Friday, March 26, 2010

Foodie Friday: Sausage Fry

Yummy sausage of your choice. I cooked up 4 Beelers Brats. I give them a quick brown on the stove then put them in 375 deg oven for about 20 minutes or so.

After the sausages were done I also started some Basmati rice. You can use any rice you want but Basmati sounded good to me. I went the extra step and toasted the grain in some olive oil before adding the water. Hmmm, It smells so good that way. If you haven't done this before add the clean Basmati rice to a bit of warmed olive oil and toast it until you smell popcorn. At least that's what toasted Basmati smells like to me. Then add the water. I do almost 2:1 water to grain. 1.5 cups of dry rice takes about 30 plus min to cook. I'm pretty cautious and check often after about 25 min. You know it's done when you lift the sauce pan and the rice doesn't slide down.

You can use really any veggies of your choice. I'd have added carrots to the mix but were are low and I want it for stir fry for our next meal.

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2 onions thinly sliced
2 red peppers or peppers of you choice thinly sliced
1/2 cabbage thinly sliced
4 or more coarsely chopped toes of garlic

With luck this will serve 4 plus extra. Most likely the girl kid will only eat the veggies and the boy kid will refuse to try it. After fixing this up I really needed the carrots 2-3 or the rest of the head of cabbage to have the ratio of sausage to veggies I'd like.

While the sausages are cooking I prepare the veggies above. After the sausages are done I start cooking the veggies. Sometimes I wait until the husband gets home so the food is all warm and yummy and then he helps cook too.

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Start by cooking the onions and when the look almost done I added the garlic. This was a new addition to my sausage fry. I haven't used garlic before but it sounded good tonight. Then add the peppers, then the cabbage. When things look almost cooked to your taste toss in the sausage I like to chop mine up before adding it. Then let it cook for a bit more with a lid so the sausage can add some flavor to the fry and warm up. Salt and pepper to taste while cooking or not.

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Mea culpa for the blurry photo but it looks a wee bit tasty yes?


Serve up with the rice and optional sauce below.

3 tbl olive oil
2 tbl rice vinegar
1 tsp yellow mustard (I used dijon this time)
1 tsp tamari
1/2 tsp sugar or honey

I kind of like this sauce on the sweet side and use more honey than suggested above. This is the same sauce I use on the Chick Pea Potato Salad. I don't normaly use sauce on my sausage fry and depend on the flavor of the onion and sausage. Since the kids don't like the sausage there was a request for a sauce. So there ya go. I decided against a sweeter sauce and a drizzled it on the fry was really good.

Friday, March 19, 2010

My New Toy

I got my Spin Dryer yesterday and I love it. I washed up some mittens, socks, and a sweater in the early evening yesterday and they are all dry this morning.

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I have my work cut out for mover the next few days as I get my woolens washed and ready to store for the summer. It's always a bit sad when I need to put the sweaters, hats and mittens away. I will miss them. With the help of this spin dryer it will be done in no time. Since it's supposed to snow on Saturday maybe I should wait a few more days.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Shawls - Lots of them

I've been yarning lots of shawls. So many that I joined the 10 shawls in 2010 group on Ravelry. So my list of shawls to make keeps getting longer and longer.

Shawl One: Ultra Traveling Woman
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Traveling Woman by Liz Abinante
Did extra repeats of the horseshoe pattern and could have done more. I had over an ounce of fiber left.
Ultra Alpaca Fine - Love the feel of the yarn but it's splitty. So I 'm not sure if I would buy it again.
US 6 needles


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Shawl Two:
I dream of spring All Shawl

All Shawl by Doris Chan
Changed up the edging. I replaced the pineapple border to the shell stitch. I like this shawl but I'm not sure it's my color. They yarn is super soft.
Cascade Heritage Paints and Solid - Used up what was left from my Dreaming of Spring socks.
I/5.5 mm hook


I dream of spring All Shawl

I dream of spring All Shawl

Shawl Three: Red Wine Saroyan
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Saroyan by Liz Abinante
I did a few extra pattern repeats in the middle section.
US 10 Needles
365 yards of Cascade 220

It's really soft and squishy but it's more like scarf in style so I don't know how much I will use it. I find I really like my triangular shawls as scarves as they stay on and looks pretty too.


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Shawl Four: A nod to the gods shawl
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Three-cornered Scarf by Ruth Hollowell in Intentional Spinner by Judith MacKenzie McCuin
US 8 but I wish I had used US 10
Used all but a small bit of my Wenslydale handspun single
I love how this turned out as the colors transition wonderfully.

The fiber before spinning:
Fireside Wenslydale

Spun Fiber:

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Shawl Five: In the Dark
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198 Yards of Heaven Shawl by Christy Verity
I used more of a sport weight yarn than the worsted yarn called for in the pattern. Hence I used about 288 yards of my very own black merino handspun yarn. I also omitted the edging rows using some else's mods from Ravelry.
US 8 needles

The handspun yarn:
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A bad photos of me wearing it for scale:
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Five done and five more to go. I have one on the needles right now and the yarn for one more.

Monday, March 1, 2010

Mad spinning

Since I finally managed to knit and crochet down most of the yarn stash. Someday I need to show you all what I have been making. What I feel most proud about is all the spinning have been doing. I've been spinning so much that my legs are sore. Really it's true.

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Doesn't it look lovely. I started a shawl with some of it last night while sipping a beer with some fiber friends. I needed that beer!

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It will be the 3 corner shawl from The Intentional Spinner.