Category: cooking

giveaway time!

Apologies for the lack of blog posting! I’ve been working and otherwise a little busy this week:

Yesterday I (with some help) canned two bushel boxes of roma tomatoes from the grocery store – getting to the last of the season, they were only $10 each! I’m so tempted to go back and get another one to make sauce. The tomatoes that didn’t make the canning cut went into a vat of sauce to be frozen, and the good ones became 29 L jars of halved or diced tomatoes plus 18 500-ml jars of diced tomatoes.

I can’t wait to crack some open a little further along in the winter! Mmmm.

Another random food-related little note – I’ve been working on following a hypoallergenic and anti-candida diet these days (except for at my launch party, that was a special occasion!) and today I made the most awesome snacky food!

I found brown rice tortillas in the frozen section of the grocery store where I bought the tomatoes – they have quite an extensive health food-type selection. I had ripe avocados today, so it was time for the guacamole and chips! I cut a couple tortillas into wedges, sprayed them with a little olive oil (I’ve got a little pump bottle that you can fill with whatever you want), sprinkled them with a little salt and garlic powder, and then baked them in the toaster oven for a couple minutes at 400 F. They were super crispy and tasty, just what I wanted. I’ll definitely be making these again. I think they’re go great with all the soups I’ve been making.

In other news, I had my book launch party at lettuce knit last Wednesday and it was great! Unfortunately I suffered a bout of camnesia and didn’t take photos at all. People dropped by, yummy food was had (thanks megan!), I signed books and even managed to knit a little bit.

And now to celebrate, how about I send some more books out into the world?

I’ve got THREE (3) copies of my book, Teach Yourself Visually Sock Knitting, to send away to three blog readers! All you need to do is leave me a comment to this post pointing me to something that you think is cool, interesting, funny, delicious (and vegetarian), or otherwise entertaining!

Comments will close Friday, October 3 at 11:59 PM EDT (can you believe it’s almost October already?). Winners will be chosen at random.

September 28, 2008
temptations

Really Must Stop Looking At Yarn!!

(Although if you like the colour of Silk Garden that I used for Rayne, it’s on sale at Littleknits under the word “looking” above :p)

Must not buy yarn! It’s tough when there are such pretty things out there, but I have GOT to save some money to spend across the pond. Also, I really, really, really don’t need any more yarn. I’ve got plenty. And I have lots of knitting to concentrate on for the time being.

I got all the way to the midpoint of the edging of the Mooi shawl (actual name: Niji Baby Cable Shawl) when I realized that something was off. Sigh.

I’d made a mistake wayyy back in the first pattern repeat (there are 17 on one side of the shawl). It bothered me enough that I ripped the edging all the way back and redid it. The shawl is a store sample, too, so I didn’t want it to look wrong! When I got to the middle again…still off. But only by 2 stitches, so I was able to fudge it a bit. Finished shawl photos soon!

Since that’s about it for the knitting, how about some food?

The now-infamous NY Times chocolate chip cookies:

It was a good time to make them this past weekend because my sister was having birthday parties (multiple!) so there were lots of people around to eat them! I made the dough on Saturday morning and baked some that night (7 hr chill), some the next night (32 hr chill) and some just last night (umm…50ish hour chill?). I must say that I wasn’t super blown away. I mean, it was a good cookie, maybe a great cookie, but the best ever? I don’t know. Anyway, they’re still really good.

Dinner Sunday night: tempura-style fried okra, spaghetti in roasted Ontario tomato sauce with goat cheese. Mmmm!

August 12, 2008
cheery cherry

I’ve always considered myself to be more of cake person in the cake versus pie debate (Mel is a pie person), but this one…this one moved me a little more towards the middle.

The pile of cherries that I picked from the tree in my yard (Montmorency sour cherries) were sitting in my fridge while I dithered about what to make – they sat a little too long, actually, and I had to toss a few. But I still had enough to make this delicious cherry pie with a little less filling!

The recipe was from the June issue of Bon Appetit – it’s been reproduced on another blog here. I halved the filling, but made the same amount of crust, and didn’t do a lattice (obviously).

The crust was perfect – super duper flakey and delicious! It’s been a long time since I’ve made pastry – actually, now that I think about it, I’ve never really done much! My mom used to bake things with crusts, and I’d get the leftover scraps to make mini-strudel shaped things with jam inside. Never too late to get started though! I used a few tricks I’ve heard here and there – I cut the butter into small cubes then stuck them in the freezer for about 15 minutes; I also measured the dry ingredients into a bowl and stuck that in the fridge for the same amount of time. I also used the pastry cutter rather than my fingers, although I did have to use my hands a bit to get it to stick together before I put it in the fridge.

The dough was a bit crumbly to work with, but overall it wasn’t bad – although my rolling technique needs some work! I saw a pie/pizza dough lifter thingy on a blog somewhere, but now I can’t find it – that’s what I need! My pie’s kind of ugly, but did I mention the yummy-ness? I think a homely pie is kind of cute, anyway.

Did I mention the flakey? I was so amazed. I’ve been brainwashed by grocery store pies.

Please note that this slice was the second (messy plate); photo taken before the addition of a scoop of Hagen-Daas Half-fat Vanilla (which is very good!).

Now I can think about is pie.

July 14, 2008