Old bottles

The house I was almost born in and spent the most time in was in Woods Hole, on Cape Cod.  I loved this house so much!  There was a piece of driftwood by the front door, with the name my mother gave the house, Old Bottles.  We had tons of old bottles scattered around the house, in windows and on shelves.  Turns out when my parents went to dig the duck pond in the back, they came across tons of old bottles.  Our back yard and the swamp that bordered up against it (and was part of it) was the old town dump!  The bottles there we dug up ranged from old vodka bottles to Noxema jars to china dolls.

I was really happy to see that Make did a piece on old bottles, pointing at the Bureau of Land Management’s page on how to identify old bottles.  There’s actually a big trash pile on our neighbor’s property, almost coming across ours…I should go dig sometime :-).

Famous Noodle Casserole

I just made the killeriest casserole ever.  Wheat free.  Dairy free.  Egg free. Potato free!

We’re trying to use up the stuff in the house, since we’re out of here in a week to the US.  And after a minor issue with the school, ice cream, and freezers, I have only half my usual amount to use in the house.  So I found minced pork, and started digging through recipes.  It was this or sweet and sour pork, which I totally didn’t want to do.

E’s Famous Noodle Casserole

(all amount approx, as this was flying by the seat of my pants cooking)

• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 4T butter/margarine/oil
• 1T yellow mustard
• 1 cup soy sour cream
• 1/2 c soy cream
• sprinkle of soy parmesan cheese
• 2 slices wheat free rye bread, made into fresh breadcrumbs
• 200g minced pork
• 250g wheat free noodles (your choice of shape), cooked [I didn't see cooked until just now.  This makes sense, considering that P kept talking about the bones in the food]
• 1 cup pineapple juice [you won't use it all]
• 2 cups chicken broth [you won't use it all]

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F/180 degrees C.  Grease a 2 liter casserole dish

Melt the butter/margarine/oil in a frying pan and cook the onion until it’s translucent.  In the meantime, put the sour cream, mustard, soy cream and soy parmesan into a bowl and mix together.  Once the onion is cooked, add this to the bowl and mix in onion.  Put the pork into the still-hot frying pan and cook through.  Put the breadcrumbs into the pan next, mix, then add the pork and mix.  Splash in, alternating, the pineapple juice and the chicken broth until it’s just like thick thick soup (runny, but still thick).  Mix in the noodles and cover.

Put in oven for 45 minutes.  Remove from oven and uncover, let sit for 5 minutes.  Serve.

Summer

There’s a smell in the air today that reminds me of Woods Hole, and summers growing up.  Years ago, I realized why I thought of Woods Hole when I walked past a certain hedge in California…we had the same hedge lining the driveway there, and the flowers always bloomed all summer.  So I smell that and I’m right back in the house there.  Same with the foghorn here. The lazy summer days, and if you woke up and all was quiet, and then you heard the Nobska foghorn going, it was going to be a soft day (as they say here).

I loved the view from my bedroom window.  Across Eel Pond to Swope, seeing if it was windy (I could hear the mainstays clanging on masts when it was, before opening the blind) or sunny.  Sunny meant heading to Stony Beach, where I learned to swim, hung out with friends, and hoping the ice cream truck would arrive soon.  After a long hot day there, if I heard the bells from the Bell Tower, it meant I was late for dinner (served promptly at 6, and that’s when the bells rang).  Home to dinner, a quick shower to wash off all the salt and sand; even tho it was called Stony Beach, it really wasn’t that bad.  Jumped into “warmer clothes”–a sweatshirt and shorts–and headed out to see the friends, hang around town.  If it was Tuesday, we’d go to Folksinging at the MBL Club.  If it was Thursday, it was movies in the Lillie Auditorium.  I once took my dad to see Rocky Horror there.

Summers in the Hole rocked when I was a kid.  I don’t know what it’s like now…I haven’t been back in 6 years at least.  I know there’s a new drawbridge (I knew the song the gears made on that by heart), I know the old elm trees in front of my lovely house (the cream one, with yellow trim) are gone, as well as the barn.  I wonder if our giant blackberry bush is still there?  Or the duck pond?

Tags: Memories, Summer

Crazy friends

One of our friends is going to do a sponsored skydive, with monies raised going to the school for playground equipment.  Very worthy and noble.

I asked him why he didn’t just get a tattoo: “No!  I hate tattoos!”

We’re going to bring a picnic lunch.

