Out like a lion

A weekend this rainy and chilly calls for comfort food, and a big pot of soup in particular. I've used the Red Lentil Dhal recipe at the Post Punk Kitchen web site many times, mostly as a springboard to make something similar based on the ingredients I had on hand. Today I put togther a big pot of vaguely dhal-like substance that turned out to be one of the best soups I've ever made. It's well-spiced but not hot, and it's almost stewlike in consistency. It's different enough from the original that the recipe is listed below. I bought a container of plain yogurt to dollop on top, but the coconut milk makes it so rich that there's no need.

Red Lentil Dhal-like Substance

• 3 TBS peanut oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1/3 head of cauliflower, cut into small florets
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 TBS curry powder
• 1/2 TBS garam masala
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground cardamom
• 1 heaping TBS Patak's Mild Curry Paste
• 1 can petite diced tomatoes
• 1 can tomato paste
• 1/2 can coconut milk (freeze the rest and make ice cream later)
• 1 cup dried red lentils
• 1 8oz package frozen chopped spinach, at least partially thawed
• 3 cups water
• 2 cups broth (chicken, veggie, etc)
• 1/2 bunch cilantro, torn up into pieces
• salt to taste

Saute the onion in the peanut oil for 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cauliflower and saute another few minutes. Add the spices and heat through for 1-2 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients except for cilantro and simmer covered for 30 mins. Add the cilantro and salt and serve. Makes at least 4 big servings.

On a totally unrelated note, I am all about this site:

Dark City?

I think I'm the only person in Raleigh who observed Earth Hour. Despite Google going to a black page for the day and some CNN coverage, I don't remember seeing any local media mention of it. Nonetheless, I turned off my lights and did some knitting by candlelight. This worked well until I hit the lace section of my second SKB sleeve and couldn't for the life of me see whether I was K2TOG or K3TOG or maybe just K1 with the dark yarn. I could have fired up my trusty Dietz oil lantern, which gives off quite a bit of light, but it didn't seem worth it, so I read for a while instead (Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, which is pretty good so far).

I wandered around the house looking for "non-essential appliances" to unplug, but the only things I could find were my coffeemaker and printer. My stove, microwave, cable box, TV, and stereo are all plugged into places that require moving large pieces of furniture to get to (or in the over-the-stove microwave's case, climbing onto a chair to get to the cabinets where the plug is and then moving stuff out to get to it). It would be nice if more appliances had real "off" switches. My stereo and cable box have power buttons, but they're still in standby, using power and showing stuff on their screens, even when they're turned "off".

I'm pretty sure this counts as "real food" by the Michael Pollan definition: I used up some leftover grits in my favorite way this morning. Sliced into bars while cold and solid from the fridge, dredged in a little flour, and fried in bacon fat until crisp on the outside. Mmmmmmmmm. And the eggs are organic.

Easter 2008

Easter brunch was attended by 4 Sariks and a Jag. On the menu were 2 kinds of bacon (yum!), sausage, Easter eggs, and the lekvar/apricot/nut rolls I made. A strange disembodied hand flitted around the table stealing everyone's tea.

The annual egg fight had some thrilling moments. Here Robin and Dad face off, as Dad displays his personalized egg.

The moment of impact! Robin is victorious.

Robin and Jag competed over my plate as mom looked on in concern.

In the end, the Dudley's Marbled Egg kit produced the 2 winning eggs in both rounds of competition. Any suggestion that the vegetable oil coating may have hardened the shells is mere slander.

After brunch, there was frolicking in the yard. Here Robin re-enacts a scene from Cinderella with Jag.

Robin pursued Cary around the yard.

Toby is once again wearing a collar to keep him from gnawing on himself, so Robin showed solidarity with his plight.

Jag really got into the Spring spirit.

Mom showed off her latest in-progress afghan project, which we're all encouraging her to enter into the State Fair. The pattern and the yarn work perfectly together.

