Polish Food

When was the last time you said, "Let's go out for some Polish food,"?  I have to say Polish food was filling, tasty, relatively healthy, and CHEAP!

Usually when my mother and I travel, we eat out of the grocery store due to her violent allergy to fish.  Luckily for us on this trip, Poland isn't known for seafood and we felt comfortable enough to frequent the bars.  The MILK bars that is ;)  Back in communist times, milk bars were a government subsidized lunch counter because a well fed worker is a productive worker.  Nowadays the milk bars are still present and a wonderful place to get an authentic and local meal for a great price.  Note the little booth in this picture.  They are selling obwarzanek which are the Polish street pretzels you see EVERYWHERE.  The weather was cooler or maybe it was spitting out because the vendor has the vinyl shelter flaps put up.  The pretzels cost about 40 cents.

We stayed in Krakow and everyone who visits Krakow goes to the main square and the cloth hall for shopping.  We did plenty of that but we also took time to walk up Grodska street to visit this milk bar.  I want to say it was #27 but I could be wrong.  Just look for this blue sign.  You walk in and they have a Polish/English menu on the wall.

 It looks like your typical lunch counter.  You pick up your tray and tell the gal what you want.  In our case, we wrote down what we wanted in Polish on our handy dandy notebook and showed it to her. 

She then goes to the little window in the back and places your order.  Anything hot came through the little window from the kitchen.  All the salads and beverages were already dished up and sitting waiting on the counter. You bus your own table by taking your dishes up to the counter at the end of your meal.

 These are the cottage cheese dumplings with strawberry sauce my mother ordered.

 Here is my order of potato pancakes with goulash of pork.  I think most Americans think goulash is made of macaroni noodles and ground beef and tomato sauce.  Goulash in Poland means meat sauce and this was DELICIOUS!  Num NUM!

 This was my dad's roast pork with mushroom sauce with a serving of the ubiquitous carrot salad we saw everywhere and the mashed potatoes topped with dried dill weed.

 This was a plate of 'salads' that we also saw everywhere!  And it was delicious.  We saw green and red cabbage varieties of salad that were bona fide salads.  They had a light slightly salty and sweet dressing and were filling and delicious.  We Americans eat cabbage salad smothered in mayonnaise and call it cole slaw.  After tasting this I ordered it in every milk bar we frequented.

 

 This is the bar we visited on Kasimierz street after we visited the Jewish market and the site of a major scene used in the film Schindler's List.  It was a block or two up the street from the ethnographic museum and was a really local hole in the wall place.  We saw lots of old age pensioners visiting this lunch counter and most of them came to get take-away meals.  They'd bring in a quart jar and the lunch counter lady would fill it up with soup or Borscht or whatever.  I had a cheat sheet of common Polish menu items and the wonderfully sympathetic lunch counter lady saved our lives by uttering, "English menu?" 

 

 Typical milk bar set up.  My biggest pet peeve about the milk bars was that the juices and kefirs were already poured out and sitting on the counter at room temperature but that seemed to be the standard procedure in all the bars. 

 Here is another version of the ubiquitous cabbage and carrot salad.  Delicious.

 Here is my order of meat and rice stuffed cabbage leaves with dried dill topped potatoes.  My brother makes very good stuffed cabbage leaves and I need to get his recipe.

 Here are my mom's strawberry stuffed pirogi. 

 I absolutely couldn't wait to buy a red cabbage when we got home.  I made my first attempt at Polish cabbage salad using my mandolin but then I remembered I had this implement of destruction lurking in my cupboards. My sister gave me this years ago and I'd never used it before.  It is a Salad Master and is the most low tech but versatile kitchen tool.  This was the first time I'd used it and it has earned a permanent home in my hall closet.  I tweaked the following recipe to taste:

1/2 head of shredded cabbage
3 tsp. salt
2 finely grated carrots
1 finely grated onion
1/4 c. vinegar
6 Tbsp. stevia
2 Tbsp. oil

All this is to taste of course.  I ended up putting some garlic powder in too.  The salt softens the cabbage and brings out the water which becomes most of the dressing.  I never thought raw cabbage could be so simple and tasty.

