I signed up to Tuesdays with Dorie at the urging of a very persistent Leigh over at Lemon Tartlet. The group is essentially baking their way through the Dorie Greenspan book, Baking: from My Home to Yours over the course of the year with a new recipe each week. Everyone posts their results, of course, on Tuesday.
This week’s recipe was a Fluted Polenta & Ricotta cake, so I thought I’d serve it as dessert for a small dinner party I had this past Saturday, which is why I didn’t finish the promised MP08 project. Dinner came out fantastically well, with a gorgeous beef tenderloin served with a shallot and mustard sauce as the main course. For sides, there were glazed carrots, green beans, sauteed spinach with pine nuts and golden raisins, along with fresh baked dinner rolls.
I substituted dried cranberries for the figs since they were already in the kitchen and used a springform pan as I somehow don’t own a tart pan. The cake tested done, but I think next time, I’ll bake until it’s more golden. Served with a slightly sweetened honey whipped cream, it was delicious and got compliments from my guests. But I was nervous as to how the cake would go over, so I whipped up an emergency back up dessert before I started dinner. I took the backup to work with me yesterday and my coworkers helpfully polished it off.
Polenta and Ricotta recipe after the break. Read the rest of this entry »
7. finish Fattie’s Fish Fish, you know, because the baby’s already here Done!
Finally! Something off my MP08 list.
The pattern is One Fish, Two Fish from Blue Sky Alpacas using their Dyed Cotton. I actually knit both the large and small fish and combined, they took two hanks of #602 Honeydew and one of #623 Toffee. There is an errata out for the pattern, so be sure to take a look at the website if you’re thinking of some fishy goodness for yourself.
As you can see from the photos, the larger fish is a bit…large. (Small child included for scale). The boy and his fish are hanging out on a blanket the brother-in-law has been carrying around for a long time. The observant among you will see that it is, in fact, an E.T. blanket.
For my next trick, another item off the MP08 list before the week is out. Can she do it?! Ooh…the suspense.
Yesterday, all manner of knitters descended upon the Virginia Highlands neighborhood in Atlanta to witness the second coming…of the Yarn Harlot. Me? I was checking out the Sur la Table at Perimeter Mall with Jen. I really wanted to find the silicone bunny spatula from their website, but it was sold out. I consoled myself with a dough mixer.
You might wonder why, when the rest of our friends and every knitter within driving distance to Atlanta was hanging out, we skipped the event. Well, I really enjoyed myself the last time Stephanie came to town and looked at the whole spectacle as a once in a lifetime sort of bash. And for such an occasion, I was willing throw myself into the masses of knitterly humanity and buy the t-shirt. Plus it was during the week and I work downtown.
Given the option, I would rather be anywhere else than in the midst of an enormous crowd; especially a loud crowd. I have a few people issues and some types of gatherings are beyond my comfort zone. Performing arts where there are distinct assigned seats and people politely clapping? Yes. Concerts with masses of screaming people? No. Epcot, while on our honeymoon? Yes. The Magic Kingdom on that same trip? Sweet Zombie Jesus, no! People gathered around the table at an occasional Sunday at Knitch? Yes. 700 knitters in a jam-packed theater on folding seats? This time, I passed.
It was actually nice to do something that involves some of my other interests every so often. We hit up Sur la Table, Crate & Barrel and a few other stops before ducking into Maggiano’s for a late lunch. Then we opted to stroll to the next shopping center over to browse the bookstore, resisted Restoration Hardware and left the Container Store before things had a chance to get dangerous. A walk back over to the mall landed us in the Cheesecake Factory (very, very mediocre food, tasty desserts) for coffee and something sweet before we headed to our respective homes. A very nice way to spend an afternoon, if you ask me. The rest of my weekend was spent running around in my underwear for the glorious few days my brother-in-law was out of town.
For all the Daring Bakers, I did complete my March challenge. I was never inspired enough to photograph the results.
For the first time in a dozen years, I remembered to dye some eggs for Easter. This probably only happened because I had several scavenged packages of dye that I purchased on the cheap last year, intending to dye fiber. I still haven’t dyed any fiber with the egg dye. I even boiled half a dozen eggs to dye. These are not those eggs. I realized I wanted to dye more, so these are the dozen raw eggs that were in the fridge. No reason they can’t be pretty for cooking. The pink stamp on the end of whatever egg it is I purchase is completely water soluble.
With the pretty eggs putting me in the mood for permanent warmer weather, I pulled out some knits that also reminded me of spring. I have a Wisp going made of Filatura di Crosa Superior, a cashmere and silk blend, in a perfect shade for spring.
Then I pulled Herring out of my knitting bag and worked on that for a bit. In two sittings, I’ve gotten this far (crappy cell phone pics ahead. The actual color is more like this).
And I have this far to go before mindless stockinette. It is completely mindless, too, since it has an afterthought heel.
Can you tell that I forgot which color was designated the main color on the second sock in the colorwork portions? I’d planned to make one sock “grey” and the other “green”, but make the legs exactly the same on both socks. In the first sock, the grey was the dominant color. Instead of using logic (as in the first sock is grey so the main color must have been grey) I made green the dominant color. See how much more it “pops” against the grey in the second sock than in the first?
Nona and others have written some very informative posts if you’re interested in the whys of color dominance and why you should remember which color is which through your entire project. Now I just need a picture of Fish Fish waiting for his fins and eyes to be sewn on to have a trifecta of green goodness. I don’t have one, of course.
the FrankenFuzz Monster.
I mentioned in my last post that our kitten was a smidge broken. When we got her from Jacquie last November, she’d previously had two polyps removed from her nasal passages. Fuzz made a great deal of noise when she ate or drank and we soon realized that the polyps were probably back. Since about February, we were constantly in to see the vet, trying out medicine cocktails to control the problem as surgery was a bit cost prohibitive. It got to the point where daily steroids were the only thing helping to control but not correct the problem.
Neither the husband or I felt very good about giving our less than 7lb kitten the equivalent of kitty prednisone every day for an extended amount of time. Any attempts to wean her from the pills was painful. Her breathing was incredibly labored and along with the vet, we wondered if she was getting enough oxygen at times. I also became convinced that she was mostly deaf as nasal pharyngeal polyps tend to originate in the ear canal. The deafness did explain why Fuzz Monster insisted on “playing” with Jezebel despite the growling and hissing; Fuzz couldn’t hear the growling.
Two weeks ago, bleeding heart that he is, the husband decided we weren’t going to medicate anymore and took Fuzz to Georgia Veterinary Services with the referral our vet submitted at the beginning of the whole process of getting the kitten better. GVS removed a marble sized pharyngeal polyp from the back of her throat and nasal passage. Then they opened her up and cleaned out the bony area around her right ear canal to ensure the unwanted tissue was completely gone.
She came home on the 12th looking like the most pathetic kitten in the world. In addition to the shaved head, she had a drain under her chin to let the excess fluid out and a row of stitches next to it. The Elizabethan collar finished up the indignity. She got the drain removed on the 14th and the incision area has healed very nicely over the past week. This past Thursday, I came home and found her sleeping just inside the bedroom door, sans collar. I looked around and found it on the bed, still velcroed together. She’d managed to pull her head out of the collar and run free. Since she wasn’t bothering the staples at the incision, we kept the collar off for longer and longer stretches, finally keeping it off Saturday. We also let her out of her sick quarters (our bedroom) and reintroduced her to the household.
Mocha is still not very impressed.
