S’more-cakes

My progression to making up s’more-cakes this morning started like this:  1. I want pancakes.  2. Maybe chocolate chip pancakes.  3. Oh look, a modification next to the recipe to make graham cakes.  4.  Oh look, there are mini marshmallows in the cupboard next to the chocolate chips.  5.  Oh my god – s’more-cakes! (At this point, you should picture a gigantic light bulb above my head!)

The basics – take your favorite buttermilk pancake recipe and replace half of the flour with graham cracker crumbs.  You can buy these in a box, or crush up some whole graham crackers very very finely.  Don’t add the chocolate chips or marshmallows to the batter.  Instead, pour some of the batter into your warm pan and quickly add the chocolate chips and mini marshmallows  into the batter/pancake.  Like this:

Let the pancake cook until it is almost ready to flip.  Keep pushing the marshmallows down while the pancake is cooking.  Right before you flip it, it should look like this:

I would recommend cooking the pancake a little bit longer on the first side than normal.  Of course, turn down the heat a little bit so it doesn’t burn!  This is because once you flip the pancake, you only want it to cook for about another minute so that the marshmallows don’t completely melt away.  Once you’re done, you should have something like this:

They were quite delicious!  I would serve them immediately after cooking, so that the marshmallow doesn’t get hard and weird.  They were quite sweet and moist, so they didn’t need any topping (besides, syrup would just be strange!).  I’m not sure it this is the perfect way to make s’more-cakes, but it was certainly a tasty first try!

BBQ Chicken Pizza

More food!  In addition to the crockpot, I also received a pizza stone and peel for Christmas.  I was pretty excited about this – I hate how pizza tends to be soggy in the middle and burnt around the edges, so I was pretty sure that the pizza stone would solve all of my problems.

The inaugural pizza was BBQ chicken.  I bought the dough fresh at the grocery store and topped it with barbeque sauce, a ton of red onion, bacon, chicken and mozzarella cheese.  In reading the instructions for the peel, they noted that you should dust it with cornmeal before putting the dough down.  I would like to know their definition of the word dust, because my pizza got horribly stuck!  I had to lift up the edges and keep throwing more and more cornmeal underneath the pizza to make it slide off the peel and onto the stone.  I did manage it eventually, and a major dinner crisis was averted.  So, in all – a liberal coating of the peel would be a good idea!

Verdict?  The pizza stone rocks!  The bottom of the crust was crispy, but the inside wasn’t overdone.  It was probably the best pizza I have ever made!

New Year’s Resolutions

I don’t usually make new year’s resolutions, but this year I’ve made a few.  A major one is to get back to posting regularly!  Secondary to that, I’ve decided that I need to entertain more at home, so that might benefit the blog as well, since there is usually food involved in entertaining!

Speaking of food, I got a crockpot for Christmas!  For its inagural run, I decided to make a recipe from The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook, which I also received for Christmas.  There is an entire chapter devoted to slow cooker and pressure cooker recipes.  Eventually I settled on Lamb Vindaloo.

I was a little concerned about my ability to find a boneless leg of lamb, but it was right there in the Star market by my work.  It was a little over five pounds – huge!

After trimming off most of the fat (and skin?) I cut the lamb up into big chunks, about 1½ inch cubes.  After seasoning with salt and pepper they were seared in some oil.  It smelled so good!

While this was going on, Tim played sous-chef and chopped onions and garlic.

I cooked down the onions, then added spices and then the garlic.  This also smelled wonderful!

The meat and the onions were refrigerated separately overnight and then in the morning I dumped them all into the crock pot with some broth and let it cook all day.  Once I got home I thickened the sauce with some flour, added some fresh cilantro and made some basmati rice.

It was a wonderful meal!  And it made so much that we had leftovers for days – which is an amazing thing considering the voracious appetite of my sous-chef!

I have a feeling that the crock pot will be making many appearances on our dinner table for the next few months!

Seascape

I finished Seascape a while ago, but I hadn’t had a chance to take any pictures.  I finally found some time, and some sunshine.

The finished dimensions came in at 10.5″ x 88″, leading to a pretty respectable scarf.  The edges seem to curl in a little bit, even after blocking, but I rather like the effect that it creates.

