it's that season again!

Every year, the spiders come in droves, and I start having nightmares about the darn crawlers. Last night I dreamt I went to yoga and while I was in some ridiculous pose, a hoard of spiders started swarming around me.

ok. but seriously, it's not just spider season. It's the season where I get the bug to start planting. This year, I've planted three tomato varieties: Oregon Spring (a short season tomato, so I should get some early tomatoes), Old German (a beautiful bicolor tomato), and Brandywine. Now you might be thinking, "gah lori! it's a bit early/cold still to be planting tomatoes, doncha know!" But to you, I say "phhhhhhhhhbtt!"
I don't know when I'm going to start moving away to grad school, and I want to get the possibility of tomaters in this season. Plus, I've got my wall-o-water. See:


I saw these at Wegman's last year, but by then I didn't need them. It's basically just some plastic tubes you fill with water that help retain the heat around the plant during the early season. Here's a pic of one of my tomatoes in the wall:


I've also decided this year I would try companion planting more. Hence the marigolds around my tomato plants. They're supposed to help ward off pests... we'll see how that goes. Apparently, mint and basil also are great companions to tomatoes, so those have now been added to a couple of the barrels.

I've also convinced my mom to let me plant a bunch of tomatoes, veggies, and herbs in her backyard this year. They get a TON of sun, and have a lot of space so I think it will be perfect, and a good way for me to plant other varieties in hopes of harvest. I'm planning on planting Stupice, Hawaiian Pineapple, Green Zebra, Early girl, and Marvel Stripe. I'll also probably do a big boy or better boy for them.

I found this photo on my camera. It's of an amazing chickpea stew. This was absolutely delicious, although I edited the recipe slightly and added the whole can of diced tomatoes (i think 28 oz... Cook's Illustrateds says Muir Glen is the best brand)and all of the chickpea broth. It was so tasty, economic, and would feed an army!




Here's evan's bro, Sean, and his Tufts girly (i can't remember her name) sitting down to our vegetarian dinner:

Back-to-work blues…

**Twang** Oh yeah, I got the back-to-work blues **oh yeah**. (How appropriate that it was country night on American Idol). Ya know—those deep sighs that come with having to step back into the real world after living a different life for a week. Our vacation ended with the erv and me getting back at midnight last night to find two needy (and a bit fat—or at least asha has gotten pretty tubular and popped her collar off due to a chubbier neck) kitties.

Evvie and I took Stanford’s Spring Break off to visit my Aunt and Uncle at their house on Lake Washington. We went to coffee shops (between my meetings at the U) and met up with our friend Henry at the Malay Hut near Microsoft’s campus. Despite all weather reports that said it would rain the whole week, every morning we woke up to a beautiful view of the sun on the lake. Evan managed to find the local 99 Ranch, and cooked up some delicious tendon and oxtail stew for all of us to enjoy.



The oxtail and tendon were superbly done, and they tasted much better than the fusion/pan-asian cuisine we had for lunch the first day of vacation at Chinoise when we went to Wallingford. I had a hankerin’ for sushi that day, but after heading toward the sushi restaurant, we decided to try the fusion restaurant next door.


The food was Vietnamese/Japanese.


Evan liked his curry, but I really found my noodle dish rather lacking. It did look pretty though:


Overall the trip was actually fairly busy during the week last week. But Sunday, evan and I kicked back and popped Spongebob Squarepants the movie into the dvd player. Much to our surprise and enjoyment, my uncle (quite a busy man these days) jetted upstairs to join us on the couch, as this movie has been on his netflix queue for a while as well. I found the movie really funny/weird. I can’t really see how children would have enjoyed it as much as adults, in fact, if I were a child, I think it would have confused and frightened me. As it was, I really enjoyed Spongebob’s references to public radio and weird hangovers.

Here’s a couple of pics I’ve been meaning to post from my travels over the past couple of months:

Evvie braving the cold cold Chicago weather:


The numbers pavilion in front of the math department in Columbus:


The fun/dorky café in the physics building in Seattle:

food porn and social psychology on TV

This is the breton butter cake I made last night. I have gone back and forth about posting this next picture of the breton butter cake... because it really is... food porn.



And yet, I still like the picture a lot! For those of you who own ervy and my first "tried and true" recipe compilation, this recipe is in there. For those of you who don't own that, the cake, is more of a layered pastry. Originally found in food & wine.

Breton Butter Cake

pizza dough
1 stick cold butter
3/4 C sugar plus some for sprinkling

You start with pizza dough, roll it out into as flat a rectangle as you can. Using 1 stick of butter cut into 16 pieces, scatter 5 pieces over 2/3 of the dough with 1/4 C sugar.

Fold unsugared part over the center and over once again, like you're folding a business letter. Roll out into a thin rectangle again and repeat the process. Do this one more time, then fold the ends in to the center to make a dough pouch.

Place dough pouch upside down in a buttered cast iron skillet. Cover and let rise for 40 min.

Brush with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar. Cut 2" slices all the way through the pastry in a star burst pattern. Bake in 450 degree oven for 25 min.

The Breton Butter Cake was really just a great finale to a wonderful meal last night. Having eaten simply and cheaply the past few days, I thought I'd make something a little nicer for the erv and myself.

Last night I went all frenchy, and made a quick Coq Au Vin, a delicious potato and cream gratin, and an endive & walnut salad with a dijon mustard vinagrette and crumbled blue cheese.

I've never made Coq Au Vin before, and I found in my Saveur french cookbook a recipe that took a day in advance of preparation. Luckily, I'm an avid food blog reader, and I had saved the KQED Bay Area Bites recipe for fast Coq Au Vin. Wow was that good! Evan and I were seriously sucking the chicken bones like gluttons! I used four free range whole chicken legs from whole foods, and I was peeved to see that the chicken actually cost less than the two bell peppers the recipe called for! That's what I get for eating bell peppers out of season...

I mean, do these look like they should cost almost $8???!!

Admittedly, the are rather large... but I just didn't think they would be that expensive. lame.

Anyhow, the gratin I made turned out beautifully. And I got to pull out my pretty red Zyliss mandoline which honestly sees way too little use.

Gratin Recipe

2 1/2 large organic russet potatoes peeled & sliced 1.5 mm thick
2 C heavy cream
2 C whole milk
salt
freshly ground pepper and nutmeg

layer potato slices in a 2Qt baking dish. Mix milk and cream together and pour over the potatoes. Bake at 275 degrees for 1 1/2 hrs. Make sure you have a pan under this as the cream mixture can boil and spill over the dish sides. Take gratin out and season with salt, pepper, and ground nutmeg. Crank the oven up to 400 degrees. Bake gratin for 30 more minutes.

Next time, I may try to make each person a single serving of gratin in small ramekins. This gratin has no cheese, and so no binding to keep the cream together. But if kept in its own little dish, it would be perfect, as it is so rich and delicious that it doesn't need cheese.


Psychology on TV

So I caught the first episode of Unan1mous on tv after American Idol (yes, I admit, I can't tear myself away from the singing... Mandisa, your voice astounds me!!). I kept thinking throughout the episode, "Man, if this were a psych experiment, this would never ever make it through human subjects protocol." In fact, it brought to mind ideas of Zimbardo's prison experiment, and whether it was ethical to treat people this way for entertainment's sake.

If you didn't watch the show, or haven't seen the previews, the premise of the show is that there is 1.5 million dollars to give away, but all the participants have to decide to give it to one person. The people are stuck in a windowless bunker, and told when to sleep. With no idea of time, the producers could be majorly messing with these people biological rhythms to induce higher stress levels. Man, I just don't know, but I kept thinking... this show is really really wrong. Why should we get entertainment value out of suffering?

