Finished object and WIP

I accidentally left my socks at work yesterday, and the sweater pattern I wanted to buy could take days for my e-check to clear (grrrrrrr), so I cast on Calorimetry last night. Easy peasy! I did the whole thing (with modifications) in less than an hour, and used only leftovers from my ugly Tubey sweater. Too bad I don't have the long hair any more to cascade out the back. I think these will make good Christmas prezzies.



Excuse the very messy hair.

Oh, and also check out my lace socks! I actually found the 2x2 ribbing and the straight stockinette on my first socks a little tedious, so I thought that it would be great to break it up with a pretty lace pattern, like this one. I'm loving it!

Bored at work

You better be thankful I don't get bored at work often, because when I do, this is the shit I come up with:

What's Cooking?

So what's for dinner tonight? Mr.'s mother likes to make this recipe for us vegetarians, so that's what we decided to make. But we discovered after we started really craving it that we didn't even have one pound of eggplant from the garden, so we decided to make up the difference with squash from the CSA. Oh, and we'd veganize it. Oh, and cut out some of that oil. Oh, and make it a little more streamlined by not cooking that eggplant first. And it turned out delicious!





It barely follows that original recipe, but it's a loose derivative of... That's whole wheat shells from our co-op, red and orange tomatoes and eggplant from our garden, squash and garlic and basil from the CSA. Nutritional yeast instead of the cheese for the vegans. Lots of red pepper flakes.

I think I need to work on my What's Cooking? picture techniques, because I keep getting steam. How do I get around this? I like to eat my food reeeeally hot, so I'm not willing to wait too long...

**Adult Content**

Isweartogod that my Little Dog is a huge pervert. He's been getting busy with himself these last few months like it's his job. I kind of feel bad for him, because he doesn't appear to be able to uh, take care of business, and it seems to be a real nuisance. He actually seems embarrassed, and he can't walk properly when he is at attention.

So we took him to the vet yesterday just for a check-up, and when the vet asked if there are any problems or issues, we said, "Nope, he's just fine... Well, there is one thing..." I swear, it was really quite an embarrassing conversation. When I go to the gynecologist, I know what to expect, but it didn't occur to me that I'd be having this kind of conversation with my sweet middle-aged male veterinarian at 8 am on a Saturday morning.

Anyway, my vet has explained that in dogs, the area between the pen1s and the sheath can get dry, and that perhaps my pervy little dog is just licking in to lubricate it. Now, I still don't know, because I've seen the look he gets on his face when he's working on himself. And guess what the solution is? Our vet has dispensed to us a mild non-astringent disinfectant-- we are supposed to flush inside the sheath with this diluted mixture and KY Je11y. I swear, who does that?! We have in fact bought all the necessary products, including a bulb syringe, but ohmygodIjustdon'twanna...



Why can't he just be fat and anxious like Big Dog?

What's Cooking?

We've been harvesting tomatoes like it's no one's business (those small tomatoes grow like weeds and ripen very quickly!), so we had a counter full of tomatoes from our garden, the CSA, and Mr's colleague even brought him a bag of vegetables yesterday. So last night we decided to make this roasted tomato soup. We used up pretty much all of our ripe tomatoes, but it was definitely worth it. Gorgeous taste, and it was so easy!

My modifications: We doused our veggies pretty well in olive oil for the roasting, so we didn't use any butter once everything moved into the pot. We of course used vegetable stock instead of chicken, and we subbed out the cream. Oh, and I added basil, but as you can see, I added it as a garnish instead of blending it in the soup (I didn't want it to be a weird color).

Sock (singular)

I finished! Only one entire other sock to go...



But to be honest, it was easy, so I'm not particularly dreading it. Yes, time consuming (#2 needles), but not difficult.
It's hard to take a picture of your own foot without it looking like a sausage, and Mr. had already gone to bed, so check out my best efforts:

What's Cooking?

Look what we did!

We're getting down to the last few weeks of the CSA, but we got a bumper crop this week! Squash, tomatoes, garlic, lettuce, basil, dill, rainbow chard, etc. etc. So we made a gorgeous stir fry! We had made a New Year's Resolution to eat one new food per month, so tonight we used the kohlrabi that we recently bought. Delicious stuff, kohlrabi! I don't know where to find it except for Whole F00ds, but next time I find myself out that way, I'll definitely buy it again.

Our recipe:
a few large leaves of rainbow chard
1-2 Tb. sesame oil
1 hot pepper, cut in half
1/2 large onion, sliced
1/2 large bell pepper, sliced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
3 small kohlrabi bulbs, peeled and julienned (thick)
1 medium summer squash, cut on the bias
shoyu

Wash, then prepare the swiss chard by cutting the leaves off the ribs. Cut the ribs on the bias and roughly chop the leaves.

Heat a large wok with sesame oil. Add the hot pepper, onion, chard ribs, and bell pepper and stir fry until the vegetables start to take on color. Add the garlic, kohlrabi, and summer squash, and cook until everything is tender and slightly browned. Add some shoyu and chard leaves and cook until the chard is wilted.

We meant to put scallions and/or basil for garnish, but it was so tasty, we forgot about decoration and scarfed it down naked. Mmmmmm.