long time no post

whew!  it’s been forever!  since i went home to visit my parents things have been bu-sy.  and not a ton of cooking or knitting has been done either.  highlights include:

-finishing the madge hat (which is sadly too big on me.  and i have a big head! i like the pattern though and might try again)

-missing tp’s birthday celebration because of stupid work

-having a lovely birthday here with a.  which involved seeing modest mouse at the very strange nokia theatre, and receiving a very nice pair of earrings (along with another pair of very nice earrings) from this designer

-starting a scarf using a lovely silk yarn.  i’ve never knit with silk before, and it feels very nice on the fingers

-making this

-making burgers at home that for once weren’t dried out lumps of overcooked beef.  sounds appetizing, eh?

all thrilling stuff, i know.  so for thanksgiving we’re going to my aunt’s house and i’ve committed to cooking a few dishes.  i’m making this gratin which looks delicious.  and i’m making two desserts: a pumpkin caramel cheesecake and a free form apple tart.  i haven’t actually picked out recipes for either of those, so any suggestions are appreciated…

don’t forget

go vote today!

yawn-o-rama

back from good old asquared and i am tired!  my mom loved the clapotis, and even brought it with her to the hospital (of course, she is a mom, so anything i make for her is much loved even if it’s no good).  she’s on the way to healing and should be out by tomorrow which is, of course, a great relief.

last night a and i went to here for a nice meal after i got home.  i had the mini meatloaf and a had the braised pork ribs.  both were quite tasty, and a’s had long beans which i love.  in an effort to have a lighter dinner, we had moules provencale tonight with roasted brussels sprouts and crusty bread.  the recipe was really good, but i think the actual mussels weren’t that great.  i bought them from a local fishmonger who has a good reputation, but they seemed pretty bland and tasteless.  they were cultivated–are cultivated mussels a good or bad thing?  i have a hard time keeping track of what should be farmed and what shouldn’t…

i’m still (still!) working on the so-called vintage scarf.  i thought i was going to finish it in ann arbor but i ended up playing too many games of gin, crazy 8, and fish with my dad.  my new project will be the madge hat, knit in the same manos (in jupiter.  does anyone else think that mallard looks like the coolest color ever?  i have to check that out)  that i’m using for the scarf…   i’m still going to work on the somewhat cowl, but the hat is a more pressing need (and a much quicker knit).

et voila!

the clapotis, she is finished!

ok, so i have to weave in ends.  and yes, that’s a bunch of crap on my couch (and floor!) still leftover from tp’s visit this past weekend.  but still, it’s finally done!  i think it turned out pretty well.  i made it narrower and shorter than the pattern called for because it’s for my mom who is a tiny (tiny!) woman (and cause i’m lazy and i can’t imagine having done the whole thing).  my dad is little too.  seriously, people wonder where i came from when they meet my parents.  it’s like they were immigrants from a blight-stricken country and i’m their strong, strapping, american child.  except they’re not.  and i’m not so sure i’m happy i just called myself “strapping.”  anyway, i think my mom will like it as it’s some of her favorite colors and made out of her favorite yarn.  guess i’ll find out for sure when i make the trip home to asquared tomorrow.

though the reason for my visit home is not so wonderful (my mom’s back surgery) i’m still looking forward to seeing my parents and visiting home.  we’re going out to dinner tomorrow night here for a late celebration of my mom’s birthday and early celebration of mine.  it’s a new restaurant and sounds quite lovely.  

so no cooking this weekend but hopefully lots of knitting on my long-neglected “vintage” scarf.  or maybe i’ll just revel in the fact that i finished something larger than a hat…

springtime halloween

this is the warmest halloween i can remember.  while i’m not normally a proponent of warm weather past october 15th, it’s nice to have a warm halloween so kids can show off their costumes and not have to cover them up with puffy winter coats.  that was always a huge disappointment for me as a kid.  you get all dressed up and then no one can see what you actually are because you’ve got this giant coat over your costume!  costumed kids were out in in full force in park slope.  walking gracie was actually difficult because there were so many kids blocking the sidewalk.  we saw a lot of superheros and a lot of princesses.  we also stumbled upon a big parade on 7th ave.   i had no idea this was going to happen, but it was cool to witness.  it seemed like almost a mardi gras style marching band with a lot of in synch whooping.  lots of cute costumed kids in strollers (this is park slope, a neighborhood with so many strollers it actually prompted one bartender to write a stroller manifesto) too.  gracie wasn’t a big fan, and had a mini-freak out and we had to walk quickly through the crowd to get to a quieter spot.

