Now Norma Knits

90. The More Things Change

Do not be alarmed. You are at the right blog.  The banner has been retired and I am redecorating a little bit. See yesterday's post for more details. Best man Dave Daniels is on the job, so anybody who wants to challenge him to a banner-off will have to get up pretty early in the morning, I'd say. I told him there'd be somethin' special in it for him, but then I remembered his flag doesn't fly that way. Oh, yes. I am that bad. But the contest IS still on!  We may even have readers vote on the best one (over which I of course will have veto power, this being my blog and all, ya know...)  Banner on, people!  I'll sweeten the spinning pot with some special fibers to go with the spindle.  Designers, start your engines!

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So, yeah, the more things change, the more they stay the same. I am not so much a lace person.  I am not drawn to drool the way other knitters seem to be at the lace shawls, and particularly not the triangular ones. I love my Flower Basket "Shawl," which is really just a scarf, but I'm not tempted to make another lace shawl.  Maybe another lace scarf or two or three, but that's it.

But I see something like this, and THIS speaks to me. This looks like something I could incorporate into my wardrobe. And every single thing Jared knits makes me want to KNIT. He has the taste and sensibilities that are the closest to mine on the entire 'net, I think -- and the courage, like the Mason-Dixon gals, to knit garter stitch without fear of being thought a knitting cretin.  (although scrolling down reveals that Jared has recently been knitting -- LACE!  Damn.  So much for my theory. Well, still. I admire and covet everything he knits. And honestly I would not kick a lace shawl out of bed if someone were to knit one for me. I'm just not so interested in knitting one.)

So it's like being hit in the head with a (padded) crowbar.  Suddenly it clicks again, because I've realized this before and keep forgetting it. 

Let us review, shall we?

I love tweed.

I love simple.

I love elegant.

I love shapely, but not outlandishly so.

I love garter and moss and stockinette.

I like cables, but not if they are overdone or fattening or boxy or fussy or make my shoulders or arms look like those of a football player. Which brings us back to the word of the day:  Simple.

These are the things that make my knitting world go 'round.

My advice to myself:  Keep it simple, stupid, and stop feeling like you need to love to knit what everybody else loves to knit.

Oh, and while we're talking about this, I love the way a short-row heel looks.  But it does not fit my heel well.  I'll stick with the heel flap and gusset in future.

For example, this cute sock fits me -- in Pretend Fit, which coincidentally Ryan just wrote about the other day, and which is otherwise spelled D-E-N-I-A-L. 

If I really tug at it and MAKE it fit, it will fit around my heel and be good enough for its photo op for the blog, and if I never said anything, you'd all be fooled and think it was a great sock, which it is.  But the heel cup is too shallow to be pretty on the foot OR comfortable, and I think it'd be the kind of thing that would ride down when walking, annoying the hell right out of me. I sure hope the intended recipient of these has stubby heels.

I'm quite sure I've read somewhere (Priscilla Gibson-Roberts, maybe?) that there is a way of making a deeper short-row heel cup.  Then why do all the patterns give it this way? Does everybody but me have short, stubby heels and ankles? Surely not.

Thank you for indulging me.
I've enjoyed this little chat with myself.

89. A New Title (And A Contest)

Now Norma Knits
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Only Nominally A Knitting Blog
(but who cares?)

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I just love ya, Gale. 

If you follow the link, you'll see that Gale, photographer, book-writer, and adventurer extraordinaire, gave me an E for Excellent blog rating.  Part of her review carried the words, "only nominally a knitting blog but who cares?"  Of course I immediately took (faux) umbrage and said, "Hey!" 

But then I paused to (faux) think about it and said, "Oh, yeah.  THAT."

Gave me a chuckle, it did.  But of course it is the truth, and it's something I've been thinking (and writing) about for a while, wondering if I should change the name of the blog to more accurately reflect what I'm all about.  But the question remains: What the fuck AM I all about? 

Everything. (I flatter myself) Or a lot, anyway. Which I hope is not the same as "scatterbrained." 

Way back in the day, long before The Blog, my online persona for email and eBay and such was (and still is, in case you're into voyeurism as to what it is I've bought and sold on eBay, and I just know that you are.....) "Northerneclectic."  That really does capture the essence of what I write and think and do better than "Norma Knits."  The idea of "Now Norma Knits" was intended to have the emphasis on the word "NOW," as in, "Norma does a whole lot of stuff and goes through phases like she goes through toilet paper, and now she knits, too."  The "2" in my URL is meant to be a cutesy way of saying "too." 

