Yarn & Food, Two of My Favorite Things

This  (bread) bowl of yarn was once.....

....this sweater from Goodwill.

I know, you're thinking it can't be, as they aren't even the same color. Try as I might, I couldn't get the yarn balls to photograph right. It was a bit late in the day when I took pictures of the wound balls of yarn. The partially dismembered sweater above was actually a whole sweater when I bought it. I didn't think to photograph it bfeore I began the long and laborious job of deconstructing it.  I've recycled thrift store sweaters into yarn before, but never one as time-consuming as this. I was disappointed to find many knots in the yarn, too; hence so many varied sizes of balls.  Goodwill's sweaters are $3.49, but they were having a buy-one-get-one-free sale, so this sweater only cost me $1.75. I couldn't find another worthy of recycling, but I found a lovely chocolate brown zip-up cardi in great shape, which I think my daughter might  like.

The sweater's yarn color was much richer than it looks in the picture above. The color of it really jumped out at me in the store. I usually look for size large or extra-large sweaters, so I'll get more yarn. This was sized small, but such a pretty color. I'm thinking of knitting an infinity cowl with the yarn.   I realize winter is nearly over; but knowing me, it may not get  completed before next winter. It took me  a few days to get to this point with the yarn. I still have to wash it, then hang it to dry over the shower stall.  I'll weight the ends  to pull out the kinks in the yarn. I'll then wind it back into balls and be ready to get my knit on!

A little something to tempt your taste buds.

My son saw this dish being cooked on a morning news show earlier this week. He's not one to care about cooking or recipes, but he does know what looks good to him, and apparently this dish did.  I googled and found the recipe here. I'm not one to take someone else's recipe and pass off as my own, but I will type it out here, simply because I made some modifications, which I felt it needed. The original was the idea for it, though.

Crock Pot Soft Chicken Tacos
1)Put 3 or 4 chicken breasts (I used frozen) in your crock pot. Spellchecker reminded me crock pot is two words. I can never remember that. Yea for spellchecker!
2)Add  one can Rotel tomatoes (I use store brand equivalent).
3)You can add in a diced onion, or you can wait & use fresh chopped onion as you're making your tacos, which is what I did.
4)Add one can whole kernel corn, drained.
5)Add one can black beans, drained (I rinsed mine in a colander).

Sheesh, that was hard, huh?  Seriously, for starters, that's all there is to it. That makes the filler for your tacos.  All I did differently was to add seasonings. I did this after cooking it, when I realized it was somewhat bland.

I added about a teaspoon of cumin, and some onion  & garlic powders, all to taste.  You could probably even add a package of taco seasoning to the crock pot as you're cooking the chicken, but I'm trying to get away from using processed foods. I'm not there yet, but I leave them out when I can. Of course, you can also make your own taco seasoning, which I guess is sort of what I did.

To make the soft tacos, I buttered one side of corn tortillas, laid them buttered side down in a nonstick skillet on medium heat for a couple of minutes.
After removing from the skillet, I sprinkled mozzarella cheese on top.  You can use cheddar, but just sos' you know, it's nearly twice the saturated fat grams as the white stuff. Just sayin'.
I spooned the chicken mixture in a strip across the center of the tortilla, sprinkled a little more cheese on top of the meat, then carefully folded over the tortilla and returned it to the pan. You may have to hold it with a spatula to keep it from unfolding.
After a minute or so, gently turn it over to the other side.  This doesn't make the tortillas crispy like a store bought shell, but it gives them a slight crunch, and makes it easier to hold when eating.
Return the taco to a plate, then fill with whatever ingredients you like in a taco. Mine has diced tomatoes, diced onions, sour cream (nonfat), picante sauce, & shredded lettuce.   This meal was a big hit with Mr.Studley & my son. I used 3 chicken breasts in mine, and it made a LOT.

I celebrated a birthday last week. Well, celebrated might be stretching it a bit.  We live in a small town, with a handful or restaurants, and not a lot else. Eating out isn't a big deal since we do it through the year anyway, always at the same old places. We could've driven a couple of hours to big  D, but I just wan't feeling a road trip. Mr. Studley took me to a couple of thrift stores, waiting patiently while I looked to my heart's content, then we went out for some yummo  Chinese food.  Hardly an exciting way to commemorate my 56 years here on this earth, but a fun day for me, nonetheless.  I always have fun hanging out with Mr. Studley.

Our weather has been mild, and I'm starting to see a lot of these. They always make me smile.  Be blessed!

