Fiber Fool

We stopped at the food co-op yesterday afternoon for some staples to get us through another snowy (I hope they got it right this time) weekend and happened upon blood oranges. Yum! I hadn’t ever had one straight up before. Too bad they are *so* expensive *sigh*.

As I mentioned yesterday, there will be some watching of Warehouse 13 this weekend. Although I’m sorry to admit we watched 6 episodes last night! That’s kind of sad except when you figure in being under the weather and getting some knitting done while watching. There will likely also be some reading. More knitting.

Maybe I’ll do some sewing? I have a few pieces that just need hemming, plus a few patterns singing their siren song to me. Though I have fabric stash for only a couple. I think I have two fabrics that I could turn into the new Coletterie Laurel dress (and maybe one or two for the blouse version) but I’m uncertain if a shift like that is really suited to my current body shape? Although in a breathable fabric it seems like a wonderfully comfortable cut for unbearably hot days and there is a sleeveless version. What do you think? Would it suit? I should decide as the pattern is on sale through today if I want to get it. They are also having a contest for FOs.

I trolled Ravelry this week for some FOs of my patterns and found some stunning ones!

• ameymccabe’s Spring Frills in a very autumnal colorway that I love
• KnittingJoy’s Spring Frills
• TurtleGirl76’s Cirrus
• momholbrook’s Cirrus
• Outi77’s Hits the Spot II (yes, she’s knit it twice)
• YarnMadness’ Ciabatta
• -dimoni-’s Barton Cottage Shrug

With the colder, damp weather I think I’ll be diving into my new cookbook from DH and we’ll be enjoying Heidi’s Farro Soup. Although I couldn’t find farro in bulk yesterday, so I think I’ll sub in brown basmati rice which should have a similar cooking profile. We’ll also use preserved lemons in the yogurt rather than adding fresh lemon and salt individually.

We may also have her baked oatmeal for brunch with frozen blueberries.

I might finally get around to photographing my lentil tacos that several of you have requested as well. That is if we don’t have our fill of lentils in the soup.

With the bug I got mid-week my kombucha bottling was delayed a bit, but that will be happening tonight or early tomorrow morning. The tea has to cool completely so it’ll depend upon how long that takes. I can’t wait to try the coffee as well as do a side-by-side taste comparison of the 4 different types of tea! We had to buy bottles now as this batch exceeded our capacity. Ooops! It’s good to support the local brew shop though I suppose.

For more linkity check out Stumbling Over Chaos and A Cup of Jo.

What is on your docket for the weekend? Has spring sprung where you are yet? While I’m happy for precipitation in any form I’m not horribly excited about it being frozen, but I’ll take it.

Wow, did this last week throw me for a loop! Daylight Savings Time. Hardly any snow when we were to have a blizzard followed by a half way decent snow when we weren’t to have any precipitation. 30 degrees days followed by 70 degree days. A 13 minute workout that render me unable to gracefully sit down or get back up for three days. Another wildfire barely outside of town - in March, when the usual resources are not available for fighting it.

To top it off, the future demise of Google Reader. Gah!!! I’m currently testing out Bloglovin’ and Feedly. Right now, I think Feedly is winning because it kept all my organization from GoogleReader and on Bloglovin I have one hot, huge mess. But I know I’m seeing many of you saying you are going the direction of Bloglovin’ so I’m trying to keep an open mind. That said, my preferred iOS app for blog reading, ByLine, is likely changing their back end to Feedly it sounds like. So even if I don’t love the Feedly iOS app I could continue to use the app I already paid for and like. If that is where you are at, follow my blog with Bloglovin.

While I didn’t get a reading post up on Thursday, I did manage to get a fair bit of reading accomplished this week and will likely up date you on those this week. I also went a little hog wild at the library and may end up with book ADD for the next little while. Whoops!

If it weren’t so late in the season and I wasn’t determine to turn DH’s 10 weeks away this summer into my own personal Biggest Looser intensive I’d love to make myself the Purl Bee’s Knit Sweatshirt. Doesn’t it look so comfy and cozy and easy to live in? Plus, I’ve never knit a kangaroo pocket yet! I love projects where I learn something new :-)

I’m thinking about trying this “Ultimate Viniagrette” with kombucha in place of the vinegar and sugar.

