May Stashdown Report

May was a long, rough month for me. I was sick with a variety of ailments through most of May, plus Spike, Zee, and I all celebrated birthdays, my sister graduated with a masters degree, we had a weekend out of town, my parents visited for a week, and we took a pilgrimage to Ikea to further our effort to be real adults with an upgrade in decor and storage from combined college apartment furniture. It's not hard to see how those 31 days could slip by so quickly.

I attended a yarn yard sale by Karin of The Periwinkle Sheep. I just got all of my acquisitions loaded into Ravelry. Here are some of the highlights!




Yards in from the sale alone: 5933.

I got my first month's Alina Shea Creations club yarn, which is a 50% merino 50% silk blend that is incredible to touch.



I also bought two skeins of her Belladonna Berries colorway.



And Shannon of Alina Shea Creations and I also had a bit of a swap, in which I received the Earth Day 2010 colorway.



(it makes me want to recycle just a little more...)

On the other hand, I did make some things in May too.

A dishcloth and some flowers:



I designed my own washable reusable Swiffer cover.




Made a couple flower hotpads:



And who can resist some ninja bunnies?



Step away from the beer, ninjas!

I also got to destash some yarn to a Ravelry member in need who found it in my stash there. Yay!

So here are the stats!

May yarn in: 7,563 yards
May yarn out: 750.7 yards
Year-to-date in: 28,614.75 yards
Year-to-date out: 9,206.8 yards

Yards to go until I break even: 19,407.95 yards

Right.

There are quite a few projects in progress.

Maybe it's time to freeze my wallet in a block of ice? ;)

April Stashdown Report

In April I finished a scarf and made a lovely pair of mittens. I also had a trip to WEBS during the annual sale and came upon a sale in March from one of my favorite dyers. I also won a prize through the Harry Potter group I'm in on Ravelry, which was (of course) some lovely yarn!


April yarn in: 3010 yards
April yarn out: 352.2 yards
Year-to-date in: 21,051.75 yards
Year-to-date out: 8245.6 yards

Yards to go until I break even: 12,803.35 yards

I also signed up for the Alina Shea Creations yarn club for May, June, and July, but of course that hasn't come yet. I also went to a major destash event this weekend by Karin at The Periwinkle Sheep. She had a yarn yard sale, and it was good news all around - she got to destash, I got some new-to-me yarn, and prices were less than retail (some FAR less than retail!). The sale was in May, though, so I have some time to tally the damage.



Given the sale and the yarn club, however, I've made an executive decision to go "cold sheep" - that is, not buy any more yarn - through the end of July. I'm hoping that sticking to a plan will help me narrow the gap between yarn in and out for the year. Perhaps I'll break even by July - you never know!

Kale, Sausage, and Chickpea Soup

Kale - it's one of those vegetables that you've heard of, and you know it's probably good for you, but you don't know how to eat it. This recipe for Kale and Chickpea Soup came recommended by Crazy Aunt Purl although I cannot figure out where on her blog this occurred. But it did.

This soup was really great - filling, flavorful, colorful, and delicious of course. Spike didn't want to try it, but after a spoonful of broth mysteriously got past his lips (ahem) he ate the whole bowl. Soup as a texture seems to be a tough sell on this toddler, until he tries it.

On with the soup!

You will need:

1/4lb sausage (I used sweet Italian sausage - different types and flavors of sausage will yield different results as the sausage really makes this soup)
1 medium onion, chopped (I used one of my green Vidalia onions, yum!)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil
1 large potato, peeled and diced into 1/2 inch cubes
a bunch of kale
~4 cups chicken broth
2 cups water
1 14oz can of chickpeas (or about 2 cups prepared from dry beans)

For preparing this meal I needed a pot with a lid, a cutting board area and knives, my not-so-trusty salad spinner and bowl, and some bowls to hold ingredients while they waited for their turn to go into the soup pot.

The first thing I did was wash the kale. I'm not sure where I got this idea, but when I wash leafy things I like to let them take a nice swim in a bowl of water for a few minutes to let some dirt settle out. Then I spray them with water and wash, then spin any remaining water out in the salad spinner.

So while the kale is swimming I wash the other produce and chop what I'll be using first - the onion and garlic. When I use green onions, I use the white and green parts but I do cut off the tips of the green and the rooty part of the bulb at the bottom.

It goes from this:

to this:

and then I just chop it up with a knife and sweep it into a bowl to wait. Since the onion and garlic will be cooked together, I put them in the bowl together. Somebody stop me!

Now at this point I cook the Italian sausage right in the soup pot. The original recipe calls for chorizo which must come pretty ready to eat since it only cooks for 3 minutes in their directions. Italian sausage, on the other hand, needs to be cooked, and so I cook it. I find that if I buy it as links that the casings are easy to cut off before cooking. It generally goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway - wash your hands after handling raw meat. I have it down pretty well, leaving the dishwasher open to receive the knife I open the casings with and only touching meat with one hand so I can use the other to turn on the water. I use a spatula to break up the sausage as it cooks, and remove the crumbled meat to a bowl when it's browned.

