Another crocheted hat

Here's another hat I made. This one is adult-sized. BTW, it doesn't look it, but it's lavender, not gray.

I'm getting closer to finishing the socks and will take a picture soon. Had to take a break from crocheting yesterday because the arthritis in my shoulders was really acting up. I picked them up again today and did two more rounds on each.

I also did another row on a baby afghan I started last year. Will post a pic of that soon, too.

This morning I made French toast out of a loaf of Challah bread I found when cleaning the freezer a few days ago. I make it in the oven, which is faster than the stove. Tasted really good and there are enough leftovers for another breakfast.

I took the ends of the loaf and put them in the Magic Bullet to make crumbs. Then I crushed up potato chips left in the bottom of a bag (Mike likes chips with his burgers) and mixed them in the crumbs. I added chili powder, cumin and a little cilantro. I've got some cut up boneless chicken that I will dredge in this and fry. Then I'll either freeze the chicken or we'll have it later this week in tacos.

My inspiration was the show "Chopped." It's a contest where the cooks have a basket of strange ingredients that don't seem to go together. Think: cornish game hens, peppermint candies and bulgur. Somehow, they have to create a dish using everything. The elimination rounds follow a meal: appetizer, main, dessert. I love seeing how creative people can be. They do manage to pull it off.

However, interesting as it may be, nobody in this house is ever going to be served cornish game hen with a bulgur-peppermint rub!

I've been working on a lot of projects lately. Here are some hats I've recently crocheted.

Mr. Bunny and Liony-Piony are wearing my own creations, made from scrap yarn. Bun's hat would fit an adult and Lion's hat is sized for a child. Liony-Piony was not too happy when I woke him up to model (yes, he sleeps--he even snores) but, being a cub, he doesn't have much of a roar yet.

Mr. Bear is wearing a creation from AllFreeCrochet.com called "Snowy Ridges." This is also adult-sized. Here's the link if you want to make it:

http://www.allfreecrochet.com/Hats/Snowy-Ridges#

In the cooking/baking department, I mixed up the dough for spritz cookies yesterday. That is a project for this week. Today I made Swedish Meatballs--emphasis on the 'ish.' I did not have some of the ingredients so I'm hoping the sauce (which I'll make closer to Christmas Eve) will make them taste right. Mainly, I was missing allspice and cream. Not sure if the allspice is necessary. I just subbed cream cheese for the cream. We'll see how it goes. They sure smell good!

Works for Me Wednesday and Coat

I'm pretty late to the Works for Me Wednesday party (better than 200 people ahead of me with great ideas), which is linked here:

http://wearethatfamily.com/2010/10/wfmw-entertaining-even-when-youre-reluctant/

but I just came up with an idea worth sharing over there. I have been lucky to find Southern Living Annual Cookbooks for really cheap at either garage sales or the thrift store. Today, I was going over some recipes trying to find ones that are good for freezing. What do you know? In the index of the SLA books they have both "Freezeable" and "Make Ahead" categories! Hooray, all I had to do was go down the lists and check off what looks good.

Having things categorized works for me!

And on the coat front...I sewed in the sleeve hems today. I'm happy to say they aren't too short (I shortened the pattern before cutting it out) but fall just about at my wrists.

I'm seriously considering, if I have enough leftover fabric, making a belt and forgetting the button. We'll see.

Be sure to visit "We Are That Family" for "Works for me Wednesday" and lots of great tips!

OAMC Lite

I'm still here. I spent Sunday cooking up some ground beef for various recipes. I can't get into the Once a Month Cooking thing entirely, but I can get into some of the aspects--like having ingredients ready, or parts of meals. I started with 6 pounds of ground beef I browned in the oven in a big pan.

