That is news enough for me today. Spring is officially here, even if it is supposed to snow tonight.

We are preparing to go sing right now, and then we sing again tomorrow. My voice is doing very well after so much illness, I am delighted. There is nothing like singing when the whole body supports the sound!

I have lots and lots of photos taken but none processed for web yet. One is an 8-year-old boy wearing a hat he knit… in the round, on circular needles and then Double-Pointed Needles. Very Cool! I also have photos from Carla for the create-spring-into-existence project.
Photos soon, I hope. Until then, maybe I will see a few of you at our concerts.

I read on Cosmic Pluto’s weblog about her making her own Indian food, Mattar Paneer. She shared the recipe for making this Indian cheese (it does not melt and is not aged/fermented, a very unusual food). I have not had any aged/fermented foods or yeast/mold category foods since 1991, and thought all cheeses were on the “no-no” list. Imagine my surprise when I heard you could make the cheese and eat it less than an hour later. No aging!

For several years I avoided dairy foods but luckily that rest did my system well and now I can have dairy if it is not aged (I miss my yogurt but I have not missed standard “sour” cheeses at all). Ice cream is a real treat, though it is hard to find it without raw egg as an emulsifier, even in a health food store. Luckily I have found one brand I can get locally and that has been a wonderful delight in the last several months. But I digress.

I love Indian food. When I travel, I seek out Indian restaurants. Even better, I have had several friends, co-workers, students over the years who were from India, and thus I have been gifted with foods from folks’ kitchens, the best ever.

I bought an intro-to-Indian-food cookbook over a year ago but never made anything from it. After I had that week where I could barely drink tea in early February, the first thing I craved when I wanted to eat again, was Indian food. And just a few weeks later, Cosmic Pluto posted the recipe she got from a friend who is Indian. Score!

I went to the Health Food store and got some whole milk. It can’t be ultra-pasteurized to make cheese, but I got some that was regular health-level pasteurized only, and it was even the kind where you have to shake it because the fat rises to the top (not homogenized).

And I made Paneer, and it was pretty darned simple to do. Then I made the vegetable base, Mattar Paneer (green peas in a spiced tomato sauce with chunks of paneer in it) from Cosmic Pluto’s recipe. She had made the recipe more simple than her friend’s version… but since I do not like fussing in the kitchen I sped it up even more. And it was really good, and it made me VERY happy.

You may have to look for the cheese in this photo. Since it does not melt and is white, it may look like pieces of tofu in the sauce there. I think firm tofu may substitute, but the cheese was a real treat for me. I put the sauce on quinoa rather than rice, and we garnished the dish with chopped cilantro. Any fresh herb you enjoy would garnish well, I would imagine. The fresh leaves on top of the smooth and spicy sauce were a great balance.

I found Gretchen’s Kitchen while looking for a recipe for an Indian bread. I found many other recipes, not only Indian in origin, but other locales throughout the world.

The photos (when there are some) are not over-fancy. They do not “style” the foods, they just take photos and then eat (as I do, when I share a recipe with you).

I am eager to try the spicy kohlrabi and a few of the Indian flat breads. Perhaps you will find a recipe that sounds good to you, as well.

Finally, a food/health website that focuses on the positive! I found myself yesterday at World’s Healthiest Foods. They have a List of over 100 Nutrient-Rich Foods, which I checked out for a while. Each food has so much information that it takes a long while to get through it all, so I did not get too far. However, I’m excited to add blackstrap molasses to my diet as one iron-rich food, not in a pill. I do not eat red meat/mammals so I need to pay attention to iron more than most.

There is also a recipe page. I did not even get to that page. However, I know you guys always appreciate links to recipe sites. So go to it!

I am really happy about the positive nature of this site. Yes, they do sell a book, so they can make some profit from it. But I’m telling you, the information this site holds is vast and you can use it without buying anything.

They have a page explaining who they are and how they got into this in the first place. I like what they say here (this is only one sentence from the middle of a long page):

Our Focus
Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine said, “Let your food be your medicine, and your medicine be your food.”

And with that, I’m off to teach and ship a few orders. The ZigBagZ patterns are coming right along… Wednesday is still the goal for shipping those out. It looks good, and I’m so glad to be on this portion of the journey!

Well, I read a lot about cooking. I don’t always do what I read but I find it fascinating. I’ve always found eggplant yummy at a restaurant but not in my kitchen. I just have not yet figured it out.

And then I found this. How to Fry Eggplants like a Sicilian Mama, at FXCuisine. It is interesting. I am not sure I want to fry anything in a lot of oil, but now I know some things I did not know before. You might find it interesting, too. There are many good photos and not a lot of extra talk. A very good food page.

