December 29, 2009

New recipe: Flank Steak Lo Mein

http://icookstuff.blogspot.com/2009/03/flank-steak-lo-mein-revisited.html

(pic is from above link)

 Or sorta new because I've certainly done a lo mein or three in the past. But I've always done them with pork or chicken, never with flank steak. I do loves me some flank steak though. Broiled, grilled, slow-cooked, bbq'ed and shredded, you name it, this cut of steak is goooooood eats which says a lot because I'm not big on steak in general.

I have a bookmark folder called 'Recipes to Try' that's, ohhh, about 3 pages long and I like to browse it now and again for inspiration. This one caught my eye this week because I had a flank stank defrosted and a red pepper to use up. The steak was unbelievably tender and came out tasting like teriyaki - but really GOOD teriyaki. Not that gloppy, overly sweet stuff you sometimes get.

Mods: None to speak of other than the fact that I didn't measure anything. lol When it comes to asian style cooking, I know what I like and just eyeball it at this point. In addition to the red pepper, I added broccoli and thinly sliced onions for the veggies. And a plop of sambal oelek for a little heat.Oh, and a little sesame oil. Just a tiny bit though. :)

December 28, 2009

NEW FOR 2010.
(Ignoring the fact that I'm a wee bit early here.....)

 I've added an RSS feed for my bloggy bits. Linkage is on the left column. I've been loathe to do this for ages, for many different reasons, the primary being that it draws people away from your site, which is not really desirable when you are trying to sell products on that site, yes? To that end, I'll either have to change my blogging style to incorporate more links to my site (I know - waaaaaahhhhhhh! OH-SO-DIFFICULT-IT-IS) or I might just post a subject line to the RSS feed as a teaser with a link back to the site to get the full entry. (A lot of food bloggers do this and I have mixed feelings on it. I find myself not reading them as much after they've done that but, from what I can gather, they also do it to drive more people to their actual site vs. just having a bunch of anonymous people skimming their stuff on Google reader. Pros and cons to it, I guess.)

 I've tried to figure out how to embed a blog w/a feed on the main page of my site but, invariably, about 3 minutes into my research on it my eyes start to glaze over and I feel a coma start to come on from the icky-picky technicality of it all. (I'm not sure I have enough qualification on such matters to say that it's a difficult thing to do but I think the fact that I've yet to see a single Pappashop-hosted site with an rss-feed blog embedded on a page speaks for itself. Such sites probably do exist but I have to think it's pretty rare. It goes beyond your average click-and-drag html skill set, that's for sure.)

But I'm sure I'm not the only one who adores their RSS feeds so I guess I should get with the program and get one myself. I love love love love my Google reader. It's stuffed full of food bloggers, knit bloggers, political bloggers, everyday bloggers, tv industry stuffs, on and on and on. It's not unusual for me to open it up in the morning and have 100+ posts to dig through. Do I read it all? Hardly. I skim like a mofo. lol I treat it like a magazine. My own personally designed, totally 100% free,  magazine labeled ME. I read the parts that look interesting and skim through the rest. It's a good thing. :)

December 26, 2009



(And yes I am a bad bad blogger for not updating more often this month. My husband is even starting to shame me into updating this thing. lol)

December 7, 2009

Errmmm. I swear the weeks in December are sped up double time. 
Thanks so much guys for all the bead orders!! You're keeping me just busy enough making beads to, uh, keep me busy but not *too* busy, which is perfect for me. I've been admonished for having such a bare cupboard over at Etsy though so I'm going to *try* to work on some goodies for over there (at some sort of discount, I'm sure) for later this week. :)
Anyhoo, the state of my 'other' projects is as follows:


It's kind of a good news/bad news thing. Good that I started *and* finished the right glove last week. A matched set of these is *always* preferable for gift-giving, yes? The bad news is that I had so so so so so so many problems working on the right glove that I didn't have a lot of time for any thing else. So I barely got to the 2nd blue sock and/or any other Xmas ornaments. I had high hopes to do another pair of gloves but now I'm thinking, uhhhhhhh, not so much with that. I managed to knit this 2nd one ALL THE WAY UP TO THE PINKY FINGER before I clued into the fact that I was following the directions for the LEFT GLOVE AND NOT THE RIGHT ONE. Two lefts anyone? Such a stupid mistake!! I had to rip it back to the cuff (about 3 inches from the bottom), which was hellish to pick up again because of all the cabled stitches (read: 2 hours right there just to get everything sorted so I could start knitting again) and, even with all that, the pattern on the back of the hand is still not positioned *quite* right. One glove has a double cross, single cross, single, double....on the right one it's more like double, double, single, single. They are so similiar though I figured that wasn't worth starting it ALL OVER AGAIN. I'm only a perfectionist to a degree. If I were gifting these to a knitter, they *might* notice that but, as this person is not a knitter, I'd be willing to bet it will never be noticed.  I'm claiming artistic license on this one.  *cough*

