fauxcaccia

you guys. this BREAD.

it's this Peasant Bread recipe, and it's just glorious. easy, quick to throw together, and gooooooood.

i made it in the bowls once last spring, but opted for the 9x13 pan this time around. oh right, and we didn't have any rosemary, so i sprinkled dried basil on top.

presenting: Fauxcaccia!

 just out of the oven...

...and drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with salt, because i may have forgotten to eat today, and i couldn't wait for dinner.

NOMNOMNOMNOMNOM!

please, please, PLEASE make this bread. you won't be disappointed!

pottering

ahhhh, Sunday afternoons. so peaceful, and so full of possibility.

my love lies sleeping (good thing, since she has to work tonight), and so far, i've had one cup of coffee, taken out the trash, done the dishes, and started a batch of peasant bread to go with yesterday's beef/lamb/lentil/veggie soup. the loaf pan is missing in action (oh, chaos muppethood), so i'm going to make faux-focaccia (fauxcaccia?) instead. other household-y plans include taking down the Christmas tree (what? IT'S PRETTY), cleaning the kitchen, and possibly mixing up a baking soda/essential oil carpet deodorizer to sprinkle liberally around the basement in advance of next Sunday's superbowl party.

(which reminds me - i need to have a mindless yarn project to work on in between the commercials.)

last weekend, we went to our favorite antique place for some browsing, and i came home with this:

 a grown-Dragon-sized school chair!!! they had four of them, for $15 apiece, and part of me wants to go back for the other three so we can use them as dining chairs. E doesn't quite share that vision (but she thinks the chairs are neat), however, and I have no business dropping $60 on chairs, so i am contenting myself with one chair-of-my-dreams.

it makes a perfect sewing chair. even more perfect is that i get to paint it whatever color i want! i've settled on a nice turquoise blue, but that's definitely an outdoor project that will have to wait for spring. sigh.

tomorrow will be my second hockey drop-in! and twice this week i made it to the gym and walked 3.1 miles on the treadmill. my goal is to walk 5k twice a week and play hockey once a week for the next month...and then start running. this years' Warrior Dash will actually include dashing, dammit!

i'll leave you with a picture of foster kitty, who is greatly enjoying our hospitality (and is a very pleasant, cuddly, and entertaining guest):

 and who, fortunately for her, has a very narrow butt.

nope.

had nightmares. overslept. started my period. bruised my heel on the metal bed frame. partially melted the vinyl cover of my bolster at work by not realizing it was resting on the plug-in floor light (charred vinyl smells kinda like toasted marshmallows). slipped on snow-covered ice and landed on my shins in the driveway.

all before 1:30pm.

exasperated, my crampy uterus and i took our chinese buffet take-out (which i did NOT drop in the driveway - yay for cat-like goalie reflexes) and a large glass of Coke and retreated to the bathtub...where i promptly knocked over said glass and dumped 1/4 of said Coke into the bathwater (so much for the cat-like goalie reflexes).

sigh.

currently, i am curled up in bed with the cat, a down blankie, and large glass of ice water with lemon, trying to decide how best to salvage the evening. movies and crafting? nap followed by sewing machine fun? hours and hours of browsing Pinterest, perhaps?  i'm not sure which option is the safest! LOL!

***edited to add: Red Wings hockey and crafting - perfect!***

Yay for Monday!

Mondays just might be my new favorite day of the week! tomorrow marks my return to playing hockey on a (i hope) weekly basis! there's a women's drop-in at 9pm - i was going to play last week, but the rink closed early due to the extreme cold. kind of funny, really - too cold for indoor hockey! when's the last time that's happened, i wonder?

we came through the deep freeze just fine. the button on my drivers' side door handle froze solid for four days (i had to reach over from the passenger side to open it), but the Jeep suffered no other ill effects.

on Saturday, i picked up my freshly cleaned and repaired (new bulb, new spring, and new cord insulation) sewing machine from the craft store:

back in April, i picked it up at a garage sale for $10. it worked fine, and came with a carrying case top, the original owners' manual, and all its original parts. it's from the early to mid 1970s and, except for its expanded stitch selection, is the exact same model as my mom's (and hers is still going strong)!

