Cat Knit

When learning new knitting techniques, I find it useful to practice on objects where the recipient may not notice or care about a few flubs here or there. When I was learning how to do increases and decreases, I practiced on catnip mouse toys for my two spoilt cats. They love em. And they don't mind that the shaping is a bit wierd. They got toys, I got to learn new stiches.

I've recently taught myself how to cable and practiced knitting with novelty yarns (FunFur and Boa)...once again by turning out projects for the cats in my life. The FunFur is not recommended for this particular application, as the mouse comes out looking...well, a bit frightening. I can barely make out the ears! The Boa yarn resulted in better looking mouse - fuzzy, but not too fuzzy. Mouse pattern was from WendyKnits.

Breakfast of Champions!

mmm...Chocolate....and even better...it was for Breakfast!

Thank you so much to Raquel and Chad for the absolutely delicious Black Magic Brownies from Zingerman's. They were a wonderful breakfast treat, paired with Organic Sumatra coffee from D'Amico Foods in NYC. Even better as a dessert with vanilla ice cream and dulce de leche....I go into sugar overload just thinking about it!

String Theory

For some reason, it seems that no matter how big my stash is, I still need to run out and purchase more yarn to get projects underway. Why is this? I've finally finished my French Market Bag and I need to take a photo to get it up on the blog. I've got a couple projects with novelty yarns underway...and I've got a list of holiday knitting that needs some attention. I don't know how it's happened but a bunch of my projects need the same size needles *woe is me* Unless I go acquire some more needles, I'll have to queue up the projects one behind the other....

Tequila!

Thanks to my friend Raquel and her impending move, I acquired a bottle of tequila amongst other tasty things while shopping in her pantry. What to do with said tequila? Margaritas come to mind...but I decided to turn it into a tasty marinade for my dinner...Tequila Lime Pork, Chicken and veggies! What's the recipe, you may ask?

Tequila Lime Marinade for Pork, Chicken and Vegetables:
1/2 cup Tequila
1/2 cup freshly squeezed lime juice
1 jalapeno, sliced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon cayenne
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 bunch cilantro, chopped
1/4 cup olive oil

Combine it all and marinade your meat and veggies overnight. Slap it all on the grill and enjoy!

For the curious, I used the above to marinate about 3 pounds of pork loin chops and chicken breasts along with 1 large onion and 2 huge bell peppers.

mmmm...Courgettes

or zucchini...whichever you prefer, it's all the same to me! Ya gotta love summer, with all the fresh produce that abounds. With fall on its way, it's time to try to sneak in as much of the nice fresh stuff as I can. It really is a shame I don't have a proper garden and have to rely on making my way to farmers markets or on friends who have so many squash they just don't know what to do with it all to get my organic veggie fix. Last summer I was the proud recipient of a gigantic zucchini which made its way into zucchini bread and some cakes. Very tasty. I wish Golden Valley Organics had a more convenient pickup point for me.

In the way of strange things spotted at the market, I saw purple...yes Purple...cauliflower for sale.

Miscellany!

Taking a break from my political reading, I've turned to....Schott's Food and Drink Miscellany! A small and rather random collection of uncommon items regarding food and drink. Just yesterday, I learned the difference between a Brimmer and a Bumper. In addition, the book conveniently tells you how to say "Cheers!" in thirty-two languages. Another interesting musing? Apparently there has been a recent addition to the four "traditional" tastes - raise a hearty welcome to Umami! Umami detects "savory sensations" and joins salt, sweet, sour and bitter. As to whether there is a Umami region of the tongue, the book remains vague.

In the Kitchen, experiments have continued to be curtailed, but I did make a lovely Lentil Stew the other night for dinner. The next weekend or two should find me prepping for a hiking trip, so non-crushable treats will be on the menu.

On the knitting front, I've about one more inch to go on the French Market Bag body before starting my decreases and the handles. A trip was made to the local yarn shop so I could carry on with my project (because none of the yarn in my stash would do!), and I am reminded that now that it is officially fall, I better get moving on my holiday gift making.

My Cat is Wierd.

Not only does he look remarkably like a Gargoyle, my cat also happens to like to eat legumes. And not just any legumes, he has a definite preference for lentils. Brown lentils. While he prefers them cooked, he'll eat cooked and dehydrated lentils (from a curry lentil soup mix). Perhaps he's a gourmand in the making?

