The Sweatshop of Love Blog

So, World Wide Knit in Public Day? I’m at New Wave, watching it rain, blogging. Seriously bummer, considering two days ago the weather report was calling for a beautiful knitting outside day. But, I’m here, just in case anyone shows up, which I’m doubting. The Logan Square Knitting Meetup is here, knitting away, so I feel good that the community is represented.

And I haven’t had a chance to blog too much this week because of how crappy I’ve felt. Today? Feeling good! This is easily the best I’ve felt in over a week. I worked out yesterday, and last night my body gave out right around 10, which isn’t normal. This morning I got a workout in and am hoping I don’t collapse until I want to. But, I’m so over it. I’m done being sick. So I’m going to act normal and hope my body catches up.

Muffin Club

Friday morning, like last week, PT and I got up early and baked some muffins. I hadn’t been grocery shopping in quite a while, so I really had to scrape the bottom of the barrel with these. I had a can of peaches, no eggs, no brown sugar, and didn’t want to use oil, so basically I mixed together flour, sugar, cinnamon and ginger, a can of peaches with the juice, and apple sauce, and out came these. They were ridiculously heavy, but seriously delicious! I wouldn’t give them to anyone by any means, but with my recipe limitations, I’m pretty proud of these peach muffins.

Lori and Gil showed up! Hurrah! Knitting in Public Day is not a total bust!

Spicy Scallops

Last night’s dinner was almost a total bust. Apparently I can’t be trusted to season anything, because, yet again, I made the sauce for these scallops way too spicy. What is wrong with me? I swear I used like a quarter of a jalapeno! But, I love scallops so much that I sucked it up and ate them.

Velma, Up in my Grill

I got some ice cream to calm down my tongue, and Velma was all over it. She has never been interested in ice cream before, and doesn’t usually care at all about people food, like Pudge Rodreguez, so we had to take a picture. Before I slapped her. ‘Get away from my ice cream, bitch!’

Despite sitting around all day waiting for my special FedEx package to come in, missing my workout, leaving for Sweater Club before it arrived only to come home to it sitting outside my door, delivered at 7:56pm, holy shit am I excited!

FedEx Makes Me Happy

We are entering a new phase at The Sweatshop of Love: actually trying to make money! It is something new and different for me, and, as usual, I have no idea what I’m doing, but I thought buttons would help.

My Knitting Avatar on a Button Should Solve All Problems in Life

Obama is president now because he had buttons that people wore, so if people wear these buttons then I’ll be famous, too!

My Honest to God Reaction to How Cute These Are

Right?

Me Gazing Adoringly

Get one here! Or email me.

To celebrate, PT and I had Muffin Club this morning before heading off to work.

Apple Yogurt Muffins

We haven’t held Muffin Club in about a month because PT’s mom was in town, we went to Michigan, things just kept coming up. We are back with a vengeance, though, and we got up at 6am to bake these Apple Yogurt Muffins and take a sunny stroll along the boulevards to start our day off right.

I’m glad I got out a little, at least, since I’m battling some kind of insane headache/cough/dizzy/body ache/tummy bubble/sore throat thing now.

Sick People Food

I cooked myself up some oatmeal, threw some raisins and cinnamon in it, and ate it with some crunchy peanut butter on my homemade bread. I’m drinking hot tea, and it is 76 degrees. I’m the worse sick person, totally in denial, PT was just yelling at me through gchat to get off the computer and lay down and to most certainly not go work out. I better do that before he jumps through the computer and knocks me out cold so I get some rest.

Buy a button!

Saturday was a big day for The Sweatshop of Love. We celebrated our three year anniversary! It was sunny and warm for the first time all week and I couldn’t have been more excited about it. I frosted the cupcakes, I got my knitting together, I grabbed some books to swap, and then realized there was still four hours until the party started.

Muffin Club

Although the blackberry muffins I just kind of made up the recipe for fell, they were still very delicious, and they were more delicious walking around the boulevards in the sunshine.

I Love Rachel

Something else that tastes good in the sunshine? Sure, I made cupcakes, but my love Rachel made this Sweatshop cake! How cute is that? I promised her I wouldn’t send it into Cake Wrecks, and of course it wouldn’t even make it on Cake Wrecks because it is so beautiful, but it had to go on a blog somewhere. Have I mentioned how much I love Rachel?

Tara, Gil, and Martin

It was breezy, it was warm most of the time, and we all stuffed our faces.

Rachael, Erin, and Colleen

Everyone got some knitting in and some Vitamin D. I’m really excited to get another knitting afternoon together very soon, so keep your eyes on your inbox for Sweatshop newsletters!

For me the fun Saturday didn’t stop there.

Sun Dried Tomato, Artichoke Heart, and Olive Deep Dish Pizza

A couple friends and I got together and between the five of us we threw together a green bean and beet salad and this delicious deep dish pizza (thanks Shawna!).

Today was full of classes! The last Sunday morning Sweater Club class, then I ran home, watched the beginning of the tigers game, then ran to Entrelac Workshop. Whew! All the knitting must have gotten my brain working because DAMN PT and I knocked dinner out of the park tonight.

