The state of things...

• I'm too annoyed at the Health Care legislation issue to comment extensively on it. The entire thing just sounds like a huge clusterfuck (and that's a technical term there) of the first order. I'm displeased about there being no public option and I suspect that it won't change the insurance company abuses. But, of course, only time will tell how it will pan out. I do not for one second blame it on the President though, but rather entirely on the Congress.



• Except for some ends that still need to be woven in and blocking, I've finished the OpArt baby blanket I've made for my friend Andrea, who is expecting a little one in about a month. She is the first of my friends that I went to high school with to have a child. The blanket is lovely. I've also made a Jayne hat and another hat and a pair of booties. There will probably be more things to follow, although she doesn't like the cutesy baby things so that cuts out a lot of the options at the newborn stage of things.



• I'm making Pumpkin-Cranberry bread pudding. I wish I had a recipe, but I don't. It's something from Dinner Done, a dessert that I bought out of their Grab-and-Go freezer. I hope it will be good and can't imagine that it won't be.



• I made 48 half-pints of strawberry jam this past weekend. It took almost all day both Saturday and Sunday. It's delicious!



• The garden is looking awesome! I need to take pictures and put them up here. The peppers are a little less than I'd like them to be right now, but hopefully they fertilizer I put on them today will perk and green them up. We've had good rain for the past few weeks.



• Passover is coming up and we've got most of the kosher for Passover food that we'll need. Last year, we were in VA over Passover and had to take all the food up there with us because there's no where to buy it up in the Ville. But this year, we will be here. I was glad to find rotini and shell pasta to buy this year, as well as organic and whole grain matzohs. I'm really glad that those are options now! Oh, another interesting thing I found the other day - Target has Passover dishes! I was surprised! Plates and platters and special "matzoh plates" with the word מצה (matzoh) in the center in silver. Unusual and unexpected at a place such as Target. I thought about buying it, but I figured I'd wait a week and if they still have any, they'll be on clearance for a fraction of the price.

Jam...

So I made that strawberry jam I've been talking about for what must be weeks by now. It is completely delicious. I used this recipe.

I've discovered something interesting. I think I'm allergic to strawberries. I hardly ever have strawberries, despite the fact that I live less than 15 miles from the Winter Strawberry Capital of America. Never fresh because I always expect them to be sweeter than they are, and I find it so disappointing when they aren't, and I think the last time I attempted to eat them was when I was 8 or 9 years old. I vaguely remember breaking out in hives at that time, but I can't clearly remember it and neither can my mom. I've had other forms of strawberries over the years. Strawberry cake, strawberry sauces on like ice cream and things like that (and I mean the real stuff, not artificially flavored things) and strawberry cheesecake for sure. Never had a problem with any of those. But this evening I've eaten about a tablespoon of strawberry jam and now I've broken out in hives. :-( This makes me very sad because my jam is really yummy.

Four pounds of fresh strawberries, fours after they were picked in Plant City...




Washed, cut up and ready to go in the pot...


Mashed and boiling...


Finished cooking...


All done and processed... 11 jars altogether...

A Sunday of randomness and gardening...

Gardening first... It was supposed to rain this afternoon, but it's 4pm and it still hasn't. Maybe tonight... But I've been out in the garden off and on since about 9 this morning getting as much done as I could. I moved bricks around to line the edges of the vegetable bed, and I planted the yellow summer squash seedlings in with the mustard greens that are going to seed right now. I also watered everything, thinned the parsnips, which seem to be just starting to really grow, and picked about 4 gallon-sized bags worth of mustard greens. We've got so much of that stuff, but it's yummy, so that's good. I also threw some annual seeds in the dirt of the flower beds in the front yard. With luck and water and sunshine, in a few weeks, there will be some marigolds, cosmos, zinnias and calendula coming up out there. I like those flowers because they do very well here and pretty much take care of themselves, freeing up more time for me to spend on the veggies out back.

On to the randomness:

• I got my first paycheck on Friday. \o/ Not a fabulous one, there was only one day's worth of work on it and the next one will be much better, but still, paycheck! *dances*


• I ordered myself a pair of handcarders today. Schacht brand. Made in the USA with some really nice features for longevity. I figured I'd use my Christmas money and a few dollars from my first paycheck on them before I forgot that I had Christmas money sitting in my account with a directive from my aunt to "buy something frivolous." Useful but unusual and expensive was about as frivolous as I could get. LOL!


• When the handcarders get here, I'll finally be able to start tackling the four pounds of raw llama fiber my friend Tareena sent me. YAY! \o/


• I'm annoyed with Lane Bryant. They sent my the clothes I ordered to Virginia, even though they had said they had fixed the address label and the order was certainly being sent to Florida before it left their facility. They obviously lied. Supposedly, it has now been forwarded through the US mail, but it still hasn't arrived and it's been more than a week. There were some really cute outfits in that order for work, and now they've sold out of my size, so if this is lost in the mail, refund or not, I'm S.O.L. Grrrrrr...


• I want to make strawberry jam. This sounds like the most wonderful idea to me.


• I haven't worked on Jensen's socks in days. However, I did make myself a steering wheel cover for my car. I finished it last night. Pictures will eventually be forthcoming.

Yay! Yarn! And Pie!

I made pie tonight... Pumpkin pie... Two of them. With this recipe. I didn't have any evaporated milk on hand, so I made some myself on the stove... Took about an hour and a half to slowly boil 3 cups of milk down to 1 1/2 cups... Next time, I'll just run out to the 24-hour Super Walmart. Still. YUM!







I spilled the filling of one of them just a bit, so that's what the darker places are on the crust edges.