Now do you get me? Well, I doubt anyone will ever truly GET me, but does that help make it at least slightly less foggy?

Someone who's known me via the blog for ages recently said that she thought my old email address, "Northerneclectic," would be a cool name for the blog.  I like it, too, but I've worked so long and hard to create a space for myself here that it seems kind of hard to change the name now.  I've seen other bloggers try that and land with a big thud. Also, I've mentioned, I really like being in the minority of bloggers who use their name in their title, because at gatherings of bloggers, I love feeling like a person with a name when meeting someone, rather than the "And what is your blog name?" thing. 

BUT I am thinking of changing it slightly to conform to Gale's idea, because I am SERIOUSLY HEAD OVER HEELS IN LOVE WITH IT and it makes me laugh and fits my personality.  Anything or anyone that makes me laugh gets gold stars in my book. I'll be needing a new banner.  I'm just throwing that out there in case anyone has the overwhelming urge to design it.

Ooooh, I have an idea:  Let's turn it into a contest.  The one whose design I like best gets to have the second Merlin Tree spindle. I suppose I should set a deadline.  Let's say April 15th.  Give us all something to look forward to rather than filing our taxes, hm?  That hopefully gives people enough time to think about it, but not enough time to forget about it. I'm looking for something sort of elegant, and sort of highbrow, but also sort of smartass and sassy. Anyone want to have a go at it?

[edited:  Hey everybody, RELAX!  Nothing is going to change.  Except the decorative thingy that we call a banner at the top. I've retired the old banner and we have above what is sort of a blank slate until we replace it with one that is to my liking. It'll still be the same URL, the same blog, the same predictable-in-my-unpredictability me, even Now Norma Knits.  But the subtitles will be added, and hopefully the banner will be more upscale, brought into the new millennium so to speak, and more closely related to ME.]

Look!  She knits!

A  heel is born. Can a toe be far behind?

(This sock is not nearly as orange as the setting sunlight would seem to imply.)

88. New Exercise Protocol

I'm a member of the "I knit and I'm fit" group in Ravelry, so I talk about fitness once in a while in the blog. Thanks to Ms. KnitFit, I recently learned of the Tabata protocol. I latched onto it like a tick to a dog's ear, and I've got one word for you:

eFFEC-TIVE!

Here's another short article about it, and you can spend hours reading about it and watching YouTube videos of people using the protocol for various exercises, which is a pretty good idea to grasp the concept and get inspired.  And then just get out and do it! 

The first time I tried to incorporate it into my exercise routine, I tried it on the elliptical machine.  I did the first two sets and thought, "Oh, that's not so hard.  This is totally doable.  What's the big deal?" 

Then I did the third set. 

And I barely made it through the fourth set. 

And on the fifth set, my lungs started to burn. 

And that's as far as I got that day. I am mindful of the fact that I am only a few months short of one year less than half a century (follow that?) and I do monitor my heart rate in my workouts.  At that point in the workout, my heart rate was in the what-could-be-considered dangerous range, and I didn't want to push it farther than that.

I continued my workout, finishing my 35 mins. on the elliptical at a normal pace. letting my heart rate get back to a good cardiovascular workout range.  Then I did my weight work, and I finished the day by trying some more Tabata with the jump rope.  Once again, four sets was all I was able to complete.

That's the way I'm doing it -- I'm doing bits of Tabata-style exercises interspersed with what was my regular routine.

Then I took a couple or three days off, and I went back to the gym.  This time I repeated the process.  I tried more on the elliptical.  I was able to complete six sets. Later, I did some pushups using the protocol. I was able to complete three sets. I tried it with full assist (the equivalent of my entire body weight on the stack) of the chin-up assist machine. That means that in effect, I was lifting no weight, just going through the motions.  The machine was assisting me to the full extent of my body weight (does that make sense?).  I started to feel lightheaded, so I stopped.  Then I did Tabata squats. (<---link to a video of women doing Tabata squats. Please note that one of them has a newborn!)

