Welcome to Heidi's blog......Tales of life in Portland with my baby, Hank.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Knitting - my new favorite hobby

I'd been wanting to learn how to knit for a really long time.  I finally took a class at Yarn Garden (lower Hawthorne) a few months ago.  The class was a beginner learn how to knit a hat class.  It was 3 weeks and I did complete it by staying late the last class.....I cannot stand an unfinished project!  I wanted to keep my newly learned skills fresh, so I sought out another (hopefully easy) project I could do on my own.

I found a cool pattern on the Internet for an apple hat, and decided to knit that for my niece, Scarlett (see pictures).  I really messed it up a few times, after putting a lot of time into it.  But I learned so much by plugging away at it.  There were weeks that I didn't even pick it up, but I finally decided I needed to actually finish it before winter was over and she'd be too big for it by the following winter. 

I learned: how to knit in the round (my first hat was done on circular needles, but not in the round - that really messed me up with this project!), how to knit on double point needles, how to decrease stitches and how to bind off.  I finally finished the hat just over a week ago and gave it to Scarlett last weekend when her mommy (my sister, Anne) and daddy (Todd) brought her over.  She loved it!  Not!  She wasn't feeling well (teething and maybe a cold), so she pulled it right off every time I chased her around trying to put it on her head.  But Todd got her to wear it so I could take some pictures right before they left.  Look at those tearful eyes!  Cute!!

My next project is a baby blanket.  And I'm taking another 3 week class at Yarn Garden starting on March 3rd that will be knitting a baby sweater.  Dog sweaters shouldn't be far off!

Monday, February 21, 2011

Recipe - Thai noodles

Here is what we made tonight - it's an adaptation of a recipe in my Big Book of Vegetarian cookbook.  We've made it a lot, it's so good and it's pretty fast too.  It would be a great summertime meal since you can eat it pretty much cold, or lukewarm.

12 oz. Soba noodles, cooked to package directions
1 cucumber, peeled, seeded & chopped
2 green onions, cut on the bias
3 large carrots, cut on the bias
ginger (2 Tablespoons, diced fine)
cilantro, chopped
toasted sesame seeds (4 Tablespoons, approx)
2 cloves of garlic, diced fine
tempeh (not necessary, but we had it and it's better with it or tofu)
6 Tablespoons rice wine vinegar
6 Tablespoons soy sauce (we use less sodium variety)
3 Tablespoons toasted sesame oil
Sriracha (2 big squirts, total, or to taste)
sugar (2 teaspoons)
1 lime

Chop veggies first, then make sauce.  We make double the sauce that is indicated in the recipe.  Believe me, you'll want to also.  We do this in part because we chop the tempeh and quickly toss it in the sauce.  Then saute the tempeh to get some color on it.  Use the rest of the sauce to pour over the noodles.  I'd recommend doing this for tofu as well (for sure!).  The sauce is the ginger, garlic, rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, toasted sesame oil, Sriracha, sugar & a squirt of lime.  Boil noodles per package directions (they cook really fast, done in about 2 minutes).  Toss the noodles with the sauce (this will unstick the noodles if they've started to clump together in the colander).  Then mix in the veggies & toasted sesame seeds.  Then garnish with the chopped cilantro and squeeze lime to your taste over the dish.....and enjoy!

Of course you could also make this with shrimp instead of tempeh or tofu.  Or it would be delicious without a protein.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Recipe - Tex Mex Mac n' Cheese

Last night we made Tex Mex Mac n' Cheese.  This is a recipe that we've done a million times over probably the last 10 years (or nearly, at least).  It was originally from the Oregonian FoodDay.  We've modified it here and there and it's probably  never exactly the same, but is always yummy!  Here is what we did last night - we added collard greens for the first time and I thought it was a great addition.  It makes a large casserole - it'll feed a big group or give you a lot of leftovers. 

1 bag large elbow macaroni
1 onion (chopped)
1 green pepper (chopped)
1 bunch of collard greens (washed, stemmed, chopped)
1 jalapeno (seeded & chopped unless you want a lot of spice)
1 can of black beans, drained, rinsed
1 can of diced tomatoes - do not drain
1 small can of diced green chilis
5-6 heavy shakes of hot sauce (to taste)
1 T. cumin (divided)
3/4 T. coriander (divided)
1 T. chili powder (divided)
salt
1.5 cups whole milk (or lowfat, or some of each)
1 16 oz. sour cream (we use light)
2.5-3 cups pepper jack cheese
1/2 cup bread crumbs (buttered)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Grease a 13x9 casserole dish.  Boil the macaroni in salted water w/some oil.  Cook to al dente, or slightly below since it will cook a little longer in the oven.  Drain noodles & put back into pot as you'll mix everything in the pot.  In a large saute pan saute the salted veggies (you can do all at the same time, or add the greens a little later).  Greens should be tender, but should still be bright green.  To this pan add half the spices in the last few minutes of cooking.  Add the beans, tomatoes & chilis to mixture.  Prepare the sauce, which is the milk, sour cream, other half of the spices & salt. We actually had less than a full 16 oz tub of sour cream so we ended up using probably 3/4 of a tub.  In the pot, mix the veggie mixture with the macaroni, then mix in the pepper jack cheese & the sauce.  If your pot's too small (as ours was) then at least mix the macaroni w/the veggies and you can layer the cheese & sauce in the casserole dish.

Cover in tin foil and bake for 25 minutes or so.  Top w/the buttered breadcrumbs and bake uncovered until golden.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

This week.......

Last week was fairly uneventful.....We did go to Accanto for lunch on Saturday.  This is the cafe side to Genoa on Belmont (the fancy fixed price place).  We'd been to the cafe once before, for dinner, and weren't all that impressed.  Lunch was amazing though!  I got a tuna sandwich.  It came on a delicious baguette.  I thought it would be too crusty, but it was so soft and yummy.  Looks like most of their sandwiches come with pickled veggies - that are really good.  Julian got a pulled boar sandwich, he said it was similar to a pulled pork, but maybe a little "gamier".  Hopefully a meat eater knows what that means, I don't think I do.  But he loved it.  We were so impressed.  We've added this to another favorite place we can walk to.  It's time for another chance on dinner at Accanto.

Saturday night we went to the Bagdad and saw Due Date.  This was similar to Planes, Trains and Automobiles.  I'd heard it was, and I would agree.  But it was still really good - different enough from PT&A that I stopped comparing the two after a while.  I recommend it - I laughed pretty hard.

That brings me to an interesting observation.  While we were at the Bagdad we noticed a blind guy went to the movie as well.  We both thought that seemed odd.  Do blind people "watch" movies too, and just follow the dialogue?  I guess so.  Seems like it would work for some movies better than others.  Due Date was a simple comedy, I could see enjoying it by just listening.  No silent movies for blind people though!  Boy did they miss out.

That made me think of when we went to Walla Walla a year and half or so ago.  We rented a tandem bike to ride around their beautiful wine county.  We'd already rented the bike and were waiting for them to bring it up to the front.  While we're standing there a really tall blind guy walks in with a very short girl and says he wants to rent the tandem bike.  We just looked at each other because we'd already rented it (little did he know) and were really wondering how a huge blind guy was going to ride a bicycle (even tandem).  Once we tried getting on that bike we really had a good laugh at that idea because we struggled with trying to ride it and we're two (fairly) able bodied, sighted, people.  I could only imagine this tiny girl up front trying to navigate this big bike with a blind giant person on the back......I kind of wish I'd seen that.