Civic Duty

Today was spent hanging out at the local municipal courthouse to serve Jury Duty. I was not one of the lucky few selected, but I did have an opportunity to while away the day being asked miscellaneous questions to see if I qualified. Interestingly enough, out of the cases on the docket today, 50% were DUIs. I'm not quite certain just *what* I think of that. Anywho, my knitting was not confiscated at the security inspection, so I made a bit of progress on my projects :)

K1 *M1 K1 PMSO*

No, it's not some sort of weird code...it's a knitting pattern! And it's what I've been working on lately. It's a custom design by Raquel that I'm testing.

It looks like I might run out of yarn in the skein I'm knitting from now - so it looks like a quick trip to the local yarn store (LYS) is in order. I'll probably change colors for the bottom and handles on the bag, just to make it interesting (well, that and I can't find that yarn anymore).

Like most knitters, I have more than one project on needles...and as I alluded to in my post yesterday, it's another bag. The pattern is from Straw into Gold/Crystal Palace Yarns but I've deviated by using completely different yarns.

The purple portion is going nicely, and I'll probably switch to the grey soon enough. All I can say is after this, I'm going to be really proficient at ribbing and seed/moss stitches!

Bag Lady

I don't know what it is about bags, but I have lots - I have bags of all shapes and sizes - handbags, totes, duffles, and packs! Don't even get me started on Packs! Even the two projects I've got on needles are bags...Some would say I've a healthy Bag Fetish. I just say I'm well prepared :)

My latest addition was waiting on my doorstep yesterday...It's a custom Dee Dog Timbuk2 Messenger Bag - very handsome Royal Blue, Gold and Red panels. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos last night of it, but you can see what it looks like on the T2 site. Love it.

Tweak Tweak Here...

...tweak tweak there! As I continue to Blog, I keep deciding that things need rearranging and reorganizing. All of the links have been shifted around and reorganized again. Things will settle down soon, I'm sure.

On Cake: M.Chu from Cooking For Engineers had a good point regarding the dark crust on my cake - the pan I used was one of those of the dark colored non stick variety. The dark colored pan likely contributed quite a bit to the dark colored crust. A trial with a myriad of pans my well be in order...if I could only figure out what to do with all that cake....

To Commercialize or Not?

This country is consumed by commercialism. Everything is sponsored; advertisements abound. A good portion of the Internet is plastered with banners and pop-up windows. It's quite dreadful. I probably can't complain too much though. After all, we market a few items on our website...and various people have been encouraging us to open a CafePress store....and we've thought about publishing the content of the site to a book...

We're out for financial independence - it is the American Dream, isn't it? We'd love to be able to escape Corporate America and support ourselves doing something we love - who in their right mind wouldn't?! Anyway, what brought this on? Periodically we're approached by others to either 1) add a link to their site 2) allow them to use content from the site 3) sell products for them. While I like the idea of being able to draw an income off the site (if not for anything else but to pay for the hosting fees) there's something that just sits wrong with adding external commercial links all over the place. Am I psychotic? Confused? Just plain odd?

On a much more tasty note, I've posted the Rev0 recipe for the Caramel Rum Pound Cake as a comment to that entry. Enjoy.

Recommended Reading

An interesting and eye-opening read about America's tax system. I knew things were bad, but I didn't realize quite how bad they were. Certainly raises some thoughts that should (and probably have been) posed to our government and corporate leaders....and of course, they continue on their merry way and ignore the pointed questions. I don't know why I read things like this, as it serves only to rile me up and make me more cynical. Oh well.

Have Rum, Will Bake

Caramel Rum Cake with Peaches

Well, I finally had a moment and the rum on hand to try to re-create a fantastic cake recipe from my Grandma. It's essentially a Caramel Rum Poundcake - it came out not quite the same as Grandma's but tasty nevertheless.

I must admit, this is the first time I've ever felt compelled to take a photo of food I've created :D could it be a trend? Stay tuned for more adventures in the kitchen...

Open for Business...

Well, kind of anyway. Apparently I am a nerd, and not a very talented one at that.

After first trying to check out different free blog software and even giving several a test-run, I eventually came back to Blogger...only to find that I have technology issues when it comes to posting photos. Apparently Hello is not proxy-server compatible, so no photo-blogging for me when I'm looking for a break from work. I eventually got Hello working from home, but it seems kinda kludgy to me....or it could be my lack of intuition at work! Someone correct me if I'm wrong...if I want to post a photo with text, does that mean I need to post the photo from Hello and then log into Blogger to append the message with text? I guess the other option is to use Flickr.....oh choices choices :D

Anyway, that's enough of my personal ineptitude up for display. I'm off to rummage for dinner.