Be Sweet Yarn

Last week, I met a wonderful surprise waiting for me in the post. You see, I won a giveway over at the Canary Knits blog for a package of Be Sweet yarn, so I knew it was coming. However, I did not expect this package of wooly goodness to arrive on my birthday.

The package included:

• a ball of satisfaction in the peacock colorway
• a ball of whipped cream in the grape colorway
• a ball of bambino taffy in the licorice colorway
• a skein of magic eight ball (that would be the really funky multi-colored one pictured above)

The yarn itself is soft, soft, softy soft in a extreme. It made me want to hold it up against family members' faces and rub while muttering "Feeeeeel it." It was an urge I could not resist acting upon. The husband was less than amused.

I am now figuring out what I can make with the squishy, high-quality fiber yarn now at my disposal, with the bambino taffy, with its part-cottony softness, reserved for an as-yet unknown baby gift. Until I finish my current project of doom (the never-ending Maize and Blue Blanket) though, I can't act on my wish to knit all the things with the pretty yarn. Thus, I have placed them safely inside my cedar trunk reserved for the best of my stash.

If the yarn wasn't delicious on its own, I am also quite thrilled with the company it hails from. Be Sweet is concerned with being "socially and environmentally" conscious. They employ those in economically depressed areas, allowing them to become independent and able to support their families. The sheet my yarn came with shows a lot of smiling women in South Africa who benefit from the ideals of this company.

Sweet yarn. Sweet company. The name makes total sense. It was quite a pleasant package to find in my mailbox on the day that I turned 29.

Polenta and Cuban Bean Patties (sort of)

We've been meaning to try polenta, and this past week, the husband nabbed some pre-packaged on sale. Due to this find, we had some difficulty in the kitchen. It started when I couldn't decide what to eat with polenta. I even googled something along the lines of "What to eat with polenta?" that led me to ask.com and a bunch of strangers instructing me that crusty bread is the ticket. Excuse me if I didn't get on board to eating my carbs with a carb.

In the end, I went with what I know: black beans go with cornbread. I found a recipe to adapt heavily for some black bean veggie burgers and set up shop to fried up some polenta.

Polenta

To make polenta the easy way, go to the store and buy a hamburger-like tube of the stuff. 

Then, just slice it into 1/2 inch rounds and fry it in a big skillet. Instant mushy cornbread. Of course, it doesn't fry up like a patty of anything. It fries up like a lump of dough, which is essentially what polenta is. This makes them hard to flip and impossible to salvage the outer layers that, inevitably, end up adhered to the bottom of the pan. Even so, at the end of the kitchen mayhem, there was polenta.

Of course, eating polenta by itself wouldn't be a very well-rounded meal. For that, you need protein and veggies. Thus, I became work on the black bean burger side dish.

Cuban Black Bean Burgers
What you need:
2 cups (1 can) black beans, drained1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin

1/8 teaspoon salt 

1 large egg white 

• 1/2 cup shredded mexican mix cheese (or whatever your cheese preference) 
• 1/4 cup shredded carrot 
• 1/4 cup cornmeal 
• olive oil 
• 1/4 cup reduced-fat sour cream

• 1. Mash beans, garlic powder , onion powder, cumin, and salt in a bowl with a fork. Place 1/2 cup of the beans and the egg white in a food processor and process for about 30 seconds. 
• 2. Add bean puree and the cheese to mashed beans in the bowl and stir until combined. Divide into four equal portions, shaping each into a 1/2-inch-thick patty. 
• 3. Put cornmeal in a separate shallow bowl. Coat both sides of the bean patties in the cornmeal.
• 4. Heat pan over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add patties and cook 3 minutes on each side until they are browned.
• Of course, these instructions only work if you remember to drain the beans. If you don't drain the beans, they will be too watery, even after you add the cornmeal directly to them, to fry into burgers. They will cook but remain fairly nebulous.
• To construct the final meal, I put three slices of the polenta on a bed of lettuce. Then, I plopped a bean non-patty (thanks to the non-draining thing) on top of it. Then I topped the whole in sour cream, because sour cream makes everything better. (See image above recipe).
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Of course, they make good tacos too, which is what my husband and our son did for their supper.

And for dessert:

Godiva hot chocolate made with almond milk,

topped with whipped cream and chocolate syrup.

Because what sour cream can't make better, Godiva and whipped cream always can.

Giving up the kitchen reigns.

I can't do everything. There, I said it. I understand it. I accept it. But you know what? I don't want to give up anything either. It's been a hard go of it. I had to bust my butt to finish my thesis ahead of my previous schedule, which I succeeded at. During thesis madness, of course, there was no time for anything. There was work and there was thesis. Sometimes, I saw the light of day. You know, walking from my car to a building or from a building to my car.

Things have calmed a bit, though I feel like I need to be constantly active as I wait for my body's anxiety-state to return to equilibrium. I've been knitting. I've been writing and reading. I've been devastated that PBS replaced my knitting show on wednesdays and sundays with some quilting show. I've been working a lot and making money, which is good, though I don't have a lot of time to spend it, which is good too I suppose. But I miss grocery shopping with my man on tuesdays (which was usually my day off from classes during pre-thesis-hours MFA) and I miss practicing my guitar every day. I miss making food in my kitchen on a frequent basis.

In the time since my last food blog, I have made the following meals:
1. A random chinese stir fry with carrots, broccoli, the tofu my man had already baked, the rice my man had already cooked, and water chestnuts.

2. Spaghetti and meatballs with homemade sauce and frozen meatless meatballs
3... no that's about it.

Meawhile, the man has taken over the kitchen duties. This is no small feat for a carnivore to do when there is a vegetarian in the household, but he's done a pretty stellar job. Last night, for example, he made Moussaka:

Apparently the top there isn't cheese but a mix of egg and yogurt. It was even tasty reheated for lunch this afternoon.

Today, it was the boy's picking night. He picked pizza. By the time I got home, my man had already made the dough (using my favorite recipe and the whole white wheat flour). Usually I hate making the dough, but now that I don't have time to, I miss it. He forgot to buy the toppings, though, so I opted to walk down to the corner grocery town (the pluses of city life are few but this is one of them). It was late spring weather when spring has only just started. The sun was shining, the magnolia trees were in bloom, and no random street hustler tried to sell me anything or beg me for money the entire walk, there and back.

While at the store, I went a little overboard. I picked up the carrots, tomato, and pepper that I came for, but spring has sprung in the supermarket too. The strawberries looked perfect. The zucchini is back in season and looking like warm-weather zucchini instead of that wrinkley way it looks when they sell it in the winter. The portobella mushroom caps were on sale. And because I was getting strawberries, I figured, what the hey? I picked up some shortcake and heavy whipping cream. Sure, I didn't have time to bake shortcake fresh, but the little shells worked out fine. Instead, I put a little energy (and not too much extra time) into making fresh whipped cream.

To make whipped cream:
In a large bowl, whip heavy cream until stiff peaks form. Add a bit of vanilla to taste and about a teaspoon of powdered sugar for every 1/2 cup, more if you want it sugary.

The best shortcake is the first shortcake of the season. 

It's not much, but I made something in that kitchen. It's a start.