I just tried the first piece... It's very custard-like and the pumpkin flavor isn't very strong (although it still tastes good), and I added an extra 1/2 cup of pumpkin. I may need to strain the pumpkin better, or it could be because my pie crusts weren't large enough for the entire filling. I made the same amount as the recipe calls for, but the pie crusts weren't deep enough for it all. Deep dish pie crusts are obviously a must.

And I finally uploaded pictures of the yarn I made for Jensen and Jared's socks.

Jensen's color... worsted weight, superwash merino:




The main color for both pairs of socks... worsted weight, superwash merino-alpaca:




Jared's color... worsted weight, superwash bfl:




I also just uploaded the pictures I took the weekend before last when I went out to a park in Pasco County with my mom and her friends from dog training class. They have a doberman. A very well trained doberman. Far better than our Maxie.

Maxie:

Randomness...

I drove home last Friday. It was a long day. And my birthday was Saturday. It was a good day. I went out to lunch with some friends and to the movies. In the evening we had pizza and watched reruns on tv.

Yesterday, I posted more/better pictures of the things I made for holiday presents to my Ravelry account. There were a few things I realized I never took any pictures of... I think I need a "D'oh!" graphic to put on there for when I do that. I really hate not having some kind of picture to put up...

I've been sick since at least Saturday (went out for my birthday in spite of it because I wasn't going to let a pesky thing like being sick ruin an otherwise perfectly good day). I'm feeling significantly better today, but still not quite 100%. It's just a cold... or a mild flu... or something. I'm mostly just tired and feeling a vague malaise now, all other symptoms having thankfully subsided.

I've been keeping busy by spinning and looking for sock patterns. I can't remember if I said before, but I'm going to tackle socks yet again. To make for the boys from Supernatural. Yes, I am. I got that superwash roving I ordered and plan to employ it well. I've got the first ounce of the BFL I ordered spun and plied, and I'm waiting to see what weight it's spun up to before continuing. I need a worsted for the socks I want to make. It's ribbed and stretchy and also the pattern is written for Jensen's size... and hopefully it won't be difficult to upsize this pattern to fit Jared. So... yeah...

Oh! Ilana! Before I forget, thank you once again for the lovely things you sent me for the holidays. I unpacked yesterday and I found a little sample of roving in the bottom of the bag you made for me which I had missed before. What is it a sample of? It's very pretty.

Today, I ordered a flawless ironstone teapot on etsy, which I'm really excited about, and bought a new stainless steel tea kettle at Target. Our old enamel one, which I've not liked for a while now because I realized that the inside is Teflon, had gotten a chip in the enamel and had started to rust on the outside, so yeah... New one...

Tomorrow, I want to make biscuits. I got this fantastic recipe while I was in South Carolina for Cat Head biscuits. I need to find where I wrote it down though... But it's basically a buttermilk biscuit that one doesn't need to roll out and cut, so they're really quick and easy to make.

Post-Election Pumpkin Puree...

So, a hearty "Good morning, Mr. President-Elect Obama!" I can't sleep. T'ain't happenin' right na'h. Far too excited!

Last week, my dad bought a Cinderella pumpkin... aka what is properly called a Rouge vif d'Entempes. (I've always liked them. They're so pretty...) He bought it for my mom to explode in her one of her science classes the Monday after Halloween. But I convinced them to let me go out and find her a carving pumpkin, rather than have her explode a beautiful, huge pie pumpkin like that. Found 'em at Albertsons for $0.99 each. So I get to do as I like with the Rouge vif d'Entempes...

After the election had been called, and President Obama had made his speech in Chicago, I needed something to do with my hands. Knitting was not enough. Sewing, pppffffttt!! The newly-successful-at crochet, uh-un. Time to massacre a pumpkin. So I looked back on my dear friend Ilana's blog to when she massacred a similar pumpkin last year (Very useful link you've got posted there, btw!) for tips on how to tackle it, and I got to carving... Several hours later, I've got a ton of pumpkin puree and the kitchen-- actually, the whole house smells so good! One of the things I dislike the most about carving pumpkins is the smell. It smells kinda gross. But this one! OMG! So sugary and yummy! Like pumpkin pie without the spices!

Now, all I need is some recipes to make with this yummy stuff... Suggestions are welcome... And I might go out and get some small, Connecticut Fields pie pumpkins and puree those as well...

Oh, and I'm saving the seeds. They're going in the ground in January, if I can manage it. I want to try growing them "off-season" for Florida because large vining squashes have never been successful for me in the later Spring and Summer, when all the literature says they should be planted here. If I had room out there right now, I'd plant a few tomorrow, just to see.

Vanilla Fig Preserves...

Made Vanilla Fig Preserves on Sunday with my friend Mia. We made 3 batches, using 6 pounds of figs, which turned out to be 15 half-pints (the webpage with the recipe says that the recipe makes 5 1/2 pints, but it must be a typo that should be "half-pints"). It's not nearly as much as it sounds...

In the first two batches, we didn't use vanilla, the vanilla is only in the last batch, which was by far the best, according to our taste tests. I recommend cutting the sugar the recipe calls for in half - so 1 3/4 cups instead of 3 1/2 cups of sugar. It really doesn't need that much sugar for sweetness or to gel.

I have pictures...

This is Mia stirring the pot...


The figs are beginning to cook and release juice...


Processing the jars in a water bath...


Finished jars of Vanilla Fig Preserves...


Altogether from throwing the ingredients in the pot til the finished jars come out of the water bath, each batch takes about an hour if you have everything set up and ready to go and you don't have to wait for the water bath to heat when the preserves are done.