The next thing I wanted to try to make was potato pancakes.  Polish potato pancakes were not like latkes and seemed to be made more of mashed than grated potatoes.  I found this recipe and the first time I made them, I was too lazy to get out my food processor and I just grated the potatoes on my box grater.  The pancakes turned out ok but the recipe yielded about 8-9 pancakes.

I wanted to make these along with pork goulash for Dave's supper.  This time I used the food processor as instructed and was happier with the texture.  We got enough to feed us both and pack 4 box lunches for work!

For the goulash, I got an 18 oz. pork tenderloin on sale at Cub and used that for the meat.  I used this recipe and it was delicious.  The meat just melts in your mouth.  I used half the amount of paprika called for but next time I'll use the whole amount.  I have a BAG or two of paprika my parents brought me from Budapest and I bought some more from Poland.  I thought it was fitting to serve this on my Polish pottery too!  I bought 12 place settings of it on the trip and am eagerly awaiting a knock on the door from the UPS man.  I will post pictures when they arrive.

As far as kitchen souvenirs (I like finding things overseas to put in my kitchen because I will use them regularly), I am proud to say I did NOT get any wooden spoons!  The first thing all my Anderson family members said when they came to Christmas last year was, "You have a lot of wooden spoons and spatulas!"  I bought a bunch of packets of dried herbs and spices at the grocery store.  I know we have dried dill here but I wanted Polish dill and they were CHEAP!  A huge packet like that cost about 25c.  I also bought a bunch of hostess napkins for not quite $2-including a polish pottery print.  Hostess napkins cost well over $6 in gift shops here.  That wooden mushroom is in fact a nutcracker and cost around $2.50.  We visited a salt mine and I bought a salt grinder and a bag of rock salt.  We visited Schindler's factory and they sold small enameled cups and of course I bought one.  I love enamelware and before the trip was even thinking I wanted to find a functional piece to bring home.  I found that small green pot and lid in a shop in Wadowice and it cost not quite $10.

Prices were very cheap in Poland.  A loaf of bread cost $1.  A liter of milk cost $1.  10 eggs cost $2.50 and they were free range organic eggs--the most flavorful I've ever tasted.  They sold eggs in packages of 10 or 20 which I thought was so funny--but they probably think we're crazy for selling ours in such an un-metric number as 12!  150 grams of bacon was $1.30 and it was lean bacon but again, the most flavorful I've ever tasted.  It was so lean that we fried up cooked potatoes with some chunked bacon for breakfast and we had to add butter to the pan!  A liter of fruit juice was $1.  A kilo of wax beans was 75c.  A huge head of cauliflower was 50c.  They had the most beautiful produce I'd ever seen.

And most of the museums we went to were free one day a week and we planned to visit that day.  If you had to pay to get in, they were around $2 or so.  Mom and I were saying that in London, any museum or site you want to see costs $15-$20! 

 We survived Poland and got back on Friday.  I'm working all week and haven't had time to really unpack.  The apartment we rented had a washing machine so I only had to bring 2-3 changes of clothes which left me way more room to bring home trinkets and souvenirs!  I will take pictures of them in a day or two.  Otherwise, my mornings have been filled finishing up these fabric baby shoes for my Etsy shop.

Here is another three pair.  I'm always so hopeful with Etsy but so far, all my sales have been limited to gals I work with and I appreciate them very much.  If these don't sell, then someday when we have kids they'll have the best dressed feet in the neighborhood!

November is shortly upon us which means it is time for National Knit A Sweater In A Month again!  Last year our census was down and I was offered on call shifts left and right and was able to finish an adult cardigan.  I don't think that will happen again this year so instead I am going to attempt a toddler dress for my niece Leah for Christmas.  I have my pattern at the ready and my yarn wound.  I will have a delayed start though because Brenda and Melissa are coming to visit for a few days on Monday.  We're taking a field trip to SR Harris and will sew and eat a lot!  Can't wait to see my girlfriends!

Deep Thoughts...

