Knit Think

Friday food

Well, it's Friday again, and I'm in a summery mood, which means animal protein on the grill. But fear not, vegetarians--it's two-fer Friday, so there's a bonus recipe that doesn't involve animal protein. It does involve alcohol, so if you're a teetotaling vegetarian, you're out of luck.

So. Let's start with some basic, delicious ingredients.

Beer. Half a bottle. Do what you will with the other half. I prefer not to waste it.

Now take a stick of butter, cut it up, and shove it in the beer bottle. You can see that Youngest Son thought this part was rather fun.

While you're doing that, melt another stick of butter (you know this is going to be good because of all the butter) with some paprika, garlic salt, and pepper.

You're going to add those same spices to the bottle.

Careful doing this--sometimes the spices cause the beer to bubble up and over. You don't want to have that happen. Yet.

Now you take the foil-lined pan and put it on the grill with the spiced-up beer bottle. It's time to impale a whole chicken. You can see that Youngest Son is not as excited about this part.

I've mentioned before that I think raw chickens are funny looking. Like they're embarrassed by their nakeyness.

Before closing the grill to cook, take the saucepan full of melted butter and spices and pour over/baste the chicken with it. This is why you want a pan on the grill; because all those juices are going to cook and you're going to keep basting with them. Plus, the beer/butter combo in the bottle will slowly boil and simmer up and out of the bottle, basting the inside and outside of the chicken.

The recipe says it takes 3 hours, but I've found the chicken is perfectly done within 2 hours. Moist, flavorful, yummy--and you definitely want to scrape up the drippings from the pan and pour them over the chicken.

This, my friends, is Beer Butt Chicken, a favored summer dish in our house. You see Youngest Son is all ready to dig in. As are the rest of us. It's finger-lickin' good. It's scrumptious. It's heavenly. It's greasy and succulent and buttery, all the things chicken should be.

But what's a wonderful summer grilled recipe without a summery drink? Sure, you can do beer with this, but I was feeling at bit more adventurous, and I had just seen this recipe over at Woolgatherer's site. It took some doing to track down the cachaca--the local liquor store was befuddled by the request and even more befuddled to realize they had it in stock. Two labels of it, actually.

Limes, sugar, cachaca, club soda. You mush up the limes and sugar in the bottom of a glass, add crushed ice, and the cachaca (club soda is optional). It's cool, it's pretty, and it's definitely a perfect summer drink.

Cheers, everyone! I'm sure it's 5 p.m. somewhere in the world. Drink up. 

Dear American Airlines

I don't very often mention what I'm reading. I note it on the sidebar, over there on the left. It is very rare that a book makes me even chuckle out loud, much less laugh so hard that I can't breathe. Not that I don't think things I read are funny--but for some reason I usually need other visual cues. I laugh a lot at funny movies.

However, last night I started reading a book I picked up at the library, Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles. The premise is that the narrator, Bennie Ford, is a middle-aged failed poet who is traveling to his estranged daughter's wedding to another woman, and who, courtesy of American Airlines, has been trapped at Chicago O'Hare for many hours and is in severe danger of missing the wedding. He begins a letter to American Airlines, explaining in vivid detail why he needs a refund of the $392.68 he spent for his ticket.

I started giggling pretty early on, but just a few pages in came this gem of a paragraph:

"Do you know that the first diagnosis the internet will offer you for any symptom is almost always a venereal disease? This must be causing acute distress for those hypochondriacal members of our society allowing their genitals to mingle. In the seventh grade the rumor was that your willy would drop clean off if you tugged on it too much (or put it inside a black girl, an indicia of the cultural clime of the mid-'60s New Orleans) which caused me infinite grief and worry. The thought of running to my mother with my unfastened manhood in one hand was enough to put me off onanism for several years. The horror! My mother was a crafty sort who doubtlessly would have tried to reattach the poor thing via the aid of a hot glue gun, some sewing thread, glitter, and cut-out photographs from National Geographic, making my private parts look like an elementary school project about orangutans. 'There now,' she would've said. 'All better.'"

I'm not far enough in this book to say if it carries on so hilariously all the way--but it's already passed the "50 pages am I still interested or do I chuck it" test.

I'm back...

