2010 Ravelympics - Pregame Show

Ron:  With less than 24 hours until the 2010 Ravelympics kickoff, we're here with one of the contestants.  Ms. Sutton, what you can tell us about this year's competition?

Toni:  Well Ron, to date there are more than 8300 knitters from around the world signed up and ready to compete.  Some will be competing on multiple events--such as perhaps the Scarf Super-G as well as Sock Hockey--while some of us are tackling a single, larger project.


Ron:  So participants have 16 days to complete their events.  That's a lot of pressure for what many of us would consider a grandmotherly-sort of sport.

Toni:  Don't let the stereotypes fool you.  Anyone who has ever witnessed the carnage at a 50%-off sale of cashmere yarn can tell you, knitting is not for the timid.


Ron:  You're signed up for the Sweaterboard Cross and the Stash Compulsory Dance, which--let me get this straight--is an ENTIRE sweater made from stash yarn within 16 days.  Is that correct?

Toni  Yes, Ron, it sure is.


Ron:  16 days--that's a pretty big challenge.  To attempt such an extreme knitting feat, is there training involved, or some sort of practice or preparation involved?

Toni:  Definitely.  This is not something to be attempted by the first-time knitter.


Ron  What sort of training goes in to preparing for the Ravelympics.

Toni:  Well, first the knitter has to learn to set ridiculous goals with incredibly tight time frames.  Most of us achieve this by deciding to knit a Christmas sweater or afghan around December 1.  Not every knitter can make it.  Most don't--many spend Christmas eve with 4 pots of coffee and a nervous tic in one eye to get there.  It's a grueling training process.  Often there are tears...occasionally the knitting project will be savagely flung into a food processor out of frustration.  Definitely not a sport for the timid.

Ron:  With just under 24 hours before the mass cast-on, tensions are running high.  Stay with us for our continuing LIVE coverage of the 2010 Ravelympics......

Perspective

I'm still reading Grandma's Wartime Kitchen, and I thought I'd share this little snippet with you:

“Because of rationing I had a new way of life. I made lye soap to wash baby clothes, picked wild greens, canned all garden vegetables and fruit, helped raise broilers [chickens] and milk 29 cows by hand. We butchered our own meat, also caught fish and had frog legs.” --Marjorie Marzolf, Salina, Kansas

Did I mention that I've sworn to whine a whole lot less during canning season??????

So Did I Mention We're Back On the Diet?

Not that we ever really had a big fling with processed foods--and we are enjoying having one Diet Pepsi a week as a special treat--but the weekend before this one, we made the mistake of going out to eat 3 times in 3 days.  I still don't know much about food science, or what processed foods really do to one, but when food leaves you whimpering in pain after eating it--your body is obviously trying to tell you something.  We'd like to have salad dressing once in a while, but have drastically cut that back and decided that we won't eat it at all in the summer when veggies are at their best.  We were trying to come up with new rules--like maybe 4 cheats a week if we needed to restrain ourselves, but severe stomach pain works quite nicely as a deterrent.  Not to mention--very few forbidden foods taste that great anyway.  Except chocolate--let's not be stupid.  Chocolate is, was, and always will be FABULOUS.

Since convenience is the real issue, this weekend I made a huge vat of totally legal spaghetti sauce with pumpkin puree & lots of tomatoes, and it's now divided up into little two serving containers and packed into the freezer.  I even labeled them for once--which makes me quite proud of myself.  During January we were playing a lot of dinner-is-whatever-the-heck-this-turns-out-to-be-once-it's-defrosted, and I think we're a little tired of that game.  And a little tip for you--minestrone and pasta sauce don't look all that dissimilar when they're defrosting, but minestrone makes a lousy pasta sauce.

Later this week, I shall be attempting to make a few breakfast cereals.  This should be entertaining..... 

Things I Have Learned This Week

*  Do not underestimate how much water a pillow can actually hold

*  If a recipe says something like "carefully pour," I'm in over my head.  I don't think I'd even know if I was carelessly pouring, and if I wouldn't recognize if I was doing something wrong, how would I ever figure out how to do it right?

*  Having successfully made zucchini chocolate cake obviously gave me a foolish sense of optimism about my ability to make desserts.  A recent "caramelized pumpkin custard" incident has put me back in my place.

*  It is possible to cook a custard for an extra half an hour and STILL not have the knife come out clean like the recipe says it should.

*  Going out and stirring up the compost bin is a good way to squelch spring fever

* A goal to read 100 books during a year can be made much easier by reading a lot of short "mind-popcorn" types of books, even if they are a little silly and predictable

*  If you and your spouse have made the rule that the one who cooks doesn't have to do dishes, it's best to also make the rule "leaving dishes 'to soak' is a complete load of crap"

*  If you spent a large portion of last winter entertaining a cat with a cast, the cat might start to believe this is your function during winter months

Let's Discuss My Morning, Shall We?

