Part one.

I love frozen pizza. It is one of the few things that I actually like from the freezer. Something happens to the pizza when it is frozen to make it taste, well, like frozen pizza. And then there is the convenience. Go to the store, pick up a pizza, take it home and bake it. Or more simply, open freezer, grab pizza, unwrap, bake.

In theory anyway. I am not the type to have frozen pizzas on hand. If I have them, I eat them, so if I want one, it requires a trip to the store…usually Hy-Vee, usually late at night.

And part two…

A few nights ago I made some pizza from scratch. It was good, but I forgot (since the last time that I made it) that my recipe makes too much dough for my pizza pan. I ended up, again, with a slightly ruffled pizza that had way too much dough on the edges. I wanted to make some pizza, figure out the best size, so that I have it all figured out for the next time I make pizza. The problem is that I don’t really feel like eating more pizza.

So, perfect time for me to make frozen pizzas. Then, some cold lonely night, I can creep down to the basement, open up the freezer door, and pull out a home-made frozen pizza. No more trips to Hy-Vee! (Oh, the things that make my world go around…)

I made a batch of pizza dough, kneaded it until the dough was the consistency of an earlobe (as per directions..). Then let it rise, and shaped it into 3 pizzas. Large enough for one meal (plus leftovers for the next morning). I love to have cold pizza with lime pickle!

The pizzas are simple; tomato sauce, cheese, and a little bit of dried oregano sprinkled over the top. I can always add extra cheese, or toppings before baking.

I cut out some cardboard circles, wrapped them in plastic bags, and put the pizzas on them to freeze. I wanted to make sure that the pizzas froze flat, and then in the morning I will give each pizza its own ziplock bag for extra fresh, airtight storage.

When I was 8, my mom gave me a knit your own lamb kit. I remember carefully knitting the lamb, and painstakingly sewing the seams. It was quite an ordeal. I loved my lamb, and played with it for many years. I don’t know where it is anymore…somewhere in a box in storage I guess.

A few months ago, I came across the original pattern.  I wanted to make a new lamb, so I got started and knit to the end of the pattern, which ended up only giving me piece #1. It turns out that piece #1 is the body…no head. And that was it for the pattern. I realized that I must be missing page number 2…

Below is piece #1, with the addition of the head (stitches picked up and knit around the neck)…

I wanted to make a lamb in the style of the original, so I put the lamb piece #1 down and took to the internet. With no luck. I found one random posting for a kit being sold from 2001, and that was it. I called all friends that might have had the pattern, which was written in 1988. No luck there either. Then a few weeks ago, I was looking in a notebook full of recipes and other notes, and page number 2 fell out!

So I set to making lambs.

Attaching the top of the head to the chin.

Stuffing the legs by pushing wool batting to the tips with a thin pen.

Sewing up head and neck. The process of actually knitting these lambs is quite quick and easy. The time is spent in assembling the parts and sewing them all together.

Here is a lamb sewn up minus ears and tails…

…they look rather funny! Ears and tails are attached by threading a double length of wool through a stitch or two on the head and rump.

The yarn is then crocheted for a few chains, and the loops are reattached to the body, forming a little bubble for ears and tail! I was talking with my friend Jeanne, who used to raise sheep and lambs, and she said that the tails of lambs are actually rather long and floppy, but we agreed that the loopy tail looks quite sweet.

We have a beautiful undyed yarn from Rowan (Rowan Sheep Breeds) in our store,  and the variations in color and texture come from the different breeds of sheep. I have knit several sweaters out of this yarn, and just love it! I wanted to make a little field of lambs, to show some of the different colors of yarn for the store window.

Kathy made a beautiful wooden box, which we lined with plastic, and filled with pea gravel and potting soil. We sprinkled the soil with grass and clover seed (and a few poppy seeds!) and covered the top with straw. I am hoping that the grass will poke up soon through the straw field, so the lambs have something to frolic in and graze on!

