Sweet Pea, etc.

Oh my blog, I haven't been ignoring you. I've just had a lot of things in progress and very little finished, and therefore nothing much to post. I've been working on matching striped raglan sweaters for my friend Sara, who's having twins (a boy and a girl) in October, although I set them aside while I worked on Sweet Pea, my version of Ysolda Teague's Gretel beret. I should mention that I'm not really so crazy with how this hat turned out. The cables were tedious (in hindsight, maybe I should've tried learning how to do them without a cable needle, as the pattern recommends), and this yarn (Rowan Summer Tweed) has terrible stitch definition. And also reinforced my distaste for cotton-y yarns. Someday when all of my WIPs are finished (haha yeah right), I'd like to redo this pattern with a lovelier yarn...something woolly and smooth and solid-colored. Until then, on to Avalon: yesterday I received 15 balls of RYC Cashsoft DK in a lovely pale gray, for knitting Ysolda's Coraline. I'm trying to convince myself to finish the twins' sweaters before embarking on my own, but it's that sweet sort of temptation that's so hard to resist. Like ice cream or kisses.

[ raveled. ]

Otherwise, I've just been watching a lot of movies lately. Today I finally got around to seeing The Dark Knight, which was incredible. And last week I signed up for Netflix, so I've been spending a lot of time filling my queue with old movies (like the Thin Man series and anything with Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant, or Fred Astaire). If anybody has any movie recommendations, I'd love to hear them!

P.S. I shall be making these blueberry crumb bars quite soon...perhaps tomorrow! Rainy days are always good for baking, I think. And any day is good for blueberries.

Miss Adventure

This hasn't been a very recuperative weekend for me. I did a lot of running around yesterday, and today I had lunch & went antiquing with my cousin (one of the coolest people on the planet, fyi) and also took my big girl to the vet. And through it all, I managed to miss out on seeing The Dark Knight, my one big definite Plan for the weekend. I also didn't buy yarn for Gretel--well, not at my LYS, anyway. I ended up buying some Rowan Summer Tweed online last night. But I did find lots of yummy Debbie Bliss Cashmerino DK--8 balls, in fact--for a couple of new baby sweaters. My friend Sara is having twins--a boy and a girl--due in October. Last night I started on the boy's sweater, and I'll start on the girl's as soon as I get an extra pair of size 6 Clover bamboo needles (coming with my tweedy goodness on Friday). Here's a sneak peak of the stripe pattern (on the girl's sweater, the red & teal will be swapped out for pink & purple):

Tonight I'm going to sleep for 12 hours. Well, maybe not quite that long, but definitely a good long while.

Is This Pizza?

Every time I make pizza, my sweetheart says the same thing: It looks nice, but it's not really pizza. Well, what else should I expect from an Italian? This time, however, I think I've come quite close to What Pizza Should Really Be. Sunday morning I was at the grocery store, dawdling in the pickle/olive aisle, and I spied with my little eye a jar of sundried tomatoes. Yum!! I instantly wanted to slap them onto the thin & crispy pizza crusts I'd found at Target a few days before. Anyway, so I backtracked to produce to pick up some fresh basil, and a couple days later...a pizza is born:


Now I'm off to my LYS to look for some Gretel-worthy yarn. Later this afternoon/tonight, I'm finally going to see The Dark Knight.

Little Stars

Ysolda Teague is a genius. I'd love to kidnap her brain for a day to help me with the technical-schmechnical side of pattern design (I've got no problems with the abstract design process...it's the nitty-gritty nuts & bolts stuff that makes my head spin). Anyway, I'd been taking an extended vacation from knitting and crafting in general. Half-finished knitting and embroidery projects are piling up in my living room. An Ysolda beret was just what I needed to pull me out of my slump (although now all I want to do is find a yummy pink tweed for knitting Gretel).

So here's Stelline ("little stars" in Italian), my version of Ysolda's Estella. I used Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran in #137 Empire and Silkroad Aran Tweed in #118 Dusk, 1 ball of each.

[ raveled. ]

Holy crap, The China Syndrome is on AMC! I haven't seen this in like 6 or 7 years!!

The Lazy Blogger Strikes Again!

