Pensive Frog

Wowza - I just learned this morning that Magknits has evaporated! I’ve already had a few requests for my Peekaboo Mittens pattern, which makes me happy! I just need a little time to put together a pdf of the Peekaboo Pattern, and I’ll upload it to Ravelry, or post it here, or some other solution that works for Peekaboo fans. If you’re smack in the middle of a mitten and suddenly without a pattern, leave a comment and I’ll hook you up with some text instructions ASAP. Thanks for your patience, and for making lots of Peekaboos!

I imagine that the best thing about being incarcerated is the guarantee of three square meals a day. No menu planning, no grocery shopping, just exit your cell in an orderly fashion three times a day and file into the prison cafeteria to receive your portion of pipin’ hot prison food.

Okay, prison food probably tastes horrible (especially if you’re an inmate at Maricopa County Prison), but I’ve just about had it with meal planning. Especially lunch.

Lunch is the most annoying meal of the day! It needs to be substantial in order to fill the 12-hour void from breakfast to dinner, so that usually calls for something better than fruit and cheese or PB&J. I often try to cook big batches of stuff in hopes of having portions for lunch (e.g., giant pan of lasagna), but usually I end up saving those extra portions for dinner because let’s face it - weeknight cooking can be brutal, and often leads to eating dinner at 8:30.

So I’m in search of some excellent lunch ideas! I just found this recipe booklet for awesome sandwiches, and Just Bento has some neat ideas for bento lunches, many of which require minimal prep time. Last week I fixed up some Vietnamese-style sandwiches using this recipe, which turned out very tasty. Does anyone else have any favorite packed lunch strategies to share? I’m about to resort to GTY (Grand Theft Yarn) to avoid having to plan another week of lunches!

No time for a lengthy post at the moment, but I saw this site and had to share. I think it’s exactly the kind of thing that will appeal to my regular reader(s).

Ever notice that fast food looks way better in advertisements than it does in real life? Here’s incontrovertible proof.

I’ve heard of several… shall we say, interesting things that women choose to do with their placentas after giving birth. There’s the classic “bury it in the garden” approach, but I only have a patio container garden and I think an umbilical cord trailing out of a windowbox might scare the neighbors. Then there’s the hardcore hippie “cook it and eat it” method, which has awesome ewwwww potential but I don’t believe anyone really does this. Although if you bury your placenta in the garden, a pack of neighborhood dogs might unearth it for a snack. Until today, I was ignorant of placenta prints, or the art of using your placenta as a squishy stamp pad to make decorative wall art (or Christmas cards, wallpaper, etc.).

I have to admit, I’ll probably want to take a look at my placenta, but the relationship ends there. It is very cool that I’ve manufactured a whole new essential organ out of nothing, but I don’t need to eat it. Besides, what wine would I serve?

Last weekend I attended my first baby education class! I started small, with a seminar on taking care of newborns and breastfeeding. I learned many awesome things, such as:

1. My belly is as big, or bigger than pregnant ladies with due dates several weeks (i.e., 4-6 weeks) earlier than mine.
2. I should bank cord blood because it may be the only cure for my future diabetes - everyone knows that the pharmaceutical industry quashes disease cures to ensure their continued profits.
3. Listeria is transmissible through breastmilk, so the prohibition on soft cheese and cold lunchmeat has to remain in effect until the baby is weaned.

Although I “learned” all these things in class, please note that only item #1 above is true.

Le sigh.

I did learn a lot of great things, especially about coordinating breastfeeding/pumping/working, and tons of handy tips for helping my wee one to sleep. I practiced swaddling, and even bathed and diapered a realistic plastic baby. But it was painful to hear the teacher say that pharmaceutical companies bury disease cures to maintain profits. Although pharma companies may do a lot of things that seem “evil”, these companies are also made up of individuals, the majority of which actually care about reducing human suffering. Shocking, I know.

