Baby Blankets

I know I have not posted in forever. . . . . I knew this would happen!!

1. All my rechargeable batteries crapped out on me, so I couldn't use my digital camera until I bought new ones. Finally remembered to buy some new ones about 2 weeks ago.

2. I've been too busy/tired from work, classes (I'm taking 2 now), and other crap; to even think about cooking anything fancy. At least nothing new/worth mentioning.

However, I am moving sometime in August. . . .and I'm hoping to get back into cooking once that's all straightened out. Until then, I'm focusing mainly on my knits.

So this post. . . .baby blankets!! I love making baby things because they are so tiny/easy. Plus they look cuter than adult things, duh!!

First is a baby blanket I made for one of my cop buddies, Marvin, and his wife who just had a baby boy:




The pattern is Beth's Little Star Afghan. Yarn is Vanna's Choice/Vanna's Choice Baby. I think the colors worked well together . . . .I'm horrible at making "boy" things! I prefer to work with the typical "girl" colors, pink and purple!!


My next baby blanket is a WIP. . . . . just a plain beige basketweave blanket.



I made up the pattern myself. (I actually hate calling things like these 'patterns', the basketweave stitch can be found in any stitch dictionary). Yarn used is Paton's Classic Wool. The only thing that sucks about the basketweave stitch is that it's hard to photograph, grrrr!! I'm thinking wool could have been a poor choice of fiber for a baby blanket, but at least it looks and feels awesome!


And finally another baby blanket WIP. . . . . . Purple cabled baby blanket!




Pattern is made up by me. . . nothing too fancy. Yarn is Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino (which is AWESOME!!!)

Cornish Hens Update

So the roast chicken experiment turned out pretty good. Took the hens out at about 150 degrees, then let them rest for about 10 minutes while I made the pan sauce (which turned out to be too strong, and unfortunately overpowered the deliciously juicy chicken!). The meat turned out perfect, yay!

I am definitely more confident in my meat roasting skills now.

However, I am less confident in my meat carving skills. I did a major hackjob on the first hen, and then forced my exboyfriend/roommate to hack up the second one.

The sorta potato salad was awesome, will definitely make that again. . . and of course my carrots were amazing, AS ALWAYS haha.

Soooooo yummy! I forgot to take a picture until I was pretty much done eating.

Tonight's Dinner: Cornish Hens that I will probably fuck up

So tonight I'm making cornish hens. I've wanted to roast a whole chicken for some time now, but I'm a little intimidated by giant birds. I figure I'll try out my meat roasting skizzles with some cute little hens first. Right now they are marinating in a sauce recipe that I got from PAWLA Dean. I took the suggestions from the recipe comments and made a double batch of marinade. However, as I was throwing it together, I realized I did not have enough soy sauce (oops!) so I substituted a little Worchestire sauce instead. I've made a couple of Asian recipes with a combo of soy and Worchestire and it always tastes delicious!

So far, they have been marinating for almost 4 hours and I am going to stick them in the oven in about 15 minutes . . .I hope this turns out good! I'm not really a huge fan of marinating - haven't noticed much of a difference in taste between marinating meat for hours and just slopping the sauce on right before you cook it.

Side dish #1: Sorta Potato Salad. Modified this from a Rachael Ray recipe (Everyday with Rachael Ray magazine, June/July 2007) called Balsamic Potato and Green Bean Salad. I didn't have any green beans so just used potatoes. The sauce contains dijon mustard (mmmmm!), one of my favorite ingredients. Everything tastes better with mustard - it's like the bacon of condiments!

Side dish #2: Carrots in Lemon Butter and Dill Sauce. Kinda just something I throw together sometimes. The first time I made these, I used a little too much lemon juice (that stuff is potent!) but it's not too bad if you REALLY like lemon!

New Year, New Blog

My original New Years resolution for 2009 was to start working out. . . . but that isn't going so well. So I decided to instead re-start my knitting blog, which had been neglected since November 2007.

So then I came up with this brilliant idea to make my blog not only about my yarny talents, but also include my culinary experiments.

(Wait a minute, did i just say 'yarny'? Is that a word? Well, I guess since Dubya isn't the president anymore, somebody has to be in charge of making up new words!)

I've really gotten into cooking in the past 2 years and it appears to be heading in the same direction as my knitting obsession so it all makes sense. I'm really trying to branch out into my own patterns and recipes so that is what I will mainly cover in this blog. I might occasionally post about someone else's pattern/recipe - but most likely will include a bunch of changes that I made to it.

So we'll see how this goes.