I need your help. You see, I have been in bed since two Mondays ago. I am tired of being tired. My fever is gone, I am officially not contagious, and yet I can hardly stay awake in the middle of the day. Every day is wake up, rest, nap, wake up, eat, sleep again.

I have no energy. Standing upright is a tippy prospect, I need to be where I can hold on to a wall. For those of you who know me, this is just not Lynn. And no, it’s not mono. been there already, thank goodness it can not repeat.

Brian was funny today. As a background note, I once knew a cat named Amanda who acted like she owned the world… Queen, not pet. She would sit there looking superior, and the family she lived with developed this funny joke (to them) where they would turn to Amanda and say: “Poof! You’re a cat!” And she’d look around like something unpleasant had happened, not liking the change in energy.

So I tend to say “Poof! You’re a cat!” Or “Poof, you’re a ________!” When I need a change in perspective. I find it quite amusing, in any case.

So today Brian sat in his chair and said, “Poof, you’re LynnH!” Because, boy oh boy have I not been my normal high-energy LynnH self lately. I wish his magic had worked. In time I am sure, but not as quickly as we might have hoped.

I realize that the first line of defense is good rest, and that I have done. I can’t take standard vitamins because of all the allergies I fight, though I have an iron pill I can take every couple of days if I have a tummy full of food to avoid a stomach ache from it. I know that the standard advice would be to eat beef or some sort of mammal product but that just does not work for me, though chicken remains in my arsenal for the time being.

So tonight I am planning to make some chicken broth into something or another. I will take “Emergen-C” powder to get a few vitamins in me. I ate something like a third of a cabbage (stir fried) which was tasty but not exactly an energy factory. It took me till dinnertime to get out of bed, to even make that. Thank goodness I had some soy tapioca pudding already made which I could eat until I got today’s energy together.

Any advice for me? What do you do when you need energy and it is not coming from within? Please pile that comment bin full of options. I will not be able to take all the suggestions because of my fussy food allergy situation, but if I do not use the advice, perhaps another commenter might learn from it.

I want to be LynnH again. This lump I have turned into is a boring gal. Please help.

(Oh… gratitude: my car started today after sitting still for more than a week of very cold weather. I did not go anywhere but that was gift enough.)

What I Haven’t Done Yet

I’m the first one to admit I could benefit from a little meditation or slowing down. It seems that everyone around me is finding some way to calm their inner selves with Yoga, some other Meditation, Chi Gong, Nia, Tai Chi, whatever. So far I just can not go there.

(Well, Brian is already calm, he needs none of this. He won’t understand why I needed to write a whole column about it… which is why he is so perfect for me. Not sure why I’m perfect for him, but I’m glad, anyway.)

I tried one yoga session one time, and I wanted to run away half way through the class. However, I’d come with a friend who was a regular attendee and I had to stick it out. That instructor was big into “feel your muscles” and I was not interested in that sort of awareness.

The closest thing I’ve ever found to yoga was adult ballet class, when I was lucky enough to take it from Diane Newman (Director of Happendance Troupe and School). I found that when I had inner conflict, I found it very hard to balance my physical body. I had immediate information about my psyche when I stepped away from that barre.

Luckily for me, Diane allowed for the adult class to be less strict than a normal ballet class, and when I’d fall over and laugh out loud, she didn’t flinch. In fact, she’d tell me how beautiful my foot was. She would find the one thing I had done right and make sure I knew about it. What a loving person she is, and it shone through in class.

What I Do

So in order to get in touch with my physical self, I now study mideastern dance (AKA belly dance) and rehearse with the girls. With lots of music and other women around me to distract me from the effort it takes.

I have never been strong physically and pushing my muscles hard is not pleasant, no matter how much others might like working out until they can’t push further. (Photo is me dancing as Eudora, at New Aladdins Restaurant just Friday. A blur, my camera does that, but it’s sort of wonderful to show the movement here.)

I do love to walk, but I admit that this is also an activity with distractions. I love the distractions. Especially when the grass is green and there are flowers of any sort, I walk the neighborhood and observe gardens as they change through the months.

I find it hard to walk when there is snow on the ground, though. I don’t like cold any more than feeling my muscles.

A Stitch/A Mantra?

Knitting has a repetition I adore and which makes it somewhat akin to some sorts of meditation. However, I am all about knitting in circles around and around, knit knit knit without any pattern or counting at all. And I can do that without looking at my hands.

So I read blogs while I knit socks in circles. It’s good for getting the fidgety nerves out of my fingers, so to speak, but it’s not about paying attention or anything.

