Toast with cream cheese and strawberry balsamic jam.
Broccoli raab and kale with garlic, chile, and a fried egg.
The border of my ripe bananas lap blanket.
I set aside Thursday afternoon for writing. And while the words didn’t come easily, I’m a few paragraphs richer today.
(Nope, not talking about the applesauce! I’m only halfway through the bushel.)
I walked into the university bookstore on my way to lecture yesterday to grab a few more brightly colored pens, in anticipation of the scribbling I’ll be doing as I revise my own work this weekend and the pile of papers my students will be turning in on Monday. On my way in, Plenty, by Diana Henry, caught my eye. I picked it up, and after flipping through it, I walked all the way around the table it was on in order to find the other copies. When I wasn’t able to locate them, I decided that I just couldn’t bear to put this copy down, and so it came home with me.
I don’t think I’ve ever taken pictures of the inside of a cookbook before, but this book is gorgeous. Thick paper, saturated colors, beautifully-staged photography, mouth-watering recipes — all aimed at the “home cook.” (That’s me!) This cookbook contains a nice range of meat and veggie options, with lots of discussion about leftovers. This is a cookbook about eating and living well while being conscious of the politics of growing, preparing, and eating food. I’m a mostly-vegetarian cook because I can’t always source (or afford) the kind of meat I am comfortable eating — meat from animals raised kindly and locally, on farms that care about long term ecological health. Diana Henry provides advice for a cook with my politics, and offers an impressive number of recipes for “less popular” cuts of meat — the kind that maybe someone like me can afford from a local farmer. She thinks about refrigerator continuity — a weekend roast that serves as the base for several other possibilities later in the week.
Can you tell I’m excited about this book?
I am also incredibly excited about this blanket — so much so that I’d like to submit it instead of the paper I’m revising to my department for consideration. (Too bad that’s not really an option.) I’m working on the last section of the blanket before the border, and I cannot wait to curl up with this on the couch. Hopefully I’ll have some FOs around here soon, in both written and knitted form…
My university has an orchard, and that orchard began its annual apple sale this weekend: buy half a bushel, get half a bushel free. (Chair for scale.)
Applesauce, simmering.
Packed, stacked, and ready to go into the freezer. This was the first batch of the week. Batch #3 is simmering on the stove right now. I am going to be ready for winter! (If only the paper I’m presenting later this month were as easy to prepare.)
As you can see, I’m making good progress on my ripe bananas lap blanket. (I’m aiming to finish it this weekend!) I wrapped up the lace section with the red and taupe shetland singles, and then switched to some Cascade 220 in a heathered, rusty red to keep the darkening gradient going. (In case anyone is wondering, 1.4 oz of Cascade 220 is pretty much exactly how much yarn you need to knit 1.5 inches of this blanket on 7s when the stitch count is in the 450 st range and increasing. Phew!)
Next up, more handspun. As soon as I get this Spunky Club corriedale in the New Day colorway wound into a ball, I’ll be on my way.
And here are the veggies I roasted for dinner last night: potatoes, fennel, and beets, all from the farm. Yum.
Last night, at about eight o’clock, I decided that I just couldn’t look at the pages of a book anymore. And so I dug out an unfinished spinning project: 3 oz. of BFL blend in the Fireside Chat colorway from the AVFKW Woolly Wonders Fiber Club. I’d already spun one bobbin, so I turned on an episode of Planet Money (great npr podcast, which you can find here), and spun the second half of the fiber, albeit a bit thicker in places than the first.
I made a half-head of romaine-sized portion of my dad’s caesar salad recipe (so good), and returned to the reading. (Sneak peak of my progress on the ripe bananas lap blanket test knit.)
And then I plied and washed the Fireside Chat BFL, and it poofed up. (Yay!) While in the kitchen, I snapped a photo of this very lonely cranberry muffin:
A dozen cranberry muffins – (one rooster reading + one boy writing a dissertation proposal) = one muffin remaining.
Must it be Monday?
(Okay, it was a red kabocha squash. Also known as a Japanese pumpkin. I made the alliterative choice.)
Cranberry pancakes for lunch. (Fresh cranberries, from my favorite little farm/market hybrid.)
Red kabocha squash, stuffed with a mixture of local sausage, kale, onions, mushrooms and rice, and topped with some shredded jack cheese.
A double batch of pear crisp, made with pears from the tree in D and T’s yard. I’m warming this up for breakfast.
And there’s this guy. Leg up in hopes of a belly rub. Sometimes he just lays like that.