Like so many of you out there in blogland, I have been a bit overwhelmed by life lately. Nothing bad...just the busy-ness of life. In good news, my brother gets out of the hospital this week! Yay! He'll be walking with a cane and will need phyical and occupational therapy all summer and possibly into the fall, but right now everyone's confident that he'll be ready to teach school again come September. That is indeed good news!

And I was on TV again, and this time I'm on the internets. If this link doesn't work for you, my apologies...a couple of friends with Macs have said it won't play for them.

Showcase Minnesota

And--at long last--as promised ever so long ago--knitting! Yes, I have been knitting! Really! What follows could be considered a tribute to one knitter's severe case of ADD.

Nothing's changed with poor Emily Dickinson. She entertained me thoroughly during National Poetry Month and then, fickle as I am, I dropped her like yesterday's news.

Hey, Nora--progress has been made on Forest Canopy:

It may not look like I've added much since the last time I posted, but please understand that I ended up ripping the whole thing out and starting over again. So really, I've made progress. You can't see them, but I'm faithfully using lifelines. Which is a good thing. I haven't picked this up in weeks, because the most recent row ended up with too many stitches, and I was getting bored with the whole "let's go back and see where we screwed up" procedure, which has occurred far too often on this project. But now that I look at it again, hmmm...maybe I'm ready to return...

In the meantime, I started a few other things. I signed up for one of those nifty-difty mystery shawl KALs, the ones where you get a piece of the pattern each week but no pictures and have to knit on faith. Go ahead and laugh. It makes me chuckle to think of me attempting such a thing. Here's about the fourth go at the first clue:

If you look closely, you'll see it's beaded. Yay! Beads! I've never done that before! It turns out I like beading with yarn! So much so that at first I added far more beads than the pattern called for! But given that this KAL started back in April, you can see that I've not gotten very far. And guess what! I stopped because--yes!--too many stitches at the end of the current row!

Not that I ever let a little thing like complete incompetence stop me. After signing up for that KAL, Goddess Knits announced a special anniversary mystery shawl, and this one was free to participate in. Why not? That one started almost two weeks ago. Here's how far I am:

Laugh if you will. This yarn was a total PITA to unskein. Tangle, tangle, knot, knot. It took me three nights of watching Torchwood to get this under control. And it's only one skein; there's another waiting.

Given how much I liked using the Schaefer Laurel yarn with the Hypoteneuse pattern, I decided to embark on some Christmas knitting, using that excellent combination again:

Can you guess which famous woman this colorway is named after? Can you?...

waits...

taps feet...

Give up?

Judy Garland.

Lest you think all I do is start and give up, here's something that's coming close to being done:

The Flutter Scarf. The yarn is from a yarn club I signed up for. Yes, I signed up for a yarn club! Because I'm not ADD enough already! Why shouldn't I get yarn arriving every month to distract me some more! Besides, how could I resist this? It's Dharmafey Cosmic Fibers yarn, a line called Nefarious. Each colorway is named after a nefarious character. Can you figure out who this colorway represents? Can you?

Got it yet?

Figured it out?

No?

I'll give you a hint:

Yup--it's Hannibal Lecter yarn! Styled after the color of his face mask! And it came with a special stitch marker, with a Shrinky Dink representing a bone fragment!

You see why I had to sign up for this yarn club?

Look at the second month's colorway:

Madame DeFarge! Brilliant! This is supposedly sock yarn, but I dunno, don't you think Mme. DeFarge deserves something else? Something more noticeable? What shall I do with this wonderful skein?

So you see, lots of knitting. Little completion. Heck, little accomplished. Good thing I'm a process knitter.

Friday food

When we first moved into this house, I had a clean and empty freezer in the basement. Gradually I began filling it. Eventually it occurred to me that it needed a defrosting. While sorting out the items that were in the freezer, I found things that were four and five years old.

How time flies.

So now I make it a policy to at least rummage through the freezer in spring and fall, looking for past-date items or need-to-use-soon items. It definitely makes for less garbage. This week, on a rainy, windy day, I dug around and found I had a package of stew meat that needed to be used (but nothing that had to be thrown away!). Given that the next day's forecast was also for rain, I decided to make a stew of some kind. I pulled out this book:

My mother spent a great deal of her working life at this bank. My first job was there. I filed checks. This was before the days of superior automation and technology. Yes, I filed cancelled checks into separate files for each account. Yes, it was boring. And hazardous--there were many paper cuts and slashed cuticles. Somewhere around Bemidji, there are people who got cancelled checks with little brown spots on them and never knew it was my blood.

