together (yes, at this point we’re both a little behind on those).
For the 70’s week, the challenges were three things that were apparently a big deal in that decade: profiterole stacks (aka croquembouche), banoffee pie, and gateau cake. Of those, both of us have done profiteroles multiple times before (they are actually not as difficult as they are often made out to be, but maybe that’s because I’ve been making them for as long as I can remember, and they weren’t ever that big a deal, who knows), and the gateaux cake was a bit more than either of us wanted to handle.
Originally, I was going to swap out the banana for some cooked apple discs in mine, because I eat approximately one banana a year, usually only when offered as a dipper for chocolate fondue, and otherwise avoid them because the smell is *obnoxious*. But since this was going to be for the whole family we decided to do follow Paul Hollywood’s recipe (it was the Technical bake), and just see what happened.
I’ve heard people gushing over banoffee pie for years, and….okay? It’s a pie crust filled with caramel, topped with banana slices, then a layer of whipped cream. It’s….not that exciting, actually. Maybe my distaste for bananas makes me miss the point?
Anyway. The caramel layer was quite tasty, and the crust was perfectly flakey. I might still try it with apples instead, or else maybe make just the caramel and eat that directly out of the pan using apples as a spoon, since that would be quicker anyway.
* * * * *
We were very pleased that we needed no extra clues to figure out today’s Escape Room advent calendar puzzle, and today’s tiny jigsaw puzzle made me giggle.
‘Tis the season for Holidailies.
Welcome to December, wherein I try to update this (sadly neglected) blog every day for a whole month! And happy 25th anniversary to Holidailies!
Today has been a very long day. We flew back Washington pretty late last night, after spending several days at my younger sister’s house, with all the family, for Thanksgiving. I don’t sleep well in the best of times, even in my own bed, and traveling makes it even worse, so I was pretty wiped out by the time we headed home, and the cats were very needy after being all alone* for years and years**.
(* We have a fantastic pet sitting service, so they were well taken care of.
** It was only 3 days, despite all the tales of sadness and woe they told me in the wee hours of the morning.)
Today was Richard’s family’s Thanksgiving celebration, so we assembled a veggie casserole for him to take, plus a big pot of potato cheese soup, since it’s definitely soup weather. I, however, could not attend, since today was also recording day for our upcoming concert, so he headed off alone and I instead went and sang for several hours straight.
But at least there was some time this morning to kick off the month with some new advent calendars. This year we each got one of our own, plus one to share. We had such fun with the Escape Room calendar last year that we decided to try another one.
Sadly, we were both completely confused and had to end up looking at the clues for today’s. I am telling myself that that is because we were both still so tired this morning. Hopefully by tomorrow we’ll have better luck with our guesses. Ha.
My individual advent calendar is another jigsaw puzzle one, although this time instead of all the days combining into one big picture, each day is its own little surprise scene, which is definitely more my style.
Here is Day One. I’m definitely going to enjoy these.
‘Tis the season for Holidailies.
Let’s veer back to some knitting, shall we?
I started this shawl because I was actively avoiding working on some unfinished socks and I knew if I just knit *something*, eventually my brain would decide that those pesky socks weren’t so bad and I’d be able to finish them. Plus, this pattern has been in my queue for an inordinately long time.
This is not the best yarn to use for this project, and so chances are pretty high I’m going to dye it at some point in the near future (perhaps a dull green, or a dusky blue, or even a milk chocolate color) – something that will let the full effect of the pattern itself come through, but it was what I had in the stash that was the right size, and so I was happy to find a way to use some of it up.
This is the Photography Shawl, and it is a deceptively simple pattern, in that all the really fun patterning comes about from just knits and purls. The widest section also includes some decreases, to switch it up from columns to waves, but otherwise, still knits and purls and the regular decreases.
Here’s a close-up of the ending section, which is my favorite part of the pattern.
I know it looks a little discombobulated in the pictures, but that’s because technically you’re not supposed to block it. Normally I’d pin something like this out to a proper shape, to even up the edges, except that the whole point of this pattern is to embrace the texture created by the knits and the purls, and so pinning it out would ruin that entire effect. So instead I gave it a wash and then laid it out on some blocking mats outside, and tried to pat it into some sort of rough shape, without losing the texture, and this is the result.
Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.
Today I looked at the calendar and thought, okay, so I know we don’t actually do Valentine’s Day (mutual decision we both are quite happy about), but surely we can use it as a teensy tiny excuse for me to make
Richard enthusiastically agreed with this plan, so this morning before work I made the sponge, and whipped up the mascarpone and cream filling. Once the sponge was cooled enough, I cut out rings of cake and soaked them in a coffee syrup, and then layered them with the mascarpone cream in two wide-mouth mason jars with sprinkles of cocoa powder between everything. Then I covered them up and popped them in the fridge so the coffee soak would have time to do its thing during the day, and then after dinner, we got to enjoy them.
These were quite delicious, and super easy and quick to make. I really appreciate that lately King Arthur Baking Company has been sharing a lot more recipes scaled down for only a few servings. Plus there’s some cake scraps left, and there’s still lemon curd in the fridge, so I think we’ll getting one more tasty dessert out of this when we’re done.
Making a thing a day for
Technically I didn’t make this in one day, but as this is my challenge, I get to play with the rules, and so I’m going to run with it.
