It's November *what*?!

I can't believe it's already November 21. I think someone's playing a joke on me and rolled my whole calendar forward a few weeks. It's not almost December! *cries*

But I have a giveaway to give away! This month the randomizer chose Connie! I've contacted via Ravelry.

Here's what I've assembled so far. I'm waiting on one little component so I can make a glow in the dark stitch marker or two. I can assure you through personal experience that it's really annoying to drop a stitch marker in the dark.


The little green packet on the lower left are some silk hankies I dyed last week just for fun. They're not something I plan to have in the shop any time soon. I love playing with hankies, but it's really just play and I figure that something a little different would help for power outage boredom. The delicates wash and lanolizing wool drops are offered up by my friend Cate of Urbbody (her home shop is Urbhome). I think the lanolizing drops are really cool, even if one isn't treating soakers, and I used a bunch of the delicates wash recently to de-smoke all my wool after a week of wood fires.

Meanwhile, I have nothing of substance to talk about today but I do have my Thanksgiving menu planned so I'll put that behind the jump.

A poll and dinner

So I'm planning to do a demo/tutorial on my dye technique and I'd like to tape it on Saturday. I'm not sure what colorway to show, so I've put a poll in the sidebar to the right ---->. If you have an opinion, please fill it out!

Meanwhile, here I am blogging my dinner again. I tried this thing where I baked chicken pieces on a bed of lentils and liked it so much that tonight I tried it again with a slightly different configuration. It's good enough to record for posterity, although there was no measuring involved. So this is more of a notion of a technique than an actual recipe.


Boneless chicken baked on a bed of lentils, served with rice and kabocha pumpkin.

Blogging my dinner again

So, yesterday was my birthday and for my birthday I decided I wanted to cook a very complicated dinner without concern about costs. Some of it was very successful and some of it could have been improved, but all in all I had a fantastic time shopping and cooking and cooking some more. Dinner was tasty, my plan for how to prepare and serve everything went almost without a hitch, and we ended the night full but not in distress from overeating. Considering the meal had 8 courses, this last was probably my greatest achievement!

Dinner and an update

I got my July Phatfiber colorways listed by the skin of my teeth, today, as well as a few other colorways.  I'm still working on editing and then listing the rest of my June yarns.  But first, I have to cook dinner!

This is one of the colorways I listed last night. It's called "Monster under the Bed" and is a combination of a red burgundy or maroon, purple, and bright greens shot through with chartreuse and light blue. The picture will take you to the listing.

Now, on to dinner!  I'm working with not a lot of sleep, so simple was intended as the order of the day.  I was going to do chicken cutlets, but someone cut up my chicken breasts. Needless to say, I couldn't pound them and then coat them with flour and pan fry them anymore.  Add to this that the tooth challenged member of the family requested rice instead of pasta, and my entire plan for the evening was shot.

So, since I couldn't go simple, I went complicated. But not too complicated.  In this case, a kind of chicken croquette.  I ground the chicken breasts with salt, a little thyme and black pepper, added some egg, and wrapped them around a bit of cheddar cheese. Coated with flour since I have no bread crumbs, and then fried in a pan with some oil and finished in the oven, or toaster oven in this case.


Recipe below the fold.

Melting

First a reminder!  Today is the last day to comment for the July 1 giveaway! I'm giving away some lovely Urbbody products, you know you want 'em!

Meanwhile, it is hot. It is ridiculously hot. I have to give the rabbit outside ice bottles three times a day so he doesn't overheat.  He's hiding in his little house cuddled up to a cold water bottle.  For some reason, the cats have insisted on staying outside, however, and we're treated to melted cats draped over all the available cool surfaces.

Bergil and Banquo defying sense and staying outside in the stunning heat.

The last few days have been taken up with preparing my Phatfiber samples.  July and August were mailed out today.  Sending 2mos at a time is more than a 50% savings in priority shipping, and that alone makes it worthwhile. They should get there in plenty of time for box drop.

July samples shown in colorways Sea Wrack and Long Walk, Jackrabbit base.

And it's Wednesday, which means it's my day to cook.  I refuse to heat up the house by turning on the stove, so I'm getting creative with leftovers. Especially after picking up a chocolate bar I left in my office and it squished. 

Phood

I received my June Phatfiber box today, and as usual it's full of lovely softness. But I also cooked an off the cuff dinner tonight, and I want to record this recipe for posterity as I think it came out very well. So tonight's another double poster.

I basically made up a mango chicken recipe as I went along and it came out a very pleasant sweet/savory combination. The mango was too ripe for this application, so the texture suffered but it tasted good. We had it with a simple salad dressed with oil and vinegar, and rice.


Recipe after the jump

Eating well

(Don't forget, the ice cream giveaway here!)

Today is Duanwu Jie, the Dragon Boat Festival. A day when one traditionally eats zongzi or bamboo wrapped sticky rice dumplings.

