For some odd reason, I decided to do a little genealogy research last night. Okay, not such an odd reason…I am so tired of listening to Taylor Swift sing off-key that I couldn’t bear to watch the Grammys with the rest of the crew.

At any rate, I grew up knowing about six or seven generations of my family tree: all patrilineal, of course. Last night, as I was poking around on the web, I saw something that made me think “Hey, what about the tail line?” That something was a small notation indicating that my great(3)-grandmother, Florence Carlow, was born in New Brunswick.

Hmmm. This was new information for me. And so off to the New Brunswickian genealogy sites to see what I could find. I read through various census documents until I finally said to myself, “Didn’t these people come from somewhere else?” And finally, in documents listing New Brunswick’s “First Families”, I found that they did…they came from Maine and before that, Massachusetts.

Luckily, amateur American genealogists have posted their family trees online because otherwise I would have been lost. Apparently, that Massachusetts family is rather well-known: the Howlands actually arrived in MA on the Mayflower.

Okay, there were three brothers: John, Arthur, and one more who does not figure in this story (lucky for me as I’ll be damned if I can remember his name!). John Howland arrived in Plymouth on board the Mayflower in 1620. His descendants include notables such as George HW Bush, George Bush, Sarah Palin, and Eleanor Roosevelt. His older brother, Arthur, arrived in Plymouth some time around 1627, maybe on a ship called the Mayflower (apparently, there were several), maybe not. His descendants include ME!

Here’s the trail I followed:

* Florence Carlow, daughter of Horatio Carlow
* Horatio Carlow, son of Elisabeth Turner
* Elisabeth Turner, daughter of Rachael Sylvester
* Rachael Sylvester, daughter of Joshua Sylvester
* Joshua Sylvester, son of Lucretia Joyce
* Lucretia Joyce, daughter of Elizabeth Howland
* Elizabeth Howland, daughter of Arthur Howland

So there you have it…my family arrived on the Mayflower. Can I have my green card now?

What a bargain!

With nothing else scheduled for this morning, the Spawn and I were able to hit the farmer’s market where I spent all of $18.55. Just look at all that good stuff! From the top, we’ve got a bag of organic kiwis, two small heads of leaf lettuce, cauliflower, Swiss chard, fresh onions, a head of garlic, broccoli greens, baby artichokes (the first of the season!!!), onions, red potatoes, and broccoli.

I’ve already got plans for some of it…

* baby artichokes: these are destined for tonight’s dinner. We’ll have pan-roasted baby artichokes with pasta (and lots of garlic and oregano). We stopped by Dianda’s in the village for lunch and left with a loaf of bread and some Italian pastries for dessert as well.

* the kiwis will be eaten by the Spawn as breakfast throughout the coming week

* broccoli greens: I’d like to cook these like collard greens as a side at some point during the week

* fresh onions: bundle these up along with a bit of Serrano ham in some puff pastry and you’ve got a fantastic savoury treat.

The rest is just “staples” for the crisper; the cauliflower and broccoli may or may not end up in a soup. Who knows?

I haven’t made any New Year resolutions for many years now. I always found them to be just one more way to fail.

This year, however, I think I’ve come up with some resolutions that are achievable. There are only three on my list and none are terribly specific…no “quit smoking” (well, that wouldn’t be on the list anyway as I don’t smoke), no “lose weight”, no “start exercising”. No, these resolutions are much more approachable and I cleverly phrased them in such a way as to make them almost impossible to fail at:

1. Read more regularly.

For the past several years, I’ve taken to “reading” audiobooks and listening to podcasts instead of sitting down with a real book. In the future, I’d like to change that by adding reading back into my routine. I’m hoping that the classes I’ll be taking at the local junior college will help in that respect.

2. Walk the dogs more regularly.

I’ve already started on this one and the dogs think I’m a goddess. Talk about immediate gratification!

3. Try to make a pot of soup for dinner once a week.

This one will probably fall by the wayside once the hot weather is here but, until then, I think I can do it.

And there they are…my first resolutions in many years!

Having resolved to ignore the plaintive mewling of my family and to start cooking “good stuff” again, I went looking for some recipes I developed several years ago (2005! where does the time go?).

Maybe it’s not such a surprise that I still have them kicking around as I am indeed a self-confessed (digital) pack rat. Sure enough, they were still in their directory on my hard drive, each file containing three recipes for healthy, tasty food.

My original plan for these babies was to sell the files at $1.00 each. I thought they’d fly off the Internet, destined for homes of people who wanted to lose weight without having to eat cardboard. My first attempt at marketing them garnered me tons of hate mail…apparently asking for a small token in return for the imagination, testing, writing, photography, and publishing of recipes is a no-no in the weight loss world. Who knew?