No knitting to share, folks. Despite deadlines of the knitting variety fast approaching, the work pile won out yesterday. Grading, reading, corresponding with students — the productive hours disappear. Hoping to find time to curl up with my needles today.
Just now trying to catch my breath after a whirlwind weekend — and it seems fitting to post a few photos from the part of Saturday that felt like a chance to relax for a brief moment. These glimpses out the window onto one of many courtyards capture a bit of what it felt like to be back there, ten years after I first arrived. Just as beautiful, but a bit further away. Light filtered through window panes?
I’m still looking for the pause button these days. Feeling a bit overwhelmed by work and life, and trying to find time to knit.
This seems a bit heavy for Tuesday morning, so I’ll leave you with a photo of the twice-baked potatoes I was craving after Sunday afternoon’s long drive home.
Yum. More soon.
So this is the first half of the grey alpaca I’m spinning for my friend N., after setting the twist and hanging it to dry. While neither of these mini-skeins is next-to-skin soft, I’m really happy with the halo and the sheen of this yarn. What you’re looking at is about 160 yards. I delivered the first half of the alpaca to N. yesterday afternoon, and decided to work on the second half after dinner last night. One of the remaining bumps of fiber felt softer, so I spun that first. Here’s the bobbin:
I think you can see the difference in the quality. N. told me that she paid five bucks for almost eight ounces of this stuff, which makes sense to me. I think some of this fiber is the “good stuff” from the animal, but I think a lot of it might be the hair from the less prize parts of an alpaca’s coat — like the underbelly, maybe? That would explain the amount of veggie matter in the first two bumps. Here’s the final (larger) bump after separating the fibers a bit with my hands:
I love the depth of color in this picture — such a complex grey. This was coarser, more like the first two skeins. I think singles were the right choice for this yarn — and hey, I’m no longer afraid of alpaca! Maybe I’ll dig out what I’ve got from my very first fiber purchase and try again.
I’m pretty sure that this expression has something to do with the fact that Boh finally understands that there is not an alpaca in the kitchen. Just some yarn hanging to dry.
A few glimpses of the weekend:
Deb’s scalloped tomatoes, made with the last of the season’s farm tomatoes.
After dinner hot chocolate made with dutch cocoa, organic sugar, and milk.
And this morning, I pulled on my down booties when I climbed out of bed in the darkness to make my coffee. I’m ready for daylight savings — I’d rather get up with the sun than rise before her.
First of all, thanks for all of your input on my handspun blanket. This time around, the oranges have it, and I am hoping to make some time to wind yarn later today!
I wore my Sunday Market Shawl yesterday, and it was just the burst of color I needed. I reach for this far less often than I thought I would — maybe because of the colors — but it certainly brightens my day when I wear it out of the house. Someday I’ll get around to actually blocking this…
Meet the first pie (for me) of fall. Pears from the tree in the yard of friends, plus one apple to fill out the pie pan, and a crumb topping. Delicious. In fact, this is reheating in the oven right now.
I plied most of my SCF bfl in the reflection colorway while the pie baked, and today I have plans to wash the yarn and set the twist.
Okay, time for pie!
I subbed bourbon for the rum in Kaela’s Pirate Peaches, and boy, am I excited to enjoy these. My entire kitchen (okay, apartment) smells slightly of sweetness and spirits. (Yep, present tense. Batch number 2 is simmering away on the stove, prompted by the fact that a tiny piece of peach prevented one of my jars from sealing properly. Rather than re-process a single jar, I dumped the contents back into the pot with another pile of peaches that were macerating in the fridge, along with the partial jar of leftovers that I didn’t process yesterday [to get me back up to 3 lbs of peaches], added more sugar, more booze, and the appropriate amounts of lemon juice and zest, and I am once again enjoying the aroma of peaches simmering in bourbon.) This time, I’m going to try to get the peaches a bit softer than they were yesterday, and I may even break out the immersion blender to make more of a sauce. I ran into trouble yesterday with the ratio of end-of-season peaches (which I think are harder than peak juicy peaches) to booze/syrup, which is why I had some leftovers.
Also, I have no idea what kind of peaches I picked up at the orchard, but I can tell you that they are not freestone. (Ask me how I know that.) Also, the skins did not slip off as I expected they would, which made for some serious peach wrangling…good thing the bourbon makes it worth it. Another lesson from this project? Simmer peaches with the lid (mostly) on. There may have been a slightly sticky residue coating much of the kitchen floor this morning…
See? I also did some spinning. I am mostly through the second bobbin of my reflection SCF bfl, and am looking forward to plying this soon. Happy weekend!
barefoot rooster 