2013 - Week 4

Well, hello, and welcome to Week 4 :) How has your year been going so far? Here is how my week went:

To start out with, my dream journal has not been going so well this week, not because I've forgotten to write things down, but because I haven't had any long, fun dreams. Most of them have just been short snippets or a theme of the dream, and usually they just relate to the movie or TV show that we happened to watch that night. Nothing too fun or exciting.

My daily journal and nightly Bible reading has been going very well though. I can't wait to have multiple years written in the journal and be able to look back on what I did each year on that date . . . I think that will be fun. I bought a little 200 page (400 side) notebook and at the top of each page I've written the date and then along the left column, I'm writing the year and then just a short blurb about something that happened that day, usually whatever was most notable  or my favorite thing. (I was going to use a page-a-day calendar, but the notebook was cheaper). Then next year, I'll go through the same notebook again and continue for how ever many years my little pages last :) Fun huh?

As for my five hours of task, I went rock climbing two days and made up the rest of my time organizing my recipes. I am slowly but surely making my way through the giant pile of cooking/recipe magazines that I have accumulated on my side table. I think I'm going to need some more page protectors though, my binder is getting rather full. At least I won't be at a loss for recipes any time in the near future :) The rock climbing is going pretty well too. I have conquered all of the V0 routes, and almost all of the V1s. The biggest accomplishment though was completing a V2 on the free-standing boulder on the first try. I think those routes tend to be a little harder, so I was very proud of myself :) My one-month climbing pass will be over before I know it unfortunately, but it has been nice to get back in the gym again.

Since I've been going through so many recipes lately, my new thing for the week was a new casserole, well two new casseroles actually, because I was afraid one might not be good and as I was taking them to a friends house, I wanted to make sure we had something to eat for dinner :) I tried to pick recipes that I already had the ingredients for, so all I needed to buy were some frozen veggies and a can of cream of chicken soup. The two recipes I picked were: Updated Shepherd's Pie and Cranberry-Orange Chicken Bake (thank goodness for online recipes . . . I was not looking forward to typing those all out :)). The Cranberry-Orange chicken was my first pick, but that's the one I was worried about being weird, so I made the Shepherd's Pie as well. Since I was testing out the recipes, I tried to stick as close to them as possible which was really difficult when there were no onions or spices in either recipe (gasp), and who measures cheese? ;) I did have to add a little bit of salt and pepper to the mashed potatoes on top of the Shepherd's Pie . . . I just couldn't bring myself to make mashed potatoes without salt and pepper.

While I'm learning new things this year, I thought I would take this opportunity to try and teach you something new as well. Okay, so maybe it's not really new, it's basically just common sense, but did you know the term for it . . . mise en place? Mise en place is a French phrase that refers to having everything in place before you start, especially concerning cooking and baking. I find it much more useful in baking and felt it actually kind of got in the way of my cooking, but it's a good habit to get into for a couple of reasons. 1) It ensures that you have all the ingredients and utensils you need before you get halfway through the recipe and realize you are missing a key ingredient and the pan you need is holding leftovers in the fridge, and 2) Once you get cooking/baking, it's amazing how quickly it goes when you have everything prepared like this . . . it makes me feel like I'm on a cooking show :)

All of my ingredients out and ready . . . mise en place? I don't think so.

That is my general set up for cooking . . . I get all of my ingredients out, but they are definitely not ready to go into the dish.

Now that's mise en place, or at least very close to it

A better mise en place set up . . . almost everything is thawed, rinsed, chopped, measured and I have my utensils ready over near the stove. I find that I can never trust the time on a recipe because they tend to ignore the time it takes to get from picture one to picture two, and that's where most of my time goes it seems. However, once I got this all ready, I think the recipe making was pretty true to how long it said it would take. Try this method next time you cook or bake (like I said, it is especially helpful in baking where exact measurement are more important than in cooking where sometimes it's easier to just eyeball the measurements and save yourself the pain of washing the measuring spoons and cups).