And the comment about Listeria being transmissible through breastmilk is bunk, or at least never proven. Just another way to limit the autonomy of pregnant and breastfeeding ladies “just in case”. Listeriosis infection is very dangerous for pregnant women, and can cause miscarriage and stillbirth. A lot of people I know pooh-pooh my prohibition on unpasteurized soft cheese, but the fact is that pregnant women are 20 times more likely to contract listeriosis than other adults. This FDA factsheet estimates that 30% of all cases of listeriosis occur in pregnant women. Now, far less than 30% of the population is pregnant, so there is something magical about being pregnant that makes us gestators far more likely to get listeriosis. Capiche? I haven’t had brie since last June (sniff). But the danger comes to an end once this baby pops out, and then I’ve got a brie bacchanalia all planned.

St. Andre - here I come, lover.

That’s the first thing that crossed my mind when I was David Lebovitz’s recipe for Candied Bacon Ice Cream. But no, he’s serious! And it looks seriously good. I have David’s ice cream cookbook The Perfect Scoop, but his Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream was so good I stopped making ice cream in fear that I would hurt myself.

Perhaps I’ll make an exception for ice cream of the bacon-y variety.

One of the more annoying aspects of pregnancy is forbidden foods. In particular, forbidden drinks. Yes, I used to enjoy alcoholic beverages, but that vice has pretty much been put on hold. Strangely, I don’t miss the alcohol as much as I miss the variety of taste. The tart tannins of wine, the bitter flowery notes of beer, the sweet oakyness of a good single malt…

When you’re reduced to water, milk, and soda, you get fed up FAST with sweet drinks. I go through lots of club soda, but that gets dull after a few months. Tonic water is better, but I limit my intake because quinine isn’t that great for developing fetuses. Dry Soda is really tasty, but at $2 a bottle, this pregnant lady balks a little. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I invented the following beverage, something I like to call (very creatively) the “Pregnant Lady Cocktail”. It’s bubbly and tart, and the sweetness level can be adjusted depending on what the taste buds call for that day. As all pregnant ladies know, that can change in an instant. Did I mention there are cherries?

Pregnant Lady Cocktail

Serves one pregnant lady

Pour into a pint glass:

1 12 oz can club soda or seltzer
1/2 to 1 1/2 oz Torani raspberry syrup (to taste)
1/2 to 1 1/2 oz Key Lime Juice

Stir gently, add ice and several maraschino cherries. Drink in one gulp, preferably through a pink straw.

So what have I been thinking about in the month since my last post? Just a little project called “Raising America’s Next Supernerd”.

Even though I know it will be a while before my baby starts asking adorable questions like “why is the sky blue?” and “why does it rain?” and “which is a greater threat to public health: obesity or smoking?”, I can’t help but be captivated by educational toys.

I really hate toys that tell you how to play with them. When I was a kid, the best toys were stuffed animals, art supplies, blocks, and household objects. Since my household is already decidedly science-minded, I’m really drawn to scientific nursery decor and toys. So I was really excited to see these handcrafted wooden blocks featuring insects, wild animals, and dinosaurs! Awesome!

Except, it annoys me that the block with the hippopotamus is labeled “hippo“. I’d rather teach baby the full name - how else do you get to hear adorable mispronunciations (e.g., happapommytus)?

And, they spelled “lightning bug” wrong.

And “pterodactyl” wrong.

Seriously, if you’re going to put words on an educational toy, shouldn’t those words be spelled correctly? I really love these blocks, but I can’t live with the risk that my daughter might grow up thinking that teradactyls used to fly around in the Mesozoic era, and that lightening bugs are fun to chase on summer evenings.

This reminds me of a toy sold by Pottery Barn Kids, which teaches kids foreign words for hello, goodbye, please, etc. Apparently, “hello” in Italian is spelled “chow”. (Yeah, there’s an explanation if you read the post I linked to, but STILL! How ridiculous.)

Yes, still here! Still gestating.

I’ve noticed some yummy recipes around the web recently, so I’m posting theme here.

1. DIY granola bars. I’m constantly noshing throughout the day, so these would come in handy.
Ginger-coconut milk cereal bars from Coconut & Lime

2. Chocolate-covered coconut macaroons. While I haven’t tried this recipe, this is one of my all-time favorite types of cookie.