My dream of financing a weekly cup of coffee at Starbucks through recipe sales was crushed. And, as the response really just confirmed my initial impression of humans in general, I let the entire issue drop.

Now that four years have passed and I just happened upon the files on my hard drive, I’ve decided to fling them out there onto the great Interweb-thingie FOR FREE!

Menu 1:

* Blueberry-Yogurt Smoothie
* Curried Broccoli Soup
* Sausage and Potato Bake

Menu 2:

* Salade Lyonnaise
* Mashed Cauliflower
* Scallop Cakes

Menu 3:

* Mediterranean Omelette
* Sunomono Salad
* Lemon Chicken Skewers

Menu 4:

* Corn Pancakes
* Spicy Thai Asparagus Soup
* Shepherd’s Pie

Menu 5:

* Spiced oatmeal (or Do-It-Yourself Instant Oatmeal)
* Tuna Melt
* Stamppot

Any and all positive feedback would be greatly appreciated (I need all the help I can get re-motivating myself to cook “good stuff” again)!

Now that it’s all over, I feel safe in blogging about my Christmas knitting this year. Of course, I completely forgot to take photos of things but links to the patterns would still be nice to share, don’t you think?

The Spouse’s knitted gift was a big-ass afghan, knitted from Plymouth Encore. I used ten balls of wool but no pattern per se; it’s just a big rectangle knit in my thatched bamboo stitch and with a garter stitch border.

That was the only family knitted gift of the year as I felt like I bombarded them with knitwear throughout the year. Besides, it’s hard to knit a Glee DVD…

For friends, I knit up two Mineco market bags (Rav link) using KnitPick’s CotLin. For the one of those two recipients who uses dishcloths in her kitchen, I also knit two dishcloths in a nice reversible stitch, the name of which completely escapes me (if I ever knew it to begin with!). It’s k1, p1 across and then knit back.

This was the first time I’d used CotLin and I really liked it. Very easy to work with and it looks fantastic. The leftovers of all that cotton blend will be knit into facecloths which will then be tucked away with some handmade soaps. I reckon they’d make fantastic “emergency” gifts.

One other (female) friend received a pair of socks and a fourth received a Wavy Orange Scarf (Rav link or web link) and a matching Calorimetry (Rav link or web link).

The three male friends I knit for each received A Hat Fit for a Boyfriend (Rav link or web link). These were great to knit up using leftover worsted weight yarns held double with leftover sock yarns. Quick quick quick! (And apparently desirable too as the Spouse has specifically requested one for himself!)

Now that I see the list all written out, I’m wondering why it took me so long to knit all of that! I started in August with the afghan and finished at the end of November. I guess I did knit other things at the same time…socks, a lace shawl, slippers, a cardigan.

Next year, I’ll take pictures…

Sometimes when I first wake up, I let my mind wander. I imagine all sorts of things like:

If my dogs were famous humans, who would they be?

Rogie’s easy. He’d be Simon Pegg.

Streaka? Maybe Katherine Hepburn.

Tighe could be George Clooney. He’s suave, good-looking, and aging well.

Dayton’s the tough one…I just can’t think of a tall, goofy-looking guy with a wicked sense of humour.

Other days (those days when I really don’t want to get up straight away but can still smell the coffee), I wonder if it would be possible to train the dogs to make coffee and bring it to me. I’m sure, given the right equipment, any of them could be trained to make coffee. It’s no problem to teach a dog to push a button and move things around on a counter. But how would they react to the task?

Streaka would just out and out refuse to do it. “Don’t you have staff for that, darling?”

Rogie? Well, he’d get so excited about having made coffee that he’d run back and forth with the mug, spilling it everywhere.

Dayton could make it for sure but he’d drink it all himself.

That leaves Tighe. Clever, eager to please, and not a coffee-drinker…

If only he had thumbs.

[I will preface this by saying that Streaka is also known as “the Queen” and that, ironically as it turns out, both Streaka and Rogie will do anything for a chance to get their snouts into the koi food (made of very stinky fish meal).]

So, one night for dinner, the whippets shared a 2 lb. chub of a fish-blend dog food. What follows is their response:

Streaka: Hmmmm. I don’t recognise this white stuff. Best just eat around it for a bit.

Dayton: Mmmmmmm. Dinner.

Tighe: Mmmmmm. Dinner. <chew, chew. slobber, slobber.>

Rogie: <sniff>

Streaka: Hmmmm. Do I detect a hint of carrot? Ooooo, I like carrots. I wonder if there’s any turnip in here. Turnips are my favourite.

