Sunday Spinning!

Taken with Instagram

“I know that spinning sets me in a trance; it soothes me and charges my batteries at the same time. When times are tough I sit down to spin during the news-broadcasts, with therapeutic results.”
― Elizabeth Zimmermann, Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitter's Almanac

I first started to get interested in spinning when I got interested in knitting socks. I have been trying to get enough yarn spun so that I could finally have a pair of handspun socks. First the yarn was too thick. Then the yarn was perfect, but I just didn't have enough of it to make a pair of socks without a coordinating color. So, I am trying again.

I am spinning up the rest of the KnitPicker Corriedale fiber in the Buckleberry colorway. I love how this yarn is turning out to be. It is mostly blue with shots of purple in the single. I am planning on spinning it all up and then N-plying the single. The fiber in the picture is only half of the remaining fiber left. I just split it up into smaller and more manageable bundles before I started to spin it.

I was so focused on trying to make it into the perfect sock yarn that I put it down for a long time. I had to admit to myself that I wouldn't spin if I was so focused on the end product that it would suck the joy of spinning out for me. Spinning is soothing and magical in how it works. It shouldn't be something that I obsess over. I have enough things to worry about in my life. Spinning is relaxing and it should be fun to do too. So I am now spinning it up as my default weight which will end up being a good three-ply sock yarn anyway.

Can I Make a Boring Stir-Fry?

leftover pork and vegetable stir fry

“...no one is born a great cook, one learns by doing.” ― Julia Child, My Life in France

Once you have been in college without knowing how to cook and all you can make is mac 'n cheese or ramen, you gain a whole new appreciation for the simple stir-fry. This is a dish that simply does not get old because you can make it so many different ways. It can be as simple or as complex as you need it to be and it can hold a variety of different flavors. Best of all, depending on how you make it, it can be perfect for calorie counters.

However, there will come a time where you can just get in a rut with stir-fry. You will become comfortable using certain things in certain places. When the last five you made ended up having the same base of onion while having the second main ingredient as rice, you might be stuck in a rut. That was where I was a few days ago. I wasn't sure how to go about changing my stir-fry into something just as tasty as the ones I have made and still have a good flavor. So, I turned to the internet for some inspiration.

My favorite base to use in a stir-fry is onion, but it never crossed my mind that there might be more than one way to cook an onion. I would normally grease my pan up with some Pam and then throw the onion in with some green bell pepper and cook them until the onion was translucent. With the help of Simply Recipes, I figured out how to caramelize an onion. I always thought that caramelizing was an advanced cooking technique, but that post made it simple to understand just how it was done.

For lunch that day I prepared all of the ingredients I wanted with some minor changes. I used a whole onion because I knew that the onion would cook down during the caramelizing process. I kept my green bell pepper because I wasn't tired of it yet. I left out the rice and put in some leftover green beans and a carrot. Then I threw in a handful of sliced almonds with the leftover cooked pork. Finally I used low sodium soy sauce with ground mustard instead of my usual orange ginger stir-fry sauce. I also used olive oil to start the stir-fry.

Best of all, the entire plate was a reasonable 582 calories*. The only reason the calorie count was so high was because of the olive oil to start the process out with and the pork has a higher calorie count than the rest of the veggies combined. But when I compare that amount to the dinner I had that day (McDonalds) I would say that 582 calories is much better than 900 calories. (and that isn't even including the drink I had!)

It was just the right amount and filled me up for the rest of the day until dinner. I consider that a very tasty and interesting success.

*calorie counts according to myfitnesspal.com

Second Sock Blues

“As usual, the sock yarns have no idea what is going on.” ― Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, All Wound Up: The Yarn Harlot Writes for a Spin

I love knitting socks. I love the fact that I can get a perfect pair of socks that fit my feet like a fine leather glove. I love the fact that I can take one sock with me wherever I am going and be perfectly content no matter what happens. I even love that one sock can look so different from the other sock because of slight differences in the way the yarn was dyed.

I simply cannot stand actually knitting the second sock sometimes. When it is a complicated pattern, I can usually push through the second sock with no problem at all. The pattern either becomes soothing or interesting to knit again. The trouble comes when I want nothing more than a pair of vanilla socks with a rolled hem at the top. The second sock just becomes so boring, but I want the end product so badly that I keep knitting anyway.

