recipe for delicious

A few days ago I was at work starving, when a co-worker (a godly saviour of a young man and perhaps an architect in the making) offered me some granola his mom had made for him. It was unbelievably good, and as I had never realized there was a such thing as "homemade granola" I immediately decided to make my own.

Inspired by several internet recipes and still in waiting for the copy of this young man's mother's recipe, I created my own.

Ingredients:
2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
1/4 cup sesame seeds
1/2 cup sliced almonds
1/2 cup pecans (mine were candied but to be fair I was using up old ingredients)
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut (optional)
1/2 cup oil
ground cinnamon

eyeball all of these:
1/6 cup real maple syrup + 1/6 cup brown sugar +1/6 cup honey = 1/2 cup sweetner

dried fruit pieces (mine are a mix of golden raisins, dried cranberries and dried blueberries and dried cherries)

1. Put the oats, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, sliced almonds, pecans and coconut into a bowl. Add the oil, and then measure the sweetner in the same cup you used for the oil. The honey mixture will slide right out of the cup, no scraping. Mix all of these together. Place on a flat cookie sheet or in a roasting pan and sprinkle with cinnamon per your taste.

2. Bake at 300 degrees for 30-40 minutes. Stir carefully every 10 minutes or so, especially if you don't want granola baked into your pan I did. The granola will still be slightly sticky and smooshy when you remove it from the oven, but it will harden as it cools.

3. After the mixture is cool, place it in a bowl or in a baggie and mix with about 1 cup of the fruit. You can, of course, add more or less per your taste. Store in one of many airtight ways.

4. Enjoy as it is or add some milk or yogurt. Die happy.

Maneki Neko

If you have a chance to pick up this book, I highly recommend it for anyone who has extra socks. The sock creatures in it are adorable, and would be great for small children, or anyone who needs cheering up. I made this "maneki neko" style cat with just a pair of socks, stuffing, and some embroidery floss.

In addition to sewing up some adorable friends, I finished my first sweater over the holidays. I'm just getting around to posting it now because I've been pretty busy. The pattern is the "Hela" sweater, free from Istex's website. However, I made it with Reynolds, instead...I'm told its the same yarn. It is EXTREMELY warm, suitable for the coldest days of winter. I wear it under my jacket, and it completely blocks the wind. I end up sweating outdoors in 10 degree weather sometimes.

Here's the Ravelry link!

Among other things I'm also an Italian grandma.

My mom got me a noodle machine for Christmas this year, in addition to some mini cupcake pans. So now I have a noodle machine. And If I may say so myself, home made noodles trump store bought any day. Even the ones you buy in the frozen foods section.

You don't, however, need a noodle machine. Just a rolling pin, a sharp knife, and the desire to die happy:

Pasta (this is not my recipe, but all recipes on the internet and in books generally point to this recipe. Plus it is easily doubled.) Serves 2ish sort-of hungry but not starving people.
-1 cup all purpose flour (recipes suggest semolina, but if both whole foods and giant eagle didn't have it, good luck and try the strip district maybe?)
-1 egg, well beaten
-1/2 tsp salt (my mother is now warning of the dangers of regular table salt, so you might want to use sea or kosher)
-a small amount of water as needed

1. Combine flour and salt.
2. Make a well and add the egg. Gradually incorporate the flour. Or if you're like me, and this fails every time, just mix them until a dough forms.
3. You want the dough to stick together and be solid, but kind of dry. In my experience, if its too wet, it won't go through my machine correctly. So if after you mix, you still have a powdery mess, add water. If you have a ball of dough, don't.
4. Let it sit there. For like 20 minutes.
5. Cut into about 4 sections. If you don't have a machine, roll each separately, then cut into noodles. A pizza cutter would work well here if you have one.
6. Bring about 2 quarts of water to a rolling boil. Home made noodles take 3-4 minutes to cook, much less time than store bought.



So you want a sauce to go with this? This one worked very well:

Brood Witch Sauce (with sun-dried tomatoes)

6 cups of chopped tomatoes (about 5-6 large ones)
1/2 onion, chopped
5-6 sun-dried tomatoes, chopped.
1 clove of garlic, smooshed.
rosemary
oregano
pepper
salt(if the sun-dried tomatoes weren't already salty enough)
olive oil

Combine ingredients in a large pot. Cook on medium to low heat until it looks like sauce. Stir often, try not to burn it. Stir in no more than 1/4 cup (but probably much less) olive oil at the end. I added a few pinches of baking soda to even out the acidity.

free hat!

free hat!
Originally uploaded by destroysodexho

Finished Object: Seaman's Cap

A new hat for Zachary! Look at him looking so pretty! He immediately loved it as soon as I was done and I let him have it even though its definitely an X-mas present. He's wearing it right now, in fact. I highly recommend this pattern, its easy, straightforward and the resulting hat is super comfortable.

and here's the ravelry page!

Winter break is so very, very fun. Today I cleaned my apartment, made rice pudding, took a bath, biked to Cal's (Cal's apartment definitely wins the adorably romantic tiny apartment prize), watched Happy Gilmore, and spilled cinnamon on my hand(it smells GREAT!), and still fit in time to knit my sweater!

Tomorrow: maybe even a book!

killing spree prevention device covers or "Colorwork iPod Covers"

use scraps of yarn! make sure you have enough! make something fun! takes only one day! Scandinavian patterns because that’s where most of our music comes from! These are great for a first test project with colorwork that is neither expensive or time consuming.

step one: using any worsted weight yarn and size us 8 dpns, cast on either 32 or 28 depending on how large or small your ipod is. 32 might fit like a monster old fashioned 60 gig. 28 will fit my 30 gig video and also new thinner ones like the itouch.

step two: do some 1x1 ribbing until you’re okay with it. do it tight so the ipod doesn’t fall out.

step three: designs. patterns. using two colors helps the case be thicker and more cusiony for the pod. For the checkered pink and black case, after ribbing, k 1 round black, k 2 rounds pink, then follow that with k2 pink k2 black for two rounds, then switch the colors to k2 black k2 pink. k 2 more rounds of pink, finish off with black until you're satisfied with the length. The grey and black is a little more complex, but still easy to figure out...just take a look.

step four: when its long enough, please cast off and then sew it together at the bottom.

step five: wrap that rascal. play some tuneage.

Here's mine on ravelry.