Pink Cowl

Last year after I finished taking the PE, I bought this yarn as a reward for all the studying that I had done.  It is a wool silk blend, and since it's so soft and shiny and pretty I was waiting to find the perfect project to use it.

.

.

I thought that this cowl pattern was a perfect fit for my yarn.  Cowls go right against the neck's sensitive skin, and the combination of merino wool and silk is very soft and not a bit itchy.

. 

.

I had only one skein of yarn, which made a cowl a good choice because it doesn't take much yarn.  I used the entire skein.  In fact I ran out of yarn when I still had about 10 stitches to bind off.  Luckily I had a different yarn that is a near match for color, and the bind off isn't easily visible.

. 

The Sirens of Titan

.

Two years ago my brother and I mad an agreement.  He agreed to read my favorite book and I'd read his.  The agreement was made when we were on vacation, in a pub in Austria, and frankly I never thought that I'd have to keep my end of the bargain because I didn't think he'd read Pride and Prejudice.

.

And then a few months ago Robby called me up to tell me that he'd finished Pride and Prejudice.  He told me that Mr. Bennet was hilarious (which he is) and that he'd be sending me a copy of The Sirens of Titan to read.  Well, a deal is a deal.  I put it off for a while because he never sent me the book, but when he came up for Christmas he had it with him.  So with no excuse left, I read it.  

.

It definitely wasn't the kind of book that I usually read.  It was very weird, written in the past but set in the future.  I'm not sure that I could sum it up very easily . . . parts of it are set on Mars, Mercury, and Titan (Saturn's largest moon), and it had a set of main characters that were not especially likable, which I guess is lucky because then you don't mind so much when life doesn't go as planned.  

.

I'm not sure that I'll be reading any more Kurt Vonnegut books, but then I don't imagine that Robby will be reading any more Jane Austen.  It was a fun experiment, however, and I'm glad that we made the deal . . . and followed through with it.

.

I've decided this year to use the blog to keep track of books that I've read.  So periodically you can expect book reviews to appear here.

Blueberry Pie!

Happy New Year!  After taking a break from blogging for the holidays, I'm back!

.

Green Smoothie

Since I made my own yogurt, I decided that I needed more things to do with it than just eat it with granola.  So I decided to try out a green breakfast smoothie.

.

.

I have heard a lot about these and following a basic recipe I found online I made one with yogurt, spinach, blueberries, strawberries and molasses.  The spinach is for added nutrients, and in theory you really can't taste it.

.

.

Unfortunately my blender is not very powerful, and I ended up with some not insubstantial chunks of spinach in my smoothie.  It was mostly fine until the end when all that was left was chunks of spinach.  Mmmm yummy.

.

Then I happened to read a recipe that called for blending the spinach and yogurt together first to eliminate the chunkiness.  Why couldn't I have found that sooner?!

.

.

This method worked much better!

.

.

I added the ingredients one at a time, so my blender didn't have to work so hard.

.

.

.

It's a little bit hard to tell, but this smoothie is a uniform color, and chunk free!

Yogurt in the Crockpot!

.

I was recently reading about making homemade yogurt in a crockpot.  We eat yogurt all the time, usually with granola for breakfast.  It sounded fascinating so I decided to give it a try.  I forgot to take very many pictures,  but the one above shows everything that I used.  I used this recipe, although I used my teeny tiny 1-quart crockpot, so I had to monitor the temperature more closely instead of just relying on the times given   The basic steps are:

1. Heat milk up to 180 degrees in the crockpot.  For me this took about 3 hours. 
2. Turn the crock pot off, keep covered and let cool to 110 degrees.  This took me a few hours . . . I don't remember exactly how many!
3. Put half a cup of yogurt (since it was my first time making yogurt I used store bought) and half a cup of milk in bowl and mix well.
4. Put the milk-yogurt mixture back in the crockpot with the remaining milk and stir to combine.
5. Cover the crockpot, wrap it in a bath towel and let sit for 8 to 12 hours.  
6. You should now have yogurt!  Refrigerate for 8 hours for the best texture.

My yogurt was a bit runnier than store bought.  We're about out of the batch that I made last week, so I'm going to be making a second batch today.  I saved half a cup of last weeks yogurt to be the starter for my yogurt this week.  I've been thinking of getting some cheese cloth, and straining the yogurt in a cheese cloth lined colander over a bowl in the fridge to get a firmer texture.  I'll let you know how it goes!

Christmas Gala

David and I went to the Christmas Gala at UP on Friday night.  It's always a fun event, with amazing food.  We got to get all dressed up, and I even wore my red lace "Ishbel" shawl!

.

.

We wanted to get a picture of us.  I know that this one is kind of blurry, but of the 10 or so pictures that we took this was the best one!

Lego Advent Calendar

We enjoyed our Lego Advent Calendar so much last year that we go one again this year!

.

.

On our first day we got a Lego Snowman!

.