The Real Practice in My Real Life

So Saturday night I made tapioca pudding. This is a real treat for me, something I truly enjoy as comfort food and have absolutely no allergy problems with. Currently, I make mine with soy milk, brown sugar, tapioca and a tiny bit of butter or ghee (there is nothing like dairy fat to satisfy, I must admit). Not even vanilla most of the time, just four ingredients. (I published a partial-coconut-milk tapioca recipe here once. It’s reeeeally good. Doc says no more coconut, so it’s your recipe now.)

But tapioca pudding requires stirring pretty much constantly until it boils, slowly. It is very hard for me to accomplish. In fact, I must admit that one day I burned two batches. Two. Sigh…

Striving for Serenity/Grasping Straws

Saturday I had to dive in and use Adobe InDesign. I worked on it one other long day, and that is it. I must say it is so unlike anything I have ever done before that I am really struggling. I cried at one point (drama queen that I am) but recovered and pressed on.

Maybe it is harder for me, because I am an expert at Microsoft Word, I’m very good at PowerPoint and Excel, I’ve done web page design since 1996, have done programming in dBase III+ and DOS and MS Access. I am used to being the expert. None of these programs are anything like a layout program. It’s start from scratch time.

I have tried to “grok” three different page layout programs over the years, even sat in on classes and it didn’t sink in. Others say how logical these programs are. So far they have not made much sense to me. Why they exist, I totally understand. how to use them, not so much.

I’m grateful for my friend Deb who uses this program a lot (to lay out whole books, not just patterns). She surely has discovered things about it the hard way, many things I will never need to know. Or so I think today. She at least explained a few things to me this weekend while I was whining and whimpering. I’d do drama queen, she’d do resource librarian. Just the facts, ma’am. Exactly what I needed.

I took a class in how to use the program, back in October. I remember a few things from that class, and I do have the book we used as a reference which has been quite helpful. Today I did something I learned in class, and my computer flipped out. It flashed and blinked and in the end went almost entirely gray with a few words still left on the screen.

Somehow I lucked out and it did not stop running. I gave it about 5 minutes, then waved my mouse across the gray screen, and as I did the words under the mouse started to appear. I clicked Cancel in a dialog box and got everything back. Whew. But as Brian says, I was sort of in a dangerous energy or something.

Stirring is a Mantra…Maybe?

I didn’t feed myself enough because I was focusing on other things. So I realized after dinner that a little comfort food dessert would be a very good thing. I wondered… do I dare to make tapioca pudding? The closest thing to focus, to meditation, to yoga that I ever accomplish? On a good day, anyway.

I took the challenge. And I stood there and stirred and stirred, and watched that pudding. I talked to it, told it “nice baby” and all those things you say to a child or a kitten, or an unsteady car. And I did it. I did a perfect job of tending to my comfort food. I did not burn it, I did not so much as turn my back on it for a minute.

It was good.

Dang. It’s not even done with January yet and I have a cold. Trust me, I’m counting my blessings… I didn’t feel crummy until just after our Friday concert was over with. First I had a doozy of a headache, then the cold set in but luckily without the headache… I’m all for a cold rather than a headache, personally.

We don’t perform again until February 8 (Foods For Living, 4pm-6pm). So I’ll surely be feeling fine in time for that performance. It’s a cold. They don’t last forever.

Meanwhile, I toughed it out through my classes Monday at Haslett Community Ed. What I do there is unusual enough that I know nobody who could substitute for me. My students were wonderful and understanding, and it went fine.

But when I got home I was so wiped out I just plopped down on the couch. Brian thawed us some dinner from the freezer. (I can not tell you how wonderful my crockpots are, we cook two full ones at a time and freeze, and then we need not cook some nights. Just like tonight.) A couple of Excedrin and dinner, and I already feel better.

Planning a Mostly-Lazy Day

Tuesday I don’t work at all, though I have 2 short appointments scheduled. I think I can cancel one but not the other.

I will work Tuesday with my feet up on the couch. Thank goodness for laptops, I can do email from there now.

I will also finish knitting a few straps on bags that are nearly ready to be shrunk/felted for my new ZigBagZ patterns. And I will go back to learning InDesign (computer program for laying out patterns and other documents).

The Dreaded Learning Curve

I spent Saturday diving in deep, with this new program. I do not enjoy learning curves for computer programs, but I have a list of projects all waiting for me to master this one. I played with a simple pattern first, so in case I really messed it up I wouldn’t have wrecked something big. I have a mitten pattern almost ready to roll.

In the end I will use this program for many purposes. Most of the documents will be my patterns, and probably some promo materials for The Fabulous Heftones. I’ll also use it on menus for Altu’s Ethiopian Cuisine… and my mother’s incredible very-beginning-reader books.