Commercially made frozen red bean zongzi.

... I made eggplant rollatini for dinner.

Eggplant rollatini with braised flounder over zucchini and penne.

Cooking again!

It is symptomatic of my week that this blog post has disappeared once. And that I found a mouse nest in the cupboard under the oven today.  *sigh*    But it's my night to cook and I'm kind of pleased with it, so I'm going to post anyway.

No recipes really, today, because all of this is stuff I make without.  I just toss things together.  The menu is breaded chicken baked in the oven, zucchini stewed with onion and tomato, and couscous because I didn't have time to make anything else starchy. Late starts will do that. 

I only took half a chicken breast. Those were big pieces of chicken.

Fud

Time to cook! And if you haven't yet, check out my June 1 post for the yarn giveaway. :)

Tonight we're having a sort of "white" burrito composed of grilled pork that's been slivered, a white bean concoction, white rice, and white extra sharp cheddar. This comes from the fact that it's a bit warm and very humid and I'd rather not steam up the house. Add to this leftover grilled pork that needs to be eaten, wheat tortillas in the freezer, and leftover rice, and it all sort of comes together into this:
 
The discerning will note that there's no rice in this picture. There isn't any rice in my "not burrito" either, and it doesn't need it. I feel no guilt.

It's my day to cook

It's too hot to cook. 90°F in May? You've got to be kidding me. So, I'm grilling the big chunk of leg of lamb. Hot = cooking outside. But curry was suggested, so I'm going with a bit of Indian flair in the seasoning.

I also got some knitting done in anticipation of this ridiculously hot day.  Pint glass cozies!


More knitting chatter and the lamb marinade after the jump.

Chilly

Post 2! Oo-er.

So, it's been very chilly for May. As a sort of reaction, I made chili, and beans, and cornbread for dinner. It's my very inauthentic out of the recesses of my brain sort of chili, the beans are just basic black beans with onions and herbs, but I'm basing my cornbread off of this cornbread recipe and this one.



Served everything with a side of tomato/avocado/vidalia onion salad and topped with crumbled extra sharp cheddar. I'm pleased. It's all very tasty indeed.  And I didn't have to go shopping for any of it! That's an extra bonus.  Recipes below the fold.

It's Wednesday

Must be my day to cook. Tonight is one pot couscous again, because I am lazy. This time with dark meat chicken marinated in a very Moroccan blend of seasonings.

And oh yeah! I forgot to say that there's a giveaway for some of my stitch markers on the Phatfiber blog. Just comment there and be entered for the drawing. Meanwhile, I'll be having my first giveaway on this blog starting June 1.

Now back to the food. No real measurements! Makes a giant pot (because last time, I missed out on leftovers)


one pot couscous all ends up looking the same....

Kitchen sink cookery - Not-paella

Wednesday is my night to cook, and as I get lazier I've become attached to one pot cooking. At the same time, I don't want it to all taste the same, look the same, or feel like eating undifferentiated soylent green. Cue a discussion of recipes with a friend who also cooks on Wednesdays, and the entirely too enticing idea of "paella" made with couscous instead of rice.

This, of course, inevitably led to a Fake-paella Off! We've both made couscous "paella" with shrimp tonight, the winner gets a delicious dinner to eat. The discerning will realize that we are both winners in this case, since we're both competent enough cooks to make it delicious, and separated as we are by several states we're each cooking our own dinners. But it's fun to go into it as a sort of challenge. It's also an excuse to take lots of pictures.

I call this kitchen sink cookery because it's like making fried rice. It doesn't matter what goes in as long as it all works together. In the end, it's all about ingredient order since it's all made in one pot. I was substituting and estimating through most of this, and it came out exceedingly tasty. It was also, to my delight, incredibly fast. The ingredient prep took longer than the cooking. I started all prep at 5pm and had the Not-paella and a secondary vegetable done by 5:45. (Disclaimer, looking at my log, I actually started prep at 4:15ish. But I was also doing a million other things, and chatting, and taking pictures and things. The actual cooking took about 25min.)


The finished product, one serving with shrimp and no large turkey pieces and one with only turkey. I can't really eat shrimp; I have a mild sensitivity to them. So the turkey was for me, and to add richness to the broth. For a gander at the competition and her fine looking not-paella, go here

One thing I really liked about this, as well, is that I'm not actually that fond of the saucy rice in paella or risotto. It's often too mushy or sticky/glutinous for me. The couscous fluffs up into tender bites that are not at all gummy. It has a light feeling to it, which is perfect for hot weather. And because it's cooked so quickly, each bit of the dish retains its own flavor while still blending together as a whole. Very tasty and not at all mush or porridge-like.

So, on to the recipe. Substitution is inevitable, so this is just an idea of what to put into it. Varying seasonings and primary ingredients would give it a very different flavor and I fully intend to try that some time.