Vacation shots, feel free to bypass

As many people know, all summer I kvetched about work overload. So I took my summer vacation in late September. Mostly I read (thanks again, Julie and Rich). There are no photos of books, largely because although I'm past 550 pages in Boswell I (ahem) misplaced the godforsaken volume Thursday after an uncharacteristic encounter with a margarita. Argh.

Anyway. I'll keep the blow-by-blow short. After my fly-by-night departure (got about three hours of sleep)(damn, I'm already going into detail) I called my kid sister from the airport (5:45 a.m. She was on her way to work) and landed to fairly inauspicious, misty/rainy weather.



(Look-- kilometers!) Which cleared up beautifully as soon as I arrived at my destination.



Harbor basin at low tide:



The view from Julie's front door:



After I spent a day or two unwinding (i.e., lazing), I put on my tourist's hat and visited Lunenberg, a pretty coastal town. First I hunted down nearby Blue Rocks. It's a small, traditional fishing village, says the 1999 Frommer's guidebook I found on the street four years ago (I loaned my good guidebook away).



The fishing shacks intrigued me. All pint-size. Rough, short gangplanks to get in and out. "Village" overstates the spot considerably.



No one was there. A small handful of wood-carving souvenir shops-- that is, people's houses-- and that was it. Tight turnaround. Which reminds me: The Toyota Yaris hatchback is a faaaantastic car for the money. Decent headroom. Comfortable. Handles fine, though I wouldn't want to corner hard. Tight turning radius. Sips gas.

Then I did my best to get lost.



I succeeded. Lunenberg itself: eh. Lotsa galleries offering locally made paintings of storm-tossed seas and scenic coves. (Is that description too harsh?) The tourist shops seemed especially strange on a post-season, empty day. The town has attractive churches.



(Any guesses? In New England, that would be cod.)

And stately cats.



"You may kiss the paw."

Okay. We're getting near the end. Promise. Monday, back with my generous hosts (whom I'd cleaned out of All-Bran), I wanted to get closer to the view. So I hiked the local cape.



Pretty. I haven't uploaded my water pictures, but it was there. Speaking of not uploading, I'm not maintaining blog semi-anonymity; I have a constitutional dislike of getting photos of myself in front of landmarks. (Other people in front of landmarks-- no problem.) Also, as an ex-New Yorker I worry that any stranger I ask to take said photo will turn and run off with my camera.

To prove that I didn't crib this portfolio from stock-photography sites--



Windy up there. Shnookered around for a while, then came back down and walked on the beach. Which leads me to the minor moral of this picture book: In Nova Scotia, come September,



Apples are everywhere.

Ta-da! (thx thx J. & R.!)


p.s. Drat, forgot to mention Halifax. I have a funny story involving a hip comics store, a mouth (mine), and a foot (sadly, also mine).

Nova Scotia knits

First off, both the Ambiguous Pink Thing and the Arisaig cardi (remember that?) are motoring along satisfactorily. But I forgot to take photos, and after loading 103? photos to iPhoto I hope you'll excuse me photo if I can't bear photo to take any more photos today.

So... as I asked, when in Rome (Nova Scotia), what does a knitter do?



Yup. My first two skeins ever. Story short: Gaspereau Valley Fibres started as a sheep farm, and I wanted to buy their own, homegrown yarn. Unfortunately, that day they offered mostly bulkyish yarn-- gorgeous snuggly stuff, but I couldn't drum up any ideas for it. So I roused about until I found the two cheapest skeins of Fleece Artist in the house.

(p.s.: I'm trying to leave out locating details until I ask my host whether or not she wants her town identified. If yes, I'll add a link to the LYS.)

The right skein is 325m (!) of 100% washable merino. Oddly, the accompanying sock pattern says not to wash. Hm. The photo turned the merino's plum purple. (In some dicey corner of the writer's universe, that sentence makes sense.)

No way will I hide this gorgeous stuff on my feet. I think that, post-presents, I'll bow to groupthink and knit a Clapotis scarf/wrap for myself.

The left is some other yardage (I wrote it down somewhere) of Kid Silk. (Not Kid Silk Haze.) Comes with a scarf pattern I might use. The skein smells faintly... sorta faintly... of goat. LYS owner suggests that I air or wash the yarn. Yes--



Truly, airing or washing the skein is a great idea. Here's hoping the stuff doesn't make my needles or hands smell like goat. (Though Eva-cat might appreciate it.)

p.s. I glued up a cute orange-and-hot-pink fleece sheep thing at the crafts table. Picture to come, maybe.

