Pass the whipped cream

It's only 3pm, but I've had a rough day. I got an unpleasant surprise in the mail- an invitation that actually left me feeling horribly excluded. I've cried a fair bit today, but I'm working on being chin up and counting my blessings (which are many, even if they are scattered by the winds of the earth). I'm having a tired, I-can't-take-it-on kinda day. To quote an Ani DiFranco song: "I'm tired of being so fierce, I'm tired of being so friendly".

As part of my pro-active approach I'm dreaming up things that will help my emotional pendulum swing back the other way- or at back to the center. Leslie's comment wondering about Kitchenaid attachments got me thinking about whipped cream. The real kind, not the canned kind. And now I'm pretty fixated on getting me some sweet, fluffy, cheering whipped cream. I'll let you know how much it helps :P

In other news, I'm trying to figure out a way to maintain my knitting/overall sanity (hint: it involves me knitting every day. No kidding. A recently published study found that knitters brainwaves, while they are knitting, closely resemble those of people meditating. I know that knitting has that kind of serenity-ifying effect on my emotional state!) while somehow not blazing through $100 (or more) of yarn every month. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd love to, but the money just isn't in the cards at the moment. So, I think I'm going to need to learn to love small yarn knitting- stuff like socks, and lace-y shawls. I've never been particularly drawn to them in the past because they can take a while, and I like results (OK, socks don't take terribly long, but the stitches are really tiny!). But clearly, the time has come. Plus I think they might be more appealing to knit in the lovely New York summers, don't you?

Food, and things that aren't

Zion goes to a co-op nursery school. Among other things, this means that we as parents are involved in the day to day running of the school. To keep this from devolving into chaos, we're all assigned to committees. Robert and I are on the shopping committee, and March is one of the months we're responsible for buying whatever the school may need at any given time.

On Friday one of Zion's teachers gave me a list of things they needed by Monday. It was the biggest list I'd yet seen for a single trip, and included 240 large trash bags, 5 lbs of sugar, 500 small paper plates, 10 bottles of juice, 2 cases of paper towels...so, this morning I loaded up the kids and headed for Shop Rite. We had to leave early, cause Robert needed the car to take his art class up to Dia:Beacon, so I didn't get to eat breakfast before we headed out. Hmm, I thought to myself, this could be trouble. Grocery shopping on an empty stomach?

But, as it turned out, it wasn't trouble. The things on the shelves at Shop Rite didn't tempt me one bit, because they just didn't look like food- quite possibly because they aren't food. Or oughtn't to be. What I really wanted was to get home so I could have some of my homemade yogurt, and maybe a couple of apples from our CSA (we picked up our last winter share yesterday, sob! How will we live through 2 1/2 months until our first summer share comes in??). Caramel corn flavored cereal? Frozen pizza? Packages of food fortified with preservatives for their long trip from production factory to your home? Yuck. O. Rama.

I must admit, however, that when I'm not actually hungry, some of this fake food does arouse a polite interest. But if I cave in and buy it, oh the disappointment! I used to love Hostess "Fruit" Pies as a kid, but not as an adult (though I do try them every few years, just to check). Ah, disenchantment. Luckily I've found that real food re-enchants me (and, I can only hope, the rest of the world) every time.

Watch what you say...

So, remember when I whined about the less-than-stellar heat distribution of my Emile Henry pot a few weeks ago? Well. A few minutes ago I put it on the stove and put some oil in it. I turned on the flame, and set to work chopping onions and garlic. And then I looked over at the stove to see how the oil was doing and there was oil dripping from the bottom of the pot. I rushed over to look at it, and yes, there is a hairline crack running the length of the pot. I almost cried. My $200 pot, which lives a life more pampered than many house pets has a f&**ing crack in it!

Apparently Emile Henry pots do not enjoy being slandered on my blog.

I decided to contact Emile Henry USA to complain and discovered that all their products have a 3 year warranty. So, we're well within warranty time (the pot is 27 months old)! I've sent an email to their customer service and hopefully I'll have good news to report here soon.

