yarn tootin'

Things I've Made That Are Delicious

     Yes, I know that the title of this post is more than a little bit reminiscent of Mindy Kaling's Things I Bought That I Love, but that is intentional because I love Mindy Kaling and her blog.  That being said, I've made two delicious recipes in the last few days.  I'm not much of a cook, so this is a big deal. 

     Last Friday, I decided to make cookies.  I've been reading about Momofuku Milk Bar cookies all over the interwebs lately.  For awhile, I just ignored the references and lived in ignorance, but after hearing about this Milk Bar business over and over again, I just had to know what they were.  A few minutes of Googling later, I had several recipes to choose from and they all sounded delicious. 

     I read the recipe for the real Milk Bar Cookies and decided that it was too much trouble.  I then found this delightful copycat recipe and decided to give it a whirl.  I made the cookies exactly as the recipe says to do it, except I mixed the marshmallows in with the dough.  The cookies are great.  If I were to make them again, I would put in a whole bag of chocolate chips instead of just a cup (the recipe says 2/3 of a cup, but that just didn't seem like enough).  My 9-year-old nephew was with us over the weekend and he liked the cookies very much and ate several, but did mention that they were a tad salty.  I'd tend to agree, but for me, this was a selling point.

     I've got a bit of a cold, so yesterday I really wanted to make soup, but I didn't want it to be difficult or time consuming.  I am forntunate to live about .75 of a mile from a Trader Joe's at the moment and I rarely shop anywhere else if I can help it.  I love Trader Joe's dumplings of all varieties (wontons, gyoza etc.) so I did a google for "Trader Joe's dumpling soup" and came up with this recipe for Asian Soup.  I wasn't sure about the cabbage or the mushrooms, but Bob likes those things, so I put them in my cart (already chopped up, of course) along with a bag of  TJ's frozen Chicken Cilantro wontons for the dumpling part. 

     I basically followed the directions as written.  I used all of the ingredients the recipe calls for, but cooked them slightly differently.  I started by lightly sauteeing the garlic, ginger, cabbage, and carrots in EVOO and a bit of sesame oit and then adding the mushrooms and THEN adding the chicken broth.  After that, I brought the whole thing to a boil and dumped in the wontons.  The soup seemed to need a little something, so I improvised and put in about a teaspoon of Chinese Five Spice Powder.  I think this was the key ingredient.  Anyhow, the soup was extremely delicious and easy and it made me feel like a gourmet.  I even ate the leftovers for lunch today and I hate leftovers.

Hello Again

     A number of things have changed since the last time I posted.  It has been so long, that I don't even know where to begin, so I think I'll just make a list...

1.  We no longer live in Big Texas.  We are living in Danville, Caleeforniya for the year.  Bob took a job/fellowship with the League of American Orchestras and is working for the San Francisco Symphony this year.  The Little Mister and I are hanging out in the burbs and going to Gymboree and Music Together and enjoying temperatures that are milder than the 105 degrees they seem to have been having in San Antonio for the last several months.  We may end up back in Big Texas at the end of all of this, but maybe not.  Where we will go next is anyone's guess.  Too many questions on this topic annoy me and I try not to think about too much and just go with the flow.

2.  We spent the summer in Snowmass, Colorado while Bob worked at the Aspen Music Festival and School.  Now that the Colorado portion of our adventure is over, I look back on it with fondness.  While it was happening, I didn't love it so much, but it sure was pretty.

 
I like this picture, which was taken by a friendly stranger, because Edison is flapping his hands with excitement as he often does and because it fully depicts the discrepancy between the Filner calves and the Sedgwick calves.  It's probably too soon to tell, but it would seem that Edison got the Filner calves.

3.  This feels like it was a million year ago, but I feel I should mention that I ran Sequoia all by myself this year.  Bob was in Aspen, my brother-in-law, Ethan, who is also a violist and who has been helping with Sequoia the last couple of years was making a CD with his quartet, which left me to run Sequoia.  Bob's mom was there to help with with all of the administrative stuff, Ethan's wife and her mom were there to take care of Edison the first week and my mom and dad were there with Edison the second week.  Basically, all of the the wives, moms, and in-laws were there, but the Filner boys were not.  I didn't think it could be done, but it turned out to be the best Sequoia ever.  Thanks to everyone who helped make it a success!