But, needless to say, I down graded my ambitions a bit for another pair of gloves to be done by Xmas and decided to go with mittens instead. There is only the thumb opening to screw up on those, and that's a wee bit easier to correct if I, I don't know, knit like the human race is made up of people with two left arms.  Overall though, PATTERN PROBLEMS ASIDE, I think they came out very good, especially because I've never done gloves before. It's pretty neat creating fingers out of thin air, so to speak, and all my sock knitting experience helped me avoid holes at the finger joints. I knit these on teeny tiny size 0 needles (which are basically toothpicks or maybe even a little SMALLER!) so they have a nice drape to them, almost like a machine knit pair of gloves. (Which begs the question....why do them by hand then? SSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHhh! Don't bother me with such things when I'm in this deep!!!!!! Just nod and smile, nod and smile.)

 I love the mittens Kathryn just posted over here so I think I'm going to try those. It's a Norwegian pattern that's only barely been translated into English. Shouldn't have any problems there, right? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! LET THE GAMES BEGIN!!!!!!! (Odds are in my favor though because about 50 people on Ravelry have already knit them so.....between the actual pattern and the comments on Ravelry, it should be relatively smooth going. And I'm going to resist the urge to rechart the pattern myself to incorporate more stitches in case I want to make room for fingers....nope. Not.going.there. *twinge*)

November 30, 2009

Man, am I glad it's Monday. The whole weekend was tiring and I'm tired of leftovers and....I'm just tired. (Probably because I forced myself to get up at 8am, even though I'd only been sleeping for 4+ hours because otherwise I could have slept til eleven and that is NO WAY to start a week! lol Someone remind me to go to bed before dark o'clock tonight, please, because I need to get up a little earlier tomorrow. If you see me on Facebook at 2am - tell me to GO TO BED. And don't be nice about it! I get sucked into the black hole of Bejeweled over there like you wouldn't BELIEVE. Grrr.)
Speaking of which (the leftovers, that is), in trying to use them up I only created, you GUESSED IT, a ton more of leftovers. I mean, seriously? ......WTF? I turned the turkey leftovers into a massive batch of turkey chili. (Which we've BARELY touched so far.) The ham leftovers got turned into ham salad. (Which we're actually doing pretty good on because 1) it's good for lunch and 2) did I mention it's HAM FREAKING SALAD? What's better than a ham sammich, I ask?) I think the leftover potatoes and stuffing might have to be pitched at this point because I can't eat any more. Nope. And, mind you, this  is after sending our guests home with a huge bag of stuff. I just way over cooked this year. There was turkey, ham, potatoes, dressing, brussel sprouts, haricot verts, some sort of squash (the name escapes me , grr), corn, gravy, homemade cranberry sauce, two kinds of rolls and three pies. Oh and onion dip as pre-dinner munchies with a backup of cheese and crackers ready to go if needed. (It wasn't needed). In my defense, this will be the FIL's last holiday season so I panicked and over did it. C'est la vie. The amount of dirty dishes in my kitchen around 3pm Thanksgiving day was so epic we could only laugh about it. I'm glad I have enough counter space to hold it all or we would have been stacking 'em up on the floor! lol

One holiday down, one to go. I'm not going to bother with Xmas decorations though for at least another week, maybe two. It's bad enough trying to wrangle Maggie to keep away from the tree. With a 5 month old kitten around, I can only imagine the daily destruction. I figure I can only take that for about two weeks before I start pitching cats off the deck and into the backyard in a fit of rage. *ahem* So the tree will have to wait a little bit to be put up. :) It's okay to wait anyway because I have a bunch of half-finished ornaments to complete. I keep half-finishing stuff and REALLY need to buckle down this week to finish some of this up.
Here is what I've got MOSTLY finished over the last 3 weeks:


One glove and one sock. (Xmas presents both so, yeah, gotta finish these. Especially because I've got at least a couple more things to START and FINISH when it comes to my Xmas knitting.) 2 Xmas ornaments and 2 more Blackbird stockings to sew up and make all purty. I think on these last ones I was waiting to finish up a few more before I did the sewing part and, to that end, I do have 1 more of each started but, at this point, I should probably finish these up first. Oh well, I do a little of something pretty much every night while I"m watching tv so progress is slow but steady. (I'm too ADD for long periods of work on stuff like this. I tend to get up a lot when watching tv.) Do you ever get the feeling my hands NEVER EVER EVER STOP MOVING? lol Not totally true, as it turns out, because I managed to stay still long enough to start and finish a book this weekend. :)

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