The Best Fish Tacos EVER

After many many tries, PT and I have finally gotten our recipe for fish tacos down perfectly. Pan fry the fish brushed with a little oil and seasoned with salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Meanwhile, we slice up the avocado and mango. We heat up the taco shells by toast them on the stove top burner. We put down the avocado slices on the shells. When the fish is cooked we flake it and put it on the avocado slices, then put some spicy chunky salsa on the fish and fresh mango on the salsa. Before we eat them we squeeze on a little lime. Holy. Shit. Amazing. But it didn’t end there.

Fried Plantain Split

We pan fried up a plantain in butter, sliced it, and put ice cream on it. It was salty and sweet and SO good! I can’t figure out why this isn’t a thing at every restaurant. Warm and creamy.

‘Do you remember when we made fried plantain splits?’ PT just asked me, three hours after we ate them.

Yes, PT. Oh yes I do.

This weekend was great! Sunny, warm, full of knitting and friends and amazing food. And I’m going to sleep well tonight.

Yes, this is my third blog post of the day. You would think I’m getting paid to blog.

Today for lunch I had a ‘what is about to go bad in my fridge lunch’:

Potatoes, Pinto Beans, Corn, Onions

This mush bowl was actually pretty good. I seasoned it with taco seasoning and mixed in some ketchup. I’m poor, ok? Lay off.

And don’t feel sorry for me! Last night PT and I ate like kings at Buona Terra. Thursday night they have a $22 prix-fixe menu, which to them means any appetizer, entree, and dessert on the menu. We knew it was going to be good when we got the bread.

Garlic Goodness

The bread was served with this garlic, oil, and cheese spread that was out of control! We put it on everything that crossed our plates until they took it away.

Appetizers

We tried to be adventurous, and we also wanted to get way more than our moneys worth. PT got the Carpaccio de Baebadietola, which was thinly sliced beets with arugula and breaded goat cheese, and it was awesome! I got the Zuppa di Cozze, or black mussels in spicy tomato sauce, which was also so good. It was great spreading that garlicky sauce over the extra bread we got with mine, too.

Butternut Squash Ravioli

I ordered the Angelotti Zuca, or the butternut squash ravioli soaking in butter, in a good way. It was a lot of butter, though. The sage was out of control! I ate all the little sprigs.

PT's Seafood Linguine

PT was the real winner, though, ordering one of the specials. Linguine Frutta di Mare, which was delicious pasta with fish, mussels, calamari, and shrimp in garlicky red sauce. I might have eaten more of this than PT did.

PT's Tiramisu

PT loves Tiramisu, and this one was really good. I usually like more cake in my cake, but I had my fair share of this dessert!

Chocolate Pecan Tart

In what the Tiramisu was lacking in density my chocolate pecan tart made up for! The crust was chocolaty and pecany, and the chocolate gouache filling was very creamy and really good.

Overall, Buona Terra treated us right. We would for sure go there again, after May. Because May is going to be a money saving month! No eating out just the two of us, no spending money when it is just the two of us at all. We will only spend money when other people make us. Buona Terra was a great way to kick off the money saving month, though! I miss it already.

Bake A Lotta

This afternoon I baked up some cupcakes for the party tomorrow, and I kind of made blackberry muffins for muffin club this weekend. As you can see those muffins dropped like its hot. I picked at the one on the left and they taste good. So much for thinking I could leave out the eggs!

Summer came to Chicago this weekend and everyone was out celebrating!

Veggie Burger

PT and I started the celebration Friday by making these veggie burgers! They were the best veggie burgers I’ve ever eaten, much less made myself. I get the Self Magazine Recipe of the Week emails, and this was the first recipe I’ve ever tried. If this is any indication, I’ll be trying many more from now on!

PT Was Hungry!

PT loves meat and, as you can see, loved these burgers. He ate two, along with some more brussel sprouts and carrot fries! He was hungry. It was so warm we enjoyed our burgers on the porch, where we were pretty much all weekend.

A couple weeks ago we went to Letizia’s, sat outside, and ate delicious muffins and cups of tea. It cost like $9. We decided that we could replicate that same experience ourselves for a fraction of the price, so I went to Target, bought a huge muffin tin, and we have been making muffins for the weekends ever since. We call it Muffin Club.

Raspberry Muffins at Muffin Club

This week’s muffin? Raspberry, and it was delicious. We take our cups and our muffins and we walk around the neighborhood. It is glorious, especially on a weekend like this one.

Toe Up Sock Number 2

The nice weather and all the partying didn’t allow for much knitting time, however, so I didn’t get too far on my second sock.

My Porch

I didn’t need socks, though! Sitting on the porch this weekend, reading and listening to the tigers win was lovely. I’m sad it is over! Most of my life is a weekend these days, so this is the first Sunday night in a long time I’m sad to see this one go.

We sent it out with a bang, though:

Shrimp Stir Fry Over Brown Rice

PT is thinking about buying a condo, so while out looking around the neighborhood this afternoon we stumbled on a grocery store that had shrimp on sale for $3.99 a pound! So we got some and threw together this amazing shrimp stir fry with broccoli, green onion, green pepper, and carrots with teriyaki stir fry sauce and ginger, served over brown rice. It was out of control.

If the storms hold off tomorrow we will be running down to US Cellular for half price tickets! I’ll be bringing the sock. I want to get a couple pairs done before Sweater Club starts up again on May 28th! Even though I don’t plan on wearing socks again for a long time.