4.  Now that we're settled and I'm rocking my new role as stay-at-home mom (SAHM), I'm doing a bit of knitting.  Over the summer I worked on a Potato Chip Scarf in Noro Silk Garden that I bought at Yarnivore last winter with no particular pattern in mind.  I just liked the colors.  The pattern is easy and mindless and just what I needed.  It's almost finished and I should just go ahead and finish it, but I got sidetracked last week when I finally opened the big bin of yarn I packed last May and found my Tanis Fiber Arts Dipped Infinity Scarf Kit.  I felt an overwhelming urge to cast on right away so I did and I love it and I'm not sorry.  Here is the Potato Chip Scarf in progress in July...it needs about one Gray's Anatomy's worth of knitting and it will be done.  I will try to force myself to do that this weekend.

 
Slightly blurry Potato Chip Scarf in progress.

5. There are several more items to list, but it's late and I'm tired.   We spent two weeks in the Motherland at the end of August, so I'll leave y'all with a picture from the Great Minnesota Get Together also known as the State Fair.

 
Nonnie (my mom) came to the fair with us and we parked in a tiny, random, but convenient lot and entered the fair through the Swine Barn! 

 

Back So Soon?

    I'm back and it's only been a week!  I confess that I mainly felt the need to post in order to announce the winner of the Sock Yarn One Skein Wonders Book.  The winner is Diana!  Thank you to everyone who commented on my posts last month.  It's good to know that someone other than my mother is still reading this thing.

      A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from Yarn4Socks telling me that there were still a few spots left in the December Not So Sock Club.  In general, I've decided that yarn clubs are not for me because more often than not, the yarn is just not my thing and then I'm stuck with a bunch of yarn that I don't love and who needs that?  The nice thing about the Yarn4Socks club is that you can buy the kits one at a time and they tell you who the dyer and the pattern designer are for each month before you invest.   The yarn for December is from Hazel Knits and the pattern is designed by Kirsten Kapur from Through The Loops and that combination sounded too good to pass up, so I bought the December kit.  The pattern is probably too tricky for me right now, but I love the yarn.  The colorway is called Rick's Cognac (some sort of Casablanca reference - I've actually never seen Casablanca), but to me it looks like the color of my viola, so I'm calling it Bill the Viola. 

3 Things

1.  For those of you who won Free Yarn Friday yarn, it went in the mail yesterday and y'all should have your skeins by the end of the week.  I will do the drawing for the book and announce the winner the next time I post which will most likely be sometime this weekend.

2.  If a person is born on the 31st of May, is their 6-month birthday today or tomorrow?  If it is today, then my boy is 6 months old today!  Bob and I went to B.J.s for dinner last night while Grandma babysat and we remembered that the last time we were there was the 30th of May and I had a baby the next day.  Fortunately, I didn't have another baby today.

3.  I made it through the month of NaBloPoMo and while I missed 4 days, I think I did pretty well under the circumstances.  I go back to work on Thursday (Nutcracker!) and I'm still not sure how that's going to go.  The mere thought if it makes me feel very, very, tired.  Thank you to all who have read and are still reading and especially to those of you who have left comments.  It's good to know that Yarn Tootin' is still alive.  I'll try not to go another 3 months without posting. 

My Mom Knit Me a Hat and It Fits Over My Helmet!

      We're going to go to the Motherland for a visit in December, so I thought the Little Mister might need a nice warm hat.  He will definitely still be in the helmet (which has a big hole in the top and doesn't cover his ears), so I knit a hat big enough to go over the helmet.  With any luck, we will get a few years of use out of this hat. 
     My mother-in-law has been visiting for the last week and we decided to go to Yarnivore the other day.  I hadn't been in there in ages and I have to say, they've really spruced the place up!  They have a new, larger store (just across the parking lot from the old one) and they had a lot of great new yarn.  I picked up this skein of Malabrigo Rasta and knit up an Elf Cap in just a couple of hours.  I made the Small/Medium size and I think I have enough yarn left over to make an Extra Small cap for our baby friend who does not have to wear a helmet.

Thanksgiving For Dummies

     I probably should've done this post last weekend, but I wasn't thinking about Thanksgiving last weekend, nor was I enjoying delicious leftovers last weekend.  I'm not someone who cooks.  I can make a few things that aren't too bad, and I can read and follow directions, but I am by no means a good cook.  I don't have an inate understanding of the chemistry of cooking and I'm not one who just throws a few things together and voila, delicious!  My husband Bob is often quite good at that sort of thing, but I've noticed that unless they're really experienced, people who cook that way have at least a 50% chance of whatever they're making turning out not so great.  I prefer to read the directions and make things that are just pretty good every time.