This has been a torturous week so far. I feel like I'm being dragged through each day, kicking and screaming, wishing for the weekend to start Right Now. I'm having trouble sleeping, I've barely talked to my sweetheart, and work...ughhhhhhhhhh. So that's my excuse for not updating in the past few days. But coming up during my weekend: sundried tomato & basil pizza and a knitted hat. Maybe some other things too.

P.S. I'm on the hunt for a recipe for homemade applesauce (like from real apples and everything). So if you have one, please share!!

P.P.S. My nephew is turning sixteen on Tuesday, so I'm feeling really old. I remember when this kid was a baby and I used to push him around the house in a laundry basket (propped up by my stuffed animals, of course)!

Blueberry Crisp

After my success with the apricot crisp last week, I decided to try it again...this time with blueberries. I love blueberries. Love. Love. And when I saw a lovely pint of them at the grocery store on Sunday, I knew I had to try this recipe ASAP. And what a success it was!

Original recipe at smitten kitchen. Substitute apricots with about 1.5-2 cups blueberries (I only used 1.5 cups because that's all my baking dish would hold...this would definitely be better with more blueberries, though, so if the dish you're using is slightly larger, use the whole 2 cups). Also, I used cinnamon instead of nutmeg because I don't have any nutmeg. And I omitted the almonds because...gross. Last but not least, 30-40 minutes in the oven is ridiculous. Mine was done after 13 minutes. I think in the future I may bake it longer, but at a lower temperature (like 350), because the blueberries didn't have enough time to break down and release their juices (this wasn't a problem with the apricot crisp because the apricots were in pieces to begin with). I served this for dessert, warm with whipped cream (or vanilla ice cream).

Mushroom Lasagna

I've been trying to take better care of myself lately, head to toe (from using moisturizer on my face to wearing more supportive shoes on my feet). And a big part of this is eating better. To me, that doesn't necessarily imply eating healthier (although I'm trying to do that too)...it means to eat more natural foods with less processing and fewer unnatural ingredients (I'm not a big fan of artificial sweeteners, for example). So I'm trying to cook more. But nothing is more tiresome to me than a fussy recipe with lots of ingredients that I have to drive across town to find. That's why this lasagna is one of my favorite things to make. The most time-consuming part of this recipe is cutting up the mushrooms, but if you like big pieces of mushrooms you can totally skip it and have this whole thing done in 40 minutes (5 minutes for prep, 30 minutes in the oven, and 5 minutes to cool).

Mushroom Lasagna (serves 4-6, although my family of 3 managed to polish off the whole pan)

two 4-oz. (net drained weight) cans of pieces & stems mushrooms
two 10-oz. cans tomato sauce (use already seasoned sauce if you can find it, or add Italian seasoning)
4 oven-ready lasagna noodles
1 cup ricotta
3 cups mozzarella

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Drain mushrooms and chop them into smaller pieces, if desired. In a bowl, stir together mushrooms and tomato sauce (and Italian seasoning, if using). Grease a 9x9 square baking dish. Spread a thin layer of mushroom sauce on the bottom of the pan. Place a layer of uncooked noodles on top of the sauce (for this size pan, this is 2 noodles). Spread approx. 1/4 cup ricotta on each noodle. Sprinkle approx. 1 cup mozzarella over the noodles/ricotta. Spoon half of the remaining mushroom sauce mixture over the cheese, making sure to cover the corners/edges (this helps to prevent the noodles from drying out). Place another layer of uncooked noodles over the sauce, spread with remaining ricotta, and sprinkle with another cup of mozzarella. Spoon remaining mushroom sauce over the cheese, and sprinkle with last cup of mozzarella. Place baking dish on a cookie sheet (in case it bubbles over in the oven) and bake uncovered for 25-30 minutes, or until cheese starts to bubble and turn golden. Let cool for a few minutes. Rejoice at your impending feast.

Notes: The first time I made this lasagna, I mixed 1 can of pieces & stems with 1 can of portabella pieces. I wanted to do that again, because the portabellas give it a little bit of a "beefy" flavor, but I couldn't find them. But the lasagna is still delicious with just pieces & stems. For the noodles, I like to use Archer Farms whole wheat oven-ready lasagna noodles. I like the texture & flavor of whole wheat pasta, although if you know someone who isn't a fan (like kids?), this isn't a bad recipe for trying it out. You really can't tell the difference. Also, if you have regular (not oven-ready) lasagna noodles on hand, go ahead and use them. Cooking them is an extra step, but it doesn't change any of the other steps in this recipe. If you have a pan with rounded corners (like mine), another way to avoid dry corners (and make the noodles fit pretty perfectly) is to just snap the corners off! For the ricotta, I recommend the whole milk kind because ricotta lowfat & part-skim are so flavorless. And if 3 cups of mozzarella sounds like a lot...it is! This lasagna is extremely cheesy. If you prefer your lasagna to be less cheesy, sprinkle less cheese in each layer (although it's important to keep the number & order of layers the same).

