Manda of all Trades

Bun trouble.

2009-07-19T22:13:00.005-06:00

Today we put on a pork shoulder to smoke for BBQ. After we'd started it, I realized that we didn't actually have any hamburger buns upon which to eat the aforementioned BBQ. So, being the crafty lass I am, I decided to whip up a batch of my own.

And this, as they say, is where things went badly.

See, I used this recipe. Smitten Kitchen has never steered me wrong before, and all of the comments seemed to unanimously say "YAY! This is the most awesome thing since cheese!" So, how could I go wrong, right?

As it turns out, 3 tablespoons of milk, one egg, and some butter were not enough to somehow magically turn 3 1/3 cups of flour into a super-sticky dough. At least, not in my kitchen. I have no idea what manner of voodoo the rest of the world might have going on, but I ended up with a bowl full of mostly-dry flour. I had to add 1/4 cup more milk to make it worth anything.

Normally when I botch a recipe (which happens frequently enough), I can go back and retrace my steps and figure out what I did wrong. "Oh, I used a teaspoon instead of a tablespoon" or "Damn, I completely spaced on the butter..." This time, though, I am 100% positive that I followed the recipe exactly. I'd blame it on the altitude, but I think that might be a little bit of a stretch for this one!

Anyway, they turned out edible, if a teeny bit on the tough side. They were a little bland, too, but that's nothing that some good BBQ sauce can't fix! Actually, I'd be surprised if there's anything in the world that BBQ sauce can't fix. I'm pretty sure that it could usher in an era of world peace if only we would let it...

I am definitely in the market for a new hamburger bun recipe, though. (Or any hints on what I might have done wrong with this one... I'd be glad to admit I made a mistake if I could just find out where!)

Crafting and ethics and morals, oh my!

2009-07-18T22:05:00.004-06:00

Making things makes me happy. Really, really happy. There's just something about creating new things, especially new things that are pretty. I'm a big fan of pretty.

Crafting can, however, get a bit political. Well, it can for me, anyway, since I'm one of those people who considers the far-reaching implications of pretty much everything. If I had my way, I would only knit with yarn that came from people who only used wool from happy sheep, or bunnies, or whatever. Actually, I'd rather raise my own sheep and bunnies and spin my own yarn, but I'm pretty sure there are ordinances against that sort of thing. (The sheep, not the spinning.)

As it stands, however, I am one broke-ass crafter. Sir HatDragon has been out of work for many months at this point, and my own job search has remained unfruitful. There's just not a whole lot of work here in Denver, and no work means no money, and no money means that I have the choice between spending $2 on something from a big box store or... not doing anything.

And, let's be honest, there is no way that I'm getting organic, fair-trade, or local anything for $2 at the big box store. I would love to be able to afford to buy from local glassblowers or or metalsmiths or fiber-people. (What do you even call people who spin yarn? Spinners? That sounds like spiders...)

In that same vein, I feel like people should work on reusing, upcycling, and recycling materials as much as they can. I've seen some amazing t-shirt surgery, and some beautiful items that have been created out of already existing materials. And, really, we already have enough crap on this planet. It wouldn't kill us to reuse some of it.

That's why I feel as sheepish as I do about jewelry making, I think. Most of what I've been using has been new materials, and it doesn't do anything but look pretty. No one really NEEDS jewelry the way that people NEED dishrags or bags or clothes or shoes. But it's so pretty! And fun to make!

Anyway, I think that's at least partly what's drawn me to knitting bags lately. They're fun, and fairly simple, and cute, and - best of all - useful! I'm hoping that people will use them for farmer's market/grocery shopping bags, thus eliminating the need for plastic bags a little further.

I have been fighting a bit with the handles. The way that the pattern I started out with (and promptly chopped up, rearranged, tweaked, and reinvented... will I ever be able to just follow a pattern more than once?) does handles is less than awesome, I think. Not very sturdy, too stretchy, not very attractive. So I've been working on figuring out how to make good, solid, cute handles. It's been an adventure.

I also broke out the crochet hooks and tried to make cute little flowers to go on my bags... as it turns out, I have a very firm grasp on the basics of crochet. And absolutely nothing beyond that! What does it MEAN when it says to sc in ring? Argh. I need a tutorial on crocheting in the round.

Next on the agenda: finding ways to upcycle un-useful things into slightly-more-useful things.

2009-07-16T16:56:00.006-06:00

(Mouse, the only being on this planet that makes me lapse into baby talk, does not approve of my lazy blogging.)

Oh, man, I'm so busy lately. It's stupid how many things I'm doing. Let's make a list, shall we?

- I'm working on an iPhone application with HatDragon, mostly in the consulting and writing documentation sense.

- I'm making jewelry and knitting things for my Etsy store.

- I'm working on a project that I will tell you about eventually but not today.

- I'm trying to get ready for my best girl to come visit in a month (!!!) by cleaning and doing yardwork.

- I'm gardening, not that it takes much effort right now.

- I might have a web design project.

And that's on top of all the normal stuff that I have to do, like snuggling children and cooking meals and laundry. God, I hate laundry. I mean, I'm not really fond of most recurring chores, but laundry in particular just seems to have it out for me. It breeds while you aren't looking, I swear.

All of this means I've been failing at blogging. My goal, starting now, is to blog every other day. But you guys will forgive me if I don't, right? Because of that list up there? Ok, good. In reward for your awesomeness, I'll leave you with some pictures.

*Me and my amazing bardic friend SJ Tucker at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
*Pretty sea-inspired necklace.
*Turqiouse bracelet. (This one is actually on Etsy.)
*Earrings... for me! (A girl's gotta keep something back for herself, right?)
*Another bracelet up on Etsy.

