Whew! I made it.

To the weekend that is. It just felt like this week would...........never....................end. But here it is. Hopefully next week will be a little easier to get through. :)

Thanks for all the comments on my mittens! I do love a good hand knitted mitten. Maybe I'll enter one of these into the Fair next year, since they are both a little complicated in design, which I know the judges love. I didn't enter anything this year because I didn't feel I had really knitted anything that would wow them this past year. It's all been pretty basic stuff as far as fair entries go, you know? Your entries can be from any time during the year before the fair though so both of them will qualify for next year. Something to think about! I would have to squirrel one of them away and not use them if that were the case, to keep them new, which would make me sad because I OMG WANT TO WEAR NOW. We'll see how it goes when I actually FINISH a pair. lol

Fair Isle knitting isn't all that hard, I don't think, if you think like a CROSS STITCHER. Seriously. It's the same principle as far as pattern reading/applying that pattern. See -

This is just one small portion of one of the charts used to make my mitten. You follow it from right to left in a row and if the square is green, you knit with whatever color you have designated for the green areas, same goes for white, etc. Any stitcher would be right at home with these charts. The knitting is slower because you are working with two yarns at a time and have to keep switching them but the concept is simple enough. I credit all my years of cross stitching for preparing me for reading my knitting charts. lol

Here is the haul we brought home from the farmer's market the other day:

Corn, radishes, peaches, string beans, orange cherry tomatoes, a few hot peppers, blueberries and maple peanut brittle. (That last one comes courtesty of my husband's sweet tooth.)

I genuinely like eating a lot of vegetables. Like, A LOT. Between the farmers market and the regular supermarket this is what I have on tap to eat over the next week:

2lbs. of strawberries, bananas, apples, a whole pineapple, red/orange bell peppers (for cooking), a bag of mini bell peppers (for snacking on with wedges of Laughing Cow), 6 heads of romaine lettuce, head of cauliflower, yellow squash, baby carrots, two English cucumbers, bunch of cilantro, an avocado, and red/white onions.

Plus the several pints of cherry tomatoes I have coming out of my own garden. (I'm making a big batch of fresh corn salsa tonight, matter of fact, to use up a whole ton of tomatoes. Man, love this stuff on EVERYTHING. Salad, burger, taco, etc.)

Most of that will be gone by next Thursday and I'll get to start all over again. YUM. (And it is mostly me who eats it because I eat fruit/veg with all three meals and he only manages it usually with supper.) It's kind of ridiculous actually. lol (And you'd think, with all that, that I wouldn't be able to find room for 'bad stuff' like Doritos but you would be WRONG. Anytime, any place, baby. BRING IT. *snort*)

One more updated bead set posted today, just because I can:

Have a great weekend, all!!!! :)

NOM NOM NOM

We don't really watch the Super Bowl in this house (we're more of a NASCAR family and nothing else, though I'm tired of that too now) but I do love the lead-up to it as people post all the yummy-nummy foodie things they are planning to make or want to make, etc. 

One thing I saw last week was these Buffalo Chicken meatballs on the Martha Stewart show. DING! DING! DING! I loves me some Buffalo Wings and Frank's Red Hot sauce so I *had* to make these. 

Oh. My. God. are they good! 

NOM. NOM. NOM.

I followed the recipe as is EXCEPT instead of using the ONE STICK of butter it calls for - I used 4 tablespoons. You won't miss the extra butter - I swear. (Though if you are on good speaking terms with your cardiologist, maybe go for the full stick?) Oh and I ditched the 2 TB olive oil for the sheet pan. Uhh, spray oil anyone? lol
Doing it that way they came out to be 51 calories each with 44 total meatballs**. I figure I can shave that down even more next time (AND THERE WILL BE A NEXT TIME) if I use Egg Beaters instead of 2 whole eggs and maybe trim the breadcrumbs a little.(Anyone have any experience using Egg Beaters in meatloaves and the like instead of whole eggs? I've been meaning to try that out to cut down on calories/cholesterol but *keep forgetting*. Grrr!)

They were great with baked potatoes, celery sticks and more Frank's dribbled over them.
ENJOY YOUR GAME DAY WEEKEND, Y'ALL, no matter what you are doing!! :)

**This is based on grinding my own chicken breast. I can't find pre-ground chicken in the supermarkets around here but once in a blue moon so we ran skinless chicken breasts through the grinder attachment for my KA mixer instead. (Which is INDESCRIBABLY GROSS BY THE WAY. I don't even like the *sound* of meat grinding. *hurl* ) I have no idea what parts they use for store-bought ground chicken so the calories when using that might be higher?