True story: one day a very irate customer and his wife came into the checking department, wanting to know why the bank kept charging overdraft fees, because there was no way he was overdrawn, he made plenty of money, etc. And when he finished ranting, his wife popped up with this gem: "Besides, we have lots of check blanks, so we can't be overdrawn." Dead serious. The husband stopped, looked at his wife, grabbed his checkbook off the counter, grabbed her by the arm, and left.

So it wasn't always boring working in the checking department.

Anyway. These are tried-and-true recipes from the bank's employees and board of directors and other relevant people. I decided to try the Crockpot Beef Stroganoff. I'm always looking for more ways to use my crockpot, because it is a handy device, but it doesn't always yield a worthwhile meal.

If you're thinking, hmmm, beef stroganoff, isn't that kind of heavy for a summer meal? Remember--the forecast was a 70% chance of rain and thunderstorms.

Of course,the day I made the recipe turned out like this:

Sunny. Warm. But by golly, now I wanted stroganoff, so stroganoff it would be.

First, you need the fundamental ingredient in any good Midwest cook's pantry:

Laugh if you will. I grew up eating this and use it to this day. It's great for casseroles. It says so, right on the blue part of the label. I also grew up eating Cheez Whiz. I don't use that quite as often, but it still makes good mac 'n' cheese.

Anyway, you get out your crockpot, mix flour, paprika, garlic powder, and pepper in it. Then you toss in your beef and mix it all up, so the beef gets good and coated. Add the cream of mushroom soup, some water, and another grand staple--dried onion soup mix. Voila! Time for the lid.

Why is it that food that should taste good often looks so ugly?

Cook on high for 3 1/2 hours. Add sour cream, canned mushrooms, and parsley. Cook for a little longer. Eat, on egg noodles:

Still not attractive, but you know what? Darned tasty. All those basic ingredients yielded a surprisingly good stroganoff. Sure, there are gourmet (or "fancypants," as Youngest Son would say) ways to raise the profile of this dish, but sometimes basic is all that's needed.

Crock-Pot Stroganoff

2 T. flour

½ t. garlic powder

½ t. pepper

¼ t. paprika

2 pounds stew meat

1 can cream of mushroom soup

½ cup water

1 package dried onion soup mix

1 (9 oz.) jar mushrooms, drained

½ cup sour cream

1 T. parsley

In slow cooker, combine flour, garlic powder, pepper and paprika. Place stew meat in flour mixture; toss to coat. Add soups and water; stir to blend. Cover and cook on high 3 ½ hours, until meat is tender. Stir in mushrooms, sour cream and parsley. Cook on high 10-15 minutes. Serve over rice, noodles or mashed potatoes.

Whew!

I did it! I went on TV! I didn't oversleep! I didn't forget to put tons of makeup on! I didn't trip over the camera cables and break something! I didn't spew spit or drool! Fortunately, they didn't have me eating anything on live TV, because those of you who have dined with me know of my unfortunate tendency to slop and spill, so I was safe there too. Whew. Double whew. Thanks for all the good wishes and kind emails.

Only one little sadness...I've heard rumors that the camera angles completely obscured any sign of the cute new shoes I bought just for this occasion. So here they are:

Aren't they cute? Don't you wish they'd gotten to be on TV too?

Oh--and just this week, I relaunched the book's blog, A Closer Look at Flyover Land. C'mon over and see what's happening in the great state of Minnesota! Comments and questions much appreciated.

And now, having been up since 4 a.m., I'm going to chisel all the makeup off my face and take a nap.

Tidying up

I'm remiss in shouting out a thanks to Marijke. She had a contest on her blog, Help My Hurt, a site devoted to providing news and information about all forms of pain and how to cope/work with it. It's an enormously useful site. I won something that is already extremely useful to me: an ergonomic mousepad.

Thanks, Marijke! Also, if you know anyone who's pregnant, Marijke has just launched a pregnancy blog, Womb Within.

Now, in other exciting news: for you Twin Citians who are early risers, or who have Tivo/DVR, I'm going to be on KARE-11's early morning news this Wednesday (6/11). Very early--6:15 a.m. Feel free to record it and watch it later. :-) I'll be chatting up my BOOK. This should be an interesting experience. I went through my entire closet today and realized I had nothing to wear. I live an exceedingly casual life. So I had to go to the store and buy something.

