I finally got my invitation to Ravelry and I signed up immediately. Since it’s totally in beta right now, you have to wait for the administrators to invite you.
To quote Spongebob:
“It tastes like I always imagined it would”
I’m uploading projects, I’ve joined the Crochet Liberation Front, I’ve found new patterns. I am totally geeking out in a crazy yarn way. It’s sick. I need help.
Category Archives: Craftin
Delivered
I delivered my Def Strawberry Jam and my salsa verde (possibly to be named Zapata’s Vacation and Zapata’s Revenge for mild and spicy respectively) to the State Fair this afternoon. I love the women there. All I want to do is hug them and eat cookies with them! Already a million jars of a million other things had been dropped off, I don’t count my chances too high. It’s fun either way and next year I’ll submit more.
Unrelatedly…
David and I stopped at McDonald’s on the way home from camping. It’s a strange fact, but people who finish camping crave huge amounts of fat and protein. Somewhere along the line McDonald’s has started printing the nutrition info on their food. Holy shit. Everyone knows McDonald’s is unhealthy, but what surprised me was just HOW unhealthy it was. I could not for the life of me figure out how they managed to cram that many calories and grams of fat into anything. I’m not the healthiest eater around, but I’m generally aware of the nutritional value of what I eat. We were blown away.
I got a quarter pounder and medium fries and that was almost 900 calories. The sodium and fat content would choke a horse. Now, I certainly agree that a lot of the obesity epidemic is about making poor choices, I’m proof of that. I’m educated and well informed about nutrition and I still make choose the gooier options. I gotta say, however, that there’s no way I would have put a simple burger and fries up that high. Doing my own research I found that I can put together a similar meal at 1/2 to 2/3 the calories.
What exactly are those fuckers putting in the food anyway?
Luckily I almost never eat there or I’d be way way fatter than I am.
also unrelatedly…
We brought back 2 quarts of wild blueberries from the BWCA. I will be making jam with 1 quart and we will be eating the rest. Do not ask me for any blueberry jam. Just don’t. I’m not sharing it with anyone and especially not with anyone who asks for it. It took us 90 minutes in the hot sun to collect those berries and that was after days of not finding any in the usual places. Mine. I get to be greedy once in a while.
bu relatedly…
After 90 minutes in the hot sun I decided that migrant farm workers needed to be paid more. Jesus, that sucked and I was just doing it for myself. I can’t imagine having to do it to support a family. Migrant farm workers need to network and unionize for fair wages and America needs to stop being such babies about what their food costs. Hell, if you want to complain about food costs lets talk about the recent hike in dairy prices since cattle feed has gotten so expensive as a result of the dimwitted and short sighted E-85 ethanol bullshit.
It’s after 11 and I need to eat me some dinner.
manfunk
Tomorrow we leave for the BWCA. David spent the evening prepping and packing and getting ready.
I spent the evening standing over boiling pots and stirring and burning myself (note to self: jam is mostly sugar, it’s way way hotter than water). I finished the Def Strawberry Jam, it worked out beautifully. I am so pleased with it. I worked out my salsa verde recipe and processed it. It is truly a thing of beauty. I may have to call and switch from ‘mild’ to ‘hot’ salsa. It’s hotter than expected.
anyway, I’m exhausted, I’ve not slept well since Thursday night.
I leave you with the above photo of Maddie and Chester waiting in the window. This is what I see every time I come home whether I’m gone for an hour or an entire day, they stay in the window. Maddie is more vigilant, she stays in the window and moves for nothing, she even sleeps there.
Wish us luck! I’ll come back with photos and movies or cool bear scars!
(also, go see a Fringe show!)
smash up
SO much going on and so little time.
David and I had been talking for a while about getting camping but hadn’t really moved on it. Suddenly it’s the end of summer and he is going to have to go back to school and we have the students coming back to MCAD and I won’t be able to take time off at the end of August.
Talked to my boss and decided to go camping this coming Wednesday even though it’s short notice. Since the trip is coming up we have much to do before we go.
