eat! craft! live!

:: photo friday :: I work with some pretty awesome people

They threw me a party! (In honor of my recent marriage and my successful recovery from surgery.) Yay!

July love

You may have noticed, from my last post, that I like corn. There is just something so wonderful about fresh sweet corn that I'm inclined to forgive its space-hogging, somewhat wasteful tendencies. A nice big cob of luscious, yellow and white kernels, bursting with flavor and topped with simple butter and salt can be, in my humble opinion, the perfect dinner. (Or part of dinner, if you insist on eating something else too...) I boil mine usually - we don't have a grill and there isn't much easier than throwing a big pot of water on the stove and turning it on. A word of advice about cooking corn - don't overcook it! I never boil it for more than a few minutes and it's amazing - the kernels are still firm and plump and the flavor is delicious. It's a far cry from the squishy, wrinkled, tough corn of my childhood when, for some reason, it seemed like everybody boiled their corn for 20 minutes or more!

I also love something that is imminently practical and yet there seems to be a serious lack in the marketplace. Skirts (and dresses) with pockets! (Don't even get me started on pants without pockets...or, almost worse, pants with teeny-tiny short pockets!) I think we all know what I'm talking about here. And who knew there was a whole Flickr group devoted to skirts and dresses with pockets?

I recently ordered some soap from Birch Bark Handmade Soap and I adore it. I love handmade soap in general, and Sherrie's smells just delicious, lathers nicely and hold up extremely well in my often-damp shower! I can't wait to need more.

It's been so hot here it's ridiculous, hence my need for lots of soap... I know that those of you in the northeast are sick and tired of rain, rain and more rain and I feel so sad that we can't maybe trade a little bit of our heat for a little bit of your rain... That said, I never thought I would be one of those people who carries a parasol (or in my case, just my usual umbrella) to protect myself from the heat of the day. Well, now I am. And I am converted! Not only will it protect my skin and hair (and clothes too, I suppose) from the damaging rays of the sun, but it makes my hilly, mile-plus walk in the often 100+ degree heat just a little more bearable after a long day at work.

Lastly, I have to share how much I love my new Diva Cup. Silly name, excellent product. Now, when it's that special time of the month, I don't have to worry about anything! No disposable, landfill-clogging waste. No realizing I'm out of feminine products just a little too late. I won't lie - the first time I used it was...interesting. But after only a day or so, I was completely used to it and will never go back! Highly recommended.

I hope you all have a wonderful July and, for my US readers, a lovely holiday weekend!

:: photo friday :: summer in Texas

It's hot here right now. Really hot.

toot toot!

(That's me...tooting my own horn...)

I just had to share real quickly that I've got a photo on the New York Times website, here. It's #5, pop over and check it out!

Now if only I could make that a regular, paying gig...

May socks: interlocking leaves

May's socks were knit while partially under the influence of pain, pain medications and muscle relaxants. And now I've learned the hard way that I should never knit one sock while loopy on drugs and the other sock stone cold sober. Because that first sock? Quite a bit larger than the second! Ah well...

The leaf pattern is lovely and I'm looking forward to weather cool enough to wear them! (Sadly, not for many months yet...) They were good socks to knit while home recovering from surgery (aside from the aforementioned drug-induced size difference) - not too complicated, but challenging enough that I wouldn't have felt comfortable whipping them out on the bus every day and trying to remember the pattern. Just a little bit of a bite to keep things interesting.

And now for the details:
Pattern: Interlocking Leaves by the lovely Kelly Porpiglia, who is delightful in real life.
Yarn: Sundara Yarn sock yarn in brambleberry
Needles: US 1½ / 2.5 mm
See mine, on Ravelry

CommuniCrafting

Austin has a pretty great crafty-people scene. This past Thursday I hopped down to the Austin Museum of Art to get my craft on and nibble some tasty tartlets too. (Oh, the tartlets were delish. Gone in seconds...so glad I grabbed one!)