Almost done (just needed the oven baking)

I baked these at my friend's house, and we were so hungry that I forgot to take a picture of them after they were baked, but they didn't look too different, and looked very close to the pictures in the recipes. I was pleasantly surprised that they were both edible and pretty tasty although the Shepherd's Pie could definitely have used the onions and extra seasonings. The stuffing mix in the Cranberry-Orange recipe had enough seasonings to make it pretty tasty. Once the mise en place was done too, these recipes came together so quickly and easily I felt kind of down-hearted about how much time I sometimes spend making fancy meals . . . oh well :) One more week of 2013 has flown by . . . talk to you all again next week :)

2013 - Week 3

I think he is happy with his new scarf :) 

I finished my scarf :) :) :) That is really the big news for this week. I worked on it for a long time on Sunday, and didn't stop until I was finished. Then I gave it to my husband (his belated Christmas present) . . . I think he is pleased with it :) It's huge . . . it ended up being 7 feet 8 inches long by 8 inches wide. I really enjoyed knitting it, and I can't wait until I finish all of my other projects so I can start a new knitting project . . . I think I have two more picked out already :) I am just amazed that I made it through that whole pattern without dropping a single stitch, or having it end up all different widths . . . it is actually pretty even throughout, I love it, and I think he does too :)

Seven feet eight inches long, by eight inches wide

I put the CD next to it for a size comparison

All that was left of my 2 skeins of yarn

A closeup of the texture

If you are interested in recreating this scarf, here is the pattern that I started with: RedHeart Basketweave Scarf. Then I changed it a bit . . . I didn't think that twenty stitches was wide enough, so I doubled it to 40. I did four rows of knitting and then began the pattern. It went something like this:

Row 1: K2 (K4P4)x4 K6 

Row 2: K2 (P4K4)x4 P4 K2

Rows 3-6: Repeat Rows 1 and 2 alternately

Rows 7-12: Repeat Rows 1 and 2 alternately, starting with Row 2. 

Continue alternating Rows 1-6 and Rows 7-12 blocks until the scarf is long enough for you. 

(I've never written a knitting pattern before, so I'm sorry if this is confusing. Please correct my format if it is wrong and feel free to comment if you have any questions about it). 

At the end I finished up with four more rows of knitting and then did a simple bind off, tucked in the ends, and voila, it was done :) 

So that's that . . . as for everything else (dream journal, Bible reading, daily highlight journal), that's all going well too. Since my scarf didn't take me five hours to finish this week, I have incorporated my weekly exercise into my weekly task. As if I didn't get enough of it during Rock Climbing Month last year, I am back at it. I got another month-long membership and went three times this week. I'm a bit out of climbing shape, and I was a little discouraged when the V1s weren't as easy as they were a year ago, but I'm getting back into it. I think I've gotten all the V0s already, and most of the V1s. Since I'm not going to be going every day this month, I doubt I'll get in as good of shape as last year, but it is fun to get back in the gym. Maybe this year I can convince some friends to go with me :)

For my new thing this week, I learned how to make danishes. I've had this recipe bookmarked in my Betty Crocker cookbook for years and never got around to it (mostly because it requires an overnight rest period), but I think it turned out pretty well . . . not that I didn't have my scares during the process ;) 

My first scare

 After I "cut in" the butter, I was expecting it to look like a strudel topping, which it definitely didn't, and then after I added the milk and egg yolks, it was much more runny and clumpy (from the cold bits of butter) than the smooth bread dough that I'm used to.

Filled in with jam

 I went forward with them anyways and even used a good amount of my homemade black raspberry jam (thanks again to my friend who let us pick tons of his black raspberries and blackberries last summer) to fill in the ends. They took much longer to rise than I thought they should have, but again, I just hoped for the best (while not expecting much).

The finished product

Surprise, surprise . . . they actually turned out pretty good :) The hard, lumpy butter turned into a really nice, croissant-like dough and the jam was really tasty. It was a learning experience, that's for sure, but I think they were a success.

In other news, after ten years, I finally decided to update my iPod (since I couldn't load any new music on my old one because it ran on firewire cable). Kind of fun how technology has evolved in ten years huh? (Thanks Mom and Dad for the Christmas present ;))

I decided it was time to update my iPod :) 

What have you been up to this week? Did you learn anything new? 

2013 - Week 2

Well, here is my weekly update for Week 2:

Unfortunately, I did not finish my scarf, but I am getting close. I did keep up with my at least five hours of project work (knitting) and I did two hours of exercise to make up for not doing any during week one. My Wii fit experience was rather funny actually. It seems it had been 1020 days since my last time playing it . . . oops. It was good to get back into it again I think. I kept up my dream journal, daily event tracking, and my Bible reading as well. I am enjoying the chronological, archaeological Bible reading that we are doing. We read part of Genesis and now we are reading through Job . . . it's going well so far.