[edited to add, with tongue planted firmly in cheek:]  To respond to the outcry that I might wreck the knees of all the knitters in the kingdom who follow me like I'm the pied piper and do their squats like the women above, here is a video of women doing them in a much better knee-protective form. Although my understanding from all the reading I've been doing lately is that the old 90-degree rule is controversial and may not necessarily BE the best form. I do, however, adhere to it myself, except when I'm doing Bikram, and then all bets are off. And please note:  Although the woman on the left looks very hot and sexy, and is doing the exercise in the right way, it appears she is chewing gum.  Please do not chew gum while doing vigorous exercise like that, or you might have to have Eddie Izzard perform the Heimlich Maneuver on you.  Hmmmm.  Have I covered all the bases now?  Have I?  :D

Don't be too intimidated.  It doesn't have to be done as vigorously and as fast as in that video, and it doesn't have to be squats -- just as hard as you can do it within your own fitness range. If all you can do this week is Tabata television-clicker-lifting or beer-can-lifting, or Tabata strolling, hey, it's a start.  Maybe next week you could move up to Tabata sitting-in and getting-up-from the La-Z-Boy.  It's all progress!

The idea is 20 seconds on, as hard as you can; 10 seconds rest; repeat this sequence ideally 8 times. 

I am able to push myself as hard as depicted in the video, but I was only able to do three sets the first time. Then I collapsed on the weight incline bench for a while, with people looking at me and probably wondering if they should call 911 (not really -- they looked at me with amused understanding). Then I went home. When you read people in these articles saying you'll think you never knew 20 seconds could be so long, they know of what they speak. But it's changed up my workouts to help make them more fun and interesting, and I think the results are already showing. Except for the fact that I felt like I hit a wall with exhaustion yesterday, I feel at least five years younger after just that first week, and I can't wait for the next one. I'm excited to try it with the bike outdoors, when and if the snow ever melts and the mud ever dries up.

There has also been a bit of time for knitting on the lovely Koigu sock:

And lovely it is.  This colorway is sweet!  I am totally in love with this sock. I was working on it while at a doctor's appointment yesterday, and the nurse and doc were both oohing and ahhing over it (and my Noro striped scarf, too, by the way. I almost thought the doctor was going to put it around her neck and walk away with it.) 

They were even savvy enough to notice the picot cast-on.  This is a fairly small sock, because it was intended for me and I have smallish feet.  So now I think I'm going to give it to the doctor. She is a teeny person, and she wears Birkenstocks and socks all the time.  I think she is the perfect recipient for these, and it makes it all the more fun to finish them. Now I can't wait! 

I got most of the way through the short-row heel last night and realized I had screwed up the count so they were uneven (this happens to me with every short-row heel!), so I had to rip it back to the beginning of the heel.  So, a small setback. But because I'm excited about giving these to someone who clearly appreciates the handknits, I'm really motivated to finish them.

87. Google Help Me

"Indecision may or may not be my problem."
~ Jimmy Buffett ~

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When a blogger is looking for a little entertainment or a little blog fodder on the cheap, she needs only go as far as her blog stats. I took a cruise through yesterday, looking for search strings that brought people to my blog. I've written long enough and frequently enough and on enough eclectic topics, I guess I can expect just about any combination of words to land someone on this blog. To wit, the following.  There is a surprising lack of foul language, though.  What's up with that?

• google help me to find a knitting thing to dress a clothes peg that is free. ( The beginning of this search sounds a bit like The Serenity Prayer. And how does one dress a clothes peg that is free? I need fashion advice on this one.  Free?  Enslaved?  How do their clothing needs differ?)

• pictures of girl saying i can pee in the garden for free (Is she saying, "I can pee in the garden for free"? Or is she saying, "I can pee in the garden," and the person wants the picture for free?  Or....)
• pictures of girl saying i have to go pee in my underwear and she did (WTF is up with these pictures of people saying things about peeing?  I think I shall write a book:  The Abnormal Psychology of Googlers.)
• cracking your bones (I have my favorite executive transvestite to thank for this.)
• knitted bike seat cozy (Awwwwww.)
• mens pouch c ring underwear (Um....? Can anyone elucidate?)
• pictures of people 80 years old doing Bikram (Why???!)
• plum tuckered out (or)
• plumb tuckered out  (We still can't decide which it is....[kidding])
• nausea fuzzy thnking (Typo left in. The person was really fuzzy in their thnking, I presume.)
• how does a stenograph work (It takes two years to learn. My blog posts aren't really going to help much. But I suppose it's a place to start.)
• neti pot walmart [This one has far surpassed the previous most-frequently-searched-for thing on my blog, "peter heater."  I assume this is because Oprah, and now, I'm told, the AMA (they were influenced by Oprah's endorsement, I am quite sure) has endorsed neti pot usage. So now the world wants to know if Wal-Mart sells neti pots.  Unfortunately, I do not know. But Google sends many people to my blog every day lately to find out. Perhaps I need to conduct field research on this topic.]
• pensive mood (Yeah.  Quite often.)

