June 29, 2009 at 9:06 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: knitting, socks
I’m quite proud of these socks, made for my son. It’s a combination of two left-over wools – some Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock from the first pair of socks I knit for myself, and plain black Sandnes from a pair I knit for my Dad. My son loves the fact that they’re “Mom-Grandpa” socks!
I had to do some fiddly counting and planning to get the stripes to work out the way I wanted, and to have the harder-wearing black wool on the heels. The end result was worth it.
Technical notes, for those that are interested… these are knitted from the toe up, using Judy’s Magic Cast-On. I did the first one on four double-pointed needles, but knitted the second using one long circular needle and the Magic Loop method.
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June 29, 2009 at 8:26 pm (Hobbies)
Tags: beets, dinner, veggies
My love of beets continues unabated, and since this salad is ubiquitous now, I thought I might as well make it at home.
I had a big chunk of beet in the freezer, which I defrosted and cut into 1/2″ squares. There were about a cup of cubes. I boiled them for 10 minutes, until they were soft, then drained them and let them cool. The dressing was 1 tsp. of cider vinegar and 2 tsp. of olive oil, plus a few pinches of dried tarragon, which really goes well with the beets.
1 ounce each of chopped walnuts and Woolwich dairy goat cheese completed this tasty side dish. We were having burgers, and it definitely elevated them out of the ordinary.
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June 4, 2009 at 10:36 am (Uncategorized)
Tags: veggies
The local farmer’s market started today, and all three of us went to see if we could load up with a week’s worth of vegetables. We ended up with much more than we expected:
cider ($5)
spinach ($2.50)
radish ($2.50)
2L of apples ($4)
a loaf of sourdough bread ($5)
4 honey garlic bison sausages ($7.41)
carrots, a cucumber, and 10 small potatoes ($10)
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April 17, 2009 at 7:39 pm (Hobbies)
Tags: food, veggies
Tonight’s dinner was a “soup” adapted from an Epicurious recipe for Beet and Cabbage Soup. It read like a Mexican borscht, but turned out like a hot vegetable puree for me.
The veggie mix above is a Cylindra beet, a red onion, 3 stalks of celery, and a quarter of a very small head of cabbage. After sauteing the veggies in vegetable oil for about ten minutes, I added a container of frozen turkey stock from the freezer, and boiled it all for an hour or so, until the veggies were soft enough to puree in the blender. The only other ingredients were lime juice, stirred in at the end, and tortilla chips to crumble into it.
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April 5, 2009 at 5:57 pm (Uncategorized)
We constructed a 4′ by 4′ (sorry, 1.2m by 1.2m – old habits die hard, and gardening was always done with my parents in Imperial measurements) bottomless box today and set it on a former flowerbed, to become the first of our square foot gardens. The official square foot garden method says to fill the box with a mixture of peat moss, coarse vermiculite, and compost; since I’ve read that the current stores of peat moss in the world are holding as much carbon dioxide as the rain forests, it seems like a good idea to skip that and go for a closed-system approach in our backyard garden. We turned over the soil in the box and added the compost from the composter, and planted in that.
There’s, of course, not much that can be planted now, but we planted a square each of peas, spinach, and beets, and half a square of radishes.
Most of the point of growing vegetables is to be environmentally friendly, so we’re relying on scavenged materials. The sides of the box are leftover siding material from the shed, and the grid strips are from old lattice I pulled apart.
You can just see the tulips coming up on the left-hand side of the picture – I hope the squirrels don’t eat them until after they bloom, this year.
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April 5, 2009 at 5:22 pm (eco-minded)
Our “Kill-a-watt” device has this to say about the electrical usage of my school-issued laptop, which I left on for several days as a test:
66:41 hours:minutes
1.25 kWh
max watts 99
No conclusions to draw here, just collecting data for later comparisons.
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April 4, 2009 at 9:38 pm (Weights)
My new chiropractor has given me the go-ahead to start a weight program, which means I got to add a new subcategory to my “Hobbies” category!
Today’s routine was twice through this list:
- 20 side steps with the Theraband in each direction
- 15 bridges (I’m supposed to do 30, but I think they’re aggravating my back)
- plank (I managed only 15 seconds the first time)
- bicep curls (8 reps per set, 1 set at 5lbs, 1 set at 10lbs)
- shoulder press (”)
- upward row (”)
- lateral raises (8 reps per set, both at 5lbs)
The oddly-named Stumptuous site is my favourite source of information for weights so far.
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April 4, 2009 at 8:59 pm (Hobbies)
Tags: dinner, veggies
Tonight’s dinner was a heavily-modified version of the the Blue and Red Flannel Hash recipe on Epicurious. I started with red onion and thyme in olive oil, and added half a fresh Cylindra beet, peeled and diced (rather than the pickled beets called for in the recipe), plus some leftover turkey stock so it would steam as well as saute. A bit later I added a diced Russet potato with some more stock, and when the beets and potatoes were cooked, added some chopped-up leftover turkey from the fridge, made two holes in the hash, and broke two eggs into it. While they were cooking I daubed some goat cheese over top.
It was tasty, but could probably have benefited from serving four people instead of two, with a spinach salad on the side.
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March 26, 2009 at 9:31 am (Hobbies)
Tags: cooking, veggies
Our search for the bottom of our freezer continues, so yesterday I dug out a frozen turkey carcass from earlier this year. I had all day to let the stock simmer, and by dinnertime it was ready to use in a barley stew with onions and garlic, leftover turkey meat (also found in the freezer), and parsnips.
On the side I made a spinach salad by attempting to caramelize a red onion, sliced thinly. The warm slices had the right combination of bite and mellow to the washed baby spinach leaves along with a dressing of rice wine vinegar, olive oil, tahini, and grainy mustard thinned with a little water.
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March 24, 2009 at 6:29 pm (Hobbies)
Tags: food, veggies
Our Mama Earth box came today, so supper prep started with me diving to the bottom for the Russet potatoes I knew were in it. Scrubbed and cut into 1cm planks, they’re currently in the oven roasting and turning a lovely shade of brown. (I’m roughly following the Epicurious recipe here).
A head of cabbage has been patiently hiding in the fridge, so together with some sliced red onion (also in the box), and dressed with rice vinegar, soy sauce, and sesame oil, it is our real vegetable side dish. Oh, there are toasted sesame seeds on top, too. (Loosely based on this recipe from the same site.)
These should both go well with the multigrain-breaded Tilapia I bought on sale yesterday… a relatively healthy version of fish and chips!
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