Kiss My Knits!

Yesterday was my husband’s birthday, and it was a good one.
Icing makes lousy concrete!

Sorry for my lack of here-ness. The hubby’s out of town, so I’m holding down the fort solo. And yet, oddly, the house is cleaner when my husband is gone and it’s only me here. Coincidence? I think not.

My daughter’s been very good, and we’ve had fun. I’m so glad she can say “what does that mean?” now. In this way, she’s been able to ask for clarification on subjects such as sleepwalking, millet, and why we have to keep the bathroom door closed when we’re in there. Currently she’s viewing that as “optional” which I’m attempting to change.

Dragonrealms-wise, I spent part of the morning learning the behind-the-scenes GM side of a neat in-game system. One part was flummoxing me, and GM Iayn finally figured out what the dealio was. GMs Ariawen, Maece, and others also chimed in with help, whch was much appreciated. Nifty system. It’s been said before, but I’ll say it again. GM Jeremael was a freakin’ genius and I still miss him.

On the knitting front, I’m hating having instructions to make just “a blue scarf” with no clue of the tastes of the individual. For all I know, she wants fun fur. However, pressing the issue with the recipient is what got me as far as “a blue scarf” and I sense I can’t pursue it any further without making her uncomfortable. Okay, then, blue scarf it is!

I already had some Silky Wool in a periwinkle/blue jean shade that was going to be the Eve scarf for myself. The only picture I’ve got of my progress on that is so blurry that it’s pointless to post. Anyway, based on the four inches I’ve knit of Eve, it will take too long to knit for someone else, so instead I decided to tackle the lace sensation that’s sweeping the nation, Branching Out. Picture to the left.

Jayne hat-wise, hat on the needles for Virginia, then California and Connecticut.

Tonight? Knit more, watch LOST, and wallow in decadence. I made linguine with clam sauce last night, so I’ll have leftovers of that. Then, for dessert?

+ = =

Yeah, baby!

Went grocery shopping this morning at my local Harris Teeter grocery store. This store is huge, and carries many things you wouldn’t commonly find in a smaller store, like buffalo meat and flaxseed oil. I wasn’t shopping for those, mind you, as I’m not in the market for naked oiled buffalo meat wrestling.

Because they’re so big, they have a hot food bar, with Chinese and Italian food in the afternoon and breakfast in the morning. So today, going past the breakfast bar, what do I see?

A blast from a Southern kid’s past…

Got a buddy on my friends list who’s trying to lose some weight, so I’m posting up occasional low-fat or low-calorie recipes in a gesture of solidarity. This one’s fairly white bread, but I’m in a white bread kind of mood.

This is meat loaf with spinach inside, accented with tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese. If you’re a vegetarian, you definitely shouldn’t look at this recipe. This recipe honestly sounded revolting to me when I first heard of it. Actually, it’s very tasty! Takes a little bit of advance notice, since you have to thaw out frozen spinach ahead of time.

Meat Loaf Florentine

I’ve got a LJ buddy who’s trying to lose weight, so I thought I’d post up occasional low fat, low calorie, or at least quick-to-cook recipes.

This is a good one to start in the morning and then pop in the oven when you get home.
‘Italian’ Baked Fish

I’m awful when it comes to knitting new projects for people. I always dither and take freaking forever to decide exactly what I’m going to do, and I might change my mind several times before actually doing it. So finally tonight, I realized that I had several balls of high-quality machine-washable wool in my stash in excellent colors to make masculine baby-type stuff. Great! I’ll knit a striped baby sweater with that.

I thought I knew where every scrap of yarn in my stash was, but I have completely misplaced the remnants from this:

I could just weep. How do you misplace three balls of Karabella Aurora 8? Now I’m back to being indecisive again, and making grand plans that I just don’t have time for because she goes out on leave on April 5th. They don’t ALL have to be brand new patterns; it won’t kill me to knit the same thing twice, will it? Wait, will it?

Okay, the hubby’s nearly finished bottling his beer, and the hoisin salmon is about done marinating, so I’ll go cook and curse a little and then figure something out. Maybe a little sweater out of the hand-dyed cotton chenille with a magenta heart on the chest, although my husband says, “that’s a little girly, isn’t it?”

Grr. I’m so confident usually, but trying to find exactly the right thing to make as a gift is my Achilles heel. Again, I say “grr.”

Some time ago, my six-year-old daughter decided that she no longer liked bananas.

As part of my neverending quest to get fruit and veggies into my child, I made banana muffins tonight. But so that they wouldn’t be completely heinous to her, I chocolated ’em up some. This is adapted from a mocha banana chocolate chip muffin recipe from allrecipes.com.

Banana Chocolate Chip muffin recipe

Some folks asked for this recipe, so here it is. I can’t claim this is healthy, but it’s easy as can be. If you’ve got fresh summer berries in season, MAN is this good.

Blackberry Coffee Cake

1/2 c butter
2 cups self-rising flour
2 cups white sugar
2 cups milk (I use lowfat or skim)
4 cups blackberries

* Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Once oven is preheated, melt butter in a 9×13 inch baking pan.

* In a medium bowl, stir together flour, sugar, and milk. Batter will be slightly lumpy. Pour mixture on top of melted butter in baking pan. Do not mix butter and mixture together.

* Drop blackberries into batter. If more crust is desired, add fewer blackberries. Bake in preheated oven for 50 minutes or until golden brown.

(If you do not have self-rising flour, add 1t salt and 2t baking powder to 2 cups of white flour to achieve same effect.)

Man, I don’t know what’s gotten into us lately, but we’ve been on a good cooking binge. Last night was organic flank steak in a mustard-white wine-caper sauce with some leftover asparagus, and tonight I think I’ll make some maple-glazed salmon over baby greens. It’ll go well with the blackberry/raspberry cobbler from last night. Well, ‘cobbler’ is a bit of misnomer, as it’s got more of a coffee cake consistency. Still, it’s sooooo tasty!

And because I haven’t put up a quiz in a while:

Most of it I can explain, but “Upper Midwestern?” Eh?

ETA: Tonight’s glazed salmon devolved into take-out from Wendy’s. We just ran outta time. Maybe tomorrow night!

Last night, the hubby pan-seared some sea bass. To go with it, he whipped up some tomato cream sauce with added shrimp, using fresh basil and tomatoes from our garden. We also had steamed asparagus and some sun-dried tomato ciabatta from the bakery section of our grocery store. I loves me a man who can cook.