Then I looked at the matching cable on the other side of the center panel and that one was screwed up too — and differently, to boot.
Dagnabbit.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Argh. Just...argh.
This morning, I picked up Kilronan to do a few rows while I had my coffee and found this rassin' frassin' miscrossed cable:
Then I looked at the matching cable on the other side of the center panel and that one was screwed up too — and differently, to boot.
Dagnabbit.
Then I looked at the matching cable on the other side of the center panel and that one was screwed up too — and differently, to boot.Dagnabbit.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
"And I was just sitting there. With my lentils."
That was the last line of a self-deprecating story I was telling at a friend's birthday party over the weekend about going to a park near my office on one of the warm, sunny days last week and being literally the only person there without an accompanying stroller and the pointed looks I was getting from everyone. The experience at least reaffirmed my belief that I don't have to worry about becoming a pedophile because, among plenty of other reasons, it turns out that I feel really super self-conscious and weird being alone when surrounded by strangers and their children even when I'm in a public place I have every right to be in.
But, unlike judgey looks from the wives of hedge-fund whatever-people-who-work-with-hedge-funds-are-called (managers? traders? executors?), I like lentils a great deal. They're cheap and they're good for you and they turn nitrogen from the air into protein, which is practically magic and therefore awesome. And they can be delicious when prepared with even a modicum of attention. Lentils combine with all sorts of things in interesting ways, providing endless variations on the kind of one-bowl dishes I like to eat for lunch and useful ways to do something with those herbs that are about to die or the last little bit of cheese left over from something. I cook all of the components separately, which sounds fussy (and is a bit, if I'm being honest here), but is worth it to have a variety of textures. I've gotten in the habit of cooking late Sunday afternoon/early Sunday evening and none of the elements really take that much attention, so it's easy enough to watch some Battlestar Galactica at the same time.
Lentil-based lunch dish #54
1 1/2 c. lentils, rinsed and picked over -- I used dark green French lentils because they have a peppery flavor I like and hold their shape when cooked
rosemary sprig
1 1/2 c. barley
2 handfuls chopped walnuts
olive oil
2 onions, halved lengthwise and sliced thinly
lots of chopped greens -- 4 c.? more? I used a mixture of kale and broccoli raab and kept throwing it in the pan until no more would fit
a few ounces of sharp, salty cheese, crumbled -- I used ricotta salata here because the feta at the coop is weirdly bland
Put the lentils and rosemary in a saucepan with plenty of water, at least 6 cups. Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer until lentils are tender. Drain them and put them in a large bowl. I don't bother washing the pan here and put it right back on the stove to cook the barley in at least 6 cups of water. Bring to a boil, then simmer until tender. Drain and add to the lentils in the bowl. Drizzle with a bit of olive oil and salt liberally. It will need it.
Toast the walnuts in a dry skillet until they're fragrant. Set them aside. Add olive oil to the skillet, then the onions and some salt. Cook on low heat, stirring occasionally, until they're brown and jammy. Don't rush this; the caramelized onions add a ton of flavor. Take the onions out with tongs, leaving as much oil in the pan as possible, and add to the lentils and barley. Add the greens to the skillet, stirring to coat with the oil and cooking until tender. Add to the lentils/barley/onions mixture, stirring to combine.
Divide the mixture into five containers and top each with walnuts and crumbled cheese.
But, unlike judgey looks from the wives of hedge-fund whatever-people-who-work-with-hedge-funds-are-called (managers? traders? executors?), I like lentils a great deal. They're cheap and they're good for you and they turn nitrogen from the air into protein, which is practically magic and therefore awesome. And they can be delicious when prepared with even a modicum of attention. Lentils combine with all sorts of things in interesting ways, providing endless variations on the kind of one-bowl dishes I like to eat for lunch and useful ways to do something with those herbs that are about to die or the last little bit of cheese left over from something. I cook all of the components separately, which sounds fussy (and is a bit, if I'm being honest here), but is worth it to have a variety of textures. I've gotten in the habit of cooking late Sunday afternoon/early Sunday evening and none of the elements really take that much attention, so it's easy enough to watch some Battlestar Galactica at the same time.
