Still Biding My Time

Here I am on maternity leave without a baby. What to do with my time? Here's a list of things I have done so far:

1. Finished up my outstanding knitting projects and started another. Having free time to knit is a joy. The Vine Stitch Scarf for my friend S is done, blocked and dried.



The Misti Alpaca Ribs and Ruffles Scarf is also complete. I forgot how quickly you can finish a project with chunky yarn!

I may be getting too big for my britches here, because I am contemplating starting an adult sized sweater, not a baby sized one.

2. Went to the library to pick up a summer read. I chose The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. The book was written by an aunt and niece team. Unfortunately, the aunt passed away in 2008 and didn't get the chance to witness the success of her novel. The book is written in epistolary format and is a quick enjoyable read. I happen to love epistolary novels, because I think it satifies my voyeuristic side as I read the letters of others. Guernsey is one of England's Channel Islands and during WWII, it was occupied by the Germans. This novel, while at times a little "precious", contains vignettes of the German occupation (whether all the details are based on true hustorical fact, I can't say) told through the correspondence between a journalist and some Guernsey residents.

3. Saw Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Verdict: Book is much better. I was so bored during the movie, and regretted spending the $11 bucks to see it in the theater. Some guy actually fell asleep during the movie. I know this because during the more quiet moments in the film, we could hear him snoring. Oh well, at least I saw a movie in the theaters while I still can.

4. I watched some movies through Netflix. I ordered movies that I know my husband would never want to watch. Mostly, these are those BBC series based on novels and period pieces, like the Merchant and Ivory films. I love these types of movies and serials, and now I can watch them by myself without feeling guilty about having subjected husband to them.

Other more mundane stuff has been done, too. Cleaning, cooking, some work stuff, bleh. On a side note, my kitties are torturing and teasing me with their bad behavior. They now understand that I am big and ungainly and cannot move very quickly. So, they do all sorts of forbidden things like clawing the curtains and carpet and generally being annoying right in front of me, knowing that they can make a quick getaway before I can get up to scold them. Bad, bad kitties.

Our Poor Kitties

Poor Monkey and Elvis.  I am sure they are feeling neglected with all the goings on - the bathroom remodel and future baby and all her trappings.

Sunday Bread Baking

I am not sure what bit me in the ass recently and told me that I must bake bread from scratch, but this past week, I was itching to make fresh bread. And not the kind from a bread machine, either, but the old fashioned, knead-by-hand kind.

Then, I saw this recipe on Smitten Kitchen's blog (which, incidentally, is a gorgeous website that chronicles a Manhanttanite cooking fabulous recipes in a small NYC kitchen), and I could not get it out of my mind. I recalled eating black bread when I lived in St. Petersburg, Russia during my junior year abroad. I haven't really enjoyed/been able to find the same type of bread again, so, I ventured forth to make the 17(!) ingredient-incorporating black bread. Here's all the ingredients gathered. I don't have those small clear glass bowls that make ingredients look so organized and pretty on cooking tv shows, so I made do with our sushi-soy sauce dipping bowls and random other bowls. They worked pretty well, actually:

Note the small mortar and pestle in the picture for grinding seeds. I recall getting this as a wedding present from a certain someone who reads this blog with a comment about how this person thought it would be funny to get me things I would never use, but insisted on registering for. Haha - the last laugh is on you, because I use this thing all the time for spice grinding. I also use the Microplane grater that was in the gift - you would have to shoot me to part me with it. But, I confess, the flour sifter, not so much...I just use a small sieve.

The black bread calls for ingredients like chocolate, shallots, molasses, rye flour, fennel seeds, caraway seeds, espresso, etc. It wasn't easy tracking down all the ingredients, and it involved going to Whole Foods (aka Whole Paycheck) and wandering up and down aisles.

I mixed together the dry ingredients, prepared the wet ingredients, including the yeast, and then combined to make the starter mix:


The mix looks sort of unappetizing and gross, but had this wonderful rich smell wafting forth of yeasty, dark goodness...

Then, came the mixing together of the wet and the dry ingredients. Ok, here, as another aside: I may have registered for a mortar and pestle, but I never registered for a Kitchen Aid stand mixer. You know, the kind that ubiquitously shows up on every bride's registry. I figured, hey, we are going to be living in a small condo in San Francisco, with a small kitchen, so why get even more gadgets that only take up valuable counter/cabinet space? I mean I have a hand mixer, and I have my own two hands to beat stuff with whisks and wooden spoons, right? Well, this recipe will go down in the books as having humbled my cavalier attitude about stand mixers. I will have reconsider getting a Kitchen Aid mixer with a dough hook. The hands/arms in the picture are those of husband. I had to call in the big guns when the dough got harder and harder to mix in the bowl and it was time to turn out the dough on the counter to knead:

Ok, finally, I left the dough to rise in a greased bowl. Then, after a couple of hours, I came back to this - a nice, round ball of dough, roughly doubled in volume:

Then, husband and I each shaped a round loaf, left them to rest again, and then finally placed them in the pre-heated 350 degree oven:

About 45 minutes later, out popped these gorgeous, scrumptious-smelling loaves:

After we let the bread cool a little bit, we came back to make ourselves some delicious snacks. I wanted the traditional Russian-style buterbroad (sounds like boo-ter-bro-oad) open face sandwiches. First, you slather on butter, as any good Russian knows (and which Smitten Kitchen notes in her blog, as well), then layer on the goodies. We choose some Blue Moon cheese, hard salami and sliced cucumber. Very Russian. And as another option, we used some organic fig spread from Greece that we picked up at Whole Foods (so delicious, go get some for yourself right now, yes, now, don't make excuses).