Before blocking:

During blocking (I really need to get some blocking wires if I’m going to continue lace knitting!):

And a few more shots of the finished scarf:

This is going to be the perfect scarf in the fall.  It is really soft, but pretty thin so it won’t be too warm.

Garden 2009

While I wasn’t blogging, the garden grew!  I thought that a big update of what we have growing was in order.  Saturday it didn’t rain, so I got a chance to take some pictures.

Here is the garden as a whole (please don’t judge our shaggy lawn, it’s been rainy everytime there is time to mow it!).

The garden is divided into three sections with little stone walkways in between.  I’ll take you from left to right in pictures!

All the way on the left we have the tomato plants.

They are just starting to flower.

Next up are some beans.  I planted a row of yellow and a row of green beans, but only the yellow ones really took off.   Which is fine by me, because they are my favorite!

The beans are also starting to flower.

The next section starts off with some pepper plants.  There are both sweet and hot varieties.  In the front are a few brussel sprout plants.

There are tiny peppers on a few of the plants.

Next up are some vidalia onions.  These look a little sad, all falling over.  I weeded them, and I think that the weeds were helping to hold the stalks up.  They should be okay though (I hope).

And next to the onions, finishing off the middle section are some carrots and a second crop of radishes that are just coming up in the front.  Our first crop was starting to get woody, so we pulled them all and re-seeded the section.  (I gave up trying to weed the carrots, it was just a lost cause.)

In the final section, we have some green onions!

Also, there are some melons, which are doing very well, which you can see in this picture of our lettuce.

Fresh lettuce may be my favorite thing in the whole world.

In between the lettuce and the green onions, we had planted some spinach.  Unfortunately, it succumbed to aphids and all of the leaves curled under.  We were forced to pull it all up, but on the upside, we just planted more lettuce!  Hopefully we can keep the aphids at bay.

At the back of the garden, along the fence we have some climbing plants, like snap peas, which are flowering and producing like crazy.

And some cucumbers, which got a late start but are coming along nicely now.

Oh look, I have a blog!

The other day my sister complained to me that I hadn’t blogged in ages – and she was right!  And I don’t even have a good excuse for the last month!  I finally defended and started my new job, oh and moved – so there has been a lot going on, but it’s starting to quiet down now.

So, I’m back.  I have a lot of things backlogged to blog about; I’m going to try to get to them all in a week or two.  But right now, I am excited about this:

This just came in the mail today!  It’s 13 skeins of Briggs & Little Atlantic.  13!  That’s a lot of yarn.  But I’ll need it all – because I am making sylvi.  I am so excited!   Sylvi was my motivation during the last push to write my thesis.  I promised myself that once I was done that I could make it.  Well, try at least.  The pattern looks a little intimidating, but I love a challenge!

In case you’re wondering why I’m knitting a heavy wool sweater in the middle of summer – I want to wear this as my fall coat, so I have to get a jump on it!  Luckily Atlantic is a bulky weight yarn, so it won’t go too painfully slow.  And, it will be a nice break after the laceweight from the Seascape.  Which I did finish, I swear.  I’m just waiting for a day with some sunlight to take some decent pictures – it just has to stop raining!

Off to swatch!

I Can Hear My Knitting Laughing at Me

Loudly, in fact.

I’ve been annoyed at knitting lately, and I was trying to hold on to a project that wasn’t really working.  First, recall this awesome swatch that I knit ages ago (March 3rd, actually).  I made that swatch in preparation for some awesome fingerless gloves that I had envisioned in my head.  Enter problem number 1 – a designer of anything more complex than scarves I am not.

But, ignoring that fact, I went for it.  I measured and did math (problem number 2 – math is not always my strong suit).  I thought really hard about increases and decreases and how to center the cable design perfectly on the back of my hand.  Through all of this hard work, I managed to create this:

I was excited that it was spring colored, bright and happy.  I ignored the fact that it was a little too small and started to cut off the circulation to my fingers.  (If you’re counting – this would be problem number 3.  Look how red my fingers are in the picture!)  I was giddy over the fact that the cable pattern was centered so nicely that the top worked its way right up my middle finger.  (I thought maybe that I could flip people off in style).