Now, off to take a shower so I can get stuff done. See you on Saturday!

PS - Oh my goodness. This is the craziest thing that I have ever seen, and I think I might make it for my birthday. Vegan Chocolate Avocado Cake.

Sometimes life goes too fast for blogging!

2009-06-22T23:42:00.009-06:00

I've been promising this post forever! I've kind of failed at blogging lately, but this time I have an excuse that isn't just me being whiny and having a blog-identity crisis or whatever.

So, to catch you up, I started playing with chain mail (chain maille? I can never figure out which one is the "proper" spelling) a month or so ago. I've always been fascinated by metalwork of any sort, but chain mail really draws me. Probably because I am a total dork for history.

This is not to say that my pieces are historically accurate, mind. Far from it. Maybe one day I'll get into making historically accurate jewelry, though... because I don't have enough hobbies, right?

The first piece I made was a 4-in-1 choker (which I photographed before I built my super cheap macro box):

That is a really crappy photo, but it's still in my queue for photographing properly. You get the general idea, though. The middle part, until past the crystals, was done with some jump rings I got from Michael's. While we were in there I saw a jump ring maker, and I asked the HatDragon, "Why would anyone want to make their own jump rings? Seems silly when you can buy them right here."

Yeah, famous last words. Trying to work with the jump rings from Michael's was awful. Half of them were warped, they didn't want to close right, it was a mess. I decided that I was going to finish the choker and give up on the whole idea.

Well, I didn't have enough to finish, so I ordered some jump rings in bulk from Fire Mountain Gems. Oh. My. Goodness. It made all the difference in the world. They came properly closed, they were easy to open, they didn't go all caterwumpus on me unless I really screwed it up. So I fell in love with the idea of making mail jewelry again.

The next thing I did was a Byzantine bracelet:

The weave kind of collapses on it when you lay it flat, but you can see the middle is standing up properly and that's what it looks like when it's on your wrist. It was... challenging to make. I love the way it turned out, though. Next time I think I'll use thicker rings, just to keep the weave in place when it's laying flat or being hung up. I'm a perfectionist like that.

Then there was this one, which was so easy that I'm kind of embarrassed to even call it "mail(le)"... it's a simple 2 in 2:

I love the colors, though, and I love that it's delicate and simple. I'm really drawn to dark reds and silver, so maybe I'm biased. Oh, and I made it, that probably helps.

In true CSADD form, I made these and a few sea-inspired necklaces (which is another entry altogether) and then went back to knitting! Right now I'm working on making bags, knitting in the round. Maybe I just needed to make something practical after working with jewelry for so long?

Tonight I set up an Etsy store (there's not a whole lot there that you didn't just see... and in fact, you got one more thing than Etsy did!) in hopes of maybe not feeling guilty for making more pretties than I can use. I mean, if I'm making them to SELL, that's ok, right? It's not an obsession then, it's a job.

Yeah, that's it.

My Grandmother Would Not Approve

2009-06-09T18:00:00.010-06:00

Last year I had a garden. It was a pretty ok garden, as far as newbies go, but I left the cauliflower too long and the Brussels sprouts got mealy aphids and I didn't stake the tomatoes down properly so they broke in a mid-summer windstorm. Mostly I ended up using the herbs out of it, eating a few radishes, and learning a lot of rather difficult lessons involving a complete loss of various crops.

This year... this year I'm doing better. I've learned from my mistakes a bit, see?

That tomato is not going anywhere, I promise. No little dowel rods here, no, I tied it to a small slab of hardwood. We've already had three hail storms (!) this spring, and so far the worst that has happened is the sharp hail shearing off a few leaves. I hope my luck holds on that one... it's supposed to storm all damn week.

So, things are coming along, and that makes me happy, especially since the breadwinner of our little household was unceremoniously laid off at the beginning of May. We went and bought a lot of easy-to-freeze things (like meat and bread and cheese and frozen veggies) with his severance pay, but I worried that we wouldn't be able to afford to eat fresh greens and veggies like we're used to. I can't even count how much spinach and mixed lettuce we go through in a month, since it's one of the types of raw vegetables that the guys will eat with no problem.

Luckily, one of my box gardens looks like this:

Lettuce apparently LOVES the cool, rainy weather with occasional bursts of sun that we've been having lately. And the little guys even like home grown radicchio (something that they detested in the storebought version) and will eat the "curly parts" with no arguments. Really, this is a win-win situation.

(I feel the need to mention that I did learn one lesson the hard way: if you let arugula get too crowded, even if you intend to eat it all while it's still "baby" lettuce, it will bolt and flower. Apparently lettuces will do this when they feel stressed, and my arugula needed some serious Xanax or something. I only got one salad out of it before it bolted on me.)

I know for a fact that my farmer ancestors would laugh at me for feeling this way, but there's just something magical about this whole process to me. I built a box and mixed the dirt just so and planted little seeds, and then I went out in the drizzle this evening and harvested a salad. Just like that! Amazing!

It makes me wonder if perhaps we haven't gone full circle. My great-grandmother never quite got over the shock of going to the store and buying cans of food that you didn't personally have to sweat all day in the kitchen at harvest time to make. My grandmother was amazed at the idea of going to a store and buying strawberries in the dead of winter. My mother delighted in t.v. dinners and other no-cooking options. For generations my family has cheerfully moved toward convenience and away from manual labor.

