Cubicle kitchen: Coffee Crunch Chocolate

Have you ever gone through the stages of weird food?  Like:

Stage One: Disgust.  You hear about some new thing, and you just think, 'Why would anyone ever want to eat that?  Gross.'
Stage Two: Curiosity.  You start to wonder just how bad it might taste.  And really, why would they make it if it really was so horrible?
Stage Three: Connecting.  You think about some other foods that you like that might have similar traits.
Stage Four: Craving.  You decide that you must try this thing.  Maybe it will be horrible, but by this point you start to believe that maybe, just maybe, it could be good.  And you wouldn't want to miss out on that, would you?
Stage Five: Tasting.  You actually get to taste it, and from there you might either fall in love with it, or perhaps you were right in the first place and it is the work of a flavor sadist.

I went through all five of these stages with the new Lays chips, specifically the Cappuccino flavor.  Coffee potato chips?  Huh?  But then, I made some intriguing connections.  After all, salty and sweet is an intriguing combination.  Kettle corn, for example, is delicious.  That thought, and stumbling upon the chips in an end cap at the grocery store, fulfilled the destiny of Stage Five.

The result?  I wouldn't say I'm obsessed, but they were good.  I found that while eating the chips themselves was intriguing, I preferred them with just a little bit of peanut butter.  I happened to have a jar of Vanilla Espresso Almond Butter, and it was the perfect 'dip', if you will.  It might also be yummy with one of those cream cheese fruit dips, maybe with some instant coffee flavor.  Something to round out the slight sweetness and bitterness of the chip.  And nut butter is great because it also has a complementary saltiness.

So there's a further Stage Six that I go through with these things, which is then to want to put them into a treat for klatch and share them with the world.  Combined with my almond butter, I thought that some kind of bark would be a simple way to keep the chips recognizable but turn them into something new.  Plus, I thought dark chocolate would play nicely with the other flavors.  And it did, this is just as good as all of those crazy chocolate bars I've seen all over the place, and everyone was very amused at my strange potato chip find.

This isn't a recipe that I expect a lot of people to recreate exactly.  But it's something you can certainly play around with.  Maybe just with plain potato chips and creamy peanut butter.  Or pretzels and cookie butter.  Whatever you find that intrigues you.  Push it all the way to Stage Six!

Coffee Crunch Chocolate

Ingredients

• 36 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
• 3/4 cup nut butter (I used a Vanilla Espresso-flavored almond butter)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons strongly brewed coffee
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• About half a bag of Lays Cappuccino potato chips

Directions

1. In a bowl, mix together nut butter, coffee, and powdered sugar.  Mixture will be crumbly, kind of like the inside of a Reese's cup.  Set aside.
2. In a large glass bowl, melt a third of the chocolate chips by microwaving on medium power for about a minute at a time, stirring until totally smooth.
3. Spread the melted chocolate onto a parchment paper lined cookie sheet.
4. Sprinkle crumbles of half of the peanut butter mixture and crunch handfuls of chips onto the chocolate.
5. Repeat the melting of chocolate, spreading, and topping sprinkling. (Note: You could also choose to do a single layer of 'toppings' if desired.)
6. Melt the remaining chocolate and spread carefully.  Sprinkle additional potato chips as desired.
7. Chill in fridge completely.  Break or cut into pieces.

Inspiration Saturday: Cotton Candy Grapes and other produce-breeding requests

I was all set to show you some daily progress shots of my wheel spinning from this week, but after an exciting sampling experience at the grocery store, I'm switching up my inspiration.  Don't worry, I'll be spamming you with handspun fiber soon.

I vaguely remember hearing about Cotton Candy Grapes when they first came onto the scene, probably on NPR.  I was intrigued, but not desperate to try them for myself.  Cotton candy is a fun, if messy, treat that reminds me of county fairs and field days, but it's not a flavor that I seek out in other forms, because to me the airy texture tends to be what I like about it.  But still, when I spotted them at Central Market this afternoon as a sample offering, I wanted to give them a try.

Wow!  They really do evoke that cotton candy flavor.  I resisted the temptation to actually buy any (they're a bit pricy and I opted instead to invest in some pomegranates), but they were yummy, and I imagine they would be really good frozen, which is how I like to eat my grapes in summer.

So, if they can use traditional plant breeding techniques to evoke a flavor as specific and man-made as cotton candy, I have a few requests for possible research and development:

Ginger Apple: I'd love to bite into a crunchy apple and have the spiciness of ginger cut into its juicy sweetness.  I know most people tend to favor the sweeter apples, but I love the tangier Granny Smiths, so something like this would be right up my alley.

Caramel Pumpkin: There's still time before autumn for them to try and come up with one of these.  Can you imagine how amazing these would be?  Pumpkins, with their delicious and vitamin-filled flesh, could only be made more enticing with the addition of creamy, burnt sugar notes.  If the Cotton Candy Grape can use particular grape genes to evoke vanilla, I don't see why pumpkins couldn't also be endowed with this particular kind of sweetness.

Garlic Potato: Everyone already loves garlic and potatoes, right?  They roast garlic and add it to mashed potatoes for deliciousness that absolutely steals all of the spotlight from the poor, neglected meatloaf.  So what if you could get a potato that was already herbaceous and wonderful without any clove-smashing required?  I would still need to have heads of garlic on hand for all of the other things I add it to (almost everything savory), but I think it would be amazingly convenient to just be able to scrub a potato, prick it a few times, stick it in the microwave, and voila!  An instant baked potato made even better because it's already imbued with garlicky goodness.  Just add your butter of choice.

