Now entering radio silence

Ta da!  NaBloPoMo is done and I managed to post every day this month.  Very pleased, very pleased.  I now return you to my not so regular posting schedule.    Particularly for the next week or so.  My final exam is on Dec 9th and I’ve got some serious studying to get done.  I’m trying to figure out how I can study and still work on my Christmas knitting.  I probably shouldn’t multitask my studying though.
See you after the 9th.  You kids behave while I’m gone.

Pedahah (perogies) festival

First you boil up a metric tonne (that’s bigger than an imperial tonne) of potatoes and mash them up.  Chunky mash, not that whipped business.  You also brown some bacon & onion together and add it to the potatoes.  Mom had already done this step so I couldn’t photograph it for you.  Sorry.

Then you make dough

It’s vitally important that everyone involved stare into the Kitchenaid bowl while the dough is being kneaded.  Put very serious expressions on your faces.  This makes the pedahah taste better.

Try using the pasta attachment on the Kitchenaid for rolling the dough.  Realize that this is really not the right kind of dough for this labour saving device.

Then you roll dough the old fashioned way like you’re supposed to.  Nice try on the being lazy thing though.

Note – my hair isn’t actually orange.  I hope.  Hmmmm.  I wonder if the light in the bathroom is just bad.  Now I’m a bit worried.

Cut it into wee squares.  Put a spoon of the warm potato mixture in the middle then seal up all the edges very tightly.  Shoot, didn’t get a shot of that seeing as I was stuffing the pedahah and hubby was playing with the stupid iPhone.

Freeze a lot of them but make sure you keep out enough for dinner.  Add a whole mess of these to a pot of boiling, salted water

You can now drizzle them with butter and even a little sauteed onions and eat until you blow up, or…fry them until golden in bacon fat with little pieces of bacon.  Sorry yarnpiggy!

Awesome.  I’m really starting to realize why I’m not nearly as slim as I was in high school.

Knitting Meme

Heh heh!  I’m not even home right now!  I’ve set this up ahead of time so that I can have an evening away from the blog without NaBloPoMo guilt.  Sneaky, sneaky.

Here is a knitting meme from yarnpiggy.  I’ve been keeping it up my sleeve for just such and occassion as this.

What is your all time favorite yarn to knit with?

Zara

Your favorite needles?

Susan Bates Quicksilver

The worst thing you’ve ever knit?

A neckwarmer using Patons Bohemia.  Nasty stuff!  Shed more than my dogs

Your most favorite knit pattern? (maybe you don’t like wearing it…but it was the most fun to knit)

Top down raglan sweaters a la Elizabeth Zimmermann

Most valuable knitting technique?

Cabling without a cable needles

Best knit book or magazine?

Knitter’s Almanac by Elizabeth Zimmermann

Your favorite knit-a-long?

All the Sockapaloozas

Your favorite knitblogs?

In no particular order:

Here,here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, etc etc etc

Your favorite knitwear designer?

I really like the design team at Drops.  That site is my startitis place!  I also really like Knitting Pure and Simple.

The knit item you wear the most? (how about a picture of it!)

What a surprise!  It’s Noro!

Good lord.  Things good in this pici are the Clapotis scarf in Mountain Colors Bearfoot (colour way Ruby River) and the Converse basketball shoes.  The lengths I go to for you guys, embarrassing myself like this!

Okay, I’m tagging anyone who wants to be tagged!  I think I have a cramp from all that linking.

Gifts from the blog gods

Had to hit the bank after work.  You know, deposit a pay cheque, get out some ‘mad money’, blah blah blah.  When what should fall into my hands?  This:

It says, ‘trace this cool older bill!  www.whereswilly.com‘  Well thank you to the blog gods because without this little bit of good luck you would be looking at LOL cats tonight!  I rushed right on home and inputted my bill into that site and ta da – here is the very tiny history of my bill.  I shall be hitting the pub & scrapbooking store tomorrow after work so I can guarantee that I will be sending this little guy on its way again very soon.  Hopefully it will be found and its history added to.

Middle of the week

Thought I should show you a bit of knitting that I’ve been working on lately.  It’s Malabrigo in the colourway ‘Intenso’ and boy is that a great name for this colour.  I’m using the Scrunchable scarf pattern but I’m only going to knit about 24 inches then crochet a wee loop on one side for a fab-o button and voila!  I shall have another neckwarmer.

I’ll have most of a second skein left and I’m not sure if I should make mitts or a hat.  It’s finally been getting a little colder here and either one would be a good idea.

I’ve also been working on Christmas knitting but it’s super secret and I can’t show it here.  Sorry.  Have to wait until the 26th.

I also registered for my next course yesterday.  I’m going to be taking Introduction to the Criminal Justice System.  Not a serial killer in sight.  Aren’t you glad?  I sure am. 

A good day

I’m pretty happy with today.  The budget at my work passed its preliminary reading with no changes at all.  That budget included keeping yours truly employed for another year contract.  Whoo hoo!  Now I can register for my January crim course that I’ve been putting off.  Yay!  No serial killers this time though.  Perhaps a nice course on the Canadian criminal justice system.

Not much else going on around here.  Oh, I should warn you.  Turns out, the lentil soup, yeah…it may have a tendency to make one…say…a little whiffy.  Know what I’m saying?  Consider yourself warned. 

I’ve been doing a bit of knitting mixed with a a bit of studying.  My final is two weeks from today.  Eep!  We’re also having a new database installed in my office the same week.  That can’t be a good thing.  My head might actually explode from the stress of that.