Me? I'm tickled that I can grow my own food, it tastes good, and if I want to preserve it in cans? I could do that! Totally! How exciting is that?! (Ok, not the lettuce. But I fully plan on making my own salsa and pickles and the like.)

Well, I'm excited, anyway, which probably makes me a dork. But I'm a dork with roughly $50 worth of produce hanging out in her backyard and more coming up every day. I say that evens out.

CSADD

2009-06-05T22:43:00.006-06:00

Can we be honest? I hope so, because this is the internet, which pretty much ends up facilitating the most beautiful and brutal honesty ever. (And the most horrible and stupid lying ever, but that's another post.)

I think I might have CSADD. Craft-Specific Attention Deficit Disorder.

Remember my saga about the beading, how I followed the never-ending path of crafting to get there? Started with knitting? Well, the other day I was thinking about doing some beaded charm-type things. I thought they'd be cute as accent pieces on bags, right? And I could totally make bags. I could sew some. I need to practice sewing anyway. So I went and looked up patterns (which are way more complicated than one would think) and some inspiration.

On my search for inspiration, I found knitted bags! Which let me to other things which led me... to sitting around knitting. It's like chasing my tail. I keep going around and around in circles and I'm actually getting anywhere.

I'm not sure what to do about this affliction. I thought about making up rules. Like, you know, I would do one craft a day. Knitting on Monday, sewing on Tuesday, etc. Or I could set up a project timeline. I can't do anything else until I finish this necklace, then I'll work on that blanket. Or I can work one hour on this project, but then I have to put it down and work one hour on that other project before I can pick it back up again.

Which are all really good ideas. For someone else. They just don't work for me, at least not with creative ventures. If I'm trying to sew when I really want to be knitting, I'll hate everything I do. Ah, well, maybe I'll find a way to cure myself at some point.

Until then, lookit the fun knitting stitch I ended up messing with!

Until now I've mostly been doing pretty straight, blocky stuff. I did finish the cabled scarf, but that's been the extent of my interesting knitting. I really like the scalloped shape that this gives, but I think next time I'd do it with one color or perhaps with intentional color changes.

Still, cute, huh? I found a few super-awesome crocheting patterns, too!

... uh oh.

Seriousness is overrated.

2009-06-02T22:35:00.004-06:00

So, one day I'm sitting around thinking about knitting. Then I though that perhaps I'd rather do some other sort of crafty-type things instead, so I made some little ladybugs. They were cute, so then I wanted to make dragonflies. I decided to make those out of beads, which meant dragging out the long-neglected beading supplies and figuring out what I still had after four or five moves.

This led to the little guys poking their noses into the beading box going "What's this one?" "Ohh, can I see that one?" "Look, this one looks like a monster tooth!" And poking themselves with wire and the like. So, in a flash of inspiration I decided to dig out an even longer-neglected box of plastic pony beads we had so the guys could play with them and leave me to sort my gemstone beads and poky wire in peace.

... which involved me cleaning out the pony bead box, removing all the screws and thumbtacks (wtf?) and sorting it out so there were just beads/beading supplies in there. Once I was done with that, I realized that there were not that many actual beads in it. So we bought two giant boxes of assorted acrylic beads when we went to Michael's to get me some supplies.

Because, of course, I'd gotten off on a jewelry tangent. It has since kind of turned into a chain mail tangent, but that's the topic of another post.

Like most things, the jewelry-making started to seem daunting after I really got into it. I look at various beading catalogues for inspiration and my reactions vary between "I could totally do so much better than that!" and "Oh, god, I'll never be as good as that, so I may as well not try." This whole self-defeatist attitude is something I'm trying to work on.

As it turns out, the bucket full of silly plastic beads was the perfect cure for my whiny, I-can't-do-anything crap. The guys won't use the "girl" beads (yeah, they're at the stage where gender roles are set in stone and nothing I say will sway them that some boys actually wear purple and some girls don't like flowery things) so I started messing around with them, just making little bracelets.

And they were cute! And they gave me ideas for other, more grownup jewelry. So maybe I just need some creative stretching before I start thinking of new things to make. A little mental yoga, perhaps. Something goofy that I have no worries about screwing up.

So, creative people of mine, my professional opinion as the girl of all trades is that you go forth and find your own brand of mental yoga. Do oneword or keep a stash of tiny canvasses (I found some 3" square canvases that are adorable) to limber up your brain when you feel unmotivated, boring, or like a hack. If it doesn't fix you right up, then you might have to break out the big guns, something used by artists and writers for millennia...

No, not absinthe. Put that bottle down! I was talking about a nap, you deviants.

Where have I been?

2009-06-01T00:05:00.002-06:00

Long time, no post, eh? A funny thing kept happening on the way to the Blogger site...

See, for some reason I ended up getting caught up in the question of What Kind Of Blog I Should Be Writing. That's the big thing out here on the internets now, finding a niche and selling yourself in it.

Am I a "mommy blogger"? Mmm... no. I'm a mom AND a blogger, but I don't blog exclusively about the mommy side of things. Besides, I kinda feel weird about putting my kids' photos out where everyone can see them very often, and what good is a blog without pictures?

Is this a craft blog? Well, I do crafty stuff fairly frequently. I'm planning to open an Etsy store. I blog about what I'm doing and how and what I screw up. Buuut...

This might be a food blog! Most of my posts thus far have been food-related. I do love cooking. Well, I love it most times. See, sometimes I get busy or get into a rut and then we eat sandwiches and mac and cheese and other such things for a week straight. Not exactly thrilling blog fodder there.