Lentil-based lunch dish #541 1/2 c. lentils, rinsed and picked over -- I used dark green French lentils because they have a peppery flavor I like and hold their shape when cooked
rosemary sprig
1 1/2 c. barley
2 handfuls chopped walnuts
olive oil
2 onions, halved lengthwise and sliced thinly
lots of chopped greens -- 4 c.? more? I used a mixture of kale and broccoli raab and kept throwing it in the pan until no more would fit
a few ounces of sharp, salty cheese, crumbled -- I used ricotta salata here because the feta at the coop is weirdly bland
Put the lentils and rosemary in a saucepan with plenty of water, at least 6 cups. Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer until lentils are tender. Drain them and put them in a large bowl. I don't bother washing the pan here and put it right back on the stove to cook the barley in at least 6 cups of water. Bring to a boil, then simmer until tender. Drain and add to the lentils in the bowl. Drizzle with a bit of olive oil and salt liberally. It will need it.
Toast the walnuts in a dry skillet until they're fragrant. Set them aside. Add olive oil to the skillet, then the onions and some salt. Cook on low heat, stirring occasionally, until they're brown and jammy. Don't rush this; the caramelized onions add a ton of flavor. Take the onions out with tongs, leaving as much oil in the pan as possible, and add to the lentils and barley. Add the greens to the skillet, stirring to coat with the oil and cooking until tender. Add to the lentils/barley/onions mixture, stirring to combine.
Divide the mixture into five containers and top each with walnuts and crumbled cheese.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Urban foraging
This weekend, I had the pleasure of taking an urban foraging tour with Wildman Steve Brill, which is something that I've been meaning to do for years now. We met in Forest Park, in Queens, which is a part of town I'd never been to before (it's nice), and walked around for a couple of hours as he pointed out stuff we could eat and we tasted things and took samples and talked about what to make with all of this stuff and what the plants we were tasting would look like in a few months' time and why the Parks Department's official position on foraging is firmly opposed (lawsuits. duh.). It was grand. Since the edible foodstuffs available in city parks changes so much throughout the growing season, I'm going to do a few more tours at different places in the city as the spring and summer go on, both with Steve and with Leda Meredith, who I met a week or so ago at a mutual friend's and liked tremendously.
The spoils, from the left:
1. Black birch. The pulpy layer under the bark contains oil of wintergreen and you can make a nice minty tea by steeping a handful of twigs for 20 minutes. Mine was pretty weak, but I think that I just have no sense of what a quart of water looks like. When Steve was passing around a piece for everyone to smell, he asked if anyone recognized the scent. I blurted out, "Necco wafers!" which is both true and kind of embarrassing when you're surrounded by natural-foods evangelists.
2. Field garlic. Looks like chives, tastes onion/garlic-y. This time of the year, the root (not pictures) is mild, like a scallion, but develops a stronger flavor as it grows.
3. Spice bush. It smells really lovely and can be steeped for tea. Once the berries ripen, they can be ground and used like allspice, presumably after being dried. I have a note here that the tea is good for fevers.
4. Garlic mustard. The leaves are spicy and bitter, the root tastes like horseradish.
5. Sassafras, the root of which is used to make root beer. I didn't get to Prospect Park yesterday because I was busy doing laundry and reading an entire book start to finish and taking a spectacular nap, but I want to grab some more and try infusing vodka with it. It's very strong; Steve said the size piece I have up there could be used over and over to make tea or a base for root beer. 'Sassafras' also happens to be tremendous fun to say and, after I told her all about my foraging adventures this weekend, possibly the name of my friend Karen's new cat.
6. Sweet cicely, the root of which is good raw or cooked and has a nice anise flavor. Steve swore up and down that it's delicious in oatmeal.
We also found plenty of young dandelion leaves, but I didn't bother taking a sample of those because I eat those all the time anyway, anywhere I'd use spinach.
The spoils, from the left:1. Black birch. The pulpy layer under the bark contains oil of wintergreen and you can make a nice minty tea by steeping a handful of twigs for 20 minutes. Mine was pretty weak, but I think that I just have no sense of what a quart of water looks like. When Steve was passing around a piece for everyone to smell, he asked if anyone recognized the scent. I blurted out, "Necco wafers!" which is both true and kind of embarrassing when you're surrounded by natural-foods evangelists.
2. Field garlic. Looks like chives, tastes onion/garlic-y. This time of the year, the root (not pictures) is mild, like a scallion, but develops a stronger flavor as it grows.