Cordial Cherry: Maybe this is just crazy talk, but I feel like it shouldn't be impossible to develop some kind of essential cocoa flavor.  And I think we've already strongly established our ability to toy with the sweetness to the point where it tastes like candy.  This year's cherry crop was so good, we were eating a bag a week for about a month.  If these were around, it could be dangerous.

Peanut Butter Banana: Now we're just entering a realm where I start naming flavor combinations that I love.  But really, again, why not?  Peanuts are a plant.  Not the same kind of plant as a banana at all as far as I know, but a plant nonetheless, and thus I think I should be able to peel a banana and enjoy a potassium-filled, peanutty treat.

Lavender Lemon: I'm not crazy enough to imagine picking up a lilac-colored citrus, but it would be cool to have a lemon that, like a Meyer lemon, was just a bit less tart, perhaps a little sweeter, and had a touch of lavender.  The clean taste of lemon goes really well with a little herbaceousness, and lavender would be a great way to mellow out the zing.  It would make a really nice lemon bar...

Mandarin Grapefruit: We're well past the trendy days of the grapefruit diet when people were eating them every day for breakfast, but I've been known to polish one off as a fruity dessert.  So I think it would be good for grapefruit to make a comeback with a clementine-like hybrid that would result in easy to peel, snackable citrus.  Still with the tanginess of grapefruit, perhaps a little more mellow for the mass market.

I'm going to stop myself now because I'm only making myself hungry and sad that I can't eat any of these fruits and veggies.  What about you?  Have you tried the Cotton Candy Grapes?  If you could breed your own favorite fruit or vegetable, what would it be?

(And don't forget, more inspiration at Woolen Diversions.)

Craving love and aloo gobi in 'The Lunchbox'

Monday Movie Madness may have fallen by the wayside, but I still find myself wanting to share some cinema time with all of you.  Especially because yesterday I went to the movies, and I want to let you all know that if 'The Lunchbox' is in a theater near you, it's worth seeing.  But I'm going to start from the beginning.

All in all, it was a very Indian Sunday.  As I was doing a little late-morning channel surfing I discovered something rather unusual for American television: a cricket match!  I have caught highlights of cricket matches every once in a while as part of SportsCenter's Top 10, and I knew that ESPN had been including matches as part of their online coverage.  But this wasn't a highlight, it was a live match on ESPN2.  My mom was as pleased as I was surprised.  She may not like tea, but in her love of cricket at least she shows her Britishness.  We watched Sri Lanka beat India in the T20 by six wickets with 13 balls remaining.  Yeah, I only sort of know what that means.

After that we went up North towards the lone theater presenting our desired feature.  That meant, of course, that first we would have a lunch of frozen yogurt at Yogurtland.  While they didn't have anything particularly Indian, they are doing another round of flavor passports that did include Spanish flan, Geneva chocolate, French black currant tart, and Florida orange sorbet.  We could have had some Indian food at Tarka just around the corner, but Mom isn't a big curry person, so we stuck with froyo.  We also stopped by Sea of Beads, and I was tempted to pick up some seed beads to add to the final blue edge of my Affection-ite.  But in the end I decided that just finishing those final rows is going to take long enough, and I think the striping will be interesting enough without the additional sparkle.

My mom had been wanting to see 'The Lunchbox' since she had heard something about it on the radio.  These days, I end up putting more movies on my to-watch list from listening to NPR, and then from seeing the trailers when I go to see those movies, than from commercials on TV or Oscar buzz or things like that.  Anyway, we had to wait a few weeks for the film to come to Austin, in the meantime I had found the trailer and concurred with Mom's assessment that this looked like something worth seeking out:

This is one of those movies where it is truly cruel to only have overpriced buttered popcorn available to eat.  Even with a stomach full of froyo, I could practically smell the paneer and the aloo gobi.  It was so unfair.  This movie would be perfectly paired with a dinner party of Indian food, whether attempted at home or brought in from a take-out place.

Just like the layering of flavors in Ila's lunches, the film's story is a perfect blend of emotions.  It shows rather than tells, and adds depth to characters in daily details.  It's not too schmaltzy, but it's not depressingly cynical, even though Saajan begins the movie that way.  I simply cannot spoil the ending, but it similarly balances realism and the kind of optimism that I like to leave a theater with.

If I've whetted your appetite, I hope 'The Lunchbox' might be playing nearby you!

Inspiration Saturday: Healthy Greens

Yes, I love my chocolatey browns, tart yellows and of course sugary pinks.  But I also have an appreciation for those healthy greens.

I admit that I tend to look up the health benefits of fruits and veggies as I eat them.  There are two reasons for this:

• Self-righteousness tastes good, and
• If there's any chance that I could gain some placebo effect just by thinking that something is lowering my cholesterol or whatever, I want it.

But the logical reasons that I should eat these things are secondary to the reasons that I want to eat them.  Because they taste good.  I know I'm alienating all of the third graders out there who think that by pushing peas around their plates their parents might not notice that none of them have been eaten.  But I'll say it loud, say it proud: I love Brussels sprouts!

Oven-roasted or in the slow cooker, with some dijon mustard, having Brussels sprouts for dinner is kind of an exciting event.  Just a big bowl of them, and I'm all set.  More and more, my dinners are centered around green things, like steamed broccoli with melty cheese for dipping, and oven-roasted slices of zucchini.