3. Lentil soup from 101 Cookbooks. Man, oh, man, this looks delicious. I really love lentils (and all kinds of beans), especially in soup. And I’m looking for ways to get more protein into my (and the fetus’) diet without gorging on meat. OK, the occasional filet mignon is practically required. And I do love me a good patty melt. Plus the idea of stewing up a big vat of lentil soup and then feeding off it all week is certainly appealing. Mmmm… leftovers.

And if you have any pregnant women in your life, let me pass on two wonderful items that have made the maternity clothes nightmare more bearable for me.

1. Pregnancy suspenders! I sit down, pants fall down. I stand up, pants fall down. I get into car, I’m suddenly sitting bare-assed on the upholstery. Ah, the humiliation! The solution? Pregnancy suspenders (I got mine at BabyStyle, but they appear to be gone now). These are not a panacea, for the contraption cuts a bit into the axillary region (i.e., the pits). However, a little pit chafing is miles better than walking around with a death-grip on the elastic waist of your maternity jeans. Take it from me.

2. Topless undershirts! Or as I call them, “my tubes”. These low-slung tube tops cover the gap between shirt and trousers, thus eliminating chilly underbelly drafts and the embarrassment of revealing your convex navel to the world. I wear one of these daily (seriously - EVERY DAY), and I’ve been able to make my pre-pregnancy stretchy tops and cardigans completely wearable. At least, I’ve convinced myself that I don’t look like a bulbous idiot. In a nutshell - bigger wardrobe, minimal additional cost. I’m about to order a few more. Love, love, love! The only weird thing is that these tubes are totally not colorfast. They’ve released a significant amount of dye in to the wash water every time I’ve given them a bath. Other than that, they’re soft, stretchy, and do a great job camouflaging my suspenders.

Every Christmas I make a whole mess of treats to share with my family at Christmas. The treat assortment is pretty constant, but occasionally expands to include new goodies. Last year, I conducted by first marshmallow experiment, which received rave reviews all around. I’m been making these apricot-ginger biscotti for years, although I usually add whatever dried fruit I have on hand. This year, I used a combo of apricots, ginger, and Trader Joe’s orange-flavored cranberries. Delicious, and so, so easy. In previous years, I’ve made these chocolate-walnut biscotti, which are seriously excellent but more crumbly than the apricot-ginger recipe. I also have been making chocolate-dipped orange peel for several years, but this year I tried the recipe in the December 2007 Sunset magazine. The orange peels turned out better than ever before, super soft and not at all bitter. Unfortunately, this recipe isn’t online. The gist of it is to simmer the orange peels on low in a syrup of 4 parts water to 3 parts sugar. Don’t let the sugar crystallize, and plan on a total cooking time of 3-4 hours.

My favorite rum balls recipe calls for cocoa and walnuts. Yummy, but off-limits for me this year. I’m still making a batch (by special request), and I went to the liquor store yesterday to buy some appropriate rum. For those of you that don’t live in Washington, let me explain that hard liquor is only sold in state-run liquor stores. These liquor boutiques have a definite governmental air to them, from the harsh fluorescent lighting to the mud-brown industrial carpet underfoot. The line moves faster than the one at the DMV, but otherwise, the shopping experience is pretty similar.

I was sure that sirens and alarms would go off as soon as I crossed the threshold - NO PREGNANT LADIES ALLOWED IN THE LIQUOR STORE!! - but nothing that dramatic happened. I even had a brief conversation with a clerk about the most drinkable inexpensive rum. Nada. Perhaps I should try this again in the spring, when my burgeoning belly is no longer shrouded by my winter coat.

This will probably be my last entry until 2008, so I’ll wish all of you a happy holiday season and hope that the New Year gets off to a rockin’ start!

Whoops, I somehow forgot I was a blogger! I have responsibilities, you know? I have readers to amuse, television to critique, impending public health disasters to warn about…. my work is never done.