Since I didn't have anything truly pressing today, I decided to do some of the "extra" cleaning--you know, the stuff you hardly ever get around to doing.  In the grips of this madness, I decided it would be a good time to wash the pillows from our bed.

The pillows are reasonably new, so I hadn't washed them before, but I carefully read the tags (because, you know, under penalty of law I was obligated not to remove them...), loaded them in the washer, which is a front-loading machine so I wasn't even actually too worried about it.  I added some detergent, set it on gentle, and went off to do other things, coming back when the buzzer went off.

So far, so good.  The stuffing had neither clumped nor exploded all over the washer, so I was feeling pretty confident at this point. The tags said to dry them on low heat/fluff.  Fine.  I put them in the dryer, set it to low, and walked away.

Now I am no mechanical genius, but I have found that when it sounds like an appliance is screaming in pain, this is a very bad thing.  I took the pillows out of the dryer, turned it on--no screaming.  Put the pillows back in the dryer, turned it on--screaming.  It may be hard to believe this coming from someone who is currently getting her ass kicked by a couple pillows, but even I have the sense to NOT destroy a $400 appliance over a couple $50 pillows. 

Since it's a balmy 2 degrees above freezing, hanging the pillows outside to dry seemed like the next logical choice--aside from the fact that we don't have a clothes line or anything of that sort.  Briefly, I thought of trying to use the corner of the fence & the top lattice work to rig up a clothesline

but I'm just not sure I want my pillows drying over a pile of dirt & horse manure

even if I did grow up in the country.  I'm never going to claim to be any sort of whiz at cleaning, but even I know that things should actually be cleaner at the end of the washing process than they were at the beginning--so, best to avoid all horse manure. 

You might not have put much thought into this, but wet pillows are actually remarkably heavy. Trying to suspend one between a pole and a stepladder will, as it turns out, pull the stepladder over.  HOWEVER,

if suspended between a pole, stepladder, and big gas barbecue, it won't.  Pillow number one taken care of (until it dips below freezing, of course--by which time I hope to have made this Andy's problem and not mine)

Pillow number two required a little more creativity, as we only have barbecue and the pillars on the patio are rather far apart, so I would like to introduce you to the world's first barbecue-pillar-hot tub suspension clothes line:

which actually works rather nicely

 

I am really, really, REALLY hoping that we don't get the snow that they're predicting for this afternoon.  Wouldn't it just be my luck for TODAY to be one of the days they actually get it right??????

Grandma's Wartime Kitchen

Today I'm reading a book called Grandma's Wartime Kitchen, which is a (so-far) fascinating book about women in America during World War II and the meals they made and how they coped with rationing.  I think we all know about the "Victory Gardens" Americans were encouraged to keep--I believe to free up the demand the industrial food that was to be shipped overseas, but I didn't know much else about it.  Two really interesting points so far:

*  Because of the influence of the dairy farm lobbyists (which there seem to have been), margarine had to be white rather than yellow, but one brand of margarine actually came with a little bit of orange food dye that could be kneaded into the white goo so it would have that yellow "buttery" glow.  Now I can't say for certain because I wasn't there, but would kneading orange goo into white margarine REALLY be preferable to living with white margarine???????  Or am I just a bit lazy about that sort of thing?

*  I'm just going to quote this for you:
     "The [American] government produced, and encouraged businesses to sponsor, pamphlets, articles, and posters that gave the home-front housewife all the advice she needed to work a ten-hour defense-plant shift, come home to serve a nutritious meal on an impeccably set table for her family, have the kitchen spotless in no time, and in the morning, look absolutely perky as she handed each family member a hearty lunch before she started the next long day."  
 
     I can only assume that women at that time had some sort of mental fortitude that I do not possess.  If I had ever received such a pamphlet with such "suggestions," I think I'd have a few suggestions of mine own to share...........

A New Book To Add To The List

According to this review:

sp!ked review of books | A foodie’s guide to the history of humanity

the life expectancy of the first human farmers might have actually declined. I'm not sure that the reviewer isn't oversimplifying things a bit, but it is an interesting thought.

As strange as it may sound to us now, much of history is truly the history of food--the search for spices leading to the discovery of new lands, the sugar trade and the birth of the slave trade (much of history really is about people being totally rotten, sadly), wars being won or lost because of the ability/inability to feed armies. So far I've been reading books about the history of food--not necessarily about how food shaped history.

Sigh.....I have SO many books to get through yet.....