Dayton: Mmmmmmm. This is the catfish, is it? Isn’t that what those Cajun whippets eat? Laissez les bons temps rouler, cher!

Tighe: Mmmmmm. Dinner. <chew, chew. slobber, slobber.>

Rogie: <sniff>

Streaka: Catfish? Darling, you know I don’t eat bottom fish. No wonder it didn’t taste right to me. Tighe! Tighe, come here and deal with this for me.

Tighe: Mmmmmm. Dinner. <chew, chew. slobber, slobber.>

Rogie: Catfish? What is this catfish? We have no catfish in Germany. We have cats. We have fish. But catfish? That is an abomination! I cannot eat this. Tighe! Eat this! Schnell, schnell!

Tighe: Mmmmmm. Dinner. <chew, chew. slobber, slobber.>

Dayton: I’d really like some more of that catfish.

[Dayton looks pensive.]

Dayton: If I show you my boobs, will you give me more? No? That’s just Mardi Gras beads, you say? Even if I show you all ten? No? It’s all gone? Tighe! Save some of Rogie’s for me!

Tighe: Mmmmmm. Dinner. <chew, chew. slobber, slobber.>

So, two thumbs up and two thumbs down. (Or, two dew claws up and two two dew claws down.)

Happy birthday to the best dog in the world…

Streaka is 12 today!

Or…another reason why life is too short to eat crappy food.

A couple of years ago, I had a really bizarre set of experiences over a couple of weeks. Every few days, I’d awaken from a dead sleep by the smell of food. Not just any food, mind you; it was the smell of something I’d eaten the day before.

Lest you think this was just a rather bad case of dyspepsia, let me assure you that the experience was quite pleasant and had nothing to do with the release of any gastric gases. The first time it happened was the night following one of our “corned beef hash cook-off” dinners. There was one serving of hash leftover and, after we’d eaten, I wrapped it up, thinking it would make a fantastic breakfast the next day. I woke up in the middle of the night to the smell of the perfect corned beef hash. I could almost taste the crispness of the potatoes, the sweetness of the onions, and the saltiness of the beef. I drifted back to sleep, muttering to myself fuzzily that it wasn’t fair of someone to eat my breakfast in the middle of the night.

The next morning I pointedly accused someone of doing just that and was very surprised to learn that not only had no one been cooking up the leftover corned beef hash during the wee hours but my breakfast plans could go ahead unmolested, as the corned beef I’d smelled cooking the night before was still wrapped up in the fridge.

I put it off as an odd dream.

That is, until a few nights later, when I was awakened by the smell of the most buttery, rich, and (dare I say it) perfect caramel. If Plato had crawled out of his cave and had some caramel while out in the sunlight, it would have tasted how that caramel scent smelled to me. You guessed it…the day before I’d had a single caramel from a confectionery in Berkeley.

At this point, the chances that it was “just a dream” were dwindling. In fact, I was sure I was dying of a brain tumour.  (I’ve always thought that, if one is going to fantasize in a hypochondriac manner, one should “go big or go home!”)

Only one more nocturnal olefactory awakening occurred for me and, as I’d eaten nothing particularly fantastic the day before, it was the smell of coffee that woke me. Now, I love the smell of a good pot of coffee brewing but as I do tend to associate it with the smell of skunks, the experience wasn’t quite as wonderful as the corned beef hash or caramel hallucinations.

After that…nothing. If I’d had a brain tumour, I’d gotten better awfully quickly.

Until this morning, that is. Last night I’d braised some pork shoulder in sauerkraut and white wine and, sure enough, in the wee hours this morning, I was awakened by the archetypal smell of that meal. It smelled so good…

This time around, I’ve decided that, rather than wandering off in some sort of hypochondriac haze, I’m going to make the most of my brain’s synesthetic confusion. Until it stops, I plan on eating only the most wonderful things I can think of, in the hopes that I get to experience their essence the night following.

So far today, I’ve gone with carnitas (alas, this batch wasn’t as good as the usual carnitas from this source so I’m hoping that it’s not on the short list for nocturnal smells) and an orange and ginger-flavoured fruit gel.

I’m rooting for the fruit gel…

This story has its roots in my early knitting days–those crisp autumn days of yore (AKA last year). My very first knitting project was, not surprisingly, a scarf. Even less surprising was the fact that I didn’t like the pattern and so just did my own thing. For my second project, I made a felted handbag. It didn’t matter to me that I’d never knitted anything in the round or that I’d hadn’t needed to increase or decrease stitches while making that first scarf. I figured if I could read the pattern, I could knit the pattern. Turns out, I was right and I soon found myself the proud owner of a lovely little felted handbag.