Hoards of crafters converged upon the museum for the CommuniCrafting event to celebrate the  latest releases from Jenny Hart, of Sublime Stitching, and to try our hands at a number of different crafty pursuits. Folks from Austin Fiber Artists were there with needle-felting goodies, Leslie Bonell from Stitch Lab had some sewing-related fun, Rachel Hobson (Average Jane Crafter) showed me a thing or two about embroidery and Kathy Sever from Future Craft Collective had some delightful cut-outs of ponies and turtles that I forgot to sneak into my bag...

For a handful more photos from the event, take a peek at my Flickr set.

:: photo friday :: tasty touring and public knitting

We went tasty touring to a few food trailers last weekend - check out Chris' Little Chicago for delectable dogs, Lulu B's for scrumptious Vietnamese sandwiches and Molly's Sno-Cups for sweet sno cones! In honor of WWKIP Day, my knitting accompanied me to all our destinations.

garlic chive-parmesan biscuits

One of the pleasures of getting fresh, local groceries delivered (or shopping at the farmer's market!) is finding new uses for familiar vegetables and herbs and getting to try new vegetables and herbs! I'm a big fan of chives - we are growing two big clusters in the garden after all - but I generally eat the onion-flavored variety. It's not that I hadn't ever tried the garlic kind, it's just that when I think "chives" I think "onion." Onion chives are delicious, with their snappy little tubular stems. But garlic chives, with their flat stems, are delicious too. They add just the right amount of garlicky flavor to these tartly cheesy drop biscuits. And since they're drop biscuits, they're super easy to make - no kneading, rolling out dough or cutting! Just plop them down and they're ready to go. I've been making batches of these and freezing them, so I can have fresh biscuits at the drop of a hat! Delicious with a cold summer soup.

garlic chive-parmesan biscuits
adapted from Joy of Cooking

• 2 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 5 tablespoons cold butter, cut into pieces
• 1/2 cup grated parmesan
• 1/4 cup finely snipped fresh garlic chives
• 1 1/4 cups buttermilk

Preheat oven to 425°F. Whisk together in a large bowl the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add the butter pieces and cut them in with a pastry blender until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs, with a few larger pieces. Add fresh chives and parmesan and whisk thoroughly. Add the buttermilk all at once and stir until the flour mixture is thoroughly moistened. (The dough will not be smooth.) Drop by heaping tablespoons onto an ungreased baking sheet 1-2 inches apart. Bake until the bottoms are golden brown, about 12-15 minutes.

:: photo friday :: knit in public

Don't forget to knit in public this weekend. (Or next!) Maybe some new yarn would inspire you? ;)

blackberry buttermilk cake

When a girl gets fresh blackberries in her grocery delivery box and stumbles across a recipe for a deliciously simple cake calling for raspberries, what does she do? Why, substitute, of course! A tiny substitution, to be sure, and one that might be repeated this weekend with, get this, blueberries! It's that glorious time of year here when the fruit is all juicy and bursting with flavor and it's hard to even save enough to bake with because it's just so easy to pop them all in your mouth... But restrain yourself! Because this cake is amazingly delicious with its crisp, sugary top and so simple I had to make two. In two days. It's that good.

blackberry buttermilk cake
adapted from Gourmet, June 2009

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)
• 1/2 stick butter, softened
• 2/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar, divided
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup well-shaken buttermilk
• 1 cup fresh blackberries

Preheat oven to 400°F. Butter and flour a 9-inch round cake pan. (My cake pans have gone missing so I used a pie plate. Worked great.) In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon, if using. Beat the butter together with the 2/3 cup sugar with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes, then beat in vanilla. Add the egg and beat well. At low speed, mix in the flour mixture in 3 batches, alternating with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour, and mixing until just combined. Spoon batter into prepared pan, smoothing top. Scatter blackberries evenly over top and sprinkle with remaining 2 tablespoons sugar. Bake until cake is golden and a wooden toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 25 minutes. Cool in pan 10 minutes, then turn out onto a rack and cool 10 to 15 minutes more. Invert onto a plate. Apparently, two cakes serves two people over the span of about three days, if you're us and there aren't a lot of other groceries in the house...