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!

Sky Scarf

The last project to sneak its way onto my to-do list for next year is a Sky Scarf (thanks Mel :P). You look outside every day, see what the sky looks like, and knit two rows on the scarf that look like it. Over the course of the year, you end up with a scarf that reflects the sky/weather in your area for the last year. This totally neat idea and pattern can be found here. I stopped by my LYS today, but didn't find the colors that I wanted in lace-weight yarn. I did find them in a slightly heavier DK weight. So I am amending the pattern somewhat and going forward. So this time next year I should have a finished scarf to post.

2013 To-Do List

Short explanation - I have the attention span of a squirrel, so I have to make lists to remember things I want to do. I have a tendency to move on to the next thing before I ever finish what I have. So my goal is to start working through things I have and haven't finished, and projects that I have to do. The ground rule is this: If it is on my list, I can buy the things that I need to do to finish the project. If I want to do something that isn't on this list, it goes on the 2014 to-do list. If I finish everything on this list early, I have to take a break from doing stuff, because that was one busy year!

Here is my to-do list for 2013, grouped in no particular order:

Books:
1. The Infernal City - Greg Keyes
2. Lord of Souls - Greg Keyes
3. Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects - Christie Golden
4. The Sagas of Icelanders - Penguin Classics
5. Njal's Saga - Penguin Classics
6. The Norse Myths - Kevin Crossley-Holland
7. Voyage of the Beagle - Charles Darwin
8. Walden - Henry David Thoreau
9. Letters From Honeyhill - Cecilia Hennel Hendricks
10. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
11. The Passionate Observer - Jean-Henri Fabre
12. Call of the Wild - Jack London
13. Ivanhoe - Sir Walter Scott
14. Chicken and Egg - Janice Cole
15. Riddlemaster Trilogy - Patricia McKillip
16. Iron Druid Chronicles - Kevin Hearne
     16a. Hounded
     16b. Hexed
     16c. Hammered
     16d. Tricked
     16e. Trapped
17. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers - Henry David Thoreau
18. Beowulf
19. Mountains of California - John Muir
20. Collected Poems of Robert Frost

Movies/TV:
21. Monty Python's Holy Grail
22. NCIS Season 1
23. Tales of the Green Valley Series
24. Victorian Farm Series
25. Andy Griffith Show Season 1
26. Doctor Zhivago

Games:
27. Complete Morrowind Main Quest
28. Complete Skyrim Main Quest


Music:
29. Learn Ragtime Nightingale on Guitar
30. Learn Arkansas Traveler on Guitar
31. Lear Swallowtail Reel on Guitar
32. Learn to play songs on tinwhistle in 'The Clarke Tinwhistle' book

Cooking:
33. Cook recipes from Sarah Foster's Southern Cookbook (minus seafood)
34. Cook recipes from Jamie at Home (minus seafood)
35. Make tamales
36. Make something from sourdough starter every week
37. Make homemade pasta
38. Make beef jerky
39. Can peach jam
40. Can marmalade
41. Can pickles
42. Cook with lingonberries

43. Make peanut brittle
44. Make hot sauce
45. Homebrew root beer
46. Boyle a pigeon

Garden:
47. Move the flowerbed from the computer-room window
48. Mulch flower beds
49. Make a new raised garden bed
50. Grow soapwort and calendula
51. Grow peanuts
52. Grow a lotus
53. Set up the pond again
54. Save garden seeds from beans and tomatoes
55. Set up vermicomposting bins
56. Powerwash the outside of the house and sidewalks
57. Catch a wild honeysuckle plant
58. Put up a trellis for the honeysuckle plants
59. Paint the butterbug
60. Make a miniature garden
61. Make a fairy house

Crafting:
62. Crochet Skyrim Viking Hat
63. Knit hat for me
64. Knit scarf for me
65. Knit gloves for me
66. Knit flower hat for friend's baby
67. Knit something for other friend's baby
68. Knit socks for John
69. Knit socks for cousin's wife
70. Finish Barn-Raising Quilt
71. Sew Quilt for/with the GS
72. Sew GS's Angry Birds
73. Spin yarn on my Navajo spindle
74. Spin yarn on drop spindle
75. Make small tri-loom
76. Make large tri-loom
77. Weave Gordon tartan