Oooh... I'm thrifty sometimes! Maybe I'm one of those money-management bloggers? (I'll wait for the people who actually know me to stop laughing hysterically.)

I geek out occasionally, but I'm not technical enough to write a geek blog. I play a few video games, but I'm hardly cutting edge or diversified enough to handle a gamer-type blog. Same thing with literature or music or politics, etc, etc.

And then I got to thinking about the whole "selling yourself" part of the deal. I know that people start blogs to make money sometimes, and sometimes they pull it off and make a billion dollars or something. (I'm looking at Dooce, here.) But do I really even want to be a professional blogger? I've been doing the blogging thing for nearly 9 years now, in various incarnations. I've never, ever gotten paid for it. Ever.

In the early years, I would have scoffed at the very idea of getting paid to blog. As far as I knew, only camgirls got money for blogging, and even that generally came in the form of PayPal and Amazon gifts for showing their boobs during webcam shows. And, let's be honest, there are a multitude of reasons that you do not want to see my boobs, much less pay for the privilege.

After a while, blogging because a nice, respectable way to earn money. A lot of my friends do reviews or blog about certain topics for cash. Some of them are just so damn charming that they make bank from the number of visitors that they pull to their site on a daily basis. Ok, so, making money blogging sounds like a no-brainer. I like blogging, I like making money, where's the issue?

Well, see, while I was looking into how to make money at this thing (hey, it's kinda difficult when you've been giving it away for free for a decade!) I came across a site that would pay you something obscene like 75% of the profits for putting certain ads on your site. Someone buys them, you make money. Sounds like a win, yes?

But the first "product" that I looked at was for a book or something that was labeled "How to Get Your Ex Back." As if that weren't creepy and sketchy enough, the little description intended to sell you on selling the product read: A Hungry Crowd That Is Desperate For Help Makes You A Lot Of Easy Sales.

Ew.

There are a lot of programs out there with stuff like that or worse on their rosters. And there are ad banners that flash, scams pretending to be work at home businesses, crappy diet ads... the list goes on.

Between the skeevy ways to make money blogging and my existential blogger crisis, I found myself "forgetting" to update. I still did a lot of things. I taught Rachel to knit, I started making jewelry, I baked the most amazing cake ever. But I would conveniently forget to take pictures or mutter something about it not being worth posting if Kris asked.

I don't know how blogging, something that is like breathing to me, suddenly became this big deal. I felt unsure, hesitant, and like I was doing it all wrong. Maybe blogging wasn't really what I wanted to be doing with my time, after all. It's just pixels on a screen, right? Silly time waster.

Thankfully, I came to my senses. ;)

Seriously, I started this blog to talk about the random stuff that I want to talk about. You know, crafting and cooking and geeking and gardening and whatever else I manage to find myself doing at any given point. So, I should just do that, because that's what I wanted to do.

Making money? Eh, I'm not going to complain if someone clicks the adsense ads over there (though I don't know why anyone would when it keeps putting things like "dragon tattoo" up there...), but I don't think I'm going to go out of my way to be a Professional Blogger™. Sure, there's stuff out there that makes me lose faith in humanity, but I don't have to participate for goodness' sake. I'll just be me, doing what I do. You guys be you, the blogosphere with be itself, everyone will be happy and the world will be in harmony.

So. Starting tomorrow, we're back on the air.

Mother Nature, human nature

2009-04-16T21:14:00.003-06:00

Just when I think that we're safely into springtime, there ends up being another crazy blizzard! This time they're predicting nearly 20 inches of snow, which means that we'll either get snowed on to the point of not leaving our houses until May, or it'll just skip us and keep going. You have to love Colorado weather, right?

The last unexpected bout of snow ended up killing all the blossoms on my forsythia, which made me very sad. When I lived in an apartment, I didn't notice the repercussions of late frosts, but now it almost seems like a personal affront. How could you kill all my pretty flowers, Mother Nature?! What did I do to you?

For some reason I am not nearly as upset about the loss of the crab apple blossoms out front. Maybe because the idea of not having a zillion berries squishing underfoot every time I go out my front door is actually kind of nice. Maybe it could just frost in the front yard?

On the upside, there ARE signs of spring that are keeping me from going completely nuts. My strawberry plant (currently residing inside, out of the clutches of the sleet that's pelting down as I type) has had wonderful blossoms, and there are now a few slightly-blushing tiny berries promising sweetness to come.

I planted my salad garden two days ago, with four different types of greens and some nasturtiums. Last year I planted it too late and the lettuce never sprouted because of the heat. Something tells me that heat will be the least of my worries this time!

Of course, I'm just whining. In a few months I'll be whining again, but then it will about the 100 degree heat and how I hate all the dry days. Just like every year before. Funny how that happens, isn't it? We just can't help but to whine about what we can't have. At least I realize that I'm being unreasonable about this whole weather thing... do I get extra points for self-awareness?

Wine does not dye eggs well, and other stories.

2009-04-13T14:47:00.002-06:00

I decided to try my hand at dyeing eggs using natural ingredients to make the dyes. Namely, natural ingredients that I already had hanging out in my pantry/freezer/fridge, because I am lazy. After extensive research (meaning I read some websites carefully, then chose to discard pretty much everything I read in order to wing it), I jumped in and started boiling random things.

Firstly, I took a dozen eggs, put them in 6 quarts of water with 6 tablespoons of white vinegar. The vinegar helps abrade the eggshells so that they take color better, supposedly. Then I hard boiled them, letting them cool at room temperature when they were done.