...actually it feels more like random thoughts.  Dave and I went to the Renaissance Festival 2 weeks ago.  I last went 10 (count them TEN!) years ago with Matt and Melissa.  Dad had free press passes for us and off we went.  It was a hot day while we were there and we hiked around the entire site.  I'd done my homework the night before and had a few booths I wanted to check out.  We got Burger King for breakfast on the drive over so we weren't hungry while we were there and didn't buy any food.  I saw a few pottery pieces I liked but I couldn't justify buying them because I am leaving for Poland on TUESDAY and am going to buy as much Polish pottery as I can carry.  The only thing we bought was a garlic braid and jar of jalapeno pickled garlic cloves.  I'd wanted to buy a garlic braid 10 years ago but didn't because I knew I'd never use it up before it spoiled.  And I'm disappointed in all the literature that touts the immunity boosting properties of garlic because I've been cooking with it like crazy and still managed to catch the worst cold in recent memory this week.

 I finished a few more owl cardigans for cousin baby gifts as well as some cloth baby shoes.  I got these off in the post today and I hope they like them.

 I knitted another for our non-existent baby stash.  I finished this one with buttons for eyes and I might try to knit a matching hat. 

 And since I have another trip coming up, I needed another bag.  Last week I sewed another trusty Amy Butler Messenger Bag out of a yard of 60" wide Amy Butler fabric.  I bought this years ago when Dave and I were still dating and he'd come down to Mason City to visit and we drove over to Charles City to go to the Pizza Ranch but more importantly, to visit the yarn/quilt shop next door!  This has to be some of the fussiest sewing I've done to match up the pattern to the bag.  I felt guilty cutting out of the middle of the fabric to match the pieces.  In the end, I didn't have enough and had to piece together scraps to finish off the outer purse.  If this was a blah patterned cut of fabric, I'd have had more than enough but because it was such a specific design, I ran short.  It turned out OK though.  I love that it looks like tiles and I love the colors.  Necessity is indeed the mother of all invention and nothing could be more true.  I got creative in squeezing every last inch out of this fabric.  Can you see the outer purse hiding in the bag?

Obnoxious Blankets

 I made two more obnoxious jelly roll blankets.  I used up the last of my scrub top scraps for this one and backed it with a busy zig zag print.  I cut all my scraps 3 inches wide and used a 1/2" seam allowance and was never pleased with the finished width of the blanket.  When you sew the blanket using this method, you go from 1 to 2 to 4 to 8 to 16 to 32 strips wide.  64 strips would be way to wide so I made the next one cutting the strips 3.5 inches wide to stretch my 32 strips.

 I lay out my backing fabric on the living room floor right side down, then my batting and then the quilt top right side up.  I smooth it out as best I can and then pin it to death.  I quilt the layers together using the strips as a guide which goes much faster than my plain fabric blankets because I don't have to measure and chalk lines.  Then I trim the batting and quilt top and fold over and hem the backing edges because I don't have the patience to mess around with quilt binding.  And it seems whenever I do this, someone always has to come along and lay on the quilt. 

 Here is the other one I finished!  A while back, I collected a bunch of holly fabrics for Christmas and planned someday for a Christmas quilt.  Of course they sat in a box in my sewing room and got moved up here from Iowa and then moved here from our old apartment.  Ever since I started working on jelly roll quilts, stash is starting to bite the dust!  I have batting on hand for 2 more but I have at least 4 groups of fabric stash mentally lined up. 

Winter is coming and you can never have too many blankets in your house for company.  We had 8 people stay with us last weekend and luckily the weather was warm.  I use our living room floor to assemble the quilts so for that reason I'm a little glad we still don't have furniture in it!

 Our Better Boy tomatoes have really slowed down but we have plenty of Juliets that are ripening.  I've been picking a lot of green tomatoes...

 ...and eating them like this!  Dip them in flour with some Greek seasoning, then egg, and then cornmeal and fry until the tomatoes are tender.  Num num!  I have 4 eggplants developing and I can't wait!

Surprise Fall!