I’ve been distracted, dear readers. Distracted by the responsibilities associated with growing a fetus. That’s right, a real human baby! At least, that’s what the ultrasound technician tells me. While I could attribute my recent hiatus to long sessions getting acquainted with my toilet bowl, the reality is less dramatic (as it often is).

A welcome absence of morning sickness has given me plenty of time to focus on the essentials of planning for the new arrival:

1. Figure out where the critter will sleep
Unfortunately, plan A is out because the refrigerator crisper is already full of arugula. Must come up with plan B…

2. Figure out a better name than “critter”
Excel spreadsheet pro/con list, check!
Unfortunately, the spreadsheet features quite a few not-in-a-million-years names like Roger, Qubo and Neveah, so I’m not sure how much progress is being made.

3. Figure out where to get time to knit cute baby stuff
Because critter is not coming into this world with only a half-finished hat to her name! (Yep, critter’s a girl! And yep, that’s why Roger would be a bad name)

That’s pretty much all the figuring there is to do. I’m very lucky to have a support system as strong as the prescription-strength anti edema socks I must wrestle on each morning so that I can wear normal shoes. I tell you, these are the most expensive socks I’ve ever worn, and they’re horrific. Thank Jeebus it’s winter, and long-pants season - and the alternative is this.

Gee, I hope you swallowed your sandwich before clicking on that last link.

Anyway, I’m only 19 weeks along so I can still dress myself, but before long I’ll have to use one of these sexy compression sock donning aids.

This baby had better be cute.

I’m on a food safety alert mailing list, and this notice about the bust of an illegal cheesemaking ring caught my eye. I’m starting to feel a little nervous about that homemade ricotta I posted about a while ago… Nah, not really.

There are some interesting questions raised in the comments to this news item. Namely, is outlawing illegal cheese in the best interest of public health, or in the best interest of multinational corporations such as Philip Morris (oops, I mean Kraft)? Although I’m the first to admit that the words “cheese” and “bathtub” should never be in the same sentence. Ugh, too close to that Seinfeld episode where Kramer makes a salad in his shower.

Have y’all seen the new sockweight Noro Kureyon? Well, I assume it’s new because I’ve never seen it before. I’ve seen some fabulous socks made from Silk Garden Lite, but I never knew this stuff existed. It’s kinda pricey at $18.95/skein, but one skein makes a pair of socks so it’s actually cheaper than many sock yarns out there. And yes, the page I’ve directed you to has free shipping with no minimum order. You can thank me later.

I know it’s an important topic, but was the name “World Sanitation Summit” already taken?

I really dig the logo. And this is happening now, people. As you read these words, thousands of international delegates are working together and “strenthening [sic] of the efforts to speed up meeting the bulk of the MDG Targets for Toilets by the 2015.”

Ugh. Bulk.

I may have mentioned that I finally tried David Lebovitz’s famous Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream recipe, and that it was a resounding success. I only have one picture of the endeavor, because my fingers were preoccupied with scraping stray ice cream bits from the ice cream maker and aiming them towards my mouth. Sticky ice cream fingers and photography simply do not mix. However, I did capture part of the caramel crunchies process - here’s the salted caramel praline spread out to cool on my Silpat. Those little white flakes are salt crystals.

And yes, it does look like the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

High off the success of my Trellis scarf, I’m already scheming my next lace project. I’m thinking another rectangular scarf. I’ve had my eye on Eunny Jang’s Print o’ the Wave stole for a while, but the grafting and edging are a bit intimidating. However, I just found Kodachrome’s simplified pattern adaptation, so the PoW just entered the realm of possibility for me.

I certainly don’t feel like buying a pattern to satisfy my lace craving, but I do have a bunch of back issues of Interweave Knits to leaf through. I do like Panda Bonzai’s Anya Scarf (and the fact that it only takes one 440 yard skein of yarn!). And Twisted Knitter’s Leaf Lace Scarf has definite potential - I just love the color of the sample scarf! Anyone else have a favorite, moderately difficult lace scarf pattern to suggest?

So I was instantly smitten by the Foliage Hat in the Fall Knitty, and I started one up right away, using Manos in a weird pink/grey colorway.

