MarQ1

Still cool, but warming slightly.

Fat Yarn

I look at chunky or even aran yarn—and sometimes even worsted—and think what could possibly do with that? Besides a hat. That I wouldn’t wear. Large yarns making my head look smaller.

I do have some nice thick yarns, several skeins of Malabrigo Merino, in fact, but I look at them and think ‘scarf’, in fact, brioche scarf—which I’ve done. Twice.

I could do a different brioche.

The Downstairs Neighbor is Still a Pig

The other night he banged on his ceiling to complain about the sound of my chair as I rolled away from my desk before shutting down and going to bed. Really, mice make more noise than we do.

I Googled him. Apparently his wife is more successful than he is.

Still rather cold and getting colder.

What to Cook With

I had disliked my stove for some time. It was white and didn’t match the fridge or the dishwasher. It was hard to clean. The burner grates weren’t flat, so pans would rock back and forth when stirring. Think stirring risotto for twenty minutes straight. The burners would go out instead of going low. It was, like much in this condo, the cheap builders’ model.

I finally got a new one, a Kitchenaid, with more features than I need. The feature I like best is the high-heat burner with the grate insert that reverses to become a wok stand. That is a full-size wok from a Chinese restaurant supply store on the stand. Cheap. Cooking in a wok with enough space to push each cooked ingredient out as it is done and opening enough space in the middle to cook the next is a revelation. I might even cook more stir-fry.

What I really want to cook more of is South Asian and Middle Eastern. What I need to cook more of is vegetables, so I went rooting through Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian. I had the stove; I had the recipe’s. I needed vegetables and spices.

Lots of Spices

While the stove was delivered last weekend and installed on Monday, neither of us had anytime to use it. I did boil water for pasta on Thursday, but that was it. I plotted with my cookbook and tossed all the stale spices into the trash.

Friday, though, I was able to take the day off and I went shopping. I went to Fairway for the bulk of it, but came home without a few things, notably, no red chilis, fresh or dried. Then I hit a few local shops trying to fill in the gaps and to pick up a five-inch cast iron pan for roasting spices. I found enough ingredients to make cucumber raita, Afghan sour cherry chutney, Hyderabadi red lentils and Sri Lankan sweet potatoes with cardamum and chilis. All of these were excellent. The raita was some of the best I’ve ever had and the sweet potatoes were good even leftover and cold.

Saturday, I went out to further fill in the remaining gaps in my grocery list and pick up few things J had added. I hit Dean & Deluca and got sweet smoked paprika and manchego cheese for J, and paid a fortune for Mexican oregano, but bombed out on everything on my South Asian list. Then I got my wok at the restaurant supply at Houston and Lafayette, two blocks away, then walked with the not exactly lightweight wok to First Ave just below Sixth St to a South Asian spice dealer and grocery, which is where I should have gone to begin with. Everything that was on my original list and some extras, all cheaper than anywhere else. The day was perfect for it too.

Have you ever smelled asafoetida? There is a reason it’s hard to find. Noxious and nauseating. I sealed the small jar I bought in a mason jar when I got home. So far it works, but I’m afraid to open the jar.

Saturday was a Chinese-like stir-fry, in honor of the new wok, with a ersatz fresh-ground five-spice powder (no star anise in the house), some chicken breasts and lots of vegetables. Not bad. I love the wok.

I also made tabouleh from scratch for lunches. It has an entirely different texture than what you get in the instant versions or pre-packaged—smoother and less oily.

J broke-in the oven Sunday with Lemon Bars and dinner that evening was Jaffrey’s Red Peppers Stuffed with Herbed Rice in the Persian Style. This was perfectly fine, but I’m now pretty sure tarragon is more appealing in concept than practice. Thyme would be a good substitute.

Knitting

There was some progress on Feather & Fan in the last month, but most of my knitting was done on a lace scarf in Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool on #2’s (Am) during innumerable conference calls to tedious to recall. Between that and typing e-mails, my hands and wrists have been tired.

This has all been rather long-winded, but I’ve spared you the last month of boredom and tedium. Really, you missed nothing.

Anyone care to review 300 pages or so of financial systems business requirements documents for me? I didn’t think so.

Literally.

Clear and excruciatingly cold. My sympathies to the folks in Minneapolis, Chicago and Columbus and everywhere in between.

Binge Organizing

I’m tagging my swatches by yarn, needle size and type, and date. I was probably inspired by my newly organized notions and needles drawer.

We also installed new shelves in the bedroom closet, discarded unneeded furniture, took a few boxes to the basement, consolidated tools into a storage box under my desk and laid out plans to reorganize the office.

And I want to get a new stove.

