It takes a village...of Santas

Remember when the kids were small, and their Christmas presents were Legos and Barbies and board games and picture books? When their eyes shone just looking at the lights on the tree or the twinkling fake icicles dangling from the soffit? When everywhere you went you could find something you knew they would love?

Those days are so gone. Our kids are 20 and almost 17. Their toys are electronic. Their clothes are expensive. Their tastes are unpredictable. But one thing they still love, no matter what is in the gift--the tag.

What? The tag? Who reads past their own name on the tag? Ah, if you do not live in the village of many Santas, you may be missing the best part of gift giving. Let me explain.

Years ago, I got tired of putting "To ________ From Santa" on every tag. It was so boring, so uncreative. And generally left unread. So I started sneaking in different names for Santa. At first it was just alternative monikers like "St. Nicholas" or "Papa Noel" (the French version). The village of Santas just kept growing, though, and DH and the kids got into the spirit and started labeling their gifts with silly Santa names that sometimes hinted at the contents as well.

This year the re-naming of Santa provided us with hours of entertainment. Consider the example above, on a gift of athletic socks (DS goes through at least a pair a week, and they fit nicely into the stocking, but socks are right up there with underwear in the "gift you really don't want to open" category). As it turned out, the tag was more fun than the gift, and we all had a good laugh over it. Other notable examples: on a replacement tripod for DD, who has suffered numerous spills with the cheap one she currently uses for oil painting, "Life is too short to waste on bad equipment Santa." On a gift to my husband of the former California governor's favorite pumpkin seed oil, "Arnold Santa-negger." "Vintage Santa" brought me a lovely beaded scarf, and "Lame Sister" received a book from "Even Lamer Brother Santa." A bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream came from "Tam O'Santa," and "Santa D'Or Dali" gave DD several new tubes of oil paints.

We had so much fun with the Santa village that I'm already thinking up Santa names for next year. I hope you all enjoyed wonderful Christmas and New Year's celebrations. Let's make something wonderful in 2012.

Teal Bulky Sweater - UFO Finished at Last!

Remember that teal Blue Sky Bulky yarn I bought a few years ago? I started by designing an original pattern for a cardigan, made it too big, ripped it out, and made it smaller. I tried it on at the beginning of fall--it was shapeless and too big for my (happily) shrinking figure. I ripped it out again. I found a new pattern on the Blue Sky website, designed by Sylvia Hager. It looked adorable on the website, so I bought it ($9, yikes!). I knitted four or five inches, found it was also way too big, ripped it out and started over. I had some trouble with the directions for the bust shaping, did more ripping out, re-wrote the directions so they made sense, and continued. The Sunday after Thanksgiving I worked most of the day on the sweater and had it almost finished when a giant hole appeared in the front. I don't know what caused the hole, but I'm guessing it was one of my knots tied too close to a yarn end badly frayed from so much ripping out and re-knitting. Vowing not to be defeated by the yarn demons, I ripped almost 70% of my work out one more time, all the way down to the hole, and knitted the sweater again.

Success! All done, and cute! It's so bulky you can't tell I've lost 25 pounds, but that's okay. It's warm and comfy and I still love the color. Plus I get to check a long-festering UFO off of my list, just before the start of a new year.

Merry Christmas, everybody, and best wishes for a happy, productive 2012!

Recipe Report - Roasted Sweets & Greens

I found this recipe in the October 2011 issue of Better Homes and Gardens. You can also find it here: http://www.kitchenmonki.com/recipe/Roasted_Sweets_Greens. It's on the bhg.com website, too, but I needed to log in to access it, and I just refused. I chose this recipe because it packs 6 grams of fiber and 4 grams of protein into a 236-calorie serving, and because I love sweet potatoes.

The recipe took about 45 minutes to make. The arugula was expensive (close to $4 for a box) and I think the recipe would have been just as good with spinach or parsley, frankly. DH was wildly enthusiastic about this dish, and would have gladly eaten the whole pan by himself. DS wasn't that impressed, although he ate a good-sized serving, too. I didn't think I liked it much, but then I caught myself going back for more. All in all, if you want a filling, tasty side dish to make up for a lightweight main course, this is it. After a serving and a half, I had little room for anything else.

By the way, counting my calories and upping my exercise has paid off in a big way already; I have lost 17 pounds. I feel like I'm peeling myself like an onion (at 15 pounds lost, I was back to 2007 when we moved to Indiana from overseas; at 17 lost, I'm the weight I was in 2003 when our daughter was a seventh grader and our son was eight). I'm trying not to set any impossible goals, but 20 lost would be a nice start. Anyone interested in committing to a life of eating what your body needs instead of what it wants might want to check out myfitnesspal.com. It has been a godsend to me; I have the app on my iPhone and enter every single thing that I eat every day.

Where did the summer go?

What a summer! Lots of stuff happened, some of it really good, like the visit by my friend Michelle from New York (shown with yours truly above at Spring Mill State Park) and our trip to Chicago together, some of it really not good, like the four days my mom spent in the hospital (she's better now, thankfully), and some of it just busy, busy, busyness brought on by trying to keep up with volunteer commitments and life in general.