     Because we are usually involved in endless performances of The Nutcracker, Bob and I have been on our own for Thanksgiving for most of the years we've been together and we've gotten pretty good at it.   I've learned that everything you need to know about cooking Thanksgiving dinner can be found on the package that the food comes in, on the Food Network website or in the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook.  I bought the BH&G Cookbook one year when we spent Christmas at Bob's family's cabin in Wyoming and Bob and I were the only people to arrive in time to buy all of the food and plan the meal.  I had no idea what I was doing and there are no interwebs at the cabin, so I figured that a book that's been around for a million years had to have a good recipie or two and it does!
     Here are our Turkey Day Basics (or Christmas Day if you like to repeat Thanksgiving on Christmas, and I do)...

Cranberry Relish

     This is the easiest thing ever and you can make it a day or two ahead and it just tastes better.  If you follow the directions on the bag of Ocean Spray Cranberries, it will tell you to boil a cup of water and a cup of sugar, add the cranberries, reduce the heat and boil until they cranberries are soft.   We do that, but then we add some orange zest, the juice of half and orange, and the tiniest bit of nutmeg to give it that special something.  We then use our amazing Bamix Immersion Blender (thanks, Mom!) to blend it all together so it's not lumpy.  If you like a chunky cranberry sauce, you can skip that step.  Before we had the amazing Bamix, we just used a regular blender and that worked just fine, but it was a lot messier.

Turkey

     Raw meat gives me the willies, so this is Bob's area.  When doing a whole turkey, we consult Better Homes and Gardens and then Bob basically follows their recpie, but ends up basting with little bit of orange juice.  I think he got that from his mom, and I thought it was weird the first time, but our turkey was delicious and it didn't taste a bit like orange juice.  The last couple of years, it's just been us and one or two other people, so we've just done an extra breast.  We call it an extra breast becaue that's what my mom calls it when she has to do a whole turkey AND an extra breast because she always has about a hundred people at her Thanksgiving.  Anyhow, we've used Ina's recipe and it is easy and very tasty.  If you're like me and you want to watch a video just to be sure you know what you're doing, you can find that here.

Stuffing

     I learned this one from my mom.  It's all about Pepperidge Farm's Herb Seasoned Stuffing Mix (the bag with the blue trim).  I just follow the package instructions for the casserole version, but I add a finely chopped apple and a handful of cranberries to the celery and onion mixture.  This year we made two pans of stuffing; one to take to our friends' house and one to have at home, and the one we cooked in a casserole with a lid came out much better than the one cooked in a pan covered with foil.  Duh.  I should have known that, but like I said, I don't really cook.  Anyhow, this stuffing is awesome every time and it tastes like Thanksgiving.  If you have a bunch of vegetarians at your Thanksgiving, and we often do, you can make this with vegetable stock instead of chicken stock and nothing is lost.

Gravy

     Gravy is a giant pain in the ass and I don't even really like gravy, so I'm happy to skip it, but Bob thinks it's an essential component to a Thanksgiving meal.  The first year we did our own turkey, it took at least two phone calls to each of our mothers to get the gravy done.  All of those giblets and whatnot are seriously gross and I generally want nothing to do with making gravy.  If you have to make it, you can do it the Rachael Ray way.  This gravy is easy, there are no giblets required, and it tastes just like gravy.

Apple Pie

     The secret here is not to make your own crust.  Seriously, why bother with that?  If you just let Pillsbury do that, apple pie is the easiest thing in the world.  This I learned at that Wyoming Christmas at the cabin from my brother-in-law Dan's girlfriend, Sarah.  She gave us her pie making shopping list over the phone and I was skeptical at first, but her pies came out great.  I usually either consult BH&G for the pie filling, or I just use the recipie on the refridgerated (not frozen) pie crust box.  Each box comes with two crusts, so you can do a bottom and a top crust and the whole thing is very pretty and almost disaster proof.

Mashed Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, and Green Beans

     Mashed potatoes are easy.  Just look up a recipe in BH&G (there are several) or at foodtv.com and follow it.  Bob and I don't like sweet potatoes, so we never make them.  If we're having guests and they ask what they can bring, we always suggest sweet potatoes because then we don't have to deal with them.  If it's just us, we skip them altogether.  If anyone has a good sweet potato recipe, I'd love to have it on hand, just in case.  My favorite green bean recipe is from the Food Network, but I can't find the recipe right now.  Basically, you just steam or blanch the beans and then set them aside until just before you're going to eat.  Then you saute a shallot in some EVOO, heat the beans in the oil, add some salt and pepper and you're good to go.  People always carry on about my delicious green beans and I feel like a fraud because there is really nothing easier.

     I'm off to enjoy what's left of our leftovers, including a big slice of apple pie!