I saved baby bok choi from my CSA share for a week and a half to have enough for this recipe (it requires for about 4 baby bok chois). Kimuchi is a Japanese style kimchi, that I found in my usual canning book, Joy of Pickling. The recipe is normally made with napa cabbage, but Joy of Pickling suggests that you can use other types of cabbage as well. Since we reliably get bok choi in our CSA, I decided to try it instead.

The cabbage is sliced into sections, ready to be salted…

…and pressed overnight.

Salting draws out the moisture in the cabbage, and works as a preservative. The salted cabbage ends up looking quite shriveled.

I chopped the salted bok choi  into 1″ squares, and added slivered carrots, grated apple, and the usuals: ginger, garlic, green onions, salt, and hot pepper. I used a little less hot pepper, to experiment and see what happens.

The kimuchi now has to sit, loosely covered, for a few days before it is ready. My last batch has been living in my fridge now for about a month, and it seems to get better with time. The flavors aren’t quite as sharp…

One of the benefits of living in Iowa in the winter is cross-country skiing. Especially when the snow doesn’t seem to ever go away. It is one of the best ways to get outside, enjoy the weather, and stay warm, toasty warm! Some friends organized a group ski a few days ago, and it was a great opportunity to have fun with friends, enjoy the beautiful sunshine, and get some exercise.

And eat treats and drink tea and cocoa of course!

Up the hill after break. I have two favorite things about going up hills. The first is knowing that I will get to zoom down an equal amount of hill some time in the relatively near future. The second is the Groucho Marx uphill shuffle. Lots of little bouncy sort of steps to keep going, and keep the traction on the bottom of the skis.

And the silo set against the beautiful blue sky, reminders that the group ski is indeed in Iowa. It is a little later in the afternoon, so the shadows are growing a little longer on the snow…

One of the highlights of the skiing trip was a taste of a maple icicle. I have never thought or heard of such a thing, but as we were skiing a long, my friend Sam noticed a rather large icicle hanging off of a maple tree. He tried it, and it was indeed maple syrup flavored. YUM! It makes me want to try to tap some maple trees in the next month…

I was working on a project this morning, and when it got time to make lunch I realized that I didn’t have too much time. I wanted something hot, and so I rummaged around in my fridge and pulled out a handful of rainbow chard, a carrot, and some cheese, and olives. I made a grilled cheese sandwich, and on the other side of the grill I sauteed my chard with olives. It was a yummy treat, and so pretty to look at!

Sometimes it is rather tricky to get my mom over to my house. Especially in the winter, when it is cold (14 degrees), snowy (I can’t even drive down my little lane..), and dark (8 pm).

But, when I have a jar of home-made soup, and a promise to heat it up, she does somehow make it over. My dad and I made dinner for some friends of his, and I made soup from a wonderful soup cookbook, Vegetable Soups, by Deborah Madison. My mom brought the cookbook home from the store a few days ago and we have made two delicious soups from it already. (She made a black bean soup with cumin, lime, and cilantro.) I saved a jar of soup for my mom, and heated it up for her when we got home.

I started the soup with a bunch of fresh vegetables, and made a stock. I like to make home-made stock, although sometimes I just don’t have the time to do it. This particular soup calls for chickpeas, so I added the chickpea broth (made with garlic, onions, bay leaves, parsley, and peppercorns) to the soup as well.

The main ingredients were broth, chickpeas, and farro (for which I substituted soaked spelt, with a slightly chewier result).

We garnished the soup with fresh parsley, olive oil, salt pepper, freshly grated Parmesan cheese, and a squeeze of lemon juice to brighten things up.

Anyways, I got home, heated up the jar of soup, gave my mom an eider down comforter, and the hot soup.

Here is attempt number one of Tunisian crochet. I have been meaning to get around to this for a while. This morning, when I got into work, I grabbed a ball of Peaches and Cream multi colored yarn, and a wonderful crochet hook with a long cord (also known as an afghan hook). The stitches are worked back and forth on the right side of the work, picking up the horizontal loops while working to the left, and getting rid of them as you work back to the right.

The long cord attached to the end of the hook comes in handy when you start accumulating the stitches. If you were working a small item, you probably wouldn’t even need the cord!