Greg arrived for dinner in his new car! He drove the entire way like this.

After a delicious dinner of ham, twice-baked potatoes and a yummy asparagus/sugar snap pea/broccolini/green bean recipe Robin made, Robin revealed her dessert, which tasted a whole lot better than it looked. This is what happens when green food coloring combines with chocolate pie filling.

We all marvelled at the mysterious LekvarHenge, which had been left on the counter by some Druids or something.

The End

Sewing fast. Knitting slow.

I've been quilting a lot longer than I've been knitting (I started quilting in high school) and I'm often struck by how SLOOOOWWWW knitting is in comparison to sewing. The idea of knitting, say, a log cabin blanket, pretty as they are, is just not appealing to me because I could rotary cut and sew together one out of cloth in 1/4 the time. I was particularly struck by this when I abandoned my current knitting UFOs to sew a skirt from the Cute Skirts pattern I bought from Sew Mama, Sew!. (The fabric is from eQuilter.com.)

This is a very easy project, but it's a bajillion times nicer than your standard elastic-waist quickie skirt pattern. The front waistband is flat and stabilized with fusible interfacing, and the elastic is all in the back. The skirt itself is made out of 8 sections, which gives it a nice flared look, and when you add the optional flounces to the bottom (there's also another variation with gores), you get a really great little outfit in just a couple of hours (around 3, in my case). Please excuse my dopey expression.

I have no knitting progress photos for this week, although I do have some lovely eggs to show off. Jag made 3, and I made 3.

I also spent a good part of the day today making the traditional Easter baked goods I've described in previous years (thrilling photos from last year here.) I made 3 with homemade prune lekvar, 2 with homemade apricot butter, and 1 with walnut filling especially for my dad. (I had to wing the walnut filling without a recipe, so I hope he likes it. I'll find out tomorrow.) In one of those crazy coincidences, this year's rolls look identical to last year's rolls, so I didn't see the point in taking more pictures.

Knitting, plus bonus Terrifying Crochet(tm)!

Due to being trapped at home all weekend because of what I fervently hope will be my last-ever on-call rotation for work (ahem), I got some knitting done. First up is my weekly headless Simple Knitted Bodice progress pic. I'm working my way down the first sleeve and have about 5" to go. It's extremely tempting to just say "screw it" and do a 3/4 length sleeve, but I know I'll be kicking myself next winter if I do, so I'll be continuing on down to the wrist.

I also turned the heel and did 1 lace repeat for the foot of Arrow Lace Sock the Second. This project should go a bit faster now that I only have the instep to do in lace, and can zip along the bottom of the foot in plain stockinette.

And now a special feature from the Terrifying Crochet(tm) Department.

Recently I bought a lot of 7 crochet pattern booklets from Ebay as a gift for a close relative, mostly for one particular booklet, but the others have some pretty cool stuff as well. Except for this particular pamphlet, which features a crocheted bathroom ensemble. Including cozies for your toilet paper, kleenex, toilet seat, and ENTIRE TOILET TANK.

I get constipated just looking at this stuff. The frilly seat cover is bad enough (any male trying to take a pee here would likely find the seat falling down mid-stream, since the sheer bulk of the yarn would make it impossible for the seat to stay up), but what psychosis would drive someone to cover an entire toilet tank in crochet????

Here's a close-up of the tank cover. Look on these works, ye mighty, and despair.

Bacon Lollipops!

So wrong, yet so right. Mmmmm, bacon.

Walk on the Eno

Me and Jag took a walk in the Cole Mill area of Eno River park yesterday. Runoff from the recent rains had plumped up the river a bit, which was nice to see.

A short length of the trail had flooded, but otherwise it was pretty clear sailing aside from some small muddy areas.

We saw DisturbingGapingHoles Tree,

(which turned out not to have anything noteworthy in the gaping holes),

and also Cthulhu Tree, which was unable to claim our souls due to its mobility problems. We did, however, lose 1D6 SAN points.