I’d like to give this curried tofu a try with some of the fancy pants curry spices mom and dad gave us for Christmas.

If I stop putting all our bananas in smoothies I might have to try these soft peanut butter banana oat bars a try for a relatively healthy treat.

I’m wondering if I have any more of my really large tees left to turn into this no sew vest refashion.

I really wish I had the sewing and drafting skills to grade this gorgeous dress to my size and sew it. I know it would flatter my figure very well.

I definitely need to take time to follow some of the links in this post on natural cleaners you can make yourself. I know a little bit, but not enough.

Okay, that’s enough linkity for now. Check out Chris if you want more links to swallow up some time! ;-)

In anticipation of a snowy DST weekend in, here are some links to things I may make use of this weekend…

Firstly, Rodale has some tips to help you get through the change to DST this weekend.

If those tips don’t help you get to sleep, check out this natural sleep tonic you can whip up in your kitchen.

Keep your hands busy with a fun and easy texture to knit.

I’m going to keep warm with a homemade rice pack made from recycled flannel PJs. This tutorial does a good job in showing how to divide up the bag to keep the rice distributed well.

If I had picked up another eggplant we’d likely enjoy this baked za’atar eggplant fries with tahini dip while snowed in. Don’t they sound yummy?

BTW, if you have either a purchased jar or made up your own za’atar and now are wondering what to do with it I discovered a couple weeks ago that it is an awesome accent on baked kale chips!

And now I’m contemplating forgoing the miso soba bowls this weekend in favor of these veggie burgers purported to be *the best.* I’m not sure I bought enough mushrooms to do both. Either way, mushrooms boost the immune system and flu season isn’t over just yet!

Since DH usually does the shoveling and I won’t be able to go for a run I might try this stacked fitness routine.

I’ll likely finish reading Death Without Company (Walt Longmire Mystery #2) by Craig Johnson and perhaps start One Lucky Cowboy (Lucky #2) by Carolyn Brown or Something Borrowed, Something Bleu (Home Craft Mystery #4) by Cricket McRae.

Speaking of reading, GoodReads had an interesting set of statistics from their users about book discovery and various aspects of e-book reading.

It those aren’t enough links to keep you busy, check out Stumbling Over Chaos or A Cup of Jo for more.

What is on your docket for this weekend?

P.S. You can click on the photo at the top of the post for the rough recipe for my green smoothie in a bowl that I enjoyed for lunch on Thursday. And again for breakfast this morning… For whatever reason, eating it out of a bowl makes it stick much longer for me than mindlessly sipping it from a glass or mason jar. The granola helps with that too I think.

Wow. It has been a week. What can I say? I’m looking forward to the weekend. I know those of you in the northeast are looking at a very snowy weekend. We have some snow forecasted, but it isn’t looking like it will amount to much, which kind of makes me sad. I hope by Sunday morning we have more coverage than in the photo above from two years ago. For one, we could really use the moisture. But it has been a not very wintery winter so far. There is still hope though. Traditionally February and March are our two snowiest months so I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

Our house will be the honorary “Clubhouse” this Monday evening, so there will be a good bit of cleaning and a little bit of kitchen prep going on at our house this weekend. I’ll be making my whole grain chai doughnuts in mini form, prepping the dry and wet ingredients on Sunday so when I get home from work there is minimal more work to do to get them in the oven. I think I’ll also make a spiced up version of this Wasabi Soy Spread/Dip (I typically double or triple the amount of wasabi, though I am working with powder so that may be why I need to boost it) I’ve brought to knitting before. That does means lots of prepping of fresh vegetables to accompany it. The rest of the food will likely be ready to eat stuff – a cheese or two, some crackers, and a fruit or two. If I’m super motivated I may make up my homemade chai concentrate, but I’m not promising it!

What are you planning this weekend? Do you have any exciting knitting on your needles? I need to knit vicariously through you! :-)

Here are some links that caught my eye this week that you might find inspiation from:

Food

• Chocolate Avocado Pudding - still pretty high calorie, but there are at least really good fats and fiber going on
• Homemade Black Licorice (via The Kitchn) - I’m not likely to ever do it, but that is one of the last things I thought about being able to make at home
• Orange and Cardamom Iced Coffee - cardamom & coffee, need I say more?
• Cardamom Lemon Soda Bread - whole grain even, be still my heart!

