Post Olympic Blues

Thursday came and went. I felt melancholy through the afternoon. I couldn't figure it out. How could a day when I had acupuncture and a 90 minute massage result in melancholy feelings? I went to Ravelry to waste a bit of time before teaching a class and hoping to perk myself up with a funny quip or two from my online friends. What I found was so enlightening and uplifting it changed my mood for the rest of the evening and even carried over into today. One of my fiber friends (that is fiber as in yarn and wool to be spun into yarn) posted on a discussion thread that my Olympic shawl was her favorite project of the Ravelympics. I was stunned and proud. As I read further there was a post echoing her praise of my work. The enlightening moment was realizing I am experiencing Post Olympic Blues. The project was a long one. I cut it close and almost was unable to complete when I ran out of the yarn I spun last summer during the Tour de Fleece. I frantically went downtown to see if I could match the hand dyed merino wool. Lucky for me I did. I spent a week of the allotted 17 days spinning another 114 yards of yarn to complete the shawl I started. And how was this uplifting? I must need to start another project! I have a pair of special socks going now but can't post any pictures because I don't want to spoil any surprises. I'm also starting a baby sweater this weekend. The daughter of a friend is expecting a baby girl and I'm excited to start knitting this sweater for her.

Here is a shot of the Olympic Shawl:


Today's Recipe Offering:
Breakfast Chicken Salad (Serves One)
3 oz. diced cooked chicken
1 small apple cut into small pieces
1 stalk celery diced
10 walnut halves chopped
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp honey

Combine all ingredients except honey in a bowl. Drizzle honey over the top or mix it through. This can be made the night before and stored in the refrigerator for a quick breakfast.

"Pesto" green beans
1 pound whole green beans (fresh or frozen)
2 tsp chopped basil
2 cloves garlic chopped
1 TBS olive oil

Saute all in a skillet until the beans are tender but still crisp. Add sea salt to taste. This is a quick side dish and one of my staples.

Enjoy!

Wednesday!!

(Yes, I know it is not Wednesday! Due to computer difficulties at home this post had to wait until today to go live!)

Wintery Wednesday in Western North Carolina!!! I walked to work today through the snow. Interesting how icy roads mean leaving the car home and trekking in to work the old fashioned way while sunny skies mean driving in so many errands can be run. I was so bundled up to fight the bitter wind there was little pleasure in the walk itself. I did stop to take notice of the hill in front of the studio. This was a smart self-defensive move on my part. The hill is covered with 6-7 inches of snow. The ground underneath is uneven and can be hard to navigate. The surface was blowing and drifting. There were little points along the surface that were higher than others and dry powdery snow blew at high speed over and around these miniature points of architecture. The whole scene reminded me of walking the beach in Hatteras. The heavy winds blow the sand on the beach creating a similar drifting. There are high peaks almost like cliffs were the wet sand holds itself still and the dry sand whips on by.

On a chilly day like this I crave soup. What I have to offer today is Broccoli soup. The ingredients are simple as is the preparation and the outcome savory, warm, and satisfying.

Ingredients:
4 cups broccoli, chopped
1/2 a sweet onion, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 TBS parsley
1 TBS olive oil

Saute the onion and celery in olive oil until the onions are clear. Combine all ingredients in a heavy bottomed sauce pan add filtered water to cover. Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer and cook until the broccoli is soft. The soup can be eaten as is or can be blended to a creamy consistency using a hand held blender.

Snow Covered Mountains

We have snow in the mountains again. Everything is covered in white. The clouds are dark. A peek at the weather map says the snow will continue through the day and maybe even into the night. If only I could just sit in my living room by the fire and knit all day. Not the case today. I am spending the snowy day catching up on officey stuff and planning to get my workout in.

Last Sunday I made a Fabulous Sunday Feast! One of the side dishes was Roasted Brussels Sprouts. It was such a simple dish and so yummy.