My purchase may or may not have included a pair of Spanx. I'm not saying it did. I'm just mentioning it as a possibility.

Plus I am supposed to arrive fully made up. This will be a challenge. I rarely wear any makeup at all. Sometimes, to be special, I put on a bit of eyeliner. For really special occasions, and it has to be pretty special, I might add lipstick. What is this blush/powder/eye makeup people talk about? And how bad would I look without it???

It just goes to show, you never know what life will throw at you. So be prepared. Buy some blush.

Friday food

Actually, that may not be the best title for this post. Oh! I know:

The N00bs go to Florida.

That'll do.

So, yes, the Knit Think family went to Florida last weekend. DH had a business meeting which included spouses, and we dragged the kids along for a couple of days too (and they flew home all by themselves!). We stayed at a gorgeous resort right on the beach just north of West Palm Beach. You know, where all the Rich People live. And when our dowdy, chubby, travel-bedraggled little family went to check into this lovely resort, I could see it in the receptionist's eyes: Oh, no, the geeks from Minnesota have arrived!

It wasn't just me. Even The Teen picked up on the vibe. I suppose my costume of capris with athletic socks and ragged tennis shoes, coupled with The Teen's faded Metallica shirt, did little to disprove that opinion. Not to mention messy hair and shiny faces sans makeup.

To be fair, the clerk covered up her dismay quickly and welcomed us to the resort. We collected our room keys and hastened to the elevator, where the dulcet-toned voice welcomed us ("Going...UP!"). Our suite was just beautiful--two bedrooms, full kitchen, oceanview on one side, poolside on the other. But of course, what do kids notice at a time like this?

The minibar.

Specifically, the can of Pringles in the minibar. Youngest Son made a dive for them, but I was quick to grab the minibar price list and whack him over the head with it: "No, you MAY NOT open the can of $8 Pringles!"

Not to mention the $9 bottle of water. Let's not even go into the beer and wine prices. But oh--the room service list? Guess what! You could order a 750 ml bottle of Grey Goose vodka for only $190! Including mixer and snacks.

I would like to be all nonchalant and savoir faire, but $8 Pringles? No. So back to the front desk I went and asked where the nearest grocery store was. After all, we had a full kitchen.

Apparently no one ever asks where the grocery store is. I might as well have "white trash" tattooed across my forehead.

In this situation, one has two choices: one can cower and feel insignificant. Or, one can secretly revel in one's n00biness. Guess which one I chose?

Not that it was much of a choice, especially when we went to the family pool, and Youngest Son yelled, with all the power in his hearty 12-year-old lungs, "Wow, this place is really FANCYPANTS!"

He wasted little time sitting on the pool deck.

I, however, was perfectly content to sit on the pool deck, in my dweeby bathing suit, and sip delightful martinis. It's so nice to have kids old enough to not require parental presence in the pool.

Not that the pool was the only thing we visited. We took a boat tour of the Everglades and saw this:

A baby gator! Idn't he cute?

Then there was this guy:

Awwwwww....the guide said he was about three years old. He would raise his head just above the water, show us his teeth, then submerge. A minute later, he'd rise up again as if to say, "Are you people still here? Didn't you see my TEETH??"

We spent a great deal of time here:

The weather was just lovely. Hot and humid, but with a strong breeze coming off the ocean. We sat in lounge chairs, we swam, we walked. And maybe drank a few more martinis.

Sometimes we had our martinis here:

The main hotel at the restaurant. I had a totally divine sashimi tuna sandwich here. Oh. It. Was. So. Good. Even for a n00b like me.

The walks on the beach yielded some interesting sights.

A sea turtle nest. I saw lots of nests, but no sea turtles.

And this, which made me sad but all the more appreciative of my trip:

A memorial for a young woman (23) who died in late May and apparently loved the beach. Very touching. There were lots of photos and written testimonials. Plus she left behind a baby boy. Hug your kids and friends, people.

But what about the food? There was food, glorious food; there were home-cooked breakfasts in our suite (with food from the grocery store! Rather than the $100 it would have cost us to order the same stuff from room service!), and crab and shrimp and steak and scrumptious salads and mango cheesecake and, yes, Pringles.

But most of all, because this particular chain was as ubiquitous in Florida as Starbucks is here at home, we had lots of this:

Mmmmm. Do-o-o-o-o-nuts. Boston creme.

