After knitting off and on Wednesday night during SnB and then again off and on yesterday I managed to finish the second manly sock. The reinforcing yarn turned out to be a bit different on the second sock but thanks to the tip I got on the wool arts tour I’ll just use a spool of wooly nylon from the sewing store next time and avoid that problem all together. Who knew I’d need two of those little cards of reinforcing yarn.

This week at the high school is spirit week. Here’s Daniel with his class shirt. His class color is maroon and we hunted for maroon hair gel but red was as close as we could come. He’s really trying hard not to smile. He’s been really excited about art metals and is working on a new project in that class that will take him the rest of this term and possibly into the next. Hopefully he’ll bring it home at some point and I can take a picture of his progress. He’s doing a sword-in-the-stone sort of thing with a few different metals that will involve soldering, using a jeweler’s saw, and learning to do a stone setting. Yesterday he used a blow-torch to do the soldering.

Here’s another winging-it supper this week. I happened to have a nice pork roast in the freezer and some cranberry beans in the cupboard. There was a bottle of wine we didn’t use when we had company a few weeks ago originally meant for fondue.

Pantry Pork and Beans

center cut pork roast, cleaned and cubed
1 medium onion
1/4 cup flour
salt
cayenne pepper
4 tablespoons canola oil
crushed red pepper
1 cup white wine
1 pound cranberry beans
1 cup chicken stock
2 cups vegetable stock
1 teaspoon dried thyme

Cook the cranberry beans 30 minutes in a pressure cooker or by your preferred method. Put the flour, salt and pepper to taste into a gallon ziploc bag and toss the cubed pork in this mixture. Brown the pork on all sides in a Dutch oven with the canola oil. During the last few minutes of browning add the onions and cook until they are translucent. Add the wine to the pan and scrape with a wooden spoon to loosen browned bits. Add remaining ingredients and reduce to a low simmer, cook for an hour or until meat is very tender.