i'm pretty much giddy with excitement!!! the possibilities and projects are endless. ENDLESS! or, they will be, as soon as i learn to thread and use it. (ENDLESSSSS!)

the valentines are coming along nicely. some of the first round are off-center, but that just adds to the homemade charm (right?). i'm dying to post pictures, but some of you will be on the receiving end of these, so for now, a picture of the raw materials will have to do:

mmmmmmmmmmmm. i love candy-colored things!

i've come to realize that i'm happiest when i get an hour or so of creative time every day: trying new recipes, playing with yarn, cutting fabric, you name it! of course it won't always be possible (tomorrow, for example), but on the whole, getting some sort of creative time is pretty vital to my health and well-being. and there's certainly not going to be a project shortage, no ma'am - in addition to the previously posted works in progress (WIPs) and Fun With Sewing ideas, i'm going to give cheesemaking a whirl. I KNOW. the local dairy here makes great milk, rennet tablets just came in the mail, and i've been itching to try a 30-Minute Mozzarella recipe. E says maybe we can make a caprese plate for our Super Bowl party!

last night, E expressed a desire for pudding, and this recipe from Rachael Ray's magazine sprang to mind. i tried it a few years ago when i was living in Wenatchee, and was really happy to find it online! it's a double-chocolate pudding, using both cocoa powder and chopped chocolate, and it's GOOD. especially if you use Special Dark cocoa powder and dark chocolate chips (we don't keep bar chocolate on hand). way better for you, too, because you're controlling the ingredients. no Mystery Chemical Pudding in this house!

that's all for tonight - time to get some sleep. Happy Monday!

snow day!!

both of my clients cancelled today. i wasn't surprised, or upset - it meant more snuggle time with E, and postponing warming up the car/digging out the end of the driveway (*shakes fist at snowplow drivers*)/driving home in a -23F windchill. it was a wonderfully lazy day, balancing nicely with the afternoon/evening's productivity.

so far tonight, i've finished two partially-watched movies (The Hunger Games and Darshan), knitted two inches on my sweater, folded and put away laundry, cleared unnecessary papers/stuff off of two dressers and a desk, made the bed, sorted through/re-organized my bug-out bag, exercised the cat, made a template for the valentines, and figured out how many boards and how much peat moss, vermiculite, and compost we'd need to buy in order to have three 4'x4' square foot garden beds this year.

can we talk about garden porn for a minute? i don't know of many things that are more pleasant than browsing seed catalogs and planning your fantasy garden when there's a foot of snow on the ground. and this year, the first catalog showed up in the mailbox the week before Christmas! YAAAAAAAY!

so far, we've got seeds for rapini, Tom Thumb lettuce, San Marzano and Cherokee Purple tomatoes, Pink Beauty radishes, Provider bush beans, Lincoln peas, Dorata di Parma onions, Moon and Stars watermelons, Detroit (!) Dark Red beets, Genovese basil, a Winter Squash Mix that has a little bit of everything (pie pumpkins, butternuts, acorns, and dumplings), and a Rainbow carrot mix (because why not?). all we need now are soup beans, kale, and corn! i'd like to get one garden bed assembled in time to plant the peas and cool-weather greens this spring. and we're hoping to be living together by then, too, which would make things much easier - this past growing season, between my two jobs/scattered days at E's and E starting her new and very physically demanding job, we lost a lot of produce. it sucked, but we know where we went wrong and are determined to do better this year.

once we get a handle on the vegetable garden, i'd love to get a couple blueberry and blackberry plants. and in a perfect, perfect world (womanifestwomanifestwomanifest), we would have a couple of acres - plenty of room for berry plants, veggies, an asparagus patch, and maybe some grapevines or a small grove of hazelnut trees. and chickens. there WILL be chickens someday!

the roast was a smashing success, by the way - i'm never using any other method again! it was SO GOOD - moist, tender, and flavorful. next time, i'm going to attempt Yorkshire puddings, too. we've never had them, and they've always seemed like such a storybook food to me. i hope they're as good in real life as they are in my imagination!

winter is so great for daydreaming, isn't it?

snowpacalypse

after baking for 24 minutes, the roast is in the (turned-off) oven. it smells terrific already!

