Baking Again

 

I'm nothing if not persistent.

Yesterday I made buttermilk biscuits again.  

They aren't pretty. They aren't all the same size. They do taste good though and I used actual buttermilk instead of faking it with vinegar and milk. I believe I get extra credit for that.

And this is what my kitchen looked like afterwards.

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I will probably hear from the Cooking Channel any day now, don't you think?

I Did It!

I rode my bike all the way to the Post Office and back!  That has been my goal for years because, as I have mentioned before, I love Post Offices!

However, and this is a big however, I did fall, yet again.

Bikers have to abide by rules of the road, I am told, so at a crosswalk, I had to stop, which means I have to get off my bike, because the seat is TOO HIGH and I can't quite get enough of my foot on the pavement to casually balance the bike while I wait to go across the street. I tried, but I fell.

This is not me.  I know enough to wear a helmet.  Because I fall.

The last time I fell I broke my wrist.  

I asked my bike-mechanic/long-distance rider/biking EXPERT- husband to lower the seat so that I could put more of my foot on the pavement, rather than just the very tip of my toe.

He said, and I quote, "You have to learn how to dismount gracefully." Apparently that involves gracefully sliding off of the seat as I gracefully put the very tip of my toe on the pavement.

Alrighty then. What that means to me is that I have to fall again and again and again in order to practice and finally learn how to GRACEFULLY DISMOUNT.

Nope. Nope. Nope.

Lower the seat! Or I will, if I can find the right wrench. You use a wrench for that, right?

One Success/One Fail

I finally, FINALLY, finished this scarf:

It is the Perfect Blend by Casapinka using Miss Babs Yummy 2-Ply Toes in the Casapinka Perfect Blend colorway.

I say "finally" because I began working on this on May 14th.  It's a scarf, not a complicated stranded or cabled sweater, but it sure took a long time.  And yes, I'm wearing it in this photo because I wore it indoors while I watched Serena Williams win her match at the US Open. Really, where else can I wear it? The grocery store? I hope by the time cool weather arrives we can go places again. Wear masks y'all!

Now for the fail:

My first ever in this century part whole wheat bread.  Brand new King Arthur yeast and Harvest Grains Blend,

brand new King Arthur bread flour, brand new King Arthur whole wheat flour, and I followed the King Arthur recipe exactly.

It just didn't rise enough in either of the two rises.  So here it is.  It tastes really good; it's just kind of...flat.

So maybe next time?

And!

 

We did experiment with cooking/air frying/baking other recipes too, not just the Eton Mess.

I bought a large bag of cauliflower florets for the kids to snack on.  I like raw cauliflower, but the kids looked at them and pronounced them "styrofoam" broccoli."  I see their point, but they were not going to eat them no matter what I said.  So I used a Pioneer Woman recipe younger daughter had given me, and air-fried them.  Yummm... But the kids had no interest in them and I had to eat them all myself.  Again, yummm.

Another recipe:

Scones, from Mary Berry's recipe. They tasted great, but the recipe calls for self-rising flour, which I didn't have, so they were a bit flat. (Notice the one on the far right, the one I used a cutter to make. Flat. For the others, I just plopped the dough on the cookie sheet and those looked better.)  Self-rising flour means self-rising flour. Lesson learned.

And I made homemade buttermilk biscuits, which I am ashamed to say, I had never done before. They turned out well, and they were for strawberry shortcake.  We haven't had that in years and years because my husband thought he was allergic to strawberries, but a particularly bad reaction last year to who knows what sent him to the allergist.  He had lots of tests and it turned out he is not allergic to strawberries.  What he is allergic to, really badly allergic to, is now a mystery.

Beautiful, right?

And yesterday I learned about this:

Oh, my.

I can't imagine that (probably frozen, pre-made) Eton Mess could possibly be good. Wouldn't all the merengue pieces and the added chocolate cookies be kind of soggy or cardboard-y after being held in the whipped cream for who-knows-how-long?

It's too easy to make and too good to use this pre-made stuff instead. I wonder if restaurants do.

Make your own, y'all!

Dinosaurs, Panda bears, and Eton Mess

 

We had our older daughter and three of her children visiting last week. Her husband and oldest daughter, both working, held down the fort at home in Austin, Texas. We hadn't seen them since Christmas, and don't know when we will see them again, so it was a treat to have them here. They drove straight through, getting food at drive through restaurants only, to avoid contact with people. Bathrooms? Masks, soap and water.