Cupcakes

This morning the word "cupcakes" came out of one of my friend's mouths. I'm not sure who it was anymore (Jill? Wendy?), or even what the context was, but my brain latched onto the idea of cupcakes and refused to let go. What's a girl to do? I took my kids into the kitchen and we baked cupcakes.





We made vanilla cupcakes because I wanted to fill them with cherry jam- jelly cupcakes, if you will. I thought chocolate might overpower the cherries, though next time I make raspberry jam I might try chocolate cupcakes stuffed with that. Mmmm. I gave the kids a choice of chocolate or vanilla buttercream frosting, and Liel immediately said "chocolate", so naturally Zion wanted vanilla. We made both. And no, I didn't have any cupcake papers at home. But cupcakes can't wait on a little thing like that!



Of course, now that they are available to eat, I have no interest in them. I love baking, but often find that once I've baked something I can't eat it (with, thank G-d, the exception of pie!). Blessing or curse? You decide...

Seashore Sweater

I've created my first finished object from the lot of Handpaintedyarn.com handspun bulky that I bought from another Ravelry member! It's also my first self-designed sweater. I used 3 different colorways in this sweater. For the main body I alternated every other row in two different colorways (remember that I only have 2 skeins of each color of yarn!), and the lacey edging in the third color. It all came out very beachy looking, and reminds me of the sand at home, and the teeny tiny shells we'd occasionally find, with their pale pink and purple interiors. Hence, the Seashore Sweater.





As usual, the pictures aren't the best, but eh. We're neither of us photographers!

Why phones are still good

Every month or two our mailbox is graced by it's free copy of Rockland Magazine. Yep, an entire magazine devoted to how awesome it is to live in Rockland County, NY! Call me cynical, call me an outsider, call me a sulky Gen X-er, but I just. do. not. get how anyone reading or writing for this magazine can take them seriously. Mostly we just giggle at it, and read the restaurant reviews in case there's anything good to eat that we've missed. But, occasionally Rockland Magazine redeems itself in our eyes (though only for a month or two, cause we're fickle like that). Over the summer it told us about a decent BBQ joint in Blauvelt (Baily's Smokehouse, if you're in the area. It's nothing you'll dream about, but they do have an actual smoker at least!), and last week it informed me that there is a 112 year old family run chocolate shop in the county. That was worth knowing for sure.

So I checked the website on Saturday, found out that they were open until 6pm, and off we all set for Lucas Candies in Haverstraw. Its on Main Street, and Main St in Haverstraw is a kind of run down place. Nice bones (lovely old brick buildings), but depressed. It was a gray, cold, windy day. We parked and hurried over to the shop.

And damn if it wasn't closed. I think each of the four of us was near tears as we stared hopelessly into the dark interior (past the display of enormous chocolate bunnies) and walked back and forth between the two doors. I have no idea why they were closed- there wasn't a sign explaining the change from normal business hours. To soothe our disappointment we drove over to Blauvelt for some BBQ. That worked reasonably well, but brought another disappointment of it's own. Prices had gone up! And side dishes had gone down! Our normal order, the BBQ sampler for 2, used to be $25 and come with fries and 2 sides. Now it's $30 and comes with 2 sides and a salad that was so crappy (it was literally drowning in a pool of dressing that tasted to be more or less 99% straight vinegar) we didn't finish it. Robert loves salad and abhors leaving any food behind. We did not finish the salad. The meat was still decent, thankfully. But in the end it did leave me longing for Texas.

So, the moral of the story is: do not drive to Haverstraw without first calling the chocolate shop, unless you have a craving for some New York-style bbq (cue old Pace commercial here...).

Finally, results!

Well, folks, we had a verrrry close race at the end there! In third place was Jill, with 13 points. There was a tie for second: with 18.5 points each we have Robert and Tamara! And in first place, with 19 points....Becka! Nice job, Beck! I will now insist that you call me (or email, I suppose, lol) to discuss your prize.

Happy March! Look for pictures of my newly designed and completed sweater later today!