Bus vs. home knitting

I'm currently working on Joan McGowan-Michael's "Racer Back Tank with Mesh Side," and I was able to notice the effect of bus knitting vs. home knitting:

I'm thinking that knitting this project on the bus may not be the best idea!  I'm hoping that the blocking will even everything out!

I think I'll start crocheting on the bus.

Favorite pancakes

These are our new favorite pancakes. Made with freshly ground whole wheat flour, they have a nutty taste, complemented by the slight tang of their long, cool, overnight rest:

They're "Pittsburgh's Finest Diner Pancakes," from the King Arthur Flour website.  And, as you can see, they're big pancakes, which fill the pan when cooked:

We've altered the recipe slightly:

• We use 100% freshly ground flour, which we grind from wheat berries.
• We don't cover the bowl with plastic wrap while the batter rests; we simply place a dinner plate on top of the bowl.
• We cook the pancakes in clarified butter.

They have crispy edges, and are very thin, so can be filled and rolled like a crepe.  My favorite filling so far is Straus Creamery's organic yogurt mixed with fresh fruit.

Berber onion and kabocha squash pasties

We recently made the Berber Pizza from David Tanis' cookbook, A Platter of Figs--it's wonderful! Absolutely delicious, and we found it really easy to make.

If you're making it, be sure to cook up more of the onion mixture than you will need. We mixed up the extra onion mixture with baked kabocha squash, and used it for filling in pasties:

I made up some pie dough, divided it up into twelve or fifteen balls, and rolled them out pretty thin, filled them with this filling and sealed them up.  Then cut little holes in their tops, and baked them a little less than an hour at 425F--pretty standard pastie baking.  The combination of the squash and the Berber onion filling was fantastic!

I forgot to get photos of the pasties.  We were too distracted by the deliciousness.

We'll be making all these dishes again, though!

Feast day torte for a feast day

For dinner this past Christmas day, and then again for the New Year, we made a Feast Days Piñon Torte from Lois Ellen Frank's Food of the Southwest Indian Nations cookbook--it's fantastic!

This is the first one, inverted on a cutting board for serving, decorated with powdered sugar on half of it:

We found it was good with 8 ounces unsweetened chocolate (that's two bars of the kind we buy), 1 cup of agave syrup (instead of sugar), and 5 tablespoons of cornmeal.

Cedric's holidays so far

Cedric is loving his holidays!  He was King of the Thanksgiving Turkey!

And he loved the table setting, and eagerly awaited all the guests' arriving.

After all the guests arrived, he was too busy socializing to take pictures--everyone had so much fun!

Cedric visits the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge

Cedric got to join a tour of the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge!  And you can see Paul there, too, taking a photo as well.

Sewing a dress: watch those pocket seams!

I've been having so much fun, and the dress is coming along well--the bodice front, back, and sides are together, and the skirt is attached to the bodice.

I decided, before sewing the skirt, that I wanted on seam pockets.  My favorite skirt has these, and I wanted some just like those.  I got out my sewing book, The Complete book of sewing, and read all the directions.  I turned that favorite skirt inside out, and traced the pockets as the basis of a pattern, and carefully cut out the pieces from the scraps leftover from cutting out the dress pieces.  I followed the instructions in the book, very carefully, I thought...

Obviously, I forgot to remember to pay attention to where the seam allowances were going!

I decided not to rip them out and redo them--I'll use them as a design opportunity--possibilities I have in mind include sewing them down with a decorative stitch in a cute color, or with a cute seam binding.  I'll see what I think the rest of the dress is sewn together.