I am so tired today, but I did some more work on my embroidered wall calendar. Sorry for the poor picture quality. I am too tired to exert any more effort than using Photo Booth.
Yup… another cooking TAD. I have never made Indian food before, but I have been all about eating Indian food lately. I am also always a fan of warm, stewy, chickpeas. (Check out Lazy Lulu’s chickpea thing.) That said, I was recently turned onto Smitten Kitchen, an excellent food blog written by a new mom, named Deb, who cooks comforting and beautiful food in her small NYC kitchen. Needless to say, her blog speaks to me.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I made this on Day 06 along with my chicken cacciatore. Superbowl Sunday promises to be a busy day full of cookie baking, child rearing, and tv watching. In anticipation, I am writing this on Saturday night.I am an American football fan. I watch the Giants – as painful as it is sometimes. I scream a lot at the tv. I am also a Superbowl fan. I think you can be a Superbowl fan even if you don’t have a care in the world for football. It is an excellent excuse to eat junk food and hang out with friends in front of the tv. Additionally, it is nice to be in the know when everyone talks about the commercials on the following Monday.
Every year I make my own Superbowl t-shirt. I have for years now. I usually do it with whatever I have on hand. (To be fair, after years of avid artsing and crafting I have a lot of artsing and crafting crap on hand.) This year I drew out a stencil on acetate, cut it out with a heat tool, and used silkscreening ink, a stippling brush and the stencil to paint it on.
I love trying new recipes and today I followed a Bon Appetit recipe for chicken cacciatore. The recipe notes that: “The classic dish is updated by adding oven-roasted tomatoes, mushrooms, and onions to deepen the flavors.” It is soooo yummy. I will definitely make this dish again. However, next time I make it, I will not forget that the pan had been in a 350 degree oven, not just on the stove. That bare handed grab of the pan handle made me very sad, very angry, and a bit mean to my family until I was sitting down and eating.
Things have been a bit stressful at home lately because we are selling our co-op apartment and buying a co-op apartment at the same time. We thought we had it all worked out, alas, NYC Real Estate ain’t that easy. Suddenly, my husband, daughter and I have found ourselves not knowing where we (and our loads of stuff) are going to go. Actually, we are pretty sure that we will be living in my childhood bedroom for a month and then figure it out from there. In order to make myself laugh at the situation before bed, I made a fortune teller, a la elementary school, dedicated to my present situation.First choose: Co-Op, Rental, Condo, Mom’s House. Then a number. Then another number. Here are my potential outcomes:
- Wake up in new place, unpacked.
- Go on a vacay, then stay.
- Move into new place BEFORE the Elfa sale ends.
- Have a stress induced coronary. Move to ICU.
- Become a master home goods seamstress.
- Have a free babysitter 24/7.
- Couch surfing gives you bed bugs.
- Co-op board member leaves your application on a the bus. Finder of package promptly steals your identity.
I made beer bread tonight. Beer bread is no longer new to me, but I am very proud of it. I am a timid baker who has been conquering her fear one baked good at a time, since last autumn. My friend Jen shared a recipe for beer bread on her blog a few months ago. It was an approachable “quick bread,” but it wasn’t sweet, and sounded tasty. I made it and fell in love. Since then, I have substituted flaxseed meal for the white flour and I think the bread is very tasty this way. I wanted to feel less guilty about scarfing it down, loaf after loaf and it turns out that I actually prefer it with the flaxseed. I also use 14 oz of a very hoppy beer (Anchor Liberty Ale has worked best in my humble opinion) as opposed to 12 oz beer plus 2 oz water.
In December I started thinking about making a 2010 calendar. Then January rolled around and I still did not have a calendar. Finally, on January 28, I sat down and began to embroider one. With great determination I finished January before January ended. Today, I began March. I am new to embroidery so it is not perfect, but you know, practice makes perfect.
I love tags, and not the digital ones, paper and cloth ones. It must be my inner librarian. That said, I am oddly cheap when it comes to buying tags and labels (as well as socks and wrapping paper.) I just make my own (except for socks.)