In the past few weeks I've also tried some greens for the first time.  First, a gigantic bag of kale that I found on sale at the grocery store.  Then, again in a gigantic on-sale bag, collard greens.  Both were totally prepped for cooking, washed and chopped and all that.  All I did was put them in a big pot with about an inch of water and boiled/steamed until they were tender.  I love discovering new veggies, it's the flip side of all of the baking experimentation I do, keeping things simple instead of tossing in extra goodies and the calories that come with them.

I'm surprised that I don't have more green in my stash.  I think it just doesn't jump out to me as much as the crazy pinks and purples, which tend to be my impulse colors.  But I really do like green, from a limey chartreuse to a darker forest green, and those are making their way into my projects as well.

Do you love your veggies, or do you only eat them so you can get to dessert?  What about the color green?  And for more inspiration, go to Woolen Diversions.

WIP Wednesday: Looks like it's back to Norman...

After at least one 'morning' when I didn't get out of bed until after noon, I can't say that I was happy to hear my alarm ringing bright and early on Monday morning.  But it's not a vacation unless it ends and you go back to work.  And I know I'm not the only one feeling the 'shock' as my dad calls it of returning.  Everyone has that same wistful tone in their voice as they answer the requisite question of the week: How was your break?

So it's back to the hustle and bustle of the work week.  But it's not all evil alarms forcing me out of bed and disturbing the cat in her continued slumber.  Wednesday holds some good routines, like the weekly coffee klatch, which brought another successful recipe I'll be sharing soon.  It also gave me enough crafting time to do a few more rows of my shawl, slowly making my way back to where I was before I discovered its fatal asynchrony.  Other than that, I've been doing some non-knitting crafting for my Jane Austen swap.  One project involves committing a cardinal sin and deconstructing a book, while the other involved a lot of blanket stitching, but was not, in fact, a blanket.  Tantalizing hints, I hope, to keep you in suspense for the big reveal sometime in February, when packages go out.

I was also kind of looking forward to running on the treadmill again.  While at home, I was either on the road or on the elliptical, and I kind of missed the compromise that is the treadmill.  It was a little annoying, though, to finally reach the standard time limit of 100 minutes and have to restart my workout in order to reach my designated 9 miles.  Oh well, at least I maintained my skill at reading magazines while running over the break.  I'm tempted to try knitting and running, but, um, how about after the marathon?  Yeah, definitely after.

Another relatively recent edition to the work routine has been dinner with Dad on Wednesdays after my workout.  This became a habit in the past few months, and it's nice to count on a little face-to-face time no matter what else the week may hold.  Today we again went to Tarka, as the two of us are the only ones who seem to like Indian food.  Mmm…I won't say that Channa Masala has completely replaced my beloved Kerbey Lane pancakes, but it's perhaps slightly less incongruous with the very healthy way I spend the hour or two before dinner to eat a curried mix of veggies than to have a stack of banana bacon pancakes with peanut butter sauce pancakes.  (Proof: despite not going to Kerbey Lane Cafe, I did check their Facebook page to find out that these Elvis pancakes are the pancake of the week.)

I hope those of you who are also returning to your regular working lives are not in too much shock and that there are some good things to return to as well as the mundane minutiae of office life.  For more WIP Wednesday posts, go to Tami's Amis.

Squash Mein, and other leftover concoctions

The meals of Thanksgiving and Christmas are as much about overabundance as they are the gathering together of family and friends.  Which might be why I look forward to leftovers just as much as the actual meal.  Yes, there's the comforting tradition of a plate with turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes with gravy, stuffing, and green bean casserole all fit into their own little space.  But there's also something really delicious about the spoonful of leftover green bean casserole stolen from the Tupperware straight from the fridge.

And after that illicit bite, there's even more fun to be had in deconstructing the elements of the original meal and reconstructing something else entirely.  I swear my brain has several tracks of thought all working at the same time, and one of them is entirely devoted to food.  So thinking up new things to do with leftover dishes is just a great little brain teaser for me to work on.  Leftover cranberry sauce is great mixed with some plain yogurt to make, well, cranberry yogurt.  It's also a fabulously fruity ice cream topping.  And stuffing that isn't eaten with turkey can be stuffed into a portabello mushroom and roasted for a vegetarian entree to worth being giving thanks for.

Spaghetti squash was technically part of our Christmas dinner, but last week we did make way too much of it and ended up with more than an entire squash's worth of veggie spaghetti left in the fridge.  I've been making my way through it not just by reheating it with some tomato sauce and parmesan.  Oh no, that's too easy.

First, I decided to make spaghetti squash pancakes.  I took a little inspiration from the Jewish holiday staple of latkes.  Though the squash is naturally a little wetter than shredded potato, when mixed with some egg whites and flour it can still be pan-fried into a respectable cake.  I still prefer the potato version, but these with some tomato sauce were pretty good.  It's interesting how even the same ingredients just prepared into a different form can keep something from feeling repetitive.

For the pancakes I had already started sautéing some extra veggies, like thinly sliced onions and carrots.  So last night, as I was tossing in some frozen red pepper, beet greens and mushrooms, I decided to improvise a little more, and instead of adding the veggies to cold squash before mixing in the egg and flour, I just dumped the squash straight into the frying pan.  I added a little soy sauce and other seasoning, then really took it over the edge with the addition of a fried egg.

I know that calling this bowl of deliciousness Squash Mein is not an accurate representation of Chinese cuisine, but that's what I'm calling it.  It's all the best things about fried rice, without the greasiness (unless you count that as one of the best things, in which case you're better off calling for delivery).  And I've just made it again tonight for dinner.

Do you have any favorite leftover food hacks?  Or do you prefer to just reheat and eat?  Or have you mastered the art of never having too much left over at all?

