what i wanted to post

this is what i wanted to post today: lovely pictures of all my christmas knitting, beautifully posed by my silly little tinsel christmas tree, and happy pictures of various family members wearing said knitting.  i wanted to post pictures of my epic peppermint bark making adventure, inspired by that most famous of knitting bloggers, yarnharlot.  i also wanted to post some pictures of my new year's eve party and its ensuing madness too.  why haven't i posted such things, you ask?  because the pictures are on my stupid smartphone, and i can't get em off of it, because i am here in the middle of nowhere working and there's no signal.  poop on my smartphone, i say.  it slices, it dices, it takes better photos than my actual camera- then holds them hostage when i really want them.  maybe it wants a present?  i could knit it a cozy.  so anyways.... i will attempt to paint word pictures instead, so that you can have some idea of my nice little holiday. 

#1: peppermint bark.  i spent way too much money on peppermint bark, by the way.  i took my little self and my husbot over to whole foods to get the chocolate and white chocolate and peppermint for the bark, and i found the chocolate just fine.  i then spent a very grumpy half an hour searching a very busy gourmet food store three days before christmas for peppermint candies.  any peppermint candies.  i found candy canes, but they were in such "creative" flavors as pomegranite (why?) and butterscotch, and would not do.  turns out that the entire store had no peppermint candies at all- three days before christmas.  so then i yelled at the cashier lady.  i'm ashamed about that.  i fumed a bit, and then went to a different, non-gourmet food store and found my candies in about two seconds.  of course.  the bark making, though, was easy and amazingly good.  if you could see the pictures, you would want some- white chocolate and crushed peppermints on the bottom, dark chocolate ganache in the middle, more white chocolate and peppermints on top.... and no, i didn't eat it all.  i gave a good bit to a dear friend who's just started eating gluten free due to an auto-immune disease, and shared with the fam... but you do have to understand, i can't eat a lot of christmas goodies.  i didn't feel all that ashamed about the bark.

#2: christmas knitting.  so here's the rundown on the stuff- i'll post pictures if my smartphone ever wises up.  mom = purple handwarmers.  i think she likes them, but i don't know.  dad = blue cabled handwarmers.  again with the thinking he likes them.  both of my parents are sensitive to wool, so i had to make em out of acrylic.  sigh.  sisters = blue and green colorwork hats in three different patterns.  they really like them, and like that they match without copying each other.  i didn't think that it would be such a big deal when you're 22, 16, and 11, but apparently it is.  huh.  my special brother = stripey socks.  he loves them, and is currently pairing them with overalls and bright green rubber clogs from ikea.  i love that kid.  my hip brother = dude beanie.  he says it's warm.  my friends got an assortment of socks, and they like them too.  my MIL = slipper socks, and hopefully they're something she likes.  they're also my first toe-up socks, so they were an adventure that nobody cared about but me.  but it's really fun to learn a new knitting thing, so i kept on calling the husbot over to show him.  i know he thought it was at least as important as i did, and didn't resent me at all for interrupting his video games.  i also made my oldest little sister convertable mittens and a cowl out of some crazy sparkly cotton yarn that she will use for running.  whew.  i think i'll go make myself a sweater now.

#3: new years party.  not a whole lot to say about that one, except that to get the full effect you have to imagine a bunch of nerds, a bunch of alcohol, and the game apples to apples.  extrapolate at will- and then add falling down, fajitas, and fireworks.  yup.  a great evening.  (the pics are very blurry.  i think my smartphone was feeling its cups a little by that point.)

next post will have the really good sugar cookie recipe i came up with to satisfy my cravings without getting all wheat bellied out.  and hopefully pictures, even if they're of a broken telephone.

C is for Curry

so a wee bit ago (like the beginning of the week, or the end of last week, or something... days tend to run together when you're me), i happened to mention on facebook that i was going to try and make a chicken curry stew for dinner, and make it in the crock pot for maximun laziness.  i didn't really think anything of this mention, i mean- it was on facebook.  if i'm mentioning something on facebook, i usually don't think too much of it. it's not like i'm sixteen and am concerned that the boy i like might read all of my posts, so i make sure that all my posts are pictures of myself taken from way up high and slightly to the right.  nope, i'm an adult, thanks.  so when i had a large response asking me about my curry stew and if it was good, i was a little surprised.  it was good, in fact.  quite good, and really really easy.  i guess a lot of folks are a bit burned out from the holidays and needs something simple and filling for dinner, not to mention cheap.  this fits the bill nicely.  so i've decided to write up the recipe that i used here, and feel free to take, use, and change as you see fit.  after all, it's crock pot stew. the potential for variations are endless.