For the colors, I took roughly 1 cup of veggie matter to 4 cups of water or 1 tablespoon of spice to 4 cups of water, combined them in a sauce pan, and boiled them for at least 30 minutes each. I used raspberries (for pink), tumeric (for yellow), paprika (for orange), spinach (for green), and red cabbage (for blue). I added a tablespoon of vinegar to each of the pots before they boiled.

(Raspberries, red cabbage, and paprika boiling)

Once they'd boiled for at least half an hour - and a few got forgotten and boiled closer to an hour - I strained them. The paprika and tumeric got strained through a bit of cheesecloth set in the strainer to catch as much solid matter as possible, but the tumeric dye still had a lot of sediment. It didn't seem to affect the eggs at all, however.

When the boiled cabbage, spinach, and raspberries were put aside in a bowl to save for the compost pile, I thought they looked like some sort of fancy avant garde dish at an expensive eatery. Hence, I took a picture:

The raspberries didn't end up giving me quite enough dye and the spinach wasn't turning the water very green even after an hour of boiling, so I decided to play mad scientist with them. The raspberry dye got a shot or two of red wine to bring its levels up, but I neglected to think that red wine does NOT actually stain things red and has carbonation. Uh, oops? The spinach got a boost from some liquid chlorophyll that I had sitting around.

The dyes and the eggs awaiting dyeing:

We took rubber bands and white crayons and added patterns to the eggs before we put them into the dyes. Unfortunately, the rubber bands didn't seem to like to stay on, no matter how tightly we wrapped them. Only a few eggs wound up with their intended stripes. The dyes mostly took over the white crayon, too, making the patterns a different color but rarely leaving them white.

The yellow is tumeric, the purply-pink (2nd in the top row, 3rd in the bottom) is raspberry/red wine, the green (3rd in top row, 2nd in bottom) is spinach/liquid chlorophyll, the orange is paprika, and the light blue comes from red cabbage:

I was very happy with the way the yellow, orange, and green came out. The blue didn't come out as stunning as I'd seen it done elsewhere, and I don't know if it was due to the cabbage-to-water ratio or if maybe they let theirs sit overnight in the dye. They were still pretty, so I won't complain too much. The pink-purple from the raspberry and wine combination was interesting, if not exactly what I was going for, and the carbonation from the wine gave them a speckled look in places.

Overall, it was a pretty interesting experiment, and the kids had a lot of fun with it, too. Next time they've requested that we try blueberries, strawberries, and orange peels to see if those will give us any different colors.

I was almost sad to make these into deviled eggs... but only almost. ;)

Making my excuses

2009-04-12T23:14:00.002-06:00

I have so many entries to write... but I've kind of been veering between "too busy to post" and "in a ham coma" for the past few days. Easter weekend will do that to a girl, I think.

Next week, please expect the following posts:

- adventures in dying eggs with red cabbage and spinach
- creating my "base of operations"
- my salad garden
- moping about spring taking so long to get here for real

Right now, however, I think I'm going to go play video games and hope that my stomach doesn't realize that I ate three times my weight in ham and deviled eggs this evening. So long as it remains ignorant of the physical impossibility, I think we'll be ok!

And... putting it together!

2009-04-08T22:00:00.006-06:00

Much like many other families in the US, we've been feeling the pinch of being caught between rising costs and the spectre of the flailing economy around here. Nothing too bad, but enough that I've been trying to cut back on my grocery shopping a bit which leads to playing a lot of "What's for Dinner?"

You know how to play that, right? The oldest kid walks into the kitchen at 3pm and asks "what's for dinner?" and then you scramble through the pantry and fridge looking for something to throw together so you can put off grocery shopping another day. Extra points for using leftovers or serving it to guests. Quadruple points if the guests ask for the recipe!

So, I was tired of playing that game and wanted to play a new game. The new game was called "Say Screw the Cost and Make Indian Food, Dammit." And (rather obviously, given the last few posts) I totally won that game. It did take some preparation on my part, though, because I don't generally keep a lot of these ingredients on hand. For instance, I bought my garam masala at Whole Foods.

Here's what I made and the recipes I used:

Chicken Tikka Masala
(based off of a recipe from
the Chicago Tribune)

Marinade:

- 1.5lbs of boneless, skinless chicken, cubed
- 1 c. plain yogurt
- 2 tbsp. lemon juice
- 2 tsp. ground cumin
- 2 tsp. ground red pepper
- 2 tsp. black pepper
- 1 tsp. cinnamon
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1 small knob ginger (about 1 inch long), minced
- 6 bamboo skewers

Soak bamboo skewers in water for 15 minutes. Thread chicken onto skewers
and place in a shallow dish. Combine yogurt, lemon juice, spices, salt, and
ginger in a bowl, then pour over chicken, turning the skewers to coat. This
marinade is THICK, just so you're warned! Let chicken marinade in the fridge for
at least 1 hour, then grill or broil until done through (about 4 minutes each
side). Set aside.

Sauce:

- 1 tbsp ghee
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1/2 jalepeno pepper, minced
- 2 tsp. ground coriander
- 1 tsp. ground cumin
- 1 tsp. paprika
- 1 tsp. garam masala
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1 can (8 oz.) tomato sauce
- 1 cup coconut milk

Heat the ghee over medium heat, adding garlic
and jalepeno to sautee for 1 minute. Stir in spices and salt, then add tomato
sauce. Mix well and let simmer for 15 minutes. Add coconut milk and let simmer
until sauce thickens, about 5 minutes. Add chicken, stir well, let simmer for an
additional 5 minutes.

