Arepas

 Our daughter came home from her mission many years ago with a recipe for arepas. They are basically cornmeal buns.  The ingredients are simple: pre-cooked cornmeal (I used Pan), salt, and water. They are mixed together, formed into a bun shape then cooked in a little oil then baked to finish the cooking process. Slice them open after they have cooled. Fill with anything. 

We had sister missionaries over to eat lunch with us. One needed gluten free food.  Since I had planned sandwiches I made arepas.  We had barbecued pork as one filling and egg salad as another filling.  The sisters were kind and ate them and said nice things.

The arepas ready to be cooked.

Arepas Recipe

2 cups Pan cornmeal

2 1/2 cups hot water

1 teaspoon salt

The arepas are being cooked to give
them a nice crust.

Mix all ingredients together.  Cover with plastic wrap and let sit at least 5 minutes.  Divide into 8 pieces and form balls.  Flatten balls to about 1/4 inch thick and set on parchment paper or plastic wrap while your cast iron skillet heats up.  Put about 1 Tablespoon of vegetable oil in the skillet.  When oil is  shimmering add the arepas in batches.  

The arepas on the left cooked 2 minutes on each side , the pretty ones  on the right cooked 3 minutes...

Cook 2-3 minutes on each side then place in oven at 350 degrees F. on a parchment lined pan for 15-18 minutes.  Remove from oven and let cool.  Split with a bread knife when cool.  

The arepas seemed to be a hit.

Next time I think I will cook all the arepas in the pan for 3 minutes per side,  or even more.  In the oven I will let them cook the 18 minutes instead of 15 minutes. I will also let them cool completely before splitting. In this case the sisters needed to eat an run so the arepas had not cooled very much.

Knitting Today: Homemade Barber Cords

 Working on the Harbin Sweater has been a good thing. I have learned a variety of things that are very useful to a knitter.  For some years I have heard of barber cords.  People put them on their knitting needles tips then pull them through their knitting stitches so they can try one garments.  These are way more convenient than putting your stitches on waste yarn, which is what I have done for years.

WELL!!  I am thrilled to say that, at least with my Chiaogoo fixed circular needles, up to at least US #7 needles (I have not tried larger on this project), the homemade barber cords/barber cords work-around is very successful.

Here is the sweater with my ursatz barber cords.  The needles I am using to knit the bottom ribbing are 24" needles and there are a VERY large number of stitches.  This new "barber cord" I am using goes on the tips every time I set the knitting down OR the stitches pop off to beat the band.  I am so thrilled.

What am I using? This is jewelry making stuff...  It is a 3 mm core rubber tubing for jewelry.  No idea about its jewelry use.  I got this 27-plus yards of tubing for way less than one set of barber cords.  It works great!  I also got some 2 mm rubber tubing and that works great, too.

Something Different, Plus Knitting Today!

 This morning in my studies I read this quote:

"[Satan] damages and often destroys families within the walls of their own homes. His strategy is to stir up anger between family members. Satan is the “father of contention, and he stirreth up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another.” The verb stir sounds like a recipe for disaster: Put tempers on medium heat, stir in a few choice words, and bring to a boil; continue stirring until thick; cool off; let feelings chill for several days; serve cold; lots of leftovers.

A cunning part of his strategy is to dissociate anger from agency, making us believe that we are victims of an emotion that we cannot control. We hear, “I lost my temper.”...

“He made me mad.” This is another phrase we hear, also implying lack of control or agency. This is a myth that must be debunked. No one makes us mad. Others don’t make us angry. There is no force involved. Becoming angry is a conscious choice, a decision; therefore, we can make the choice not to become angry. We choose!"

Elder Lynn G. Robbins

Years ago I read this quote for the first time, or if not this particular quote, the message in it: we choose how we feel.  It was eye-opening to me. I had thought that feelings just came to us.  Not so. I had an experience with anger that helped me learn it was not necessary in my  life and the life of my family.  (In short--one day I was terrifically angry, so angry that I was nauseous and almost faint.  It was such an awful feeling that I resolved never to feel that way again. And I have not.)

For anyone who has felt trapped by negative emotions/feelings, you don't have to be.  In fact, it is an unpleasant truth that we choose how we feel.  I personally choose to feel happy.

One thing that makes me happy is knitting.  I can make pretty things and give them away. This really really makes me happy.

Two of my most recent knitting projects: the blue potpourri bag--

and the purple and pink potpourri bag--

These bags have been a months'-long learning project as I have been "studying" mosaic knitting.  I am not at the top of the game yet, but am making progress.  The blue bag shows the rounded bottom of the bag.  The purple and pink bag shows that the rounded bottom really is a flat bottom so the bag can sit up.