Okay, what first: nature, food, or knits?

My camera does a decent job outside, so I have a few (FEW) vacation shots to post. This is going to be picture, scroll-scroll-scroll blog post heaven. (Run.) To reduce reader RSI, I'm splitting the photo-heavy updates into three posts, with the cooking updates left 'til tomorrow.

Promises, promises

- I have an absolutely jaw-dropping dish to try tomorrow night. Can't wait to cook (and photograph badly!).

- Also on the cooking front: Two new recipes for... believe me... plain green cabbage. I'm tired of making endless spicy Asian slaw. These dishes both require the application of heat.

- I am starting to crave apple pie. Yet how can I make an apple pie when I have a few dozen oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies on hand-- specifically, slightly failed cookies that taste good but don't look good enough to palm off on people? (Flour. Experimenting with flour. Forgetting that the oatmeal does not, in fact, replace its volume in flour. Drat.)

- Ambiguous pink thing has required a couple of stabs at the (ahem) short-row part that gets turned, but tonight's Grey's Anatomy KAL should take care of that. Note: Call Mom to get season premiere synopsis. Did you non-Canadian guys know that one of the Canadian stations somehow aired the second episode instead of the first?

- And a final yarn promise. I'll just ask, rhetorically, convolutedly, and absolutely at a loss for punctuation marks-- When in Rome-- rather, Nova Scotia: To make like the Romans, what does a knitter do?


p.s. Great quote from the Knittyboard today: "What exactly is an asshat? Is it a hat for your ass (I call those 'pants') or a hat that looks like an ass?"

448 unread emails later

Or was that 484? I'm back from my weeklong Nova Scotia rest cure, thanks to wonderful hosts Julie and Rich. Can I stay home from work tomorrow on the grounds that further absence will traumatize my cat?

Photos (eventually), yarn, ghee, scenery descriptions, books, praise of the Toyota Yaris hatchback to follow.

p.s. I forgot to turn off my various daily alerts and listservs, including two local freecycle lists (oog).

p.p.s. Who's baking cookies at midnight? I don't know who's baking cookies at midnight.

As promised

I have to get in a cab in the rain in... five-and-a-half hours to start avoiding my computer. But buying new camera batteries was on this evening's list.

In the last four-ish days, I cooked several things I didn't (obviously) photograph. And I also made:

[insert standard photo disclaimer. ugh.]



What for a lack of a better phrase I'll call "eggplant paneer." (Is eggplant the "baignan" or the "bartha" in "baignan bartha"?) That pink stuff is raita mixed with the last of a steam/sautéed beets/chard side dish. You can't see it under the brown gook, but I'm also eating the last of last Friday's absurd, impromptu experiment: beet-stuffed potato croquettes, a.k.a. potato pancakes. Which taught me that I don't care to make potato pancakes more than once a year. Note to self: Put smoke detector back on ceiling.

(I had my downstairs neighbors-- hey, remember the downstairs neighbors?-- up for a bribery dinner.)

(p.s. I'm now at page 485 or so of Boswell.)

I also made something that may surprise you:



What's so surprising about salad? I haven't had any lettuce in the farm share for probably eight weeks. The fork holds pale yellow carrots, crimson-streaked carrots, and albino-blonde peppers. I don't want to think about what I'll cook come November.


Okay.

So.

Fanfare? Though all my knitblog-reading has activated my knitting insecurity. I know I can cook well. Knitting... well, the pictures do suck. Anyway, I finally finished the godforsaken



Green socks. Let's get a gander at that braid:



I knit two pairs of socks back in 1999-2000 but didn't keep them for myself. So far these are, well, damp. I did a better job on sock #2 than #1. Hmm.

I'm much more excited about the... yes...



Mystery blue thing! Take a look at that detail!



... because you're not going to see anything else! (If you know me in real life, don't check that Flickr account. I mean it.)

I hope in the next week to start my next holiday project. What? Yup, you guessed right: The Ambiguous Pink Thing.

Back online next week-- I'll send postcards.

And I need to arrest myself

D: [Frets about the proper title case capitalization for "for" in the figure of speech "If it weren't for...." Is it a coordinating conjunction, a preposition, what?]

