affreca

One of the latest quick sale produce hauls was a bag of shallots. I've been meaning to try quick pickle onions, but I rarely have red onions in the house. It was tasty enough yesterday, so writing it down while I remember

1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon white sugar
1/4 cup boiling water
2 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1/2 cup thinly sliced shallot (1.5 medium sized ones)

Add salt, sugar and boiling water to small jar, stir to dissolve. Add vinegars to jar, stir and then add shallots. Let cool on counter for 30 minutes and enjoy.

Lawnchair bought me discounted hazelnut pieces, so after looking at all sorts of national hazelnut cookies (German, Italian and Balkan) I settled on chocolate hazelnut cookies. Only major change was added some instant coffee powder. I used a teaspoon from a bag labeled "coffee + sugar" left over from a couple of years ago when I was trying to make an instant coffee blend that I liked for backpacking. My current coffee solution for backpacking/kayaking is Maxim mocha from the Korean grocery, but that changes based on what I can find.

I wanted tahini chocolate chip cookies and couldn't find any more tahini in the pantry (I'm blind, there were two more containers down there), so instead I searched for cashew butter chocolate chip cookies because I've been haunted by a jar on our shelves for a while. The recipe I found uses 3 times the amount of cashew butter than I have, but thankfully all the ingredients (including the egg) were easily divisible by 3. Bonus, I also only had 1/3 the recipe's amount of cashews. So here's the smaller version.

1 egg
1 cup cashew butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp table salt
1 cup chocolate chips
1/3 cup cashews
Sprinkles of kosher salt

Whisk egg lightly in a small bowl. Add egg, cashew butter, brown sugar, baking soda and salt to stand mixer and mix well. Fold in chocolate chips and cashews. Preheat oven to 350 F, portion out large spoons of dough on lined baking sheet, sprinkle on kosher salt and bake for 8-10 minutes.

Edited to add
Original recipe

Trying this recipe for Butternut Squash and Chicken. Planned alterations include: adding freshish rosemary and thyme because I have only one small sprig of sage, swapping 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar since I don't have any lemons, and using the instant pot because I don't want to make a sauce in the cast iron frying pan. Plan is to use the slow cooker instructions, but cook the chicken and squash for 12 minutes under pressure. Oh, and maybe crumble some goat cheese on top because I have it.

It's been about two months since I quit my job. I haven't been good a motivation for physical things, but Lawnchair's bike training gets me out of the house, either to meet up with him in a different small town 20-30 miles out or taking the RV trailer out to a lake from which he can bike 60 mile loops and I can hike random 2-6 mile trails. I've been a bit better about going to fiber guild meetings, or Fiber evenings at L's studio. I did also manage to spend three days volunteering to teach middle and high school students how to measure surface water characteristics. And training to volunteer with local river NGO kayak trips, with the first I signed up for on Wednesday. That actually sounds like a lot...

Most of my actual time (that isn't internet surfing) is spinning. I blended and spun up 42 different one ounce yarns to make myself play with new color and fiber combinations. I learned a lot, but by the end of it I was running out of ideas (multiple attempts at blending orange and teal wool and getting unexpected results, including the time I made grey).

During that set of experiments, I took a class from L that inspired a new set of experiments. See, most of the color blending classes I've taken bring out the same color wheel - red blue yellow. L's was cyan magenta yellow, and one of the students asked why. While L couldn't answer, it stuck with me. I know printing inks are CMYB, but I never thought why. I know there's a different set of primary colors if you're adding lights, but.. 20 minutes of googling and I realize that my color theory education has holes.

So I decided to blend up RBY vs. CMY color wheels in wool fiber. I dyed four ounces of each color, and started making .5 ounce batts. I've done the primary, secondary and tertiary colors, and even did some cross wheel batts - blue/cyan, blue/magenta, red/magenta and red/cyan. Next up is some tints, tones and shades. Still deciding if I'm going to spin up the entire batt, or save a sample unspun. Maybe spin most of the batts, but tape a small bit of wool to a flashcard..

Useful, no.. but finding projects.

I started a physical recipe book, so I'll copy these down at some point. Hopefully before link rot sets in.

