Childhood favorite

Growing up Mom had three canisters sitting on the counter when you first walked into the kitchen. One had flour, one had sugar, and the other held cookies. I remember some chocolate or strawberry wafers thrown in for variety, but almost always it was filled with Oreos. I have probably eaten my weight in Oreos. Twice.
 
...Maybe three times if you count the chocolate covered mint ones we got special at Christmastime.  At least it got me to drink milk??

A couples days ago, SmittenKitchen posted a recipe for Rhubarb Streusel Muffins.  I salivated over them as I read the recipe and reminded my boyfriend, yet again, that he is supposed to bring me rhubarb from his garden so I could bake something to take camping over Memorial Day Weekend. But I got distracted by the link to the recipe four years ago: Homemade Oreos.  So, with full knowledge that there was no way one batch would last from Monday night until the weekend, I made them anyway.

I fully intended to take pictures, but I forgot. It was late at night anyway and pictures would have been crappy. Then half of them were gone by morning. Oops.

So, for the sake of this blog post, I made another batch last night!  And if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you...

Homemade Oreos
Accidentally modified from Smitten Kitchen

Chocolate wafers:
1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/4 cup sugar (or 1 cup plus whatever accidentally fell in from the sugar pot)
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons butter, room temperature
1 egg

Cream filling:
1/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/4 cup shortening, room temperature
2 cups powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla

To make the wafers, preheat oven to 375. Mix all dry ingredients, including sugar, which is technically a wet ingredient.  Add butter and egg and mix like crazy.  When you start mixing it will get kind of clumpy and look like this:

But if you keep mixing.... and keep mixing.... and keep mixing, it will eventually turn into a crumbly dough:

Spoon rounded teaspoons of dough onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.  Press mounds flat with the bottom of a glass or measuring cup.  Bake for 9 minutes (Quicker and easier to bake two cookie sheets at once on middle two oven racks - just switch racks halfway through baking to make sure they're even).  Place on rack to cool.

To make the filling, cream butter and shortening.  Add powdered sugar in 1/2 cup increments, mixing well between additions.  Add 1 tsp of vanilla after you reach 1 cup and 2 cups.  Continue to beat filling for several minutes to make it light and fluffy.

To make sandwiches, fill a small plastic baggie with cream filling. Cut off the tip of the baggie to squeeze out filling. Pipe desired amount of cream on wafer and top with wafer of the same size. I piped a little over a teaspoon onto each cookie and had plenty of filling left over - from both batches of oreos!

Take note, this filling is delightful slathered on a graham cracker. Having extra is not a bad thing! Or instead of vanilla, you can add peppermint extract to the cream filling and have special holiday oreos! YES!



In other life news, I took some pictures of the yard I'll be moving to shortly. Not great pictures, but at least they give an idea of what I'll be working with. New raised beds may be in my future...

Baby birdies

I have been very busy with my new babies...

Robin babies! Mama really wanted to built a nest on a cross beam in our covered carport.  She attempted three other nests before she settled on this one. I had been avidly watching her for egg hatching activity, and last weekend I finally saw her sitting on the nest really funny with her butt in the air. A day later I could see the tips of little beaks. Slowly I could see more and more of the baby chicks' heads.  Now they are big enough that you can see all four heads at any time, as long as Mama hasn't scared you away by dive bombing when you come out of the house.  And, like most babies, all they do now is eat and poop.

In other outdoor news, my herb farm is toodling along quite nicely. My rosemary starts are doing their thing slowly and steadily. My couple of parsley starts have defied all odds and taken hold after living wrapped in slightly damp paper towel for over a week before planting. And I have a handful of thyme seeds that have finally decided to poke their heads up.

I didn't know if my thyme seeds outside would grow, so I planted some in peat pellets downstairs in the "sunroom." Soon I'll cut off the smaller guys and just let the biggest one take over the pellet for a while before planting.

Also in the sunroom, one of my orchids is going hog wild! "Trick or Treat" orchid. I think it's beautiful. I hope the blossoms survive a little moving around in the coming weeks.

Outside, my garden is finally doing something. It has felt like February out there, not May, and my plants have been acting accordingly. Peas that I planted in the raised bed, actually IN February, are now getting little over and inch tall. The peas I planted in early April are decently big.


Unfortunately, when you have a bunch of planters that all look the same, sometimes you forget which one you've planted in and double seed....Oops. Do you think mesclun mix lettuce will do okay sharing space with peas??

I got a little over excited when there was a sale on greens at Fred Meyer a couple weeks ago and bought a few too many... But I managed to find a place for them regardless.

And I'm being quite "green" about it!