Firefox weirdness

For some reason, Firefox is acting strange when I try to get into Yahoo:

It should look like this:

I know I could just use Safari for everything, but my Yahoo plugin for Freecycle is only on Firefox, and it makes life so much easier.  Mega easier.  Has anyone come across this before?  I really need Firefox to work!

Breakdown of what happened:  I was making room on the computer (had 55MB left on startup drive) and somehow my whole Libraries folder got dumped–I didn’t put it in there on purpose, I know that much!!  So we tried Firefox once we got my Lib back from last month’s backup, and the screen showed this.  So I go get Firefox 3, thinking that will be the fix.  Nope, no dice.

This is happening on SFGate.com, NYTimes.com, and other sites.  What am I missing?

Tops, roving and some singles

Lucky me, I managed to snag the last place in the Spinning class at This Is Knit today.  No, nothing to do with bicycles, thanks… it’s the drop spindle class!  I think I’ve found (another) new addiction.  This stuff is so fun, and you get to touch the lovely lovely roving.  The teacher certainly made a difference, since she was so good!  I’m dying to see more of what you’ve done, Diane.  And combining this with the whole dyeing thing, and Aileen’s Thunderwheel…  I think I’m in fiber heaven.  Now I just need my spring share from the MVFF to arrive (no, it’s not even sheared yet; they just sent out the Fall share, so I must wait.  Patiently.).

What else do we think I can do with this?  I know I have a bag of roving downstairs, but it’s old stuff.  But maybe I can still give it a go?  

In addition, while doing some dyeing yesterday with Yvonne, we played around a bit and ended up making this:

Soooo pretty.  Can’t wait to knit that one up.

Fixed!

B has gone and fixed my CSS so that the site looks right, yay!! Now maybe I can keep up with the blogging.

Again I was a judge for the Irish Blog Awards (thanks Damien!), and I’m thrilled that the two blogs I chose as my number one choice in my categories won. WAY HAPPY. I hope they were surprised as well

Foodie blog!

My friend Candi has just started up a food blog, BohoKitchen.  Give the girl some love.  The pics alone are worth it…

Finally

I can update things!!

First, let’s just crow about the fact that we’ve now gotten our full licences.  Yes, you read that right, after 10 years on the roads here, 21 years of driving overall, husband and I finally got the licence.  It’s all PINK even!! Insurance has already gone down, and I don’t start to stress when I see a Garda car.

The other update is knitting stuff.  The problem with knitting things for gifts is that they’re normally for people close to you.  People who would read your blog, for example.  So I couldn’t post pics here, cause then the recipients would see their presents!  However, gifting has been done, and I can show…

The Flying Spaghetti Monster.  This was for Christian, and I do think he likes it.  It was from a great pattern that was super easy to do, and I’m thrilled with the outcome.  I think I may do it for the nephew for Christmas next year as well.  I used Lamb’s Pride worsted in creme, which was really wonderful to work with.  The meatballs were done in aubergine, I believe.  I just call it meatball color now, but not when I’m in the shop talking to someone about the wool!!

The Spiral Rib Bag was for my sister’s birthday.  These colors are totally her!  It’s Lion and Lamb, by Lorna’s Laces.  What a dream to knit with!  Little bit slippy on the Addis, but if I had done it on the Harmony it would have been perfect.  I really liked doing this one, and since I still have half a skein, I might do a matching thing for her later.

What am I up to now?  The candy cane hat from Handknit Holidays; one in blues for Eoin, one in green and white for P.  Then mittens to actually fit their hands.  Then Yvonne’s Copper Cables scarf for B, if I can get it done in time for Valentine’s Day (he needs a nice warm scarf!).  Plus all the other 4 pages of stuff in my Ravelry queue.

I hear the Blog Awards are coming up.  Good luck to those who get on the lists, it’s a great honor to be nominated.

Tags: 2009, Knitting, presents

Dyeing followup

Elena was a great dyer!  She put pics of her dye job on her site, and the colors she chose were really nice.  The yarn we use sucks up dye like no one’s business!  I was doing some, and pushed some dye into the yarn with my hand…normally some dye comes back out, in the same state it was going in, like paint.  But no, when I pushed, it came out as clear water.  Now *that’s* dye.

We have another dyeing workshop on Dec 14, if anyone wants to come.  Hand dyed sock yarn makes a great Christmas present for the knitter in your life!

My dad and stepmom arrive on Thurs night for 4 days…we don’t get to see them very much, as they live in Hawaii, but it’s great to see them when we can!  He’s in Athens for his sabbatical which ends in Dec, so we are very lucky!!