Oh, wait, there was something I wanted to show you.  The coffee shop where I meet all my crazy knitting friends every two weeks is also a gallery for local artists.  At our last meeting the artist on display was Carly Louth.  I’m so in love with her crow paintings.  There was an amazing piece there (not on the website) sorry that I almost bought last time I was there.  It’s $300 though.  Now that I know I’m getting renewed for another year, I might just pony up the cash and get it.  It’s supporting a local artist, that’s good right?  Okay, a local artist that doesn’t make yarn.  See, I’m branching out.  Growing as a person, if you will.  Snork!

How to make lentil soup (a picture recipe)

What you will need:

• 1 ham hock – smoked (sorry vegetarians!)
• 4 stalks of celery
• 1 large onion
• 3 medium carrots
• various spices – thyme, rosemary, whatever.
• 2 quarts of stock – I used 1 quart chicken/1 quart vegetable
• 2 – 3 cups of lentils (I used 2.5 cups of green and .5 cups of split red)
• 1 package of frozen chopped spinach – 300 grams – defrosted and squeezed to all heck to get the moisture out
• one large pot

Okay, put the stock in the large pot and bring to a boil.  Add the smoked ham hock.  Turn burner down so you have a nice simmer.  Cover pot and wander away for 1.25 hours.

Next – chop up your onion, carrots, and celery.  Keep asking your husband “What’s this called in French?”  He will respond that it’s Mirepoix.  You say, “What?  Jamiroquai?  That doesn’t sound French!”  He will look at you and shake his head and mumble under his breath.  Repeat this step until it is no long amusing.  Seriously, this is what makes the soup!

Add the Mirepois/Jamiroquai to the soup and simmer for another 1/2 hour with the lid on.

Add the lentils and simmer for another 1/2 hour.

Now, remove the ham hock and let it sit on a plate for a couple of minutes.  Remove the skin (your dog will love you if you put a little bit of this on their food over the next few nights) and coarsely pull apart the meaty bits.  I used two forks for this.  Discard the bone.

Put the meaty bits back in the pot and add the well drained spinach and let the soup simmer for 10 minutes or so with the lid off.  This will get rid of any unwanted extra moisture and finish cooking the lentils.  If you don’t have enough moisture, you can add a cup or so of water or more stock if you have some.

Ta da.  You just made some fab-o lentil soup. Serving suggestion:

Multigrain bread, sour cream, glass o’ milk.  Sweet!  Salt and pepper to taste and you are good to go. Make sure you taste it before you salt it.  The stock and the ham hock may be quite salty so you want to make sure it needs salt before you add salt.

Cooking, baking, and generally just making the house smell amazing!

Mr. Beentsy decided that he wanted to get some baking done this weekend.  Sausage rolls, mince tarts, and spanakopita to be exact.  He made the mince tarts on Friday night.  Sorry, there is no photographic evidence that they ever existed.  Sure were tasty though!

Sausage rolls?  Oh yes, we have sausage rolls!  For the time being anyway. 

Exceptionally yummy!  Next was spanakopita:

Mr. Beentsy wanted to make them look like they were racing for you.  It’s good to know that he’s just as much of a geek as I am.

*NOTE* – the little dog – didn’t move an inch.  Hope springs eternal that we would drop something and she could swoop in and catch it before it hit the floor!  What a trooper.

And finally – there was this:

Fabulous!

While all that was going on I was making killer lentil soup.  I’ll share that with you tomorrow.  A photo recipe if you will!

Ahhhhhh, Saturday. Would that every day were you!

I love Saturday.  All of the happy of a Friday without the workday to mess it up.  Sunday may be a day off too, but there’s that nagging gotta go back to work tomorrow feeling about it.  Love me some Saturday!  As previously mentioned, today was blood donation day.  I got a sticker.  It says, ‘Be nice to me, I gave blood today.’

The added bonus of a blood donation day – no strenuous activity for the rest of the day.  Nice.  I spent the afternoon on the couch knitting with a wee dog in my lap while watching Mr. Beentsy kill things in Zelda – Twilight Princess on the Wii.  Watching him do it is all the fun of playing the game without any of the performance anxiety for my sucky game playing skills.  Win win situation.

I was also really glad to read that a bunch of you are weirded out by guns too.  Made me feel a lot better about myself.  Good to know that if I am crazy, at least I have company.  Some of that company has some very pretty yarn too!  It might be just the teensiest bit ironic that I really want to work at the RCMP.  Just sayin’.

Okay, back to the Christmas knitting with the warm wee dog in my lap.  Now I understand the draw of little dogs.  Perfect little heaters. 

Yay! It’s Friday!

I swear, I feel like I worked two weeks this week, not just the obligatory one!  Exhausted.  So glad it’s Friday.  Got nothing much on the plans for this weekend and I’m pretty darn happy about it.  I’ve got a blood donation tomorrow (please go donate if you can, wicked blood shortages & the holidays are approaching), and after that it’s nothing but laundry, cleaning the bathroom, maybe a little vacuuming, some studying, a bit o’ Christmas knitting, and cleaning the cat box.  Huh, now that I list it all it does sort of sound like a fair bit of stuff to get done.  Shoot!

Went to Costco after work tonight too.  Pretty sure it’s the last time I’ll be going there before Christmas.  Crazy busy.  Folks just wandering around with the glazed shopping look.  It’s not even December yet folks, relax!  I’m sure I won’t be saying that in a month when my Christmas knitting isn’t done but oh well, that’s another day’s worries!

Time to go make some dinner.  Have a good night.