These are some meat pies I made. (I will resist the urge to make a Mrs. Lovett joke--Sweeney Todd fans will 'get it.') I just used store-brand biscuits for them. I split each raw biscuit in half and rolled it out as thin as I could. I put a nice mound of meat in the middle (how's that for alliteration?) and topped it with another piece of biscuit dough. I cooked these then froze them. We already had them for dinner last night and they were reeeealllly good. Here is the link to the recipe. I was lucky enough to have all ingredients on hand!

http://www.rd.com/home-garden/miniature-meat-pies-recipe/article26225.html

I also made up some of it for what I call Slider Casserole:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Slider-Style-Mini-Burgers/Detail.aspx

(I used 2 pounds for this as it is a family favorite!)

And for Ground Beef Casserole:

http://www.mealsmatter.org/RecipesAndMeals/Recipes/Recipes.aspx?RecipeId=54992&p=1&pageTemplate=PrintView

(Only the meat and tomatoes part--I'll combine the rest when I make it)

I also combined a pound of the meat with some cheese and green chilis (from a can) for enchiladas. And I left one pound plain so that I can throw it in sauce for quick spaghetti.

On the other side of the creative front, I've been working steadily on crochet/sew or knit projects. In fact, I'm signing off now to work on my daughter's wrist warmers, as the light from the window behind me is just right.


Oh, btw, the doll I got at the church sale is a "Ginny Baby" from 1965. Apparently she isn't worth much more than $20, but considering I paid about 50 cents for her, I think I got a deal, LOL!

Fall Doily

I haven't quite finished the fall doily, but wanted to post about it anyway. I'm making this using a much larger hook (J, as a matter of fact) than the original pattern. I think it will look nice with a pumpkin sitting on top!

Didn't do much on the coat. I have the lining cut out and the back pieces pinned. I'll sew them today. If I'm really ambitious I might pin the summer blouse pattern.

As usual, I'll keep working on the blue scarf. I think it's going to be a gift for my mother, who likes the color blue!

Here's the link to the pattern for the doily. It's easy to follow and a nice, quick project!

http://www.crochetspot.com/crochet-pattern-hipster-doily/

Editing to link to a fall blog party over at "A Wise Woman Builds Her Home"--

http://proverbs14verse1.blogspot.com/2010/09/its-all-about-fall.html

Check out all the awesome autumness over there!

Coat and chicken wings

The wings and egg rolls were a big hit. My daughter had her friend try the egg rolls, too, and both wondered why I didn't like them. Like I said, I'm not fond of the taste of water chestnuts. But I have a basic idea of what to do to make them so next time I will experiment a little.

Today I have Buttermilk Baked Chicken in the oven for Katherine. She can have it during the week or tonight. I rarely follow recipes to the letter and I thought this would look a little bland. So I mixed up a bit of ranch dressing mix with some Ritz crackers and sprinkled that on top to give it color. Yeah, it adds a few calories, but not too many. And I think it's important for food to look nice, don't you?

On the coat topic, I just pinned in the sleeves and will sew them either today or tomorrow. I have a really simple way of doing the basting to ease the sleeves into the armscye (or however you spell it). I got this from one of the Nancy Zieman books. Basically, you run a line of long stitches along the edge and when you get to the end of your stitching, you reduce the stitch size, pivot, make a few stitches then pivot to go back the other way. Then you increase the stitch size to basting again and make your second row. The little stitches are your anchor. It's much easier to do this than to do two separate rows of basting stitches.

The buzzer just went off and I took the chicken out of the oven. It smells really good. I did turn it halfway because I was afraid of the cracker crumbs getting too brown. So of course they got all mushy and fell off after all. But the chicken still looks nice. I'm going to make a broccoli salad and twice-baked potatoes to go with it. I have work in 3 hours so I will probably do that tomorrow. I see one or two other recipes from the WW book I might try later in the week. We'll see.

On the crochet front I did 2 more rows on the baby blanket. I'm about at the end of the skein. When it runs out I'm putting this aside to concentrate on Christmas gifts. I just have to remember to write out my instructions either on this blog or in a notebook: 1 row of singles, one row of doubles, one row of front post triples then a singles row that anchors down the back of the triples. I took a picture of that and showed it in an earlier post.