Light Up Your Face With Gladness

Here's hoping that your day is as lovely as mine is shaping up to be!

New Shoe Day!

For the past year or two, I've been wearing completely disposable ballet flats. And my feet have been crying out for supportive mercy. Well, I just couldn't take it anymore, so I went in search of good, cute shoes that weren't too expensive or too orthopedic-ish. I've been a bit in love with mary janes lately, and I didn't think that they'd be so hard to find, but really they kind of were. Anyway, I found two pairs that I liked, and they were delivered last night while I was at work. They're perfect!! Comfy, already perfectly broken in, and really cute. The top pair are the Sienna Mary Janes by Keen, and the bottom pair are the Carlisle Mary Janes by Born.

Coming up on Tuesday/Wednesday: I'm remaking the apricot crisp, this time with blueberries! And I'll also be making one of my most favoritest creations, mushroom lasagna. Holy moly.

Free-Form Pizza

It's been a rainy sort of weekend.* Perfect for tinkering around in the kitchen or watching old movies while curled up in my big red chair with my old man blanket. Tonight for dinner I made my favorite pizza. Normally I take the easy way out and just buy a pre-made crust, but I really prefer the taste of homemade crust. I'm not so adventurous as to make it from scratch, though...I just use the Jiffy boxed mix. And I've never actually made this crust before (at least, not by myself), and anyway I guess I didn't really mix it very well because the dough was kind of lumpy. I got frustrated with trying to make it a perfect square or circle or something, so I gave up and made it free-form. Anyway, my mistakes turned out wonderful because the crust was soft & chewy on the inside, but had a great little crunch on the outside. I topped it with basil, garlic, & oregano tomato sauce, mozzarella, black olives, mushrooms, and sundried tomato & basil feta (in that order).

*My workweek is Thursday-Monday, so my "weekend" is Tuesday-Wednesday. It's pretty much terrific because everything is open without being crowded, there's decent stuff on tv, and my sweetheart doesn't work on Wednesdays either.

Big Sticky Mess (But Oh So Yummy!)

As promised, today I baked smitten kitchen's Breakfast Apricot Crisp. Wow. Wow. I mean, really. It's that good. The crumble topping, especially. I'll definitely be making this again and experimenting with different fruits (blueberries? oh yeah!!). Some tips, though:

1. In the recipe, she says to tear the apricots into quarters. This makes for some pretty big chunks! If you like that sort of thing, go for it. But I feel that the large chunks are a big reason why the crisp is so tart. Next time, I'll cut the apricots into significantly smaller pieces.
   
2. The recipe calls for a pinch of nutmeg. Well, I couldn't find any nutmeg in the cupboard, so I used ground cinnamon instead. It came out of the shaker much faster than I expected, so there was more than a pinch. This turned out to be great, though, because it gave the crisp a beautiful smell.
   
3. Maybe this is largely dependent on the type of dish you use (I used a 16-oz. capacity Corningware round dish) and your oven, but my crisp was burnt a bit on top after only 20 minutes. So keep an eye on this as it's baking!
   
4. Definitely, definitely, definitely put your baking dish on a cookie sheet before sliding it into the oven. As with all crisps, cobblers, and pies, the filling will bubble over the edge and make a big sticky mess! For even easier cleanup, line the cookie sheet with aluminum foil first.

P.S. As per my previous post, I'm chucking my ballet flats. I've ordered a couple pairs of mary janes from OnlineShoes.com: the Sienna Mary Janes by Keen and the Carlisle Mary Janes by Born. The Keen shoes are supposed to be great for walking around town...one reviewer even mentioned that she wore them during her entire trip to Italy. How perfect, right?

Tomorrow I'm making pizza with feta, mushrooms, and black olives. It's my favorite! Until then, I'm off to watch High Society!