 We had a snap spell of bona fide fall weather.  It got down to not quite freezing overnight last night and we put sheets over the tomatoes and eggplants just to be safe.  My brother also arrived for his week of drill and bureaucracy.  I'd bought 2 whole chickens on ridiculous sale a few months back and thawed one out in John's honor.  The high temp yesterday was mid 50's and perfect for roasting a chicken.  I kind of made the recipe up based on the wonderful Anne Burrell.  I enjoy her program every weekday at 1300.  I can only catch the first half of her show because I am in the shower every work weekday by 1320.  I took 4 Tbsp. of butter and softened and mashed it with 1 Tbsp potted garlic (I prefer Lee Kum Kee), a generous sprinkling of freshly ground black pepper, 2 tsp coarse kosher salt and a generous 1 Tbsp minced fresh rosemary.  I loosened the flesh of a 5.2# roaster chicken and rubbed the butter mixture under the skin.  I also generously salted the cavity of the carcass.  I coarsely chopped 2 carrots, 2 onions, and 2 ribs of celery and layed them in my enameled cast iron dutch oven as a base for my chicken.  I threw a cup of water into the pot and roasted the bird at 375 degrees until the juices ran clear and the temp registered 170 degrees.

I started on the pie early in the afternoon.  I got the apples at the grocery store and got regular old granny smith.  I never got to go to the orchard for strawberry picking in the field so I want to go for canning apples.  I used this recipe and it was awesome.  Next time I will use a larger pie plate and half the amount of the streusel topping.  I baked this pie for 65 minutes which was 10 minutes longer than required and the apples were still very firm.  Maybe next time I will try a different apple variety.  This recipe also calls for the filling to be tossed with a caramel apple dip mixture which of course was delicious, but in a time crunch, could be omitted.  Mmmmmm.....pie.  Autumn is the time for pie. 

Jelly Roll Jeans

 I am a saver.  My sister will tell you that I am a hoarder but I disagree.  There is a definite crowbar separation between those two things.  I love the idea that you could take something that is no longer useful as it's original intended purpose and use it to make something functional and totally different.  I've had a sack of old jeans sitting in my sewing room for some time.  Some were mine, some were Dave's and a coworker gave me a dozen pairs her son had outgrown.  They all had holes in the knees, pockets ripped out, crotch seams worn away, etc. 

Lopi has ripped up her dog bed cover twice in the short time she's lived with us.  She can't help it though, she is a terrier and terriers need to dig and before she lays down on anything, she has to dig at it to make it just right.  Well I thought a dog bed cover made of denim would be pretty tough and withstand her "bed making".  I set to work cutting 3 inch wide strips out of all the different varieties of jeans and pieced them together jelly roll style and this is what I wound up with.  I think it is quite pretty with all the random shades of blue.

She was running around with her rope toy and just happened to lay on her bed for a moment for me to snap a picture.  What did we do without this nerd?

 What's new around here?  The State Fair has come and gone and Dave and I went twice.  We used the heck out of our Blue Ribbon Coupon Book on our first visit.  Our second trip was on the very last day with my parents and Freya and John.  As we boarded our bus to the fair, passengers coming back gave us their books so Mom and Dad had coupons to use.  Our favorite food item this year had to be the Reuben bites from O'Gara's.  Num num!

 We visited the Creative Activities Building because I had knitting and Freya had scrap booking exhibited.  I am proud to say I entered 9 things and got ribbons on 5 of them and 2 of those were blue!  As my dad would say, "The sin of pride."  Here is my finished 3 piece baby set that won the top knitted item prize at the Washington County Fair.

 Now that my fair deadlines have passed for the year, I am working on baby deadlines.  I've had my eye on this pattern for some time.  Can you see the owls?  I am currently knitting a bunch of these for family babies.  My niece Becky is expecting a boy so this sweater will go to her with the blue stitching on the buttons and eyes.  My cousin Anna is expecting a girl and will receive this same sweater but with pink thread for buttons and eyes.  My cousin Britt is expecting a baby but they are not learning the sex prior to the birth so I am torn between yellow and teal thread.  The sweater itself is knit from a gender neutral sea foam teal/blue. 

 Dave and I attended the wedding of our nephew held on the terrace of the Stillwater Public Library.  I was dubious when I read the location on the invitation but it was bee-YEW-tiful!  Who knew that was up there?  What a great facility and you'd think you were in Prague by all the church spires!  This was the first small town library I'd ever seen that had a parking ramp beneath it!

 We also attended the first Gopher football game of the year last Thursday with Dave's dad.  The weather cooperated for the most part and we creamed Eastern Illinois.  I had fun but I have a hard time paying attention at large sporting events like this.  I start looking around at the cheerleaders and the band and I'm watching what Goldy is doing and....oh wait, we're playing again!