Anyhow, another social psych reality show I've been following avidly is Black. White. Those of you who know me probably know that I study issues of race and prejudice, so I HAD to TiVo this show. The premise of this show is that they take a black family and make them up to look white, and they take a white family and make them up to look black and then they follow them around in their interactions. The funny thing, is I was just thinking about studying something similar, but in a totally different way. At the Society for Personality and Social Psychologists Conference this year, I met someone at Columbia University who had done something very similar using Virtual Reality (a technology that I've been contemplating using).

neglected things

As my life seems to charge full speed ahead, several things I love are silently standing by, waiting to get attention again.

There's my knitting of course. This poor scarf was started right after Valentines Day with the wonderful pink yarn Ervy got me from Full Thread Ahead. I decided I wanted a long narrow scarf, and I based it off the stitch pattern for Sheep in the City's My So Called Scarf.



Ha, you can't tell how short it is from this picture. Notice how I slyly cut off the ends of the picture so you can't see just how little work I've been able to do on it. It could be miles long.... you just don't know!


Now, I am disturbed that I seem to have some sort of ridge/space that has formed in the scarf... What am I doing wrong?

And then, there's my neglected garden. What do you suppose this is?



Why it's broccoli, can't you tell? Of course it looked more like broccoli before I forgot to harvest it. All the green florets sprang to life with pretty yellow flowers. I did get to eat the first harvest. These were from the second set of offshoots.

And here's my poor cabbage that has yet to ever make it into cabbage form for some reason... but they're like pretty purple flowers anyway :)



Of course I also have some neglected spinning that's still on the Wally the Wheel. Wally has been almost permanently shuffled to one corner of my living room, right next to my neglected drum carder :(

At some point, my life will return to normal (or will it?). For now, I at least know I don't neglect my cats :) In fact, Nikko would often like it if I left him alone more... like this morning, when he was obviously perturbed by the camera shoved in his sleeping face...



For good measure, here's a photo I had meant to put up when Skittle was visiting our house. All three cats, asleep on the futon. I love that Nikko and Asha are butt to butt.

simple eating

It's been odd getting back into work after all my visits. I'm currently having a lot of fun using ipums to look at census and cps/acs data. It just astounds me how much information is at a person's fingertips nowadays! It's actually quite exciting.

Anyhow, I'm mostly working from home on these analyses, so I get to fix myself simple food for lunch or dinner. One of my FAVORITE simple foods to do is just go to Whole Foods and pick up a roast chicken and roast up some veggies to go with it. But really, it's the next day that I LOVE even more! You see, after evan and I have eaten most of the chicken, it becomes... CONGEE DAY!!!



Congee day Recipe

1 left over roast chicken (bones and all)
1 C rice
6 C water/or broth from bones
1 t sea salt

Optional:
handful of sliced mushrooms (I used some leftover portobello slices)
1 century egg cut in quarters

Garnish:
chopped scallions
chopped cilantro
cooked egg
pork sung

1. If you have time you can make a broth from your chicken bones first instead of placing the bones in the slow cooker. I find it easy to throw the bones into the slowcooker too, just make sure you watch for bones when you're eating the congee.

2. Place bones or broth from bones, rice, salt, century egg, and mushrooms in your slow cooker. Cook on low for 6 hours or so.

Garnish and enjoy for an easy tasty meal!

In other news, Jess Dang (in my year at Stanford) apparently didn't make it through the premiere of the Next Food Network Star. On her blog, thepetitepig.com, she discusses the show.

My favorite bit has to be this:

"what did morimoto say to you?:
"i would not serve your food to human beings." no joke. but believe me, when someone like morimoto talks to you even if it's completely negative, you just smile. he's morimoto after all. what a culinary god. did you see what he did to that cucumber?"

still alive

kinda. I think I may be getting sick. I just came back from visiting my first grad school. It was absolutely fabulous. I have so much fun talking with people in my cohort and professors and graduate students about what I want to do research on, and how we could all collaborate together. I even networked on the plane on the way home even though I was exhausted!!!