Inspiration Saturday: Memories of memories

This week, my inspiration is shared with someone else's.  Namely, Jeni of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams.  She posted a blog earlier this week about the story behind their latest collection of flavors, Holiday in the Alps:

Aside from how delicious the ice cream sounds (I can't decide whether I'm not intrigued by the Cloverton + Red Currant Sauce or the Pumpernickel, since I love caraway), I can really identify with Jeni's story.  Apparently she spent some time as a youngin' in Stuttgart, Germany, on an army base.  The blog post has some great photos of her all bundled up in the snow.  She says:

Today, what I remember most about my long-ago time in Germany near the Alps and of my childhood in Peoria isn’t so much the mountains and or the subtle beauty of the plains of north-central Illinois. What I remember are the treats that always appeared at our house during the holidays. Every year, family friends from Germany always made sure to send my family holiday care packages of torrone, the nougat-honey-and-almond candy, and white and milk chocolates, and more candies.

For myself, I was actually born near Munich and lived there until I was about three.  I've always had a love of the treats that I associated with Germany as well as the UK, where I've also spent a lot of time.  Things like Kinder Eggs, which are actually illegal here in the US because parents apparently can't be trusted to not give them to their kids before they are old enough not to choke on them.  Or Smarties, the chocolate kind, not the powdery tablet kind.  These were and are treasured treats of sweetness and nostalgia.

This also applies to savory things, like pretzels.  I'm really enjoying the current pretzel roll trend in bread right now, because whenever I see them, I think of this:

Yup, that's me, with a pretzel bigger than my head.

I also get just as much comfort from the deliciousness of svickova as I do from the fact that it's such a classic Czech dish that reminds me of that part of my heritage.  Which is why whenever I'm in Boerne I go to Little Gretel's, a Czech restaurant that happens to have svickova on the menu:

The portions are not as outrageous as a Czech pub, but it's still tasty.

I have very few of my own memories from that time, most of them are mixed up with home movies and photographs.  Again, it's not unlike Jeni's experience:

When I tell people about these new flavors I’ve been referring to them as “memories of memories.” All of my memories are of magical places I see in the old slide photos of my brief time near the Alps: the biergarten with smiling, rosy-cheeked men in feathered hats, castles and fountains, the garden of our landlord where I would follow him around.

The holiday season always brings back these kinds of thoughts, I think, because it's all about traditions carried on over the years.  There are lots of special little things that we all do to harken back to times in our own personal history, and food is one of most potent ways we do that.  Something to do with senses and the memory, I suppose.

If I had my own gourmet ice creamery, I would love to play around with these flavors like Jeni does.  I do what I can in my baking, like the caraway shortbread cookies I experimented with at the Thanksgiving potluck this year.  And spoiler alert for my Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap recipe coming next week, I was greatly inspired by poppy seed kolache, another Czech favorite of mine.

What are your favorite flavor "memories of memories"?  And for more inspiration, go to Woolen Diversions.

WIP Wednesday: Thanksgiving Eve

Happy Thanksgiving Eve, everyone!  Tomorrow's the big turkey day, are you ready?  I just about am, my mom and I have plans with some of our knitting group to gather together with food and all of our projects.  I'm hoping that with their help and a Thanksgiving miracle, I'll finally start seaming my cardigan and get started on some of those ruffles.

I've been off work all week, taking a few of my days off before I lose them at the end of the year.  That's given me time to enjoy a little extra sleep and to make sure I keep going strong on my NaNoWriMo efforts.  There's just a few more days to go, and just a few thousand words to go as well.  I'll probably still have story ideas left to explore, and some unfinished ones that I've started.  But I'll get all 50,000 words typed up for sure.

And to go with my literariness, I have a new pair of glasses that I just picked up from the optometrist this afternoon.

They're purple!  For the first time ever, my prescription has stayed stable enough that I didn't actually need new glasses.  But I had the insurance to cover most of it, plus the flexible spending money that I had to use up (insurance and vacation time, gotta use them all before New Year's), so now I have two pairs of glasses that I can wear.  It's kind of exciting.  Plus, it means that next year, when insurance only covers lenses, I can put new lenses in one of the frames and still see wearing the others while they do it.

Sad news about my Fruit Loopy Shawl, though.  The yarn was on Knit Picks the other day, but now that they're having their 'Big Sale', it's gone!  It's like the colorway has ceased to exist.  I'm going to have to find someone on Ravelry willing to sell it from their stash.  But I'm still tempted to make a purchase from Knit Picks anyway.  To comfort myself.

Speaking of comfort, I'm so looking forward to all of the food tomorrow!  I wouldn't have believed it when I was a kid, but I think the dishes I'm looking forward to the most are the cranberry sauce and the Brussels sprouts.  I know, weird, right?  Of course, I'm also going to save room for pumpkin cheesecake and chocolate pie.  For the sake of being festive.

What are you looking forward to eating tomorrow?  And what will you be doing while everyone else watches football?  For more WIP Wednesday posts, go to Tami's Amis.

Inspiration Saturday: Cranberry Orange

Last Thursday, in the final sleep before starting the Crawl (Crawl Eve, if you will), my subconscious revealed just how excited I was about the impending yarn roadtrip by having me dream about it.  And in my dream I was on the Crawl and found a yarn in a color that is not my usual color.  I'm usually drawn to jewel tones.  Bright, saturated, and leaning towards the blue-toned.  But in my dream, there I was, buying a skein of orange yarn.  But not just orange.  A cranberry orange.  I think this was my subconscious again blending my foodie craving for all things fall-flavored, like pumpkin and cranberry, with a just-as-powerful fiber craving.