Our 3 year old strawberries are starting to bloom, and will hopefully produce sometime in June.

But the blueberries may take a while. We got three bare root blueberries last month for 50% off. Luckily, I had three large planters already available so we could pot them instead of putting them in the ground. They should be fine for a couple of years in these guys before I am able to find them a more permanent home.  One variety is supposed to produce berries up to silver dollar diameter! Yum.

We had a rare bit of sunshine yesterday, so I took the opportunity to dig up some calla lilies that were hiding in an odd corner of the yard. I was digging with a spade instead of a shovel and think I may have damaged some of the roots during the transplant, but hopefully they'll enjoy their new living conditions.

That's it for outside. I've got kale and lettuce starts in the raised bed, as well as the tiny peas and some radishes, but they aren't far enough along to warrant a photoshoot. Inside I've decided to prep for summer by planting some flower seeds. I had plastic 6-packs left from the kale starts, so I'm going to hope my daisy, bachelor button, and zinnias get an excellent start in the sunroom.  Eventually I hope to be able to plant them around the edge of the yard to bring in some bright color. Fingers crossed that seeds from 2006 are still viable....

And, I'm getting a bit adventurous. A dear friend sent me a link to the "greenest" way to start plants - in a toilet paper tube! I got some free tomato (and basil, for that matter) seeds from Sunset magazine trying to sell me a subscription. I have no clue what kind of tomato seeds they are - roma, grape, etc - but I'm hoping I get to find out. I've never done tomatoes from seed, and I've heard they're very difficult, so it may just be a fun, if failed, experiment.

I couldn't get them to stand up on their own, so I had to put them in cups. Not sure if it will be good or bad for them. Maybe I'll move a couple to between the flower starts if things look disasterous.

____

Proof of nurture vs nature: Ollie the Gardening Cat.

Easter

Another Easter, another 42 pound weight gain.  Ugh.

I made another batch of cinnamon rolls on Friday night/Saturday morning and they were just as delicious as last time. I didn't have any cream cheese on hand, so I found a recipe for an old fall back that I remember my mom making a version of - butter, vanilla, and enough powdered sugar and milk to make it the desired consistency.  I based mine off of this recipe.  Some said it was better than the original cream cheese icing, but don't tell Alton.

I had a giant group of extended family in town, so of course we had appetizer and drinks, dinner out and wine, and dessert and more booze after (and the amount of noise we created steadily grew throughout the night. None of us are really quiet people).  There were two kinds of pie from the Seattle Pie Company, marionberry and strawberry rhubarb, so of course I had to try a little bit of both. And what's pie without a scoop of ice cream on top? My vote went to the rhubarb.

And on Sunday, I made chocolate pumpkin muffins (cupcakes, really) with German Chocolate cake mix -my preferred cake mix for those, and fair scones from a mix to put homemade lemon curd and peach butter on. Followed by a huge dinner and a homemade strawberry rhubarb pie for dessert. Again with the pie. I can't say I minded too much at the time. It was really good.

So in conclusion, two days and 42 pounds later.... I'm going to go home and eat that leftover piece of strawberry pie I have sitting on the kitchen counter.

Right after I go running.

Good Friday Projects

With Easter near on the horizon, and today being Good Friday and all, I thought it was time to post my most recent crafting experience. Easter Eggs!

I used the classic Paas egg dye, where you dissolve tabs in vinegar, then add water.

I tried to keep it nice and clean, but dying eggs always makes such a mess.

Supposedly dissolving the tabs in vinegar before adding water makes the colors brighter. I'm not sure I believe it. Somebody needs to show me the science on that. Or maybe I should just perform an experiment after Easter when all the egg dye kits go on sale. 

Aren't they pretty? Don't they make you hungry?

.... for chocolate? Yum, Easter.

I only dyed nine eggs. I thought more than that wouldn't get eaten in a reasonable time period. So, what to do with all the dye after it's done?

Dye yarn!

I found this article about how to do it successfully and followed it pretty closely.

I started with a light cream colored yarn that I thought would take the color nicely.  When dying yarn you should always use natural fibers - acrylic yarn does not accept dye.  Unfortunately, this AlpacaWare Blended Alpaca is 50% acrylic, 30% alpaca, 20% wool. I didn't know what to expect, but I have 10 skeins of this stuff, so I decided if it was super ugly I wouldn't mind tossing it. And what fun would it be if the yarn turned out with 1 ply white and 1 ply dyed??