Hungarian goulash - https://eatingeuropean.com/hungarian-goulash/

Smashed Potatoes - https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/213492/smashed-potatoes/ - used hoisin sauce

Mexican casserole, need to try first - https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/20680/easy-mexican-casserole/

Somehow I feel like I used my vacation day productively, though not sure it is justified on analysis. Last night, I realized left my wallet at the office. As I'm off on another work trip Sunday, I sort of need the wallet. So I needed to go in to get it. This morning, I realized I also left my work laptop in the office, so even more need to go in. I got up at my usual early time, but lazed about before driving into the city. I got a mile walk around the neighborhood in with Lawnchair before it got hot.

Reassuringly, both my laptop and wallet were in the office as expected. I decided to do an hour of work (dealing with money crap), and then the yarn store I've been meaning to check out would be open. Yarn store was cute and woke, but I wasn't thrilled enough with their fiber selection to buy any. Then decided to check out the used art supplies store. They had about four ounces of fiber, but not worth buying. Finally, I hit the Target on the way an buy out the last of the 18 gallon rubbermaid tubs they had (I need more for organizing the yarn and fiber in the library). A final stop to pick up prescription and I did more errands than a normal day off.

I do still need to pack for work travel. I'm volunteering at the river clean up tomorrow, and I suspect I will be hot, sweaty and tired by the time I get home.

I cast off my last travel socks this evening, and wound up the next yarn into a ball to start on this trip. I think I'm back to socks being so much more suitable for travel than any other knitting. Maybe hats, but it's to hot to get exciting about hat knitting.

Adapted from this recipe, with alterations based on comments and my own tastes.

Filling
4 medium apples - peeled and cut into small pieces
3/4 pomegranate's seeds
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup brown sugar (could be decreased slightly, but needs to be brown)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
ground cloves and cardamon
~1/2 cup nuts (I used pistachios as that's what was in the house)

Topping
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup unsalted butter (soft)
(Might be worth doubling topping)

Mix filling ingredients in 9 x 13 greased casserole dish, and top with nuts. In a bowl, cut butter into other topping ingredients with a fork. Crumble bits over fillings. Bake at 350F for 45 minutes. Let cool 10 minutes and eat.

in today's aggravations. After thinking about it, I decided that I'd rather frog the hoody progress rather than keep contemplating the better construction idea that I'd had - starting at the top of the hood so I didn't have to pick up stitches on the neckline (though this will decrease structure at the neckline). I got 14 rows into that before I decided that I really wanted an i-cord edge on the hood. 8 rows into that, I decided to search for a way to minimize pulling on the i-cord edge, but that could be fixed going forward without frogging. For the last, I'm doing an extra slip three/knit three every four rows. I'm 18 rows in now.

Today is soup and bread day, so I'm ready for the work week tomorrow. My mistake with the soup is that because it's basic leftover turkey soup, I'm not following a recipe for amounts and I added to much garlic. I went online for suggestions other than add more stock to dilute it, and found the suggestion to add something creamy. Half a can of coconut milk, and it's a good soup now.

However, as I was focusing on my soup, I was not paying attention to my oven preheating. At 45 minutes in, it still had not reached 435 F. Or even 400 F. It did make it to 400, so it's partially working. I decided to bake it at what I had (yeast is on it's own schedule), and see. Worst case, I throw it out and go buy bread.

Today was the last of my in house sampling work for the year. I was delayed a couple of weeks due to software issues, and found out the pump isn't working in the well I was supposed to sample. I had to rejigger plans, but still had a nice time dealing with the people in my old job. It turns out I do like training people, and if I train the regulators, they'll expect things to be the way I do them. And having faces for names helps since there's been so much turn over in the last few years.

Which means I have to go into the office tomorrow, to return equipment, scan receipts and water my plants. I was out yesterday working the election, so it's only one day this week.

I'm glad to be flying to see S. in Oakland on Friday, as we're getting winter tomorrow. The low tonight is supposed to be 67 (after a high in the 70s). Then we'll get to 70 in late morning, followed by crashing temperatures to a low of 24 tomorrow night. The forecast is then highs in the low 40s to lows in the low 20s.