Mom: The grammar police aren't going to come after you.

D: I am the grammar police.

N.B.

I have finished the Mystery Blue Thing, which is a good time to say... some of you readers may want to avoid going directly to my Flickr account until after the holidays.

Never the twain?

Now, I know that I'm a tight knitter (shut up), but this is ridiculous.

PATTERN
#4 needles: 20 sts/??? rows = 4" (stockinette)

ME, keeping my hands purposely loose
#6 needles: 27 sts = 4"

Farther apart than Ann Coulter and Molly Ivins.


p.s. Speaking of odd bedfellows, though these work better: grunge-noise + electronica/slightly oddly tonalities + harmonized = Hooray for Earth. I've listened to their album five-six times since I bought it last night. "Simple Plan" (mp3).

Coming soon...

- Actual finished objects. I kid you not. The waning moon is having its witchy way with me.

- A break in posting, since I will be, shall we say, avoiding my computer for several days next week. Photos to follow.

Since I have a little (ahem) extra reading time coming up, I'm considering buying a book for once instead of letting the library buy it for me. Zadie Smith, I thought, I should read Zadie Smith. (Okay, Porter Square Books had On Beauty stacked up front and I noticed it from the coffee line.) That book looks good, thunk I, but I probably should start at the beginning. White Teeth. Yeah, I should buy that before I start avoiding my computer.

Then out of nowhere, not requested, no clue, a slim package appeared in my mailbox. The inimitable, brilliant Ryan sent me a book, raving that it's the next best thing to David Foster Wallace and I have to read it. Don DeLillo: White Noise. What timing, thunk I. I'll take that when I start avoiding my computer!

Then this morning I read the tepid-at-best, read-the-book-instead NY Times review of the movie The Black Dahlia. James Ellroy, I thought, yeah, I should read James Ellroy. Noir is perfect when you're avoiding your computer. So I scrolled over on the Porter Sq. Books website and hmmm, what else has he written besides Dahlia and L.A. Confidential?

White Jazz.

I can't even conceive of a clever, comic summary line for this reading list. You guys want to try?

Recent iTunes adds and hits

My real-life friends here know I used to be a music critic. A summer 2005 blog would've had 90% music content.

Now, burned out and redirected, I'm down to about three shows/month from four shows/week. The most recent installment was last week's "Five Fab Fiddlers" show at Club Passim, which-- really, don't laugh, trust me-- blew the roof off the place. I got home at three a.m.

I still don't have an iPod. But at work I plug my robot self into the mother unit, which is equipped with iTunes 7. So....

- Richard Buckner, "Town" -- free single from his new album, which I must get.

- Jabe, Where Are We Going & When Do We Get There -- Local, melancholy alt-country/rock guy. Deserves to be more widely known. Note: That link streams the whole album, and you might want to turn the volume down.

- Son Volt, Trace -- If No Depression magazine knew I'd never heard this album, they never would've let me write for them. Another link that screams music at you. I don't understand why they don't default to "music off." I mean, I do understand, but it's annoying.

- Editors, The Back Room -- Unexpectedly catchy.

- The Campaign for Real Time, Yes... I Mean No -- Another bunch of locals. Oddball dance music. Great stuff. Plus their guitarist creates crosswords for the NYTimes.

And still addicted after four months:
- Devin Davis, Lonely People of the World, Unite! -- Sloppy, literate, crashing.

(You didn't hear this from me, but non-critics can still find ways to get... ahem... promo CDs.)

Garrison Keillor's column this week

(I'm going on a trip soon.)

From "Guns on a Plane":

--
The way to stop terrorists on planes is to encourage passengers to bring loaded firearms aboard: guys in orange vests sitting in exit rows with deer rifles on their laps, ladies with Mr. Colt in their purses, kids with peashooters. Somebody wake up the NRA. Does the Second Amendment say "The right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed except on commercial airliners"? Where is the right wing when you really need them?

This way, if some guy in a burnoose sets up a chemistry lab in Row 24 and mixes hydrogen peroxide, sulfuric acid and acetone in a big beaker that is packed in 15 pounds of dry ice to keep it cool, and cooks up some triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, the passengers will be able, in the several hours it will take him to make the deadly explosive, to bring him under control, assuming the fumes haven't knocked Ahmed out. And they could nab the mastermind too, the monocled guy in first class petting the white cat.
--

(I don't care what the official TSA regulations say... I won't risk putting pricey metal knitting needles in my carry-on.)