I will talk about Mom’s books here more when they become available. Mom is totally brilliant at teaching reading, and these books are her life’s work… her Opus. So that will be the very coolest thing I’ll do with the program, and very soon at that.

Nearly-Ready Pattern… Finally(?)

The ZigBagZ are really five separate bags. I have been discussing the possibilities for them with friends (yarn shop owners, test knitter/proofreader/collaborator Diana, knitting buddies).

It looks like I may decide to split the bags into two patterns, one for the three smaller ones and one for the two larger carry-all bags. They are all zigzag with the same number of stitches in a repeat, but there are different charts, different handles, different button flaps. The big bagz are significantly different in many ways, from the smaller bagz.

With five designs, I had to say “start with section A then go to Section C then D & E” or the like, for each of the smaller bags, which made it a bit hard to navigate. And at 15 pages, I would have to price the pattern higher than my other patterns which could be a hassle as I (and shops) sold them.

The pattern idea started out as a plan for a large carry-all. I made the smaller bags basically as gauge swatches, and they were so fun and useful that I kept going with them. They are all tested and mostly ready to go (it’s the two big bagz that have taken so much work and time).

The photo above is of the first two large bagz knit… the front one I knit, the back one Karen knit. Mine was from prototype numbers. Diana just finished another from actual pattern specs and it should arrive here tomorrow for me to shrink. Cross fingers. (Photo at left is small bottle bag, this one I kept for myself and use frequently.)

February 7

I have announced on Ravelry that this pattern will be available February 7, and I bought an advertisement on Ravelry to run from Feb. 14-29, so everything that is looking good needs to proceed as planned at this point.

But I’m thinking that Linda and Diana and Rae are right, that things would work better for me and my shops and my customers, if things in this project were more streamlined than they seem to be right now. Fifteen pages is TOO LONG for a pattern. At that point we are in booklet territory.

I wish for folks to make these bags without wondering what I was thinking when I set up the pattern I have a reputation for easy-to-follow patterns. I want to keep that reputation.

Cooking Sweet Green Pea Soup

Anyway… that was a digression but maybe it was interesting to my knitting readers. The point is that I can still work, at least when the Excedrin is doing its job. And I will be as horizontal as I can. I will even limit my cooking time to as little as possible. In the end, it’s just a cold, right? Irritating but temporary.

Green pea soup works well in a crockpot. And it’s SO good. Check out this recipe at Paz’ website for a recipe which was my inspiration. Yum!

Leeanne/Wool & Chocolate put me on her short list of “10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel happy about blogland.” I am honored. I do my best to keep this cyber-place as upbeat as I can, at least 95% of the time, hopefully more.

It is interesting that Leeanne notes “The experience of reading her blog is really enhanced by the fact that she responds to blog comments with personal emails…” I do try to do just that, as much as my time will allow. It seems really important to me at this point in my life.

Thank goodness I don’t get hundreds of comments like Stephanie/Yarn Harlot does, though it clearly shows her popularity (and the comments there have somehow become a community of a unique type). I think sometimes I long for that many comments. Then I remember reading a book by Eleanor Roosevelt, about her life, and a huge portion of her time was spent tending to correspondence. She had no choice, really… she couldn’t say that she was just tired of people admiring her and seeking her advice or assistance.

But me? I value every single one of you who read this. I get excited every time I get a comment. And whenever I possibly can, I write with at least a thank you when you take the time to write to me. Thank you, Leeanne, for saying right there in print how much it means to you. I guess we have a mutual-admiration society going here and I’m delighted!

For the knitters who loyally tune in here, you have not seen many photos lately. I knit this hat off the cuff, starting on Saturday at Scene Metrospace Folk Festival. I finished it Monday, and I love it. Altu’s daughter who is a Junior in High School, also loves it. This feels good to me.

(No, there is no pattern. Maybe I will write it up, I hope I do, but the ZigBagz are top priority and I can not focus on a new thing until some of my old things are tucked safely into bed… Nevertheless, I do love this hat. Yarns are DiVe’ Autunno in teal-to-green with black and Cascade… can’t find the ball but it’s worsted-weight 50% Merino wool, 50% Angora… in a bright green. Very soft, I’m calling this my Soft Stripe Hat for now.)

If you read here often, you know that I eat healthy (mostly because of a long list of food allergies and sensitivities). I buy fresh ingredients, very few canned or frozen items, and I make things myself so that I am very clear what I am eating. I feel well when I do this, and often if I give in and buy at a restaurant I regret the choice.

However, I learned to read labels on food when I was just a child, before my food sensitivities took over my life. I am discovering that many otherwise well-informed people in my life never really look at what is in their food, even though it is right there for the reading.

