Wavy Moss Hat - Long Distance Hug

I have a dear friend, let's call her May, that has had not the best month.  January is supposed to come with feelings of renewal and potential, but hers has not quite been so.  I live half a state away and sadly have to comfort and encourage her from a distance, when all I want to do is have her coach me through making her a good bloody Caesar and proceed to talk and hug it out.

Over the last month she has not been directly physically, emotionally, or professionally harmed.  Her friends have.  With the heart this girl has, bad things happening to friends feels just as horrible if not more so.

My solution is of course to knit.  I knit her my version of a hug from a distance and sent it with a loving note including a cute squirrel picture or two.

I know knitting doesn't come close to making the bad feel better.  Only time does that.  But she might as well pass that time in something made of yarn made my someone who loves her dearly.

In my world, yarn is love and it forever will be.

Trying my hand at Brioche

I've only ever seen pictures of knitted brioche.  The way the colors intertwined mesmerized me and I convinced myself it was "too advanced" or "too fussy" for me.  I'm here to tell you that I was wrong and appreciate brioche for what it is: clever and actually very simple double knitted ribbing.  Seriously, it's very easy!  If you can do basic ribbing and know how to yarn over, you can make this happen.  Trust me! 

Now, I don't do much knitting requiring more than one color (making two custom Christmas stockings out of acrylic the first year the Husband and I were married put me off to color work for a while), but brioche is essentially knitting horizontal stripes without letting anyone know.  Each row alternates between each color, and you simply knit together a yarn over with the previous row.

Ok, I'm just making it confusing.  The pattern from Purl Bee is A LOT better at explaining than I am.  I used their pattern for the Brioche Cowl, but cut down the stitches from 218 to 124 to make it a single wrap cowl.  Find my Ravelry project page here.  So far, I love the results.  I always knew there was a reason I stored these two colors in the same baggie after all of these years.

For this project I used some stashed Knit Picks' Wool of the Andes Worsted Yarn in Tranquil (teal) and Fairy Tale (magenta).  This picture totally doesn't do the colors justice, but I love how each color pops between the other.  Note to self: Get off the couch and out of your yellow-walled family room to take some descent project pictures that actually show them off once in a while!

Now that brioche is firmly in my "I can do this" camp, here are a few other brioche projects that I've promptly put into my favorites.

Kennermerland hat, cowl, and mitten set by Alexandra Richards

Vintage Deco wrap/scarf by Nancy Merchant (frankly, I should just include her whole collection)

High Vibe by Maiko Hikosaka

Shallow End Brioche Accent Pillow by Trudianne Temple

Ah, Brioche.  Let's be friends forever.....

The Rainbow Fish Cowl has been Flushed

The Rainbow Fish Cowl has been flushed....  making a joke of it didn't make me feel better.  I thought it would.  Damn.

I made it through nearly 6 inches of this 280 stitch double wrap cowl before diving into my second skein.  Only to realize that the pinks were way more "pinky" in the second, and the gorgeous teal was pretty much nonexistent.  After having to redo the cast on several times to begin with (280 stitches on size 8 needles needs a long long long tail cast on, yo), it was so painful to rip it out.

After nice strong beer that night and a feel good movie, I have resolved to take this as a lesson to alternate between skeins within a large garment, and will be making something a bit different now that I'm back at square one.  I decided that I'm going to make a single wrap cowl along with a matching headband and fingerless mitts.  It'll be a cute little set that will still have the twisted rib and slip stitch "fish scale" elements of the first.

But for now, I need another project to take my mind off of the tragedy that is frogging... flushing... whatever I want to call it.  My twin nephews' birthdays are coming up in March... and I think they may need a neck warmer that goes with their adorable fox jackets my mom made them :)

Musings About Christmas Yarn

For Christmas my wonderful husband's big present to me was a box full of yarn.  Delicious, spectacular, colorful YARN!!!!  While opening presents, we were in our PJ's and sitting next to our gas fireplace.  All warm and cozy, and even then, I kid you not, I got chills when I opened this box of yarn.

My fellow yarn lovers will know, a box of yarn can be a magical thing.  It is not just delicately twisted, dyed, and wound up string of varying thicknesses.  It is potential.

I'm going to get a little nerdy, so bear with me here.  If you're learning basic physics one of the topics when studying energy and force is potential energy.  The most basic example of potential energy is placing (to keep us at least a bit on subject) a ball of yarn at the top of a hill.  Although, of course, none of us would ever subject our precious yarn to touch outdoor ground unless the house was on fire and the only way to save the stash would be to toss it out the window.