This was in the back of my mind throughout the first weekend.  But it wasn't until the final stop that my dream came to life.  You might have spotted it in my WIP Wednesday post:

It's the Plumage Ltd from Little Green Finch, a local dyer who just happened to be in the store.  I had a fabulous time chatting with her and playing the game of 'put random colors together and be amazed at how gorgeously they go together'.  I could play that game forever.  I really just need to find the job that requires me to match yarns and mix up ice cream flavors and I'm all set.  Anyway, when I first spotted this skein, I knew it was my dream come to life.  I don't know if I foresaw this colorway, or if she was able to read my mind, but one of us is clearly psychic.

And so I will take the lead from my subconscious and just share with you a few more cranberry orange things that inspire me:

If I were to try and evoke cranberries in knitwear, bobbles would have to be involved.  I particularly like the look of orchids & fairy lights from tiny owl knits:

Photo credit: tiny owl knits

Nice and chunky, and I can imagine just how squishy it would be in Malabrigo Worsted, as suggested.

Speaking of fruits and bobbles, I feel like this is also a good time to give another shout out to the gorgeous Blackberry Cabled Cardigan my mom made for me:

Less bulky bobbles here create a really nice texture in the back and on the sleeves alongside all of the cables.

Okay, so now I have to revert to the tastes that cranberry and orange evoke for me.  Since I gave my mom some props, I'll do some horn-tooting and mention the Cranberry Jaffa Cakes I made the other week, which had just a hint of orange:

These would be really tasty dunked in a mug of some Blood Orange Herbal Tea, from Tea Embassy here in Austin, to enhance those citrusy notes.  I don't know if that would be considered heresy in the UK, to dunk ones Jaffa Cakes.  But that will just be our little secret, no one needs to tell them.

And I can't talk about cranberries without passing on the recipe I use for cranberry sauce.  I use the one from Stephanie O'Dea from A Year of Slow Cooking.  Again, it's cranberry, but it's enhanced with the flavor and acidity of orange.  We don't just make this for Thanksgiving to go with the turkey and dressing, I end up making this several times in the fall season, to go with ice cream, yogurt, oatmeal, fresh fruit, scones, or almost anything else.  No, you don't really need to use a slow cooker to make cranberry sauce, but it's so easy to just put it all together in there and let it do it's thing.  

And in the meantime, you can knit.

For more inspiration, go to Woolen Diversions.

WIP Wednesday: The right kind of wrong

My inner goody-two-shoes tells me it's 'wrong' to cast on a new project before casting off an old one.  But this weekend, I just couldn't help myself.  I made a little incremental progress with both my plying and my cardigan, but both projects are so big that spending 30 minutes never feels like it yields much.

So I decided to dive into a quick project that I knew I was going to have to complete in the near future anyway, a pair of dishcloths for an LYS holiday party.  Obviously, I'm using 'near' in relative terms.  Last year I whipped up some love-ly lace dishcloths, and this year I had another stitch I wanted to try.  Instead of hearts, bricks!

My mom and I bought the yarn earlier this year when Yarn Barn appeared to be going out of business, a trio of Cascade Ultra Pima Fine in gray, red, and yellow.  The gray is for the 'grout' and then I'll have red bricks (the classic) and yellow bricks (follow the yellow brick road!), and there will be plenty left over for Mom to make her pair in whatever pattern and color combo she wants.

Here is the red brick, featured with my current reading material, Aimee Bender's 'Willful Creatures':

Here's where I get to feel like a finisher, because I did finish reading 'Freedom' over the weekend (loved it), and I actually also finished this dishcloth already.  I'm really enjoying the stitch, it's easy but effective, and the yarn has rich colors and a soft feel that you don't always get with cotton.  And you can put in a few hours' worth of crafting time and have a finished object.  Or in this case, half a finished object, since these are like a pair of socks.

Next, I started the yellow brick.  It has the honor of being photographed with something else that's so wrong it's right:

Kerbey Lane pancakes!  But these are even more deliciously evil than usual.  The top pancake in the short stack is the weekly special, called The Elvis.  It's got banana and bacon in the batter, and a peanut butter topping on the side there.  Adding to the wrong factor is the fact that I went to a lunch 'n learn about cholesterol today. But hey, I not only ran this afternoon, I took a spin class.

Right and wrong, it's a delicate balance.

For more WIP Wednesday posts this week, go to Tami's Amis.

Allergic to old age

This weekend, I experienced an annoying first: allergies.  Rudely enough, they started Friday evening, with red, itchy eyes, and an occasionally runny nose.  This is the first time I've 'had allergies', the only other allergic reaction I've ever had being of the more disturbing swelling variety, when I woke up with fingers so fat I couldn't bend them around my toothbrush in the morning.  Ah, college memories.

Anyway, medication was taken and my eyes are a much more normal color.  Apparently, allergies are just one of those things you can accumulate as you get older.  Yay, another reason to feel old.  I'm hoping that this growing into allergies thing which I've heard is so common does not mean that it's going to be an every day issue.  Especially because I'm not sure which exact particulate flying through the air caused it.  I'm inclined to blame cedar, just because it's all around me and it is evil, but I don't really know.  And I refuse to consider the possibility that I'm allergic to weekends.

I'm also pretty sure I'm not allergic to cauliflower, since I just ate the equivalent of an entire head of it in the form of a cauliflower 'mash'.  If you've never tried this, it's a delicious side dish that's slightly reminiscent of mashed potatoes, but with many, many fewer calories.  Similarly to spaghetti squash, though, I wouldn't say that it's necessarily for people who love the starchy originals and hate veggies.  You should at least like veggies to consider this a possible substitute as the co-star with your meat loaf.  But it's another preparation that I hadn't tried until very recently.

