Lots of Listening

On my vacation, I've been taking a long walk most days and listening to podcasts.  While I have several standbys (Q, Pop Culture Happy Hour, Stuff You Missed in History Class, The Splendid Table, The Dinner Party Download and I could go on), I recently downloaded a number of knitting podcasts and this has gotten the motivation in high gear.  I've been sampling a bunch but the ones I've been sticking with are:  Prairie Piper (which had a good rating on iTunes so I downloaded it).  She led me to Down Cellar Studio who sent me to Never Not Knitting.  Not sure which of the above sent me to 2 Knit Lit Chicks.  Prairie Piper got me interested in a pattern designed by Alana of Never Not Knitting before I knew about her podcast so it is all quite circular.  Anyway, I find all of  these podcasts have good conversation about patterns and yarns and I have been marking quite a few patterns as favourites on Ravelry lately.  I've also picked up a couple of books at the library based on the 2 Knit Lit Chicks recommendations.  Enjoyable all around.

I'm still not sure I get it

But I do like knitting dishcloths.  I don't really think I want to use them to wash dishes - too bulky.  They seem more like napkins to me. And I have thrown the two I made previously in my lunch bag when I remember which beats using paper towels.

This dishcloth is the often-seen one recreated in Mason Dixon Knitting from a yarn company ball band.  It took no time at all to knit.  Start to finish in an evening.

For some unknown reason (although I think I actually had an idea in mind at the time which I have now forgotten), I bought a bunch of cotton yarn from Zellers when it was going out of business.  The lure of the sale possibly.  This used half a ball of the Peaches and Cream Twist and a small amount of a yarn called Ecofil.  Not sure I need as many dishcloths as the rest of the yarn will make so hopefully that original thought comes back to me.

It was on sale

The Sweet Sheep is closing in it's current format so all items are 30% off.  I just had to order a few skeins of sock yarn.  I couldn't help myself.  And the one thing I don't have too much of in my stash is sock yarn so feel less guilty than if I had purchased something else.  I can't wait until it gets here.

Success at last ... I think that's a good thing.

Under the heading of "be careful what you wish for", I have hoped for a large zucchini crop for years and have had relatively non productive plants.  I'll get just enough to eat but not enough to really go crazy with.  So this year, I planted extra plants.  And this year, they must like the weather, or the bees have been better at pollinating because I have zucchini.  A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about 3 loaves of bread and zucchini fritters from one large zucchini.  This morning, I found five large ones in the garden.  I hope I found them all.  The largest, a 3 pound sucker was the last one I found and it was purely by accident.  As a result, I knew the direction my day was taking.  Fortunately, the weather also agreed that an in house day was not the world's worst idea.

So I've been busy.  First on the agenda was Zippy Zucchini Relish from Canadian Living's The Complete Preserving book.      I have had some very good success with recipes in this book and the relish was no exception.  It is delicious.  Definitely a go to recipe again next year (or maybe next week).  We tried some of the relish on tortilla chips and it also makes a good salsa.  It used up 3 pounds of zucchini.  Which was good because I'm not sure the 3 pounder would have been good for general eating.  In a relish, it had lots of time to soften up but was pretty tough to cut.

Bon Appetit's issue this month has a page devoted to zucchini.  Last night I made up the Squash and Tomato Gratin (because in addition to the bad boys picked this morning, we've had a pretty steady diet of zucchini for a bit now).  Today for lunch I whipped up the Curried Squash Soup.  It was good.  Fairly mild but the curry helps counteract the natural mellow taste of the zucchini.  Served with a dollop of goat cheese, a sprinkling of toasted sesame seeds and one of my whole grain rolls from the freezer.  Very nice.

I made two more loaves of Lesley Stowe's chocolate zucchini bread and zucchini cookies from Food 52.  I tasted the cookies right out of the oven and they are actually more cake-like than cookie.  I think I like them but the true test will be after they have cooled down.  All of that used up 2 more zucchini, I gave one to my neighbour and the other went into the crisper.

Phew.  Now it's time to decide on what to make for dinner.  Zucchini anyone?

Day Trip

I had to go into Toronto yesterday to go to the dentist and to get my hair cut.  Since I work down there, my practitioners are all there too.  I pretty much made a day of it.  Romni was having their annual sale so I popped over there after the dentist.  Since I was early for their 11 am opening time, I had a Latte at a local coffee shop.  It was one of those shops with a lot of earnest looking people typing away on their Macs.  Were they writing books or articles, surfing the net because they had nothing better to do on a Thursday at 11?  Who knows.  I was knitting my sock.

I came away from Romni quite lightly.  Four balls of Noro Silk Garden because I can't resist and the Inspira Cowl looks great in the Ravelry pictures using Silk Garden.  My only other purchase was some Rowan Tweed of the DK variety to make these gloves.  I'm generally a mitten person but I have admired these for a long time so thought I should make them.