While at the top of this hypothetical hill, the yarn has the potential to roll down the hill with its 100g mass with the help of gravity and the height of the hill.  Potential energy is the energy stored in an object, such as this yarn at the top of the hill... but I don't think that's quite true in the figurative sense, at least not when it comes to yarn.

The potential in yarn goes so much farther than a skein's relative mass and distance above ground.

When opening that box of yarn you ordered to make family and friends Christmas presents, sometime around August and September, you don't see hours and hours of selfless knitting for others.  You see the look on their faces when they open and pull out the personalized garment of their favorite colors made just to fit them and their personality.  Even if you never see this FO again, you will hold in your memory their faces and how their hands lovingly touched what you knitted for them as they eagerly put it on.

When I opened that box of yarn the Husband got me this year for Christmas, I saw hours and hours of selfish knitting... for once!  After knitting selfless gifts for the last few months, this is the best present I could have hoped for.  Of course the yarn, but the gift of the potential.

Here is how some of that potential is coming along so far.  I'm preemptively calling this the Rainbow Fish cowl.  I'll work on publishing the pattern when I'm finished and satisfied.  I'm using Knit Pick's Hawthorne Sport Multi in Happy Valley.  You can find my Ravelry project page here.

Loaded Black Bean Soup

Do you ever have those days where you know you ate too much earlier in the day and you know darn well you shouldn't have much for dinner?  Lunch almost always ends up being the largest meal of the day for me.  This is usually because I pack a ton of veggies or fruit to eat along with my proper lunch of a soup, rice dish, or salad.

This lovely soup came about around New Years when the Husband was determined as all-get-out to meet one of his goals for 2015: to get under 184 pounds.  This was a goal he had reached earlier this summer, from starting at just over 200 lbs last January.  Since summer, however, he had become more lax, and of course Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas came to pass with endless goodies around.  For him, he considered this goal a failure if he didn't achieve this goal just before midnight of the new year.

(Now, for the record, I asked about the logic of achieving your goal only on New Years, rather than making healthy habit for a lifetime... in the Husband's mind, a goal is a goal, so I went along and try to steer him as healthy as I could.)

So, for the last week or so before New Years, he dropped all beer from his diet (leaving me to have my occasional evening wine glass to myself).  Three days before New Years he was at the gym daily sweating it out.  Two days before New Years he severely limited his food and drank green tea almost constantly.

Now, fundamentally, I don't have an issue with dropping beer (other than we just bought a keg for our kegerator and now it is sitting idly in the garage), and I don't have an issue with him going to the gym religiously as long as he's not hurting himself.  I DO have an issue with not eating.

So, in an effort to help him to achieve his goal while coaxing him to eat some decent food and not go hungry, I made this Black Bean Soup from Jill Nussinow's pressure cooking cookbook, The New Fast Food, and altered it a bit to include more veggies, more spices, more beans, and some corn.  When calculated out, this large 8+ cup recipe serves 6 and is under 200 calories per serving.

This recipe can EASILY be adapted for the stovetop with a bit more cooking time and using only canned beans.  Please see my notes below.

Loaded Black Bean Soup
Print this recipe!
(adapted from Jill Nossinow's original recipe, which you can find here)
Serves: 6
Time: 10 minute prep, 5 minute saute, 7 minute high pressure, natural pressure release, 1 minute high pressure, quick release

Ingredients:
1 large onion, chopped
1 Tbsp minced garlic
3 large carrots, peeled and diced
3 large celery ribs, diced
1 Tbsp ground cumin
1 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (more or less to taste)
1 bay leaf
2 tsp dried oregano (or 2 Tbsp fresh)
1 1/2 cups dried black beans, soaked for 8 hours
6 cups vegetable broth (homemade or low sodium preferred)
........................................................
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 cup frozen corn, not thawed
........................................................
salt to taste
cilantro to garnish
soy yogurt or sour cream to top (optional)

Instructions:

1. Prepare all ingredients before beginning.
2. Sauté the onion and garlic for 2-3 minutes in a heated pressure cooker, adding water as needed to prevent burning.  Add in the carrot, celery, and spices.  Stir well to mix and sauté for 2 more minutes.
3. Add in the soaked dried beans and vegetable broth.  Lock the lid and set to cook at high pressure for 7 minutes (those with an InstantPot can alternatively use the soup function for 7 minutes).  When the timer is done, allow the pressure to come down naturally.
4. After the pressure has been released, carefully remove the lid.  Use an immersion blender, or scoop several cups of the soup into a blender.  Blend until about half of the soup is creamy, leaving quite a few small chunks behind.
5. Add in the canned black beans and frozen corn.  Lock the lid and set to cook at high pressure for 1 minute.  Once the minute is up, carefully quick release the pressure.
6. Serve hot with cilantro to garnish and soy yogurt/sour cream to top.  Leftovers will thicken up in the fridge and the flavors will marinade to make the soup even better the next day!

