Adventures in Morrowind

I have been having an absolute blast for the last few months, playing through Morrowind with the Morrowind Graphics and Sound Overhaul. It totally overhauls the characters, landscape, water, many of the mechanics, etc in one mod. I have taken fully as many screenshots in Morrowind as I did in Skyrim, which was my most screenshotted game to date.

#59 - Paint the Butterbug

My super talented and creative cousin makes metal sculptures for lawns and gardens. Last summer, he agreed to make one for me. He asked what sort of things I liked and I told him just about anything - animals, bugs, flowers. He needed a challenge, so I said a firefly - that had an area where I could put a candle and light it up at night. He brought the results to my sister's wedding in July. Here it is:

It has a solar cell on it, which lights up a lightbulb on its tail. Since it looks like a cross between a butterfly, dragonfly and lightening bug, I took to calling it my butterbug. Unfortunately, it came home with us in the middle of the heat of summer. I put it out in the back yard garden gravel and it sat there for a while. I noticed it starting to get rusty so I got some paint for it, but hadn't gotten it painted. So I put it on my to-do list for this year so I wouldn't let my beautiful butterbug rust away. Since we have had a nice warm sunny spell for the last few days I broke out the spray paint cans and got it painted.

Sourdough Saturday - Ginger Cookies (Epic Fail)

Perhaps I was pushing my luck too far with my recent successes in sourdough baking. Perhaps it had to do with cooking while sick...who knows. So when Saturday rolled around I really didn't feel like baking, or doing much besides curling up and sleeping. We've all been sick lately, not enough to be bedridden or anything, just dragging around. So I amended my original planned baking to do something that would be easier. In my Alaska Sourdough cookbook by Ruth Allman there was a recipe for Soft Ginger Cookies. Since cookies are my specialty and I can bake them in my sleep, it seemed to be a no-brainer. I mixed up the dough, got it chilled in the refrigerator, GS and I rolled them out, cut them out, and put them in the oven to bake. As I was cleaning up the counters while the cookies were baking, I was reviewing in my mind the reaction between the sourdough starter and the baking soda which makes quickbreads rise, when I was struck by a strange thought - "I don't remember putting baking soda in the dough". I went back to the book and re-read and the baking soda was there at the bottom of the list. I had missed it! Too late now, the cookies were already baking. At the finish line they looked about the same as they did at the start, little dense circles of cookie dough, baked on the outside and like a lump in the middle. So alas, the cookies did not make it and I will have to try them again.

On that note, this is the first recipe I have tried from that book. It is an interesting book, it is in handwriting and not print. It has a lot of stories and history in it. The annoying thing was that the ingredients were not in the order that they were used in the recipe, which accounted for going back and forth, and I believe one of the reasons that I missed the soda. Still, I hope to try this recipe again on a better day and to try other recipes in the book.

Snow!

Today winter weather rolled through Dixie, and we were homebound. I picked GS up from school before it closed and we came home. We watched sleet and rain turn to big puffy flakes of snow. We walked to the mailbox to get the mail and tried to catch snowflakes on our tongues. I worked on my knitting in front of the fire while GS played. It was a wonderful way to spend the afternoon. :)

Chicken Country Captain

Throughout the years, I have read and owned many Southern cookbooks. I have seen the Chicken Country Captain recipes - a dish of curried chicken, usually with raisins in it. I have never been tempted to make it, it was just a bit too odd. Over the years though, my palate has changed. I started making and eating curried dishes - starting with Singapore Noodles and then going on to asian curried coconut dishes and also made curried chicken. I have also grown more interested in using fruit in savory dishes, which I was totally NOT into when I was younger. So when I was looking through the dishes in Sarah Foster's Southern Cooking and saw this one, which used dried apricots instead of raisins, I knew I had to try it. It took quite a bit of prep work to get everything set up, but then went together nicely and baked in the oven. The house smelled wonderful, spicy and exotic. GS ate some of the chicken, and DH loved the whole thing. I think it will definitely become a part of our standard cooking.

Sourdough Saturday - Anadama Bread

I decided that after a quick venture into sourdough quickbreads for the last few weekends that I would try to make "real" bread again. I found the recipe for Sourdough Anadama Bread in my King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook and decided to give it a try. To be honest, at first I thought that the recipe had flopped. The dough didn't seem to be rising nearly enough, and I thought I had messed it up somehow. I put the bowl by the stove while it was rising because the kitchen seemed very cold, but I thought it might have gotten too hot. It baked up lovely, though it was still a bit dense so I might not have done it quite right. The house smelled amazing while it was baking. The bread was dense and moist, with a lovely dark rich flavor from the molasses. I had never had Anadama bread before this, so I wasn't sure what it would come out like, and it is a very nice bread. DH loved it and ate most of it for his lunch sandwiches for the week.

Achtung! Fledermaus

Last night, the Gnomeslayer and I baked some cookies for a friend's going away party at work. He had been on a trip where bats got into his hotel room, and it has been a joke with all of us for a while. I finally got to use the cookie cutters I bought before Halloween to make these. I used a chocolate cutout cookie recipe, because, well bats are supposed to be black. These were absolutely the messiest cookies I have ever made. Since they are dark, the recipe suggests to use cocoa instead of flour to keep it from sticking while rolling them out. By the time I was done I looked like I had been digging around in the garden. The taste made up for the effort though, they were really good - not too sweet.

