Thing-a-day.com

made over the past few days

I started cutting out pieces for a “Plain Spoken” quilt from the Modern Quilt Workshop. I really like this book, it’s so inspiring. This quilt is going to be a gift to my friend Cara’s almost-born baby boy.  The picture is a little blurry.  But my camera batter was on the way out for the night so, here it is.

I also worked some more on crocheting, but I don’t have any pictures of that. I decided I was finished with the circle-based hyperbolic plane and started one from a straight piece of crocheting. I think I didn’t follow the instructions all the way, or maybe I just need to keep going, because what I have is more of a spiral than a beautiful, undulating hyperbolic surface. I’m going to be trying again in a few days, I have an idea of what to do differently.

As I said a few days ago, I’m learning to crochet so I can crochet the hyperbolic plane. I don’t remember much about what I learned about hyperbolic geometry several years ago in the physical science core class at Oglethorpe, but I remember I liked it. Here’s my first try, I actually made it yesterday. I don’t think it’s exactly hyperbolic, as sometimes I lost my place. But I’m happy with it as a first go.

On Saturday some friends came over and we made Mediterranean food, I made the stuffed grape leaves, inspired by this FFV recipe, but I also made some with ground beef.  The beef grape leaves stuck together better and reheated better.  I think this might be because I used brown rice.  Next time I’m going to try it with white rice and see if it’s not a little stickier.  Overall a very delicious dinner!

Sunday, my  friend Dione came over and we taught each other some crafts.  I showed her how to knit (cast-on and knit stitch only, we’ll save purl stitch and cast-off for next time) and she showed me how to do the chain stitch and single crochet.  It’s interesting how different the two seem to me.  I assumed that since I’ve been knitting for a while, crocheting would be sort of intuitive.  But it doesn’t seem that way at all.

I’m learning to crochet so I can crochet some models of the hyperbolic plane; as I first read of in Cabinet.  I also feel that crochet lends itself to creating cute and ornamental things more than knitting, which seems more suited toward the practical.

Today I revised my resume and wrote a cover letter.  I applied for a new job.  Yea!

So, a few more things for Feb 18 that I can hardly call “things”:

First, I finally finished the triptych of my sister dressing for her wedding. This involved printing yet another 5×7, adjusting the brightness ever so slightly (I did this at FedEx-Kinkos, not in my darkroom). And finally placing it in the frame.

I have obsessively adjusted the pictures so many times the little tabs that hold the back of the frame on all broke this time. But I figured out a way to put it together.

And finally, I was thinking today after buying fresh mint, dill, and parsley (I’m making stuffed grape leaves later in the week): I really like fresh herbs but I don’t like it when they wilt in the refrigerator. A good way to prevent this is to rinse the herbs and wrap them, still damp, in paper towel. But I don’t really like to waste paper toweling, either. So I “made” this:

I use the word “made” very loosely because as you can see all I did was cut some rectangles of washed muslin and wrapped my herbs in them.

I visited Korea at the beginning of the month and had kimbap for the first time. Here’s me making it:

The egg has soy sauce in it and was delicious by itself. Ingredients involved: the egg, cucumber, green onion, radish, steamed spinach, can tuna, carrot. And sushi rice, and kim (nori). The rice I cooked by following the directions on the bag, except I didn’t have time to soak it. I just rinsed well and simmered on the stove. I put a cloth napkin between the pot and the lid to catch excess steam, a trick I learned on the online as I’m not a very good rice cooker. I guess I should really buy a rice cooker. Though I’m wary of kitchen appliances that only do one thing.

Here it is done:

Again I’ve turned to cooking for my things of the day. For dinner, we made pepper crusted fillet minion with horseradish sauce (just horseradish mixed with sour cream), mashed potatoes, and asparagus with lemon and parmesan. It sounds so extravagant to say I ate fillet minion, but considering I only eat steak about twice a year, I don’t feel so bourgeois. For dessert, chocolate pudding from Smitten Kitchen! I seriously seriously love Deb and these recipes. Here’s how it looked:

As for how it tasted, you should really make it yourself, it’s delicious!

Also, the site went down for whatever while I was writing this.  I actually made this on Feb 14.  The site is so slow now I hardly ever want to look at it.  My computer freezes up when I do.  Oh but I should just keep my bad attitude to myself.

Tonight I made lemony lentil soup, adapted from the Blonde Lentil Soup recipe in The Vegetarian Epicure by Anna Thomas. This is pretty much my go-to dinner when I can’t think of anything else, it’s pretty quick, easy, and I usually have the ingredients in the kitchen.

Here’s my version: 1 onion, 3-5 cloves garlic, drizzle of oil, 1-2 lemons, 5 c vegetable broth, 1 c lentils (the yellowish-green kind), zest of 1 lemon, juice of 1-2 lemons, 3 carrots, parsley for garnish

Sauté onion in a little oil (olive, vegetable, butter, whatever) until almost translucent, add minced garlic and cook for a few more minutes. Add lemon zest and cook a minute or two more. (This time i used leeks, and though I really like leeks, I can’t say it made much of a difference.)

Add the vegetable broth and lentils, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer. Simmer about 30 minutes, until lentils are almost done. Add sliced carrot (I like to quarter each carrot slice, so they’re little wedges) and lemon juice to taste. Simmer 10-20 more minutes, until carrot is tender.

Serve with parsley on top, and warm pita bread if you like.

I also made some blue potato potato chips. I’ve had these potatoes for some time now, maybe 2 weeks, and I figured they had probably become too starchy to eat any other way.

I tossed them in olive oil with a little salt and pepper and baked at 500 degrees for 10 minutes. When I went to flip them, I realized some of them were already burned and lowered the heat to around 425. Many of them were burned but the unburned ones were pretty good. Next time I think I’ll try them at 425-450 degrees for the entire time.

So I didn’t even try to do a thing a day while vacationing in Korea. As I originally posted, I did make a little picture using a graph paper index card and markers. You can see it here, it’s nothing much.

To make up for my poor participation, I plan on trying to do 2 things a day for a couple of weeks!

For today, I’m making some foods, it’s almost ready so I’ll be posting them soon!

Well I’m traveling for the first ten days of February, so maybe this wasn’t the best timing for me, but I’m going to try to do something every day, even though I might not be able to post it. Today I’ve colored in some squres on graph paper but can’t get the picture uploaded, I think the internet connection here is just very slow. Coloring in graph paper squares seems to be a way of following some unstated directions given by the paper itself. I would elaborate but I’m still very jet-lagged. I’ll try to get you the picture soon!