Things I did this weekend:

[eruthros]

1. Cooked! A lot. I made apple-pear crostada and cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie and mashed yam with oranges and rum and pecans and salad and other things as well that I've forgotten. m_shell made kick-ass apple-cranberry-turkey sausage stuffing, and was responsible for cooking the turkey. (Turkey is scary.) It was all quite good, even if we did have a minor pie crisis (for unknown reasons, it took an hour to cook instead of thirty minutes -- baffling). Also, we then ate leftovers for days.

2. As a corollary to #1, I did a lot of dishes. Because I have only three mixing bowls, I washed them about every thirty seconds all day Thursday.

3. Taught m_shell to knit. Go me! She picked out some yarn and everything, and is knitting a hugemongous scarf, which she had time to practice because...

4. ... I watched the entirety of the 2005 series of Doctor Who since Friday. We'd both sit here with our knitting, and then I'd pause it to explain Daleks to m_shell, and then we'd agree that Daleks were creepy, and then we would watch more Doctor Who. Um. Yeah. It ... didn't feel like thirteen episodes?

5. Knit. A lot. (See #4.) I finished a scarf and am halfway through a purse made of sari silk.

6. Discovered that I live in a town where you can buy pony carts on craigslist and the police need to remind people to lock their doors when they leave for a month. A month. I cannot deal. It was a front-page story in the local paper: attention! lock your doors! Where is reality from here?

Comments

[redbyrd-sgfic.livejournal.com]

I had friends who left town for 2 weeks and left the doors unlocked. Their reasoning? They didn't have a spare key to give the catsitter. Hel-lo? $1.29 at your local hardware store?

Friend: "Oh, we never lock our doors. We're home most of the time anyway."

Me: "So? You figured that makes you immune to someone stopping by and taking your stuff and vandalizing your house? Heck, I keep the doors locked even when I'm home."

Friend: "But it's a safe neighborhood."

Me: "That's what my classmate Tess thought. She lived in a town a lot smaller than you. At least until someone slit her screen one hot summer night and knifed her to death in her own kitchen." Thinking: What planet are you from again?

Friend: "I can't imagine that happening here."

Me: "Is that a risk you're willing to take with your kids?

Friend: "Uh-"

Me: "So suppose it isn't your stuff? Suppose it's your fifteen-year-old daughter coming home from school and finding someone waiting for her?"

Friend: "Um. That never occurred to me."

And I bet she still doesn't lock her doors. Pbbtht. I'm not paranoid, but if habitually keeping things locked up makes me that much less attractive as a target, then I feel it's worth doing.

[eruthros]

SERIOUSLY. It takes, what, thirty seconds to lock your doors? And it's not like smallish town=safe; right after I moved here, we got email from the police telling us about a girl who woke up to find a man standing at the side of her bed. (And apparently, after he ran away, just rolled over and went back to sleep instead of, you know, calling the cops or checking the doors, and he broke in again the same night!) It's this myth of smallish-town safety.

Also, I am sorry about your classmate.

[(Anonymous)]

Yowza. It's not just houses either-

I recently got email from the campus cops (because I'm taking a night course at the moment), reminding people to lock their cars. Because if you leave your iPod in your car with the doors unlocked, people might, omg, steal it. I'm not sure anyone that dumb deserves to be admitted to higher education!

I've made it a habit to lock my car doors when it's parked ever since I got my first vehicle as an undergraduate. (At the time, I had nothing in the car worth stealing but if you left your car unlocked some fraternity pledge was likely to fill it with garbage.) And of course this works equally well as as zucchini defense in the summer *g*.

And then I started getting better about locking my doors when I was driving after I happened to meet a guy (in the town I grew up in!) who was on crutches- in casual conversation I asked what happened and he told me he was stopped at a stoplight with his doors unlocked and three guys jumped in. They made him drive around at knifepoint for a while, and take money out of his ATM, and then they were kind of pissed that he didn't have more on him so they dragged him out of the car and broke his leg.

It was stuff like this that originally inspired me to study martial arts. Not that I want anything bad to happen, but it's like locking the doors- it's not foolproof but if something does happen, at least I have a better chance. Or like a locksmith friend said once- you don't need incredibly good locks. But if your locks are a grade better than your neighbors', chances are you'll be a less attractive target. *g* Of course anyone who breaks into my place looking for a plasma TV is going to be a tad disappointed to find only about 5000 used books...