Mittens!

I have finally finished my first pair of mittens! It is something I have been meaning to do for a while, but never got around to it. I had a pair of convertible mittens I bought at Wal-Mart, cheap acrylic ones though. I wanted to make some woolen ones so that they would be toastier. I found this lovely emerald green Madeline Tosh yarn and thought it would be perfect for my first mitten knitting experiment. I have to say that I love them, unfortunately the topper seems to have been done one stitch too far over so it kind of twists while I am wearing it. And since it is knitted in and part of the mitten you can't just reposition it. And I need bigger buttons - the ones I bought were much too small for how big the i-cord loop turned out. But overall, yay! I made mittens! :)

Book Review - The Infernal City and Lord of Souls

I have had these two books on my shelf for over a year now. I am an avid fan of the Elder Scrolls games, so when I had heard there were books out I had to get them. They got dubious ratings from reviewers at Amazon.com, but since I understand that books relating to games are usually not expected to be high literature, I decided to give them a try. Firstly, if you are a fan of the game series, you should probably read them for the lore tidbits if nothing else. I found myself both compelled and annoyed at points of the books.

I love the setting in Tamriel, but the story itself is pretty odd. A floating island from Oblivion invades the empire (or remnants of the empire), killing everyone it floats over. Several characters are followed as they try to rid the land of the menace. The characters have stiff dialogue at times, and aren't that likeable. However, on the other hand, there isn't a fellowship of nobles traveling together around a heretofore hidden teenaged heir of some long lost line of kings that turns out to be a super-magician-fighter-savior-of-the-world. It was refreshing to at least have something different. So I found myself with mixed emotions about the books. I would recommend them if you are a fan of the series, but otherwise you'd probably get lost. And that marks two books off of my list for this year. :)

Bumps in the Road

For the last few weeks, I was refreshed and rested. I had a renaissance of cooking, crafting and doing things around the house. I purposely didn't make any New Years Resolutions, because they typically fail spectacularly within the first few days. I did have some unwritten goals in mind though, not the typical get in shape and lose weight things (though that would be nice). I wanted to try to cook at home except for one weekly meal out. I wanted to reduce buying beverages (especially sodas) from the store. I wanted to make sure that I tried to cook healthy, nutritious food instead of processed foods.

This weekend has been the first test of those goals. I haven't felt like I had any energy. I think we are coming down with something, because DH feels the same way. I forced myself to cook dinner yesterday and today, because we had bought groceries and I didn't want the food to go bad. I would have been happy to spend all weekend on the couch sleeping, but I've tried to do more than that. I did get my sourdough baking done yesterday, made the steak dinner last night, made red beans and rice tonight, and tried to keep my daughter engaged in more than TV watching. I am still making progress on my to-do list, just not sweating it (because I have a whole year). Hopefully my energy level will pick up next weekend.

Sourdough Saturday - Blueberry Breakfast Bread

One of the books that I got to do my sourdough baking with this year is 'Baking With Sourdough', a Storey Country Wisdom Bulletin by Sara Pitzer. I flipped through it, and picked out this recipe because I had some frozen blueberries in the freezer that I wanted to use. This recipe was excellent, it was crunchy on the outside and moist and fluffy on the inside. The family raved about it, and it went perfectly with a cup of coffee. Definitely going in the keep pile of recipes.

The book isn't very big, it is really more of a pamphlet. It does cover some sourdough history, making a starter, converting standard recipes to sourdough and and  recipes covering the range of sourdough baking - breads, quickbreads, crackers, desserts, etc.

Casting on Clouds

I got my Sky Scarf cast on yesterday, after playing around with different ways of starting it. I am happy to say that I finally have some blue in the scarf, it seemed like it was going to be all gray for a while. Now to stay as diligent adding new rows every day as I am now. I have been taking pictures of the sky every day as a record, so that if for some reason I have to frog it and start over, I will be able to recreate it.

To Catch a Wild Honeysuckle

All through the summer the Gnomeslayer and I visited a stand of wild honeysuckle that grows at the dead end in the road. I have taught her the Southern childhood pastime of nipping off the bottom of a flower and sucking out the nectar. I have a honeysuckle in the back yard, a beautiful orange and red one - but alas, it has a flaw. It doesn't smell fragrant at all. So I decided that I would actually plant one of its wild cousins, so that we could enjoy the beautiful flowers and the fragrance. And eventually make the recipe for Honeysuckle Sorbet that I found. GS and I went for a walk on a bright, sunny and cold day before New Year's day and found a likely candidate to bring home. It is now tucked away in the back porch, waiting for spring to come.

Knit a Skyrim Viking Hat

I love to make different/strange/odd hats. I also love to play computer games. One of my favorite games is Skyrim, set in the land of the frost-hardy Nords in the Elder Scrolls universe. The setting is inspired by Norse mythology, and it is pretty fascinating to play. Last summer I found this hat pattern on Ravelry and knew that I had to make it. The fact that I am also a Minnesota Vikings fan and could wear it on gameday doesn't hurt. I started working on it back in November and finished just before the Christmas holiday. It is now marked off of my to-do list for 2013. Now I can add knitting a chainmail hauberk to the 2014 to-do list!