• fuzzy brain syndrome (That, too.)
• gym flatulence (I try to avoid it.)
• how do you write zero in steno number (The answer is: "0"  It's in the bottom center of the keyboard. You hit it with your left thumb, stroked together with the number bar, which is the long bar at the top of the machine. You have to use your right hand to hit the number bar at the same time as you hit the O -- that's "oh," not "zero" -- with your left thumb. It's all very complicated and top secret.)
• average baby foot length (Still, no one has answered this question to my satisfaction, and I'm apparently not the only one wondering. This is a very frequent blog search.  I wish someone would tell us. Someone needs to conduct a census of lengths of babies' feet. Please, I beg you. Surely there should be a spreadsheet on Ravelry. Well, maybe there already is, but since I'm a charter member of the Ravelry Underachievers, I think I'll leave it to someone else to look.)
• breaking a fast (Huge spike in this one lately. I imagine it's the Catholics, though as a former Catholic, allow me to say I've always thought their Lenten fasts were slightly anemic.  "I'm giving up chocolate."  "I'm giving up sweets." WTF is that?!  That's not a fast.)
• microwave chocolate cake (I'm glad to be of service on this one.)
• oops (I love that my blog is the 5th hit for "oops")
• giving someone a piece of my cake queen cake, dream interpretation (My blog is the 2nd hit for this search string, except I'm quite sure the queen in this one is the rock band and not the cake -- though I am the queen of my blog. This wins honorable mention for overly wordy and repetitive search string.)
• peter heater (A perennial favorite, mostly from Australian searchers. They've either got terribly cold peters down under, or they're very big on the gag gift. I'm hoping it's the latter.)
• Manise pottery (I don't know what Manise pottery is, but I have talked about pottery, Abingdon in particular, and Manise is a friend and frequent commenter on my blog.  Sorry, searcher, for the dead end.)
• mmmmm rose (I wonder what would happen if the searcher was looking for mmm rose or mmmm rose....)
• cutting up t-shirts into sexy lady shirts (Remember my halter top phase?)
• important facts on oranges (which I at first misread as "orgasms")
• picture of the devil wearing mittens (That'd be me. )

 

86. G is for Gorgeous

We interrupt this episode of Norma's Quackwatch (oh, how I hate to bring attention to that fanatical Quackwatch fanatic who is insanely, pathologically, intractably fanatical -- but I'll do anything for the sake of a chuckle...) to say this:  The scientist I have been teasing is a friend, and a good one, and I will go on the record under oath to say he's a very nice guy.  He is never rude.  I don't think the man knows the concept of rude. And most of the time I think he is very smart. (I don't hold his Ph.D. against him.)  And most of the time he thinks I'm very smart. However, he and I disagree about the possibility that homeopathy can work. We have just been having a joshfest, and I have an unfair advantage.  I have this very public forum in which I can tease him, and he is just a poor defenseless guy in a lab coat over there, getting tomatoes thrown at him by my readers. I probably owe him lunch now (Cheeseburger in a can's on me!). I warned him about Norma's Army.  He had no idea what was going to hit him, though.  Heh-heh-heh. So please hold the tomatoes for someone or something more worthy.  Like the Quackwatch guy. (Oh, the Google hits now....)

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It's time in the ABC-Along (well, I'm a little bit early, but...) for G, and I have just the thing. 

G is for Gorgeous.

The handcrafted Merlin Tree spindle arrived from David of The Merlin Tree for my blogiversary giveaway. Lucky Angie of PurlingOaks was the winner of this stunning piece of craftsmanship.            

It took my breath away.  It's made of one of my favorite woods -- butternut. (I'll talk some more about me and butternut in a future post.)

I'll just show you a couple more photos of it, as they're worth a thousand words each.

Lucky, lucky Angie.

But wait. 

What's this? 

David put an extra one in the package. I'm just kvelling here, which is really great, because we shiksas love to kvell at every available opportunity.

Now, I could give that one away, also. Well, I'm generous, but not that generous.  This one is mine, all mine!  Call me selfish if you wish.