Waiting for the bread to rise

(Terrible '80s mental jukebox moment.)

What season is it? Yesterday A. & I went to the beach-- finally, in my case. Hot sun, cold water, sand, salt, ice cream. Summer.



(My, I really didn't get much sun, did I?)

Today I had an Iron CSA moment, lickety-split revised my plan (nixed: stuffed peppers), and made vegetable soup and mixed-grain bread. Autumn!



Raw. Using up the CSA stash: carrots, celery, onions, parsley, radish greens, cabbage, tomatoes, last week's tomato sauce, white beans, potatoes.

[p.s. I forgot I made cabbage-radish-scallion fake kimchee as well.]



Cooked. Unfortunately I didn't time the dishes properly, so...



Half-cup cornmeal, half-cup whole wheat flour (I ran out), 2-1/2 cups bread flour. Yeast, warm water. I'm blogging and watching Iron Chef while I wait for the bread. Blogging, watching Iron Chef, drinking a beer, and eating the mocha-walnut-chocolate-chip cookies I just baked. How I love being a grown-up.

Speaking of progress...



I dropped the cardi entirely to @#$%ing finish something already. Getting decently close on the green socks. And the mystery blue item...


Neon!



Cloaked in secrecy!

--
After the beach, I did something incredibly uncharacteristic: I bought shoes. Nay, I bought



BOOTS.

Knee-high with a heel.

Oh my.

D. to A.: Gimme a riding crop and I'm in business!
A.: Oh, I love horseback riding.
D.: Not that kind of business.

I love these boots. (Note: My last shoe purchase was in March, 2004.) I love these boots. Even though I felt wicked overdressed at a party last night with the Sienna Miller dark skinny jeans tucked into the boots look. (Granted, her jeans don't come from Old Navy.) I barely cared, because I love these boots. I love my legs, even. I want to wear skirts.

Yeah. If I hadn't spent three hours cooking multiple dishes and ooohing over my fancy cornmeal:



I'd wonder who borrowed my brain.

Photos of glop

no matter how delicious the reality, just look like glop. Right?

In other words, I forgot to photograph the two kinds of roasted tomato jam (Favorita and White Currant) and the roasted eggplant dip (babaganoush minus the tahini). I did photograph-- blurry cell phone alert! the...



Tomato-corn salad. Mom's suggestion. Pan-roasted corn and chiles, tomatoes, cilantro, avocado, lime.

My farm share partner, however, puts me to shame. Take a gander at this-- and she actually shopped and cooked on the same day:

**
... we plunged in headlong and made saag paneer, channa masala, butter chicken, pork vindaloo, shrimp bhuna masala, veggie korma, kuchumber (just a cucumber and tomato salad that I made with organic tomatoes I smuggled in) and coriander-mint and onion chutneys with pappadam. we bought naan from a nearby restaurant and ran out of time to make samosas... so we'll try that another time. Before I came, my friend had made desserts - none of them Indian - but all delicious: lemon sorbet, malted vanilla ice cream and peanut butter ice cream. Making the homemade paneer was probably the highlight. It was sooooo easy and tasted so good that I'll certainly make it again soon. It was delicious just pan-fried in ghee!!!
**

I'll pause for a moment while we all wipe the saliva off our keyboards. This dinner took place in another city, btw, so I couldn't attend.

***

Okay. Also without pictures: The mystery blue thing. One done, the other started. If you have only one hand, I have just revealed that this gift is not for you. Sorry.

Taking a page from Chris's blog, I will attempt the impossible and give you Eva's thought balloons. From my Seat of Sloth Sunday night, with the television on, even...



"Hmmm, what's this? You weren't planning to drink this, were you? You let me do anything I want anyhow as long as I don't get skittish and hide under the bed... Water's fine, so..."



"I'll just dive in... slurp, slurp... hmm, I wonder if the bottom of the glass smells different from the top? I'm cute. I deserve this."



I was going to make a terrible pun about "don't give my cat any ideas," but I couldn't stand it. She really does look cute with her nose under that newspaper section, though.

The joy of cancelling plans...

Even if it's because you're nursing a slight cold. (Hope you had fun, SSH! Next year!) My apartment sparkles. My body is rested. My sparkling couch cushion has a rested, fetal-shaped depression. I even watched a movie on TV. And...