The last couple months I have been staring at some unfinished projects and thinking I really ought to do them, except I just didn’t want to. So instead I cast on a scarf kit that a friend gave me. The yarn is a four-stranded cotton yarn where the color of a single strand changes every once in a while, so that you end up with a fun color change throughout the course of the piece. It was the sort of project where it required absolutely no thought at all, and was perfect to take on car trips, or when sitting with family or friends. I knit until the yarn was almost used up, and then bound off, and then it sat there, lurking, in a project bag, for far too long, until today when I dug it out and finally wove in the ends.
This is a horrible picture of it, but it was late when I took it, so oh well. I do like the colors – it goes from a soft cream to a warm brown and the entire time I was working on it I thought it reminded me of a latte.
This will be perfect for when I need something soft and cozy on a trip. It’s double-sided because it’s all garter stitch, so no worry about whether I’m arranging it right, and it’s cotton, so it won’t be overly warm in inclement weather.
Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.
Today is all about breakfast, and surprise, it’s not a baked item!
When you have a bunch of leftover tiny potatoes, and also half a bag of celery in the fridge that needs using up, plus one lonely onion, then it’s time to chop everything up (along with a sweet potato) and turn it all into a big pan of hash.
You need to time everything so your veggies all end up cooked to you preferred level (oops, my sweet potato chunks got a little mushy), but then when it’s done, you dump a big scoop onto a plate and top that with a well-cooked sunny side up egg, and poof, you’ve got a lovely filling breakfast, plus leftovers for the next couple days.
Next time I’ll maybe swap in carrots instead of the sweet potato, as that’s less likely to go mushy with overcooking, but otherwise this is pretty tasty, and at least the next couple days’ worth of breakfast is sorted.
Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.
Today counts as a double because it was a Baking Sisters day, and since we’re still working our way through the states, this month we decided to tackle Montana and Nebraska.
I should note, for the record, that most states don’t actually have any sort of ‘official’ food (although some certainly do), so we have to rely on the internet to give us ideas, on either something the state is known for (producing) or something that’s most often found in restaurants in that area. So for Montana, we picked Butte Pasties, and for Nebraska we picked popcorn balls, because apparently Nebraska is a huge producer of popcorn.
Pasties are one of those foods that’s been around forever, in various forms. Let’s face it, basically every culture eventually develops a food that can be carried around and eaten without the need for a plate or silverware, and the outer casing is usually some kind of pastry dough. In this case, it’s a basic butter-based pastry dough (there are other versions that use lard, but as we’ve determined in previous challenges, my sister and I prefer to avoid that when possible). We made the dough and then, even though the recipe didn’t call for it, popped it into the fridge to chill while we made the filling. I chose to make the traditional filling, which is cubed beef, onions, and potatoes.
Once you have a huge bowl of filling, then you divide the dough into 4 pieces, and roll each piece out into a round the size of the dinner plate (yes, really). Divide the filling between the four ginormous dough circles, then fold the dough in half over the filling, and seal the edges with a little bit of whisked egg. The tops are given a quick egg wash, and then they go into the oven and bake for roughly an hour, which seems like an inordinately long time to bake anything involving pastry dough, but which is necessary for all the raw meat and veggies to actually cook through.
It’s hard to get a sense of size from these, I know, but Richard and I split one between us and it was plenty for an extremely filling lunch. The rest will go into the freezer for future lunches.
These were fairly easy to throw together, and I could easily see doing similar pasties (maybe without the potato but perhaps some additional veggies – carrot, double the onion, a little chopped celery, leeks) and even ground meat instead of the cubed stew meat to save some time in the prep work. Delicious.
And now on to Nebraska. My sister and I decided to make Peanut Butter Popcorn Balls, because why not. And here’s where it gets amusing.
Today happens to also be a Big Day if you care about Sports Ball. So Richard went to the store first thing this morning like he usually does the morning of our Baking Sisters sessions, except that we very belatedly realized that the stores would be packed due to everyone getting ready for the big Sports Ball Event. Oops. Anyway. The point of this little sidebar is that the only popcorn he could find was little bags of microwave popcorn. Okay. So those should still be fine, right?
Ha. No. The package said the bag should only take about 1 to 1 1/2 minute to pop. After zapping it for probably closer to 8 minutes, I still didn’t have more than half the kernels popped. In fact, despite the fact that the package said each bag should have produced over 5 cups of popped corn (and I only needed 5 cups), I ended up having to microwave three separate bags, in order to get enough popped corn to use for the recipe. And on the other side of the videocamera, my sister was having very similar problems with her plain popcorn she was trying to pop in a pan on the stove. We both found it pretty amusing that the most difficult part of today’s baking adventure was popping corn. Thanks Nebraska!
But anyway. Corn finally popped, you then make a caramel out of corn syrup and sugar, and once that’s done, you stir in peanut butter and a little vanilla, and then you very quickly mix that into the popcorn until it’s well coated. Let it sit for just long enough so you can work with it, and then it gets formed into balls.
These are definitely snack sized little confections (each one has only about half a cup of popcorn in them), but they turned out quite tasty. My caramel was the perfect consistency so the balls hold their shape without it being too brittle. The peanut butter flavor comes through, but also the caramel, and the whole thing is a chewy, delicious treat. Nebraska, you are forgiven!
Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.