First pair of socks for 2011.

Don't be too impressed though because I started them right after Xmas so they are really a 50% 2010 finish and 50% 2011 finish. :) 

I really should ALWAYS have a simple ribbed pair of socks going on a pair of circular needles because you can really bang these guys out without even trying hard doing them two at a time. I don't know why they seem to 'bend' time doing them that way but they do and it does. (Good grammar be damned. Heh.) 

I just got in another set of #1 circs from Knit Picks so maybe I can stick to that. (Not that it REALLY matters in the long run how many socks I do but I *do* have a veritable MOUNTAIN of sock yarn living in plastic bins under my guest bed. So, you know. It should be used as much as possible. Eye on the prize. Stay focused, etc.)

(Photo credit to Smitten Kitchen )

In totally unrelated news, if you love ribs you REALLY need to check out this recipe from Deb over at Smitten Kitchen. HOLY BE-JAYSUS BOY HOWDY they are good. I mean really really good. I only used one rack of ribs (approx. 2lbs.) so I halved all the spices, cooked them for five hours at 200 degrees (instead of splitting it up at 200/175 over 6 hours) and they were PHENOMENALLY GOOD. You will impress people with your mad cooking skillz good! They are BEYOND easy to make too - you just need to plan ahead so you can get them in the oven before noon if you want to eat them for supper that day. :)

July Stockings

Finished up just in time!

I actually stitched them earlier in the month (way earlier) but put the finishing aside and then.................totally forgot they existed. I came across them last night while I was organizing stacks of crap some stash hanging around my living room and whipped them together. Not sure how much I like the wedding ring one though? The stitched part is so much smaller than the stocking template, it looks weird to me? I thought about trimming it/sewing it together so it was right on the edge of the cross stitched part but that would make it a lot smaller than all the other stockings I've done and I know THAT would bother me too so I left it as is. I'll just chalk this one up as "Not One of My Favorites" in the series. /shrug

It was a week of bad mojo for all my projects, I guess. I've been working on a pair of socks with my Watermelon yarn and was making good progress, was up to the toe on the SECOND sock...........and realized I had knit the leg too long by not ONE, but TWO pattern repeats. And I'm not going to lie - I contemplated how much it would bother me that one sock would be longer by about two inches than it's mate. Anything to avoid ripping out a few days of work. But OF COURSE that would bother me because it's such a STUPID mistake and who wants to be reminded of that? lol So I eventually came to my senses and  ripped it all out so I could start the heel/foot part all over again. (Which is where it sits for the moment because I think this project and I need a Time Out for a few days. Hurt feelings on both sides and all.) If you're not royally screwing up your knitting here and there, you're not doing it right.........right? lol

Here's a neat not-quite-a-recipe recipe for Corn on the Cob from Tasty Kitchen that I tried yesterday that came out wicked good. It looks odd - almost like you are cooking your corn in soap water. But the corn really *was* the best ever. Didn't need anything to accompany it other than a sprinkling of kosher salt. And I'm usually the sort to glop butter alllllllllllllllllll over my corn on the cob. I'm not much of a butter lover in the larger scope of things and almost always prefer my veggies plain steamed or roasted with a little olive oil, with two exceptions: corn on the cob and mashed potatoes. I just *have* to have real butter for those and that's that. Heart valves be damned, I say! But this came out so good it honestly didn't need it.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

 I am part Irish and have to admit I'm doing.............bupkis for the holiday. (Who says you can't use a little Yiddish when describing your Irish activities?) I'm so over the boiled dinner thing but I do loves me some corned beef. Sadly, I did not remember how much I love corned beef until it was too late to plop one in the slow cooker for today (still suffering from DST EPIC FAIL fever) so I'll plop it in tonight before I go to bed. Then I will make some serious ass-kicking corned beef hash tomorrow...............for brunch. (See: DST EPIC FAIL fever. Not_adjusting_well_to_change.)

I suppose I should do a LOST post since it's Post-Lost Wednesday but it was a little blah last night. All's I got is Sayid being all YAWN, DON'T CARE while Crazy Claire does her crazy thing.

Let's hope Flash Forward has some good razzle dazzle on Thursday for me instead!