I ended up sitting next to a hapa prospective PhD student in bio statistics, and we chatted about our research interests, our stress about grad school decisions, and even our family history (we decided that our great grandfathers must have known each other back in China).

I'm about to leave tonight for two more weeks of visiting schools. I'm bouncing from school to school with a humongous suitcase and about 10 lbs of psychology papers to read! I'm very tempted to bring knitting, but I'm afraid if I do, I won't do the reading I need to before meeting with more professors. I have finished a Jayne hat again (need to weave in the ends), and started a My So Called Scarf with some GORGEOUS pink yarn that ervy bought me for Valentines Day! Last night I was so sad I hadn't touched my spinning wheel in a while that I started spinning a beautiful combination of earthy natural brown wool I picked up from the farmer's market and some light white an blue cloud-like wool I processed.

Anyhoosit, just coming up for a quick breath before I stomp out of here...

LMAO!

okay, so one of my potential advisors called me to say he really wants me to join his research program, and while he's asking me whether I had any further questions for him, Nikko jumps from the floor onto MY HEAD!

Of course, I had been intensely listening to the potential advisor, and trying not to make any bumbling statements (as is often the case). But when the cat hit my noggin', I yelled into the phone... followed by a quick and profuse apology to the professor on the other end.

Man, Nikko! bad timing kitty! Nikko, you're lucky I love you so much!

sp7 questionaire

1. Are you a yarn snob (do you prefer higher quality and/or natural fibers)? Do you avoid Red Heart and Lion Brand?
I'm not a yarn snob. I adore high end fibers, but I also use lion brand for projects. I am fine with acrylic as long as it's soft and cuddly.

2. Do you spin? Crochet?
I spin on an Ashford Traditional Wheel.

3. What do you use to store your needles/hooks in?
pitchers, needle rolls, balls of yarn :)


4. How long have you been knitting? Would you consider your skill level to be beginner, intermediate or advanced?
3 years. I'd say intermediate.

5. Do you have an Amazon or other online wish list?
yes. It's here

6. What's your favorite scent? (for candles, bath products etc.)
vanilla or gardenia... I'm so boring.

7. Do you have a sweet tooth? Favorite candy?
yes. I LOVE dark chocolate and gummy things! I've really enjoyed violet crumbles in the past or just yummy chocolate truffles.

8. What other crafts or Do-It-Yourself things do you like to do?
Sew, make cards, origami, make jewelry

9. What kind of music do you like? Can your computer/stereo play MP3s? (if your buddy wants to make you a CD)
indie bands. some of my favs are Death Cab for Cutie, Postal Service, The Tragically Hip, Beulah, Mates of State, The New Pornographers, and The Shins.
so if it sounds along those lines, I'll probably like it.

10. What's your favorite color? Or--do you have a color family/season/palette you prefer? Any colors you just can't stand?
I love blue. beyond that, I really digging earthy tones right now!

11. What is your family situation? Do you have any pets?
I live with my boyfriend and two kitties named Asha and Nikko and a guinea pig named Mesquite (skeeter)

12. Do you wear scarves, hats, mittens or ponchos?
scarves, hats, mittens yes... ponchos... no

13. What is/are your favorite yarn/s to knit with?
really soft ones, or ones I spin :)

14. What fibers do you absolutely *not* like?
scratchy, squeaky acrylic

15. What is/are your current knitting obsession/s?
lace shawls

16. What is/are your favorite item/s to knit?
lace shawls and hats

17. What are you knitting right now?
lace cowl, hat

18. Do you like to receive handmade gifts?
yes

19. Do you prefer straight or circular needles?
circs all the way baby!

20. Bamboo, aluminum, plastic?
bamboo or aluminium

21. Do you own a yarn winder and/or swift?
i own both :)

22. How did you learn to knit?
online instruction

23. How old is your oldest UFO?
too old to say w/o embarrassment

24. What is your favorite animated character or a favorite animal/bird?
hello kitty

25. What is your favorite holiday?
thanksgiving

26. Is there anything that you collect?
yarn, vintage knitting magazines, cookbooks

27. What knitting magazine subscriptions do you have?
i think mine are running out now

28. Any books, yarns, needles or patterns out there you are dying to get your hands on?
heartstrings flame ring neck cowl pattern i think