The garden has been moderately successful this year but we had such a late start and a cool and wet season so far.  I am already making plans for next year's changes.  I have been very pleased with our cherry tomatoes.  I started them from seed and planted them in a large pot which I plan to bring indoors when the frost comes.  We have 1 regular tomato plant and 1 roma tomato plant and they're slowly ripening.  The green beans might have a second round of produce and our eggplants look like they might produce something before the season is over.  We have yet to produce a single zucchini and have 3 runt cucumbers I hope will get bigger.  There are 3 spaghetti squash developing on the vine and I don't think we're going to get any butternut squash. 

Dave's parents always have an abundance of tomatoes and I've brought home 2 loads from them already.  I did my first day of canning this year today and boy are my dogs barking from all the standing in the kitchen.  I wound up with 6 quarts of tomato sauce and 6 pints of salsa at the end of the day.  After slowly emptying the jars all year, it is nice to be filling them up and storing them for winter.  Last year I made dozens and dozens of jars of salsa because it was the first thing I learned how to can.  Then I learned I could just reduce down and strain gallons of tomatoes and can it as sauce to use as a cooking base.  We gave away quite a few pints of salsa and ate and cooked with it and managed to use it all up but I wished I'd canned way more plain sauce. There were quite a few bitterly cold days that we weathered with velvety tomato soup made out of the tomato sauce.  I have next weekend off too and I'm hoping between our garden and Dave's parents that we'll have another truckload to fool around with.  I want to try canning marinara and pasta sauce if I have a surplus of plain sauce.  I am also going to try canning applesauce when the apples are ready.  More on that later.

Beaded Bag

 So here is the finished beaded bag I was alluding to last week.  I started this a couple years ago when I had a terrible case of start-itis.  If memory serves me, my local Hobby Lobby was discontinuing some or all of their Delica beads and had a big clearance sale.  Delica beads are Japanese and quite expensive because they are so well and precisely made.  They are the DMC of beads as far as color uniformity goes and are put to good use in peyote stitch projects because they are so uniform in size and shape.  I bought quite a few packets of various blue shades and mixed them together and strung them up in a hank with my bead spinner.  I didn't know how many I had so I thought of a simple drawstring bag beaded with single beads on one side of the fabric only.  That way I'd get the most mileage out of that seemingly small hank of beads.  I used size 8 DMC pearl cotton thread in a pale blue shade and knit a few rows of stockinette on my 0000 needles and made a few yarn over buttonholes for a drawstring to go through.

 I maybe got through an inch of beaded knitting before abandoning it in my bead knitting tin where bead knitting goes to die.  Once fair season came around, I began thinking of what I could enter this year and found this and decided to finish it.  Bead knitting really is not a complicated process but it is slow going because you are knitting with thread on practically piano wire.  Before you start, you thread all your beads onto the thread and have to keep sliding the beads down the thread.  Keep in mind, you might have 3 yards of strung beads on your ball of thread when you first start.  You might knit 6 inches worth of beads into place with 12 yards of thread and still have to keep sliding the remaining 2 5/6 yards of beads down the line as you go.  In any case, you will always have yards of unwound thread to deal with so I've found it is best to keep your thread in a bowl to contain this mass.  Here is my work in progress at rest in my bead knitting bowl.

 This is towards the end of the project and towards the end of the second ball of thread.  The bowl is also handy because as you work, the thread won't roll all over the floor.  In the end, I used just over 2 balls of thread and all but 30 or so of the beads. 

This bag may not look simple but it is.  It is just a plain strip of fabric knit as long as I possibly could with amount of beads I had.  The ends are knit in stockinette but the beaded part is all garter stitch with beads saddled between the stitches on only one side of the fabric.  The sides were whip stitched with the tails of the knitting and I made 2 twisted cords for the drawstring.  I think my favorite thing about bead knitting is the weight of the work because beads are made of glass.  As delicate as this object appears, it is heavy because of the beads.  I am very proud to say that this bag won the Grand Champion in the needlework class of the Washington County Fair and won me a gift certificate to a yarn shop!