I am always on the lookout for foods with one or two ingredients in the package. I have written about this search before, if you want to read an archived column. The ones which come to mind are pumpkin (for pie, but not the pie filling version), and tomato paste.

Even tomato sauce usually has citric acid added, which is funny because tomatoes have some citric acid in them naturally. I am guessing they use it to regulate the exact level of acidity in each batch. At least one brand doesn’t use it so the theory it might be needed as preservative would not be valid.

Citric acid is not lemon juice (though it sometimes can come from citrus fruit, it can also come from fermented corn and I can’t have mold or corn). Bet you didn’t know that!

Just to illustrate how little most of us know (until health requires us to be informed), here’s one source supporting what I just said… according to a supplement-information web page by Ray Sahelian, MD:

How is Citric Acid made?
Citric and lactic acids are produced by fermentation which utilized a carbohydrate source such as corn based starch and sugar beet molasses… Fermentation yields a crude purity product which requires further refining. One refining technique utilities a precipitation process, this process first uses lime to produce calcium citrate solids, this is then contacted with sulfuric acid which produces a partially purified soluble citric acid and calcium sulfate by product. Another technique used is solvent extraction…

Citric acid can be extracted from the juice of citrus fruits by adding calcium oxide (lime) to form calcium citrate, an insoluble precipitate that can be collected by filtration; the citric acid can be recovered from its calcium salt by adding sulfuric acid… and can be obtained synthetically from acetone or glycerol.

Yum. Yum? Now, the point is that for most people this is not an issue, but if you make your own food you don’t get the synthetic citric acid made from acetone (fingernail polish remover). I don’t like making my own food, I do it kicking and screaming sometimes, but I am clear my system is happier when I do it.

(For the record, Eden Organic Foods has canned “crushed tomatoes” that contain tomatoes and nothing else. It is essentially thick, beautiful tomato sauce. They also have Buckwheat “Soba” noodles that are 100% buckwheat… which I order by the case through their website. I love Eden Foods!)

SO… I just was checking out the Schuler Books website (because I’m doing an in-house promotion on Designer One-Skein Wonders at Eastwood, on February 28 at 7:30pm). And what did I find? This Thursday, local author Kimberly Lord Stewart is doing a presentation on how to read food labels. It’s at 7:30pm. Here is what the Schuler books website says:

Learn to read food labels with Eating Between the Lines
Award winning journalist, natural foods expert, and Lansing native Kimberly Lord Stewart is returning to give us a lesson in reading food labels, a topic that is rapidly gaining importance through the rise of food allergies and genetically modified products.

Her new book, Eating Between the Lines: The Supermarket Shopper’s Guide to the Truth Behind Food Labels, tells readers how to be discerning shoppers by breaking down the mystery and the marketing behind the countless food labels touting the health benefits of every food from potatoes to potato chips. Learn the tricks of healthy grocery shopping and have your own questions about food labels answered by an expert!

Thursday. January 24. 7:30 p.m., Schuler Books, Eastwood Towne Center, Lansing

The photos are of foods I have made and shared with you readers over the last several years. All healthy and with as few ingredients as possible, yet still tasty. And beautiful, no?

ColorJoy, the blog, is a place for all artforms. Today I wish to focus on cooking. Yummy! At the end I will share a new recipe I created today.

I love food. Some of you know that there are a lot of foods I can not eat because of allergy/sensitivity reactions.

However, because of my food restrictions Brian and I eat very well. Everything we eat at home is from scratch. We eat a lot of organic food, a lot of “ethnic” foods, many things I had never heard of while growing up. In fact, I feel really lucky to be living in these times, because so many types of produce are available to me fresh or frozen for most of the year.

New Foods for Me

I am learning a lot right now about root vegetables. I don’t do too well with potato, but taro root which has been boiled and then peeled is a lot like potato, a little more flavorful and a little more work to prepare. They are maybe a quarter of the size of a standard baking potato, and can not be peeled easily before cooking.

They look awful at the store, like small fuzzy brown rocks, but they are worth the effort. Here is a photo of some taro roots after they were scrubbed and then boiled. They look much nicer here than at the store, but they are quite nice to eat (after peeling) with just a little butter or olive oil.

We eat a lot of sweet potatoes. And now I am trying what is sometimes labeled “white yam” which looks like sweet potato, with a purple skin but flesh that is cream colored before cooking and has a few pale green veins after cooking.

It is very smooth in texture, not very sweet but sweeter than potato or taro. I put it in some green (frozen) pea soup the other day and it was incredibly good.