29. Are there any new techniques you'd like to learn?
entrelac, more lace

30. Are you a sock knitter? What are your foot measurements?
nope. i've knit one sock, I never knit the 2nd. I wear size 8 1/2 womens shoes

31. When is your birthday? (mm/dd)
08/04

bloggin' from my own computer again!!!!

The lighting in my kitchen through the colors off on this, but I love watermelon radishes; I love the way they taste, and I love the way they look. I find they taste the best roasted up with fennel, parsnips, and onions, but a little pan cooking in butter is always tasty too!

I'm excited to see my friend Stacey tonight! She just got engaged, and we're going to a place called Barclay in Berkeley for drinks and gossip. Unfortunately, there will be no vodka tonics for me since it's mainly a beer and food place (I hope they have some nice yummy dark ales or stouts!

kittles
Skittle is becoming a regular fixture around our house. I actually think he will be a little sad when he will have to go home since he loves our cat tree, and has way too much fun chasing Asha and Nikko around the house.



in other great great news, MY COMPUTER IS FIXED!!! I'm so happy about my baby. The apple tech on the phone wasn't able to help, so I finally took it in to the stanford bookstore. As we were discussing data retreival options (btw, the bookstore is awesome about this, they charge $90/hr, but it would probably have only been an hour of work on their part because they would have let me come in to drag and copy the files I wanted on my own time!). While we were talking, the bookstore computer guy took out my battery and pulled out my airport card and pushed it in. Voila! He turned it on, and all worked perfectly--no kernel panics, no booting to open-firmware... HUZZAH!

I'll admit, I'm such a geek attached to my computer. I almost cried when it came back to life. Honestly, I had tears in my eyes and I was a bit sniffly! And it was such an easy fix. People had been telling me my motherboard or my ram might have gone bad. I had tried resetting the PRAM and all these other commands that people on help boards suggested. No one suggested this, and it was SO easy. Apparently, the bookstore people just noticed a few computers having this problem in the past month. So the Apple techs don't even have it in their debugging binder checklists!!

So, for those of you who search google because your Apple Powerbook G4 running OS X boots to open firmware or you get an error: ALLOC-MEM request too big! try first pulling out your airport card and pushing it in all the way. If it doesn't fix your problem, no harm no foul, but if it does, think about all the anxiety and money you may be saving!

To get to the airport card, remove the battery on the back of your powerbook using a coin to unlock it.


Your airport card is on the right side, hidden behind a little metal door flap. There's a plastic strip you can use to pull out the airport card slightly (just about a half inch), then push it back in all the way. Reloop the plastic back as you found it so you can close the door. Stick in your battery and see if your computer works!


Sorry for my regular readers for this random delving into tech support. I felt it was my duty as a blogger to get this info out onto the web to help people, since the first thing I did when my computer died was to search the net about its errors. If I had run across this problem, I could have had a happy computer much sooner!

Weekend fun!

I had such a fun weekend! Friday night, we kept things low key and had Fuson over and played San Juan until 2am. We had been craving blackened catfish, but last week the seafood counter at Whole Foods had slim pickings due to the storms earlier. We ended up buying a whole snapper and having the guy fillet it on the spot. It was fine, but I'm still craving catfish!

Saturday, evvy and I went to work out at EA. I like it much better on the weekends when there are fewer people in the gym. I also feel better about changing one of the TVs to watch food tv while on the elliptical. For some reason, watching food just makes me forget that I'm actually exercising at the same time.

