bachelorette style

Posted on December 30, 2003 by mariko

Peter has been out of town for a couple days visiting his brother, so Deedle and I have been fending for ourselves. It’s not very pretty. I am basically a lazy person, and the idea of cooking myself a meal and then having to wash pots and pans is not appealing. The first night I nuked a Trader Joe’s calzone, then last night I had a toasted cheese sandwich (too lazy to even grill it in a pan!) and Dole Tropical Fruit Salad (I have a thing for canned fruit). Tonight, though, I actually made some pasta, but I was too lazy to have a salad. Thank goodness he comes home tomorrow!
Have you made your New Year’s resolutions? I don’t always make them. I think I am more of a process-oriented person than a goal-oriented one. I did, however, make some last year, and I think I met most of them! One I will repeat for 2003: drink more water (are you reading this, Carolyn?). I will also have to add something about working on my time management skills! So what is on your list?

Posted in General | 7 Comments

chocolate

Posted on December 29, 2003 by mariko

My friend Tom and I like to exchange chocolates. Today I found a little package from France on my doorstep. This is what was inside:
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Some fancy French chocolates!
And this is what was inside the fancy little wooden box:
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Lest you think me a chocolate snob, though, look what I had just purchased before I came home to find the fancy chocolates on my doorstep:
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I learned about these from Meg, who got an entire box of them for Christmas from her father!

Posted in General | 4 Comments

my kitchen aid can eat yours alive

Posted on December 27, 2003 by mariko

I put the new Kitchen Aid to the test yesterday. One of the main problems I encountered with my 4.5-quart Ultra Power model was its inability to knead dough efficiently. The flour would not only fly out and all over the counter but the dough would creep up onto the dough hook and then become jammed in the coil where the hook meets the mixer. It would also start pushing the dough out and over the lip of the bowl. Needless to say, I didn’t make bread very often (and yes, I could always knead dough by hand, but that’s another story).
I got out Baking with Julia and made the white sandwich bread. The 6-quart mondo mixer took that dough and showed it who was boss! Here are the remains of the results:
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And today I made Cranberry Banana Bread, recipe courtesy of Loose Ends Melissa. The mondo mixer seemed to handle the smaller quantity just fine, which leads me to the latest thought, brought forth by the oh-so-wise Claudia: Do I really need two mixers? Hmm. Maybe not! I’m going to do some more experimenting to see if my 525 watt mondo mixer can deal with everything my 300 watt standard mixer can, and if it passes, well, maybe I will let my standard mixer go …

Posted in baking | 12 Comments

look what santa brought

Posted on December 25, 2003 by mariko

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Santa brought a 6 quart Kitchen Aid mixer. It will complement my other Kitchen Aid mixer very well. The colors even match!
And my baking was not a complete disaster. My family is luckily very forgiving. Here’s the Chocolate Roulade I made for Christmas dinner:
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The recipe is from the 2003 winter holiday issue of Fine Cooking magazine.
Now I am completely stuffed. It’s no wonder so many people list “LOSE WEIGHT” as a New Year’s resolution! Of course, knitting must burn a few calories …
Hope everyone had a nice day!

Posted in baking | 8 Comments

christmas eve baking

Posted on December 24, 2003 by mariko

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I did a lot of baking this evening for Christmas, and I was not particularly successful. It made me kind of cranky, but since I don’t want to be a complete crank on Christmas Eve, I thought I’d write a haiku. I was inspired by the glorious knitting haiku I read about on Jessica’s blog.
Christmas Eve I bake
Scones and cake oh meringue spill!
Dessert disaster
Have a holly jolly merry day!
hello kitty christmas.JPG