The Fringe Festival started this weekend and now we have to cram many shows into a few days. We saw two last night, we will see two tonight and one each on Monday and Tuesday. All this and we still need to get our camping gear and food packed before we leave Wednesday morning. We’re thinking of bringing Chester with us. We’re reasonably sure he’ll have a good time up there and not be a jerk. If we were going to Voyaguers National Park I would say no, bears are much more common there and dogs don’t mix well with bears (they try to protect you from the bear and then when they realize they can’t win they come running back to you for protection with an angry bear at their heels). While it is possible to see a bear in the BWCA, it is far less likely. We saw evidence of bears when we were there, but we never saw them.
We are also thinking of bringing Chester because he’s in the midst of his jackass angsty teen months and I’m not keen to thrust that upon Anna. Ghengis went through the same sort of thing but he was less Jackass and more Whiny Attention Whore. Let’s just hope that Chester doesn’t freak and try to jump out of the canoe and get attacked by beavers.
And I still need to finish up my State Fair entries.
State Fair entries are not going so well. I mentioned earlier that the chutney turned out but I felt it was not great by any means. The first batch of cherry jam failed miserably and while I can salvage it as a pastry filling, I cannot enter it. The second batch of cherry jam seemed to turn out until 24 hours later when I checked it and realized that all of the cherries had separated out of the gel and floated to the top. The gel part became super gelled and the cherries are just loose at the top. Since ‘Distribution of Fruit’ is part of the judging criteria, this will also not be submitted. Let’s hope the Def Strawberry Jam and the Salsa Verde turn out.
What I need to find out is if the problems with the jam are an error on my part or if it has something to do with the pectin, a brand I’ve never used before. I’ll ask around and see.
Also there’s laundry and dishes and vacuuming to be done.
Over and out my peeps.
I smell of cherries
Between headaches and general staring off into space, I’ve been working on my State Fair entries. It’s been a lot of work and there’s nothing that says “SMART” like choosing to stand over a boiling pot of fruit, stirring frequently for 40 minutes or more on a day when it is 8 billion degrees out.
First up, I made a batch of cherry chutney. It’s pretty good, but I’m just not feeling it with the chutney, I don’t know. I don’t think I flavored it very well. Oh well. I’d say it goes well with pork, turkey or spicy food.
I made a batch of cherry jam that turned into cherry jello or something. That shit SOLIDIFIED! No worries, I’m calling it a cherry ‘pastry filling’ and giving it away. It tastes really good, it’s just too thick to be a jam. I drained too much juice off the cherries and so there ended up being too little fruit to pectin in the end. The gel ended up trapping millions of tiny bubbles in it. Definitely can’t enter that in the competition.
Today I made another batch of cherry jam and I think that turned out better. Definitely softer, more spreadable. I will have to manipulate the jars to help with fruit distribution (part of what yu get judged on is appearance).
Next up, Def Strawberry Jam for the “not otherwise specified” jam category and my salsa verde.
Wednesday I was on a mission for litmus paper. You see, if a recipe has a pH of 4.6 or lower, then it is acidic enough to kill any botulism bacteria that might be hiding in there. The boiling, heating and sealing will take care of the other bacteria, as well as any airborne yeasts or molds that might get in there. If the pH is higher than 4.6 then it must be pressure canned so that the temperature gets high enough to assure the death of the botulism.
If you are following a tried and true recipe, you need not worry about these things, they’ve been tested. But, if you are like me, you chafe under the constraints of order and instruction. My salsa verde recipe rocks ass but I am not sure it is acidic enough to be safe to waterbath process and I really don’t want to pressure can it because I don’t have the new gasket for my canner yet. So, I decided to get some litmus paper and find out.
Where does one buy litmus paper? Good question! I called pharmacies, I called industrial art supply warehouses, I called Target, I called a garden shop, I called a pool shop, I called a bead shop for fuck’s sake! Finally I found an elementary school supply store that was open! they had it (also, they had all of the other amazing things I wanted to buy).
The real sadness is the sheer number of people who were asked and did not know what litmus paper was for or what pH is. Dang.
Of course, I can’t really talk. I was filling 8 ounce jars with a 1 cup measuring cup and tried to pour in a heaping cupful. mmmm spillage.