Above all things have intense and unfailing love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins [forgives and disregards the offenses of others].

~1 Peter 4:8 Amplified Bible

Garden Goodies Galore!

These started out as a pair of mittens for a little girl who likes yellow. I ended up frogging them, as they were looking more like a pair of mittens for a big girl, who may or may not like yellow. No, I didn't do a guage swatch, but when I'm knitting something that small, I figure it doesn't take me any longer to knit part way up  the pattern than it would to do the swatch. For my non-knitting friends, frogging means to rip it out. Rip it. Get it?   Okay, well, in other news, look below at the yummy goodies we got today.

Mr.Studley & I have been very blessed by friends this week. On Sunday, a man at church brought us a big bag of turnips, as well as turnip greens.  Today, a woman from church dropped us off two huge bags of yummy goodness  from her & her husband's garden.  I love...no, I LOVE turnips. The greens I can take or leave, but I'd just  as soon eat a bowl of stewed turnips as I would a bowl of ice-cream, and I do like ice-cream.  In case you're from some far away place that's never heard of turnips, or maybe you have, but thought they were some odd thing southerners eat, like fried okra, or fried green tomatoes, I'll tell you how to cook them. I'm sure there's more than one way, but this works for me.

How to prepare turnips:

Slice off the ends, like you would with an onion
Peel
Cut into 1-2 inch cubes
place in a 1 1/2 to 2 quart microwaveable bowl
Add just a little water, maybe a half cup or so
nuke on high for about 5 minutes, then check them by seeing if a fork easily penetrates the cube; this will take longer or less time, depending on the amount of turnips you're cooking
When done, drain the water, or at least most of it
Add a 'sprinkling' of sugar, but not too much. You don't want to sweeten them, you merely want to take away the bitter edge turnips sometimes have
Add butter/margerine, or whatever you use for that, and salt & pepper

That's it. You'll love 'em, or you'll hate 'em, but I'm betting you'll love 'em. If you want a simple meal, whip up a pan of cornbread and bake it in a cast iron skillet.  When you cook your cornbread in a cast iron skillet, put a little oil in the skillet (I use olive oil for just about everything), then put the pan in the oven while the oven is preheating. If you'll let your pan heat  for at leat 10 minutes before adding the cornbread batter, you'll get a nice, crisp bottom crust, and the entire round of cornbread will easily slide out of the pan onto a serving plate; and  assuming you have a well seasoned skillet, all the cleaning  it will need is a quick swipe with a paper towel.  Do all this, and  you've got yourself a nice little southern meal right there, I tell you what (sorry, I have Hank Hill on the brain right now).

I didn't take pictures of everything, but there were turnips, green onions, carrots, turnip greens, kale, collard greens,  cilantro, thyme, and dill, all freshly picked this morning from our friends' garden.  Heaven...I'm in Heaven, and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak.....and that's all I can remember from that song. ;-)

I'm still spending lots of time at Pinterest, mostly at night before I go to bed. A neighbor's birthday was yesterday, so I made her this coffee cake, then topped it with a glaze from this recipe.  The recipe for the cake is enough to make two 8 x 8 coffee cakes.  Whatever was I supposed to do with the second cake??  I could have frozen it, I suppose....but Studley and I had much more fun eating it. Sorry, I didn't think to take  a picture, but I baked one in my one-and-only 8 x 8 pan, and the other in my 9 1/2" cast iron skillet. Just as I do when cooking cornbread, I let the skillet get sizzling hot in the oven before I poured in the cake batter. After it was out of the oven and cooled a bit, I slid a spatula around it to loosen the edges of the cake from the edge of the pan, then placed a plate over the skillet and flipped it over. Of course, this put the top of the cake facing down. I then flipped it over again onto another plate, and voila',  it stayed intact. I poured the cooked glaze over it, and once the glaze had cooled a bit,  I had a very pretty  cake for sending over to my neighbors.  I let Studley take it over, since it was raining cats & dogs at the time. He's so handy at times like that. He even volunteered to do it. All I had to do was lament, "how ever will I get that cake next door in all this rain?", followed by a big sigh. Next thing I knew, he was heading out the front door, a cake in one hand, and an umbrella in the other.  I'm a blessed woman, I am.