The yarn is the big savior in this second sock. It is spiraling instead of stacking on top of itself. Even better, the cuff spirals one way while the leg of the sock is spiraling a different way. This makes the whole thing more visually interesting even though the knitting is so simple. I think I am reacting this way because my life has become easy enough that I want something challenging to distract me. But I started something simple and I have to finish. If I let myself become distracted now, I will never want to finish this pair of socks.

This might be a good time to get caught up on my television shows.

Why I Love Herbs

 “Until I discovered cooking, I was never really interested in anything.” - Julia Child

 I love to eat, but I was never interested in learning how to cook. It was too slow for me and I was much happier reading to take time and ask my mom or dad to show me how to make something more complicated than a bowl of cold cereal. I was also taught that something that took time wasn't really worth doing when there was more important things that I could have been doing. So I never learned how to cook.

This isn't to say that my mom and dad were bad cooks. Everything that they learned to do came from one amazing woman, my grandmother. They are good cooks, but when I was little they were so busy that every other day was one fast meal after another. It was a treat for holidays when they slowed down enough to cook extravagant meals or when my mom slowed down enough to bake a cake or a loaf of bread.

A few months ago I was having problems with pain whenever I ate anything that contained meat or a lot of fat. I was at college and my first instinct was to change my diet and just not eat the things that would make me hurt. This resulted in me going vegan for a few months until we figured out that it wasn't any weird sudden allergy to food, but it was my gallbladder causing me the trouble. During this time I got interested in cooking.

I started out small. stir-fries became my best friend during my stint as a vegan. After a while, my pile of veggies became less and less appetizing because they started to taste the same no matter if I used soy sauce or another type of stir-fry sauce. That was when I had to admit to myself that I really didn't know how to cook.

Fast-forward to now and my problem with my gallbladder is gone (thanks to my wonderful doctor and surgeon), but my desire to learn how to cook is still the same. I remembered that my parents have a spice rack and I discovered it in a big way. I have started to make savory pancakes with thyme, nutmeg, and allspice. Garlic is not the only herb that I throw into my stir-fries any longer. Now they are packed with mustard and basil if I want to up the heat or with rosemary and lemon if I want to play up the sweeter flavors. Sage makes an excellent punch in scrambled eggs or even on a plain fried egg along with a little fresh ground black peppercorn.

Herbs and spices have made exploring cooking fun and interesting.What most people don't realize is that using herbs does not mean "spicy", it just means more flavor. People need to open up their minds and their spice cabinets and just see what one new herb can do.

30 Days of Blogging Challenge

It is August and I have blogged a total number of eight times in the last eight months. I used to blog all of the time when I had my older blogs and I really enjoyed it. So, I am going to be doing something a little different this month. On Tumblr I enjoy doing 30 Days of Challenges, so why can't I do something similar with my normal blog? In essence, it would give me a prompt, it would help me start writing again, and hopefully it will provide you with a little bit of entertainment.

Each day will include these:

1. Theme: Knits, Food, or Frills with none of these repeating more than twice in a row
2. Quote of the Day
3. Picture of the Day

This means that the blog might look a little something like this:

Day 1:
1. Theme: Knits
2. Focus on Theme: Blankets
3. Knitting Quote of Day
4. Picture of a blanket

Day 2:
1. Theme: Food
2. Focus on Theme: Stir-Fry
3. Cooking Quote of Day
4. Picture of stir-fry

Day 3:
1. Theme: Knits
2. Focus on Theme: Baby Booties
3. Knitting Quote of Day
4. Picture of baby booties

Day 4:
1. Theme: Knits
2. Focus on Theme: Sewing
3. Knitting Quote of Day
4. Picture of sewing project

Day 5:
1. Theme: Frills
2. Focus on Theme: Nail Polish
3: Fashion/Beauty/Inspirational Quote of Day
4. Picture of nail polishes/nail art

And so on. As you can see, none of the topics repeat more than twice in a row. I am using the term "knits" to cover all crafting, "food" to cover all food/home/tea stuff, and "frills" to cover all fashion/beauty things.

I think this would be a very fun way to do this blog for a month and hopefully get me blogging more again. If anyone wants to have a fun challenge of their own, feel free to take my guidelines and manipulate them to your own blog theme. If you end up doing so, leave me a comment. It would be interesting to see what you do with it.