Category Archives: kitchen

cable appreciation time.

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ulsweaterclose

ulsweater2

Nope, I didn’t knit this — but someone did. This slouchy, sheepy cardigan is a find from my new favorite thrift store in town. The sweater has been clearly loved — a few small holes, some evidence of repair, a missing button, but I just could not leave it to languish on the hanger. This sweater is perfect for reading, tea-drinking, and crafting, don’t you think?

servicelge-sweater

And it cost me 9 dollars. Crazy. While wearing this sweater, I made some progress on my toe up socks at a lovely craft night/This American Life radio gathering hosted by a dear friend. Here’s the Monday morning kitchen photo of how sock number 2 is coming along:

sock2

I can’t wait to wear these. Maybe by the end of the week?

Also, we enjoyed more “Deb appreciation time” this weekend, in the form of smitten kitchen recipe preparation. On Friday afternoon, I made her key lime coconut cake. I halved the sugar in the frosting, but otherwise, followed Deb’s instructions. This is a a fantastic dessert — light, citrusy and a little sweet, with the added bonus that it is easy to rationalize eating a slice for breakfast.

coconut-cake-1

coconut-cake-2

We also made a recipe from Deb’s archives for dinner on Friday night: the indian-spiced vegetable fritters. These were absolutely delicious, and the process was just what we needed. Nice to be in the kitchen together chopping, frying, stirring, etc. after a long week. We were too busy eating to take lots of photos, but I do have one of the final batch of fritters in the frying pan:

vegetable-fritters

Again, yum. I ate the last few fritters for dinner on Sunday straight out of the fridge, and they were just as tasty!

How did it become March? As seems to be my blogging/morning routine, it’s time to pour a second cup of coffee and continue reading. Have a great day!

process.

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Wednesday is the day I get to stay home. I have no obligations calling me to campus, but I tend to have the most important book of the week to read — often for a meeting Thursday morning one-on-one with my advisor. These are the books that tend to speak to me, and these meetings, while often incredibly challenging, leave me with a feeling of affirmation that this is what I want to be doing. That part feels good.

The actual process of reading a book for a Thursday meeting? Time consuming, because it needs to be read carefully  (and should be, given that it is more relevant to my fields than most of what I read in my other classes). It is so easy to read 20 pages, only to realize that your mind was wandering, and you didn’t really catch what so-and-so was getting at in chapter 3. That does not quite cut it during Thursday meeting, so I’ve taken to using Wednesday to get other things done during the reading process in order to make sure I’m paying attention. All this to say that, despite the fact that I have no actual pictures of the reading process, I  can show you lots of the things I got done yesterday, in between chapters:

Hung out with the dog:

dog1

dog2

Baked oatmeal-cranberry-walnut cookies, based on Deb’s recipe from earlier this week:

oatmeal-cranberry1

Worked more of the foot of the sock, in 5 or 6 row increments throughout the day:

toeup2progress

After a particularly long chapter, I took this guy to the dog park:

dog3

What a ham. I also managed to do laundry, bake a loaf of bread, and have an ichat knitting date with a dear friend. I realize that this post makes grad school look like a piece of cake, but I stand by this particular approach to Wednesday: solid, focused reading, a chapter at a time, interspersed with productive tasks (laundry, errands, food prep) and fun (knitting, playing with dog) helps things to stick better, and means I don’t waste as much time losing focus/drifting off/etc. Note to self — do this more!

Apologies if the blog is getting a bit repetitive! These days I feel like my schedule looks a lot like this:

Read (a lot). Knit (a little). Repeat.

Time to pour another cup of coffee, read the epilogue, and make some thoughtful notes for my meeting.

Progress.

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This week, I’ve been reading a lot about Progress (with a capital P) and modernization in the 19th century. Something about all the language of improvement, advancement, expansion, etc. made me pick up my toe up sock project again (despite the fact that I think I most enjoyed reading things that explored the uneasiness with ideas of modernity that existed alongside the narrative of Progress).

toe-up-first-sock

Strange light in my house this morning — these socks have a lot more green in them than you can see in this photo. The lights and darks are definitely pooling, and there is a big weird dark splotch near the top (a function of the calf shaping I’m adding rather sporadically), but I actually love the big chunks of light/dark that make stripes.