Among the greens we received, there was a batch of one kind that I didn't recognize. They looked similar to the turnip greens, but one side of the leaves were green, and the other sides were a sort of burgundy color.  Plus, I think they were a bit more oblong shaped than the turnip greens which were slightly more rounded.   Come to think of it, the leaves were more pointed and narrower than the turnip greens.  While some types of  kale have a purplish color, I do know these aren't kale.  Anyone have a clue what they are?  I forgot to take a picture of them, and have already cleaned them and packed them away. I'll send out two of my handknit dishcloths to the first one to comment (with a continental US address, please) who can correctly identify them for me.  In the unlikely event that two of you comment at the same time on the clock, I'll send you each two dishcloths.  You'll have to give me a day or two to get more knit in the event of their being two winners; and yes, I realize that constitutes about 98% of my readers. ;-)  Meanwhile, I'll give my friend a call this week to see what the greens are, so I'll know who got it right.

You guys have a great week, and remember, try and do something to bless someone today!

I will sing to the Lord, because He has dealt bountifully with me.
~Psalm 13:6 Amplified Bible

"We are born helpless....
We need others physically, emotionally, intellectually;

We need them if we are to know anything, even ourselves."

~C.S. Lewis

In The Words of Cookie Monster....

COOKIES!!! UMM-NUM-NUM-NUM-NUM!!!

I had a hankering for homemade cookies today.  I don't need to be eating cookies.  Somehow I manage to convince myself that if the cookies are chock full of oats & raisins, they must be kind of, sort of healthy.  Sounds logical, right?

Can I just say, I love my KitchenAid mixer. I've wanted one for years.  Though I have no recollection of ever mentioning this to my mom, apparently I did, as she surprised me with this one for Christmas, a year ago.

See the red mat lying to the left of the mixer?  My niece sent it to me for Christmas this year, along with several other goodies. It's a dish drying mat, and I've been wanting one for a couple of months (and I did't tell her that, either!). It was a surprise and a delight to find it in my bag from her. I told her she's a "gifted gift giver". She always chooses gifts I really like. She said that when she goes shopping, she just buys things she knows she'd like. How clever. Wonder why I never thought of that.

Ahh, now to eat the fruit (so to speak) of my labor. I knew these cookies were going to be good by how tasty the dough was.  I got this recipe from Pinterest, my third home (Facebook being my second).   This recipe made a lot of cookies.  I couldn't, in good conscience, keep that many cookies on hand, for I know where my hand would constantly be....in the cookie jar!  I took about half out and wrapped them up nicely, and asked my son to take them to work with him tomorrow to share with his co-workers.

Isn't this a lovely picture? It's a place in the UK called Scafell Pike. It's the highest mountain in England. While my daughter, Nikki, was living in England, she went with a group that camped and hiked to the top. I have a few more pictures she sent me at that time which I'll share  later. Isn't the scenery  just gorgeous?  I'm pretty sure Nikki's somewhere on that rock bridge in the distance, but you can't quite make her out.

May you have a wonderful weekend. As Joyce Meyer (teacher of God's Word) is always saying, do something to bless someone every day!

I am not moved by what I see-

I am not moved by what I feel-

I am moved by what I believe!

~Smith Wigglesworth

There's nothing like the written Word of God for showing you the way to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.  Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another-showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God's way.  Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us.

~2 Tmothy 3:16 the Message

~

Autumn, Season of My Heart

Pumpkin Butter
Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree.
~Emily Bronte

Two words describe how I feel about our summer of 2011. We survived.  That word 'survived' says a lot, doesn't it? An online dictionary definition says: to remain or continue in existence or use.  Well, we're here (remaining), we're continuing to exist, and we're still somewhat useful.  I could go on and on about how horrific it was, but truthfully, I think that subject's gone into overkill in most circles in recent weeks, so just suffice it to say, we survived.

Today feels like the first day of fall to me. I know it technically isn't, and we've even had cool days before now (off and on), but it's October 1st, the weather is oh-so-pleasant, the sky is bluer than I've seen it in months, and I am actually wearing capris around the house rather than the cooler shorts I've worn all summer.

 

No-Knead Bread

Now that I can use my oven without causing the house to feel like an inferno, I'm in a baking mood.  I've been meaning to try the above bread recipe for quite some time. Ever the procrastinator, I'm just now getting around to it.  I guess you would call this a ciabatta?  I don't know. I just know it's super simple, and that's my kind of recipe. Flour, yeast, salt, water, and no kneading. The biggest ingredient is time. You let it sit for 12 hours or more.  What could be simpler?  We had this for lunch alongside leftover tortilla soup from last night's dinner. 

