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Via David Byrne's blog, an interesting tool to see how your priorities stack up against those of the presidential candidates.
Kucinich and Gravel (who? exactly.) were at the top of my list with Mitt Romney aaaaalllllll the way at bottom.
A couple of weeks ago, I was housesitting for a friend whose place is roughly a mile and a half from my office, which made for a nice walk in the morning and evening for the week I stayed there. The walk took me over the Gowanus Canal, a body of water so polluted that it actually, quite literally, has gonorrhea. (I have to say, extreme pollution aside, I really like the area around the canal. It's a semi-seedy, mostly industrial zone between two pretty ritzy neighborhoods. If the zoning is changed from commercial to residential, which I think is up before whatever body is responsible for such designations as I write this, I expect it'll be nothing but shiny, crappy new condo buildings within two years. Boo.)
So imagine my surprise when I looked down at the water while I was crossing the Union St. bridge and saw something colorful on top of one of the pilings.
A closer look:
My electrical-tape headboard is up on Apartment Therapy today as my entry in their January Jumpstart contest.
If you're so inclined, I'd appreciate you swinging by the site and casting a vote for me. Thanks!
Yesterday, Liz-of-the-barley and I were talking about what we were going to be making for our respective dinners last night. (Food is a popular topic of conversation around these parts.) We were both thinking something in the vegetable soup vein, IMing links to promising recipes back and forth to each other, I was expressing proper (and entirely sincere) envy at her stash of dried porcinis from the Carpathian Mountains, sent by Otto's (her Ukrainian boyfriend, original instigator of all things barley) father, when I suddenly remembered lima beans.
I really like lima beans. And I couldn't remember the last time I had eaten any.
So I decided that whatever I made, lima beans would be involved. And where thoughts of lima beans go, ideas of succotash generally follow. (yes? too much of a stretch?) Since I had some running around to do after work and knew I wouldn't get home until 8:30 or so, I wanted to keep it simple. The recipe could stand a little tweaking, but it was quick to make and tasty, a very easy weeknight dinner that provided enough left over for several days' lunches.
A note about the tomatoes: my grocery store, for whatever reason, hates me and refuses to offer me options for unadulterated canned tomatoes. It was extremely difficult to find them free of chilis or basil or other weirdness. And even harder to find them in juice instead of puree. I was limited to small cans of an off brand. If your grocery store loves you and stocks diced tomatoes in juice without schmutz, that'll save you a step. Instead of chopping whole tomatoes, I just squish them through my fingers into the pot. It's faster and kind of fun, plus you don't lose any juice.
Also, I abandoned my usual MO and cooked the pasta in the broth because I was too lazy to get out another pot. Which would eventually have to be washed! The horror! It's a false economy though, because this morning when I dished out a portion to bring for lunch, the pasta had absorbed most of the broth and were softer than I'd like. Still, if you just can't be arsed to cook the pasta separately, don't worry about it. I wrote up the recipe for the way I did it, not the way I'd suggest you'd do it. And if you're cooking for more than one person, you probably won't have enough left over to worry about.
FYI, that beer, while very delicious, is less of a beverage and more of a side dish.
Succotash Soup
1 T. butter
1 onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 small cans (or one large) whole tomatoes in juice
1 pkg. frozen corn
1 pkg. frozen lima beans
6 c. broth
1 c. elbows or other small pasta
half and half or cream
Saute the onion in butter on medium heat until softened. Add garlic and cook for two minutes or so. Squish the tomatoes through your fingers into the pan to crush them and add the juice from the cans. Add the lima beans, corn and broth. When soup is boiling, turn down heat and add the pasta. When pasta is cooked, you're done. Salt to taste and add a splash of half and half or cream to the bowl if you like.
I can't say that I miss awards shows, but I do miss all of the red carpet pageantry.
At least the SAG awards are giving everyone something to look at. These were my favorite three somethings. I think Marion Cotillard looked phenomenal too, very old-school glam, but I have a strong aversion to strapless dresses and don't want to encourage them.
Hair, makeup, posture: all atrocious. Dress? Superfab.
This weekend was really laidback, exactly what I wanted. I went to a couple of yoga classes, had a friend round for dinner (broccoli-cheddar soup) and a movie (The Constant Gardener) Saturday night, did my taxes...
And did some knitting:
Verily, I do love it with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns.
When the Road to Golden pattern first appeared on the scene, I filed it away in the back of my mind as a potential future project. I like the fresh approach to stranded knitting with a slimmer silhouette and the way it gives the illusion of wearing a short-sleeve sweater over a long-sleeved one. You all know how I love the trompe l'oeil... I haven't done any stranded knitting in years, but I've always enjoyed it when I've done it. It seems like a quick, fun project.
Obviously, the colors in the original are decidedly not very Stephanie. So I spent a little time recoloring it in Cascade 220. This photo is a little washed out; the green especially is a brighter, more apple-y shade.
The background is light gray (8401) instead of cream, I replaced the light and dark greens with light and dark teals (9452 and 4009, respectively), substituted raspberry (8885) for that warm red, eggplant (7811) instead of purple and apple green (9407) for the yellow.