The bags contain a small handful of botanical potpourri and a cotton ball with five drops of lavender oil dropped on it to give it a nice lavender-y fragrance.  These make me smile.  One day when I get the pattern just the way I want it, I will publish it here in case anyone else wants to knit some of them. It takes me less than two hours to knit. I am hoping to get it together so it is less than that!

Bird Watching!

 Early one morning I happened into the laundry room and slipped open the shutters.  There, at the top of the live oak tree, was a beautiful red friendly cardinal. I raced into the other room to get my phone to take a picture, sure that he would be gone when I got back....BUT HE WAS STILL THERE!  So beautiful.

There he was...just waiting for me to snap a couple of pictures.  Birds waiting to be photographed make me so happy!

Munchie Monday: Another (Semi-) Food Disaster

 When I went to Dorr Farms I picked up two sweet potatoes.  Because I was sort of in a rush, I put them in the air fryer to cook.  As it happens, they were not quite cooked when the timer went off.  Since Dear One is not totally fond of sweet potatoes, I just left them in the oven to "finish up" cooking then ate one of them which was, admittedly, slightly under-done.  The other one that definitely was underdone I put in the refrigerator.

The next day I removed the sweet potato from the refrigerator, sliced it into 1/2 inch slices and laid them out on a piece of parchment paper on a sheet pan.  With my very handy Yeti mug, I smashed them down to about 1/4 inch thick.  I had a small bowl with some leftover seasonings in it to which I added a little bit of olive oil.  Using the red silicon brush, I brushed the seasoned oil on top of all the smashed potatoes, covered them with grated parmesan cheese,  then put them in the air fryer.  I set it at 400 degrees F and 25 minutes.

Either the temperature was too high or the time was too long. Or maybe both.

Here they are!  You can see the parmesan cheese which  more or less melted down.

Actually, these are not as bad as they look.  The black bits are the potato skin. I always scrub potatoes within an inch of their lives then eat the skins, too.  In fact, one of  the delicacies of life is russet potatoes baked then cut in half, the innards scooped out and butter and salt put on the potato skins.  So good.  So bad for you. At least that butter is bad for me.  You can tell that by looking at me...oh, what am I saying?!  I never let people take pictures of me.  At least I prefer not to.  Which is, of course, not great for family history work...

I can hear you asking why I left these sweet potatoes to burn.  Well, I was busy on another project and I DID smell the potatoes but they only smelled like they were cooking, not like they were burning.  Lesson learned.  Multi-tasking is now beyond me.  And I say lesson learned, but I bet anything that it is not rock solid in my brain yet...more burn notices will probably come my way.

Yes.  I did eat them.  Not all the incinerated skins, though.  Not so tasty...

Knitting Today: Pumpkins!

 Many years ago a granddaughter said to me that I should decorate for holidays. Finally I am doing a little decorating.

There is a pattern called Velvet Pumpkins, so named because of the Bernat Velvet yarn which is a bulky weight yarn. This yarn was not available in a store near me so I chose other yarn.

Here is what I made.  So far...

This a mini pumpkin, a small pumpkin, and a medium pumpkin.  There is also a large pumpkin but I have not yet made that.

The yarn for mini and small is:

This orange yarn was held with just one strand.

These two yarns were held together for the medium pumpkin.  I used US #8 knitting needles for the knitting.  The stem on the medium pumpkin had an add-in of some chocolate brown I Love This Cotton that I got for another project that I have not yet started.

When you look at the original knitting pattern you will see that those pumpkins in that Bernat Velvet yarn have definite lobes in them.  I felt that the delineation in these plain pumpkins was good enough.  They are now sitting on our dining room table for us to admire and think about autumn every time we  walk by.

The pattern states that it will take about two hours to knit a pumpkin.  That may be true. I did not manage to time the knitting.

Knitting Today: Square Five of the Midwinter Blanket

 Life has gotten ahead of me.  Again.  Finally I finished knitting Square Five just as the Knit A Long is about to end.  Here is the square on the blocking board. Now that I look at it spread out, it may be that there are more errors than one. Oh well.  It is a blanket.

You can see that I am using up the yarn that I have in the bin!  These colors do not match any of the other colors but it is a blanket.  Mostly the people using it will be asleep so color coordination does not probably matter.

This morning I cast on for Square Six, which is the final pattern.  Tomorrow is the day the wind-up of the Knit A Long happens with instructions on how to sew all the squares together and how to knit a border.  I will watch the instructions even though I am not making an entire Midwinter Blanket. I believe I have mentioned I am just adding these squares to the already-in-progress Barbara Walker Learn To Knit Afghan which I had started months ago to use up all the Hilda Yates yarn.  Making progress!!