Hat

I didn’t get as much done as I’d like, but I’m just a couple of rows short of a hat for Jeff.

I was going to try out a local yarn shop down here where I’m having Thanksgiving, but it turns out there isn’t one. Since I didn’t already have a yarn I approved of for the fingerless mittens, those will have to wait until I find yarn in a shop near Austin.

I do believe that I will have both Jeff hat and Miriam scarf done by the time I return home on Sunday, and a bit more of my stash turned into something useful!

Happy Side Dishes Day

I always did like the side dishes better. Potatoes, stuffing, green bean casserole, cranberries. These are a lot of my favorite things. I wouldn’t want them all the time, but if you’re going to do it, do it big, right? Maybe that’s just me.

So Jeff took pictures of me periodically from about 1 pm when I started until about 6:30 when it ended. Yes. I cooked for 5.5 hours. And it was SO MUCH FUN. This was about 2 pm when I was chopping butternut squash.

It was a Food Network meal. I made Emerilized Green Bean Casserole (the kind where you use fresh green beans from Jennifer’s garden) and make your own french onions and wild mushroom mushroom soup. Except I used Alton’s baked onion rings from his casserole instead of Emeril’s fried ones.  This is me about 3:30 chopping the last of the veggies – garlic. The squash had finished roasting.

Then I made Roasted Butternut Squah & Maple Soup, also from Emeril, with tarragon oil – fabulous, by the way. Plus I made Michael Chiarello’s Definitive Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes, which are TOTALLY OMG AWESOME. I also made a Celebration Roast (veggie roast) with butternut squash, mushroom and apple stuffing, which I think is better than tofurkey. Oh, and gravy! This was around 5 pm and the food prep was done and things were cooking. Jennifer was pureeing garlic for the potatoes. I had gained an apron. This was Intense Cooking Time.

Did I mention there are two pies? Oh dear, I don’t know how I’m going to eat them. I’m writing this in a lull between food eating and pie. The goal is to stay awake. Seriously. You know what I mean. Don’t lie. This is about 5:30 pm, and Jennifer and I are surprised here by Jeff. The soups are done, the potatoes cooked, the green beans blanched. I’ve used four dutch ovens to cook dinner and 7 bowls, and 3 saucepans, not to mention two baking dishes.

The day was not without injury. I sliced off a bit of my left index finger and grabbed a hot pan. Burns are normal for me, but slicing not so much. Luckily, the finger slice didn’t hurt. I lost feeling in my thumb and first two fingers of my left hand when I had spinal surgery, so it just bled and I went on. You see Wesley is interested in what’s going on. This is around 6:30 pm. There are things in the oven now, and everything’s nearly complete. This is me and MIL in her kitchen.

7 pm. Wrapping up, cleaning up. I’m cooking the garlic puree to put in the potatoes. The soup’s warming. The green bean casserole’s cooking.  The herbs that have been in the foreground all day are finally in the pots. The baked onions are out on the right.

FINALLY DINNER. TASTY.

Hope y’all had a lovely, food-stuffed time with your loved ones. TTFN. I’m going to go have pie.

Queue: the Happy Hooker

I had this post mostly completed yesterday, but I didn’t hit “go” and so I can’t successfully complete NaBloPoMo. Darn! So close! But I developed a migraine yesterday evening, which if you’ll remember is not the type of headache that you can power through. Not that any migraine is fun to ignore, but I end up sounding and feeling quite drunk when the aura of a basilar migraine hits, after I start losing blood flow to my brain. Jeff actually asked last night, “Are you okay? You sound drunk.” And by that point, I’m no longer really functioning. I’ve found things to do to make the migraines less painful and frequent (no caffeine! argh!) since I talked about it last April, but it’s not perfect, and I’m due for another round of head injections, so the headaches are starting to really attack.  I’m pretty happy about these holidays coming up, really.

So this weekend I’m taking the Stitch ‘n Bitch Crochet: Happy Hooker book to my mother-in-law’s where we’re having Thanksgiving. On Thursday, I’m going to cook like a fiend. Jeff and his mom generally regard cooking as something to avoid or make as easy as possible, and favor shortcuts and things. I regard it as a chance to cook something really complex that I normally don’t have time for, and thereby relax and do something really enjoyable.

On Friday I intend to (a) go get extra yarn (like I need any) and then I’m going to (b) sit quietly with my laptop, watch about 6 episodes of Eureka, and (c) make an effort to crochet three items from the Happy Hooker. By the way, if you look up “happy hooker” on Amazon, the results are a pretty funny mix.  The items I’d like to crochet are the One Skein Scarf, Ladylike Lace Gloves and the Boy Beanie (those are Ravelry links, you can’t access them without an account).  Non-ravelry folks: here’s June’s version of the scarf, Monika’s gloves on Flickr and the Boy Beanie courtesy its designer Croshay Design on Flickr. Who knows how far I’ll actually get, but they’re smallish projects, and look like fun And I could really use some quiet me time. I’m really looking forward to it.

Of course, now that I’ve actually been to Croshay Design’s website I want to make those patterns, too. It never ends.