Coconut Chicken Curry Stew (almost alliteration... sigh.)

3 chicken breasts
1 can of coconut milk
1 can of chicken broth
1/2 onion, diced
4 russet potatoes, peeled and diced large
2 red bell peppers, diced
4 carrots, peeled and chopped
1 T garam masala (this is imperitve for good flavor)
1T curry powder
1/2 t cayenne pepper
1 t garlic power
salt to taste

put the chicken breasts in the crockpot.  add the can of coconut milk, the broth, onions, potatoes, and spices (execpt salt. do that later, because you really shouldn't taste stuff with raw chicken.)  cook on high for 4 hours or so.  at that point, add the rest of the veggies and cook another two hours.  take out the chicken, and shred with two forks, then add back in.  salt to taste, and serve with yogurt and basmati rice, or naans, or crackers, or nothing.  it's good by itself too.  i figure you could add cauliflower, which i would have if i had any, or any other veggie that stands up to slow cooking.  don't forget to use the garam masala though.  it's what gives the stew it's clove-y cinnamon-y flavor.  you can get it pretty much anywhere in the spice aisle, but i get mine at the indian grocery store if i can.

so there you facebook folks go.  my stew.  it's lovely- so lovely i think i'll make it again next week.  it's so good i actually ate leftovers.  need i go on?

ps- i finished all the christmas knitting before christmas.  it was a holiday miracle.  everybody liked it too.

it's time for crazy!!

sorry, ducklings- i feel awful that it's been so long since we chatted.  i've had to focus on some personal stuff, like work being hard, and helping out friends, and dealing with my usual and complete breakdowns in the face of change.  so anyways.  hopefully, i've gotten all my kinks worked out at my job (me + new boss sometimes = corrective action for me.  i should be used to it by now, but i still am ashamed that it happens.  i'm blaming it on this job being the first new one i've had in five years, and it being so close to the previous job that i get cocky and make stupid mistakes.  lesson learned.  i'm moving on now.) and at home (new job also = new pay schedule, which means that i've been broke as a joke for the last three months.  hopefully, lesson learned there too... plus it helps one's marital status if one can in fact pay the bills.  sigh.  thankfully, i'm not single, so i guess my husband does in fact love me.) and with my friends (change is good, even for them.. accept it and move on!  be happy!) so i can now focus on the holidays.  and the holiday knitting. 

the broke as a joke situation means that i'm doing stash-diving knitting for christmas this year, which is fine.  i have a bunch of really lovely odds and ends stored aways from previous projects- from mercerized cotton to alpaca to actually nice acrylic (although the price you pay to get really nice acrylic is high enough that i should have just bought natural fiber... i'm occasionally a dummy) so everybody is getting one-skein wonders for christmas.  the crazy thing- the nuts thing- the thing that makes me rethink medication, is that i'm making 14 projects this year.  dear lord- shoot me now.  i do have seven of them done, but seven still to go, and i'm wondering if they're just not gonna happen.  plus the stuff i get for folks that hate knitting (they're big jerks).  it's nuts-making.  thankfully i have plenty of downtime at work.  i have to date made three pairs of socks, three hats, and a covertable glove/cowl set.  i have to go: fingerless gloves, a small scarf, and five hats.  the hats may not be hats by the end... it depends on my mood.  the plus side?  not having to go the mall for any christmas presents this year.  (my "too cool" brothers might just be "too cool" for gifts, is all i say.) 

so keep tuned for crazy!  it's bound to happen, as i'm just a few inches away from the edge to begin with.  i'll also maybe have a recipe for you in the near future.  who knows?  it could all happen.  i'm staying positive, right up until i'm not any more.

chili time

it's october, folks!  my favorite month of the year.  i'm not really sure what makes october so awesome- it could be that the leaves have put on their fireworks show for everybody- one last hurrah before sleeping the winter.  it could be that there's always that threat of snow in the air.  it could be the amazing indian summers we have here.  it could be the zombie crawls and trick-or-treating.  or, it could be that this is the time of the chilies.

chilies mean fall in colorado.  the smell of them roasting on street corners starts in august and finishes in november, but late september and early october are the best time.  i can't smell them without thinking of raking leaves and drinking cider and having a fire.  it's a cozy smell.  there is a festival dedicated to roasted chilies in the town where i work, and my husband and i always go, lugging about at least a bushel of roasted goodness to take home with us.  the air is like mace, the pace is frantic, and farmers sweat themselves nearly to death managing the barrels roasters and flame throwers that make the humble pepper a thing of beauty.  over one hundred thousand people came this year to celebrate chilies- and we never buy enough.  (as an aside- a festival completely dedicated to foodstuffs is a thing of beauty all its own.  there should be more of them.)

