Purple Cardigan

Everyone around me is bemoaning the continuing cold weather. I am bemoaning the approaching warm weather and the attendant close of wool-knitting season in the south. Once the mercury hits 70 degrees it's nothing but cotton, linen, and hemp until next winter. Thus, I'm blowing through my wool projects as quickly as I can; I just finished this one a couple of days ago. I'm very happy with it, as it shows my advancing knitterly skills (in detailed ways that no non-knitter would even believe could matter to a sane person) and my increasing ability to pick projects I'll actually want to wear when they're done.

Pumpkin Blueberry Cake

Yesterday I made Rose Levy Berenbaum's pumpkin walnut ring (from The Cake Bible). As usual, I treated the recipe as more of a guide, substituting whole wheat flour, leaving out nuts, and using some unidentified squash pulp I'd frozen a few months ago. On a whim I also threw in a cup of blueberries, and it turned out delicious. As you see, I made it yesterday and half of it is gone already.

Lamb Chops

seasoned with salt (a little too much) and rosemary (fresh, with flowers). Also brown rice and fried brussels sprouts. I believe I hav the only five-year-old in the state who exclaimed last night, as she approached the dinner table, "Yay! My favorite kind of brussels sprouts!"

Whole Wheat Egg Noodles

with spinach and pesto.

Pasta with Rappini

Or rapinni? My Italian-speaking friends, help me out! Anyway, we had pasta with chopped up parboiled rappini, garlic, and sardines. I didn't tell my spouse about the sardines until after he had tasted the dish and pronounced it excellent. I assured him I only tricked him because sardines are so good for us.

Pork Steak

My favorite spondee! We had it broiled, with brown rice and spinach. Spinach: how I love it. Comes in a bag, washed and ready, takes five minutes in a pan with hot butter, is delicious. You know why you cook it with butter? Because dairy neutralizes spinach's natural oxalic (I believe) acid, which is what makes your teeth feel furry if you cook it in, say, olive oil.

Halibut

with brown rice and spinach.

Superbowl Guacamole

I don't remember learning to make guacamole; I think it's possible that, as a Californian, I simply osmosed it during childhood. I made a big bowl for tonight, which will probably become dinner. I mashed up: 3 ripe avocados, two chopped-up bunches of cilantro, the juice of two lemons [should have stopped at one—ed.], half a red onion (diced), a box of cut-up cherry tomatoes, and a hefty pinch of salt. It will be better after a few hours have passed, but heavens, it was good right at the start, too. A question: why did I use cherry tomatoes? Because they were displayed next to the avocados in the store. It was a silly choice; lots of extra work for little extra flavor.

Chicken Tagine

As Che says of Evita's world tour in Andrew Lloyd Weber's masterpiece "Evita,", this was "a qualified success." On the one hand, I was brave and browned the chicken in my earthenware tagine right on the stovetop; the chicken browned, the tagine didn't crack, so all was well. Then I took the chicken out and briefly sauteed some cut-up potatoes and brussels sprouts, added the chicken back and popped on the tagine top for about half an hour. What resulted had ups and downs. Ups: the chicken was perfect, and where the potatoes and sprouts cooked properly they were delicious. Downs: a lot of the potatoes and sprouts didn't cook properly and were a lot closer to raw than I would have liked. Next time I'll add a cup of water before I put the lid on and see what happens.

Hash

Of leftover ribs, spinach, and brown rice. Extremely good.

Cooking for One

I've almost forgotten how to do this, despite having done nothing but for most of my adult life. But circumstances in the last weeks led to a number of for-myself-only meals, and I remembered the freedom of cooking without reference to anyone else's taste (or tolerance for sheer weirdness). Not that I do anything all that weird. Last night was an impromptu frittata of spinach, with a large sardine mashed up in the egg. Mmm mmm good.

Sort-of Snickeroodles

Friends, I have invented the perfect cookie for me. Let's observe:

I/2 C butter
1/2 C coconut oil
1 C sugar
1 t vanilla
1 t salt
1/t nutmeg
Zest of 2 lemons
2 eggs
2t baking powder
2C whole wheat flour
3/4 C kamut flour

You just put them together the way you would any other cookies, then bake for eight minutes at 400 degrees. Seriously, every pleasure-center in my brain registered a direct hit with these babies; I may never make another cookie again.

Lamb Chops

with spinach and quinoa.

Sunny Hat

Here's what I did with the remaining skein of yellow yarn. The stitch pattern is from a book by Barbara Walker, who basically invented modern knitting.

Sunshine Scarf

Fresh off the needles. The thing about knitted lace is that the magic happens in the blocking. "Blocking" refers to soaking a piece of knitting and then drying it flat pinned in the shape you want it to assume. It's important to any knitting, but crucial in lace. When lace comes off the needles it looks like a big blob of yarn; after blocking, it is open and drapey and beautiful. One of these days I'll remember to take pre-blocking pictures for comparison and I'll show you what I mean. The pictured scarf is a wool/silk blend I got in LA.

Chicken with Preserved Lemon

Wow. This had all the earmarks of disaster: missing ingredients, timing off, quantities dicey, but was, in the end, a triumph of triumphs. It's from Authentic Moroccan Recipes by Fatema Hal, and features a chicken browned in oil with salt, pepper, ground ginger, and caraway (should have been something called "nigella seed,"), then simmered in water with saffron (I didn't have any) and a preserved lemon (I had some). As I sat there reducing the sauce at the end, I thought, no way is this ever going to be good. Then I started eating it (over brown rice) and simply couldn't stop. I would never have been able to pick out the ingredients in it if I hadn't made it; together they became a flavor all their own.

Cod

with blood orange sauce! I was just sauteeing the fish in butter, when I got inspired and threw the juice and zest of a blood orange into the pan (after taking the fish out) and reducing it until syrupy. Majorly good. We had it with brown rice and broccoli rappini (the latter of which showed up in a subsequent dinner, with red cabbage, over pasta).

Frittata

The frittata rule seems to be this: the more days' worth of leftovers you throw into it, the better it will be. Last night's had multiple evenings' worth of chicken, cabbage, apples, spinach, and some fresh parsley for good measure, and was delish. We had it with brown rice.

Fried Chicken

with brown rice and spinach. There was *nothing* wrong with that meal.

Sauteed Flounder

with quinoa and a "salad" of sauteed bacon, cabbage, apples, and goat cheese. That last is an imitation of the salad we had over the weekend at our favorite restaurant, Chez Fonfon.