The Sweatshop of Love Blog

Slouchy Beret, Try #2

Words can not describe how happy I am to be finished knitting this hat.

It probably has some ill will knit into it, along with the few kitty hairs, but it is done and cute, if I do say so myself.

It took three whole days to dry without the help of the radiator. I kept this little guy very far away from any heat after the disaster last time.

But, it is in the mail to Heather, completing my blog giveaway knitting and my holiday knitting at the same time!

No Burning!

I’m not frantically knitting at all hours of the night to finish anything. So, August 1st is a completely acceptable time to start your holiday knitting.

Maybe it is because all the snow that fell in Chicago last week has melted, and it is about 40 degrees out, but I am not reveling in this accomplishment because I don’t feel like Christmas is next week. I’m sitting about 2 feet away from my Christmas tree, sure, but that is the only evidence I’ve got that Christmas is looming.

Cookies!

Not even the baking I’m doing is triggering Christmasy feelings, since I kind of bake a lot.

Cookie Logs

You know when you see a recipe that combines two things you don’t think should go together, dismiss, but then can’t get out of your mind?

Ok, yes, that sounds a little extreme. But if I said that about a pair of shoes it might not sound so wacky. And cookie baking is a much less expensive thing to get obsessive about.

Ready to Bake!

I saw the recipe for Earl Grey Cookies on Food Loves Writing and Kate in the Kitchen before I was sold. I love cookies. I love Earl Grey. But together?

Together they work. These cookies are light and buttery. I followed the recipe almost exactly, too, which never happens. I traded oranges for tangerines, and I wish I would have given it a squeeze into the batter before I ate it because a little more citrus would be welcome.

Roasted Eggplant Pasta

I love to eat them after meals like this; roasted eggplant, broccoli, and carrot pasta with white wine sauce and Parmesan cheese.

Roast the veggies in the oven at 350 for 20 minutes, meanwhile cook the pasta as directed, heat garlic and seasonings in oil, add white wine, add drained pasta and veggies, toss. Cover in cheese. Eat.

How fancy do I sound? Following up a meal like that with Earl Grey cookies. This is one fancy girl over here. One with no more presents to knit and a whole house full of yarn.

Look out.

PT had to work all weekend; luckily he could work from home, in front of football, but still. He spent the entire weekend in front of his computer, doing fancy TV producer work. In order to make that less sucky, I had a food plan.

Lentil Sloppy Joes!

It Tastes as Good as It Looks

A food plan that started with Lentil Sloppy Joes! I saw this recipe at No Meat Athlete. He’s got a lot of great vegetarian recipes that he tries and works through on his site, and this one had been on my radar for a while. The recipe, lovingly called Snobby Joes, is really easy and I basically just emptied my pantry into my wok. Some peppers, onions, lentils and spices! They were amazing! PT had two of them for lunch and another for dinner. I thought they were really flavorful; it’s easy to kick up the spices to make them spicier, or tone it down, and it can sit on your stove top all day for repeat visits.

Pizzas for Football Sunday

Pizza Goodness!

A pretty standard meal on Sundays are these little homemade pizzas. Maybe standard isn’t the right word, because it implies a fall back. Our homemade pizzas are so delicious! Homemade crust, homemade sauce, caramelized onions, pineapple, roasted red peppers (and olives for PT) with a sprinkle of Parmesan! I still think we should go into business.

Baking Up A Storm

I went into crazed baking mode last night! I got an extra little gig helping organize the office of a restaurant in Wicker Park (oh the life of a freelance knitting teacher?) and I got home and decided I needed to make two batches of granola bars, more Tigers Suck Cookies (even though they had an off day yesterday! They kinda sucked it up this weekend), a loaf of pumpernickel bread, and zucchini pancakes!

Holy Baker!

I saw the zucchini pancake recipe at Sarah’s blog, and I’m so glad I did! I didn’t have the crystallized ginger, and I only used about a half a cup of olive oil and moistened it up a little more with some water, and these were so great!

Potatoes and Zucchini Pancakes

They were so much sweeter than I expected them to be, being made of zucchini. But just like zucchini cakes or muffins, I don’t really know what the zucchini adds other than an excuse to eat more of them! Because it’s VEGETABLES!

And now I don’t have to bake again for the rest of my life. I’ve got cookies and granola bars enough to last me a while! I love that feeling.

The stupid Tigers have been in first place since May 10th, but that really doesn’t mean they are a good team. That just means they are slightly less sucky than the rest of the teams in their division.

They have been playing AWFUL for the past week and a half, after sweeping the Rays IN FLORIDA two weekends ago, tricking me into thinking they might be a good team. No. Oh no. They are just trickers. Because they have dropped SEVEN OF THE LAST TEN games. And just because they are doing slightly better than the Twins and White Sox still, despite all that losing, doesn’t mean they are a good team.