Notes for adapting for the stovetop:

1. Prepare all ingredients before beginning.
2. In a large soup pot, water sauté the onion and garlic.  Add in the carrot, celery, and spices.  Stir well to mix and sauté for 2 more minutes.
3. Add in 2 cans of washed and drained black beans along with the vegetable broth.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes with the lid on.
4. Use an immersion blender to blend about half of the soup.
5. Add in the 3rd can of rinsed and drained black beans as well as the frozen corn and cook for an additional 10 minutes without the lid.
6. Serve hot with cilantro garnish and soy yogurt/sour cream to top.  Leftovers will thicken up in the fridge and the flavors will marinade to make the soup even better the next day!

Nutritional Info (as calculated on MyFitnessPal.com)
Serving size: 1.5-2 cups soup
Servings per recipe: 6
Calories: 174; Total Fat: 1 g; Cholesterol 0 g; Sodium (varies with broth and added salt) mg; Potassium 314 mg; Total Carbohydrate 45 g; Dietary Fiber 21 g; Sugars 5 g; Protein 14 g

Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies

Aaaannnnddd now we are into December.  Where the heck did the time go?  Thankfully, I have finished up most of my Christmas knits, and I was able to get all of my shopping done for the Husband online.  All that needs to be done is wrapping as everything as it comes.

This will be our first Christmas in our first house, and I am so excited to make it feel like home.  We have decorated our front living room with a tree (real grand fir baby!), along with some garland, candles, and holiday nic-nacs.  We'll be hosting the Husband's small work holiday party at our house this Saturday, so I will be doing some crafting and decorating up until then.  We don't have lights on the outside yet, but hopefully we can get around to that this week if it ever stops raining.  (The forecast says "no".)

We had a pretty relaxing day on Sunday watching football and doing laundry.  Sundays are usually my day to prep some meals for myself for the week.  My main meal I prepped for the week is Curried Kidney Bean Stew from Helyn's Plant-Based Kitchen.  The stew is fantastic.  If you've never checked out Helyn's site, seriously do.  Her recipes are gorgeous, creative, and super nutritious!

This Sunday, I was in the mood for some oatmeal cookies, and I had a bit of canned pumpkin to use up, so were born these lovely little balls of goodness!  This recipe is vegan, dairy-free, egg-free, processed sugar-free, gluten-free (Use gluten-free rolled oats if you're baking for someone with a serious sensitivity to gluten.  Rolled oats themselves are gluten free, but they can be sometimes processed with the same equipment as grains that do have gluten.), oil-free, AND acceptable to eat for breakfast. ;)

Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies

Print this recipe!

Makes: 24 cookies
Prep time: 15 minutes
Bake time: 15 minutes per dozen

Ingredients:

Dry:
1 cup old fashioned rolled oats, processed into a flour in the blender
2 cups old fashioned rolled oats
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cloves

Wet:
2/3 cup canned pureed pumpkin
3/4 cup plant-based milk
4 pitted medjool dates
1 small banana, peeled
1 Tbsp ground flaxseed
2 tsp vanilla extract

Other:
1/4 cup chopped pecans

Instructions:

1.)  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

2.)  In a high powered blender, blend 1 cup of the rolled oats into a flour.  Combine the flour with the rest of the dry ingredients in a medium sized bowl.  Set aside.

3.)  In a high powered blender, blend all of the wet ingredients until smooth and creamy.  Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until well incorporated.

4.)  Use a cookie scoop to spoon out a dozen golf ball-sized cookies onto a baking sheet with parchment paper.  Use your fingers to press each ball down until it is flat and "cookie-shaped".  Because these cookies do not have saturated or trans fats (yay), they will not do the usual melt-down SAD cookies normally do in the oven.  So, press those suckers down and know that your heart is thanking you!

5.)  Top each cookie with a small amount of chopped nuts.  For an even prettier look, top each with one full pecan.  I had only chopped pecans, so that is what you get today.

6.)  Bake in the preheated oven for 13-17 minutes until lightly browned and the tops aren't gooey when you poke them.  I know, "super specific", but just bake them as much as you like.  You can eat the dough raw if you so feel like, so it doesn't really matter.  (Repeat for the second dozen)

7.)  Serve warm or at room temperature.  Store leftovers in an airtight container for 3-4 days, or in the freezer for a while.