Speaking of food, I found myself salivating over the muffins on the Whole Foods recent mailer. The recipe is for Granola & Applesauce Muffins, although I modified it a bit. I really like these. They're simple and delicious. In the future, I think I would add more oats.


Here's my modified version of the printed recipe:

Oatmeal & Applesauce Muffins

1.5 cups old fashioned rolled oats
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/4 cup chopped dried cranberries
1 cup all purpose unbleached flour
2/3 cup whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1.5 cups Applesauce
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup brown sugar
5 Tb canola oil
2 eggs
pinch of salt
2 Tb good local honey (I used orange honey)
rolled oats for topping

Preheat oven to 400F. Combine oats, walnuts, dried cranberries, flours, salt, baking powder and baking soda in a large bowl. In another bowl, whisk together applesauce, milk, sugar, honey, oil, and eggs. Add to dry ingredients and mix just until combined. Divide evenly into muffin tins (use either a non-stick pan or muffin papers) and fill 3/4 full. Sprinkle extra oats (if you would like you can sprinkle a little sugar on top as well to give it a little more sweetness) on top and bake 18-20 minutes or until tester inserted in center comes out clean. Let cool slightly and remove to a cooling rack. Makes 9-12 muffins.

Saturday night we headed over to Hilary and Steven's new place for Hilary's birthday party. We had a great time playing an old school game called "Pit" (Minli, in case you're reading this from Italy, I think you'd like this game). It's a commodities trading game that Hilary had enjoyed playing while growing up. In fact, she still had the same 1980's colored set from her youth (very cool and kitch). Basically, the game involves lots of yelling, hand-waving, and swapping of cards. We all agreed the game would be super enjoyable while drunk, but alas, we stayed sober for the drive home. We ended up staying at Hilary's house until 2:30am ish chatting with Marie. We're so excited to meet another cat lover (she has FOUR in her apartment), gamer (board/cards) and foodie (she's been to cooking school!). Hey Marie if you somehow read this, I'm totally excited to visit you for movie night and try some of the fabulous Chai you speak of!

Sunday, I woke up late and immediately started using this yarn I spun up:

I spun this up to have lots of texture and color. I had planned to make a bag for myself, but I wanted to make something fun for my friend Marlow since I haven't seen her in ages. I ended up making a cute little bag that I totally meant to take a picture of. I madly knitted and seamed the bag up in the car on the way to see Marlow and Tara. It was great catching up with the two of them and meeting Tara's dog Olive.
Here we are trying to look cute:


and here we are being a bit crazy:


kitty progress
The three kitties get along pretty well now. Friday, all slept peacefully in Skittle's room on the futon:


Nikko and Skittle have a ton of fun playing with each other, running around at top speed. I like it best when the little guy finally tuckers out and arrives purring at my lap ready for a nap.

sp6 who are you?

Now that the holidays are over, and I've photographed the wonderful things I've received in the mail, it's time to blog about them...


My wonderful SP6 sent me this GORGEOUS journal that even has pockets (how cool is that?!) and a mix cd (it was played at several holiday gatherings!), and a bunch of those yummy reese's peanut butter cups that were enjoyed by all who stopped by my abode this season!

Thanks so much SP6.... now I realize that I've recycled the box that these goodies came in, so I do not know who you are... Please let me know so I can give you a proper thank you!

I also need to send out a big thank you to all my stitch marker swap partners (Bethanie, Audrey(aka Pixie Sticks), Elspeth, Bradley & Joy). Look at the wonderful gifts and beautiful markers they sent along to me:





Wow, I'm super excited to start a new lace shawl soon with all these beautiful stitchmarkers! Thanks so much!

Here's a pic of the stitchmakers I sent out to people:


This holiday was filled with SO much good food! Ervy and I will be trying to eat healthier (for at least a little while), and I'm meeting him later at the gym to try to burn off a few of those oh-so-tasty rum cake calories!