To prep the yarn, I re-wound the skein into a hank to make sure all of the yarn had equal access to the dye.  The first ball I used the backs of two chairs, but that was a bit tedious.  For the next two I used my Handmade by Rich yarn swift, and that was a bit quicker and easier.  Next, you soak your hanks in water for 20 minutes.

As far as color goes, I really wanted to use purple and gold for obvious reasons, but I have heard from various sources that purple dyes are really hard to get right. They often turn parts of the skein red and parts blue, or just make them splotchy and not very attractive.  So instead I chose blue, green, and red. 

I drained the water from the soaking bowls, poured in the egg dye (the very same stuff I used on my eggs earlier in the day), and filled the bowls with water until the yarn was just covered.

The instructions say that, depending on the yarn, it can take anywhere from 20 minutes to a couple hours for the dye to soak in, and you will know it's done when all of the dye is absorbed and the water runs clear. After several hours my water still had color, so I left the hanks soaking overnight.

The next day, I gently poured out the water and rinsed the yarn.  Surprisingly, the blue dye had all been absorbed while both the red and the green still tinted the water.  Once rinsed until the water ran clear, I hung the hanks on hangers in my tub to dry.

The resulting colors were Easter pastel spring colors. How fitting! If I had to make a guess, I would say that more dye would have been absorbed and the colors would have been much brighter had I used 100% natural yarn.  But I like the end result, and now have to find suitable projects for them. Maybe I'll have to find a baby project that only requires 150 grams of fingering weight yarn.

Next I'm going to try dying yarn with Kool-Aid!

Butterflies, Wars, and a dry Valley

 I may not have been blogging, but I've been busy, trust me. I've been knitting, playing, crafting, working, and traveling. I have a couple of finished knitting projects, but they're just going to have to wait until later due to a lack of images. As it happens, I have too many pictures and not enough time to post about all of them, so collages it is.

I got dragged to the Pacific Science Center earlier in the month to go see the Star Wars exhibit. Little did he know that it was just an excuse to get him into the warmth of the Tropical Butterfly House! Temperatures are kept at almost 80 degrees with a high humidity. It felt fantastic after the wet and dreary "spring" Seattle has been having. At least the moss is liking it.

The Star Wars exhibit was well executed, with lots of original costumes, models, and interactive computer games and stations to build your own flying car, R2 unit, and something else... The place was packed with people, and I felt bad body-slamming a 9-year-old to get supplies to build things.  I was a little sad we didn't get to do it, the kids looked like they were having a lot of fun, and learning at the same time.  Too bad the big kids didn't get to play.

I just spent a week in California working on hatchery reform. I get the nerve-racking task of taking notes while my computer screen is projected onto a wall for everyone to see. Unfortunately, that means that everyone knows I can't spell worth crap. I mean, who can spell Ceratomyxa correctly on the first try? Not to mention all the other parasites, diseases and viruses fish can get. Sheesh.

We were conducting our interviews right in the middle of Johnny Cash-land. Our first interview was very close to Folsom Prison, then we sang "I'm going to Jackson" all the way to our lunch spot.  The next day we were "stuck in old Lodi," just like Creedence.  Who knew the outskirts of Sacramento was so musical?

Lodi happens to be right in the center of wine country.  Vineyards seemed smaller than in Southeastern Washington like I'm used to, but they sure were packed in anywhere they could.  We drove by some grapes that I'm not sure I'd ever seen before.  They looked like old craggy witch's hands coming up out of the earth.  Later, we found out they are zinfandel vines. 

Note: this picture was shamelessly stolen from Google Images. I didn't get the chance to take my own picture, but this is basically what they all looked like.



Luckily, we finished up our interviews early when we were in Merced. Merced happens to be less than two hours away from the Yosemite National Park valley floor.  We had heard that flows are really high currently and the waterfalls at the park were amazing.  A guy from Renton, randomly met at the In-N-Out Burger, said that seeing Half Dome for the first time was like the first time you saw Mt. Rainier up close.

All that excitement really set me up for disappointment. Holy crap. I was thoroughly not impressed by Yosemite. Sure, there's a vast elevation difference between the valley floor (4,000 ft msl) and the valley rim (7,000-8,000 ft msl), but shoot, it's just a bunch of granite. Cool when you first see it, but then... well, it's just a hunk of rock. It doesn't do anything.  And Half Dome? Not that thrilling. Really.

And the waterfalls! It's like these people have never seen water before! Oh... wait... they're from the Central Valley. Water is hard to come by. Sure, Bridalveil Falls is tall, and it puts out a lot of spray, but if that's a lot of water, I'd hate to see what it looks like in the summer of a drought year. Bridalveil ain't got nutthin' on Multnomah. Or Bridal Veil Falls, Oregon.  Now that's some water!