Posted in baking | 5 Comments

fabric stash additions

Posted on December 23, 2003 by mariko

I ordered some fabric recently from ReproDepot Fabric so I can make some napkins for Action Hero Melissa in return for the great scarf she sent me. I can’t show you the fabric because I want there to be an element of surprise, but I CAN show you a couple goodies that I threw in there for my personal stash.
Check out this cool Japanese canned goods fabric:
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And I am mad for all fabrics by Michael Miller:
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I don’t know what I’m going to do with these yet, but I’m sure I will think of something. Suggestions are always welcome! Speaking of suggestions, I need advice on steam irons. Our iron is the pits. I only realize this when I am sewing and need to press my fabrics. I am a wash-and-wear gal and do not iron my clothing. Anyway, I did some checking, and there seems to be a lot of controversy regarding Rowenta irons. People either love them or hate them. Does anyone have an iron that is fabulous? Care to share?
And THANK YOU for all your well wishes regarding the earthquake. Things were calmer today, though they routed traffic onto our street, which was kind of noisy. Peter went downtown and said the destruction looked much more severe and scary today. He said there were media crews all over the place.

Posted in sewing | 11 Comments

duck and cover

Posted on December 22, 2003 by mariko

There was an earthquake here today. I had just gotten home from the grocery store, and I was putting away groceries and talking to Peter about powder coating when there was a loud noise and shaking. I threw myself in front of the china closet to protect the Fire King. Peter yelled, “Put your whole body in front of it!” The rolling went on for quite a bit, and afterwards I felt a little seasick. Our power went out, and the phone lines went dead, but other than that, we had no real damage. Here are some casualties on my desk:
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The blue meanie went down! And so did the Tofu Head man:
quake tofu head.JPG
Seriously, though, it was pretty freaky. A lot of chimneys in the neighborhood came crashing down, and one of the historic buildings in our little downtown area collapsed, killing two people. We walked downtown to check out the scene, and it was pretty wild. There were bricks smashed on the ground everywhere, and many of the streets were cordoned off. Here’s a shot of the building that came down:
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This is what it used to look like (it’s from a different angle):
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It’s weird to think you could just be walking down the street drinking a latte and window shopping, only to have a building collapse on you. The earthquake was a 6.5. It was centered closer to where the Hedster lives (no, she does NOT live in Hearst Castle), but luckily it did little damage to her house (but the yarn store closed for the day).
Thanks to everyone who wrote and expressed their concern. I really appreciate it!

Posted in General | 21 Comments

knitting on the go

Posted on December 21, 2003 by mariko

I’d been thinking that it would be nice to have a little purse in which to cart around portable knitting projects. Here’s what I came up with:
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Oh, and here it is in use! Can you tell that I’m attempting to knit?
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It didn’t come out exactly as I had envisioned, but I’m used to that! And realistically speaking, I will probably just use it as a purse, since I don’t leave the house much and thus don’t have any reason to knit while walking down the street.

Posted in sewing | 12 Comments

peanut buttery goodness

Posted on December 20, 2003 by mariko

Today I baked Santa’s Surprise Cookies that I learned about at Anh-Minh’s site. If you like peanut butter and Snickers, you must try them. Essentially, they are peanut butter cookies with a Snickers Miniature* inside! The closeup is a bit fuzzy, but hopefully you’ll get the idea:
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It was a little time consuming wrapping the dough around each Miniature, but it was kind of like playing with Play-doh, and that’s always fun (it did not, however, SMELL like Play-doh).
*What idiot came up with the idea of these “miniature” candies? As everything else in our overindulgent society becomes super-sized, why is candy getting smaller? It is a conspiracy! But maybe it’s like eating celery–remember when people used to say that you burn more calories eating celery than you consume? Well, unwrapping each little Miniature is rather tedious and labor intensive, so maybe you burn an equal amount of calories as each Miniature? Delusion is setting in …

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scarf central

Posted on December 19, 2003 by mariko

Hello, you’ve reached Scarf Central. Hope you enjoy your visit. I made yet another keyhole scarflet out of the eggplant-colored yarn that Action Hero Melissa sent. It is Gedifra Techno and GGH Gala, two extremely scrumptious yarns. Initially I was going to double strand, but then I decided that each yarn deserves to stand on its own. I’m keeping this scarflet!
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And lookie what Hedi knit for me:
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It is very light and fluffy yet super warm, and of course I love the color. She also gave me a subscription to ReadyMade, a very fun magazine.
Now I must go knit another scarflet …

Posted in knitting | 6 Comments