So after the Tigers gave up 5 runs in 3 innings and having this conversation with PT:

Ingredients!

Ingrediants

COOOOOkies

The Tigers lost 9-2, but I ate 4 cookies so I don’t feel as bad. We are playing the Twins this weekend, but at least I’ve already given up on life so I don’t have to get mad at PT about it.

I’ve taken a couple anti-technology days this week. It is nice out, I’ve had this eye strain related head ache for a few days, and some boy issues. I added all that up and it equalled outdoor trash reading. I finished I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti by Giulia Melucci in three days, which helped. It was silly and all about how retarded boys are, with recipes, which helped. But now I’m back and I’ve got a plethora of food pictures.

So we are going to do this quick and dirty:

Homemade Personal Pizza

Earlier in the week PT and I made homemade pizzas. We haven’t done that in a really long time and I have no idea why. We should be eating pizza every day, these pizzas are so good.

Seriously? Seriously.

Mine was pineapple, caramelized onion, and roasted red pepper with fresh parmesan. PT’s was the same, plus olives, of course.

Pumpkin Cookies

I’ve been craving cookies but didn’t feel like making any, so I made cake cookies and mini cupcakes using a pumpkin cake mix. I spiced them up a little and baked them up, but I  need some big chocolate chip cookies something fierce. I’ll have to take care of that, and soon.

Grapefruit, Shrimp, and Avocado Salad

We have been looking for ways to eat everything in our produce box, so PT found a recipe that used the greens and grapefruit in this amazing salad. It had a light citrus/mustard vinaigrette on top! Very good. And the grapefruit was outstanding.

The Diakon

And speaking of the produce box, I tackled the diakon Friday. It looks a lot like a huge white carrot and tastes really peppery, slightly milder than a regular red radish, but, obviously, much larger.

Potato Stir Fry

I thought I would potato stir fry it up, with potatoes, carrots, and onions.

Outdoor Stir Fry

I finished it with broccoli, snap peas (from the produce box), and corn. Throw a little ketchup on that and eat it outside? The perfect summer meal.

Drool

And then there was the banana. I knew exactly what to do with this beauty. But not before I peeled it slowly, smelling it, caressing it. Loving it like my own child I was about to eat.

Oats and Toast, Banana Style

The exaggeration thing I do is going to get in the way again from expressing how I actually feel, but this was the best breakfast I’ve had in a really, really long time. I chopped up half that banana and put it in my oats with a nectarine from the produce box. Also in the mix? Honey nut Scooters (Malt-O-Meal Cheerios), raisins, and a sprinkle of cinnamon. The rest of that banana went with peanut butter on my toast.

If for some reason I wanted my final meal to be nutritional (I always answer that question with a very particular brownie sundae I’ll most likely describe to you in full someday), it would be this meal. Banana? Let me count the ways.

French Toast with Raspberries

This morning I cooked up some french toast, and sprinkled some raspberries on top. Simple and delicious and the perfect Sunday morning breakfast.

So, technology, thanks for the break. I appreciated it. Now to get to my inbox.

So the pizza?

Pre-Oven

PT and I should be hired by a very rich man to make him pizzas every day, and he will pay us thousands of dollars, because we have got this pizza making thing down. This is our caramelized onion, mushroom, radish, green garlic, sun dried tomato with goat cheese pizza.

Post-Oven

We haven’t made pizza in a while so maybe the novelty made it extra good, but damn. Damn this was out of control. No pizza should be made without caramelized onion.

Cookies!

I was inspired to bake up some cookies after Lori spoiled us on Saturday with her amazing cookies. I wanted chocolate chip, raisin and oatmeal cookies real bad, but I had no brown sugar and didn’t want to use eggs, oil, or a lot of butter. So I threw together some apple sauce, one (instead of the two the recipe called for) stick of butter, molasses, vanilla, oatmeal, chocolate and peanut butter chips, raisins, and regular sugar. I was feeling cocky after those peach muffins turned out so well without following the recipe remotely, so I sprinkled some sea salt on the top and in the oven they went.

Cookies Cooling

These cookies turned out so well! I wish I would have written down what exactly I did, because I want to make these cookies every time cookies are called for. And with half the butter and no eggs I’m doing myself a favor. I’ll eat them all regardless, so they might as well be as good for me as possible.

I kind of hate baking cookies. Like how I used my mini muffin tin for most of them? This recipe should have made like three dozen cookies or some crap. I think I got 30. I make them as big as humanly acceptable because I don’t want to be sitting in the kitchen for three hours making tiny cookie after tiny cookie, sheet after sheet. So I try to get them all out of the way in one go. And the less time I have to eat all the dough the better.