Dear Fashion,

Please make the following trends disappear, post haste:

• Sweater dresses (I think these are best left where we found them...in reruns of The Facts of Life)
• Bubble skirts (you know...the kind with the banded hem...what?!)
• Skinny jeans (I think the name says it all...and we might as well throw leggings in with this because I hate those too!)
• Colored denim (YIKES!!)
• High-waisted pants (I still haven't figured this one out)
• Swing jackets (oh noooo where's my pillbox hat?!)
• Tartan plaid (it's just cruel to put anything tartan on your bum if it's the largest part of your body!)
• Red lipstick (uff, I'm sick of it...only some people can pull it off...everyone else looks like they just stepped out of a Robert Palmer video)
• Ankle boots (I think my grandma has some of these)
  
• Ballet flats (yes, I said it...they have no arch support, they don't actually look that good with anything other than skirts and skinny jeans, and they've been done to death...I'm sick of not being able to find a shoe that isn't a gold lamé ballet flat!)

But all is not lost, Fashion! You do have some promising prospects on the horizon! Here's what you're doing right:

• Navy and Charcoal (I've missed these colors!)
• A-line skirts (especially ones that hit just below the knee)
• Dark nail polish (not black, but deep purple, navy blue, and gunmetal gray are great)
• Black Mary Janes (preferably flat, not patent, with a semi-chunky non-platform heel)
• Bob with bangs (it's so cute!)
• Slightly puffed sleeves (they're cute and pretty flattering)
• Slouchy knit berets (if these aren't in style, they should be...have you seen Ysolda's designs?!)
• Thermal henleys (they're so comfy)

Yours truly,
Whitney

P.S. Fashion, I know we broke up a couple years ago, but maybe if you get your shit together we can give it another go. How about it?

Fruit Loop

This morning I went to the grocery store to buy fruit. Well, really just to buy apricots. I ended up finding a lovely mango as well. And then I spotted feta, which I haven't had in forever, and decided to get things to make a pizza. But in the beginning there was a pound of apricots, and smitten kitchen turned it into this. Which I'm planning to bake Tuesday night, if I can wait until then.

Flash Sparkle Pop

Well a wonderful thing happened tonight...I only had to work for about an hour and a half! I thought about staying, but then I remembered that my brother had invited me to a barbecue at his girlfriend's house. There was so much food!! I took my camera with me and ended up spending a good chunk of time chasing the dogs around with it. I also got into an argument with my brother about which borough Shea Stadium is in (he said Brooklyn because he's a dummy, and I said Queens because I actually know what I'm talking about! and yet somehow I think I lost this argument...I guess that's what you get when you try arguing with a car salesman). Unfortunately, I had to leave before the fireworks started. Although I don't know that I'm really missing much, as my neighbors have apparently said to hell with the law and are currently launching small missiles from their driveway.

Happy 4th of July!!

It's 2:40 in the afternoon, and fireworks are already being set off in the neighborhood. Mother Nature has decided to be kind and gave us a cool 85 degree day (well, cool compared to the upper 90s we've been sweating through lately!). I'm either a masochist or just an idiot, because I volunteered to work today. Of course I wish I hadn't done that, but truthfully I need the money. Traveling to Italy ain't cheap!

Last night I was thinking about having a loose posting schedule for this blog...like, knitting content on Monday, food content on Wednesday, etc. It won't be a rigid schedule or anything, but just a loose guideline for myself. I don't have much in the way of content to share with y'all today, but I did get a few pictures of Max sleeping on the sofa. He's so lazy!

Goodness and Good News

There are many things that I love in this world. Three of them collide beautifully in the Crispy Salted Oatmeal White Chocolate Cookie recipe I got from smitten kitchen. Although I forgot to add the vanilla, my sea salt wasn't the flaky kind, and my cookies are inexplicably flat, my oh my they're some of the best cookies I've ever eaten anyway. Even the slightly burned ones are delicious! One thing I must mention, though, if you decide to try the recipe yourself--I didn't find them to have a strong scent while baking, so you've really gotta keep an eye on these as they're baking (typically I judge a cookie's doneness by its scent). They turn from "deep golden" to brown in the blink of an eye!