There were plenty of leaves.

And also some weird guy kept following me around.

After some serious windstorms that kept making my power flicker for several hours (thanks for nothing, underground utilities), we got a really pretty sunset at my house. The sun was angled so that it was illuminating just the tops of the trees across from my kitchen windows, so I ran outside to take some pictures.

FINIS

(Very) belated birthday

I had a great belated family birthday celebration last weekend, and now I'm even more belatedly posting about it.

1.) We had pizza from Milton's. I especially love their "U Never Sausage A Thing" Pizza. In-house sausage, Italian rope sausage, roasted red peppers, bell peppers, and mozzarella. Yum yum yum.

2.) Robin arranged for the coolest birthday cupcakes ever. No extra charge for the decorating, either. Yay HT bakery!!! I ate the chicken. Erp.

3.) I got lots of cool gifts. Some of my favorites:

Also from my parents, a WhirleyPop. As you can see, I'm pretty excited about this.

Jag also got into the birthday spirit with the world's first bow-hawk. I'm wearing a great new necklace from Robin.

The End

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Almost there!

I didn't meet my goal of finishing the body of the Simple Knitted Bodice due to an unplanned detour into miniature rag rug making, but I'm satisfied with the current length and ready to start making the purl welt to finish off the bottom edge. And the extra increases worked great around the hips. Yippie!

I need a better photographer. Hi, Kleenex box. Hi, Glade Scented Oil dispenser.

The return of the fairy door

When I was little, my grandfather, who was very ill with cancer at the time, elaborately furnished and decorated two doll houses for my sister and myself. I was too young to appreciate the amount of love and work that went into creating them, and I definitely didn't understand just how sick my grandfather was. I've been thinking about those doll houses lately while coming up with ways to decorate the fairy door I bought last fall at the Carolina Renaissance Festival.

I found a little free-standing wall shelf to act as a platform and mounted the door over it. Jag and I scoured the shelves at Michael's yesterday for inspiration. This morning I cut up some fabric strips and made a little braided rag rug for the fairies to wipe their feet on. I hung a grapevine wreath and a set of miniature keys (Jag's cool idea) on the wall and put some sprigs of rosemary and English ivy into the planters at either side. I'm beginning to think that it may require multiple fairy doors to implement all the ideas we've come up with (furniture is high on the list).

My family birthday celebration yesterday was great, but I'm waiting for certain people to send me pictures (cough) before I can post about the event.

Birthday, Part I

My birthday was on the 26th. Events conspired to make it memorable, mainly due to the midnight to noon-ish code rollout that happened to be scheduled on that day for a customer I help support at work. I did get to do my first part from home at midnight and try to sleep from around 12:30 to 4:30, but it still pretty much sucked. Luckily I got lots of happy E-cards and phone/email messages from friends and family and some donuts from a great coworker that all made it feel like my birthday despite the work annoyances and sleep deprivation.

Jag and I spent a very quiet evening at home on my birthday with some pizza and Firefly DVDs. I got to open the gifts from him, and they're really nifty.

The "I Have a Dream 2008" mug changes the country from mostly red states to all blue with the simple application of a hot beverage! Too bad it's not this easy in real life...

(View the closeup, it's worth it for the expression on the elephant's face):

A moon mirror:

Yummy yarn (undyed fair trade alpaca, and a silk/wool blend from Artfibers in SF).

And also some earrings which are very cool.

Today I'm heading over to my parents' for another celebration. Maybe I can drag my birthday out for another couple weeks!

In knitting news, I finished the round washcloth, but I did such a crappy job on the seaming that I'm keeping it for myself. Still a fun pattern and I'll definitely make more.

The sock and sweater are chugging along, with some help from a couple hours of good knitting time at a Wednesday craft night. I'm hoping to finish the body of the sweater this weekend and start in on the sleeves. I really want to get the sweater done so I can actually WEAR IT before next fall.