A Google search will yield you plenty of results, but the basic idea is to cook up some cauliflower until nice and soft, then blend it down with some liquid and seasonings.  I boiled the cauliflower in water heavily seasoned with bouillon cubes and garlic salt and used a small amount of that as my blending liquid along with some Brummel and Brown.  So yummy.  Really.  I'm not exaggerating when I say that I ate an entire head's worth.  I'm about to explode with cauliflower goodness.

As long as I don't start sneezing cauliflower.

WIP Wednesday: Full stack, short sleeve

I already told you about the delicious pancakes that were a part of my WWKIP Saturday.  But if Instagram teaches us anything, it's that if you didn't take a photo, it didn't happen.  So here's the proof:

What's more interesting, the pancakes or the sleeve?  From left to right, you have the oatmeal raisin, gingerbread, and vegan peanut butter.  Strawberry jelly on the side.  Just looking at these babies makes me think my workout this afternoon wasn't enough...no, wait, it was.  I also had pancakes for dinner tonight, but these were veggie pancakes stuffed with onions, peppers, carrots, and spinach.  A different kind of delicious.

Placed so delicately next to the pre-syruped pancakes (sticky knitting is not good!), is the sleeve of my cardigan.  It's actually quite a bit longer now than it was then, thanks to my finally getting to join the coffee klatch and a few conference calls where knitting helped me to concentrate on the conversation rather than start multitasking on e-mails.  It's going pretty fast now, is it too much to hope that I might be done with both sleeves before starting Tour de Fleece?

For more WIPs this Wednesday, visit Tami's Amis.

Cubicle kitchen: Citrus Rice Krispy Treats

My mom knows me so well.  When she sees lemon and lime flavored marshmallows on clearance, she gets them for me because she knows that I'll be able to make good use of them.  Yesterday I made up for lost time and finally shared the first treat I made with the lemon meringue marshmallows, Yellow Brick Rocky Road Fudge.  Those were inspired by a common use for marshmallows, rocky road.  Last week I twisted another tradition, Rice Krispy Treats, this time using the key lime pie variety of these Campfire Bursts.

I'm not the first to find these marshmallows and think of treats, it looks like Mallow and Co has tried something similar as well.  She's also got a wealth of other awesome treat ideas, so it's worth checking out if you ever find yourself with a spare box of cereal and bag of marshmallows.  But while she went down the actual pie route suggested by the marshmallows, I instead took the lime as my starting point and just took it up a notch.  As usual, you'll see some optional ingredients listed that reflect whatever I had in my pantry that would add to the theme.  I even decided to make a glaze, because I wanted to make sure the lemon-lime really popped.  Snap, crackle, pucker, if you will.

I also used gluten-free Rice Krispies for the first time, because one of the knitters in my mom's group is intolerant, and if it's possible to keep the gluten out without really changing the recipe, I want to include her.  Plus, I know she likes citrus-y things because we introduced her to the deliciousness that is Trader Joe's lemon curd.

Oh, lemon curd would have gone great with these...next time.

Citrus Rice Krispy Treats
Adapted from The Original Treats Recipe

Ingredients:

• 3 Tablespoons butter
• 1 package Campfire Burst Key Lime Pie marshmallows
• 1 teaspoon lemon extract
• dashes of dried orange and lemon zest
• 6 cups Rice Krispies cereal

Optional: candied citrus peel, powdered sugar and lemon juice for glaze

Directions:

1. In a large saucepan, melt the butter.  Reduce heat to low and add marshmallows, stirring until melted completely.  Add lemon extract and dried zests.
2. Add cereal, stirring thoroughly.  Optional: add 1/4 cup or more of candied citrus peel.
3. As soon as the cereal is fully coated, transfer into a 9" x 13" pan lined with parchment paper.  Use a spatula sprayed with non-stick spray to spread the cereal evenly in the pan, pressing down.  Allow to cool, then cut into squares.  Optional: mix powdered sugar and lemon juice to make a glaze, drizzling on top of the treats before cutting into squares.

Inspiration Saturday: KIP-ing along

This week, what I'm finding most inspirational in my knitting is getting to go out and do with with some friends as part of World Wide Knit in Public Day.  Rather than seeking out an organized event, we went rogue in our mission to expose the world to knitters in their natural habitat.

First, we went to go see Baz Luhrmann's take on 'The Great Gatsby'.  I looked forward to this movie's release for a while because Baz is one of my sentimental favorites, but wasn't able to actually go see it until now.  It didn't surpass any of the Red Curtain Trilogy films for me, but there were some enjoyable aspects, like cameos by 'Doug' from 'Strictly Ballroom' and Baz himself.  And I thought Leonardo DiCaprio really captured the romantic desperation of Gatsby.

Baz's wife did her fair share on the movie as well, as the costume designer.  The 20s fashion is just as gorgeous and bold as the rest of the film's visuals, and makes me want to knit a vintage pattern.  The closest I've come to a 'roaring' project is this cloche for the NaNoWriMo swap last year:

I don't think it's something Daisy would wear, she'd never appreciate the work that goes into a handmade.  But my spoilee liked it, so that's all that matters.

After the movie, it was time for lupper - too late for lunch, a little early to be dinner.  But it's always time for pancakes at Kerbey Lane Cafe.  This time I had one oatmeal raisin, one vegan peanut butter, and one classic gingerbread.  Or to be precise, I had a half of each one.  Tomorrow I'll start on the leftovers.