the warm weather also made my dinner idea seem very fitting.  this past weekend tp returned the favor and visited me and we trekked around the city visiting some of the nyc’s finest food purveyors.  russ and daughters was one of them and we purchased one too many smoked chubs (i know, who doesn’t buy too many smoked chubs when the opportunity presents itself?).  so tonight i devised a recipe for pasta with smoked fish (sounds better than saying smoked chubs), grape tomatoes, peas, and crispy leeks.  we had roasted golden and candy cane beets from the farmer’s market on the side.  the pasta wasn’t bad–i sauteed/crisped the leeks, then added some sherry and the grape tomatoes.  eventually i added chicken broth, milk, and a dollop of creme fraiche, some pasta water and the peas and fish, and we were done!  i think parmesan or an extra dollop of creme fraiche at the end would have made the dish, but this way we weren’t as hard on our waistlines.   

 

notice the color in the beets in the first photo?  significant difference after being cooked, huh?  aren’t you glad i thought ahead to take a picture pre-cooking?  and isn’t it amazing that the beets just grow that way?

awesomely disgusting

http://www.theyrecoming.com/extras/pumpkinfest03/

ouch

my head hurts.  my headaches seem to cycle in and out of my life, and i think i’m in a cycling in phase.  they’re not migraines or anything that severe, but they’re strong enough to make me whine about it.  not that it takes much to make me whine…

tonight i thought i was going out with work people, but that fell through so i’m cooking.  it’s been an ethnic food kind of week (caribbean and then indian) so i thought we should try for mexican!  i sent a some links from epicurious and was personally leaning towards a quesadilla (no, you don’t really need a recipe for that but whatever.  i’m a recipe kind of girl.  actually, epicurious has some great mexican recipes that are not suitable for weeknight cooking but i’m totally going to take a look soon and maybe make a mole or something very time consuming).  a, predictably, chose this which sounds very yummy to me too so i’m not too sad about nixing the quesadilla idea.  i’ll post pictures once it’s done if it looks pretty.

i’ve been lazy with the knitting, though i’ve started the decreases on my clapotis which means the end is in sight!  my deadline was originally to be next thursday which is when i travel home to visit my moms and pops.  i don’t think i’m going to make the deadline…

part of the reason my knitting is moving slowly (aside from the lazy part that is.  crusty shorts, where are you?  you’d be so proud right now!) is that i’m very into this book i’m reading right now.  on beauty by zadie smith.  lately i’ve been VERY into novels about the intricacies of relationships (family, romantic, or otherwise), and this fits that category perfectly.  in fact, smith says she owes a great deal to e.m. forster for providing a model, which made sooo much sense as soon as i read it.  i had been thinking jane austen but that wasn’t quite right.  for some reason i had resisted reading any of smith’s books, and i had actually picked this up a few months ago and just hadn’t gotten around to reading it until now.  she’s incredibly creative with her descriptions of people and how they look and talk.  now i’ll have to go get white teeth.  for a while i was a little obsessed with alice munro, another good “intricacies of relationships” writer…

argh

i wrote a long post last night, but once i clicked “publish” it was gone!  i was all pissed off and wrote an e-mail to support and refused to write another post.  this morning i woke up and realized that i never titled the post and so it’s probably floating around in cyberspace, all lonely and discombobulated.  poor post! [wordpress found my post!  i added in any interesting parts that weren’t included earlier.  check out the calorie restriction link if you missed it earlier]

here is a truncated version of the post.

this weekend i visited tp in washington dc.  we ate way too much food (ethiopian, french, and crabs crabs and more crabs) and had a great time doing it.  she lives in a great neighborhood in dc near the eastern market where we bought some baby red russian kale, cheese and bread.  we also got some great soy lattes poured in a very creative way by the goofy latte boy. the first he poured behind his back.  well, essentially behind his butt, so i generously gave that one to tp.  for mine he made a coworker bend down and he poured the latte from up high.  interestingly, mine wasn’t as pretty as tp’s.