We slathered the bread with pumpkin butter I made from a recipe I found at Bev Gibson's blog, Numbering the Days .  I love, love her blog. It's not a cooking blog, but she does share recipes along the way. I find myself to have so much in common with her, having newly retired husbands, grown children, and time to pursue answering the callings on our lives that we didn't have time for when raising children.  She gives great book recommendations for scripturally based 'bettering yourself' literature (my words, not hers). She's a truly lovely person. I really didn't plan on extolling her merits, but mentioning her pumpkin butter, the rest just had to be said.

The recipe is no longer available on her blog, but the following recipe (which I found on one of her boards at Pinterest) appears to be the same one I used.

• PUMPKIN BUTTER
• 1 can (15 ounces) 100% Pure Pumpkin
• 2/3 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

Directions

Combine:

 pumpkin, sugar, honey, lemon juice, cinnamon and cloves in medium, heavy-dutysaucepan. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat; reduce heat to low. Cook, stirring frequently, for 20 to 25 minutes or until thickened. Serve with biscuits, breads and corn muffins. Store in airtight container in refrigerator for up to 2 months.

Recipe makes 2 cups. 

I have lots of Christmas knitting to be done, but I seem to have lost my knitting mojo.  I haven't done anything industrious in quite some time. I did knit a bunch of dishcloths, which are always nice to give as gifts.  I can't remember if I've already shown these on here or not. If I have, then we'll blame it on the missing wrinkles from my brain.

Waffle Knit Dishcloth (free pattern)

To everything there is a season, and a time for every matter or purpose under heaven
~Ecclesiastes 3:1 Amplified Bible

When Left To My Own Devices

Mr. Studley's been out of town this week. When he's away, I get lonely and bored. When I'm lonely and bored, I tend to eat...too much. It's a bad habit which should come with a Surgeon General's warning.

Yesterday, I baked the Muffins That Taste Like Donuts recipe from Pioneer Woman's Tasty Kitchen. Where have these things been all my life? The recipe is so simple, you can hardly call it cooking. The ingredients are something most of us have on hand at any given time. I baked these early yesterday evening and had two for dessert after dinner. At such time as you see above on my kitchen clock (I'm a night owl), I caved, and had to have three more. I had milk rather than coffee with them. I took that picture this morning. In my defense, these weren't full sized muffins. They were more like mini-me muffins. I used a mini-muffin pan. If I bake them that way again, I'll pick up some more mini-muffin pans, as I had to bake them in three batches.

Incidentally, my kitchen walls are not that pukish pinkish peachish color they appear in the clock photo, but are actually a pleasant pale yellow. You can see why I try and take most of my pictures outside in daylight, but that doesn't work when I'm binging on muffins that taste like donuts in the middle of the night.

They just kept calling my name. Renna....Renna...come eat us....and so I did.

And I had them again for breakfast this morning.

Oh, ick. I just realized my coffee looks as funky as my wall color. I can't even come up with a name for that color. Suffice it to say, that's not what color it was.

On the knitting front, I'm still cranking out dishcloths. I should take them outside and photograph them, but 100 degree weather and I are not friends. I need to be knitting a baby gift and a pair of socks for my mom for her upcoming birthday. Clearly, I lack self-discipline. Too often, I eat what I want when I shouldn't, and knit what I want when I should be knitting something else.

Speaking of knitting, A Friend to Knit With is having a giveaway. She's giving away a copy of Debbie Bliss' Design It, Knit It: Babies. All you have to do to be entered is leave a comment between now and Monday the 26th at 12 pm EST. Posting about it on your blog is not a requirement. I just want you knitters to have a chance at winning. The book has such adorable patterns in it.

I want to thank everyone for the nice comments on my last post. I guess misery does love company, as it was somehow comforting to me to see that others of you have similar feelings of 'blahness'. I say, blah-dee-dah to those blahs. I'm going to enjoy my weekend. How about you?

I think I need to meditate on 1 Corinthians 9:26-27.

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I don't know about you, but I'm running hard for the finish line. I'm giving it everything I've got. No sloppy living for me! I'm staying alert and in top condition. I'm not going to get caught napping, telling everyone else all about it and then missing out myself.

~the Message

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Therefore I do not run uncertainly (without definite aim). I do not box like one beating the air and striking without an adversary.
But [like a boxer] I buffet my body [handle it roughly, discipline it by hardships] and subdue it, for fear that after proclaiming to others the Gospel and things pertaining to it, I myself should become unfit [not stand the test, be unapproved and rejected as a counterfeit].

~Amplified Bible