Thank you a thousand times, David.  They are absolutely stunning.

Now, I know many of you are going to want to have one of these and want to know where you can get one.  I believe that Amy is the lone retailer, so go give her a jingle. I see that she doesn't seem to have any in stock at the moment, but maybe she can set you up. 

85. Gawd, I Love My Gmail and Other Random Wednesday Goodies

The Contractor, The First In A Sticker Shock Series

I love my contractor.  He's a real cutie and what I call a "sleeper."  Deeper than you'd expect upon first meeting.  Several years ago, when he learned that Abigail was in a hoity-toity private high school for the arts, he started talking classical music and creative writing.  I gotta tell ya, there is just nothing that makes the hairs on my arms stand up like a man talking classical music and creative writing while grouting my floor. When he learned she was majoring in philosophy in college, he started talking Nietzsche and Kant.  While fixing the roof. 

*Pant.  Pant.*

So we've got some stuff to do around here, and that's a bit of an understatement.  I met with him last night to talk about some things.  Of course this is no surprise because it goes without saying, but it ain't lookin' pretty for the checkbook, my friends. Stash sale for new roof?  Could be. Anyway, in our conversation I made a discouraged statement about spring, what spring? and he said, "It's coming."  I rolled my eyes.  He said, "I know it, because the calendar says so."

Still as charming as ever.

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Recently Delurked Meets Lurker In The Wild

Good morning.  Ruby told me I should say hello to blogless Michelle in the Caspian Lake area of Vermont.  Michelle approached Ruby somewhere out there in the wilds of Vermont and said, "I read about you in Norma's blog and recognized your work immediately."  Does Michelle know me?  Nope.  Does she know Ruby?  Well, sort of, in a roundabout way.  Does she know Judy?  Nope.  But apparently reads my blog every day. Michelle, put your socks back on, since I imagine I just knocked them off.  Heh.  I live for knocking people's socks off.  Hey, Michelle, have you seen this button before?

 

Well, would it?! And maybe we should all meet up at Sarducci's again sometime soon.

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What'll They Think of Next?

Allow me to exclaim once again how much I love Gmail. Not only does it boast, "You'll never have to delete another email," and it has lots of great features, it gives me links to other things of interest, too. We've already talked at length about the links to wonderful gourmet Spam recipes, and I could go on and on about some of the other interesting things it links me to, but I won't just now.  Today I will talk about only one:

Because of all my comments and emails about my dream of owning a sweet little Airstream trailer, I was linked by Gmail to the best (or worst -- you be the judge) of all links in the whole wide world.

Cheeseburger in a Can.  

*retch*

This gives "I Can Haz Cheezburger?" a whole new meaning. It's the perfect dream gone wrong:  Me on the open road in my little Airstream, and dinner is only a can away.  So then I found a review that is good for some perverse entertainment.

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Picot, Take Two 

"If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style."  ~Quentin Crisp

I decided I didn't really want the tourniquet effect that a snug-fitting inelastic picot edge would give my sock, so I searched around for a ribbed picot.  I didn't find one, but I found the next best thing, a picot cast-on.  It's talked about in a few places, but this is the one I am using, and I think it's turning out beautiful!  It remains to be seen if it works the way I hope it will.  It might be ruffly on the top, and that's ok with me too.

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Them's Fightin' Words

So an anonymous (I'm sure well-meaning but misguided) scientist left this comment the other day:

I'm with your cynical friend. Homeopathy is unadulterated quackery. You believers have heard this before, but why don't you get it? It only "works" because we have the capacity to heal ourselves - it's nothing but the placebo effect. For an explanation, go to "homeopathy" on Wikipedia. If you have followed the logic and are still a believer in this tomfoolery, you will also believe in voodoo.

Posted by: a scientist | Sunday, March 23, 2008 at 07:57 AM

-------------------Another reader left this one:

Dear scientist:
So Frickin' What??  If it works, it works!

Posted by: Not a scientist | Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 12:44 PM

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Heehee.  My sentiments exactly.

And to my "anonymous" scientist, who put "works" in quotation marks, I would direct you to the "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.  As pointed out by "Not a scientist," if it works by the placebo effect, it still works. 

That's what's known as being hoist by your own petard. 

AND, W.T. Fuck do you have against voodoo, anyway???????  And who's this Tom I should be fooling around with?  Is he cute?  Wealthy?  Open-minded?  Can he rebuild my sunroom?