i never really ate green chili as a kid- a rare thing for somebody who grew up in colorado.  it's like the state food.  but my parents weren't from here and really didn't like the spicy mexican fare, so i grew up eating a lot of asian inspired cuisine.  the first time i had green chili, it was a revelation.  (thank you, banana.  you gave me the gift of chili too!  no wonder i love you.)  i can't even put into words the wonder of a good green chili.  my best friend and i make it often, and when i'm welcoming somebody to colorado (in this case my brother's new bride! i'll write about the wedding soon- but it was lovely, if really really cold.) green chili is the first thing i make them.  it's thick, spicy, warm, and filling, and has the flavors of sunshine and heat to keep you remembering the blistering summer all through the year.  it's love in a pot.

Sharon's Gluten-free Green Chili

brown 1-2 pounds of boneless pork (could be stew meat, or chops- whatever is on sale.  it's going to cook forever, so it doesn't have to be fancy meat) in some olive oil
add in 1 onion, diced fine, and 5-6 cloves of garlic, minced.
cook until onion is tender, then add in a pound of roasted green chili, skinned and minced fine
sautee together for about ten minutes

in a seperate dutch oven, melt half a stick of butter on medium heat, then add in a quarter cup of gluten free flour (i use Bob's red mill all purpose) to make a roux.  cook for 5-10 minutes, stirring constantly, until the roux is light brown.  add in 8 to 10 cups of water or broth (if using water, then add in the appropriate amount of boullion to make a broth).  dump in the pork mixture.

dice up quite a lot (however much you want, really- i like my stew really potato-y) of yukon gold potatoes and put them in the chili.  (i know the potatoes sound weird, but it's traditional if you're making the chili as a main dish.  if you're making it as a gravy, you leave em out)  add in two cans of rotel.  season with salt and pepper- and then walk away.  you're going to have to simmer this bad boy for at least 45 minutes on low, stirring occasionally.  it's better if you leave it an hour, but that's hard to do sometimes.

come back, and serve it up!  we like to have corn tortillas with it, and put sour cream and cheese in the soup, especially if you have little ones eating it.  it can be VERY spicy.  fair warning.  eat it up, warm yourself, and think of summer. 

nostalgia

people always ask me what life was like for me as a kid.  i'm not sure if this is a question that a lot of people get, but i guess when you grow up the way i did, folks get curious.  it's not every day that people run in to somebody who has twelve adopted brothers and sisters, who was homeschooled from kindergarten though twelfth grade, and who was actually adopted herself.  my family is huge, boisterous, and in your face, and how we all survived til adulthood (or mostly adulthood- my youngest sister is eleven.  that makes her nineteen years younger than me.  yeah, we're pretty weird all right.) is a mystery even to us.  my mom also tells me that when she dies, i can write a book as payback for my childhood.  so, to both embarrass her (cause it's a bitch, right?) and satisfy some other nosey parker's curiousity, i shall now occasionally write vignettes of my childhood right here.  i think it will be theraputic for me, if nothing else, and most likely cheaper than therapy...

we didn't have summer vacation at my house.  we had summer, of course.  but where other people had time off from school, days to sleep in and be lazy, and camp, my family had... work.  see, that's the problem with being homeschooled.  even in the summer, you can't flippin' leave.  (this was also the case with snow days.  school's not closed if you live at school.  it's a miracle i still talk to my mother.)  my siblings and i would wait and wait and wait for memorial day, hoping against wild hope that this year- this year would be the year that we'd get to relax, maybe go on vacation or to waterworld- something normal and fun.  and every year we would be dissappointed. 