During this never-ending pandemic (wear masks dammit), there wasn't a lot exciting to do, but we did go to Zoo Atlanta, which was limiting the number of people at the zoo, masks were required, and six-foot sections were marked on the pavement in display areas. The indoor exhibits were closed, so all in all, a safe---and hot---way to get out of the house for awhile.

And then there was this, Jurassic Quest, a drive-through exhibit with animatronic dinosaurs. It did not live up to expectations. It took place at the Atlanta Speedway parking lot, and was not remotely set up as a real environment for anything but cars. It took 90 minutes to get there, 30 minutes to get in, and an hour winding through the paths marked by yellow traffic cones.  Yee-hah...

The dinosaurs creaked and groaned and moved a little.

 

Looks like fun, right?

A plastic volcano!  How realistic!

Again, we are mostly homebound during this pandemic so this "adventure" was good for a lot of laughs. And some moaning. 

A high point of the visit:

This was fun and yummy---Eton Mess. My husband and I had this in Dublin a few years ago, and it's easy, easy, easy to make.  

Jaden made the merengues, Elizabeth cut up the strawberries, and I made the whipped cream. We crumbled the merengues a bit, stirred the pieces and the strawberries into the whipped cream, and done!

This is not my photo, but you get the idea.  YUMMY!!!

I'm So Happy

According to a lip reader who watched Kate Middleton as she was driven in an open carriage after her wedding, that is what she said to William. "I'm so happy."

Well, I'm so happy too, but it's because of this:

The spices, all but one, are in identical new jars with readable labels on the tops.

Apparently it doesn't take much for me to be happy during this endless pandemic.

It's Been Awhile

And what have I been doing? Not much. It's Pandemic World.

Each day is the same as the last, and the next. Some days all we accomplish is breathing and eating three meals.  

However, Yay! Today I have a project.

It will probably be mind-numbingly boring, but that's where I am. I have 24 identical bottles and lots of matching labels and I am transferring my spices to these bottles so they will fit in the pantry AND so that I will be able to see what is in the bottles. I'm going to go really crazy and alphabetize them.

Because I'm cooking more than I ever wanted to, I occasionally break up the menu with something different, and that's where the confusion of spices comes in. I fumble amongst them looking for the one a recipe calls for, it takes a few minutes sometimes, and because I have nothing better to do, I get annoyed. When I pulled all the containers out of the pantry, I found that I had duplicates, and in one case, triplicates, of some of the spices.  

And a funnel to transfer the spices with.

 Baxter helped!  sort of

The box the bottles came in.  It must be sat in.

I have been knitting as well, and this is the scarf (Perfect Blend by Casapinka) I'm working on. It has twelve different colors, (Miss Babs Yummy Two-Ply Toes) and lots of variations in patterns among the 23 sections. Slow progress, but I have time. Slow, interminable pandemic time.  

I acknowledge that I am lucky.  I am staying-at-home comfortably, but anything gets tiresome enough after awhile.  If people would just WEAR MASKS when they are out and about, we could all emerge sooner.

The Sweater is Finished

and has been for awhile.  I just forgot about it, stay-at-home being so hectic and all. 

Hah.

So here it is: 

In the fall I will get to wear it, I hope.

And I was bored, so I've made scones using what was labeled as a British recipe.

Here they are:  

The pasty yellow ones are bland; they need clotted cream and strawberry jam.  They were supposed to have blueberries in them, but I forgot.

These turned out ok.  AND I remembered the blueberries, and I used a larger wine glass to cut them out of the dough.

I don't know why the Great British Baking Show has not called me.  

I am such an organized, clean baker: 

As long as they don't mind breakage, I'm their girl.

I broke the wine glass I used for making the circles for the first batch; I was holding it by the base.  

I'm currently making something resembling strawberry jam for the pasty-looking scones.

I'm not using a recipe so wish me luck!  

Almost Finished!

The Throwback by Andrea Mowry

Sort of, if I don't consider that I still need to:  

Pick up stitches around the neck and knit the ribbing.
Pick up stitches on each side of the front opening and knit the ribbing.
Weave in all the ends.
Wash and block the whole thing.

So there's a lot to do yet, but I do see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I'm also knitting some socks:

Basic sock pattern by Janet Stephens

I am halfway done with the second sock, so again, light at the end of the tunnel.

AND next!

Perfect Blend by Casapinka.  Twelve colors (Miss Babs yarns) and twelve different stitches.  That should be fun, but first, I must finish the sweater.  Says I.  

I might not be listening.

Wow!

It has been a long time since I have been here, but I have made some progress on my sweater:

It's sort of weird looking, but it hasn't been blocked and that won't happen until I have finished knitting the whole thing. I did start a sleeve, picking up live stitches and casting on about eight more for the required total of 62 stitches.