Oh shoot, I forgot to do another EPIC Lost post on Wednesday, using appropriately awesome macros. :( I've resigned myself to the fact that every Tuesday night, from now until the end of May, I will be going to bed with a LOST-sized headache/brain scramble. Anyhoo, if I HAD DONE a macro post it would have contained this:

RUN BEN RUNNNNNNN! I heart you so much, you dark and twisty soul. lol

 Who buys more spices than I do? NO ONE, NO ONE! 

LOOK AT ALL THAT. *drool*

God, I love buying spices. Well, I love using them too - I'm not just HOARDING them or anything. I've been out of this, that, and the other since Xmas so I did a huge order last week and it came on Friday. OH HAPPY JOY! I've been without thyme for, like, two MONTHS. The horror! Do you know how indispensable thyme is?  ALMOST AS MUCH AS TIME. I thought I would be smart this time and, instead of ordering everything in 1oz glass bottles, I would order some 4oz bags instead so I could get a few refills out of each one. Why not, right? The bags are usually less than a dollar more and I don't NEED fresh bottles every time. Well, to that I say: heeeeeeeee heeeeeeeeeeeeee hooooooooooooo hooooooooooooo haaaaaa haa haha! Turns out that 4oz of basil (bag) is, like, A LOT. A lot-a lot. I saw those big bags of basil and thyme and started looking over my shoulder for FBI agents because it was like I was dealing weed or something. THEM BAGS ARE BIG. Now I just have to cook like a mad fiend to use it all up!

Hope everyone had a nice Valentine's Day. :)

Personally, I'm not a big fan of the day but I'm also not a big fan of being all grouchy-Grinchy so I sucked it up and made some 'love' cupcakes for the day. I don't have the patience (or equipment) for fancy decorations on baked goods but this..........ahhhhh, this I can do.

I mean.............how freaking PRETTY is that??? A RAINBOW INSIDE OF EVERY CUPCAKE. *squeeeeeee*

I used just a normal white cake and standard buttercream (1 part butter/3 parts powdered sugar/dash of liquid). Nothing fancy here except the colors. :)

(Ain't gonna lie though - it's a bit a tedious to do. Lots of mixing of colors and dabbing and you end up with 234234123432 more dishes than if you had just left them white. BUT OMG AREN'T THEY PRETTY?????????? I had hoped to get some purple in there too to go along with the red/orange/yellow/green/blue but 5 colors turned out to be exactly what I could handle. lol)

Here's what I learned this weekend:

I DON'T KNOW SQUAT ABOUT DRIED BEANS.

I was all punch-drunk-happy at my recent foray into making my own hummus (using CANNED beans) and determined the next step was to make hummus from scratch 'for real' using dried beans. Heeeee heeee hoooooo hoooooooooo. I've never used dried beans of any kind, EVER, IN MY LIFE, because I'm lazy and cans are so readily available so here's what I learned in my first outing: ONE BAG MAKES A HELLA AMOUNT OF BEANS. AN EPIC AMOUNT OF BEANS. ALMOST TOO MUCH TO FIT INTO ONE CONTAINER.

One bag seemed innocent enough. My original recipe used one can of beans and I would have liked a little more. So I figured a bag of dried beans would equal two cans. Heeeeee heeee hoooooo hoooooo! I knew I was in trouble when the damn things *barely* fit into my big ole KitchenAid whizzer and kept creeping up the peephole. And when I was done I had enough hummus to feed an army of very hungry, hummus lovers. Just a never-ending mountain of hummus. Very yummy but still - how much hummus can one person cram into their maw within a short period of time?  Next time: half a bag...........or less.....

I consider it all good research for the 'cause' and, as luck would have it, I saw another dried bean recipe this weekend I'd like to try. (Side note: baked beans are usually made with navy beans? I did not know this. I thought they were done with pintos. Hmph. Can you tell I just learned to like beans within the last 5 years or so? IT'S LIKE A WHOLE NEW WORLD TO ME.)

New Recipe - Baked Parmesan Garlic Chicken Wings

Recipe Link.