While the sausage is cooking I dice the potato and get to work on the kale. There's a thick stem running up the center of each leaf, and I slice those out and discard them along with any leaves that look like they're less than delicious.

That skinny green stick thing there on the left is one of the veins that I cut out of the center of the leaves.

After chopping, we have this!

Now. I throw the garlic and onions into the soup pot along with a little bit of olive oil and a small bay leaf and work on scrubbing the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon (just a little). The onions and garlic need to cook until they are soft over medium heat, so about 5 minutes. At this point everything needs to be ready to go in. First I add a splash of the chicken stock and really work on scraping the pan with the wooden spoon. This is the same idea as deglazing a pan - you want to get the stuff stuck to the bottom from cooking the meat up because it adds a lot of flavor to the soup. Then add the rest of the chicken stock, the kale, the potato, and the water. Cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, for about 15 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Then add the sausage and chickpeas and simmer uncovered for a few minutes.

That's the best picture I got of the soup. After this I was too busy eating all of it.

March Stashdown Report

March had great potential. I had to finish my Emerald Isle blanket to get credit in my Harry Potter crafting game, and that enormous yardage credit and the knowledge that it was a virtual guarantee is my only excuse for the yarn orders I placed in March. I bought two skeins of sock yarn from Alina Shea Creations early in the month. Then my husband offered to treat me to some yarn (enabler!!!) and, well, .... I went to Knit Picks. Then there was an Alina Shea spring sale and I was sunk (but it hasn't arrived yet.... so it doesn't count yet!).

I did wind off a skein of cotton to give away in a swap package, which I count as yards out. So there is that!

March yarn in: 7,533 yards
March yarn out: 4,404.7 yards
Year-to-date in: 18,041.75yards
Year-to-date out: 7,896.4yards

Yards to go until I break even: 10,145.35 yards

Oops.

Pan-Fried Fish Tacos and Lentil Rice

Bad news first - I didn't take any pictures of this dinner.

Good news, though - it was pretty good!

My friend Kris has shared her recipe for her Famous Blackened Fish Tacos. It's not grill season around here so somehow I came up with the idea of pan-frying the fish in a little olive oil instead. Cod fillets were on sale and I got about 2 pounds at $4.99/lb (we ate about 2/3 of it and froze the rest). I used a sharp knife on my fish cutting board to cut pieces about 5 or 6 inches long and an inch wide and tall. Then I sprinkled on a modified version of Kris's spice rub. I ran out of cayenne pepper at 1 teaspoon, I was out of garlic powder entirely, I didn't feel like grinding coriander seed, and I left out most of the salt (just because).

Kris's spice rub:
- 1 tsp course salt
- 1 TBSP smoked paprika
- 2 tsp cayenne pepper
- 1 tsp course ground black pepper
- 1/2 TBSP garlic powder
- 1 TBSP onion powder
- 1/2 TBSP ground cumin
- 1 tsp ground coriander seed
- 1 tsp dried oregano
- 1 tsp dried basil

I restocked my paprika, cayenne, and garlic powder this weekend so next time I'll be able to do it right!

With a gloved hand I rubbed the spices onto the fish and arranged them in the hot olive oil in the frying pan (on medium high). I only used about 1/4 cup oil in the pan and fried the fish for about 8 minutes, turning it over halfway through. It fell apart into flakes in the pan which, while bad for presentation, at least reassured me that it was cooked!

Our fish tacos consisted of a warmed flour tortilla (the 6" size, pretty small) with fish, diced avocado, diced tomato for everybody but me, lettuce from a bag salad mix along with a couple of the shredded carrot pieces that came along, and a little creamy poppy seed salad dressing. What?! Yes - it was a nice, sweet addition and really made the tacos. If the fish was up to the usual level of spice I don't think it would have worked, but in this instance it really worked!

On the side I made brown rice. I sauteed a little chopped green onion in just the littlest bit of butter, then added two cups of water and one cup of short grain brown rice. Because I had it handy in the cabinet, I threw a handful of dry lentils (and a little extra water to compensate) and a pinch of salt, stirring it together before putting the lid on and cooking it as usual for brown rice. That is, bring it to a boil and turn down to low and ignore it for over half an hour. I think I'll be looking into other methods because this left my husband scrubbing the pot for a while.

Anyway, as a meal it came together rather well and we had enough leftover fish for lunch the next day too, although we did change it up by putting the rice into the tortilla also. If that's not living on the edge I don't know what is!

Potato and Cheddar Soup, a work in progress

Not long ago my family was at the grocery store and looking for some potatoes. I don't remember what we planned to make, but we didn't need many. Somehow the cost comparison led us to the 20 pound bag (yes - the bag that weighs more than Zee) ending up in the cart. I think it was $6. The bag is full of nice, small, clean white potatoes, and we're working our way through them. So when my husband said he was in the mood for baked potato soup I at least knew we had plenty of the main ingredient. He said, "Bacon, sour cream, cheese - that kind of soup."