I love the colors. LOVE them. Looking at the skeins piled together makes my shriveled little heart skip a beat. My concern though is that I'm not entirely sure I actually want the sweater. My yardstick, generally, for knitting a garment is whether, if I saw it in a store, I would clutch it to me and bite anyone who tried to take it away. Because if I don't love that much, why should I spend hours upon hours making it from scratch? I like it certainly, but do I love it? I'm not sure. And if I loved it, wouldn't I know?
[okay, totally off-topic, but there is a random woman standing in front of my desk right now who is apparently a huge fan of the magazine and is visiting New York for the first time and so decided just to show up at our offices and hang out and talk about how much she loves Constantine from American Idol. Did you know that show still existed? I didn't. We've given her a totebag and are letting her go through the piles of crap bins of books to help herself. Apparently, she's really into books about naked vampires. The next time I'm in Maine, I'm totally going to the Tom's of Maine offices to tell them that I love their toothpaste and how I feel about Project Runway. WTF, internet? Who does this?]
At the same time, I think it would be a lark to knit and work with the rest of my wardrobe reasonably well. The shape will work with both full and slimmer skirts as well as pants; the colors would slide in effortlessly with everything I own already. But I can't say that I love it with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns. But I do really like it. And would enjoy the knitting of it. So I'm conflicted.
So, there's a bit of backstory and an insider-y joke behind the making of this dish.
Over the last month or so, when we've been having that what-are-you-having-for-lunch? conversation around the office, my co-worker Liz has frequently answered, "Oh, I brought barley." Eventually, the rest of us were like, "hey, Barley Lady, what's up with all the barley?" And she said that her boyfriend had been buying it in bulk, cooking it at home and bringing over big bags of it to her apartment to eat as cereal and since it's there, she's been eating it too. 
So the barley has become a bit of a running joke around the office (like, whichever member of the editorial staff needs a stage name first gets to be Pearl Barley), and when I saw this recipe for barley-chorizo skillet pie on Serious Eats, I sent it to her, because, really, what fun is a joke if you don't beat it completely into the ground? And, after a little banter, we decided that we should probably make it and that it would be the perfect dinner for this week's Project Runway viewing, which happens at her place every week since I don't have a tv.
Anyway.
'Skillet pie' sounds very Hamburger Helper, but really this is just a frittata. Instead of chorizo, we used some long, skinny Hungarian sausages.
You saute a chopped onion, red bell pepper and the meat in the eponymous skillet.
Then add eggs and herbs and cooked barley, let it set, throw some cheese on top and run it under the broiler.
Mmm, skillet pie! Best served with steamed green beans and deliciously sour Russian bread.
...Reading: Agent ZigZag by Ben MacIntyre. It's the true story of Eddie Chapman, a charming, dashing criminal and con man (and friend of Noel Coward) turned WWII British double agent. It's a pretty incredible story, very well researched and the writing is terrific; to wit, "Soho in the 1930s was a notorious den of vice, and spectacular fun. This was the crossroads of London society, where the rich and feckless met the criminal and reckless, a place of seamy, raucous glamour." I'm really enjoying this one.
...Watching: Season one of Dexter. Good fun.
...Cooking: Nothing. Nothing at all. Life lately has meant that I haven't been eating at home much and when I have, it's been some combination of cereal, yogurt and bananas. I'm starting to get twitchy to make something interesting though, so that should happen soon. I'll scroll through my saved food blog posts and see what jumps out at me.
...Planning: To see this exhibition. And, this one, which looks AWESOME. And I've been meaning to see the sample show at the Cooper-Hewitt too (behind-the-scenes installation notes by my friend Sarah here). And the Exoticism show at the FIT Museum. Stupidly, Gallery Hanahou is not open on the weekends, so I'll likely take a personal day in the next week or so and take them all in in one crazy cul-CHAH blitz.
...Knitting: After all of my moaning about Demi the other day, it's progressing quite nicely. It takes more attention than my other projects, but that's not a bad thing. It just means that I can't devote quite as much time to it as I'd like.
I finished the other front of Flicca. I'm going to try to knock the sleeves out pretty quickly and wrap this one up. It'll make a pretty ideal spring coat and there's no reason at all that it can't be done by then.
I had a credit at School Products and went in this weekend to buy yarn for Oblique. I bought two cones of superwash wool in a pretty mushroomy color. I don't generally go in for the beige family — I don't believe fair-skinned blondes should wear it next to the face — but this is dark enough and cool enough in tone that it's reasonably flattering.
The pattern is written for all of the pieces to be knit separately, but I'm going to join them at the underarm and knit the yoke in one piece. Since superwash wool tends to be slick and raglan seams are subjected to a lot of pulling and stress, I'm not convinced that the seams would hold up particularly well. I do want seams on the body though, since superwash also has less memory than regular wool and the seams will help the sweater keep its shape. I started and finished the first sleeve to the joining point this weekend:
I like the turned-up cuff.
...Coveting: This dress, which would look quite nice with either of the cardigans posted above.
Hey, look what cosmicpluto gave me!
I'm passing it along to ten non-knitting blogs that consistently make my day with funny, incisive, fascinating and/or gorgeous posts:
The Best of the Bozeman Chronicle Police Reports
Eating in Translation
Things I've Bought That I Love
The Thoughtful Dresser
Smitten Kitchen
Project Rungay
Nothing But Bonfires
French Laundry at Home
Confessions of a Pioneer Woman
A Dress a Day
Thanks again, Laura!