I was so excited about it that I was going to immediately cast on the second one.  Until I lost the first page of my notes.  (Problem # 4!)  I didn’t want to start a new project because I was afraid that I would never finish this one.  So I looked and looked.  I worked on other little craft projects here and there, finished up some things – but didn’t start any new big knitting projects.  I figured my notes would turn up.  Finally, I faced the facts.  I picked a new project, and went in search of some  laceweight yarn I had leftover from making a present for my sister.

I couldn’t find it anywhere.  I looked in my yarn bag, in my craft bin, under the couch, under the bed, under the dresser.  I tore apart the stack of things on my coffee table.  I was really ready to give up.  I looked under the couch again, and then I found this:

Yup, it’s my first page of notes from the fingerless glove.  It figures, right?  But, I was over the gloves, and now I really wanted to find my leftover Cashwool.  So I checked the yarn bag again – and there it was, right on top.

I thought about going back to the fingerless gloves.  Adding more stitches, ripping out the first one, doing them right.  And then I realized that spring has almost passed and I probably wouldn’t wear them anyway.  So I started on this:

I’ve even made a little progress:

But please, don’t remind me that I don’t really wear stoles either, ok?  I’m pretending it’s just a really wide scarf.

Fajitas

It’s been a while, huh?  I’ve been too busy to blog, too busy to craft really.  34 day until my PhD defense, so not to much time for anything!

But we did make a tasty dinner last night, fajitas!

Two small steaks were rubbed with salt, pepper, and a little taco seasoning and grilled.  The peppers and onions were sliced thin and cooked in some butter with the rest of the packet of taco seasoning until they were tender.  The meat was sliced and mixed into the veggies.  So so tasty, with the added bonus that the meat isn’t overdone by cooking it pre-sliced.  Served with a little guacamole, some refried beans and plenty of cilantro, it was a pretty tasty dinner!

Sheldon is Excited for Spring!

I finally got around to finishing Sheldon.  I started on him months ago, ran out of yarn and put him down.  I finally picked up some more yarn and finished all of the pieces a little while back.  (The yarn is just Sugar n’ Cream cotton.) Then I ran into an unusual stumbling block in the attached i-cord.  Apparently this was a problem for me, it took me about four days to figure it out.  It looks really strange starting out, but it got better as I went on!

All that work on the i-cord, and I didn’t even take a good picture of it.  Ha.  Sheldon is posing on some upcoming flowers, daffodils, I think.  I can’t wait for things to start blooming!

Alien Invasion

Another little ami – this time from my imagination.  I had envisioned a green alien, but the only green yarn I had was far to splitty to be crocheted tightly.  So, white won.  But, I like the white and red combo, especially the eyes.  Each eye is made of four red seed beads from my bead stash.

I have a really strong desire to hang him from somewhere, but I have to say that he does look like quite the studious alien on my bookshelf at work.

In Celebration of Pi

For those out there less nerdy than me, Pi day was on Saturday.  (It was also Einstein’s birthday.)  To celebrate, I made meat pie!

Meat pie is something that my French-Canadian grandmother always makes on holidays.  It is very tasty – she usually has to make two to feed all of us pigs!  I’ve never made it before, and it always seemed a little tricky, according to my mom.  And then I found out why – there’s no actual recipe! It’s all stored in my grandmother’s head, and unfortunately I’m not telepathic.  I called her to ask her how long and what temperature to bake it at, and she said “until it’s done”.   Ahh, family recipes!

So, with some vague instructions, I made a meat pie.  And now I’m going to share with you how it’s done.  (I’m also sharing this with future me, so I can’t forget!)

Ingredients:

• 1 ¼ lb ground beef
• ¼ cup water
• 2-3 tbsp. flour
• cinnamon
• ground cloves
• ½ tsp. salt
• two pie shells
• one slightly beaten egg white

Directions:

1. Brown the beef, draining off about half of the fat when it is finished.
2. Add water, and then flour in small portions until a slight gravy is formed.
3. Add cinnamon (about 1 tsp) and cloves (about 2-3 tsp) – until it tastes good.
4. Add salt.
5. Put first pie shell into the pie dish.
6. Add meat to pie shell
7. Top with second pie shell, pinch closed and cut a few slits in the top.
8. Brush the top with the egg white.
9. Bake at 400 F for about 20-25 minutes, until the top is a nice golden brown.

Hoppity Hop Hop Hop

Please meet Barnabus Bunny!  This is a amigurumi love bunny that I made as part of a CAL in the amigurumi lover’s group on Ravelry.