I'll sign off with a pic I'd like to name "2 dorks and a goose." We served roast goose to Evan's family for Christmas along with Yorkshire pudding, sweet potato casserole, cheesy broccoli, stuffing, and rum cake.

oh my god, we're so dorky.

my computer went kaput!

My laptop that has gone almost everywhere with me since purchasing it (only about 1.5 yrs ago) died. Hopefully it will go to the bookstore where it will still be under warranty (i bought the applecare protection program when i bought the comp, although i only just activated it) where they will recover all my data and replace whatever needs fixin'. The bookstore guy said he thought it might be the motherboard going bad. My poor baby won't even turn on at all, and it was working fine just yesterday.

I'm determined not to let this interfere with my intentions to keep blogging. Luckily, I still have a few photos in photobucket that I've been meaning to blog about.

For instance, I could show you a picture of what my wonderful ervy got me for Christmas this year.
Last year he bought me Wally, my spinning wheel, so topping that was going to be pretty hard. But you see, I think my sweetie pays close attention to my craigslist and ebay searches. This Christmas I opened up a box to find this:


He found me a drum carder!!! I of course went to work immediately trying to blend and learn how to use it. Here are a few of the carded batts I've made and tied up for safe keeping. I've already spun up about 3 batts not pictured here!


I've actually found that carding the Merino X wool I've washed has made it much easier to spin. I plan to wash more of Alice's fleece so I can make some more wonderfully soft merino skeins. My merino singles are about sport weight/lace weight right now, so I intend to ply. Yay for spinning! Maybe I'll spin some more tonight to keep my mind off my computer.

Skittle seems to find my spinning wheel a bit scary though. Speaking of the little fur ball, I am constantly amazed at how much energy he has (and appetite). While I'm at work (and while we're sleeping), Skittle lives in the second bedroom where he can look out onto the neighbors and out at the squirrels that dig up my pots on the balcony. As soon as I open that door when I'm home, he runs out and darts about the whole house (minus my bedroom--the only place I fear he might get lost). He's a complete spaz, and darts here and there playing with everything, pouncing on Nikko, trying to eat food off our tables, etc. Both Asha and Nikko were about 6 months when we got them, and they didn't have quite this much energy. It's certainly hard to get the little guy to settle down and sit on a lap, but I'm sure that would come with age.

visiting kittles

Lookie at the cute little squirt of a kitty I get to cat sit for 2.5 weeks!


He's such a cute little rascal, and he's so pint sized next to bear-like nikko. Cat introductions with Skittle, Nikko, and Asha are going much quicker and much easier than with just nikko and asha. Skittle seems to want to rule the roost. He doesn't seem to realize he's a 1/3 of nikko's size. He'll charge at nikko (who normally yawns or bats back without claws as if it's a game). Asha is wary of skittle, but she doesn't go after him. She just hisses at him if he comes too close to her. I predict they'll be napping next to each other very soon.

rum cakery
As previously mentioned, this holiday I made rum cake in bundt form!


The ervy gifted me with not one, not two, but THREE Nordicware bundt pans I had been eyeing. I used this rum cake recipe to christen the pans. Oh my, what a christening. It's quite tasty. I used the full recipe in one big normal sized bundt pans. It didn't quite rise all the way to the top, but it worked out anyway!

Rum Cake Bundt recipe

Happy Holidays!

Specifically, Happy New Year!


Here Ervy and I pose with my friends Hilary and Steven and our Christmas tree after some holiday gaming (San Juan, I believe).

I'm downloading photos from my camera right now so I can try to catch up on all the blogging I missed. Although, I was a poor blogger the past couple months, I did manage to whip out a camera during key times such as:

when my flower basket shawl was finished and blocking


It's my first finished lace project, and I made a bijillion mistakes (but didn't fix them), and I love it anyway. It's earmarked as my grandma's xmas gift, but she was in HK this holiday season to visit my aunt's family, and so she'll get it later :) Here's a close-up for my own pleasure.


