Alumni magazine

No, I haven't touched any knitting since I finished the Branching Out. Maybe I'll work on something over the weekend. It's weird; actually finishing something made me LESS inspired to work on my unfinished stuff, when you'd think it would have been the opposite.

I got my alumni magazine today. From what I've seen all alumni magazines are exactly the same: a handful of propaganda articles to remind you how fabulous the school is (the better to solicit alumni donations with), and the section with actual updates about the alumni.

I found out that one of the guys I was in orchestra with was killed earlier this year in a plane crash. The fairly small group of us in orchestra who were music students (as opposed to non-music students who happened to play an instrument, or the community folks) suffered through countless rehearsals where we'd all want to tear our hair out afterwards. That group of us would sit there putting our instruments away, giving each other *the look*. It basically said, "We just wasted another 2.5 hours, and once again, nothing is any better. We should mutiny." It was a nice camaraderie, built on mutual frustration and disgruntlement. Obviously I wasn't especially close friends with John, or I wouldn't have just found out about his death via the alumni magazine. Regardless, he was a great guy, and he'll be missed.

And I just saw that John Spencer has died. I don't think I've ever NOT loved him in something.

Tonight's baking experiment: the Prosciutto Ring from The Bread Bible (but made with bacon instead of prosciutto). It's a bread ring with little pieces of prosciutto in it -- yum. I felt like I needed something fatty and quite bad for me to counteract my recent weight loss. I was 90 pounds to begin with; I don't need any more of it to disappear, but I haven't had much of an appetite lately. That by itself wasn't problematic for a while, but now I'm losing weight, and that's not good.

Anyway, Bacon Ring. Definitely something I'll need to try again. First, I like my bacon crispy to the point of almost being burned. In the bread, the bacon has no way to get crispy, so next time I'll cook the bacon ahead of time. The other irritating thing is that it stuck to the baking sheet, despite an awful lot of bacon fat that should have kept it from sticking. Couldn't use parchment because the oven temp was too high, and I don't have a silpat. And because of the fact that it stuck like crazy, it ended up not being at all photogenic. Thus, no picture. It was pretty... until I forceably wrestled it off the baking sheet.

Other than that... it's bread with bacon in it: two of my great food loves in one wonderful recipe. Next time, I might also add some cheese to complete the trifecta. With crispy bacon and minimal/no sticking, it'll be a winner. I have to say, my apartment smells kind of awesome right now: bacon and fresh-baked bread at the same time.

Matzo!

No, this isn't about knitting. This is about baking. They're both domestic activities, right?

One of my favorite websites is 101 Cookbooks. She tends toward vegetarian and organic foods, which normally isn't something that would grab me, but her photography is absolutely gorgeous. Anyway, I love that site, and it's inspired me to try to detail some of my baking experiments here... on my knitting blog. Sorry.

Mediterranean Matzoh
Rose Levy Beranbaum
The Bread Bible, page 228

I've made this recipe once before, and was very pleased with how it came out. Last night, around 8 pm, I was feeling atypically munchy. This matzo recipe takes less than an hour from start to finish, so I decided to make up a half-batch for myself.

Even though my family is comprised of non-practicing Catholics, we always had an affinity for Manischewitz Passover matzo. I loved that stuff. I never put anything on it, because the cardboard-like quality of the flavor is endearing to me. We got the unsalted variety for a reason. I don't want to mess with that. Now they have garlic matzo, and apple cinnamon matzo... somehow, that just feels wrong.

Your typical store-bought matzo has an ingredient list that looks like the following: Flour, water, (maybe salt and some preservatives). The Bread Bible recipe has both AP flour and whole wheat flour, salt, water, olive oil, and rosemary. Actually, I should clarify that. Rosemary is in the ingredient list, but the recipe doesn't ever say to add it. Does it go in the dough? Do you just sprinkle it on top before baking? It's a mystery. And it's a mystery that i probably won't ever deal with, because I almost never have rosemary on hand. Leaving it out entirely seems to work well.

Anyway, a few minutes of mixing and kneading, 30 minutes of dough resting, followed by rolling out and baking gave me this stack o' matzo:

It takes 6 minutes to bake them, and with a couple of baking sheets going at once, that time goes very quickly. They're very freeform, and definitely not "traditional"... you can definitely taste the olive oil in the finished product, and there's very little resemblance to the cardboard-y matzo that I was used to. I can see this turning into something that I make on a weekly basis... easy to make, tasty, and keeps nicely for a few days (not that it stays around all that long).

Let's all take a moment and cross our fingers for my sourdough starter, which I might be testing out soon.

Look, I finished something

So, here I am, awake at 3 AM yet again, and I figured that perhaps I'd work with my insomnia and post something. I actually have a couple of completed knitted things that are done.

First, I finished my Branching Out last night:

And then, as I was sitting there last night looking at the scarf, I started to wonder how hard it would be to make a matching hat.

I'll get the pattern written down at some point so I can post it here... it took me no time to finish (I cast on last night around 1:30 AM, and finished it tonight around 11), and I'm far from the world's fastest knitter.

Dance your cares away...

I'm a Scorpio. I like to think that I'm pretty laid-back for a Scorpio, but one trait that I definitely have is stubbornness. Back in high school, I pretty much refused to accept that it was cold out until October, so I'd wear shorts to school when it was 55 degrees out, just as long as it was still September.

This compulsion has changed a bit over the years. I actually wear pants during the summer now... however, nowadays I won't turn on the heat for the season until I've reached a point where I'm sitting here shivering. This means lots of hot chocolate (just awful, I know), and a tendency to wear hats like the following:

That fabulous creation was intended to be part of my Red Fraggle costume for Halloween this year. The pattern can be found here; the brim and pigtails are a strand of red and orange Fun Fur held together, and the body of the hat is TLC Cotton-Ease.

The Red Fraggle costume idea has fallen by the wayside in favor of River from Serenity/Firefly, but the hat still needed to be seen.