Garlic and Rosemary Roasted Brussels Sprouts

1 pound fresh Brussels Sprouts
1 clove garlic
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp dried rosemary
1 TBS olive oil

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Wash the Brussels and pull of any bad leaves. Slice them in half and put in a shallow mixing bowl. In a mortar and pestle pound garlic, sea salt, and rosemary leaves to a paste. Add olive oil until well combined. Toss Brussels and olive oil mixture together. Arrange on a cookie sheet in a single layer. Roast until browned and crispy on the edges. This should be about 20 minutes.

I went to Nutrition Data and had this recipe analyzed. Half the recipe is 101 calories, 7g fat, 3g protein, and caries a GI Load of 3. This is a large serving and the recipe could be portioned into thirds but beware there may be squabbles over who gets how many sprouts!

Enjoy!

March Challenge is ON

So, I've challenged myself to write each day of March and to present a new recipe in that post. Today being March 1 it looks as though I will just make it under the wire. 10:20 pm as I am typing out the rough draft.

As Mondays go today wasn't a bad one. The beginning of the month testing went well for the clients who tested today. And for my personal testing, it was beyond my expectations!! I set physical fitness baseline for myself and am working toward a new level, a personal best in the gym. I'm feeling energized and exhausted all at the same time. Energized by the opportunity and vastness of the goal at hand and exhausted from the exertion and length of the day.

Without further intro here is the recipe for March 1!

Black-eyed Pea Hummus

2 cups cooked black-eyed peas
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup tahini
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1 clove crushed garlic
1 TBS wheat free tamari
3-6 TBS water

OPTIONAL Additions:
1 lemon, juiced
1/2 tsp cumin powder
1/2 tsp chili powder

Combine all basic ingredients and desired optional additions in a food processor. Add enough water to make a creamy paste. This alternative style hummus can be eaten with raw veggies for a nutritious snack. It is a good source of vegetarian protein.

It's not size that matters!

For the past few months I have been thinking my hand spun yarns should be thicker. That I should somehow be working against my natural tendency to spin fine yarns. I love the look of handspun bulky yarn. I love the natural lumps and bumps that appear. The new Spin Off Magazine cover has a lovely picture of coiled yarn. It’s amazing. The colors, the texture, the uniformity of the bumps all tantalize me. I read the article telling how to achieve this beautiful yarn. I slept on the information. I let the thoughts of thick and thin yarn spin through my mind for the next couple of weeks. I worked on a yarn in progress. It is lovely. It is about worsted weight. That is chunky in my spinning world. (Pictures will appear here soon!)

Then I started spinning Vitality. With the first bits of fluff drawing from my hand to the spindle I knew this would be a lace weight yarn. There are many reasons for this. The original reason was I have a small amount of fiber. The batt is less than an ounce. A finer yarn will have more yardage per ounce than chunky. This is logical. Then as I continued to spin my thoughts of thick and thin yarn played louder in my head. The artistic quandary finally started to fall into place. I enjoy spinning thin singles. I enjoy seeing how thin I can make the yarn without it breaking! Beyond that challenge, I enjoy knitting lace and socks.

Thus as much as I enjoy the beauty of the bulky handspun yarns and the artistic achievement of coiled yarn, when would I knit with them? What would I make with them? I suppose I would have a lovely scarf or two. I might have a cool hat too. That would not be so bad. It would be fun to show them off. But the deliciousness of the accomplishment is just not the same for me. I will continue to spin my fine even singles. I will stop thinking I need to spin chunky yarn just to prove something to the spinning police. I will love my yarns. And I will knit the delicate accessories these yarns are meant to be knit into!

Vitality

In October I spun a lovely batt of wool, bamboo, and firestar into my first ever chain plied yarn, Stained Glass. It was the theme for the October Spindlers group challenge on Ravelry. The experience was ground breaking for me. I found myself looking at family relationships I had avoided because of the pain associated with losing my father. I was open to working through this. I listened to the messages that came while practicing the meditative act of spinning. I gained more than insight with this experience. I gained courage to renew my faith in close relationship. I gained courage to reach out and make friends with people I may never meet face to face. I also won the random drawing to pick the theme for January.