After several false starts, this sock is flying. This expansion of my sock-knitting skill set would not be possible without this tutorial over at knitting by bicycle. The heel does not involve wrapping, and for that, I am extremely grateful. I’m so excited about being able to knit tall socks without worrying about how much yarn I’m using, and I’m thinking that this is going to turn into an almost knee-sock! (Yay.)

eggs-and-bread

I took this picture last week: fried eggs, homemade bread, good coffee, and at least ten minutes with the New Yorker = a good day.

Back to work — hoping to reward myself with finishing this sock today!

“feeling” productive.

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The keyword there is “feeling,” folks. Yesterday was such a day: only a few hours of academic work was completed, but I managed to go grocery shopping, make all sorts of deliciousness in the kitchen, teach someone to knit, and attend reading group.

smashed-chickpea-salad

Smashed chickpea salad, adapted from Smitten Kitchen. (Shocking, I know.) My version lacked olives and bread, to make it a sandwich, but this was even better than I expected.

bread-and-brownies

More applesauce bread (I’ve been making at least a loaf a week lately) and Mark Bittman’s basic brownies — I know I’ve posted these before, but it has been several months since the last time I baked them. These were for a friend’s birthday. and they were every bit as good as I remembered them to be. And so easy! Why aren’t you making them already?

snowing

Yesterday afternoon, after several days of green grass and muddy walks with Boh, the snow began to fall again, in huge, wet flakes. Yay!

oscar-blocking

Progress on the baby sweater. At last. The ribbed baby jacket is blocking, and is almost dry. This afternoon, I will sew the seams together and weave in the ends. I ended up making a buttonhole in case I go that route, and after looking at snaps yesterday, I think I’d prefer a bright button. If I can’t make it to the yarn shop, I may swipe the blue button from my gathered cardi. We’ll see…

Time for coffee and actual productivity, instead of just feelings of productivity!

lobsters.

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It all started innocently. A dear friend came over to bake and decompress. She is far more talented in the land of dough, so she did the honors:

kate-hands-hearts

hearts

In my desperate search for a heart cookie cutter, I came across a few other shapes that I simply could not bear to abandon mere days before the retail holiday of affection.

lovelobster

Thus, love lobsters. (These cookies are also courtesy of Deb at Smitten Kitchen — the coconut shortbread cookies posted recently.)

My valentine and I (and Boh) managed an afternoon walk to celebrate. The ground was frozen, but the sun was shining.

monkeyrun

monkeyrun2

For dinner, I turned to Deb again — this stuffed cabbage recipe had caught my eye. There are lots of leftovers, and all parties are excited about that. My only hot tip? Next time, I’m going to use cooked rice, as the half cup mixed into the filling seemed to take forever to cook. (As in, many jokes were cracked about our romantic three course meal — the first two courses being delicious rolls of cabbage and filling, with slightly underdone rice.)

cabbage-drying

stuffed-cabbage

I rarely remember to take pictures before we eat — while I was packaging leftovers, I realized I wanted to document this meal, so I dumped the container back into the pot…splitting open a few of the rolls. Trust me when I say this can/did look prettier, and that it was delicious, homey and hearty.

Time to get some work done on this Sunday afternoon — hoping to have some knitting to share very soon…

birthday weekend.

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I have a whole slew of unrelated (or maybe loosely connected) photos: knits in action, kitchen adventures, knitting mistakes… Hmmm. I promise NOT to name this post something about the letter K.

Friday:

bolero-in-action1

Bolero Jacket in action. I feel like I read a lot from folks about how sometimes knitting is not super wearable, and my blog gets lots of visitors who are looking for advice on wearing things like legwarmers, so I’ve been a bit more mindful of snapping photos when I am actually wearing things I’ve made (not that I consider myself remotely fashionable). This sweater gets a lot of wear around the house, and steps into real life when the weather is variable enough to warrant a heavy sweater but not a winter coat — this works best for me with a big puffy vest. I wear this when I need to bring a bit of comfort with me — in this case, the discussion of a tough book.

fork-for-scale

Friday night, we made pizza and lemon tart (from deb at smitten kitchen, of course). No pictures of the pizza. Note the fork for scale in this picture. I also discovered some serious errors with my increasing on the BSJ I’ve been working on — I literally had 6 ridges left to knit when I realized that my increases (for the fronts of the sweater) were uneven. I don’t even have the heart to photograph the problem, nor could I stomach ripping back. I just put it aside, dug through the stash, and cast on for a baby version of the bolero jacket.