Saag Paneer

- 16oz frozen spinach, thawed with excess water squeezed out
- 4 tbsp. ghee
- 1 onion, finely chopped
- 1/2 a jalepeno, finely chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 small knob (about 1 inch) ginger, minced
- 2 tsp. ground cardamom
- 1 tsp. ground ginger
- 1 tsp. ground cumin
- 1 tsp. ground coriander
- 1/2 tsp. garam masala
- 1-2 c. water
- 1/2 c. coconut milk
- 1 portion of paneer, cubed

Heat ghee in the bottom of a pot over medium heat, add onion and
jalepeno. Sautee until onion is translucent, then add ginger and garlic, sautee
for 1 minute. Add spinach and dry spices, stirring well. Add enough water to
cover the greens and bring to a boil before reducing heat and letting simmer for
at least 30 minutes. (An hour is better, as it lets the greens get really
tender.)

When the liquid is pretty much evaporated, remove pot from heat
and let it rest for 15 minutes (or until it cools if you plan on processing). I
ran mine through a food processor at this point, because I like it smooth and
creamy. Some people prefer the spinach to still be whole, so you can skip this
step if you'd like. Put the pot back on a low heat to re-warm if you've let it
cool, stir in coconut milk and let it thicken. In the meantime, brown the paneer
in a skillet with a little bit of ghee. Add paneer to the saag and stir
carefully to incorporate.

Serve these dishes together with jasmine rice and naan... and, uh, try not to eat yourself into a coma like I did. Generally I'm awesome with portion control and stopping when I'm full, but Indian food defeats me Every. Single. Time. No joke. Who can resist this:

My naan is a little, er, bulkier than I'm used to. Still working on that one. It tasted good though!

How to make Paneer

2009-04-07T11:22:00.015-06:00

Paneer is a soft cheese used in a lot of Indian dishes. My favorite (so far!) is saag paneer, with spinach and cheese.

Making paneer is one of those things that SHOULD be easy, and was once I'd gotten over the trial-and-error hump. See, I read a lot of "how to make paneer" articles, then decided to follow the one with the most positive comments... yeah, sounds like it should work, and yet! So, first I'll give you the instructions, then I'll tell you the mistakes I made and how to avoid them.

You will need:

- 1/2 gallon of whole milk (not ultra-pasteurized)
- juice of 1 lemon
- pot large enough to hold 1/2 gallon of milk with plenty of extra room for boiling and stirring

Dump the milk into the pot, cook over medium-high heat until boiling. Be careful not to let it scorch on the bottom! When it starts to boil it will get frothy and rise quickly, so take care not to let it boil over. Let it boil for one minute, then add lemon juice and stir like mad.

After a few minutes the curds will begin to form and separate from the whey. You can remove from the heat at this point, continue stirring until it looks like the curds are fully separated, then cover and let sit for 10 to 15 minutes. During that time larger curds should form.

Line a collander with 4 layers of cheesecloth (I used two big pieces folded in half) and strain the curds. Let them sit in the collander for 5 minutes before gathering up the corners of the cheesecloth and squeezing the remaining liquid out. Place the cheesecloth-covered ball of curds on a plate and flatten with the palm of your hand until it is roughly 1/2 inch thick. Put another plate on top, sandwiching the cheese between the two, and set something heavy (I used a giant thing of olive oil) on top. Let it sit for 2 hours.

Pour off any remaining liquid, then use the paneer immediately or cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. Cut into cubes, and you're ready to cook! Ta da:

Ok, not that this post isn't long enough, but let's talk about what I did and where I went wrong:

First, the recipe I started with didn't call for near enough lemon juice and instructed to remove from heat right as it started boiling. So I removed it from the heat, added lemon juice, stirred and stirred and stirred... and nothing happened!

Also, it never said anything about having to stir like a madwoman. Maybe this shouldn't be required, but I can end up being a very literal person. You say put it in a pot and boil it, I put it in a pot and boil it! So mine scorched on the bottom a teeny bit.

At first I was pretty upset, because I thought I had wasted half a gallon of milk. Then Kris reminded me that, if it was already wasted in my mind, there was no reason not to try to salvage it. What's the worst thing that could happen? So, I went and searched for tips and tricks and found out what I'd done wrong.

I scraped up and discarded the brown bits from the bottom (luckily there wasn't much) and added the rest of the lemon juice I had. Then I put it back over the heat and kept it moving. Once it came to a boil, it started to form curds almost immediately. I kept it over the heat probably a little longer than was entirely needed because I was paranoid about taking it off at that point!

Still, my mistakes were easily correctable and didn't affect the cheese at all. Even the kidlets liked it! Granted, they were less than thrilled when it was in the saag paneer, but still. I consider it a win!

How to make ghee

2009-04-06T12:48:00.004-06:00

Ghee is, simply put, the oil from butter. It has a long history in India, only some of which involves cooking. The parts that DO involve cooking are the most delicious parts, obviously, but it has many uses.

Ghee is used in everything from lamps to bathing religious icons during worship. It is also used extensively in Ayurvedic medicine, said to aid in digestion and absoption. It even is used as a healing agent on burned skin, much like aloe, and is said to help one avoid burns or scarring if applied immediately.

The first time I heard of ghee was when my husband was working with a woman of Indian decent back in 2003. They got to talking about herbalism and she gave him a handout on determining and dealing with dosha imbalances. Very interesting stuff. In the process of talking about it, she told him that her grandfather had been active until his death at 98 and had always said that eating ghee had been the primary factor in his longevity.

So, if you're making Indian food or practicing Ayurveda, you more than likely need ghee. And making ghee? Is the simplest thing ever.