Craft

• Gorgeous Lacey Tank Top Knitting Pattern
• Free Knitted Truffles Pattern - calorie free!
• Coconut Oil Skin Polish
• WildCraft Face Cream

Health

• Stretches For a Sore Neck
• Ways to Burn a Few Calories During Regular Daily Tasks

What has inspired you this week?

Yes, my plans were quite lofty for the weekend. While I can’t check off everything I mentioned I feel like the weekend was successful — a nice combination of getting stuff done and resetting for the week to come.

For post-birthday hangover recovery (I’m kidding, I didn’t drink anything besides water on Friday night and DH didn’t even come close to over imbibing) we had a warm, chewy bowl of steel cut oats topped with virgin bananas foster. The bananas were virgin due to the lack of dark rum in our liquor cabinet, but it still tasted like an awful decadent bowl of oatmeal. I had wanted to make the maple roasted apple and cheddar cheese oatmeal from the Kitchn, but discovered we had only one apple. We did have a bunch of not quite ripe bananas so I improvised by sautéing one large one in 1-1/2 tablespoons of butter with 3 tablespoons brown sugar and a tiny pinch of sea salt and divided it amongst our bowls of oats. Some pecans would have been a nice touch.

I don’t know about you, but both DH and I seem to do much better if we have one day out of the fray. No driving, no crowds etc. So Saturday kind of turned into a PJ day. I knew I needed a rest day after two runs with less than 24 hours between them. We were extremely leisurely about breakfast, loitering around the table discussing various and sundry things while sipping locally roasted coffee from the French press. I put together a batch of new tea for kombucha and left it to cool. By late afternoon we retreated to the basement and an embarrassingly long marathon of Lost Girl on NetFlix. I don’t know what it is, but I am totally hooked on that show. DH thinks it is the outcast discovering there is a hidden world in which she fits in. He may be right.

Sunday was our “do” day, but there was plenty of rest mixed in. I took a decent soak in the tub and read a bit first thing. Then DH and I took care of the kombucha, bottling the last batch and getting the next batch going with the cooled tea from the day before. Then, we hopped on our bikes – yes, in late January. Despite this being my 14th January in Colorado it still boggles my mind to see temps near 60 degrees and weather favorable for biking in January. Sadly, it was my first January bike ride ever. We logged nearly 9 miles at the end of the day, with some decent walking in between the rides. Not too shabby of a calorie burn! My sitz bones are definitely protesting today, but the rides overall were not as bad as I feared given the time away from the saddle. There was lots of stretching upon arriving home, a little more reading and some Downton Abbey and more Lost Girl viewing to end the day.

I also baked some multi-grain bread. I used the bread machine for the dough and then did the final kneading, shaping, rise and baking myself. It was *amazing*! We had a little taster after dinner. It was so good DH and I both thought it tasted like another slice even though we weren’t really hungry. We were good and resisted seconds. It was based on the Daily Whole Grain Bread recipe from Beth Hensperger’s The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook. I used cooked quinoa, did fake buttermilk by mixing 2 parts milk to 1 part greek yogurt and upped the whole wheat by ½ cup and reduced the bread flour by the same. We did have to add almost 2 tablespoons of water, likely due in part to the yogurt thickening the milk and the higher whole grain content, plus my quinoa was slightly dry/al dente and not as moist as say the rice I’ve used in the past. I think it was a combo of the ¼ cup of rolled oats and the yogurt that gave it such great flavor plus a bit extra time on the second rise. We’ll definitely be revisiting that one whenever we have left over cooked quinoa that needs using!

How was your weekend? What did you do? Did you manage to get reset for the week to come?

Some food I’m contemplating this week:

• Ginger Noodles with Kale & Shiitake Mushrooms (I’m leaning towards soba noodles as calorie-free food weirds me out
• Pasta with Lemony Brussel Sprouts
• Baked Spaghetti Squash and Cheese

Some making I’m contemplating this week:

• A clever way to maximize the length of skirts made from refashioned tees
• Seaside Bath Salt Soak