My friend Julie (blog on hiatus) found a potato soup recipe a couple months ago and highly recommended it. While I was looking for it, my husband dug up this recipe. I looked them over and caught a glimpse of the nutritional facts - 169 calories per serving vs. 749! 9.9g fat vs. 49.4g! Per serving, not in the whole pot! A closer look reveals the differences: more milk, 12 slices of bacon (ah-ha!) instead of diced ham, 1/4c more cheese and a cup of sour cream. So all the things my husband wanted in the soup are what made it worse for you. Excellent!

So here's what I made. I used the recipe nutrition facts calculator from sparkpeople here to determine that my soup, with four servings, had 484 calories and 29.8g fat per serving! I thought I did pretty well until seeing that. But it was a good lesson in learning that the little things add up.

Potato and Cheddar Soup, version 1

4 slices bacon
3 cups washed, peeled, and diced raw potatoes
2-3 cups water
1.5 tablespoons butter
2-3 green onions, sliced (3/4-1 cup) white and green parts but not the root bits at the very end
1 tablespoon flour
3 cups milk (we buy whole milk)
1/2 tsp sugar
1 1/4c shredded cheddar cheese, divided
1/3 c sour cream (I used reduced fat)


In a frying pan, cook bacon over medium heat. You want it pretty well done so it will crumble, but not so much that it burns. Remove bacon to a plate lined with a paper towel to dry a bit. Reserve a teaspoon or two of bacon grease for cooking your onions; store the rest in a jar in the fridge or freezer or discard.

While the bacon cooks, put the diced potatoes in a pot with some water, cover, and cook until the potatoes are tender. This took about 20 minutes for me. When the potatoes were tender enough, meaning I could squish one pretty easily with a wooden spoon, I left the lid off for a few minutes to let some water evaporate. One of the base recipes called for a cup of the potato cooking water in the soup, so instead of draining the potatoes, reserving liquid and recombining I just cooked it down a bit.

In yet another pot (we're up to two pots and a frying pan now) melt 1.5tbsp butter over medium heat and add in the teaspoon or two of bacon grease (hey, it tastes good!). Throw in those sliced green onions to cook a bit, maybe a minute or two. Have the potatoes or the milk close by and ready to pour in, and sprinkle about a tablespoon of flour into the onion mixture and keep stirring! This will cook the flour a little. After about a minute, add the potatoes and the liquid you have left from boiling them (just dump it in!), milk, sugar, 1 c. of the shredded cheddar cheese, about 1/3 c sour cream (I did not measure this, just a big spoonful), and fresh ground pepper. Stir and let this simmer for a bit, maybe 15 minutes or so.

Crumble the bacon and stir about 3/4 of it into the soup. I threw in the green parts of the onion at this stage as well, although I really have no explanation for this. I let it simmer another few minutes while we got the kids rounded up for dinner and got out the dishes.

I garnished each bowl with a little sour cream, a sprinkle of cheese, and a sprinkle of crumbled bacon on top.

I am not exactly sure why, but the milk or the sour cream (or both?) sort of separated a bit in the soup. I think I had the heat up too high. When I try making this soup again, I'll take more time and keep the heat lower. My macaroni and cheese recipe uses milk and sour cream added to a roux (fat plus flour plus heat is a roux) and it will sometimes separate too. It tasted fine, though. I'm not sure what purpose the sugar served and I will probably leave it out in the future.

Leaving out the sugar, using two slices of bacon instead of four, one teaspoon of bacon grease instead of two, one tbsp of butter and 1 c. of cheddar cheese brings it to 413 calories and 23.4g fat. Those are all small changes that really bring down the fat content. I'll have to let you know how they taste!

I used about half of one of my Vidalia spring onions from the latest veggie trip. That leaves 2 1/2 onions to go... where will they go?

The Vegetable Revolution

I watched Jamie Oliver's TED acceptance speech yesterday. I highly recommend scraping together 20 minutes in your day to take a look at it - it took me a couple weeks to get around to it. But after watching it I realized some things. I want to eat better food. I want everybody to eat better food and know how to make it. I want to know how to make better food too, because I certainly have some things to learn myself. And I'm going to do it, because I deserve to eat better. You deserve to eat better. My family deserves real food, every day. And I'm going to learn right here where anybody can find it, and everybody can help and be helped. I have to re-learn to cook real food. I know some, and I'll share what I can and learn what I can.

My vegetable revolution began yesterday. I hope you'll learn and share with me.

Yesterday's haul:

That's a Roma tomato ($0.30), a bunch of kale ($2.49), "baby" green Vidalia onions ($1.79), two avocados ($2.78), and two zucchini (rung up as cucumbers, they cost $1.98). I don't like tomatoes so they will be lacking in our diet, but my husband likes them and I plan to use this one in tonight's dinner.