Somewhere along the line, I made a mistake and ended up with the wrong number of stitches. I tried to figure out where the mistake occurred, but I just couldn’t. So a frogging we will go.

The leaf pattern didn’t come across too well in the variegated yarn, and the gauge was a little off. Although the pattern is written for two gauges, Manos falls squarely between the gauges and I didn’t think this hat through well enough before starting. That is a common theme in my knitting, unfortunately! I know this yarn will be a hat someday, I just have to find (or design) the proper pattern.

It’s done! The trellis scarf is DONE! I’ve been toiling away on this beast since last summer! And it’s finally done.

Here are some crappy, blurry, Interweave Knits-worthy pictures of my triumph:

Pre-blocking. I wore it once in this state, and it was so cozy and soft. That little squiggle of yarn is all I had left. Yes, this was a photo finish with mere feet of yarn remaining.

Oops, someone missed a yarnover!

WTF? Something very bad happened here. I wish I knew what was going on when I knit this section. Perhaps I was daydreaming about muscular celebrities or caramel ice cream. Or both.

I wasn’t sure of the best way to block this, so I ran fishing line through the same point every pattern repeat, and ended up with a little scalloped edge. This was a major pain, and I wonder if blocking wires would have made this easier. Does anyone have experience with blocking wires?

On the whole, this scarf looks pretty great. The mistakes don’t bother me, since they will be pretty much invisible when I have it wrapped around my neck. It’s very warm, and I love the warm, neutral color. I usually go for wild colors, but I realized that all my scarves were wild, and I needed something tamer.

Specs:
Pattern: Trellis Scarf by Evelyn Clark; IK Spring 2006.
Yarn: Knitpicks Shadow in Oregon Coast Heather, one entire skein
Needles: Size 5 Denise Interchangeables
Date Started: Early summer 2006
Date Finished: Oct 16, 2007

This is the second lace project I’ve completed, the first being the Flower Basket Shawl, also by Evelyn Clark. I think I liked the Trellis Scarf better, because the rectangular shape is much more wearable than a triangle (in my opinion) and the FBS gets larger every pattern repeat, which makes time seem to slow down to a crawl when working on the FBS. I wasn’t able to memorize the trellis lace pattern, but I eventually became familiar enough with the pattern to be able to “check in” with the pattern at the beginning of each row, and complete a row from memory. I was able also to recognize mistakes immediately, something I obviously wasn’t able to do at the beginning of this pattern! One thing I would do differently is try to knit the entire scarf at a similar gauge - the first third of the scarf is extremely tight compared the the latter two-thirds, and although this is somewhat fixable in blocking, it would have been better to keep a similar tension throughout. I knit the first portion way too tight, and I couldn’t keep it up for the rest of the scarf, especially given the k7tog in the pattern. You heard me, knit SEVEN together. Oy.

The reason I post pictures sporadically is that the computer set up to fling pictures on the Internet is not my regular computer. So I can go weeks without posting pics, then have a photo-heavy week when I finally get it together and use the photo-friendly computer. So sometimes I forget to post pictures on entire subjects or projects! Such is the case with my trip last month to Sequim. I posted photos of my jam and pie adventures, but none of my visit to the lavender fields. So without further ado, here they are!

Purple Haze Lavender Farm

Purple Haze Lavender Farm

Purple Haze Lavender Farm

Graysmarsh Farm

Graysmarsh Farm

The ferry ride home

A few weeks ago I tried making ricotta cheese at home, using this recipe from Becks & Posh. I actually made a one-quarter recipe, because I couldn’t justify pouring a gallon of milk into my first try at ricotta cheese.
The results? It turned out pretty good! And I can see why the full recipe starts with a gallon of milk, using a quart of milk only produced about 4 ounces of ricotta. I paired it with homemade pesto into a sort of layered torta, and served it with baguette slices. This picture shows the drained ricotta curds, just before I pressed them into a dish with the pesto.

I’m not sure if this will make it into my regular repertoire, just because I normally prefer more robust, sassy cheeses as appetizers, and this was decidedly mild, even with the pesto.