Flat Breads from Root Veggies

I have been trying to make things like tortillas, chapatis or potato lefse (pronounced LEFF-suh, a Norwegian flat bread which we always had at holiday meals when I was growing up). I am not having a great success with this, but I keep trying. (I can not have yeast, but I do not miss regular bread the way I miss tortillas.)

The best so far were the ones last week, made of taro and brown rice flour. The night I made them, they did roll up fine, but they hardened up a lot overnight (see photo).

Honestly, if I just want a bread to eat on the side they work out fine. However, I have not yet done well making anything that would roll up like a tortilla or lefse.

However… when it comes to desserts I am doing great. I make several versions of tapioca pudding that I really enjoy. I make teff spice muffins and pancakes (both gluten free), which are no compromise at all. I make a chocolate cake that is pretty good and I am still working on brownies.

My Friend in the Kitchen: Tapioca

It seems that tapioca is my friend. My mother always used instant tapioca to thicken pie fillings when I was a child, rather than cornstarch. It does have the telltale bumps in it, which I do not mind at all, but it is much cleaner a taste than the cornstarch, less sticky somehow. I know now that tapioca starch can be purchased much like cornstarch, so one could use that without the lumps for pie filling if desired.

I remember the years we would climb up in the neighbor’s cherry trees and pick cherries until we wished there was no such tree. Then we would sit together and pit the cherries, and mom would make wonderful pies, or sometimes just the sauce which we would put over ice cream.

Strawberry Experiments

So tonight I bought two bags full of organic frozen strawberries. What a treat! It is January and the snow is deep, and I can buy organic strawberries in Michigan! I determined that I wanted some sort of sauce or pudding made of strawberries.

I found one recipe that Diana, my Sis-in-Love, had found for me months ago, for a pureed strawberry/tapioca dessert. It seemed to be all sauce and no fruit, and I do not own (or want) a food processor or blender with which to puree fruit.

I found another recipe on the back of my pearl tapioca bag (I have instant tapioca, too, but I rather fancied the larger ones tonight). It was for standard milk-based tapioca pudding. I did not want any milk in mine but it gave me hints on how long to soak the tapioca, how long to boil and how long to simmer, before cooling.

Victory

And voila! I combined bits of both recipes, plus I tripled the amount of fruit the one recipe called for. And I made a wonderful dessert. We ate it warm like a pudding, but it would have been wonderful on ice cream or frozen yogurt. It would be a great topping on a humble poundcake or angel food cake.

Or, I am guessing, it might set up pretty hard after a long cooling night in the refrigerator, and it then could be eaten almost like a gelatin salad. I am making sure I don’t eat at least one of the portions until morning, so I can report back on that.

So here I present to you:

Very-Yummy Strawberry Dessert!

1/4c small pearl tapioca
1-1/2c water
3 Tbsp Brown Sugar (optional, or use white sugar)
1-1/2c Frozen Strawberries, organic if available

Measure berries and set aside in one layer, to thaw. Soak tapioca and water in saucepan for 30 minutes. While waiting, cut 1 cup of the berries into small pieces (may wish to thaw very briefly first). With a fork, mash remaining 1/2c berries (or puree in blender or food processor if desired).After the 30 minutes, add sugar and berries to pan.

Bring mixture to a full boil very briefly. Lower heat to very low, and simmer for 15 minutes uncovered, stirring frequently.

Remove from heat, allow to cool for 15 minutes. (At this point you may add 1tsp of vanilla or other flavoring of your choice, I did not do this myself.)

Makes four half-cup servings. Either pour over cake, ice cream, pancakes, or eat warm as pudding, or chill thoroughly in refrigerator and eat as a cool snack or light dessert. Consider topping with coconut flakes or whipped cream if desired.

Yummy!!!

I am guessing that you could mix up any fruit that was a little sweet and a little tart, and use the same recipe. Pie cherries or raspberries would be great but would need more sugar, blueberries might not need any sugar at all. The sky is the limit! Do let me know if you try it.

Do any of you have recipes calling for Tapioca in unusual ways? I’m all ears.

Prepare for photographs… I am giving in to more than usual for this post. It was a special night, you know?

On New Year’s Eve we almost did not choose to go to the Contra Dance. It was supposed to snow a lot and I was enjoying the warmth of the house. Brian reminded me that I would have a good time once we got there, and he sort of wanted a date for the holiday, so we went. He was right. I was glad I went.

We know most of the folks in the Contra Dance community pretty well. These are people we very much enjoy and very much want to spend our time with. Some of them we see only at dances, but it’s amazing how many are in our regular circle of acquaintances (for starters, Sharon, Julie, Rae, and Cynthia are all knitters I see regularly and who also dance). It is such a warm community! There is just nothing like a New Year’s Contra dance.