Nutrition Info (as calculated on My Fitness Pal):

Serving size: 1 cookie (recipe makes 24)
Calories: 67; Total Fat: 2 g; Cholesterol 0 g; Sodium 85 mg; Potassium 57 mg; Total Carbohydrate 11 g; Dietary Fiber 2 g; Sugars 4 g; Protein 2 g;

Health and Happiness,

Amy

Roasted Pine Nut Hummus

Are you guys a fan of hummus?  What am I saying?  Of course you are!  Unless you are my husband, and in that case, Husband: quit reading my blog, make me some tea, and give me a foot rub!

For those of you who are not my husband and DO love hummus, you are in for a treat today.

This is how I feel about hummus... I luff it!

Like-father, like-daughter, my dad is even more of a "hummus-holic" than I am.  My mom, who would buy a tub of hummus from the store only to find it gone a few days later, would gab to me on the phone about how he was "practically eating it by the spoonful".  We're taking the big tubs.  Not the little 1 inch tall containers.  I mean the TUBS they sell at Costco.

My dad's favorite brand was the Roasted Pine Nut Hummus from Sabra.  And, nothing against Sabra, but this stuff is not necessarily low in fat, especially when my dad likes eating it in the quantities he does. (This particular type of hummus gets 62.5% of its calories from fat.  No me gusta!)  For the sake of my mom's sanity and my dad's health, I decided I could make a better, healthier, and cheaper version at home.

This recipe was actually a Father's Day present for my dad a few years back (when the Husband and I were about to get married and were saving every penny we could).  Unfortunately, since then my dad has acquired a bit of an allergy to pine nuts (probably from overdoing it with all this hummus!), so when I make it now-a-days, I use raw sunflower seeds for him instead.

I have brought this hummus to countless parties since I first made the recipe, and the bowl is almost always scraped clean by the end of the event.  It is great served with dipping veggies, crackers, and chips.  I like using it as a spread for sandwiches and wraps.  In a pinch, I even use it as a salad dressing by taking a few tablespoons and adding water or balsamic vinegar to get a thinner consistency.  Yummers!

I also love this recipe because it can be so versatile.  Change up the type of beans, type of nut/seed butter, type of juice or acid, add different spices, or add different toppings.  Endless I tell you!

Roasted Pine Nut Hummus

Print this recipe!

Servings: 8-10
Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

• Hummus
• 1 can garbanzo beans, drained, liquid reserved
• 2 Tbsp tahini (sesame seed paste)
• 3 Tbsp fresh squeezed lemon juice
• 2 Tbsp reserved bean liquid
• 1 Tbsp low sodium soy sauce
• 2+ Tbsp water
• 1 tsp cumin powder
• 1 tsp minced garlic
• Pine Nut Topping
• 1 Tbsp pine nuts, toasted lightly in a pan on the stovetop
• 2 tsp reserved bean liquid
• 1/2 tsp dried basil
• 1/2 tsp dried parsley
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• pinch of cayenne pepper or paprika

Instructions:

1.) Drain the canned garbanzo beans, reserving the liquid.
2.) In a food processor, combine the drained beans, tahini, lemon juice, 2 Tbsp of the reserved bean juice, low sodium soy sauce, and minced garlic.  Process until smooth and creamy, adding water a tablespoon at a time until the desired consistency is reached.

3.) In a small bowl, combine all of the ingredients for the pine nut topping.

4.) Scoop the hummus into your desired serving or storage dish, smoothing the top with a spatula.  Pool the pine nut topping in the center.  Sprinkle a little extra cayenne/paprika and dried herbs around the far edges.

5.) Serve chilled and store extras in the fridge for up to a week... if it lasts that long!

Tips and Tricks:

• This hummus goes quickly, so generally I make a double batch for parties and holidays.
• I have made it before without the tahini and it still tastes great.  If you are limiting your fats or nut/seed butters, don't be afraid to leave this out.  I would also suggest doubling the ground cumin to give it a bit more flavor if you do.
• As mentioned above before the recipe, the pine nuts can easily be switched out for sunflower seeds if someone has an allergy.  Or left out altogether.  Do what you please!

Nutrition Info:

As calculated on MyFitnessPal.com for 10 servings per recipe:  Calories: 69; Total Fat: 3 g; Cholesterol 0 g; Sodium 195 mg; Potassium 169 mg; Total Carbohydrate 10 g; Dietary Fiber 3 g; Sugars 2 g; Protein 4 g;

Health and Happiness,

Amy