Okay, on to the good news: today my sweetheart told me that his firm, Leftloft, is planning to open their New York office much sooner than expected. This means that if everything goes according to our little plan, we could be getting married & moving to Brooklyn as early as March or April!! This is light years sooner than our original plan, which saw us taking this step two or three years from now. I'm still a little in shock, and crossing all crossable appendages in hopes that this plan actually comes to fruition, but I'm over the moon with happiness right now.

And one more thing before I go watch Vantage Point on DVD while eating some delicious cookies: today I googled "Italian word of the day" in hopes of finding an rss feed to increase my Italian vocabulary, and I found an amazing foreign language resource site, Transparent Language. They have word of the day widgets in several languages, including 1337 (in case you're a big ol' nerd like me), and online language games & puzzles. So cool!! I've added the Italian word of the day widget to the side of this blog.

Puppies, Pasta, & Pictures (What More Could You Ask For?)

Forget Pavlov and his bells...nothing makes my dogs salivate like cheese. I was feeling energetic (despite never actually going to bed last night), so I decided to try making the Creamy Baked Mac & Cheese recipe I found on the smitten kitchen blog a few days ago. What a success! Between three people and two dogs, we finished almost the entire pan. Tomorrow I'm going to try baking her Crispy Salted Oatmeal White Chocolate Cookies (that's a mouthful!). I've got some sea salt, but I don't know if it's the "flaky" kind (I'm not so fancy!)...but I think it'll taste about the same. *crosses fingers*

Picture Post

(click to enlarge!)

Here are some of my favorite photographs that I've taken. Most were taken within the last few months, although a couple are a bit older. Top row, L-R: me, roses, a Chihuly glass sculpture on display at the Wichita Art Museum, my dog Max (mid-bark!). Bottom row, L-R: peanut butter & banana cupcakes (from PupSnacks), my college roommate Ariane, the Rosemary raglan (one of my own knitting designs), cotton embroidery floss bobbins.

New Blog

I'm starting over. Tabula rasa and all that jazz. I used to be hyper-dedicated to my blog, A Story About Loving, for which I'd signed up using my old college email address (at the time, my primary account). Since then I've graduated from college and onto Gmail, and signing into Blogger with a different account has become an annoyance. Thus my lovely blog and her crafty supplement, Agnellino, have fallen by the wayside. This new (and possibly improved?) site is now under the ever-expanding umbrella of my Gmail account, so gone are my excuses to be a lazy blogger.

Instead of a boring autobiographical sketch, here are 10 random facts:

1. My all-time favorite book is Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman, although a very close runner-up is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.
2. When I was in high school, I participated in a few community art projects at CityArts. My favorite was CANstruction, in which several teams competed to build "sculptures" out of cans of food. My team, which won Best in Show, constructed a giant ear of corn using cans of corn and sauerkraut. After the competition, all of the cans were donated to the Kansas Food Bank.
3. My favorite colors are brown and yellow. Brown makes me feel cozy and warm, while yellow is sunny and fresh.
4. One of my favorite sounds in the world is the sound my oven makes when opening & closing. The oven is original to the house, which was built in the 1950s. The sound it makes reminds me of my mother baking cookies.
5. I can't think of a better way to spend a Sunday morning than snuggling up with my sweetheart and solving a sudoku puzzle together.
6. I have a dog who likes to walk on two legs and give hugs and eat bananas. His full name is Maximus Stinkimus Porkimus Dorkimus, but we just call him Max. And he will literally take you down for some cinnamon toast!
7. My sweetheart is from Italy, and since his parents don't speak English, I'm trying to learn Italian. So far I'm not doing so hot. But if there's a dog jumping somewhere, or I need to identify a nose, I'm totally set.
8. I'm obsessed with babies and Christmas ornaments.
   
9. I love to buy cooking magazines, but just for the pictures. I almost never cook anything from a magazine (except for the Betty Crocker magazines you can get at the grocery store). I think La Cucina Italiana is like the Penthouse of food porn.
10. My favorite candies in the entire world are those little strawberry hard candies wrapped up to look like strawberries. I've always loved them, and until I see scientific proof that they cause some horrible disease that makes your brain bleed out through your ears, I will continue to love them until I die. In fact, I'm just going to say it now, I'd like to be buried with some--just in case I'm not actually dead and I need something to cheer me up after I realize that I've been buried alive by my nearest & dearest.