Oh, we do have fun with the verbal jousting, don't we?

I do, at least.

 

 

 

84. Fun While It Lasted

Behold my first picot edge, perfectly executed. 

No, no; hold your applause and your pats on the back for a later time.
 
I had a funny feeling. 

I tried it on. 

Way.
too.
big.

Very pretty Koigu, though, hm?

Ah, well.

Take two?

83. Blogology, Cleaning Ladies, and Onion Soup

Is there a science or art to blogging? 

It's funny, I'm not the first one to have coined the word "blogology," but the blogs that come up first on a Google search for the word look like they've dried up and died. There's nothing recently posted in them.  But I was thinking about this topic the other day and discussing it with some people in some email strings.  It started with something that Erika wrote in one of her posts to the effect of, "You never know when and where and under what circumstances you might end up with an interesting conversation."  She related a story about an electrician coming to her place to do some work, and they ended up in a protracted and interesting conversation about computers. 

I agree, and it happens in my blog, too -- you just never know when something is going to capture the fancy of the readers and start an interesting conversation.  I love my readers -- there are so many surprises that come from them.  And I love the way I can talk about just about anything in my so-called knitting blog (because Lord knows there ain't much knitting around here most days) and out will crop a fabulously interesting conversation or group of comments from some surprise reader, or from one of my regular readers.  I have learned from this to not worry in the least that the little thing I am about to mention is too obscure or too weird or too boring.  I am often reminded of the time a few years ago when I posted a blurry photo of a creature I saw in my garden, with the comment, "This is for all the entomologists who read my blog," thinking that there is no way in hell any entomologists read my blog, and lo and behold, all of a sudden there were a hundred comments that day identifying this weird insect (a hummingbird moth) that I never knew existed (and I dare call myself a country girl!).

And who knew my silly little post about umami would generate so much response and interest? I had people (including Erika mentioned above) writing to me for days saying they were still thinking about it and reading about it and learning about it, and talking about the strangeness of life -- the strangeness that happens when one learns or hears about something for the first time, and then one is "stalked," as KittyMommy put it (I love that), by the new thing -- as in, all of a sudden one hears it or reads it or encounters it at every turn. 

Anyway, speaking of umami, I have recently found myself with an overabundance of onions.  We have fairly recently rehired our long-time cleaning lady (sorry for not using a P.C. term for it -- but that's what she is) after not having her for several years because of the huge tuition bills.  We (meaning I) have missed her terribly.  Well, we're all a bit older now, right?  And so is she.  She now needs a little help to handle this large house and the slobs that we are.  She's been bringing someone else along.  Well, this someone else -- we'll call her LouAnn, because, well, that's her name -- has been giving me fits.  I swear she eats my washcloths, she's stealing my underwear, she's throwing away my food.  In other words, she PUTS STUFF AWAY in extremely illogical places.  I'm going to go CRAZY.

If I weren't so dadgummed THRILLED to have some help, I would complain.  But I'm so freakin' happy to have the dusting and the vacuuming done and the toilets cleaned, I'll live with someone stealing my thongs.  Oh, I don't really think she's stealing them -- she's only placing them in the silverware drawer.  Or the freezer.  Or somewhere deep in a closet that is not MINE.  Who the hell knows.  Things ARE turning up eventually -- the sugar in the underwear drawer and the socks in the spice cabinet, for example -- so I know, and I can't tell you how relieved I am to learn this -- that she's not eating my underwear.  I have no idea what she's done with all the washcloths I used to own, but hell, I'll run to K-Mart and get a dozen rather than complain or try to figure out the method to her madness.  There is no method, I am quite sure, other than "chuck it."  I sort of see her point.

Anyhoo, so I had a big new bag of onions that she hung on the back side of a door. There were no onions where the onions are usually kept, so I ordered David to buy more.  Then I went behind the door to get something else, and sheeit -- I've got onions comin' out of my ears.

So when life hands you onions, you make onionade.  No, wait. I've got that wrong... 

You make French Onion Soup. 

I used this recipe.  It has umami to spare.  I think Escoffier would be proud, although I am not so sure he would have used apple cider, and if I were to make this again, I'm not so sure I would, either. When I did my taste test just before ladling it into the crocks, I felt I had to add a lot more beef broth, which I did. (a total of 32 ounces, which was convenient, since that was the size of the box of organic beef broth I had bought, heh.  Escoffier would not approve of the purchased beef broth. He would have had me killing the cow and roasting its bones and offal over an open fire for three days before I got going on the stock.) 

