My library card holder has taken a battering so it was time for a replacement. It’s just a piece of craft felt with a pattern drawn in pencil and then stitched over with variegated embroidery floss. I used three strands on the orange/red lines and two on the rest. Now I can once again find it easily in the deep dark recesses of my purse.
The Bob Dobbs vest has not been forsaken entirely for sockly love but has been creeping along inch by inch until it’s nearly time for some armhole action. One more inch to go!
I’m not sure why I didn’t immediately label the needle rolls once I’d sorted needles into them. Partly, I think it’s because my needle sizer doesn’t do half sizes and I was looking around for one that does. At any rate, I’ve stopped waffling and invested in a 99 cent bottle of fabric paint to accomplish the deed. Now it’ll be much easier to grab the needle I’m looking for and I’ll have no excuse to delay in putting them away.
The butternut squash have been so tempting at the market and I’ve really had stuffed squash on the brain lately. Who knew it would be so hard to find a recipe? In the end I had to invent my own completely from scratch. Jason has finally tired of egg sandwiches for breakfast and made a switch to cereal which meant there were bagels sitting around. Those were converted into a bread crumb topping. The main difficulty here was in hollowing out the squash but other than that it was dreadfully easy to make.
Stuffed Butternut Squash
1 large sweet onion, chopped
1 pound mushrooms, chopped
1 package maple breakfast sausage, chopped
2 cups chicken broth
2 butternut squash
1 whole wheat bagel, processed into crumbs (about 2 cups)
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt to taste
Preheat the oven to 375 F. Split the squash in half lengthwise, discard seeds. Hollow out the neck of the squash as best you can (please comment if you have tips for this!) and reserve the resultant bits. Saute onion, mushroom, sausage and squash bits in a large pan over medium-high heat adding about 1/2 cup chicken broth at a time. Continue to cook sausage mixture until most of the broth has evaporated. Remove from heat.
Place the squash into a large baking pan and divide sausage filling among the halves. Mix bagel crumbs with olive oil and salt and divide this among the halves using it to top the sausage mixture. Cover the baking pan tightly with foil (you will need to seam two pieces together to get a good seal) and bake for about 90 minutes or until the neck end of the squash is tender.
You didn’t think I would skip the sock update, did you? Here she is all ready for the toe which will be the last frontier of my unusual sock construction experience. It uses a double decrease at either edge of the foot so that should be interesting. I really adore this sock with the exception of those loose stitches along one edge of the heel but the main problem is that this sock is most definitely the wrong size for my pal so I’ll have to go back to the drawing board for her.
After some reassurance at the Woolpack yesterday, I began the gusset last night. I woke up fairly early this morning and finished it up so that I could attempt the shortrow heel this morning at knitting, there might be someone there with more experience at the stitch wrapping thing than I. I have to say, I really like this patterned gusset!
Feeling the loss of the Toasty Toes and Bloomin’ Feet swaps a few close friends and I decided to make a teensy swap of our own. Socks are due April 1st so we’ve named it the Silly Sock Swap. As is usual, I agonized over yarn and pattern choice before casting on. I poured over what seemed to be hundreds of patterns, ordered yarn and then deemed it unsuitable when it arrived. I chance pattern coming across the favorites list on Ravelry sent me in the Fair Isle direction and suddenly things began to click. Earlier in the week I went to wind yarn in preparation for casting on only to realize the "perfect" blue yarn I’d selected wouldn’t work so I yanked out the "unsuitable" yarn I’d ordered and pressed it back into service. It’s a wee bit thin for this pattern but it does seem to work. I first saw the Tongue River Sock booklet (scroll down, it’s second on the list) in fall of ‘05 on my first visit to Rhinebeck only to oggle it twice more before breaking down and purchasing it. This is the perfect excuse to break it out and get over my fear of the patterns. The sock construction is a wee bit different from my usual MO in that there is no heel flap at all and gussets are formed by increasing along either side of the instep in the round after which you knit a short-row heel flat and rejoin in the round for the foot. The short row thing puts me off as I once tried to do a short row toe and got a purl ridge on one side. It’s long past time to conquer that short row thing.
The Dobbs vest travels with my anywhere I need mindless knitting and makes significant progress at the weekly allergy shot sessions where the staff peek over the counter and boggle at the knitting. I am now about halfway to the armpits where I’ll split for the front and back. Once all the endless stockinette is overwith I’ll progress to endless duplicate stitch.
Last night for dinner we had spinach gnudi with spicy Italian sausage in tomato sauce (literally fried the sausage and dumped a can of crushed tomatoes over then added some seasoning). I’ve never tried gnudi before so it was quite the experience. If you make these the "dough" will be very soft indeed. Don’t try to dust off all the flour as it forms a sort of gelatinous shell around the gnudi as they cook. Don’t stir the pot while they cook or they may break open and disintegrate. I was worried they might not be edible as I’d never eaten them and I wasn’t sure how they should be while they cooked. The one that broke open and sort of melted worried me but when we ate them they were lovely and soft. These do not give you that typical squeakiness on your teeth that spinach can yield nor do they have a strong spinach taste. If you like frozen spinach then by all means just use that. I find it has a sort of bitter taste so for me it’s worth the (lots of) extra trouble to prepare it from fresh.
Spinach Gnudi
2 bunches of spinach (about 1 1/2 pounds)
1 cup ricotta cheese
1 1/2 ounces freshly grated Parmesan cheese
2 large eggs
salt and pepper, to taste
1/2 cup all-purpose flour plus 1 cup for dredging
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup sage leaves, stems removed
salt, to taste
Steam the spinach in a very large pot about 5 minutes or until all of it is wilted and bright green. Drain spinach thoroughly and then squeeze tightly in an absorbent towel to remove as much of the moisture as possible. Transfer the spinach to the bowl of a food processor and puree. Transfer the puree, about 1 1/4 cups, to a bowl and mix with ricotta, Parmesan, eggs, salt and pepper and 1/2 cup flour. Dust a large jelly roll pan liberally with flour. Scoop out a scant tablespoon at a time and dredge in the flour, transfer to the jelly roll pan. These are very delicate and don’t hold together well, you need to support it in your hands all the time. Refrigerate about an hour (longer is fine) before cooking. Cook in boiling salted water in small batches, removing with a spider after they’ve been floating about 60 seconds. I used an icing spatula to scoop them up off the jelly roll pan and drop them gently into the boiling water. When cooked I transferred them to a bowl with a bit of olive oil so they wouldn’t stick. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat and cook until it browns a bit. Toss in the sage leaves, spoon in a few tablespoons of the gnudi cooking liquid and cook 2 or 3 minutes or until bright green. Drizzle this sauce over the cooked gnudi. Serve topped with sausage in tomato sauce with a nice crusty bread on the side.
There isn’t much exciting going on today. Each January I assemble all of the previous year’s recipes into a file. Most of my free time today has been dedicated to that task. It’s kind of interesting to look at the whole year at once like that. I can tell that I made tomato soup a lot less frequently in 07 than I had in 06. I blathered on entirely too much about Daniel’s yearning for yummy breakfast and all the Farmer’s Market posts have now made me really hungry for lovely summer veggies!
My library card holder has taken a battering so it was time for a replacement. It’s just a piece of craft felt with a pattern drawn in pencil and then stitched over with variegated embroidery floss. I used three strands on the orange/red lines and two on the rest. Now I can once again find it easily in the deep dark recesses of my purse.