I made a pot holder of sorts, although it might need to be double thick for it to be really useful. It looks pretty crafty, and now I am now motivated to try the technique with linen, or hemp, to make some placemats. I also want to try it with an assortment of hand dyed yarns to see what happens with the variegation.

Some days I just love my job! Especially when it requires me to do “product development.” Hehehe..

Maybe too tricky…

I cast on for both socks at the same time, using my right hand and left hand mirroring each other to cast on.

The right sides of the cast on edge were on the outside, and the wrong sides were together, so I had to twist the stitches so that they were opposite, as the socks are knit with the right sides together. I got through the cast on and knit 2 purl 2 ribbed border with several mishaps, and learned to make sure and check my work REGULARLY so as not to accidentally connect the two socks…

The purled sock is a little bigger, and I am worried that my gauge is significantly different from knitting continentally to purling English style. I am going to keep on working on it for a while and see what I can do…

Fast forward a few days..

I ripped out socks numbered one and two, as I am pretty sure that I would have had two distinctly different sized socks if I had continued. The purled sock (on the outside), worked with the yarn in my right hand, was coming out much larger.

I also decided that I would like the socks to be ribbed the whole way down. This means that I would have had to constantly be switching between socks, as well as stitches, which is tricky! It didn’t make sense for me to spend that much time tinkering with this particular project. I ripped out the socks, and switched to one sock at a time.

I finished one very orange sock, measured the amount of yarn that I had left, and re-knit the top and grafted the new part onto the old. There is a bit of a line where I grafted the two parts together, but this way I can use all of the yarn in the ball, and have super long ribbed socks. They come about 2/3 of the way up my calf!

Of course I have one finished sock, and one sock 1″ of the way finished…

I haven’t given up on the two socks at once on one set of double points. I am going to try again, this time using a multicolored yarn, and work really hard to keep my purl stitches tight. Will post when I do!

Last night we soaked a cup of dal and a cup of rice in separate dishes. First thing this morning we ground the rice and dal.

After they were ground (the dal more finely than the rice), we mixed them together and set them out to ferment for an hour.

Meanwhile, we got the potatoes started. (For the masala part of the dish…)

We boiled potatoes, and then added them to a mixture of oil, onions, spices, and hot pepper. While they cooked, we started working on the dosas.

Heli and I have never made dosas before. Just a disclaimer. So we didn’t have our hopes set too high for the success of our “paper-thin” rice and dal pancakes. Attempt one below…

Ok…so we thinned the batter considerably, tried different utensils, switched to silicone, and then back to the stainless steel, played around with the heat until we found the optimal temperature and when we were suitably satisfied with the cooking conditions, we had made enough dosas…

So We had masala dosas, but more like potatoes wrapped in nice little scraps of dough. They tasted good though!

A finished dosa with potatoes, cucumber carrot raita, and home-made lemon pickle.

Knitting two socks at once feels like it takes a little longer. Sometimes it seems like the process takes twice as long, as each sock is knit on every round. But at the end, both socks are finished! Kind of a Big Deal! (seriously..) I set up my socks so that the yarn is coming from the inside of the ball for sock number one, and from the outside of the ball for sock number two. Sometimes this involves snipping and weighing the yarn, but in this case I made the socks reverse, and didn’t bother to adjust where they started. Its fun to be random on where the self striping yarn starts. (Its also fun to be selective.)

The socks are cast on, one at a time, and then knit, one row on sock one, one row on sock two. I am working the heels, first the flaps, one row on each. The heel is turned, one sock at a time. For picking up and knitting the gusset, the socks are then worked one round sock one, one round sock two. The gusset always feels like it takes forever for me. And when there are two socks at once thing, it takes forever times two. After the heel is all the way turned, I usually feel like I am home free. The rest of the foot and toe work up quite quickly, and as a project nears the end it seems to pick up speed as well. (Maybe some sort of terminal velocity thing…)

And so, knitting two socks at once does sometimes save me in the end. I have two socks, instead of one lingering sock, sadly waiting for its match.