I find it fun that at a Contra Dance you will inevitably find a corner of the room full of knitters. We end up talking and knitting, and watching dances, listening to the great live music, but not dancing much. I love that there are a few under-20 young folks who are part of the knitting corner. They are more likely to talk knitting between dances and still do a lot of dancing, but it is a lovely addition to the dynamic.

Just before midnight they had a big circle dance and that was a blast! We all grabbed hands at the end and made a huge spiral of people. We were almost in the center of the spiral and it was amazing how long we needed to spin before the whole line of dancers was wound up together. It sounds crowded but there was plenty of breathing room even at the center, the room is plenty large for this sort of fun.

The band for the dance was The Cosmic Otters, who are otherwise known as Two Sock Knitters, or Meg and Jonathan. It’s funny, I’ve been reading their blog at least a year now and I was sure of Meg’s name, not sure of Jonathan’s (because she refers to him as “the fiddling fool” or just “The Fool.” I was sure of how he looked but now how she looked. It must be that she takes more photos of him than he does of her.

I also did not realize that Meg and Jonathan *are* The Cosmic Otters. As I peek at the New Year’s Eve post by meg, she shows a photo of “the band” and it’s Jonathan and two friends of theirs who joined them for the second half of the dance. With Meg the unofficial photographer, it’s no wonder I didn’t realize she was half of the band!! And no wonder I did not know what she looked like.

After the dance, we proceeded over to the house where we’d spent lovely time just before Christmas, knitters and fiddlers. Meg and Jonathan were going to stay there for the night before heading home to Chicago (a 4-hour trek). So I sat next to Meg and we knit socks, while listening to a group of folks play old-time fiddle tunes. It gave us a little time to chat about knitting and Ravelry and sock yarn and all the things that internet-knitters might want to chat about. Much fun!

On the way home I noticed how beautiful the snow was. I also realized that it was a little above freezing. We drove past a house which had a snowman in it and I got this great idea that we should start the year with our own snowman. And so we did. I think it was a good way to start the year. We started with a play day together. Yup, the right choice.

Photos: The first six photos Brian took, the last is mine. (The musicians, left to right, are Sam from Lansing, Jonathan, Chirps from Chicago, Meg. Notice the otters perched on the monitors, front right. Dance committee member Bonnie even gave one of the otters a party hat!) Food, dance, music, fun.

I wish I’d taken photos of the fiddle jam session at the house. However, I was having too much time getting to know Meg to think of it.

It seems I often post on holidays, of food. It seems appropriate even for those who do not share the same holidays I practice.

One of the few non-knitting blogs I read is The Cooking Adventures of Chef Paz. Paz not only lives in New York City, but did not grow up there. This means a view of the city from something of an outsider perspective.

Luckily that means that even though it is a food blog, we get “New York Mondays,” a repeating feature with at least one photograph from the city. Paz is a good photographer and i love that feature.

This is a normal food blog (as opposed to allergy-focused), written by someone who apparently grew up in Africa. Now, Africa is a huge place and I don’t know details other than Paz loves rice… and that is apparently tied to whatever foods were commonly served in the area of Africa where she (? I think I’ve determined that Paz is female after a year of reading) lived.

Anyway, this food blog is very interesting to me even when I can not eat the food featured. There has been bread baking, and lots of soupmaking, and talk of cilantro (Paz loves it) and plantains and beans and all sorts of other goodies from New York markets.

Then recently, a recipe for Green Pea Soup. Not split pea, but frozen/fresh peas. I love peas, they are a very good food for me right now, they are fresh and a bit sweet and filling. I figured I’d try the recipe (with lots of substitutes because of my allergies or what was in the house when I started).

Paz’ version includes bacon, potato and broth. Mine includes sliced deli turkey, white yam and water with a bit of Braggs Aminos (a not too appetizing name for unfermented soy sauce).

I got white yam at the asian market. It has a strong purple skin but the flesh is very white, and it’s a little nicer than potato, with a better texture cooked. It is not sweet though it looks a lot like the sweet potatoes that Americans call yams but which are not in the same family.

I had not tried white yam before, I did not know how quickly they would cook. Therefore, I cut mine into matchsticks and they sort of disintegrated while cooking, which worked fine but was time consuming. Next time I won’t cut them quite so small.

You can click the link to the original in the paragraph above. Or try my version, or mix them up and do what seems right. It’s very forgiving.

For the record, some people told Paz that this soup needed to be pureed in a blender. I am not at all big on blenders, and in this case I’m wondering if they were confusing this with split pea soup.

So mine, like the version Paz made, contains yummy whole veggies. Yum. It was incredibly satisfying, even for a person like me who is not fond of broth-based soups. I hope some of you will try this, it’s really easy and very filling, really sticks with you.