we'd usually get a day or two where my dad wouldn't wake us up yelling "up and at em!" at seven am (followed by a quick ripping off of the covers) to lull us into a false sense of security.  and then, after a day or two of relative leasure, my mom would come up with this summer's work project.  she'd always announce it with happiness (or maybe glee) at the lunch table.  one memorable summer's work was "we're going to break up the old cement basketball slab, save all the pieces, and use them to build a patio on the second terrace of our back yard!  which reminds me.  we're also going to build a terrace!"  (i do wish i was kidding about this, by the way.)  this was usually met with the appropriate amount of enthusiasm- which is to say, none at all, accompanied by frantic phone calls to relatives for temporary custody.  and when my mom would say things like "we're all going to work on this for a couple of hours every day, and i'm sure it will be done really fast!"  we all knew that what she really meant was "you guys are going to be getting up at six thirty and working for at least six hours every day while i supervise.  the girls will get your meals.  you won't be getting paid at all or have any reward whatsoever except living in my house, but i will count your work as p.e. credit!  won't that be nice!"  it was not nice, by the way.  (notice the volunteering of "the girls" in the food prep.  i am nine years older than my next sister in line, so what my mom really meant was "S will get your meals."  i learned to cook for an army by the age of 15.  cause have you ever seen how much nine boys will eat after a morning's labor?  i got a summer job pretty quick, i can tell you.) 

it always looked odd, too.  my parents live in a pretty nice area of our fair city, and they (because this needs to be said in my family) are anglo.  my siblings, on the other hand?  are not.  now, just imagine being a hapless stranger driving through out neighborhood at random.  my brothers are all in my parent's very nice front yard, dismally swinging shovels and pickaxes in their white tank tops and dirty shorts, all while looking like they would give anything to escape.  what do you think you might believe was going on there?  yup.  they look like a chain gang.  ahhh, forced labor.  we never really did get a whole lot of people driving down our street more than once, come to think of it. 

we weren't allowed to leave the house until our allotted work was done for the day, and even then it was often a struggle.  my mom is a great checker of your work, and she's also a perfectionist, so we often ended up doing the same bit of a job over and over til it was entirely correct.  (she counted this as "life skills" credit.)  this was every summer of my childhood- at least until i got a paying job.  my family has always been about everybody making their own money, and they didn't stop me when i got that first job at the movie theater.  (for which i also got free movies.  it's a pretty cushy deal when you're sixteen.)  i think i might have been the only person there who thought of their job as an escape from work.  i'm completey grown now, and out of the house, but my youngest siblings are still in the work gang, digging dirt and moving cement all summer.  when i visit and see their misery, all i can tell them is "get a job!  it's the only way...."  cause the words "summer vacation" still don't mean a thing.  actually, come to think of it, they might mean "free landscaping".  or "those kids as sure as certain not getting into trouble on my watch!"  (yeah right.)  but they certainly don't mean "freedom" or "fun".  at least not in my house. 

september is for soup

hi there!  how was your labor day?  hopefully awesome and filled with the kind of wonder that only the holiday at the end of summer can bring.  i've never really been sure of what labor day celebrates, unless it's some unspoken homage to the god of grills or something.  if you lived in my mom's house, though, it was meant for labor.  she'd make us get up at six in the morning and build something, or clean something, or move stuff around.  (my mom is a furniture hoarder, and is constantly having to rearrange her house to make room for another couple of couches or a dresser.  she has dressers in the living room.  i am sadly not kidding.)  i, as the oldest and the only person who had any ability to cook, would have to make lunch and dinner for my millions of brothers who would be hungry, hot, and cranky from the forced, well... labor.  this was the story of every labor day of my childhood.  in fact, i was often the only cook in my house, and had to perfect the "quick food for a crapton of people" recipes that save my butt in the kitchen to this day.  my mom wouldn't let me leave the house until i had something for dinner going, which was my chore for four nights a week.  the other nights were pizza night, lasagna sunday, and leftovers. (these nights, by the way?  never change.  and the lasagna is the frozen kind that comes from sam's.  i never can make it to sunday without the nostalgic smell of the many times my mom forgot to take the carboard off the lasagna before cooking it coming flooding back to my nostrils...)

anyway, i learned very quickly that one of the best and cheapest (why cheap?  oh, cause i had to make the food budget lists for the family too.  i don't think this qualifies as child abuse, but i'm not completely sure on that.) ways to feed the fam was to make soup.  one pot meals are always the way to go, as you can cram a whole heck of a lot of stuff into one pot, set it cooking, and then flee the scene while you still have permission to use your dad's car.  i've gotten pretty expert at soups of all kinds, and make them whenever an occasion calls for it.  my chef husband even steals my recipes for the restaurant sometimes, and that's pretty much the biggest "i love you- and your food" i ever get from that guy.  labor day, for me as an adult, means the beginning of soup season and my favorite time of year to actually get up and cook something.

my new favorite soup, since the discovery that wheat makes me seven different kinds of sick, is lentil.  there's a bunch of folks who just made that "yukky" face that's sometimes seen on poison bottles when i said that, but trust me.  it's good.  it's also vegetarian- in fact, it's vegan and is completely non-processed in terms of ingredients and you can get almost all the stuff for it at your local farmer's market, if you're so inclined.  i pretty much get all the ingredients at walmart, but i am a poor librarian.  do whatever your conscience tells you is right, luke.  so here's the recipe of the day: gluten free, vegan lentil soup.  the ingredients might seems a little weird, but it's the best stuff ever with some cheese (not vegan then, i guess) on top and some rice crackers or a sandwich.  yum.  i love september.

