Life's a Stitch

Updates in a nutshell

I do need to update this blog. I can't figure out an excuse for not doing so. The kids are out of the house, not for the evening; they all maintain their own household, for now. I still work the same full time hours. Extenuating circumstances dictate that I don't knit as much. So what is it that crunches my time into little morsels? Point form to the rescue:

• I am knitting occasionally, putting on a maximum of eight rows each time to the Flared Lace Smoke Ring. Still don't have a surgery date, but my goal is to bind off the day before, exchanging stitches for stitches.
• Creative endeavours include a video slide show for my sister and I to show at my mother's funeral. People ask how is it a funeral when she died in November? Remember that fiasco? Cemetery closed fr the winter, body in storage, funeral delayed? Bizarro. I'm not sharing the video until the event. I figure we all need to be together to hold each other in comfort.
• Still walking on the 10,000 steps a day plan. In order to earn that many paces I need to add a 40 minute walk to my routine almost daily. A healthy time suck.
• Life modernization included the recent addition of an iphone and the accompanying learning curve. Definitely a step in the right direction.

What to use to illustrate this post? Gracee at 10 1/2 years and grandbaby Rye at 10 1/2 weeks:

 

 

 

Pop on Over

In the injury induced absence of knitting I was on a creative quest. Popovers. Soda can sized airy puffs, right from the oven, melted butter on top. A restaurant near my childhood home specialized in popovers.

For you Brits, they have the same ingredients as Yorkshire Puddings, but cooked in a different pan. Yorkies baked in a muffin tin come out lower and cakier. Still good, but not popover good:

The pan is the secret. I mentioned this during a recent visit from my Minnesota SIL's and I was presented with the ultimate Nordic Ware popover pan. Similar to a muffin tin but doubly deep. 

The recipe:

Ingredients: 2 eggs, 1 C flour (works best with white but whole wheat gives impressive results), 1 C milk, 1/2 t salt, 1 T margarine for the pan, cooking spray and flour for dusting.

Procedure: Bring all ingredients to room temperature. Spray pans with cooking spray and dust with flour. Place a half teaspoon of margarine or butter in the bottom of each pan. In a large measuring cup beat eggs slightly. Blend in remaining ingredients just until smooth. Let rest for half an hour. Heat pan for five minutes in 450 degree oven. Remove from oven and fill each cup halfway. Return pan to oven and cook for 20 minutes. reduce heat to 350 degrees and cook for twenty minutes more. Serve warm from the oven. DO NOT open oven door. If your oven has a window, park yourself in front and watch the show, the magical continuous rising of popovers is akin to the legendary listening of corn growing in the midwest it happens so quickly. And the scent...

We also baked them with an ounce of grated cheese on top. Yumm.

Leftovers are wonderful the next morning for breakfast, toasted and served with melted white cheese and jam.

A word of warning. These are not meant to be sweet treats. Sweeten them after baking with powdered sugar, jam or syrup. I added one tablespoon of sugar to the batter causing a disastrous outcome. Tough spongecake would be the best description.

We all agreed, the pan is the key to success. My SIL bought the competitor's pan and had less than satisfactory results. The Nordic Ware pans are pricey, as they are made in Minnesota, but with each batch the cost per popover gets way more reasonable. Sort of like your Addi knitting needles.

Need more convincing? Pop on over and I'll bake you some.

 

That's my boy

Remember him? Now one course away from his undergrad degree in film making, the boy, who had such a hard time getting through high school, is pitching for a feature length documentary. The primary purpose of this post is an ask - to distribute this far and wide, social networks, contacts who might have an interest. Who knows, it might make it to someone with the right link to the larger film world.

It's a video, go ahead, click on it. Prepare to laugh. Can you sense my trepidation? The things you do for kids: