Pie and pickles

While I am an above average cook, my baking skills are less than stellar when it comes to anything other than bread. Pie crusts in particular have long baffled me - too crumbly, too dense, too tasteless - and for years I have used refrigerated Pillsbury pie crust dough. So when I saw a pie crust class listed in the local continuing education flyer for OCM BOCES, I decided it was time to give the Doughboy a break and learn to make a decent pie crust.

Chef Ann of The Gingersnap Bakery was the instructor for the evening class, and before demonstrating good pie crust technique, she explained the science that takes place when making a good pie crust. I learned why the flour needs to coat the fat (butter, shortening, or some combo of both), why the water needs to be cold, why you need to handle the dough as little as possible. I really liked that she had us put our hands into the demo dough to experience how the dough should feel, in addition to seeing how it should look. She explained the different types of pie tops, why hot filling should be cooled before being poured into a crust, how to bake a blind (empty) crust, and so on. We then broke into small groups to make our own pie crusts, and tried out a variety of fillings.

When I asked James and Aidan what type of pie I should make first, Aidan immediately said Aunt Tammie's delicious blueberry pie, which he had eaten at their house during his summer visit. Tammie graciously sent me the recipe and I made my first completely from scratch pie in years:

I am proud to say that the pie was delicious, and Aidan even said that it was almost as good as Aunt Tammie's pie! Because the filling is not baked in the pie, I could not do a fancy lattice top. Instead, I made a rope border around the edge and then blind baked the crust. The crust tasted great, although I made the border too thick in places and it was difficult to cut. All in all, I am very pleased with my first pie crust effort and will likely never buy another pie crust again. Take that, Doughboy!

James brought in the last of the peppers and tomatoes before our only frost so far this fall, but most of the tomatoes were green. Our friend Phil suggested that James make green tomato pickles and came over one night to get him started. They sliced the tomatoes along with the various peppers and some onions, layered them with salt and left them overnight with a heavy weight on top to press out the liquid. James then rinsed the produce, made a concoction involving vinegar, water, sugar and various herbs/spices, and packed it into jars:

We will soon be able to sample his first attempt at making pickles and if they are half as good as the ones that Phil gave us, then we will be happily munching pickles all winter.

Selfish knits

Every knitter has at least one story about lovingly knitting an item for a person who then did not appreciate the item. When a person is revealed to be not knitworthy, it is all we can do to keep from shouting in our best Soup Nazi voice: "No knits for you!" While we all have many people in our lives who are knitworthy, the one person I know who will always appreciate what I knit is me, and knitting for ourselves is known as selfish knitting.

The last four projects I have completed have all selfishly been for me. The first was the scarflet I finished in September - see Wrapping Up. The second item was a quick little ballband dishcloth that I had seen in my friend Geri's copy of Mason-Dixon Knitting. I already had cotton yarn in my stash so when we got home from our visit, I knit up a Halloween-inspired dishcloth:

The third item to be completed was a Sunday Market Shawl, which I knit out of Malabrigo:

The colorway is Roanoke and it is a lovely, rich chestnut brown. I wanted a quick, mindless project to get me back into the knitting groove and this shawl kind of did the trick. Because the majority of the pattern is simple stockinette, it is perfect for watching college football games. The openwork of the shawl is achieved by intentionally dropping a stitch on the last row, and then "running" the dropped stitch. While an unintentionally dropped stitch always runs quickly, it was actually a time-consuming and laborious task to run all the rows in this shawl.

As for it being a shawl…it would have blocked wider had I used a stretchier bind off, but it would not have blocked longer. If I ever want to knit this pattern again and actually use it for a shawl, I would cast one more stitches, use more yarn and find the stretchiest possible bind off. In the meantime, it is a pretty scarf.

The last project was my first pair of fingerless mitts. For someone like me whose hands rarely get cold and just need some protection from the wind, fingerless mitts are perfect:

I used the Sirdar Escape yarn that I purchased at Soper Creek Yarn while visiting Geri over Thanksgiving weekend. It is a wool and acrylic blend, so it is easy care and will wear well. Although I was concerned with making the thumb and thumb gusset, they turned out fine. The yarn is variegated so the mitts do not "match" each other but that is okay with me, since I am not a matchy-matchy kind of person.

My streak of selfish knitting is now at an end as I turn my attention to holiday knits.

The good, the bad, and the bugly

The Department of Entomology at Cornell University hosts an annual insect fair known as Insectapalooza. We drove down to Ithaca yesterday for Insectapalooza 2012 - "The Good, The Bad, and The Bugly." There were lots of insects and people in Comstock Hall, and none of the insects bugged me as much as the people; very quickly I experienced crowd overload and had to retreat to non-populated corners from time to time.

The insects were fascinating, and we enjoyed talking with the enthusiastic and knowledgeable students who staffed the event. Here is James holding an Australian Stick Insect:

 Aidan made friends with both a male and a female stick insect:

Although there are no photos to prove it, I also held one of the stick insects. No, really, I did! They are fascinating creatures and I can see (pun intended) how they could hide in plain sight on the side of a tree.

Thanks to James, Aidan ended up with another representative of the stick insect family on his head:

Pay no attention to the sign in the background of the photo - that is a Madagascar hissing Cockroach on Aidan's hand and not a tarantula:

Aidan must not have posed any perceived threat because he was not on the receiving end of a hiss. He also got to hold a praying mantis:

 ...and put his arm into a container full of ladybugs:

When we had seen all that we wanted to see and had our fill of the crowds, we stopped by Ithaca Bakery for lunch before heading out to Ithaca Beer Co.'s new taproom. Opened just over a week ago, the taproom offers pints of beer, flights of beer (tasting samples) and retail sales of beer, with both indoor and outdoor seating.

We enjoyed a flight of their hoppiest beers:

We also got a growler to go of Flower Power, which is our favorite Ithaca Beer brew.

Bugs + beer = a fun day in Ithaca.

Squirrel on wheels

The leaves are a-changing and the squirrels are busier than ever, scampering around to hide the acorns from our neighbors' oak tree. Not only do we have those big reddish brown squirrels, we also have smaller black squirrels, who rather resemble minks in color but do not live in fear of becoming outerwear.

And now we also have a blue squirrel on wheels:

Meet Rocky, who joined our household on Monday. When we returned from our recent trip to Canada, I learned that I had won a contest on Ravelry. Heather (OregonGrl on Ravelry) ran a contest on her web site, little green fox, to win an adorable knitted squirrel on wheels. She knit Rocky from a pattern in Anna Hrachovec's book Knitting Mochimochi.

Rocky is just too stinkin' adorable.

Unlike the other squirrels who run around our yard, Rocky will not eat all the sunflower seeds out of the bird feeder nor taunt Lily, the Pug next door who thinks she is a Rottweiler.

Thanksgiving weekend

When we got our passports, our friends Geri and Fred, who live in the greater Toronto area (GTA), immediately asked, "When are you coming to visit?" A comparison of our schedules showed that autumn was going to be the first good opportunity and they were gracious enough to invite us for Canadian Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving in Canada occurs on the second Monday in October, the same day that Columbus Day is observed in the U.S. (Columbus Day being that day when we celebrate Columbus "discovering" a land in which people already lived - go figure). Aidan gets two days off from school so it was a perfect time to go. We kept him out of school on Friday so we could start our trip in the morning and arrive at Geri and Fred's house before the holiday traffic became too crazy.

We had a fun weekend visiting with Geri, Fred and Ollie, who just might be the nicest cat in the world:

Unlike our darling cat (imagine the sarcasm I am intending as I type those words), Ollie is very quiet and content.

On Saturday morning, Geri took me to one of her local yarn stores, Soper Creek Yarn in Bowmansville. It is a lovely little store with a very nice and helpful owner. I showed tremendous restraint and bought only a pattern, and a skein of souvenir yarn from which I will knit some fingerless mitts:

 

While Geri prepared Thanksgiving dinner, James, Aidan and I went into Toronto on Sunday to the Ontario Science Centre. There are no photos to show what a good time we had at the centre; the camera was in the pocket of the jacket that I did not wear that day. Of course.

When we returned to the house, the intoxicating aroma of roasted turkey greeted us and soon we sat down to a delicious Thanksgiving dinner:

We took advantage of gorgeous weather on Monday and headed to Pingle's Farm Market in nearby Hampton. There were pumpkins and apples to admire plus lots of fun activities, including a photo opportunity for Geri and Aidan:

 All five of us chose to wander through the corn maze, but Aidan and James entered first:

They say that they ran through the maze the first time, then entered again to find Geri, Fred and me moseying along at a slower pace. There were corn stalks as far as the eye could see:

Despite the corn stalks and my lousy, make that nonexistent, sense of directions, I think I could have found my way out of the maze. Eventually.

We drove back to the United States on Tuesday and are now looking forward to our own Thanksgiving. Two Thanksgivings in one year -excellent!

Wrapping up

It is the first day of October and I am loving the fall weather: cool but not cold, and a nice balance of sunshine and rain. Halloween decorations have started popping up around the village and pumpkins are for sale just about everywhere, it seems.

I made just two goals for September and I achieved both of them. I got back into the routine of walking in the morning and while I vowed to walk three times a week, I ended up exceeding my goal and walked over half of the days in September. With the cooler weather, I find it much easier to pop in the ear buds and walk for 30-45 minutes at a fast clip.

The other goal was to sort through my clothes, put away the summer items and get out the winter items. I may adore our old house but I do not adore the small closets in our old house; there is not enough room for all of my clothes to be out at one time, so I have keep off season clothes and shoes stored in the attic. I did not pack away all the warm weather clothes, just most of them, and at least now I am prepared for cooler weather.

Speaking of cooler weather and cool weather clothes, I finished a new scarflet:

I wanted a casual yet pretty scarflet to wear with my barn jacket and fell in love with this colorway, which is called Vanilla Bean. I really like the purple and brown together, and it goes nicely with my jacket:

The yarn is Madelinetosh Tosh Merino DK and feels amazingly soft and luscious. I do not like to wear long scarves, both because I find myself fiddling with all that length and because I usually get too warm if it is wrapped multiple times around my neck. A scarflet is perfect for me with one wrap around the neck and a keyhole to keep it in place.

I am still trying to get my knitting mojo back, so in October I will try to find some incredible yarn and pattern combo that has me feverishly knitting...except when I am fulfilling my goal to continue walking at least three times per week!