Betty f*ing Crocker

It’s time for another episode of Cooking With the Knitting Doctor. One of the things that is nice about being home is home cooking. The food was great on the cruise, but we usually eat a lot more simply at home, and eat way more plant-based meals. I had the urge to make beans and rice yesterday, and did so. They aren’t vegetarian, since I added some leftover sliced ham that was languishing in the freezer from Thanksgiving, but they were pretty loaded with other healthy things.

Here is roughly the bean recipe

  • 1 pound of Rancho Gordo Ayocote Morado beans.
  • Medium onion, sliced or diced.
  • Celery, 2 stalks, chopped.
  • Garlic, 2 cloves, chopped.
  • Red bell pepper, half of it, chopped.
  • 2 slices of thick cut ham, diced.
  • Generous spoon each of dried thyme and oregano.
  • Generous spoon of cumin, ground (I use the whole cumin and grind it as I use it).
  • Pinch of cayenne.
  • Salt and pepper to taste.
  • Stock or water.
  • Can of diced tomatoes

I soaked the beans in water for most of the day. Drain.

Sauté the veggies in olive oil in Instant Pot container. Add everything else, then the stock or water to cover the beans by about 2 inches, more if you want it soupier.

Lock the lid, set on high pressure for 24 minutes. This really depends on the kind of beans you are using. I tend to underestimate a bit, unless I’m shooting for falling apart beans. You can always close it up again and cook for a few more minutes if they aren’t done. When the timer is done, release the steam, check the beans, make sure they are done.

This is one of those recipes that is easily modified. Leave out the ham, or add a different meat if you have leftovers to use. Change up the spices as you like. Some chopped greens would be great in this as well. If you want to use canned or already cooked beans, you could, and just do them on the stove top.

I promptly fell asleep last night after I did these, and missed dinner. My brain is still on east coast time. So we had them for breakfast today.

I took some of the beans, cooked them in a cast iron skillet with some olive oil, mashed them a bit. They were put on top of a heated corn tortilla, and topped with shredded cheese, a fried egg, chopped scallions, cilantro, and tomatoes. And a splash of hot sauce that we bought in St. Thomas.

Honest to God, these were so good that I almost cried. I think I’ve mentioned Rancho Gordo before, I joined their bean club a while back. I get a shipment of their lovely beans every quarter, and buy more in between as well. Their beans are heirloom varieties and are wonderful.

And just so you don’t think I’m kidding about being Miss Betty F-ing Crocker, here’s proof. I won the Betty Crocker Family Leader of Tomorrow award in high school. No lie.

Aftermath

Vacation is loads of fun. We just got off an 11 day cruise in the Eastern Caribbean. We went on Viking, which was our first (but not last) trip with them. I mostly posted on FB while we were gone. Although our shipboard wifi was included, it tended to be slow, especially once everyone was on board and using their devices, so I didn’t even try to do a blog post. The trip out and back was uneventful, and we had a great time, and a much needed sun break.

Despite the fun and sun, it’s really nice to be home. I got to sleep in my own bed last night, and had a cup of tea in my own kitchen this morning. The pets were all very happy to see us. We are fortunate to have found a lovely housesitter who takes good care of them and our home, but they missed us and we missed them.

We didn’t buy much on the trip. Not surprisingly, there wasn’t a single yarn shop to be found. Most of the shops at the ports are wearyingly the same, generally overpriced junk. I did find some nice handmade silk screened place mats on St. Lucia.

Those will be lovely on our patio table in the summer.

And we had to buy a bottle of banana ketchup, and some hot sauce. The locals swear that the banana ketchup is wonderful.

And a little collection of photos from the trip.

On to that mountain of laundry.

Linen somethings

And sort of a blog fail. I finally finished all the Euroflax linen gift somethings yesterday. I had this grand idea to knit a bunch of them, finished four.

Now that they’re (mostly) gifted, I can tell what they are. Don’t be too excited, I spent all of December knitting garter stitch linen face cloths.

I know, right? Those shouldn’t be too hard. They are just big garter stitch squares. And I forgot to take photos of the first three (the green, pink, and lavender ones) before I mailed them off. These are for my sisters, I packaged them with some nice bath soap. Linda just got one, the yellow one was finished yesterday so I’ll get it in the mail when we figure that the crush at the post office is over.

I’m not doing a whole finished project thing for those. It’s Euroflax linen, sport weight. I used this pattern. It starts with 3 stitches, increases every row until it’s wide enough, then decreases back to 3 stitches. “Wide enough” for me was 89 stitches.

You would think that with as few things that I finish around here, that I’d remember to take pictures. Oh well.

I organized all my knitting projects today and got them out of the jumble that they’d turned into.

That is 4 lace shawls, 2 pairs of socks, 2 sweaters, a Hitchhiker, and another linen washcloth. And Ripley. My plan is to finish one of the sock pairs, one of the sweaters, and one of the lace shawls next. We’ll see how that goes. Ripley said she’d help.

Longest night

Winter Solstice is one of my favorite days of the year. I’m not a huge fan of the cold and dark, so even though the days are barely perceptibly longer from here, I still know that they are indeed getting longer. For the last decade or so (twelve years actually), John and I have done a huge solstice sit down dinner for friends and neighbors. It always turned out to be a 5 or 6 course meal for a dozen people, that involved days of planning and cooking.

Last year, we just decided not to do it. And we’re not doing it this year either. I still love to cook for people, but it had gotten to be more about the production and less about the fun of being with friends. The winter months are also often a challenge for me. The “undertoad” starts to grab at my toes and try to pull me under if I get too much on my plate and start stressing out.