Also this holiday season, there was yummy foodage.

There were large turkey tamales (made in a meatloaf pan):

This was one of the ways we used up leftover turkey. We also did sesame turkey noodles, turkey curry, turkey congee, & turkey donburi style in our effort to make turkey new and exciting every day we revisited it.

This season I also found the magic of Yorkshire Pudding. I had no idea what this was, but I wanted to include it on my Christmas menu for my family (I also made figgy pudding - really it's a cake using figs and craisins). Yorkshire pudding is magical to watch cook. It's basically just a bit of flour and egg, salt and milk thrown into a pan of 450F 3Tbl roast drippings (we roasted a goose which gave us soooo much drippings). The pudding starts to arch and create really tall walls at the sides of the pan and then rise in the middle, leaving you with this weird architectural edible creation worthy of some tasty gravy and meat.


There's more to talk about, but I need to get the photos of stitchmarkers and sp gifts off the camera. Suffice to say, there is more yumminess and craftiness talk on the way, I just needed to get my lazy blogger butt back into the blogosphere!

Preview for next time (Rum Cake heaven):

brief post

sorry for being absent! I have lots of thank yous for my secret pal and stitch marker swappers! Unfortunately, things won't settle down with apps till dec 15th... I'll be back then!

Guest Blogging: Mail foodie goodness

Hey, wait, you’re not Lori! What’re you doing here?

I’m guest-blogging you silly people! Lori is underwater (not literally) trying to get all her grad apps and such done so I’m tending (literally) to some bloggy business. Normally, I live over at skeet’s place (Skeeter is our guinea pig) and stick to politics and the like. Anyhow, onward, to the blogging!

Oh, procrastination! How you have bested us with your alluring laziness and welcoming slothy embrace.

We have been remiss in blogging about a quite-the-lovely package as part of the Blogging By Mail (3) food-picture-recipe exchange. About a week or so ago we received a box of tastiness and soon-to-be-tastiness from Stef (aka Stefoodie) in faraway Pennsylvania. Stef sent us a bag of Pan de Sal (Filipino bread) along with the recipe for it, a recipe for Ensaymada Espesyal (another kind of bread), her local food-shop flyer, a picture of her kitchen and a nice note.

Unfortunately, the Pan de Sal through either mail mishap or just transit flattened into little squished bread bits, but we’re hoping to whip up a batch of our own. The recipe is super double top secret because Stef is writing a cook book, but I tracked down another one online so you can get the idea.

Here’s all the stuff that popped out of the wonderful box:

The flyer(s)

Nikko (not in the box) on the flyer(s)

The note

Stef’s kitchen

So there you go! Despite our lazitude, we managed to get this up. We’re sending out our package a bit late tomorrow full of tasty vittles.

Thank you, BBM3 Friend (aka Stefoodie)!

illicit cupcake recipes

hmm.. for those who were asking for it...

while I don't know that I can provide the copy of Magnolia's cupcake recipe, let me point out that it may be online somewhere already.

Unfortunately (much to ervy's unending dissappointment), I didn't get to make a cake for my brother. My mom called and told me that they had too much leftover cake from his surprise bday party so they brought over the half of the cake that was left and we shared that too... man, Will totally missed out on that magnolia cake tho!

fah-fah-fah-FRIDAY!

I was so proud of myself for getting my NSF application in yesterday on time (well possibly 2 minutes late, but the site said it was accepted...) and handling all the work on this crazy law review article.

Then this morning I kicked myself. I totally forgot to get tickets to see the Dalai Lama speak on campus today. He's here, and I can't see him *wah!*

I'm seeing my brother tomorrow to celebrate his birthday so I get to bake him a cake *Yay*! I was going to make it shaped like a car, because he just turned 16. But now, I'm thinking it's a bad idea since I just heard he didn't pass the driving test. He's really depressed too, poor kid.