You will need:

-Unsalted butter (I use organic)
-1/8 tsp salt
- A heavy-bottomed saucepan
- A clean jar with a lid

Throw the butter into the saucepan over medium heat. It doesn't take a lot of heat to boil butter, and you don't want it to burn! Let it come to a boil, but do not stir. After a minute or two, blow the foam away from the top and see if there is separation. There should be a clear golden liquid on top and solid stuff on the bottom on the pan. Remove from heat and let cool.

Scrape any solids that are floating on top and discard. Gently pour or spoon the liquid into your jar, being careful not to get any of the solids in. Put the lid on, and you're done! Ghee can be kept unrefrigerated (because it no longer has the dairy solids that would cause it to go rancid) and used in place of oil or butter in recipes.

Cable Knitwork

2009-04-04T21:39:00.004-06:00

Still feeling under the weather, but masochistic enough to decide to learn a new trick knitting. In this case, I decided to start a scarf that I'd promised ages ago. It's my first attempt at cabling, and I'm using this pattern.

I was expecting cabling to be a lot harder than it actually is, in a technical manner. It's pretty easy to pull the stitches off onto another needle, knit a few, then knit them back in. The hard part is keeping track of which row you're on. I have to keep reminding myself like, "knit row five, knit row five, purl row five, purl row five..." I lost count of where I was ONCE and it was a nightmare trying to find my way back to the pattern.

This sort of knitting definitely takes a lot more concentration than anything I've done before. This is a Project with a capital "P" rather than just some little fiddly thing that I can do during commercial breaks while watching Dollhouse. I have a feeling that it'll take a little more time, just because I'll only be able to work on it when I'm feeling particularly in the crafty zone.

That's ok, though. This is why I have more than one set of knitting needles!

Waiting on Winter's curtain call

2009-04-02T20:57:00.005-06:00

I've been slacking on doing anything interesting lately. The Denver spring has sprung, which means that it varies between tank top weather and blizzards. I love Denver! I love tank top weather! I love snow! Just... uh, not all at once. My sinuses hate everything right now, and I'm so tired of migraines.

There is a backlog of projects taunting me: a round knitting pattern M. sent to me, a need to pick up my crochet hooks again, a thousand recipes that need (need!) to be made, a website I want to put together, etc. And I have the motivation to do exactly none of it. I'm doing good to get dressed these past two days, honestly.

Today, however, I drug myself upright and decided to plant things. It's about time to get things started inside, even if it is still snowing 6" every other day outside! I already have a strawberry plant that I bought a few weeks ago hanging out on a windowsill, just waiting for the weather to decide that it's done being all Jekyll and Hyde on us. It's making strawberries while waiting, too. Industrious little thing.

So, last year I tried to do my own starters in washed out custard cups and the like. I figured that reusing before recycling would extend their lifecycle just a little more, and I'll be the first to admit that I'm one of those crazy environmentalist types in training. Unfortunately, it ended very badly, so this year I'm cheating. I bought one of those silly peat-pot things and am using that in hopes of results that even I can't screw up.

See?

+

Just add water!

Tonight I planted tomatoes, jalepenos, and sweet basil. The little guys are so excited about the garden this year (unlike last year, when they were mostly interested in digging in the dirt rather than learning how to grow things) and they each have a laundry list of what they want to plant.

Number one on T's list when we go seed shopping next week? Cucumbers!

"Honey, you don't eat cucumbers."

"I know."

"Ok, well, then why do you want me to plant them if you don't want to eat them?"

"I don't want to eat them, I just want to make them grow!"

Well, right then. Cucumbers it is. Anyone got a good pickle recipe?

Matthew's Sewing School for the Lazy

2009-03-31T16:28:00.001-06:00

This weekend I went to my friend Rachel's house so that her husband could teach us how to use a sewing machine.

Yup. Matthew taught us how to sew. Hysterical!

Before anyone thinks that I'm being horrifically gender-biased here, let me fill you in on our backgrounds. See, the three of us were raised in stereotypically southern families. We all went to high school in Mississippi, Rachel and I to a public school and Matthew to a private one. In our families the girls learned to cook and clean and sew while the boys learned to play sports and fix cars.

Matthew does like to fix cars and snowboard and play computer games and all that other stuff that supposedly belongs in the masculine realm. I just assumed that he would've had to have gone out of his way to learn to sew, and he didn't seem interested in that sort of thing, so it never occured to me that he might know how. And this, duckies, is what I get for assuming!

When Rachel and I started talking about sewing projects, he offered to teach us to use a sewing machine.

"How on earth did you learn to sew?" I asked.

"How on earth did you NOT learn to sew?" he returned. "Didn't you guys take home ec?"

Actually, yes, I had. So had Rachel. We had the same teacher a few years apart. Our home ec classes involved reading books, doing homework, and buying candy bars while the teacher did paperwork. She was the cheerleading sponsor, so she had a lot of forms to fill out for competitions and new uniforms and stuff.

Once or twice every six weeks she would say "Ok, I have to teach you guys how to do this thing because the state says so." Then we'd walk over to the kitchen and make hamburgers or learn to wash dishes. That was the entirety of my home economics education!

Apparently Matthew's school required that he take it for three years, and so now the kid is a sewing machine whiz. And a good thing, since Rachel and I both snubbed our mothers' attempts to teach us the ancient art of sewing, preferring instead to play video games and sports. ;P

Sewing machines are kind of daunting at first, especially after growing up hearing my mother cuss at hers frequently. There are bobbins and needles and settings and tensions and... yes. It all seems very complicated. Once explained, however, it was a lot more simple than I'd made it out to be.