the crabs were probably the highlight of the weekend (other than the lovely tp of course).  we went down to the wharf, which i didn’t even know existed, and found some amazing seafood.  the wharf is a floating dock with a number of seafood vendors selling all sorts of seafood.  great looking shrimp as big as lobster tails, giant red snappers, oysters, clams, and of course, crabs.  we bought live crabs that were then steamed by the guy working there.  as i told tp (i think i was a little obsessed with the notion) a few times, watching them get picked up and thrown in the basket for steaming was as close to the life/death cycle we needed to get.

after that weekend i felt a strong need to restrict my caloric intake.  Not like the crazy Calorie Restriction people in thearticle here (seriously, even if you live longer what kind of life are you living?), but along the lines of looking at cooking light for
recipes rather than epicurious.  last night i made a caribbean pork with plantain dish.  i doubt it was authentic but it was tasty, and tonight i’ll be trying my hand at indian food.

there has been some progress on knitting.  the clapotis is coming along and i’m almost out of yarn again!  the scarf is fine but not really picture-worthy. 

i’m thinking about two new projects: this one and this one (in longer sleeves and yes, i would wear a camisole underneath.  sadly, i couldn’t get away with that much peeking out)

pronunciation

i’m someone who prides themselves on spelling and pronunciation.  for some reason my school never had spelling bees, but if they did i’m certain i would have gone far.  seriously–i can see the words spelled out in my head, and i know all the pronunciation rules.  but for some reason, i consistently mispronounce mascarpone.  is this something everyone does?  until very recently i thought that everyone mispronounced it.  sort of like most people (not me) pronounce jewelry “jewlery.”   a couple weeks ago i bought some mascarpone at blue apron and was deeply shamed by the saleslady.  i couldn’t find the mascarpone in their cheese case, so asked the woman behind the cheese counter, “do you have any marscapone.”  thinking, well, that’s how it’s said.  she pointedly said, “MAScarpone?  yes, here you go.”  so why do i say it the wrong way?  and how does everyone else say it?

all of this is the lead up to a delightfully tasty and very simple dinner i made tonight.  pasta with mascarpone and roasted grape tomatoes.  yes, the recipe was from there again.  what can i say?  i was at work and deciding what to make!  it was so good though and so so easy.  i used campanelle-shaped pasta, which is my second favorite shape next to gemelli.  and i didn’t cut the grape tomatoes in half, just roasted them whole.  broccoli rabe on the side with garlic, olive oil, and a little chicken broth.  all in all simple and satisfying. 

 except–broccoli rabe.  rapini. whatever you call it.  i love it in restaurants, but i can never seem to get rid of the overwhelming bitterness at home.  i know, it’s a bitter green so should retain some bittnerness.  but not too much, right?  so i blanch it like they tell you to, and then saute, but it still seems too bitter.  any hints?

whew

i finished two very time consuming work projects today.  i can’t believe how relieved i am to not have to think about those projects, to not have to open up the laptop tonight and continue working, and to be able to sit on the couch and knit and relax.

during the past few days i didn’t do much cooking of note, but over the weekend i made a lovely cassoulet.  i know, i need to get recipes from other sources.  everyone else who is tired of me linking to epicurious raise your hands.  while i love epicurious, and i use it so frequently because i often decide what to make for dinner while at work (they have the internet at work, but they don’t have my cookbooks), i would love to start mining my cookbook stash for dinner ideas.  anyway, i made the lovely cassoulet.  instead of a smoked sausage i used a duck sausage.  smoked sausage sort of makes me feel yucky, and adding duck sausage to a dish that traditionally calls for duck confit seemed fitting to me.  i’m getting a bit tired of these slow cooked dishes though, and am looking forward to a fresh-tasting pasta dish tomorrow.  not sure what it will be, but most like the recipe will come from epicurious.  old habits die hard…

in other news, we are being besieged by mosquitoes.  and not just cause it’s warmed up today.  we’ve been besieged for weeks now!  each night before bed a goes mosquito hunting with gracie’s stuffed ball toys.  he’s quite good actually, and with fairly good accuracy hits resting mosquitoes on the ceiling regularly.  what’s weird is that it’s october and we’ve got a mosquito problem!  any ideas?