As for my new thing this week, I tried my hand at making chicken-fried steak. I have never had this and enjoyed it before (because I'd always had it in a cafeteria setting), so I was a little hesitant to try it. However, I saw a recipe for it using corn flakes in the latest Food Network magazine, so I thought I'd give it a go (Chicken-Fried Steak). It was actually pretty good . . . I liked the steak and the breading, but it was a little too salty, and I would have liked a bit more gravy. I didn't make the whole seasoning mix the recipe calls for, but scaled it back by ratio to account for the amount needed in the recipe (1 1/3 tsp. salt, 1/3 tsp. pepper, 1/3 tsp. garlic powder . . . I know, I don't have a 1/3 tsp. measuring spoon either, I just eyeballed it using a 1/2 tsp. one). I think in the future, I would use 3/4 tsp. salt, 1/4 tsp. pepper, 1/4. garlic powder, and double the gravy recipe. Other than that though, everything else in this recipe was very exact and the meat cooked well.

Chicken-fried steak with cream gravy

In other news . . . remember the Peanut Butter Cup Cake that I made last February? It looked amazing, but I was so disappointed with the cake and frosting themselves. So, for a friend's birthday, I decided to try and redeem myself using my favorite chocolate cake and frosting recipes, but turning the frosting into a peanut butter version of Swiss meringue buttercream. This was the result, and oh was it tasty :)

Here are the links to the recipes that I used, in case you want to recreate this masterpiece (which I believe weighed about seven pounds :)) - Sandy's Chocolate Cake, Frosting (I cut the recipe in half and added a bit less than one cup of peanut butter I think), and this is the design inspiration (originally from Annie's Eats, a blog I enjoy, but she doesn't have it posted anymore) Peanut Butter Cup Cake image. It even looked good on the inside, always a plus. I think everyone enjoyed it, including the birthday boy. 

I hope you all had a great week, stay tuned to see what next week brings :) Can I finish my scarf before my library books are due???

2013 - Week 1

So my first week of the new 2013 is over, and what have I done? Well, after 365 days of non-stop working, on January first, I rested. Not that I wasn't busy, I just didn't do any specific tasks. Since then, I have kept up on recording my dreams every morning, memorable moment of the day every night, and Bible reading (at least one chapter per night) successfully. Since it was only a four day week, I "pro-rated" the task and exercise, so I did four hours of knitting (instead of five) and skipped the exercise (however, I will do an extra hour next week to make up for it). The knitting is going very well, the scarf is now 5'8" long, and growing :) It's still looking good as far as being even and not dropping any stitches. I'm going to try and get to the end of the second skein by the 16th (my knitting book is due back at the library on the 17th and I need to know how to finish it off, so the pressure is on), so I will need to really do a lot of knitting in the next few days. As for my "something new" for the week, it was a new recipe, as promised. I got some truffle oil for Christmas, so I made truffle fries (which were not as crispy or "truffle-y" as I was hoping for) and also tried a new recipe for pretzel buns (these turned out very good). My husband grilled some pineapple and turkey burgers and I made homemade honey mustard sauce (not bad, despite being made of things that I don't like) to create this lovely meal:

Yum :)

How has your first week been? Stay tuned for more goings-on next week :)

Welcome to 2013

Hi again everyone, and Happy New Year :) I hope you all enjoyed my 2012 posts and I'm hoping you're still looking for more fun challenges. I will try not to disappoint you, although the set up for this year will be a bit easier on me and not quite as challenging.

Here is the plan:

Essentially, I am looking to complete the challenges that I began in 2012 but never finished. These include: knitting a scarf for my husband, making a scrapbook, and finishing my children's book. Additional tasks will be added such as: continuing to work on my Duolingo (Spanish), new knitting projects, organizing/cleaning up my iTunes library, and organizing my myriad of recipes. To accomplish all of these tasks, I'm setting aside at least five hours a week to devote to a task. This format gives me much more flexibility for which days I need to work on my tasks and if I'm sick, or really busy one day, I can have a much needed rest day (that I never had last year). Each task will be worked on until it is completed, but I am allowed to switch if I really need to.

Also, there are smaller tasks that I will be doing every day for the whole year (and you'll have to keep me accountable to these all year long . . . I hope I can keep something up for that long). These include: reading at least one chapter of the Bible every day, recording my dreams from the previous night in a dream journal, writing down a short summary (or the most memorable thing that happened that day) every night, trying at least one new thing per week (this will probably be in the form of trying a new recipe though ;)), and exercising at least once a week. My job is more sedentary now and if I don't force myself to do it with this, I will probably get really out of shape (or just become a slightly more squishy shape ;)).
So, that's the plan. My husband has agreed to join me this year, but his tasks include: practicing guitar, working on house designs, writing a novel, starting Duolingo, exercising, and others yet to be determined. I'm pretty excited about this plan, and looking forward to a productive, but hopefully less stressful year.

Anyone else want to join in the challenge? I would love to hear about things you'll be working on. Regardless of what you are up to, have a safe and blessed new year, and I'll keep you updated (probably about once a week) on how all of my tasks are going :)