My first bagels

Last night I was seized by a desire to make some bagels. So I poked around online, looked up recipes in a couple of cookbooks, and set my bread machine on the dough cycle. I used a 3-cup recipe (with 1 cup whole wheat subbed in) and added some gluten for chewiness. The dough was done around 10, and I put it into an oiled bowl to have a second slow rise overnight in the fridge. It rose more than I expected given the stiffness of the dough.

This morning (while listening to someone on The People's Pharmacy railing against the evils of carbs) I divided the dough into 6 approximately 4 oz pieces, shaped them (badly) and let them rise for about 30 minutes while I got the sweetened water boiling. I popped them into the water 3 at a time; they ballooned up quite a bit and came out with the wet, puffy texture of dumplings.

I swabbed them with an egg white and water glaze, then sprinkled sesame seeds on three and dried onion and sea salt on the rest. They took about 24 minutes to finish baking on my baking stone.

They don't look perfect, but they taste wonderful. A crispy thin crust on the outside, and a chewy soft middle. This was much easier than I expected. Next time I'll try a more authentic recipe with malt syrup/powder and see how that goes.

Secret mom knitting update

There's a secret mom knitting update here. I've been knitting so much I've poked a hole in my finger (due to my very bad habit of pushing the stitches off using the point of the knitting needle braced against my index finger, and the Knit Picks Options are very pointy indeed). I actually took some pictures of the hole, but they're really too gross to post.

Mom can look at this picture of yarny goodness instead.

A good day

Yesterday was a good day. There was a picnic at Duke Gardens with absolutely perfect weather, a visit to the Nasher Museum, a nice dinner and some general hanging around not thinking about work. And at the end, a beautiful full moon.

The picnic food included some buttermilk fried chicken I made the night before. I'm not sure where I first heard about soaking chicken in buttermilk before breading and frying, but it seems to keep it moist and the folk wisdom is that the acidity tenderizes the meat. I use boneless breasts cut into halves or thirds, and the buttermilk seems to keep the chicken from getting dry and tough. It certainly makes the seasoned flour stick well.

I also made a really simple potato salad with baby red potatoes, sour cream and chopped green onions. That turned out pretty well also. Chives and/or dill would be good too.

The Nasher is pretty small and infested with overzealous security guards who bark at you about the "12 inch rule" if you lean in to read the 6-point text on the artwork descriptions or examine the details of paintings. I've been to the NC Museum of Art at least a dozen times, and I can't remember ever being chastised about getting too close to the exhibits or feeling like I was under surveillance. Although there was enough to see to make it worth the visit, I'm glad it was free for employees (and former employees who still have their ID cards )

I'm still knitting away on the secret mom project, but I want to finish off another section before I show more pictures.

Ramblings of the unemployed

I love playing with dough and using my baking stone, but sometimes it's nice to just dump the ingredients into the pan of my bread machine and hit "Start". I got a very nice loaf of basic half whole wheat sandwich bread, which happens to be even better as toast.

I was inspired by one of the food blogs I read regularly, Baking and Books, to make myself some soft-boiled eggs to go with. The recipe on the blog recommends boiling for 3 minutes, but the extra-large eggs I use always take at least 4 minutes to cook when used straight out of the fridge. I love runny yolks, but runny whites are nas-tay. I also don't do the rinsing under cold water thing...I want my eggs as hot as possible, and I've never had a problem with the egg overcooking itself while waiting in the egg cup.

I'm still in the "hasn't quite hit me yet" phase of the job transition.

Last Friday I ran around with my camera terrorizing the department. Some of the pictures were too dark or blurry to use, so here are the incomplete Faces of ECE (and one Pratt IT):

Clockwise from the top left, Harold Rose (as Johnny Cash), Dr. Dan Sorin, Dr. Rhett George, Dr. Lisa Huettel, Sharon Lloyd, and Dr. John Board.

Clockwise from the top left, Kip Coonley, Kristen Rogers, Ellen Currin, Marcia Arnold, Ray Stilley, and Corky Safley.

Compare and contrast

There's some exciting news on the secret Mom knitting project. Everyone but Mom is cordially invited to take a peek at the latest developments.

To give mom something to look at, here are some pictures of the office I'm about to give up.

This is the view through the door (no, that wall AC at the top of the picture doesn't vent to the outside, it just recirculates the air inside the office):

My work area:

I'll be giving up these luxurious accomodations for this.

Popcorn makes a meal

The recent news stories about "microwave popcorn lung" are kind of creepy, but the icky rumors about the material that's used to make the bags nonstick have been around for years. So I've sworn off microwave popcorn and make it on the stove instead, which is really just as convenient (both methods take about 5 minutes).

I add 1/2 cup popcorn and 3TBS oil to a pot and swirl it around.