Baked Cucumbers and Pork Pies

Yes you heard me correctly.  Baked cucumbers.  This is one of my favorite summer recipes and I just have to share it.  The wonderful and immortal Julia Child published this recipe in her Mastering The Art Of French Cooking and it is a rare and undiscovered gem of a dish.  It's a great way to use up an abundance of summer garden cucumbers and also tasty in winter with hydroponic supermarket cukes.  This is also one of the few recipes I will happily use the oven for in the summer heat.

 Start with 6-8 good sized cucumbers.  Peel them, cut the ends off and cut them in half.  Scoop the seeds out.  Slice each half lengthwise into 3 strips.  Cut each strip into 2 inch planks.  Meanwhile, combine 2 Tbsp. red wine vinegar, 1/8 tsp sugar and 1 1/2 tsp. salt in a large bowl.  Throw your cuke planks into the bowl and toss to coat.  Set aside for at least 30 minutes or for several hours.  At this point, you have the best natural air freshener sitting on your counter.  The whole room will smell like cucumbers!

 Here are my 8 cucumbers from the garden of my parents-in-law tossed in my bowl.  Next, wring them out in batches using 2 or 3 paper towels for each batch.  You will be amazed how much water comes out as well as how much has collected in the bowl.

 Here is the same bowl and the same amount of cukes after wringing out.  If you simply baked chopped cucumbers, they would turn to mush because of the water content.

 Next, spray a 12 inch wide x 1.5 inch deep baking dish with oil or rub with butter.  Toss your treated cukes with 3 Tbsp melted butter, 1/2 tsp dill or basil, 3-4 Tbsp minced onion, and 1/8 tsp black pepper.  Here are my cukes tossed with the above.  I absolutely LOVE dill and have never tried this recipe with basil.  I am always very generous with my dill.

 Bake at 375 for 1 hour, stirring every 20 minutes.  As you can see, they very barely brown and are still quite crunchy after baking.  They almost have that "squeak on your teeth" quality to them.  I usually end up adding another 1/4 to 1/2 tsp of salt to these after they come out of the oven.  Like I said, you can burn up a bunch of cucumbers with this recipe and 2-4 people can easily finish this off.  I also don't mind using the oven in summer for this because they are so tasty.  I am going to try using my crock pot on high for this and see if I have decent results.  Num num!

These are my second attempt at the pork pies I baked last weekend.  I first ate a real live pork pie back in Thirsk, England years ago on a trip there with my mother.  Mr. Granger of Are You Being Served? fame was always eating them.  They are North England's answer to the pasty.  Miners would often eat them because they were filling and portable.  I enjoy all the cooking shows on TPT on Saturday mornings and unexpectantly saw an episode of Around the Farm Table.  Here she was, in Wisconsin, making pork pies!  She very cleverly baked them in a jumbo muffin pan and I couldn't wait to try it out myself.  I baked them as described in the written recipe but unfortunately, I couldn't hack them out of my muffin tin and they were quite bland.  This second time around, I added 1.5  tsp salt to both the meat mixture and the pastry mixture and I baked them free-form.  I smushed the meat mixture into a 3/4 c measuring cup to form 4 meat 'cakes'.  Then I used a large circle cookie cutter to cut the top and a small bowl to cut the body.  I set the meat cake on the body round, placed the top round on top, and then folded up and crimped the body to the top.  I baked them for 45 minutes but I forgot to brush them with the egg mixture.  Otherwise they would have browned better.  These were so much more like the ones I ate in England.  Traditionally the meat shrinks inside the pastry casing and they would pour a gelatin mixture into the dough slits after baking.  The gelatin mixture would gel and prevent the shrunken meat from knocking around inside the pastry.  I did not do that extra step and thought these were just fine as they were.  My father in law loves pork and he concurred that these were just fine as they were.  These are not an every day entree because the pastry crust contains lard.  They are a nice treat every now and again though.

Speaking of not every day food...here is a picture of a deep fried grilled cheese sandwich!  Dave and I went to the Washington County Fair on Friday.  This was our favorite terrible food of the day.  It is amazing what you can find deep fried at fairs.  This was delicious though!  I am also proud to say that I took home the top 3 prizes in knitting this year:  Grand Champion for my bead knitted drawstring bag, Reserve Grand Champion for my red striped jacket, and Top Place Knitted Exhibit for my 3 piece baby set.  As well as the 2 top rosette ribbons, I also won the 2 $25 gift certificates to local yarn shops!  FREE YARN!  Next is the State Fair!