The left-hand-covering thing for person A has made it about one-third of the way. I wanted a fast, satisfying project, and I found it-- though I will admit, Lucy, that you were right and Cascade 220 probably is a hair too thick for this pattern (That Shall Not Be Named).

It's hard to suss that out since after spending the whole summer with sock yarn, worsted looks coarse and size 6 needles feel like knitting with pencils. (Especially entertaining/awkward because I lost one of the dpns at some point and am knitting circularly on three.) That said, the item looks smaller than it ought, so... who knows.

Anyway, I love the sense of progress. (Progress [scroll down, I'm too lazy to link directly.] How much do I wish I had absolutely no work this weekend.)

The fun thing about itemizing my project list with initials is that I'm perfectly able to change the recipient should I wish. "Person A." could be anyone. Ha ha! Person A. isn't changing, but person D. might change or possibly even double.

Guests showing up in twenty, so a bunch of food photos. Our Iron CSA champion:



Jambalaya! I desperately wanted to make gumbo but simply didn't have forty-five minutes to stand and stir a roux. After puzzling over what celery, onions, and pepper can make besides stuffing, I remembered (duh-huh!) that they're the holy trinity of Louisiana cooking. Despite the endless news coverage, it took me several more days to realize (duh-HUH!) that I was cooking jambalaya on the first anniversary of Katrina.

I took the recipe slightly Somerville with Salvadoran red beans and house-made linguiça from the HOUSE OF MEAT in Union Sq. Really. That's what it's called (well, in Portuguese).

Possessed of corn and John Thorne-induced inspiration, I bought two kinds of cornmeal the other day. This a.m., still possessed by Thorne, I tried ye olde Rhode Island specialty: Johnnycakes.



I purposely used the simplest recipe I could find, to get a feel for the most-basic setup (and because I'm lazy). Just under 1 c. cornmeal (mixed the two), 1.5 T butter, some salt (less than the recipe called for, but still too much), cream and boiling water to make a batter (since I didn't have milk). Maple syrup. Conclusion?



Well-- I love my heavy cast-iron pan and enjoyed the logging-camp feeling, and they definitely fulfilled my ongoing Summer of Whole Grains (And Not Just Brown Rice) project, but: a) they definitely could've used some spicy sausage and b) pretty rough stuff to live on.

Also on the stove this a.m.: Using up the Granby basil and the punctured farm-share tomatoes that had to live in the fridge:



Waste not, want not, put the tomato sauce in the fridge and go out for lunch.

The right tools for the job (a knitting post, no food)

As I worked on the sock (now post-heel), my head a simmering teapot with my ears as the spout, I grabbed my extra #2 circulars and took a whack at Magic Loop.

Non-knitters probably won't find this clarification helpful, but: Normally you knit a small-diameter circular item like a sock on a series of double-pointed needles, which are essentially tangents to the circumference. ML uses a smooth long circular needle, which means a lot less futzing and a reduced chance of getting the dreaded "ladders"-- i.e., baggy hole-y strips where you switch needles. Image from the instructional site:



Technique: Simple and fantastic.
Execution: Turn up the fire under the kettle, baby. My post to the Knitty board:

Magic loop: Yarn gets stuck
... Every time I had to push the new half-ring of stitches from the cord onto the needle, ho boy. It was all difficult, but the final two stitches were almost impossible to get over the join. (They shrank up on the cable, being stretch yarn. Also, the join isn't smooth.) It took me literally three minutes each side. I finally gave up and went back to dpns. I am, btw, a tight knitter.
--

The consensus is-- well, first of all I need to stop pulling the final stitches of each half super-tight. But the big consensus is that if you're a tight knitter (shut up! no extrapolation!), ML requires needles with an absolutely smooth join. Meaning no Crystal Palace.

Then last night, knitting the hand-covering item for person A. (more shortly), I tried ML again. The only circ I had was a short one I must've bought for a hat-- 14" or some such. The join gave me tsuris and-- new problem-- the cable was so short it stretched the halves of the item apart. No dice. Consensus of one: When the instructions call for a long circular needle, they mean it.

The philosophical conclusion is that sometimes you do need the right tools for the job. (Even though I've been cooking perfectly good eats for ten years with a semi-serrated never-sharpen $15 "chef's" knife.) The practical conclusion is that I clearly have to buy more needles.

If A is to B as B is to C, ergo: Philosophy is expensive.