78. Make shampoo with soapwort
79. Make balm with calendula
80. Finish preparing fleece and spin it
81. Learn Nalbinding and make something with it
82. Work on watercolor/drawing
83. Make a treebark throw
84. Make a straw hat
85. Learn Fair Isle knitting
86. Learn how to cable in knitting
87. Put together the Starry Night puzzle
88. Make an olive oil lamp
89. Make a terrarium
90. Knit a Sky Scarf

House/Organization:
91. Make rotating menu plan
92. Make pantry supply list
93. Make home inventory
94. Make electronic cookbook
95. Make budget and debt repayment plan

96. Organize family pictures
97. Make a photo wall
98. Finish lifewalk planner
99. Make a garden scrapbook
100. Take donations to the Salvation Army
101. Update Christmas Card Mailing List
102. Finish reading/crafting room

Travel (Local/Distant):
103. Take GS to a movie
104. Take GS on a picnic
105. Go to the Art Museum
106. Go to the Wheeler Wildlife Refuge
107. Go to Burritt-on-the-Mountain
108. Go to Constitution Village
109. Go to Falls Mill in TN
110. Hike every trail in the Monte Sano park
111. Go to Buck's Pocket State Park, AL
112. Go to Gulf Shores, AL
113. Go to Arkansas
114. Go to the Ozark Folk Center
115. Go to Nebraska
116. Go to Mansfield, MO and the Baker Creek Seed Co.

Overall:
117. Reduce amount of waste

Sewing Lessons

The Gnomeslayer is five now, and I have started working on getting her involved in doing more homely tasks. She has always "helped" me cook, helped me unload the dishwasher, put her dishes in the sink when she's finished eating, cleaned up her toy messes, and made her bed. But now that she is a big girl, I wanted to start teaching her some other practical skills that are also fun. So we have started working on her first quilt, to help her learn how to sew. I picked out some bright fabrics and cut them into squares, and she is helping sew them together. I have to say that it takes a brave person to help a child learn how to sew...you are subject to lots of pin pricks and a wandering attention span. So far we work through one seam joining two blocks per day. When she starts to get the hang of it we might try doing more, but that seems to suit her attention span for now. She is very excited to be making her own quilt, though less enthusiastic when she realizes that it is actually "work" and isn't instantly done. I love being able to share one of my favorite pastimes with my little girl.

Sourdough Saturday - Sourdough Pancakes

One of my goals this year is to use my sourdough starter every week to make something. Sourdough starter needs to be used and replenished fairly frequently, and if it sits for too long without being used it can go off. So I have declared that every Saturday will be Sourdough Saturday in our house. This week I made Sourdough Pancakes from the King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook. The recipe can also be found here. Sourdough can work through either the yeasts in it to make things rise, or the acidity of it can react with baking soda to make quickbreads rise.

I whipped up the batter and heated up the skillet. My husband, the self-proclaimed pancake maker in the family, hovered around the edges while I worked. After he kept making suggestions and pointed comments about how pancakes should be made, I not-so-graciously bowed out and let him make the pancakes. This is a man who loves his box of Aunt Jemima Buttermilk Pancake Mix. At first he was dubious, because the batter was pretty thick and didn't pour out. When he sat down and ate some though, he was sold. The tang of the sourdough and the buttermilk were a perfect foil for the sweet maple syrup.

If you are interested in cooking with sourdough, you can either buy your starter or make your own. The basic recipe can be found here. Care and feeding instructions for starter can be found here.

Two Birds With One Stone

Baking these cookies helped with two of the items from my to-do list. First, I am working my way through Sarah Foster's Southern Cooking, and this recipe came from there. Second, I wanted to cook with lingonberries. I bought a jar of lingonberry jam to make Swedish meatballs with, but never made the meatballs. I have been looking for a use for the jam, not wanting it to go to waste. These Cornmeal Thumbprint Cookies fit the bill. I did half of the batch with lingonberry jam, and the other half with raspberry-peach champagne jam from the frou-frou food store. The cookies have a pleasant crunch from the cornmeal, though my little food processor didn't grind the almonds up as much as they should have been so they were extra crunchy. I used to be a big fan of the Knott's Berry Farm jam cookies I bought at the vending machine at work a long time ago, though these are much better. I had to remind the family that although they are small (1-inch balls), they aren't calorie free. :)

Oh, and as far as the lingonberries - I knew that they were more tart, like cranberries. These cookies aren't overly sweet, so I don't think I'd use lingonberries with them again. They'd work better with a sweeter base to work from. I actually liked the effect, but my husband wasn't as crazy about them.

