Thanks for the encouraging comments on my sourdough experiment! So far, I've fed the beast twice, and it has about 8 bubbles on the surface. Hmm. Not looking good. In other news, I'm tempted by these soy candles recommended by Danny at Simply Green. They sell candles in dozens of scents, including beer. Yes - beer-scented candles. And "Drakkar-type" scented candles. For those times when you want your house to smell like 14 Abercrombie and Fitch models just had a kegger in your living room, but you simply can't be bothered to vacuum and have everyone over. You know, times like that.

A few summers ago, I tried my hand at sourdough bread making. I used the instructions found here on making a sourdough culture from the local environment. Yes, I harness the power of lax housekeeping for breadmaking! Give it a try yourself - mix a little flour and water in a bowl and leave it on top of your fridge. After a month, pick out the gnats and lint and you're on your way to hot sourdough flapjacks! So that gnat cemetery, I mean, starter eventually died (RIP, flapjacks). Just a few weeks ago, I ordered a sample of Carl Griffith's famous Oregon Trail Starter. This is an amazing volunteer service that exists to perpetuate a sourdough culture that has been nurtured for over a century. Right now, I'm reconstituting a little bowl of Carl's starter on my kitchen counter. I really hope it works. Although reading the recipes on the Carl's Friends website is a little daunting. OK, a lot daunting. I just need an easy recipe for sourdough bread, not one that requires me to use "stood" water - tap water allowed to stand uncovered for several weeks before using. Maybe I was on to something with my gnat cemetery. Of course, updates will follow. I only have about 27 hours until my starter is ready to use, and I have to figure out a way to maintain my kitchen temperature at 85 degrees. Right now it's about 63. Something tells me that way off in sourdough heaven, a certain baker named Carl is verrrrry disappointed in me.

I'm not sure how long this has been available, but here's a list of the stores going in at the Northgate Mall expansion here in Seattle. Looks like the rumors of an H&M moving in may have been unfounded (boo!). But hooray, a Bed Bath & Beyond! Can you smell that? I think it's sarcasm. None of these new places hold any interest for me, except perhaps the Barnes & Noble. In my opinion, the selection of new stores doesn't do anything to upscale-ify the image of Northgate mall, which I associate with roving packs of goth teenagers and those DAMN HIKUJI FAKE PONYTAIL KIOSKS! Hijuki I was bad enough, do they really need a Hijuki II? An H&M would have vastly improved things.

You can always count on Trader Joe's for new food opportunities. Yesterday I bought a bag of their chile-spiced mango. Here's what traderjoesfan has to say about them. Here's my review: These things are OK. They are a little too sweet for me - the package says the mango is sweetened, so it's definitely within the realm of possibility to temper the sweetness (hear that, Trader Joe's? Probably not). They are quite spicy. Of course, "quite" is subjective, so perhaps it will help if I tell you that I tend to order 4-star Thai food. I wish they were able to add a sour element - I think eating these with super-tart margaritas would be fantastic. But on their own, they are a little too much. And yet I can't stop eating them. Oh well, here's my favorite margarita recipe, in case you get inspired to pick up a bag of chile-spiced mango for yourself. Margarita! 2/3 C tequila 1/3 C orange brandy or triple sec 1/4 C simple syrup 3/4 C fresh squeezed lime or lemon juice Shake vigorously with ice and strain into ice-filled tumblers. You remembered to salt the rims first, right? Of course you did. (serves 2 normal people, or one graduate student) Ole!

Since I don't really have time to write quality posts for you these days (sorry, adoring fan!) the only proper thing to do is to pass the buck to other bloggers. David Lebovitz just posted a wonderful piece on lessons he learned at Illy espresso camp (ok, Universita del Caffe). I've been making myself double Americanos every morning since... oh, August 1998? on a 1993-vintage Krups espresso machine. I haven't had time to read all the details in David's post (enough with the "I'm too busy protests", already! Sheesh) but I'm sure there are some tips I'll use to improve my game. Now that I have the mother of all coffee grinders, I think I'm ready to up my game. Now if I could only learn how to make latte foam art like the baristas at Hotwire, my favorite local coffee house.

1. Recipe for a quick lunch: Drain a can of black beans and puree with cilantro, cayenne, and lime juice. Spread the goo on a tortilla with some cheddar and microwave. Hey, it's a burrito! 2. Recipe for a successful black and tan: Use a glass with straight sides. Curvy sides will make the stout and lager mix. Learned this the hard way. 3. Recipe for a man's sock: Cast on 72 st with Trekking on size 1 needles. After knitting 6 inches of cuff, decide it's way too big for dainty girly feet. Regroup. Find a man. 4. Recipe for disaster: Carelessly run sweater shaver on favorite orange sweater. Cut load-bearing thread in cuff, gasp in horror as cuff begins to disintegrate. Revise plans to be buried in said sweater. Run some almost-matching Frog Tree alpaca through the cuff stitches and save for later.

I discovered a tasty cocktail a few nights ago, and I thought I'd share it with you! It's a little twist on the classic gimlet, and I call it the Gin Giant. And yes, this would be fabulous on St. Patrick's Day. Or any day you've bought 5 pounds of limes at Costco and are searching for ways to use them up. 2 parts fresh squeezed lime juice 4 parts gin 1 part orange brandy (e.g., Gran Gala) 1 part simple syrup Shake with ice until very cold and strain into sugar-rimmed martini glasses. I actually have some green-tinted sugar that looks especially pretty with this drink.

So I've finally upgraded to the latest version of WordPress! Among other things (like giving myself the power to leave comments), there is a new spam prevention mechanism that I hope will be easier for everyone to use. There is math involved, but if I can do it, you can too. A site redesign may be in the works, but I'm looking for a decent animated .gif of a beaver in a hardhat before I get started on that.

I figured that my ugly curling finger gap (no, it's not a medical condition) might be cured by using a flat stitch pattern around the slit. I settled on a seed stitch. Now it really looks like a frog, but the gap is much less... gappy. Awww, how cute. Garh! This gap is too gappy too, and refuses to close up when the fingers are withdrawn. Some tweaking still remained to be done. At this point, it dawned upon me that I could perhaps just make a regular mitten, and insert a wide buttonhole for the fingers to peep out of? Plus, by designing my own pattern, I could work it in the round, as opposed to the Debbie Bliss pattern which is inexplicably knit flat (huh?). And astute readers will notice that the tip of the second mitten is now less pointy than in the first version - that's right, instead of decreasing to the tip, I decreased until 20 stitches remained and grafted the top together with kitchener stitch. I think it looks a lot better, especially since the yarn is quite bulky. See, I wasn't trying to torture you with the kitchener stitch, it really does work better for this mittens. In my not-so-humble opinion. That's not to say that I'll hold you down and make you kitchener your Peekaboos, but I will tsk tsk tsk a little bit.

Here's some historical perspective for you, i.e., the birth of the Peekaboo Mittens! I actually came up with the design after attempting to make some truly horrible convertible mittens. I used the Debbie Bliss Flip-top mittens pattern from the Winter 2006 Interweave Knits subscriber-only patterns website (that's a mouthful). There's no schematic included with the pattern, so I just followed the pattern and ended up with this: Not bad, not bad. Until you flip it over. The bound-off edges that form the finger slit curl terribly, producing a mitten that looks more like a sneering frog than an adorable winter accessory. So no, I didn't get these mittens from the Gap. They just feature an ugly tremendous gap. Hmmmm... what to do?