Over the next few months, I would occasionally ask the Spouse if he’d like me to knit him anything. He always said no until one day when he told me that he’d like a pair of slippers. Fantastic!

I bustled myself off to the yarn shop and, after taking some advice from the shop owners, I purchased a pattern and yarn for a pair of mens’ slippers. They knit up quickly and soon the Spouse’s tootsies were snug in them:

The Spouse was grateful for the slippers but, apparently, they weren’t quite what he had had in mind. You see, he’d seen my lovely little felted handbag and had been coveting felted slippers.

No problem! Now I knew what to make him for Christmas!

I worked on those slippers in quiet moments, confident that he wouldn’t recognise what they were while they were on the needles. When they were all finished, I tied them into a pillowcase and tossed them in the washer. Wheeee! another Christmas prezzie out of the way and not a day too soon…Christmas was just days away!

They look sort of normal, don’t they?

Well, they’re not. His special-for-him-felted-slippers-prezzie turned out to be the most misshapen, distorted freakazoid footwear imaginable. I immediately ran out to the nearest shopping mall and picked through all the mens’ slippers I could locate, searching for his size. (Just imagine how many dads and granddads get slippers for Christmas and just how many of those dads and granddads have average-sized feet and you get some sense of how arduous the task of locating slippers three days before Christmas really was!)

The Spawn and I decided to wrap up FrankenFeet anyway…you know, as a gag gift.

How much of a gag? Well, here they are with my foot alongside for scale:

As it turned out, the Spouse figured out that if he wore his ribby slippers INSIDE the FrankenFeet slippers, they kept his feet toasty and weren’t too too ginormous. (You can see the ribby slippers inside the FrankenFeet).

As for me, well, those slippers put me off felting entirely and I have studiously ignored anything felted, no matter how cute, ever since.

Right up until a couple of weeks ago when the Spouse broached the subject of slippers…

Remarkably and inexplicably, he asked if I could make him a new pair of felted slippers.  (I can’t imagine why he didn’t want to keep wearing FrankenFeet!) He had faith in me and my abilities and was confident that I could make him another pair, one that would fit.

I tell you what…he had more faith in me than I did but, I set my fears and trepidation aside and embarked on another pair of felted slippers. This time, I didn’t need no steenking pattern. I’d just make a pair of big ass socks and felt the hell out of them. I’d swatch and measure and felt and do everything to make sure that these felted slippers were the felted slippers of his dreams. I wouldn’t disappoint him again!

And so, that’s what I did. I knit a swatch, pinned it out, and measured it like I’d never measured a swatch before. I wrote notes on number of stitches, number of rows, width, length…you name, I measured it. Then came time to felt it. I knew I had to run a load through the washing machine on HOT that contained nothing but that swatch and an old pair of jeans.

This was perhaps the hardest part for me, namely because I’m cheap. Really cheap. The thought of running a HOT load in the washer makes me break out in a cold sweat. The thought of running a hot load in the washer for a single swatch practically rendered me unconscious. Try as I might, I couldn’t think of any other way to achieve the felting needed nor could I think of any way I might mitigate the costs of that one small load of hot water. I couldn’t combine it with any of my laundry as nothing I own has ever been washed in hot water. What if it shrank?! Then where would I be? (Out buying new clothes, that’s where. And that brings up a whole ‘nuther set of issues for me…like why doesn’t a pair of name jeans cost $12 any more?)

So I gritted my teeth, girded my loins, and set the water temperature to hot.

Once the swatch was felted, I took more measurements and not just of the swatch. I measured the Spouse’s feet from every angle I could imagine might come into play. Then I broke out the calculator…I needed to calculate just how big these big ass socks needed to be.

And then I knit.

After one BA sock was finished, the Spouse looked like his faith in me was wavering.

“Is that smaller than the last pair you made?”

Well, not really but I wasn’t going to tell him that. I pointed out that the first pair had been knit on bigger needles: 11s whereas these ones were knit on 10.5s. And the first pair had been knit double-stranded which I’m sure had some effect on how they felted. Maybe. I think.

“Maybe you should felt that one before starting on the next one. You know…just in case.”

Good idea!

My internal struggle with the water temperature was more quickly resolved this time around and, in no time, I had one felted slipper to show the Spouse:

It’s very hard to tell scale when it’s just sitting there on its own, isn’t it? Here’s a photo of the normal felted slipper alongside one of the FrankenFeet:

I am redeemed!

(And as soon as I get the other big ass sock finished, the Spouse will have a pair of normal felted slippers!)