There. Now you've seen Yosemite.  No reason to go now, unless you want to climb one of those big pieces of rock.

Okay, okay, I need to qualify my opinion a little bit. I'm spoiled by the beauty of Western Washington. It's green year round, there is always water, and you can hike for days and not run into anyone. Definitely spoiled. First of all, when people told me it was a high flow year, I was expecting WATER. A whole lot of water. That alone skewed my expectations. Second, we stayed on the valley floor. There is a sixteen mile loop, and we drove that, stopping to take pictures. We didn't do any hiking. I'm sure if we had been up on the valley rim it would have been fairly awesome to look down on the floor and look out at the Sierras. Third, there were already people there, on a late Thursday afternoon in April.  If it's that busy now, I can't even imagine what it will be like in the summer.  Add people, noise, and garbage to the heat of summer and you can assume I will not be there.Lastly, I'm no rock climber. I look at El Capitan, Half Dome, the Cathedral Spires, and the Royal Arches and just see rock (obviously, from my previous statements). I'm sure if you are into hanging off of cliff faces for days at a time while climbing, this would be mecca. Maybe the kid from Renton was into free climbing, and that's why he liked Half Dome so much.

So, in summary, I'm glad I went now, in April, while the park was somewhat still green.  It was a good way to spend an afternoon and evening, and it checked a park off my to-do list. More importantly, now I don't have to go back when the hordes are there.

I got some knitting done in the car and the plane, but that will have to wait for a knitting post.

Cinnamon, sickness, and a present

Last weekend I made cinnamon rolls that were above and beyond delicious. They even rival my grandma's cinnamon rolls, and that's saying something. 

The bread was moist and tender, even after several days.  The ratio of cinnamon goo to bread was great.  The frosting was light and prevalent.  In other words, I would eat these every day for breakfast if my waistline could manage it.

They are, of course, one of Alton Brown's amazing creations.   The recipe can be found here.

I made them last Saturday night/Sunday morning. I wanted to eat all of them, but one was enough to tide me over until Monday.  Unfortunately, I couldn't breathe on Monday, so my second roll had to wait a while to be eaten.

I got hit with a serious head cold and was completely out of it for most of the week. I still went to work, but most of the days were spent drinking cranberry juice cut with water and blowing my nose. Saturday the sinus pressure had built up so badly that I felt like I had been kicked in the head. I had to do something drastic. Then I discovered the joys of a netipot.  Sinus pressure has since reduced from a constant pain to a dull throb that is usually minimized right after I blow my nose.  I'm at day 8 and still not up to 100%. I highly suggest avoiding this cold.

During the multiple hours I spent miserable on my couch last week I finished a present! I made fingerless mitts for my dear brother for his birthday. I tagged the pattern when I found it in a library book to be used at a later date. I so rarely knit for men, for many reasons, just a few of them being: there are fewer men in my life than women, there are few patterns fit for the manly man, and a guy can only use so many hats!

When I first read this pattern, I guffawed when I saw it was knit flat and stitched. I think it's silly to knit something flat when it is perfectly easy to knit in the round, and less work, to boot. But alas, I thought I should follow the pattern, and I went against my best judgment and knit according to the pattern. What a pain in the caboose.  I like the mitts and might knit them again if someone wants a pair, but I will NEVER again knit them flat.

Pattern: Bird's Eye Mitts, by Martin Storey
Yarn: Paton's Classic Wool, Black, Green Heather
Needles: US Size 2, US Size 5


New Cold Sheep Totals:

Yards left = 16,348.3
Grams left = 10,351.2
Skeins left = 120.5
FO = 5

Missing March

Old Man Winter, Jack Frost, and the Queen of May are running around Seattle playing hide-and-seek. Their target, the March Hare, is MIA.

That's how I feel about this "Sprinter" in Seattle. Warm enough to not necessarily be winter, but dang, it's raining a heck of a lot, not to mention there have been some really cold frosty nights, for spring. Every time I look at a calendar and see it's almost the middle of March I do a double take. Can't be. No way.

 

The Rhodies are confused. 

The daffodils are confused.

The ornamental cherry tree in my neighbor's yard is very definitely confused.

The only guy who understands the situation...

Is this guy. This teeny tiny little radish in my raised bed. I planted peas, carrots and radishes a couple weeks back when the soil was warm enough to work but it was still pretty chilly out.  Unfortunately it snowed the next day. None of my seeds have hit the germination point except this wee little guy. He's ahead of the game, and will hopefully survive until the March Hare finds his way up north.

Why does it always seem like he's late coming to Seattle? Late for a very important date?