I put the lid on slightly ajar to allow steam to escape and turn the heat to medium while the metal rooster peers suspiciously at the proceedings.

Meanwhile, I melt some butter. Mmmm, butter.

The popcorn starts popping in a minute or so. I like to watch through the lid.

I don't even bother to shake the pot. I forgot one time and it made no difference in the results, so I just leave the pot on the heat until the popping stops. I rarely have any unpopped kernels, either.

A 1/2 cup of kernels makes a huge bowl of popcorn. I like to eat mine with strong flavored cheese (Uniekaas Reserve from Whole Foods, in this case). Bon Appetit!

I need an intervention

How to know you need to stop buying yarn:

1.) One of the online yarn stores you buy from regularly sends you free yarn...to thank you for buying so much yarn.

2.) See #1.

Despite being awash in yarn, I decided to sew something this weekend because my sewing machine has been looking lonely. (Also, my fabric stash is even more embarrassing than my yarn stash.) I had no storage for any of my knitting needles except for the Knit Picks Options (which came in their own carrying case), so a smaller version of the roll-up DPN holder from the Stitch 'n Bitch book seemed like a fast, useful project. I used up 4 fat quarters I bought at a quilt shop in Williamsburg, VA during the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival in, I think, 1999. You can't tell from the pictures, but the cloth is printed with a semi-metallic ink that changes color slightly when you move it. Now I have a way to store my DPNs and crochet hooks that doesn't involve a big jumble and them rolling behind a bookshelf whenever I paw through them.

Closed, rolled, and tied (but not scattered, covered, or smothered):

Open, showing the helpful flap that keeps all the loose needles from falling out:

Open, flap up:

I also finished up another washcloth, my grandma called dibs on this one.

Finished (in more ways than one)

I'm DONE with the secret dad project, at long last. See it here, assuming you're not dad.

I've not been feeling particularly bloggish because these last weeks at work have been a total nightmare in terms of stress and general burnout. They're making it easier by the day for me to not feel bad about leaving, that's for sure. At least I know I'm making the right decision.

Not really news

I very deliberately never talk about work on my blog, and although I suspect that anyone who reads anything here already knows about this (or doesn't care one way or the other if they don't know already), I resigned from my job at Duke this past Friday and will be moving on to other things at the beginning of October.

Hey look, a kitty!

In obligatory knitting content, I've been re-knitting the thing that was involved in last weekend's "incident", so if you are Not Dad, the progress (such as it is) can be seen here.

I've also been spending an inordinate amount of time adding pictures of my stash and projects to my account on Ravelry, as well as poking around marveling at everyone else's stuff. It's probably a sign of mental illness that when I counted up my sock yarns while inventorying them and realized that I "only" had enough to make 26 pairs of socks, I was sort of disappointed. (My sock production maxes out at around 3 socks per month at top speed, so that's a lot of sock yarn for me.) I also made someone look at yarn storage options with me at Target this weekend. Sigh.

This is my latest acquisition, some Oceanwind Knits sock yarn in a semi-solid green (the "Thyme" colorway). So purty.

Long weekend baking

One of the best things about a long weekend is having the luxury of spending a couple hours making something for breakfast. This morning, I decided on the "Classic Cinnamon-Nut Coffee Ring" from the King Arthur Baker's Companion. I've never come across a bad recipe from this cookbook, and this one, despite being one of those use-every- bowl-and-measuring-cup-in-the-house kind of recipes, did not disappoint. It has a layer of cinnamon-pecan streusel through the center, and is nice and moist due to a cup of sour cream in the batter.

I love anything made in a tube/Bundt pan. First, there's the excitement of seeing if it'll come out of the pan in one piece. Then there's the ease of making it look nice; a little powdered sugar is usually all it needs, unless you want to get crazy and mix in some milk for drizzle icing.

Then there's the fact that slicing up a ring is much easier than digging pieces out of a big 9x13 pan.

And anything that gives me an excuse to use my $12 "Martha Stewart for K-Mart" cake stand is OK by me. I can play "Diner" all day!

I'm slowly recouping my losses from disaster that befell the Secret Knitting Project for Dad. In the meantime, here's a project my mom just finished from several skeins of Lion Homespun. Homespun is very soft and comes in an array of gorgeous colors, which is why people are initially drawn to it in the store. It's also a gigantic pain in the ass to knit or crochet with, since it splits and shreds and comes apart from the plastic thread core and generally makes you want to poke out your eyeballs with whatever implement you're working it with.

I had bought an assortment of blues and purples to knit into a wrap, gave up, and gifted the yarn to mom, who turned it into this crocheted throw/shawl:

I think it turned out extremely nice. However, I think she's sworn off ever touching the stuff again, too.