3. Spice bush. It smells really lovely and can be steeped for tea. Once the berries ripen, they can be ground and used like allspice, presumably after being dried. I have a note here that the tea is good for fevers.
4. Garlic mustard. The leaves are spicy and bitter, the root tastes like horseradish.
5. Sassafras, the root of which is used to make root beer. I didn't get to Prospect Park yesterday because I was busy doing laundry and reading an entire book start to finish and taking a spectacular nap, but I want to grab some more and try infusing vodka with it. It's very strong; Steve said the size piece I have up there could be used over and over to make tea or a base for root beer. 'Sassafras' also happens to be tremendous fun to say and, after I told her all about my foraging adventures this weekend, possibly the name of my friend Karen's new cat.
6. Sweet cicely, the root of which is good raw or cooked and has a nice anise flavor. Steve swore up and down that it's delicious in oatmeal.
We also found plenty of young dandelion leaves, but I didn't bother taking a sample of those because I eat those all the time anyway, anywhere I'd use spinach.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
What I've been reading...
[edited to add: Blogger wouldn't publish the post with links -- kept giving me weird html error messages. You're on your own to find them now, but I trust that you'll be fine.]
Going Bovine, Libba Bray. They announced that she won the Printz Award while I was in the middle of it, so I had some external validation for my enjoyment of the book, not that that matters overmuch. (I just like being right.) It’s a quest story, a twist on Don Quixote, that's both bittersweet and wacky: teenage guy gets diagnosed with Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, has a visitation from a punk angel while he’s in the hospital, then busts out and goes on a road trip with a dwarf and a sentient yard gnome on a mission to save the world from (I think) getting sucked into a black hole.
A Bad Day for Sorry, Sophie Littlefield. Stella Hardesty is in her 50s, lives in rural Missouri, and killed her abusive husband several years before the book opens. She now has a business where she basically beats up other women’s abusive husbands and boyfriends for them. Also, she runs a sewing machine shop. Littlefield manages to write a book that's quirky-charming without ever veering into quirky-contrived and writes a heroine who is one of my favorite things, a salty broad.
In the Garden of Iden, Kage Baker. Time-traveling cyborgs. Forbidden love. The Spanish Inquisition. An extraordinary narrative voice. Botany. For the love of all that’s holy, read this book.
Faithful Place, Tana French. The third in her phenomenal Dublin-set crime series, this time written from the perspective of Frank, the undercover detective. I actually found this the least compelling of the three, partly because he’s dealing with a cold case and partly because he’s a more closely guarded character than the other two narrators and I felt held at arm’s length a bit. But even the least compelling of her three books is still better than 98% of what I read.
This seems like as good a time as any to mention that I finish less than a quarter of the books I start, maybe less than a tenth. Life’s too short.
In the Land of White Death, Valerian Albanov. I’m indulging a fancy for stories about polar exploration; this is the first I’ve finished. It’s a first-person account of a doomed 1912 Arctic expedition out of Russia, based on Albanov’s diaries. Their ship was locked in ice for more than a year, so he took 12 people with him and decides to walk/kayak back to civilization. Two of them survived, the ship was never seen again.
Ship Breaker, Paolo Bacigalupi. Awesome post-apocalyptic fantasy. World without oil, protagonist is a young teen boy, Nailer, who works on a salvage crew, crawling through the ductwork of abandoned oil tankers to collect copper wire and the staples affixing it to the sides of the ducts. He also has a terrible father who is a criminal and a drug addict and manipulative and MEAN. After a storm, Nailer finds a wreck with a girl alive on it and has to decide if he should kill her and keep all of her stuff, becoming the wealthiest person around, or go on the run with her, being chased lots of people who want to kill them, including his father. Outstanding world-building and pacing and intense action scenes. There were parts where I caught myself quite literally holding my breath and had to remind myself that it was a first-person YA story – the narrator would come out okay.
The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin. This book deserves its own post when I’m feeling more eloquent, but for now: She’s a genius.
Going Bovine, Libba Bray. They announced that she won the Printz Award while I was in the middle of it, so I had some external validation for my enjoyment of the book, not that that matters overmuch. (I just like being right.) It’s a quest story, a twist on Don Quixote, that's both bittersweet and wacky: teenage guy gets diagnosed with Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, has a visitation from a punk angel while he’s in the hospital, then busts out and goes on a road trip with a dwarf and a sentient yard gnome on a mission to save the world from (I think) getting sucked into a black hole.