Building Robots

The Gnomeslayer is obsessed with robots and mechanical things. For Christmas I got her this soda can robot kit. So yesterday we sat down and put it together. It isn't a fancy robot of course, it has a motor on it that makes it run around. GS got to help put the screws in that hold it together, assemble his arms and stick on the eyes. Oh, and she also got to help by drinking the root beer to empty the can in the first place. Science is a thirsty job. She is very happy with her new little robot, though her main thing she likes to do is stretch out his bendy-straw arms and curl them around.

Bluebells of Scotland

I like to go out walking around in the winter to see who is still blooming. It isn't odd to find quite a few stray blooms on my plants, including a few Bluebells. I have always been frustrated, because I have never been able to get a picture that captures their lovely blue color, because they always come out looking white. I figured out today that using flash worked. They have blooms for me year around here, with fewer of course in the wintertime. So here is one of my lone soldiers left, blooming in the cold.

The Shortbread Pan

Every year at Christmas time I break out my shortbread pan and bake at least one batch of shortbread. We have a neighbor who is very fond of shortbread, and always brings the Gnomeslayer treats throughout the year on holidays. So on Christmas I make a treat for him and his family. Shortbread is something that I don't make often, because it doesn't exactly fit anywhere into a healthy diet. I think that I ordered it from King Arthur Flour while we were living in Virginia, probably about fifteen years ago, and have made shortbread in it annually. Since I am of Scottish descent, I have a natural affinity for thistles and shortbread. The only downside to it is that residue from the shortbread gets stuck in all of the crevices no matter what I try to do. The only remedy that really cleans it out is to sit down with a toothpick and run it through all of them. It would probably be easier to just use it as a kitchen decoration and pat out rounds of shortbread on a baking sheet, but I guess that you have to sacrifice something for style. It is an annual ritual that gets me reacquainted with an old friend.

Merry Christmas to everyone, and may you all be blessed with what you want most in life!

Reboot

Anyone who has read my blog will have noticed that my writing has been pretty nonexistent for the last couple of years. Mainly because of school and work sucking out my brain, but also because of a lack of interest in what my blog had become. I originally envisioned that it would help me keep in touch with my friends and family, and then I ended up writing a blog mostly about gardening. During the last few years, my interest in flowers and gardening has waned. Not that I don't still love all of my flowers, but I only have a few flower beds and taking pictures of the same plants or trying to come up with something different to write about wasn't that enjoyable. And I found myself staging things for pictures and taking the fun out of the process. So although I do enjoy my plants, and still plan on working a lot outside with both flowers and vegetable gardens, it isn't going to be the focus of what I am going to be writing because.....I had an inspiration that got me interested in blogging again.

I am a collector (not quite a hoarder though there are family tendencies) of things, not so much a user of things. During the time I was working so hard on schoolwork, I would buy things so that I could use them when I was finished with my degree. It helped me to cope with a lot of the resentment that I had about the things that I didn't have time for because I was so busy. And then when I finally finished, I found that I just really didn't have interest in doing anything. Now that some time has passed, I found myself looking through all of the projects that I have planned, books waiting to be read, songs needing to be learned, and gardening projects that I have been thinking of. And I started making a list. First it was a list of things that I wanted to get done during my holiday break. Then I started thinking on how making a list of things that I wanted to do would help me keep track of them, and feel some progress as I completed them. So I started expanding the list into what I wanted to do in the next year.

At first I thought about just letting this blog sit and start a new one specifically for starting over again without the baggage of what I have written previously. A blank page if you will. But then I tried to think of a witty new name and came up blank. So I have decided that I am going to use this blog to keep track of my progress and share it with my friends and family. Be advised: If you continue to visit this blog, you will be subject to seeing cooking projects, drawings, hearing about books that I read, and possibly having to listen to music that I play - if I ever got brave enough to post it.  2013 is going to be a very busy year, a sort of renaissance of me to have fun and learn things. I'm looking forward to the ride.