Green Pea Soup

1 bag (appx 500gm) frozen green peas

1 large white yam (or sub white potato), equals 3 cups of chopped matchstick pieces

2 Tbsp yellow onion, chopped very small

2 large fresh carrots (called for more but I was short)

2 liters/8 cups water (or use broth)

2 tbsp Braggs Aminos (or soy sauce, or skip if you used broth)

1/2 lb sliced deli turkey or other meat

2 Tbsp ghee (clarified butter, or use your favorite sauteeing oil)

black pepper to taste

1 Tbsp marjoram (or sub parsley)

Melt ghee/oil in pot, sautee onion until clear and soft. Add meat and cook until it looks browned in some places (for flavor). Add peas, water and Braggs/soy sauce if using, turn heat on slow simmer.

Chop carrots and yam/potato into small pieces suitable for soup (can double number of carrots, I was at the end of my supply). Add to pot as you complete chopping each one.

Add pepper to taste, and add marjoram. Cook about 90 minutes on low. (In photo, I garnished with fresh parsley.)

What a good day Christmas Eve has been. I woke up early for me and got my tush on the road earlier than I normally might. I was at the grocery store at noon, and the line was not bad and it seemed most were in a good mood. I chatted with a boy in line in front of me about his new toy. Fascinating.

Planning just a little ahead

I determined to get whatever I needed to get through a day and a half of cooking, without going to the health food store. The one on my side of town is notorious for cash register slowdowns and long lines so I skipped that (the people are nice but sometimes that is not enough).

Kroger suits me fine, it’s an older store on the East side. It’s very culturally mixed and “just folks.” My favorite cashier is from Africa and I try to get in his line whenever I can. They had a Santa greeting children today which kids seemed to enjoy.

Pure entertainment

At that point I was done with obligations for the day. I went to Rae’s shop because it was literally a block from Kroger (same shopping complex) and I just enjoyed being there for a while. I knit a little and did show and tell a little, and hugged a bunch of friends. Met the sister of a knitter I know socially, and that sister is from over the pond as they say, so I was very interested in chatting for a while.

The “white tornado” returns

Starting then, and until past midnight, I seemed to have an energy I have been missing since before Thanksgiving when my sinuses started acting up. I must finally be well, because I could even sing without strain today. What a nice change! I was a “perpetual motion machine” as one friend puts it, or a “white tornado” as Brian says. I was grateful for the energy.

Good food

I came home and made a wonderful soup (food post probably tomorrow, including a recipe). I felted two bags that Diana had knit as samples (had felted a bowl the day before, big fun).

Catching up on small tasks and starting large ones

I made a bunch of sewing progress… wove/darned to repair a huge hole in a favorite pair of bulky socks, which I was really missing in this cold weather. I sewed handles on a Sassy Summer Handbag that has been waiting for those handles for maybe 6 months.

I also knit a small gift for Brian. We don’t really worry much about gifts but we sort of like to have something the other can open on Christmas day… not required but nice.

I even made some progress on the goal of a clean house. I did some in the office and some up in the bedroom, and I ran a few loads of clothes. Some of you have commented on this goal of mine, and I’m checking in with you on that. Progress, but not perfection, as they say.

Fun earring transformation

Actually, the item shown in today’s photo I completed yesterday. A dance friend got me sheep earrings for Christmas. They were shiny and fun but a little small for me and were missing the element of color.

I decided to add a few beads between the earwires and the sheep charm. It worked great! I think I’ll be wearing these a lot. They have a lot of different turquoises and greens in them, so they will “go” with lots of things (no need to match when there are that many colors). In the photo you see “before” at left and “after” at right.

Food for the holiday

Tomorrow Brian will put cornish hens and sweet potatoes in the crockpot when he gets up, and that will be our ultra-simple meal for dinner. I have been eating poultry/fish more because of my doctor’s insistance, and though I’m not fond of meat I really think I am feeling much better.

To reward myself for being a good girl, I am considering making a pumpkin pie or two. The down side would be that I would have to make the crust for the first time since the 1980s. I don’t enjoy that part much, I make too much of a mess and it’s the cleanup that makes cooking a chore to me.

Holiday thoughts and gratitude

So today was mostly relationship, with some food and knitting rolled in. I’d say that made an excellent day. I think it helps to have few expectations. I think it also helps to finally feel well.

I am really counting blessings today, friends. I’m thinking of all the folks in my life who really have made things nicer for me. There are so many I really love and who are a real part of my support system. I remember the years when I had precious little in the way of support, and I am filled with gratitude and contentment for the life I live now.