Lentil Soup

sautee up one diced onion and four cups sliced carrots in olive oil til they are nice and tender
add in two cans of rotel tomatoes and chilis, undrained (or some diced up tomatoes and green chilis from the market, if you wanna)
put in six-eight cups of water and veggie boullion, or veggie broth, or even chicken broth if you don't care about that
rough chop a big bunch of spinach and put that in the pot too
add in 1 and 1/2 cup of green lentils
season with salt and pepper
add the juice and zest of two lemons
simmer for 45 minutes or until the lentils are tender.

serve with cheddar cheese on top, if you're eating cow products, and put in some lovely almond crackers or a sandwich of some kind.  perfect for those days in september that have a little nip to them. 

why am i not sleeping? *now with recipes!*

i gotta be up at 6:15 am tomorrow, ducklings.  why, oh why am i NOT SLEEPING?  i wish i knew. insomnia is no fun at all... by the time i actually enter dreamland that dang alarm clock will have gone off and i'll be driving my happy ass to the middle of nowhere to provide library services to possibly five people.  i just keep telling myself that i love my job (repeat as mantra til i start to believe it) and that i'm thankful to have it.  sigh.  if i could just get over ambiguous job descriptions, people's hurt feelings, non-working phones, and the fact that i have to deal with middle school aged children, i would have a dream job.  apparently this is why i went to college.  don't tell my mom.

so, life hasn't been all that fun lately.  work is hard, i got an awful creepy crud coming back from my vacation that made my 30th birthday both miserable and anticlimactic, and i completely screwed myself in terms of money and my husband (who is usually the most longsuffering dude on the planet) found out about it.  guess which thing has caused the most trouble?  yup, the money.  i have got to figure out how to handle money.  it's a weakness that i have had to deal with since i had money to spend resulting in a horrible credit score, a debt settlement, and a lot of marital spats.  well, no longer.  i have a budget spreadsheet, which makes me feel quite the adult, and a complete intent to use it.  we'll see.  the best part is that it does all the adding for me, as i am a moron who has completely failed at all things math.  i'm going to say that math is more of a "concept" to us artistic types than "fact" but the "fact" is that math comes up and bites me in the butt every dang time.  (i want you to imagine me doing the air fingers thing with the quotation marks in the last sentence.)  so i am hoping that this will work.  after all, if i can stick to the danged gluten free diet, i can stick to a budget, right?

speaking of the gluten freeness, i have been cooking and i have found a recipe!  first off, i was having quite a time finding gluten free cream of mushroom soup and was despairing, as i am american and that's a pretty crucial ingredient to most of our haute cuisine.  i was overjoyed to find out that walmart has a gluten free mushroom soup that's quite good and doesn't break the budget.  so, i was going to make pot roast tonight, and i always use the packet for the slow cookert, til i looked at it this morning and saw that they third ingredient on the label was "wheat gluten".  and then i panicked, cause i already had the roast thawed and i had no beef boullion and what the heck was i gonna do cause i needed to go to work in half an hour!  and then i calmed down and made this recipe.  it's good too!  and i'm not just saying that- the three people i live with also really liked it.  so here i go: first recipe on this site- just for you!

Gluten Free Pot Roast (capitalized so you know it's important)

1 5lb rump roast
1 can gluten free cream of mushroom soup (from walmart)
1/4 C gluten free soy sauce
1 small bag baby carrots
1 onion, sliced
1 C water
1/4 C gluten free flour
salt and pepper to taste

season the roast with the salt and pepper.  put in crockpot, along with the soup, soy sauce, water, and veggies.  (you can brown the meat first if you want it to stay together, i prefer my pot roast as more of a stew.)  cook on low 8 hours, or high 4 hours.  when you come back to the roast, there should be a lot of juices.  take out about a half a cup of the juice and put in the bowl with the flour.  add a little tap water til the mix becomes a slurry.  add to the rest of the roast in the pot, straining if it's lumpy.  this makes the gravy!  give it another ten minutes or so and then eat with potatoes or noodles. 

ok- gonna try to go to sleep now.  i'll see every body on the flip side!