Saturday:

biscuits1

moroccan-stew

Moroccan Stew (from deb) and biscuits (a la Mark Bittman). Also, a new spindle arrived:

newspindle

I LOVE this spindle. I spun the sample fiber it came with immediately, and may need to dig through my fiber stash to start something new so that I can put it to work. The spindle is from Spinsanity, and it spins wonderfully. Hooray for birthday presents to myself.

Sunday (actually anniversary of my birth):

birthday-cake

Homemade birthday cake, not baked by me. Honey-Rosemary Cake with Lemon Frosting, from Apples for Jam. This is incredibly delicious, the kind of cake you can eat several pieces of during the day and not feel like you’re overdosing on sugar. I intend to have some for breakfast after I post this.

replacement-sweater

And since this purports to be a knitting blog, here’s the progress I’ve made on my replacement baby sweater. Just about halfway done already — what a difference worsted weight yarn makes. I’ve had enough distance from my BSJ to take a look, and I imagine I’ll rip back and keep going — it may go to this baby, or to the next. Lots of folks in my life are adding to their families this year!

Hope you all had lovely weekends. Sadly, you don’t get to stop reading when it is your birthday, but I did slow down a bit. Time to have some of that cake and prep for class!

plying!

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singles-balls

I still haven’t finished my book for this afternoon’s class, but yesterday I made some serious progress on my first plyed yarn. First, I wound my singles into balls.

2-strand-ball

Then, I wound these balls into a single 2-strand ball.

plying

And now, I’m plying! I’m still working on understanding the differences between under-plying, over-plying and “just right”-plying, so my expectations for this particular skein are low…but even so, I love it! This looks to me like it ranges from light worsted to a thinner bulky weight yarn, and I can’t wait to turn it into something for me.

While winding my singles, I made a pot of rather unconventional kitchen sink chili — leftover pork from the dumplings, black beans and corn instead of kidney or pinto beans, etc. and a batch of cornbread. Both were soothing and warm — just what my sort-of scratchy throat was craving.

chili-and-cornbread

Also, this is what greeted me when I got out of the shower this morning:

pouting-boh

I imagine I look sort of like this before I’ve had my first cup of coffee…

quiet weekend.

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applesauce-bowl

more-giant-muffins

more-sushi

helping

Good and good-for-us food was enjoyed, some reading was accomplished, and a cozy clapotis got some serious wear:

knit-in-action

Back to it. What if Boh actually helped with the reading, instead of just lounging NEAR my books?

Hoping to get some in some knitting on that BSJ later on this afternoon. (No SuperBowl watching occurring here…) Happy Sunday, all.

ugly dumplings.

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dsc05635

But boy, were they ever good, and a perfect way to mark the conclusion of a work-filled, exhausting week. The next 18 or so dumplings were much prettier, but I happened to have the camera out to document the first batch.

Have a great weekend!

purple potatoes, pickled onions and progress.

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Apologies for my kindergarten-esque approach to blogging this week. I’m going to chalk it up to the fact that my brain is tired — first “real” meeting with my committee this morning. It will be fine, but the meeting does have the word “exam” in the title, and I’m still a tad nervous.

Onward to the letter “P”.

purple-potatoes

Purple Potatoes. These are, in fact, from my friend P.’s farm! Aren’t they beautiful?

egg-and-pickled-red-onions

Pickled Onions — from  (where else) Smitten Kitchen — Deb made a pickled red onion and escarole salad last week that sounded incredible, so I made the onions, put them on a bed of spinach and fried an egg to make it dinner.

bsj-progress

Progress. This baby is going to arrive any moment now, and I really would love to be able to give this to my committee chair next week. I have a knitting date right after the meeting with my committee. Knitting friends + garter stitch = therapy.

Happy weekend.