Then, we ate it all up! The bread is spot-on, folks. Delicious, dense (but just the right kind of dense, not dense like sitting-in-a-lump-in-tummy dense), flavorful with the caraway and fennel and shallots coming through, and with a wonderful crust. So YUM. In the end, the bread baking was a success, but the process was long. This is not an everyday kind of bread, but I will definitely be making this again.

Bonus Kitty Pic! Elvis, in a a pensive moment.

Where is My Knitting Mojo?

I emerge from the working holidays, alive, but not unscathed, and I wonder, where has my knitting mojo gone? I cannot seem to get myself to pick up the needles. I even got these:

The snazziest of knitting snaz - Addi Clicks Interchangeable Needles - a Christmas gift from my little brother (thanks, little bro!). And I still can't get myself to knit. My last completed project is my Taste the Rainbow Scarf. I am hoping that my kniting mojo returns soon, because I, and my husband, may just die if all my yarn stashing was for naught.

Where did 2008 go?? New Year's Eve was very quiet, just me and the husband goofing around together, then another day of working on New Year's Day. We finished up watching the last season of the BBC's version of Robin Hood. We got the DVDs through Netflix. I liked it a lot, but my husband quickly got tired of the back and forth robbing and pillaging and crazy hare-brained schemes which all amazingly come together at the end, and would occasionally yell at the screen, "Why don't you just kill him and get it over with!?!" I told him it wouldn't make for a very good series if the main evil guy got killed within the first few episodes. He didn't care for my logic, but I also noticed that he did not stop watching...

Finally, just for kicks, here is a picture of Monkey, captured right after she got a good scolding. She does not look very contrite at all, does she? In fact, it looks more like she is plotting my death.

Spaghetti Cat (I Weep for You)

My childish sense of humor.

Kitty Emergency

This past Friday, we spent about 5 1/2 hours at the pet hospital waiting for chubby cat Mr. Elvis. Poor baby had some weird vomiting and stomach issues for a couple of days, and we thought it was time to take him in for a professional opinion. He had an x-ray, then an ultrasound - note his shaved belly. For about an hour and a half, we thought he would have to have surgery to remove a potential "foreign object" that might be lodged in his intestines. But, in the end, he was ok, and discharged with a prescription of kitty antibiotics and instructions to be be fed human Pepcid AC.

I nearly had a violent vomiting incident myself when I saw the final bill. We are talking serious cash. So much so that I could not justify going to a haircut appointment this weekend because of the serious cash outlay (I know, I know, I hear the the world's smallest violin playing in the background). Hey, at least we saved the $3,000 it would have cost for surgery. Yes, people, you heard me right - $3,000 for kitty foreign object surgery. But, Mr. Elvis and Ms. Monkey are members of the family, so we would have shelled this out, but it would not stop me from blogging/lamenting about it!

Happily, Elvis is doing fine. His vomiting has stopped, and he mostly looks at his shaved belly with a "WTF is this?" kind of expression on his face. He tries to hide his shaved belly - kitty modesty, maybe. And he is definitely enjoying the people food (canned salmon and tuna) that he is eating, on doctor's orders. Ms. Monkey is benefiting from this as well, since I can't look at her little face of jealousy without pangs of guilt, so I break down and feed her the people food, too.

Another Hole in the Wall

Art's Cafe - greasy spoon diner fare for very low prices, and randomly, a few Korean food choices on the back of the menu. Run by a Korean couple. We usually go for the bibimbap bowl with the barbequed beef, but their hash brown sandwich is very popular, too.

Elvis approves of the yummy lip smacking goodness!

Behold, my first socks!

I finished my sock class, and here is the end product modeled on hubbie's feet (little Monkey's paws snuck into the picture - adds perspective). I call them the Learning Socks, and nevermind the short anklet length.

Meet Devil Cat and Chubby Cat

Meet my evil black kitty. Her name is Priscilla, but we call her Monkey. She is a shelter kitty. She is half the size of our other kitty, Elvis, but she terrorizes him. She is evil around guests in our home, yowls and tries to scratch them dead, but we love her like no other. She is the most loving gentle kitty around me and hubbie. She tries to sleep between us in our bed, and spoons me at night until we kick her down to the bottom of the bed to sleep with Elvis. She loves when we cuddle with her and demands lots of attention. I can't help but love my problem kitty.

Meet my chubby tuxedo kitty. His name is Elvis. He was a feral kitty that one of my friends trapped and convinced me into adopting. He is my first cat - never thought of myself as a cat person until Elvis. He was a wild child at first, with lots of drive by scratchings of me and my friends. Now, he is happily mellow. As mentioned above, he is terrorized by Monkey. Notice his extremely short whiskers. Monkey likes to pretend to cuddle up to him and clean his face, then rip out his whiskers. Poor much enduring Elvis. He doesn't like to be held like Monkey, but likes to sit next to you and purr loudly. He sounds like a little engine.