Seasonal goodies!

This time of year means many things to many people but to me it means food!! I love to feed people...I have no idea where the need came from but the force is in me and feed folks I must. AND there is so much scope for that around Christmas. It starts about now. Mince meat, Christmas puddings, things marinating in alcohol, freezing things now for extra mouths later. I love it!!

My Christmas magazines come out this week too and I'm excited, stupid excited, ridiculously "I have no life nor any other interests and I don't mind sharing it with the world" excited!!
2 or 3 magazines with nothing but recipes of things I could cook...lovely!

Having admitted publicly to the sadness that is me and my life perhaps your impressions will change when you see what I'm up to at the moment......Lemon Verbena Liquor
All's I'll say is that a herb, some vodka and a little bit of time make a whole lotta heaven!!!!!

Kniting Photos...

Because I'm currently excited about the cardigan type top I took some pics over the weekend for all you lovely people that I'm sure are out there at this very moment reading this very blog!!
Below is the second (left) front where I have picked up 212 stitches and begun knitting the rib.
Here you can see the first (right) side which looks more like a boot than a cardigan!
A tantalizing glimpse of what the finished product might resemble!!!!
An artistic close up shot of the stitches

Chicken & Pasta Broth

This weeks soup was a bit of a comprimise. I've had a craving for a creamy chicken soup but I really wanted to do something in keeping with the season....like you would have when feeling sick or in need of some comfort food.
Everyone I spoke to said that Chicken Noodle or Chicken with Pasta is what you have at those times and so I put my own cravings aside (how selfless!!!) and went with the majority.
I have to say it tasted lovely even tho it didn't come out at all like the photo in the cook book. The only thing I changed was brocoli instead of carrots...cause we didn't have any!

Here's a nice arty close up shot designed to make your mouth water! It's hard taking photos of food and making it look nice

Chicken & Pasta Broth

350gm boneless
1 medium onion, diced
250gm carrots, diced
250gm, cauliflower florets, chopped small
850ml chicken stock
2 tsp mixed herbs (thyme, oregano whatever etc)
125gm small pasta shapes
2 tbsp sunflower oil
Parmesan cheese

Remove skin from chicken and dice.
Sauté chicken, onion, carrot & cauliflower in oil until lightly coloured
Stir in stock & herbs & bring to the boil
Add pasta shapes & bring back to the boil before covering pan and simmering for 10 mins
Stir occasionally to prevent pasta sticking
Season & serve with parmesan cheese

Gasp....not actual knitting content!

Yup...actual blogging about knitting! Woo Hoo!

The main reason I have been quiet on the knitting front is that it's been so damn slow of late. I got distracted with other projects and the cardigan sat unloved in the corner with post-it saying "too hard" stuck to it. I think all the tinking and ripping and looking up how to do things on the net got too much. I would love to knit an easy top....just once. Aren't you supposed to learn on easy stuff???

However last weekend I grabbed hold of the darn thing and forced myself to start working on it again. Of course that was after ripping back the front ribbing...sigh!! Still. It's right now and I have one side done. YUP...actually finished!! hehehe I feel so happy it's silly.
What's more even though the arm and side is yet to be sewn up it still looks like a piece of clothing. It's amazing! I'll take some photos on the weekend when the light is good.

So all I have to do now is sew the left side to the arm and back (its raglan), pick up 212 stitches evenly all the way across and then knit a rib of about 50 rows wrapping about 30 of them!!! Phew!

On the upside of all this ripping (there's an up side?) I have learnt heaps in a very short space of time. Plus the challenge has kept me interested where with an easier project I may well have died of boredom!
Officially I can now knit & purl very evenly, I can slipstitch, cast on & off a couple of different ways, wrap & turn, read a knitting pattern, know how very important gauge is, increase & decrease with flair, pick up stitches from an edge, understand roughly how to alter a pattern to fit me, tink back, rip without fear (almost!), recognise a twisted stitch, fix a twisted stitch, ladder down to fix a stitch (very scary the first time) and pick up a dropped stitch.

Not bad for a two cardigan career huh!!

Ghost Tree

I've been a bit slack this week so far. I have stuff to say but cant seem to get motivated enough to put it on here. Too many other things flying around my head I think. So here are some more pictures. The first one is of a tree in my street. I call it the Ghost tree because of the way the leaves go so white in the light of the street lamp. I know it looks a little yellowy (which is still nice) here but trust me...it's white to look at.
Below is a street on my way home. At the moment there are millions of leaves just waiting for me to 'shoosh' my way through them! And I had to include the post box of course!
More leaves. This are was carpeted with orange, yellow and brown. The colours don't come out so good on camera...something I shall work on over the weekend.

Sweet Potato & Onion

Another week, another soup. This time Sweet Potato & Onion. I have another Sweet potato recipe but it’s somewhere on my computer and I got all lazy and didn’t want to go to the trouble of finding it so I picked this one out of a cookbook.

It was good. Very thick and creamy even tho I didn’t add in the yoghurt. But it was very sweet and orangey and you definitely need some bread or crackers with it. I couldn't eat a massive bowl of it but the smaller bowl I has was lovely, wintery and warming.
Definitely worth trying

Sweet Potato & Onion soup
Ingredients
900g Sweet potato’s diced
1 carrot diced
2 onions sliced
2 garlic cloves crushed
600ml vegetable stock
200ml orange juice (unsweetened)
225ml natural yoghurt (I didn’t use this)
2 tbsp fresh coriander chopped
Salt & Pepper

Method:
Sauté the potato, onion and carrot with the garlic in some vegetable oil for about 5 minutes.
Add the vegetable stock and orange juice and bring up to the boil.
Reduce to a simmer for 20mins or until the veg are cooked
Whizz till smooth and return to the pan
Stir in the Yoghurt (if your using it) and coriander
Season to taste and serve!!

Photos for all

I have photos today for you all, tried to post them yesterday but the computer was having none of it. Anyway I made an effort and got the pics we took on the weekend sorted. Nothing spectacular…just some autumnal shots but kinda nice in their own way.

I really like this shot of the bike under the tree even though there's not a huge amount of colour in the leaves. These are some of the chestnuts we found.
This is our competition!!!!