Anyway, the soup was damn good.  And bonus:  I got to use my vintage '70s onion soup crocks that have been gathering dust for several years. (I washed them first.)

All hail umami!  All hail onions!  All hail blogocity and blogology and weird topics, and all hail freakin' cleaning ladies who chuck stuff in weird places. Hey, I wonder if she put the washcloths in the linen closet....*

Nah, that would be too logical. 

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*I didn't think to look there.  KIDDING!  Although....I'm just thinking psychology here.....maybe if I put them in the sugar bowl, SHE will put them away in the linen closet. 

82. I'm Having My Cake And Eating It Too

Life is all about compromise, right?  So how's this for compromise? I went to the gym, where I had a kickass workout with all the big, tough mixed martial arts/"ultimate fighter" guys (They said they'd missed me and wondered where I'd been for two weeks*), AND I made the cake.  I didn't make P.W.'s cake, though.  I made Marianne's instead, since she was kind enough to send me her recipe in response to my post yesterday.  I hope she doesn't mind me reprinting it here for you, in her own words.

It's got my biggest stamp of approval. Wicked, wicked good and moist and flavorful and light. Total YUM. I figure at least it's got loads of beta carotene from the carrots and omega-3 fatty acids from the walnuts and walnut oil I used, and lots of other good things from the fruit and the eggs, along with all the carbs.  And um... Well, it was worth all those extra lunges and pushups and squats and cardio I did at the gym. And it's Easter.  And I skipped the frosting -- only dusting it with a little powdered sugar to make it pretty. 

And I'll just have a little piece.

Riiiiiiiight.

Marianne's Amazing Carrot Cake

aka Norma's Have-Your-Cake-And-Eat-It-Too

(I made a very few mods, and they are in italics.)

(recipe from her former employer's wife -- how's that for convoluted?)

3 C flour (I used spelt flour)
2 C sugar
2 t cinnamon
1 1/2 t baking soda
1 1/2 t salt
1 t baking powder

whisk and combine these dry ingredients well

You need a can of CRUSHED pineapple, and the original
size of that can has been 'lost' over the years, I
just get a can, the 20 oz size... you want that juice
so get a mesh strainer and place it over a bowl and
dump that pineapple in it and let it sit there for
about 10 minutes so it drains nicely.

now...
3 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 C oil                    { mix these up together
2 t vanilla
the juice from the pineapple

(Norma's note:  I used 4 eggs and 1 1/4 cup oil.)

You'll need 2 C grated carrots
            3/4 C raisins (I use the golden)
            3/4 C chopped walnuts

Mix the wet with the dry, then stir in the pineapple,
carrots, raisins, and walnuts.

Did I get everything?

I've baked this in all sizes of pans, made it layered,
bundt... this makes quite a bit of cake!

350 degrees  I have written down: 2-9 inch pans about
50 minutes... You know enough about pan sizes and
different baking times, this cake takes a bit of time.

Basic yummy cream cheese icing/frosting, I've been
known to add chopped walnuts to it or give it a good
'dusting' with really finely chopped nuts, I'm
thinking I've even thrown in some pineapple a time or
two.

Whap some frosting on that baby and enjoy.

*Should have seen how funny it was, me dodging their gigantic bars with 6 million pounds on them. They're all like, "No, yeah, no problem, you can work out right here in front of me."  I'm like, "No, that's OK, I'll just move over here." And one time one of the guys' clamps gave way and 3 million pounds fell off one side.  I was thankful I was not standing or lying under that at the time, and I told him so. Still, it was challenging and fun. They were not being weird creepy guys. They were just working out very hard, and engaging me respectfully and including me in their workout, encouraging me, and pretending that my little 60 pounds on a bar was on a par with their 6 million.)  I may not be able to move today, but I'm eating my friggin' cake. 

Happy Easter. 

81. How I Know It's Time For Summer

They have been consumed.

I am dying to make this carrot cake for tomorrow's family festivities, and I've been dying for some hamantaschen, too, but I know that multiple family members will already be making too many decadent delights. I have not been to the gym in two weeks, and the bathroom scales have not been my friend lately, so I will refrain.  I will go to the gym today, though. That's a promise.