 We are approaching a major milestone in the Anderson household.  I've had this jar of crushed red pepper for at least 5 years and we've very nearly finished the entire thing!  You can tell it is old by the dated appearance of the label.  I've always been interested in baking but I didn't really become interested in cooking until Dave came along.  It really motivates you when you're cooking for someone other than yourself.  I love garlic and herbs and spices, always have.  I scoff in Chinese restaurants when items on the menu are marked "spicy" because I don't think they are necessarily spicy.  To me, garlicky does not equate to spicy.  It has only been in recent years that I've begun to appreciate heat in dishes, and heat and spicy are not the same thing.  Heat is just heat.  As someone who has been raised eating a bland, Scandinavian diet of "white food" (so called because the food is always bread/rice/pasta/butter/cream/potatoes...i.e. STARCH) this is a major accomplishment!

 You can see the bottom of the jar!!!  We've managed to use this up even though we have also recently discovered Sambal Oelek which is fresh red pepper paste and we even buy the 18 oz. jar of that!  Who knew we were such spicy people?!?  I have the next 2 days off and plan to spend some time fooling around in my kitchen as well as working on some last minute knitting.

This is some bead knitting that had been abandoned in my bead knitting tin.  I am hoping to finish it and enter it at the Washington County Fair next week.  I love these 0000 needles I got at the Nordic Needle in Fargo a few years back.  This will be a simple drawstring bag once finished.  Hoping to post pictures of the finished bag soon.  Have a great weekend!

May I just say...

 ...that I have waited almost my entire adult life to have fresh herbs growing somewhere in or near my house for cooking at a moment's notice?  I have fond memories of all the delicious foods I ate in Europe when I backpacked in '01.  Mind you, this was before the age of cell phones and selfies and posting pictures of food.  I took a 35mm camera and rolls of film (remember those?) and it was too precious to waste taking pictures of food, but I wrote about food in detail in my travel journal.  I have dreamt of recreating those meals with fresh herbs.  I dream about food, is it any wonder I am overweight? 

Dave and I are attempting our first full blown garden this year and seem to be having more luck with plants growing in containers due to the amount of clay in our soil.  Last summer we'd moved too late in the growing season in June to attempt a garden, but we did splurge and buy a $15 large pot of 5 herbs at our local farmer's market.  I am proud to say that 4 out of the 5 herbs survived the winter in our window sill and 3 of them are pictured above.  Last night I cooked a meal of fettuccine pasta with a from-scratch white wine Alfredo sauce with ham and rosemary and I baked a focaccia with sage and thyme.  Martha Stewart eat your heart out!  I am also having success with Italian basil I planted and am growing outside.  More on that later but I am really crossing my fingers that I can keep it indoors through the winter.

 Here is the focaccia rising on my baking stone.  It has 20 sage leaves chopped and kneaded into the dough and topped with another 10 as well as drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt.  Num num!  I used my "00" flour from Cossetta's for this recipe.  I think here we think of Stove-Top when sage is mentioned but it can be a very delicate rich flavor.  I still think about the sage farfalle pasta I ate twice in Rome and the sage topped foccacia I ate in Brindisi.

 Here is the bread after it is baked.  We sliced the whole thing in half and then sliced one of the halves into strips to eat as bread sticks for our meal.  I worked tonight and for my lunch sliced a portion of it horizontally to make open faced sandwiches with Swiss cheese and sliced garden cucumbers.  Num NUM.  The sage leaves are crispy after baking and I love just picking them off and eating them.  I am so thankful for my container herb garden!

And in knitting news...here is some more baby knitting I am hoarding for my personal collection.  This is of course a Sprinkle sweater knit from some Claudia Handpaints silk blend that I got on clearance from StevenBe's.  Dave took me there for the first time this winter and we were in the same neck of the woods as Ingebretsen's so it was a great shopping day for me.  I also knitted a star baby cap and multicolored sockies in the same colors to enter in the Washington County Fair as a knitted baby set.  This photo was taken after blocking but before I sewed the buttons on.