Because, boy oh boy, does the n00b family like their donuts.

Friday food

I'm ba-a-a-a-a-ack!

Things are going very well for my brother, and again, thank you for all your good wishes. It turns out the stroke happened because he has an extra chamber in his heart. The doc (a nice cardiologist, as opposed to the Pompous Ass) says that about 20% of people have this condition--who knew? I didn't--and that for most people, it's not an issue. However, for a select few (like my lucky brother), the extra chamber acts as a breeding ground for blood clots, which can then be sent to the brain, and, well, bad things happen. Fortunately they have a procedure to patch this extra hole, which they've done, so hopefully another stroke won't happen. He's out of ICU, and by the end of today should be transferred to Sister Kenny for a couple weeks of inpatient rehab. Lots of hard work ahead, but the prognosis is for full recovery. Whew.

In celebration of a return to health, and because the grocery store had some lovely cherries this week, I decided to--gasp! Bake! I know, I know. I never bake. But my brother likes cherry pies and the like, so I thought I'd give it a go. I saw this recipe in the latest Bon Appetit, and it looked easy and tasty and sort of more like cooking than baking, since it involves a skillet.

It lived up to my expectations. Of course, good ingredients help.

Yummy fresh cherries, good balsamic vinegar. Oh, and cornmeal.

It starts out with some stovetop action, melting butter, brown sugar, and the balsamic vinegar in an ovenproof pan:

Then stirring in the cherries and bringing all the juices to a boil so they thicken a little. Truthfully? I could have stopped right here. This, all by itself, is splendid. I mean, c'mon--cherries, butter, brown sugar, and balsamic vinegar! Heaven.

But I carried through on my commitment to bake.

How's that for an action shot! Beating butter and sugar together! Then I added egg yolks and vanilla. Eventually I added whole milk, cornmeal, flour, baking powder, and salt. After that, it was time to whip the egg whites with a bit of cream of tartar, then folded the whites into the rest of the batter, which was then poured over the cherries in the skillet, and the whole thing went in the oven for a while. At that point, I sternly kicked the kids out of the kitchen, warning them of the dire consequences involved in eating raw batter with raw eggs, horrible disease, lack of sanitation, etc. After they were gone, I slurped up what was left in the mixing bowl. Hey, I'm older, and I was raised on raw egg batter. This is really good batter.

Bake until golden brown. Your kitchen will smell really, really good. Trust me on this.

After it's cooled in the pan for a few minutes, it's time to put it on a platter. A pretty platter which has not been used in years. Because, you know, I don't bake.

Then served warm, with ice cream. Mmmmmmmmm. Ice cream.

So, yeah, it was easy, and yummy, and now it's all gone. One piece made it to the hospital for my brother. The rest was inhaled by the family. I would definitely make this again. But maybe next time, no baking, just cooking the cherries and serving on ice cream. That kind of cooking suits me just fine.

Stay tuned--long hours in hospitals have lead to much more knitting than usual. Nothing finished, but at least noticeable progress.

Friday food

Thanks, everyone, for all the kind wishes and good thoughts. It's been a tough week with lots of ups and downs, but it's ending on a good note. He's probably going to be in the hospital at least two or three more weeks, but he's stabilizing and might even get out of intensive care this weekend.

So, no Friday Food in particular, because there hasn't been time or energy. However, with the long weekend looming, if you'd like to know what the residents of Casa Knit Think will be eating, go here. I've made some of Pioneer Woman's other recipes, and they've always been terrific. I don't doubt this one will be too, and what better spoil-myself-rotten recipe could I find?

Enjoy your long weekends, and hug your siblings!!!

Karma, wishes, thoughts, prayers

--whatever fits your belief system, please send some good ones towards my brother. He had a stroke and a seizure yesterday and is in the hospital. He's doing well, considering the circumstances. He can talk, move his limbs, is lucid. But the doctor made it clear today it could be a hard recovery. He's only 57. So, yeah--good thoughts/wishes/karma/prayers/candles/whatever, send them his way.

Also, grant me the serenity necessary to deal with, if I have to, the pompous ass of a doctor who kept smiling condescendingly and calling me "the little sis:" "Of course, as the little sis, you're worried. But little sis needs to be optimistic." There was a bedpan within reach. I could have used it as a weapon...