We spent a few hours using and practicing at the machine round-robin, and at the end I made... a square!

It's actually a dream pillow, but a dream pillow is basically... well, a square. Filled with stuff that smells good. Still, I left that evening feeling very accomplished. The only thing better than doing crafty stuff, in my never-humble opinion, is doing crafty stuff with friends.

Coookie, nom nom nom!

2009-03-28T14:42:00.001-06:00

(I'll edit this with some pictures later. Right now I fail at photography!)

Last night I had company in the form of the famous SJ Tucker, aka Sooj, and her boyfriend K. Since I didn't get to make it out to the show due to a lack of babysitter, I did all those things I'd been meaning to do forever while waiting around for them to come over after the show... painted my nails, gave myself a facial, re-dyed my hair, etc.

In the midst of all of this I decided I wanted to make some snacky sort of thing. What better snacky sort of thing than cookies? Especially if I can make a bunch of different cookies and not have to worry about someone not liking or being allergic to the one type I make.

Which led me to remember that I had seen slice-and-bake cookies of the mix-and-match variety over at Smitten Kitchen. Brilliant!

I used this recipe and made the lemon poppy seed as written, along with my own mandarin-chocolate chip and chocolate chocolate chip. I did half the recipies so that I could make more variety and not have a ton of cookies sitting around taunting me if they didn't get eaten!

For the mandarin-chocolate chip I added the zest of three tiny mandarins (I didn't have real oranges and figured they would do) and a handful of semi-sweet chocolate chips. For the chocolate chocolate chip I substituted roughly 1/8 c. of cocoa powder for the flour and added maybe a little more than a handful of chocolate chips.

The lemon poppy seed cookies came out fine, but a little less lemony than I had hoped. Maybe I just used a small lemon, but next time I will definitely use more. I also might have overbaked them juuuust a little bit. The mandarin chocolate chip came out the best of all three batches: orangy, chocolatey, and soft. The double chocolate came out a lot less sweet than imagined, which was very disappointing.

Overall, though, they were all more than edible, and making them was a lot of fun. Slicing up a roll of cookie dough like that takes me back to my childhood. Just like the rolls you buy in the store, only with a lot less questionable ingredients! I think next time I'll let the little guys help me.

On knitting

2009-03-25T23:23:00.001-06:00

One of my more recent adventures has been taking up knitting. Now, a friend of mine tried to teach me to knit years ago, and I took to it much like a baby seal takes to tap dancing. After a few tries I put the needles and yarn away, assuming I would never want to pick them up again.

Fast forward to December of last year: I woke up one morning and thought to myself "Hm, you know what I want to do? I want to knit." This might seem a bit odd, given that I'd hated knitting the first time around, but I've woken up thinking stranger things so I decided to roll with it.

On another friend's recommendation I went to Knitting Help and watched their amazing how-to videos. I tried the continental (or left-handed) style rather than fight with the right-handed one that had foiled me previously. And - much cussing and wailing later - I actually got fairly decent at the garter stitch! I was so good that I made a baby blanket! And there was much rejoicing*.

A few small projects later I realized that I didn't know how to purl. So I went and learned, then put my learnings to use with the super-cute scarf pictured up there. I modified a free pattern to come up with this basic one: knit 2, purl 1 repeated 6 times with a slip-stitch on each end to form a pretty edge. Very easy, very cute, and now I want to make a hundred more of them!

I guess the only question becomes... what would I do with 101 scarves? Guess I'll have to find something else to put my energy toward.

*If you got that reference, you are a geek. Which, in all honesty, means that we'd probably get along swimmingly!

Obligatory introduction

2009-03-24T22:47:00.000-06:00

When I was a little girl, around 5 or 6 years of age, someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. It's one of those cutesy things that adults ask little kids, expecting to get a normal kid answer ("I want to be president!") or something amusing ("I want to be an elephant!") to tease them about in a decade.

Instead, I told them, "Hang on. I'll go get my list."

And I did. I had a list of all the things that I wanted to be when I grew up. The list ranged from astronaut to grocery store checker, from veterinarian to actress, from fire(wo)man to mommy. I think it had 27 future professions at final count.

"Which of these things are you going to try to be first?" the adult asked, looking over my painstakingly crayon-written list.

"Oh, I'm going to be all of them at the same time," I assured her.

Things haven't changed too much since then, honestly. Part of that might be because I never officially grew up... sure, I have two kids and a mortgage and spend a bit of time checking out the stock market every morning. But there's never been a moment in my life where I said to myself, "Ah ha! There it is. I'm a grownup now." No little ding! of leveling up to adulthood.

My list is still pretty long, too. Granted, I think I've missed the boat on being an astronaut or the president. I'm pretty sure that being a firefighter is out, too, as extreme heat makes me pass out. Famous actresses are generally about 8 sizes smaller than me, and anything involving blood and needles is right out!

But when I think about going back to college, I think to myself: "Ok, I could totally be a psychologist. People like talking to me. Or I could do social work. But I like cooking, too, so maybe culinary school? Ooh, that's spendy, though. I could look into agriculture or become a licensed herbalist. Maybe I'll learn to sew and sell clothes! Or I could do interior design. Maybe I should go the linguistics route, or history, or literature and become a professor. Or..."

My interests are so wide, my hobbies so varied, that settling on one thing to be My Thing to Do Forever is downright daunting. And so, I am henceforth doing what any sensible woman in her late twenties would do these days:

I'm blogging about it.

I am the Manda of many trades, but mistress of none. Want to come along on the ride?