DD had two guests in August; her boyfriend (who has been described in this blog before--tall, handsome, Lithuanian, and now so hairy that her friends have dubbed him "six foot Jesus"), and her former host brother from France, an adorable boy who doesn't speak much English, but when he does, the accent is pure foie gras. When she ran out of stuff to do with them (or food to feed them) in Bloomington, she brought them home to the old jail, which I loved. We traveled around the southern Indiana countryside, we ate, we went out to restaurants, we ate, we cooked up great food in the kitchen, we ate... Did I mention that we ate?

And now time to pay the piper. I avoided getting on the bathroom scale until everyone was back in school and the fun and craziness were over, but on Friday morning I ran out of excuses and faced the music. Not good. Really not good. So now I'm trying hard to get it all back off. I've vowed to work out every day and limit my calories until I can bear to look at a photo of myself in a color other than black. I've appointed DD my "accountability coach" so I won't have to bore you with the details. Wish me luck.

I Broke the Knitting Jinx

Some time ago I donated several pieces of woven cotton to a woman who makes bonnets to sell in our museum gift shop. In return she gave me, among other things, a knitted cotton washcloth. I had never understood the passion some people seem to have for knitted washcloths until I took this one to the kitchen and employed it in place of the sponge for washing dishes. It had a nice diagonal pattern that created just enough friction to get the dishes clean, and I just loved the feel of it. Unfortunately I have used it so much that it's looking pretty stained and ugly, so I'm not going to show it to you, but I will show you the new washcloth I was inspired to knit as a result of how much I liked the gifted one.

Oops--I'm getting ahead of myself. What I wanted to explain was, I haven't knitted anything for a while. That teal bulky sweater that you may remember from several years ago now is the reason. No matter what I do with that bulky yarn, it doesn't work and I rip it out again. I refuse to buy any more yarn until I use that up--I paid $100 or so for it, on sale, and my failure to come up with a winning design mocks me every time I look in the sewing room closet. So I putter around in the kitchen, as you know, and work on my little translation, and play Spider Solitaire, now that Lent is over, and in general accomplish very little at home. Until yesterday.

Yesterday was really hot--95 or so. Here in the old jail we don't have central air conditioning, which is pretty inefficient, anyway, and most of the time that's not a problem, but yesterday the heat was just beastly, so I spent the afternoon sitting under the ceiling fan in the living room knitting a washcloth in a corner-to-corner design called a "diagonal bee stitch," similar to the one I was given as a present. I found the pattern here: http://hakucho.blogspot.com/search?q=diagonal+bee+stitch+

The yarn, a high-quality worsted-weight cotton, was left over from some long-ago project; I love the color as much now as I did then. I have a nice hot pink in the same yarn and I think I'll make a second one when time permits. I love the way this one turned out, and I'm crossing my fingers that the knitting jinx is broken and I can make a few more interesting things in cotton before the weather turns cold and I can tackle that teal Blue Sky bulky for the last time.

Recipe Report - Garden Veggie Linguine with Cilantro Pesto

The recipe appears on page 161 of the May 2011 issue of Better Homes and Gardens magazine. I have been wanting to make it for some time, but there has been a shortage of cilantro in the grocery stores in our town (honestly, I looked at all four and the farmer's market). I finally got to make it tonight, and it was well worth the wait. In the meantime I reintroduced the boys to fresh oranges and zucchini, which I had to buy a couple of times waiting for cilantro to appear.

This stuff is delicious. DS couldn't get enough of it. I made it with fettucine instead of linguine. The noodles end up covered in spicy olive-y goodness, and the carrots, oranges and zucchini offer individual taste sensations that complement the noodles and cilantro well. I cut the salt in half and didn't miss it at all, and I used Grey Poupon mustard instead of dry mustard, which I don't use enough to justify keeping in stock. The recipe is relatively cheap to make. It's a bit of a calorie bomb (518 calories a serving), but could be dinner all by itself, so we'll definitely be making it again.

If you don't subscribe to Better Homes and Gardens, the recipe is also available on-line at the following address:

http://www.bhg.com/recipes/from-better-homes-and-gardens/better-homes-and-gardens-may-2011-recipes/#page=12

Blame the weather

I can't believe how long it's been since I posted anything. I have lots of excuses--it's fundraiser time at the museum again, and DH and I have been working on a house that we will put on the market this spring. It's out in the country about fifteen miles from our old jail, and once there we don't come back quickly, as you might imagine. Even though he has been doing the lion's share of the work, I have kept busy there, too. Today we finally got the kitchen cabinet doors back on (after taking them off, removing all the hardware, shopping for new hardware, applying several coats of new paint, and putting all the hardware back on). We're one tile backsplash away from finishing the kitchen, hooray!

In the breaks between regular life (work, laundry, cooking, etc.) and fixing up the other house, I've been going through the motions of the spring-to-summer transition here at home, but I haven't been inspired to do anything interesting. I bought new cushions for the porch furniture (you may remember that the old ones were lumpy and faded and basically only suitable for napping cats), but now I hesitate to put the new ones out because Mr. Fuzz and his friends will just make a mess of them.

I did have a very good time the other day pulling up dandelions with the Fiskars Weed-Eater and transplanting the tomato plants. There's something about puttering around outside on a sunny day (we haven't had many of them this year, unfortunately). Maybe that's why I'm not getting much done. It's not that I'm procrastinating, indecisive, and unmotivated. It's the weather, right?