Assault & Battery

Last Wednesday around 5:45 am, I was lying on the sofa reading the Times when I heard an beeping sound. Beep, beep, beep, pause. Beep, beep, beep, pause. First I thought it was a truck outside, but ruled that out when it continued for more than ten minutes. Then I thought our next-door neighbor was having trouble waking up, but dropped that hypothesis after a half hour of beep, beep, beep, pause, etc. The sound was definitely in the building and it wasn’t in our apartment, so i stepped into the stairway. It was coming from our upstairs neighbor’s apartment—our upstairs neighbor who had left the day before for Florida for a month.

Apparently she shut her electricity off for the month, but neglected to consider that her CO alarm would have a battery back-up that would eventually died down and cause the alarm to beep warningly. And annoyingly.

The alarm counts to three, but where I am on F&F, I need to count to 22. I can’t nap on the sofa for the beeping and napping would be good for my head cold. The battery is now weak enough that it stops for hours while the battery gathers its reserves, but inevitably when I think the alarm is done, it starts up again. I don’t hear it now, but that’s no promise.

J can’t hear the beeping in the apartment. Lucky.

Am I the only one who is annoyed by the sound that dimmer switches make?

The bulbs in our canned lights in the kitchen hum in an irritating way when they are about to burn out. J claims to not hear them. Anybody else notice this?

I had a delightfully witty post all ready for Wednesday, but hit the back button on the browser and lost it all. That was dumb, because I already knew that I have more flexibility typing it in TextWrangler and pasting it in when I’m finished.

Cool, a bit damp. Nowhere near as cold as Friday and yesterday morning.

Shopping

Yesterday’s shopping trip was the Container Store in Manhattan. I have a new piece of furniture, a console, which has two main functions: to look nicer than the desk it replaces in the living/dining room and to store yarn. It has glass doors and somehow plastic zipper bags of yarn weren’t the most attractive thing to display. So we had to buy something to put the yarn in to put it in the console.

This is full now, but there is no yarn stashed anywhere else in this apartment. At least, not that I can remember. And, yes, some plastic bags are still visible. I need to do some rearranging. The bright flash also makes it more obvious. The room is usually darker.

While there, we ordered stuff to organize the bedroom closet better, and bought trays and boxes to straighten up around here. I’ve even cleaned my desk.

Going Out

J & I went to a new wine bar on Atlantic Ave. yesterday evening, Donna DeVine (I’m not sure of the capitalization). We each had a fight of reds and some cheeses. The wine and the cheese were excellent. It was a little early and the place was not busy, so it was slow and relaxing. The place has a nice atmosphere too.

Backing Up

The witty post was supposed to be about last weekend’s trip to Dallas to see my mom for her birthday. I can’t remember the last time I celebrated her birthday, certainly not without celebrating my younger sister’s, which is on the same day.

We flew down on Saturday. I took knitting on a plane with me for the first time. Airports and airplanes are much less stressful when I’m knitting, or maybe it wasn’t that stressful because for once I wasn’t flying during a holiday season.

I had no problem going through security with Addi Turbos in my carry-on, but it still took us a while to get through: J wore a shirt with steel snaps, under a sweater. The guy scanned him for five minutes.

Our flight attendant on the way back was a newbie knitter, so we talked knitting for awhile.

At Mom’s we ate and played Scrabble, WordThief and Upwords and vainly tried to complete the NY Times Sunday crossword puzzle. I gained another pound I’ll have to work off before spring, but it was fun.

My older sister and my neice want hand-knitted socks, so I’ll have an opportunity to knit some more feminine socks with brighter colors.

Hoping

I’m hoping for a less stressful week at work. Both of my bosses will be out of town and I’ve finished one round of system testing and the next doesn’t hit me for two weeks. I’ll cross my fingers, but I won’t hold my breath.

And I’m picking up Feather & Fan again this week.

Don’t you hate it when you forget to switch the dryer from Air Fluff to Regular Heat? The bathmats are still a bit damp.

Listening to the Decemberist’s The Island from The Crane Wife. I am fascinated by this album.

The bathmats didn’t look that dirty, but the water in the washing machine looks like sewage. Gross.

This is our hop plant¹ climbing up our terrace railing. It’s climbing four to six inches a day, now that the weather is warmer. Those are pansies in the background.

Much warmer. I went out on the bike too late yesterday and the heat, the wind and the hills of Brooklyn Heights, Dumbo², Vinegar Hill, Williamsburgh, Greenpoint and Bushwick did me in. I was out for only an hour. My legs still felt dead from last week.

Today I went out earlier and to the southeast, which is much more even terrain, with the exception of Sunset Park and Dyker Heights. I was out an hour and forty-five minutes and my legs were just shy of exhaustion by the time I carried the bike upstairs. It was still effing warm and humid too.

Brooklyn’s bumpy roads are doing wonders for my biceps and forearms. If only they could rattle off my love handles².

This is the winning hop bine, the first to crest the bar of the terrace rail.

¹ According to Wikipedia, a bine, not a vine.
² Down Under the Brooklyn & Manhattan Overpasses
³ Only six weeks until our Ptown vacation.