A Bad Day for Sorry, Sophie Littlefield. Stella Hardesty is in her 50s, lives in rural Missouri, and killed her abusive husband several years before the book opens. She now has a business where she basically beats up other women’s abusive husbands and boyfriends for them. Also, she runs a sewing machine shop. Littlefield manages to write a book that's quirky-charming without ever veering into quirky-contrived and writes a heroine who is one of my favorite things, a salty broad.
In the Garden of Iden, Kage Baker. Time-traveling cyborgs. Forbidden love. The Spanish Inquisition. An extraordinary narrative voice. Botany. For the love of all that’s holy, read this book.
Faithful Place, Tana French. The third in her phenomenal Dublin-set crime series, this time written from the perspective of Frank, the undercover detective. I actually found this the least compelling of the three, partly because he’s dealing with a cold case and partly because he’s a more closely guarded character than the other two narrators and I felt held at arm’s length a bit. But even the least compelling of her three books is still better than 98% of what I read.
This seems like as good a time as any to mention that I finish less than a quarter of the books I start, maybe less than a tenth. Life’s too short.
In the Land of White Death, Valerian Albanov. I’m indulging a fancy for stories about polar exploration; this is the first I’ve finished. It’s a first-person account of a doomed 1912 Arctic expedition out of Russia, based on Albanov’s diaries. Their ship was locked in ice for more than a year, so he took 12 people with him and decides to walk/kayak back to civilization. Two of them survived, the ship was never seen again.
Ship Breaker, Paolo Bacigalupi. Awesome post-apocalyptic fantasy. World without oil, protagonist is a young teen boy, Nailer, who works on a salvage crew, crawling through the ductwork of abandoned oil tankers to collect copper wire and the staples affixing it to the sides of the ducts. He also has a terrible father who is a criminal and a drug addict and manipulative and MEAN. After a storm, Nailer finds a wreck with a girl alive on it and has to decide if he should kill her and keep all of her stuff, becoming the wealthiest person around, or go on the run with her, being chased lots of people who want to kill them, including his father. Outstanding world-building and pacing and intense action scenes. There were parts where I caught myself quite literally holding my breath and had to remind myself that it was a first-person YA story – the narrator would come out okay.
The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin. This book deserves its own post when I’m feeling more eloquent, but for now: She’s a genius.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
In which I mostly talk in math
I felt like knitting some elaborate lace two weeks or so ago and have always loved the Peri's Parasol pattern from the second(?) Barbara Walker treasury — the red one. I like the way it naturally scallops at the bottom and just looks, in general, fancy. Since shaping within complicated lace patterning wasn't something I had a particular hankering for and I didn't really want to knit a scarf and I've been thinking ahead to what I'll be wearing this summer AND I had a bag full of Cotton Classic that hasn't worked for any sweater project I've tried it for, I decided on a skirt.
Technicalish knit-babble: I took my hip measurement, added a few inches for ease, multiplied that number (42) times my gauge (5 stitches = 1") and got an initial number: 210. The lace pattern had a repeat of 22 stitches +1, so I scaled up and cast on 221. Normally, I would have worked in the round since I was making a tube, but this pattern is, um, patterned on both sides, which is a lot harder to translate from working flat and, frankly, I didn't want to do the work. So I cast my 221 stitches onto a #8 needle, which was a size larger than I knew I was going to use for the solid part of the skirt. The larger needle will make the lower portion fuller enough to give the piece some shape, again, without me doing any further calculation or interrupting the pattern. After five repeats, which is enough to bring the lace part of what I'm intending to be a knee-length skirt up to about mid-thigh, I switched to 10x1 rib, #7 needles, and working in the round, knitting two together at the join on the first round. I knit 2" even after changing patterns.
Then I starting decreasing for the waist. I have about a 12" difference between my hips and waist, but decided to reduce by 11" so it would sit slightly below my natural waist. I was looking to get rid of 55 sts, but made it 54 so that it would be divisible by the four decrease points of the darts, so nine decrease rounds. Since I had about 8" of skirt that I wanted to happen while I was decreasing and my row gauge was 7 rows to the inch (so 56 rows total), the math worked out to decrease every 4 rows. Once I finish all of that, I'll knit a casing at the top and insert elastic.
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