We did a little knitting after ordering while waiting for the griddle to heat up, and then after having stuffed ourselves silly with deliciousness.  But I don't think the point of WWKIP Day is how many rows you can get done, it's getting to spend time with other stitchers.  And that's where most of the inspiration comes from.  Sorry, it's not very specific.  But it's pretty easy to get for yourself.

Did you do anything for WWKIP Day?

And don't forget to check out more inspiration at Woolen Diversions.

Tokyo tales: Love Sweets Antiques

Okay, I'm back to reliving some memories of my trip to Tokyo.  I was browsing through my iPhoto and felt the need to share.  I also know that I should offer up some more yarn-finding advice for others who might be optimistically typing in 'yarn + Tokyo' into Google like I did.  I'll try to do that as well, but here's a totally non-crafty, but totally cute, bit of Tokyo love.

I did a lot of extra walking when I was wandering on my own through the city.  I wanted to see everything I could, so I often passed up some possible metro connections to take the longer route to the closest train station.  The bonus of the train is that you stay above ground, plus map reading those lines is a little simpler than the underground.  And in cases where destinations were just a single train stop away, I often just skipped public transport entirely and took to my feet.

This resulted in my getting to see a lot of randomly cool things (and I'll be honest, a lot of randomly boring things as well).  It also made me feel even less guilty about indulging in whatever food I felt like trying.  And as soon as I spotted this cute little storefront on my way from Harajuku to Shibuya (at the junction of Aoyoma Dori and Omotesando), I knew I wanted to try whatever it was they might be selling.  From across the street, I couldn't be sure what they were, but they sure were colorful.

What they were were donuts...sort of.  Love Sweets Antiques (that's a Japanese-only site, FYI) fulfills every expectation of cuteness, with plastic donuts dangling from chandeliers and piled up next to a big white rabbit.

The non-plastic donuts you actually eat come in little octagonal boxes and are kept refrigerated.  All I had to go on in choosing my sweet was color, so I chose the pretty purple.  That turned out to be blueberry.  Rather than fried dough, these rings have a base of sponge cake, with a mousse on top that's set a little bit like a panna cotta (with bits of actual blueberry in mine).  They don't really fit any definition of donut I've come across before, but they are circular and delicious, so it doesn't really matter.

I wandered a little down the street and found a place to sit for a few minutes to eat my sweet with one of those tiny plastic flattened spoons similar to the ones you get in fancy gelato places.  Revived nutritionally and aesthetically, it was time to continue the journey down to Shibuya to find another Tokyu Hands location.  But hopefully more on that in another post...

WIP Wednesday: Short stacks and long rows

Maybe it's a contradiction to follow up a good workout with some delicious Kerbey Lane Cafe pancakes.  But I don't think so.  I think it's a lot easier to push out those final reps and burn out my muscles when I can envision the deliciousness soon to come.  Or am I entasting the deliciousness to come?

Anyway, I successfully worked out many muscles today, including my finger muscles as I knit a few more rows of my cardigan.  I'm knitting the body on the second front panel, having overcome my first hurdle in 'reverse shaping' confusion.  I wonder if I can explain it without compounding the confusion:

In the first panel, after the ribbing, I worked and slipped the first five stitches for the front band, switched to larger needles, then purled across the wrong side row, while evenly decreasing.  Whew.  On the right side row immediately following, I increased one stitch at the beginning, which I then did every 1.5".

In the second panel, I worked and slipped the first five stitches for the front band, switched to larger needles, but not so fast!  I'm on the right side this time (which is good, because it means my front bands will actually match up).  I'm still doing the even decreases, that's simple, just so the same as the previous panel, but knits instead of purls.  Here's where I had a moment of 'Huh?': the directions say that for this panel, I will be increasing one stitch at the end of right side rows.  So, should that happen after I've done the decreasing row, or at the end of it?  Because on my first panel, the increasing starts immediately after the decreasing, but it seems weird to spend the whole row decreasing evenly only to increase by one at the very end.  But it seemed even weirder to have the increasing not begin until two rows later.  So I went ahead and just did the increase at the end of the even decreases.

Logic is hard.  Pancakes are yummy.

For more WIP Wednesday posts, go to Tami's Amis.

4KCBWDAY3: Delicious information delivery

It's infographic day this blog week.  This was a very broad starting point, and evoked a lot of wild brainstorming on my part.  I had a lot of fun ideas, but most of them were slashed by the practical limitations of this being the middle of a week that feels like a particularly chaotic swirl of stress, deadlines, meetings, and plans made and then broken.  Nothing serious, just enough accumulation of little things to make a nit-picky person like me nervous.

Thankfully, I have implemented a very powerful means of combating this moment in the week: baked goods. Almost all of my 'Cubicle kitchen' recipe posts come from the treats I bring each Wednesday to a coffee klatch with co-workers.  The hit of caffeine, sugar, camaraderie, and opportunity to get at least one row of knitting done at the same time is just what I need to power me through to the remaining days until the weekend.

It's been nearly two years since I started this job, and bringing in baked goods has been a part of my repertoire from almost the very beginning.  It didn't start out as something I did every week, and I didn't regularly blog about them until last year, but I have a pretty good record of my recipes thanks to this blog.  So I thought I would collate some of that into today's infographic.  Here's a breakdown of the baked goods, by type, which I have brought into work:

As you can see, the battle is not between cake and pie, as is so often touted, but between cake and cookie.  Cookies are obviously easily transportable, and cake, whether cupcakes, snack cakes, or cake balls, are only slightly more trouble.  Brownies, blondies, bars, and fudge, on the other hand, are great for the ease of baking.  No scooping, rolling, or cutting out.  Just pour and spread most of the time.  And then, some things, like homemade marshmallows, I just had no idea how to categorize any other way.  Pie only barely made it onto the radar in the past few weeks.  But I hope to even the score a little in the future.