The best part of the day (and it wasn't yarn shopping) was lunch at Pangea, my favourite restaurant in Yorkville.  I just had their turkey sandwich but it was fantastic with a nice leaf lettuce salad dressed in a lovely, light dressing.  This with a glass of Chardonnay and I was set.  I also treated myself to the blueberry tart which was good but I did have an issue with the crust - sort of shortbread style and hard as a rock.  Tasty though so I forgave them.  Not to mention they provided a spoon and fork so I was able to muscle through without making too much of a mess.

Bread!

 I'm finally relaxing into my stay-cation.  We aren't going anywhere again this year.  Partly because we're letting our bank account recover from the kitchen reno and partly because we had 2 sick cats.  One I wrote about the other day but the other still needs us to be around.  We give her sub-coutaneous fluids for a kidney problem and it works.  Very well.  We thought she was gone 2 years ago and she is still doing great because of this treatment.  It does put a damper on our previous travel-the-world lifestyle but we'll get back to that and in the meantime we're glad to have our little buddy with us.

Anyway, I felt a little at loose ends on Monday (my furniture refinishing project was delayed a bit because I couldn't pick a colour of stain and I felt a little lonely since my husband isn't off this week).  Tuesday was better.  I committed to a stain colour, which I think is a little light but it might be the quality of the stripping of the old stain contributing.  I also spent some time chatting with the neighbours so was less lonely.  Today, I made bread and the electricians came to put in our chandelier, finally.  Not finally because they were slow.  Finally because we were.  First we needed to get a table (which we've had for a couple of months now).  Then we needed to call the contractor to get his electrician here to put it in.  That took rather longer than it should have but now it's in and we're done.

Not much of this relates to bread but I'll go there now.  I love making bread.  I love baking in general but the eating of said baking is not so great for the waist line that seems to know only one direction so I try to avoid eating too many sweets.

I made three different types of bread today.  The buns in the picture here are from The New Whole Grains Cookbook, a book with a lot of good grain recipes including these buns.  I've made them once before, did not embellish and thought they were excellent.  The recipe calls for bulgur or another cooked grain and I guess I used the bulgur the last time I made them because it was nowhere to be found.  So, I cooked up some Quinoa (of which I have a rather large collection for some reason) and off I went.  I decided to add a little cheddar cheese and walnuts after the first rise since I also have a bit too much of both in the house.  The result, just finished for lunch with a glass of chardonnay (I am on vacation and although I vowed not to drink at dinner during the week said nothing about lunch).  So very, very, very tasty.  I had 2.  One as a sandwich and the other just plain because I couldn't help myself.

The bread is my new go-to whole wheat bread recipe from Williams Sonoma's Bread cookbook.  It is a very satisfying bread.  Rises properly too (which I think might have something to do with the proofing feature on my new oven because I've never had such success with bread ever before).

Finally, I made some whole grain biscuit mix from the Whole Grains Cookbook.  I've made these before and they are also fantastic.  The last time I made them was for a dinner party and the recipe went home with both couples.  The recipe calls for whole wheat pastry flour which I had never seen before and when I specifically looked at my local Longo's couldn't find.  I was in Whole Foods yesterday (still on vacation so decided the expensive store was acceptable) and saw some.  So of course, I had to make these.  The biscuit dough gets mixed, stored in the fridge or freezer and baked when ready.  I love the combo of rolled oats, wheat germ and whole wheat flour.

I've always thought I should try to make baguettes but I really prefer the whole wheat bread varieties. Maybe sometime when I have my very plain eating niece and nephew over I'll make them.  Until then, I'll stick with these richer, earthier flavours and enjoy.

Now, I just have to find room in the freezer with the zucchini bread and bran muffins that I have also made this week.

A new project ... surprisingly fun

Lousy picture but I took it with my iPod and so it is but it shows my latest project. We bought a new table with our kitchen reno that has a much darker stain than our original furniture.  It is also a much different style but I think we're ok with that.

We were going to see about selling the previous stuff or giving it to a niece (but she isn't in a big hurry to move out of her parent's place).

We talked to a guy we know who refinishes furniture professionally and the price for him to do it was more than we paid for the furniture in the first place.

So, I thought, to quote Mag Ruffman how hard can it be?  Let's do it ourselves.  We've sanded (the girl at Rona didn't like using stripper and a few less chemicals can never be a bad thing).  Today I mixed two stain colours and applied two coats to two shelves and the backs of two doors.  The result, pretty good.  A little lighter than the ultimate goal so I'll be a little less conservative with the stain tomorrow and off I go on the parts that people will actually see.

And if the niece ever moves out, we've still got a table and two chairs for her to take.