[havocthecat]

Sounds yummy! And like lots of fun. I started a hat for my nephew--easy stuff--and did a lot of cooking myself. One of these days, I may even post about it. ;) But I had fun reading about your adventures with both.

How do you like the sari silk yarn? I made a drawstring bag with half a skein, and oh, man, that stuff has no give in it, I feel.

[eruthros]

It was indeed yummy!

Re: the sari silk, I think it varies depending on how well it's spun and washed. It frequently comes unsoftened, and then it has no give at all and is very stiff, but it you wash it with softeners it'll loosen up. The stuff I'm knitting with right now is soft, and very flexible, but has only minimal stretch within the yarn itself, so it can be a little difficult to work with but knits up into a soft and flexible fabric. As long as I can keep the tension fairly loose, which is not always easy with yarn without much stretch. :)

[havocthecat]

I ended up making a gluten free tabbouleh with quinoah instead of wheat (several members of my family have a hereditary allergy to gluten), and panna cotta that we topped with cranberry sauce. My husband pouted at me for leaving half the panna cotta for my aunt as a Christmas gift, but luckily, it's easy enough to make, so I promised him more.

Hrm. I just grabbed a hank of it, wound it into a ball (with much cursing as I undid the knots), and started knitting. Maybe I'll unwind the half-skein I had left, and hand-wash it with some Woolite. Or maybe just some castile soap. I have no liquid fabric softener around, alas. Thanks for the suggestion! I'll give it a try when I get some spare time.

Fooooooood

[mahoni.livejournal.com]

apple-pear crostada

That sounds reeeeally yummy. Do you have a recipe you might share?

Re: Fooooooood

[eruthros]

Sure! It's a really easy Mollie Katzen recipe, from Sunlight Cafe, her breakfast book. The crust is cornmeal-based, and thus almost impossible to ruin. She gives instructions for a food processor, but a pastry cutter would work as well. I'm going to paraphrase madly, because she's wordy.

Oven: 375*. Pan: 10-inch springform.

The crust:
1.5 c cornmeal (medium ground)
1.5 c flour (I use whole wheat pastry flour)
.25 c sugar
.5 ts salt
1 stick cold unsalted butter
1 large egg
cream or half-and-half to moisten (usually takes somewhere from .25-.5 cups)

1. Combine dry ingredients in food processor.
2. Cut the butter into thin slices with a knife. Set these pieces on top of the dry ingredients and pulse until meal-like texture and even distribution of butter.
3. Add the egg and pulse until incorporated. Then add just enough cream to bring the dough together.
4. Remove the dough and push it into a mass. Split into 2 pieces: one 1/3 of the dough and the other 2/3 of the dough. Form into two balls, flatten into disks, place each disk between two sheets of plastic wrap (I use baking parchment) and roll until about an eighth of an inch thick. Ease the larger circle into a 10-inch springform pan. Cut the smaller circle into strips for the latticework on top.

The filling:
2.5 lbs mixed apples and pears (not Boscs) - I usually use more than this, in a ratio of about 3:2 apples:pears.
2 TB lemon juice
2 TB flour
3 TB sugar
.25 ts salt

1. Mollie Katzen says peel the fruit. I say "ha! as if." It's quite good without peeling. I just cut it into thin slices, put the slices into a bowl, and put everything else on top. Then I toss the fruit and coating until it's even.
2. Spread the fruit in the crust. Arrange the dough strips on top in a lattice, pressing the ends of the strips into the sides of the crust to hold.
3. Place the tart on a baking sheet, and then bake about 40 minutes until light golden on top and around the edges.
4. Cool for at least 15 minutes before removing the rim of the pan.

I sometimes find that the tart dries out too much, especially in a gas oven, so I sometimes add more lemon juice or a bit of apple cider or something to keep the fruit moist until it starts to soften and release liquid.

Enjoy!

Re: Fooooooood

[(Anonymous)]

Ooh, that does look yummy- the last crostada recipe I tried had way too much pastry per unit apple and came out awfully dry. But this looks much better.

I may very well have to try this.. it also doesn't look incredibly sugary which is good. Hmm. And no spices either? Interesting..

Re: Fooooooood

[redbyrd-sgfic.livejournal.com]

Now why did the pesky browser log me out? Rats. That was me..