I pulled out my Longest Night shawl this morning and gave it a bit of love. I’ve been knitting Euroflax linen “somethings” for Christmas gifts all month, and my hands forgot how nice it is to knit with soft silk and merino lace. Next time I decide to do something like that for the holidays, somebody remind me that I should start earlier so it doesn’t turn into a marathon. I still have one left to finish, but it’s close enough that I can take a break from it.

I’ll leave you with a photo of one of the Christmas trees at work. It makes me laugh every time I walk by it.

I hope your weekend is peaceful, and that you don’t have too much busy stuff to finish before Christmas.

It is risen

I haven’t made bread from a sourdough starter in quite a while. When we went to Poland in September, I forgot to take care of the starter before I left, and by the time we got home and remembered it, it was well past resurrecting.

I decided to buy a small starter from Breadtopia last week. It took a few days to build it up to a usable quantity. Here’s what it looked like this morning.

That looks like a fine healthy starter to me. I have bread dough in the works for a nice sourdough Pain de Campagne.

Arlo

We had a little excitement with Arlo on Thanksgiving. We had a houseful of people, some that stayed overnight, and with one big friendly extra dog. Arlo disappeared, which isn’t unusual, but I couldn’t find him the next day still. I was beginning to think he had escaped and gotten outside, but he eventually came sauntering out of some hiding place.

He is starting to be a little more cuddly than when we got him earlier this year. He is now sleeping on our bed, and today for the first time he jumped up on my lap while I was knitting.

Speaking of knitting, that missing yarn finally showed up a couple days later, delivered to one of our neighbors. Fortunately Larry doesn’t knit, so he was happy to turn it over to me.

That’s all the colors that I now have of this*. Aren’t those pretty? It brings just a bit of springtime, which is quite welcome in these dark, rainy days of December. I only have one skein of each color, but I’m thinking a summer top out of that pale aqua would be lovely. Or the purple. Or maybe one of each.

*Euroflax sport weight linen.

Stealth knitting

This is all you’re going to get for the next couple of weeks. I’ve never been one of those organized knitters that start knitting Christmas gifts in January every year. I usually think about it around December 20th, therefore, no Christmas knitting ever gets done around here.

Last week I had the bright idea to knit a few things for a few people. Mind you, I picked some VERY SIMPLE things that I can practically knit in my sleep, more of a “stocking stuffer” type of gift.

Then I started thinking, well, I could do these for a few more people too! Pretty soon I was up to knitting about a dozen of these little Mystery Projects.

Right. I am insane.

Of course, though I had the yarn for a few of these Mystery Projects, I don’t have enough to knit all of them. This is despite the boxes and boxes and nearly half a million yards of yarn around here.

So I ordered more. It was supposed to be delivered Friday. I got a tracking notification from USPS that it was indeed delivered “at or near the mailbox”, whatever that means. I think it means it is “at or near” someone else’s mailbox, since I did not receive it. This makes the likelihood of me completing my Christmas knitting even more improbable than it already was.

This my friends, is why I don’t do Christmas knitting.

Please send whisky. I will surely need it.

Holiday cactus

I’m pretty sure my Christmas cacti are actually the Thanksgiving variety. They are in full bloom. Here’s one of them.

The other one used to be all light pink.

I think there has been a little hanky-panky going on after hours around here.

By the way, I’m still only getting about 1 out of 5 comments emailed to me. I try to check back to see if anyone has commented, but if I miss one and don’t reply, that’s why.

Three on Thursdays

  1. That blogging every day in November sort of fell apart in a big hurry, didn’t it? Mostly it’s because my work day leaves me brain dead for much of my outside of work hours. I’m “just” working three days a week, but they are long days, and require every brain cell I have to keep on top of everything.
  2. Which leads to work meetings. Who the hell plans a work department meeting that is scheduled to run over 5-6 hours? Any meeting that goes over an hour is just going to degenerate into a big bitch session, as far as I can tell. And since it’s my day off, if I went, it would be on my dime. Thankfully, I had something else already planned for this afternoon. Otherwise, there might be a good chance of me stabbing someone with a knitting needle.
  3. I don’t think I’ve even touched my knitting for the past three work days. See above. I plan to remedy that today.

My cable needle went missing over the weekend. I found it this morning.

I apparently stuck it there for safe keeping.

Things I need…

I was shopping for a 2020 monthly calendar for my bullet journal today. I use sort of a free form blank page insert for my daily lists of things to do and notes, but like having a monthly master calendar to keep track of the major events of the year. I could make my own, but buy a two page per month pre-made dated calendar from Traveler’s, since I’m lazy. I’ve bought them on Amazon in the past, but their price markup has skyrocketed for these for some reason.

So I found Paper Seahorse. I’ll warn you now, don’t go there if you have a weak resistance and a ready credit card.

I did find the monthly inserts, at about half Amazon’s price. And a few other planner goodies.

And these:

They are little “business cards“ that you can fill out and give to those special people. Fortunately (I think), they are not in stock, or I’d be very tempted.

Marathon knitting

It is just time to finish this one. I understand if you’ve forgotten the details, since it’s been on the needles since March of 2018. I’m down to one repeat of the second to last chart, and one repeat of the last chart, then I’m done. Of course that amounts to 72 rows, with increasing number of stitches each row, and at the end there are 693 stitches to bind off.

These last charts include a few rows with cables. Though I do know how to knit cables without a cable needle, I’m not a cocky enough knitter to attempt that trick in lace weight silk/merino. So those rows are a bit fidgety.

It does make some very pretty little cables, though.

The pattern name is Longest Night, I’ve been calling it Winter Solstice, and I want it done before the solstice gets here. I think that is doable if I exercise a bit of project monogamy.*

*Remind me of that if you see me casting on any new lace projects before you see this one done.