Photo credit: Steamy Kitchen

These are sinfully good. It made my face go like this: o_0  Which I was surprised by because I generally don't like making chicken wings at home. (I pretty much only like them when they are fried and I try to avoid deep frying at home, except for making french fries once in a while. I deep fried chicken wings ONCE. ONCE. And the guilt that followed dogged me for at least a week, maybe even two. lol So now I just occasionally get my fix when we eat out. Somehow deep fried restaurant food is more acceptable than fried food made at home. I DON'T MAKE THE RULES PEOPLE. It just is what it is.) Other than grilling them once in a blue moon during the summer months, I never make wings. Ever. But the food bloggers have been out in force this month with the wing recipes (gearing up for the Super Bowl) and this one grabbed my attention. I only made 8 (whole) wings out of a big family pack because I didn't want there to be any leftovers in case I didn't like them but, wow, was that a mistake! We gobbled these up and made sad faces when we realized there was no more. All that was left on our plates was steamed broccoli and, whoaaa, VERY POOR SUBSTITUTE!! lol I still have the other half of the pack left to cook up so I might just makes these again later this week. :)

Mods: Nothing major. I poked small holes all over the wings before cooking so the rendered fat could escape and to help them get crispier. This is essential, I think, because chicken wings nowadays are so so so fatty. I also turned them halfway through cooking and switched to 'broil' near the end to also help crisp them up.

Oh! And I also made hummus for the first time too this weekend. Something I've been meaning to do for a loooooong time. It's so easy to buy pre-done, eh? Verdict: unbelievably yummy and well worth the little bit (and it really is a VERY easy thing to make) time to do it yourself.. I added more garlic to mine because I worship at the altar of Toxic Garlicky Mouth Fumes and needed to make an appropriate monthly sacrifice, *ahem*, but you certainly don't NEED to do that - the recipe is just fine as is. :)

New Recipe - Lemon Parsley Pasta

From Budget Bytes

(image from budgetbytes.blogspot.com)

Or newish recipe because I've done lemony type pasta things before. But I saw this post last week while browsing that site and it looked so yummy I knew I wanted to make it right away. And it *was* yummy. Ate it with some grilled chicken and grilled yellow squash, and, oh, NOM NOM NOM. Delish!

Mods: I used fresh basil instead of parsley because I had that on hand. (I think it would also go well with cilantro but I have Big Massive Inappropriate Love for cilantro so YMMV.) Added a pinch of red pepper flakes to the lemon/garlic/oil mixture. The lemon flavor was quite delicate, I think next time I'll give it a a tablespoon of lemon juice in addition to the zest. I wouldn't want it TOO lemony but I think, for MY palate, I could kick it up a tiny notch. :)

Note: the recipe has one small error in it in regards to pasta cooking time. No biggie but if you really were to cook angel hair pasta for 10 minutes like it says you could very well end up with a pile of mush. 4-5 minutes will do it for that size pasta.

Meatballs, anyone? :)

Most people start off the year with renewed vows or interest in eating healthy, losing weight, going to the gym more often, etc.

Me? I started it off by making lots of meatballs. LOTS of meatballs. Like 100+ meatballs. Using ground beef.............................and pork. Because they just ain't good eats unless they have a little porkiness in there. Though, in my defense, we aren't actually EATING the meatballs just yet. I froze them all in individual food saver packs for when I want a quick supper and/or don't feel like cooking. (I also made quart containers of sauce to go with them.)

I'm not one for resolutions any way other than a generic type of 'simplify simplify simplify' one. Once the Xmas stuff is packed away (done yesterday) I start getting twitchy and look around for other things to simplify. So far, I've simplified my internet 'life' a little by deleting over 1,000 Facebook 'friends'. So if you got deleted recently, don't take it personally. It was all getting to be a bit much and I decided it needed to be brought down to more manageable numbers. Because the way it was, I never looked at a damn thing on there any more because there was too much going on and I didn't feel like wading through hundreds of posts just to get to a few that interested me. So I whacked away at it until I got down to around 240 and I'm still trimming here and there as I go. And I have to say - it feels REALLY REALLY GOOD. (And part of this was the changes FB has made to the newsfeed in recent months. I really don't give a crap to wade through post after post of who friended who, who fan paged what, or hit 'like' on something. Why did they start adding EVERYTHING to your feed? Next up, I expect to see it give you a notice when someone farts! YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST! So annoying.)

Next up: I have to whack away at the 'leftovers' of the handmade Xmas presents/projects piled up on my hearth. Leftover balls of yarns, loose patterns, etc. And I have a pile (A PILE!!!) of needle worked ornaments that need to be sewn up into something that you can actually HANG from a tree. (A tree that is now packed up until next December. lol)