I spent almost a week thinking about the theme. I am a personal trainer and coach many people about their life force. I wanted the theme to be about life energy and how we express that. What I came up with was Vitality. We all possess a vital energy, a vital life force. After choosing the theme I didn't spin much. There were holiday gifts to knit.But now we are in January. I have to spin for my chosen theme.

So I spent some time looking at my stash of fiber. I thought about what it says about vitality. I went out into the cold and picked a friend up from the airport when I really wanted to be home where it was warm. I played on the internet looking at space weather. I slept on it.

This morning I looked at the fiber again. There is a lovely blue Cotswold Wool. There is a nice brown with red fleck Jacob Wool. And finally a white Mohair and soft wool blend.
I carded up some and tried it out. A smallish sample of about 2 yards. It is lovely. Beautiful sheen, nice halo from the combo of Cotswold and Mohair. But it did not speak to me of Vitality. I remembered I had another batt hidden away. It is the Tea Cup Yorkie that came with my newest Yorkieslave Artworks spindle! I pulled it out and realized it looks just like the videos of the sunspots I was watching last night. Talk about Vitality! Where would we be without the sun?

May the life force energy fill you and feed you as the New Year unfolds into it's perfection!

Time Warp

So I thought I last posted sometime in July. Turns out if I just wait a few more days it will be a full SIX MONTHS!! Summer happened. Fall happened. There are stories and laughter and photos too. Hopefully they will arrive sooner than later and be a slight bit entertaining. For now though I have promised to return to sharing my words and thoughts and creations. Particularly food creations.

Yesterday I made soup. It was not a super hard soup. It was leftover soup. Perhaps we should start with the Monday night crockpot dinner that was the main contributor to the leftovers.

Monday night chicken...
One roasting chicken (I prefer organic)
One lemon
One white onion
Two cloves garlic
One sprig rosemary
Fresh cracked pepper and sea salt
How to: slice the lemon into pretty circles about 3/8 inch thick, slice the onion into wedges (I usually cut it into at least 8ths), chop the garlic smallish. Layer the onion (save a bit out and put it into the cavity of the chicken) and lemon on the bottom of the crock. Add the chicken to the crock. Cover the top of the chicken with garlic, rosemary, salt and pepper. Add 1/4 -1/2 cup of water to the crock. Turn on high for 1 1/2 hours then turn on low for another 3-4 hours.

Why the varied cook time? I am starting this at lunch and bopping home between my 6 pack at 6 class and my 7:30 Firestarters class to check on it. I used the meat thermometer and turned it off when it was 175 degrees. By this time it was falling off the bone and the crock was full of juice!

Leftover Soup
We did not eat all the chicken. I just put the crock in the fridge for leftovers. Then yesterday when it was time for dinner I pulled it out. I put the whole contents into a stock pot and added a quart of broth. The broth can be purchased broth or some that you made and stored for later (expect news on this next week!!). I brought the whole thing to a boil. While it was boiling I did stuff, cleaned the kitchen, searched out veggies, fed the animals. What veggies did I find? Baby carrots (great they were already peeled!), a couple of sweet potatoes, some fresh kale, the remainder of a bag of broccoli, and some already cooked veggies that wanted to be eaten up. All the veggies were cut into bite sized pieces. Once the broth mix was boiling I strained it out. The chicken bones and meat need to be picked through and the veggies need to go into the broth to start cooking. While the veggies were getting going I picked the meat off the bones and added it to the veggies and broth. The soup was ready in about an hour!! Cutting the veggies into bite sized pieces makes the cooking time FAST. The lemon gives the soup a refreshing taste. We did find the soup needing a bit of salt and pepper but I usually like to add that in later anyway.

Next up? Adventures in fiber from the summer!!