He’s pink – but for some reason seemed more male than female, so Barnabus it is.  He also has a cute little tail, but I only snapped this one good picture on my way into work from the parking garage this morning.  There were a lot of people around and I felt a little weird taking pictures of a crocheted bunny!

Yarn is some mystery acrylic in from the bottom of my yarn bag – seems to be about worsted weight and I used an E hook.  His bottom half is filled with some poly pellets to give it some weight (and keep him from toppling over!) and the top half is just stuffed with polyfil.  I may make him a little friend out of some thinner weight white yarn I also found – wouldn’t want a bunny to be lonely!

Shirt #1

I’m on a mission to make some new clothes for my big kid job.  On Saturday I went to the fabric store and bought ten shirt patterns (on sale for $2 each – who wouldn’t buy the limit, really?)  I also picked up enough material to make four of them.  This weekend I finished one.

The pattern is Butterick B5283, view D.  I made the sleeves shorter because I ran out of material.  (Side note, that never seems to happen – I always have way to much when I follow the numbers on the back of the pattern, so that was… strange.)  I do love 3/4 length sleeves though, so I’m not too upset.  The twist at the top is supposed to be off center, and it was a little fiddly getting it to work out right.  Basically, it took two chemists and an electronics engineer a good fifteen minutes to figure it out.  Then we had some beer.

The fabric is just a basic stretch knit.  I rarely sew with knits, so this was a little new to me, but not terribly hard.  I just used a zig-zag stitch for most of it and away I went.  This shirt is so soft and nice, and I am in love with the color.  I don’t know why I love teal so much, but I’m going with it.

The only downside to this shirt is that I’ve promised myself I won’t wear any of these new clothes until I actually start my job.  Nothing like the motivation of new clothes to get a girl going, right?

A Weekend in Pictures

We had a great weekend!  We started off by making this really tasty dish with mashed potatoes, cabbage, onion, garlic, leek (I like leek, I’d never had it before!) and yes, of course… bacon.  (But only a tiny bit, really!)

leeks make food colorful and pretty

the finished dish, along with some steak and beer

Sunday we went to Dim Sum downtown (sadly, no pictures… we ate all of the food too fast).  We had pork buns, sticky rice, noodles with some sort of beef in them, turnip cakes and something else that I don’t know the name of, but I know that I like it.

After that, we went to the science museum to see the frog exhibit – Tim loves frogs!

some type of bullfromg

a green frog with sticky toes

can you find the frog?

poison dart frog - so pretty!

I also got a book from the library!  Charted knitting designs!

continuing to fuel my addition

I’ve already opened it up and tried out a pattern I’ve had my eye on, the ribbed spindle.  I think it looks like mitosis and that makes the science nerd in me oh-so-very happy.

not as hard as it looks, really

I also learned how to do a tubular cast on.  I would not encourage anyone to try and learn this at 1am.  Not my best idea ever, but I did eventually understand it.  And look how pretty my 1×1 rib looks as a result!

harder than I thought it would be

I have grand plans for this swatch and these new things I’m learning.  I’ve done a lot of math so far.  It hasn’t all been pretty, especially when I sometimes can’t count – but I’m excited about it all the same!

We Eat Too Much Bacon

I was just getting ready to post about the yummy dinner we had on Sunday when I realized it contained bacon.  As did the last like 5 food things I’ve posted.  You people must think we eat nothing that doesn’t contain bacon.  I swear that’s not true!  But, at least I’m not posting bacon-food everyday!

So, a little while back I found this recipe from The Pioneer Woman and immediately decided that I needed to try it.  Basics: lemon pepper chicken breast, bacon and cheese (we used pepper jack for a little kick).  It was by far the tastiest sandwich I’ve ever had – served up on a tasty fresh bun.

In the background you can see we had this with some fake poutine.  (And also some yellow wax beans – vegetables are tasty too!) I say fake because my grocery store sorely dissapointed me – for weeks they’ve been tempting me with cheese curds (which are extremely rare to find here) and when I actually went to buy them, they were no where to be found.  And of course when I asked about them, no one had any idea what the hell I was talking about.  Where’s a Canadian when you need one?  So, we substituted some provolone instead.  It was passable, but I can’t wait to get back to the great white north and get some good stuff!