Speaking of the future, I also hope to try my hand at more infographics and other fun blogging tricks like widgets.  But like the manatee that I am, I'll float my way over to them slowly.

For more posts, use the tag '4KCBWDAY3' in the search engine of your choice.

Inspiration Saturday: Loving lemon

Whenever we try something new that is purportedly lemon, my mother usually makes the same judgement: not lemony enough.  She wants something just shy of pucker-inducing, something which is absolutely, unequivocally lemon.  And while I don't grade as harshly as she does, I also am on a constant search for yummy lemon.  It seems like we are falling in line with a current trend, because I'm seeing a lot of lemon lately.  So that's my subject of inspiration this week.

The epitome of lemon lusciousness to me is lemon curd.  It has the sour brightness of lemon ever so slightly mellowed out by the richness of egg yolks and butter.  A spoonful of lemon curd can be enjoyed by itself or added to anything from fresh fruit to baked goods.   For anyone who lives in a city blessed enough to have a Trader Joe's, their lemon curd is one of the few things to have Mom's seal of citrus approval.  We're still waiting for them to open up here, in the meantime we have to stock up whenever we're in San Antonio, or make it ourselves.

What is available now in Austin, Hey Cupcake has a new flavor to go with their new South Congress location, the John Lemon.  Lemon cake and lemon buttercream, yum!  I haven't had a chance to try this, maybe next time I'm at Hill Country Weavers.  Nearby, Sugar Mama's Bakeshop has a Jack's Lemon cupcake with a similar description, plus some lemon sour candy sprinkled on top.  I'm loving the celebrity references with both of these.

Blue Bell has so many different flavors, they have a rotation each month of which ones are available at any given time.  This month the rotation has two new flavors, one of which is Lemon Bliss.

Lemon ice cream with vanilla sandwich cookies.  And even better, available in pints.  I found one at Fiesta and decided that it was my bloggerly duty to try it.  The downside of a dairy lemon is that it is rarely lemon-y enough.  We just had some lemon frozen yogurt at Chill Out that exemplified this (their strawberry sorbet, though, was delicious).  The ice cream also could benefit from a lemon curd swirl (why oh why don't they consult me before they make these things?), but it has good flavor, and the cookie pieces are a nice touch.

Also in the freezer aisle, Ben & Jerry's Liz Lemon is their latest Greek frozen yogurt:

I haven't tried this yet either.  I was instead lured into getting some of their limited edition Cannoli ice cream.  Greek yogurt or Italian dessert, that's still vaguely Mediterranean, right?

Once I'm back in the office next week, I'll have to put a Lemon Zinger Herbal Tea K-Cup in the Keurig to continue the inspiration.  I toyed with the idea of making something lemon-y as my treat this Wednesday, but right now I'm leaning towards a cookies and cream cheesecake instead.

Outside of the kitchen, I have to give an honorable mention to Knit Picks' City Tweed yarn, with a lemon curd colorway:

Which Ali Tong designed into a Lemon Curd Slouch:

Photo credit: Ali Tong

And I love Diana Rozenshteyn's Lemon Drops shawl:

Photo credit: Diana Rozenshteyn

But mostly, I just love eating lemon-flavored things.  What about you?  And don't forget, there's more inspiration at Woolen Diversions!

Oh la la, Ah La Cart

Surprises are not my strong suit, mostly because I'm not a great improviser.  I love to plan, make lists and check them half a dozen times (Santa only has to check twice, but that's only because he's magic).  Surprises rarely lend themselves to list-making.  But last week, I had a great surprise that facilitated my love of list-making.  One of my friends from my semester abroad was in town for the week, and was available to meet up!

In trying to decide on a spot, I put together a list of possible foodie spots that were worthy of a tourist's visit.  I offered up some of my own tried and true favorites, like Sugar Mama's Bakeshop for cupcakes, Kerbey Lane Cafe for pancakes and more, and of course some frozen yogurt.  I also included a few spots I hadn't gotten the chance to try myself yet, mostly a sampling of food trailers which have come to dominate the culinary landscape of the city.  Sometimes it takes a visit from the 'tourist' to get you to discover something great in your city.

After doing her own research (we're friends for a reason, she had to make her own list as well!), my visitor chose one of those food trailers, Ah La Cart.  All on its own in a parking lot next to a bike shop, they do 'slow food, fast' with seasonal home cooking using fresh local ingredients.

As with most food trailers, the menu is limited, but it still had more than one dish I wanted to try.  I decided to be good and stick with a classic I have been craving recently: mac and cheese.  Now, this particular dish doesn't really lend itself to beauty shots.  But smoked Tillamook cheddar and Alderwood smoked sea salt sounds pretty good, right?  It tastes even better.  So creamy and cheesy, with the breadcrumbs on top giving it a little texture as well.

It's meant to be a side dish, so it's about a cup of rich deliciousness.  Perfect serving size for me, and I'm sure that even people who don't count their calories would feel satisfied if they paired with a pork belly taco, which my friend had on a corn tortilla.  Yes, you read right: pork belly.  There may not be crazy-huge portions or a novel-length menu, but they pack a lot of flavor into what they do serve.

This just happens to be a very convenient stop on the way to either the dentist or mechanic for me, so this will be a great way to turn errand-running into something delicious.