E is still asleep, and i'm hanging out on the couch. the tree is lit (yes, it's still up), and the burbling of the fish tank is keeping me company.

i've decided to make a blanket, the baby cowboy hat, and finish the sweater - but only after i make serious progress on/finish the cross-stitch, Christmas ornaments (oh right, and i have to pick next year's), valentines, shark, pajama bottoms, and the play food set for a certain Little V's second birthday.

tonight and tomorrow, though, i'm keeping it simple: cook, eat, watch hockey, snuggle, write three letters that are long overdue, snuggle again, drink coffee, nap, snuggle, and maybe re-watch some episodes of The West Wing. (E's text yesterday about the president being messed up on pain pills was VERY alarming, until i remembered that she'd just started binge-watching that series!)

the grocery store was a madhouse today! there must've been 30 people in each line, and most of them had carts full of the stereotypical things: juice, milk, eggs, beer, bread. want to see what i had in my little cart?

this prompted the best laugh from a fellow customer in the produce aisle: "Meat and a shovel! You are good to go!" :o)

i'm going to monitor the temperature outside closely, because i'm very curious to know what -20 (or more) degrees feels like.

stay warm and safe, readers!

merry

Christmas with a toddler in the house.

woooooooo-eeeeeeee!! so very, very busy, and so very, very fun! it really has been wonderful to have Little V here. giggles and snuggles, endless games of Ring Around the Rosie, endless renditions of Row, Row, Row Your Boat (because Aunt Luckdragon does not know all the words to The Wheels On The Bus), lots of chasing and tickling and reading and just pure, all-around joy.

i made some brown sugar shortbread cookies, and we gave a small piece to Little V. she ate it very solemnly, then signed/said, "More?" so we gave her another piece. "More?" we gave her the rest of the cookie. she ate it. "Anwan (another one)? More?" Nope, we said - no more cookies, they're all gone! She looked at me, then turned and pointed at allllll the cookies on the cooling rack, then looked at me again. TOTALLY called me out! so we told her (mostly truthfully) that the cookies were too hot, and maybe they would cool down later.

 one hungry little bunny, who was also fast asleep. :o)


all in all, it was a wonderful holiday. lots of family time, lots of great food, and even a temporary kitty! she showed up on our back deck on the 23rd, meowing and trying desperately to get in the house. K and J are both very allergic to cats, and we couldn't let her in, so i made her a box shelter full of blankets. the next morning, i fed her some canned chicken, then took her around the neighborhood. nobody recognized her, but she took off between two houses across the street, and we didn't see her for the rest of the day. we were really hoping that she'd found her way home, but when Mom and i got back from church at 12:30am (Merry Christmas!), she came running across the front lawn, meowing all the way.

we brought the kitty in last Sunday, and are trying to find her a home. much as i'd love to keep her, E is also very allergic, and i really can't afford a pet right now. but i can love her until we find someone to take her!

 

 the Christmas cactus turned out to be a New Year's cactus:

isn't it pretty? i'm digging the coral pink!

i spent New Year's at E's, watching the Wings fall to the Leafs in the Winter Classic (too bad we don't still have Manny in net for us - he out-played Osgood in the alumni game, AND won the shootout), and watching the snow fall (and fall, and fall) outside. we're supposed to get more snow tonight/tomorrow, followed by the coldest air in 30 years! i'm a little worried about my car...running out and starting her occasionally over the next few days is probably a good idea.

today, i'm heading to E's after picking up a few things at the store - a heavy-duty shovel, a roast, some baby kale, and caesar salad dressing. we're going to try a Poor Man's Prime Rib recipe that we found online, i really hope it turns out!

i'm getting very antsy. it's time to start a new project for sure, lol! i'm kicking around a couple different ideas for Valentines, and there's a baby crocheted cowboy hat i want to make, and a sweater to finish. which to choose, which to choose? :o)