Then I started knitting, and according to the pattern, I should be decreasing two stitches every 8 rows. I did that and then tried on the sweater. The sleeve was very form fitting, skinny, narrow, tight, all of those things.  

So I performed what I call a "Sally™,"which involves yanking the needles out of live stitches and pulling out row after row after row. I’ve seen Sally do this over and over, and each time, any knitters present, including yours truly, gasp. It will all unravel. She will lose stitches and NEVER get them back, we all fear.

She has never had anything unravel that she didn’t want to unravel, and she doesn't lose stitches, at least not in the presence of other knitters. ( We don’t know what happens at home.)

I pulled back row after row, and then stitch by stitch, took back the first row that I had made decreases in. I came out with the right number of stitches, and, my theory is, that I can just work with that number of stitches, no decreases, and keep trying the sweater on.  If it looks as if I can make some decreases further down the sleeve, in order to have the right number of stitches for the ribbing section, then that’s what I will do.

I probably ought to write down what I do so that I end up with two identical sleeves, right?

I am struggling along on the Throwback sweater, sweating and swearing (quietly) as I knit the rows that use three colors. True fair isle, I am told, does not ever use more than two colors, and I swear, as doG is my witness, that I will never do three-color stranding again.  The yarn gets more twisted than you can imagine, and I can't find a way around it.

This is nothing like the worst of the tangling.  

People who have seen me work on this have noted that I take more time untwisting yarn as I knit a row than I do actually knitting.  I'm sure it's true.

However, I have no problem purling the wrong side of the sweater while I am stranding two colors, and people on Ravelry and in person have said that purling stranded knitting is really difficult.  I find it pretty easy, which probably means I'm doing it wrong, but it's turning out ok.

Yesterday I had only two rows of three-color knitting to do, but after I finished the second row, I found a mistake halfway across the first row.  I had to take a row and a half out, just when I thought I had finished with the most difficult of the knitting.  The rest would be a breeze.  

So I start over with three colors today, sweating and swearing (maybe not so quietly), hoping for the best.  



In other news, I bought this good-looking cat tree.  It's so much nicer than the one we've been using.  No thick carpeting to hold onto hair and barf.  Easier to take care of.  All wood, so sturdy.  The last cat tree we will ever need, I told my husband.  He spent an hour and a half putting it together. The cats don't like it.  

I'm hoping they will eventually learn to love it, but so far, nope.  I even squished Baxter's old cat bed into the bottom to replace the white fluffy faux fur pillow.  (White?  What were they thinking?)

ODC cats, right?

Look at Me!

I am fair-isle-ing!!!  (not a word, until today)

I didn't think I could do it, but apparently I can!  Knitter/needlepointer Elizabeth told me to keep the old yarn on top as I went from color to color, and that's what I did.

Yay me!

Ooops...

One of these things is exactly like the other.

Do you see the two identical halves of a snap?  Yes, yes you do.

I carefully cut off the hand-sewn half on the knitting, flipped it and re-sewed it.

Now I have this.

The snap is a clever way to attach the pom-pom to the hat, but I think I prefer the elastic loop method, where the elastic is pulled through the top of the hat and then buttoned around a, well, a button.  Less sewing.

I played yarn chicken with this project because I was using left-over yarn from the second Cowboys and Angels wrap.  I both won and lost.

I still had rows to go before I could start the decreases and I gambled that I could make it because I had made the ribbing section shorter in order to save yarn.  

As it turned out, I bet I could have knit several more rows of ribbing and still made it, so I sort of lost, even though I won and didn't run out of yarn, because now I have so little yarn left over that there's nothing to do with it.  I should have knit on.

And because it's raining and cold today, I finished my socks as well.

It's a good day for hand knit wool socks.

Now, unless I can come up with another knitting distraction, it's on to the sweater.  I've only had the yarn for a year and a half.

So It's Been Awhile

So here's an update.  Yes, the bathroom project in the previous post is finished.

Yay!


I am back to knitting, working on some socks

String Theory Colorworks, colorway Inertia

and a hat (that I am probably going to run out of yarn for) in order to continue avoiding the sweater project I'm intimidated by. The Throwback by Andrea Mowry.  

With these colors:

As I was shopping on wandering around the internet today, I found these bobbins:

Photo by Crafty Flutterby Creations

Aren't they cute?!

And I NEED them, right, for the areas where I don't have to carry a lot of yarn.

I suppose I could have gotten by without them, but why do that?  They will be on their way on Monday.

I do hope they are coming on a slow boat  from China.