I cooked!

My most exciting news for the weekend is that I cooked. I have been really bad about cooking for a long time, leaving The Professor to fend for us most of the time for longer than I care to admit. Oh, the shame of it all. But Friday, spurred on by who knows what inspiration, I made some sweet potato soup in the crock pot (recipe from this cookbook) and boiled a big pot of brown rice. I couldn't risk interrupting my momentum to stop and snap photos, but it really didn't look like much anyhow. An enormous yam, an equally enormous onion, cut and plopped unceremoniously into the crockpot, along with some garlic (2 cloves), some spices, and 4 cups of turkey broth made from Old Tom, the turkey The Professor cooked a few weeks back. The broth was treated with the appropriate amount of reverence, especially as it was nicely measured out and clearly labeled in the freezer. After 6 hours in the crock pot, I processed it in the Cuisinart with a little bit of peanut butter and lime juice. Yum. The rice we ladled it over gave it a nice stick-to-your-ribs quality, and I was so glad to have it ready to go when The Professor got home from work.

Yesterday, I made both a casserole and rice pudding. The rice pudding was in the crock pot again, using this recipe, except I left out the apricots and used brown rice and some cream that we needed to use up subbed in for some of the milk. The pudding cooked overnight and made a delicious breakfast this morning-- we both had seconds. The casserole was the leftover rice from Friday plus a can (jar) of beef that we got from The Professor's mom and dad for Xmas (they gave us 10, and they put it up themselves, which made it an extra special gift), some frozen green beans, grated cheese (grated by himself) and some cream of ... soups (celery and mushroom) as well as some eggs and milk. I ought to have put in some spices as it was a bit bland, but it was clearly adequate because while it was cooking, The Professor came downstairs and said, "The whole house smells like dinner," in a happy and satisfied way. Why don't I cook for him more often? He certainly does appreciate it. Oh, and once I added some Worcestershire sauce to it, it was divine. Didn't discover that until eating it as leftovers for lunch today, but there's still half of it left to go. Mmmmmm, Worcestershire sauce. I practically licked the dish.

On the knitting front, BSJ #3 is nearing completion. I forgot to do my increases on the buttonhole row and so had to rip back, so here's a photo I snapped while the needles were out and it actually looked like something:

I will have *just* enough yarn, I think, if that. No I-cord edging this time around, though. I'll have to try it on my next one, because of course there will be more. I continue to be thrilled with the way the color changes worked themselves into nice healthy stripes and the way the two colors of yarn (the variegated hot pink/green/white/orange and the salmon pink) work together.

You can also see evidence in this photo (upper left corner) of me finally managing to read and knit at the same time-- the cookbook holder that has been languishing in one of our icky old cupboards for so long it's acquired a funky smell (and it's lucite, so that's got to be hard to do) comes out of retirement to hold my book on the table in front of me, hands free. I'm reading an excellent book called Made from Scratch (partly responsible for the cooking blitz?), and I'm about half way done. My reading progress is likely to skyrocket now that I can read while I knit. Goodbye, television! Hello, books!

The Professor is working on some rewiring today (upstairs hall light and bathroom outlet), and he opted for the wiring scenario that did not require a trip to the hardware store and the purchase of new materials, so that was good.
Oh, and speaking of not purchasing things, today I glued up my awesome homemade pill box that I made last weekend. From a nondescript gift box to a happy little pill container. I did a much better job this past week of taking my supplements since they were in this handy little box and didn't require me to dole them out of all the different bottles each time. Anything to get them down the hatch.

Time to finish the baby sweater, and ferret out some buttons from my insane button stash. Final photos to come tomorrow-ish. Hope everyone else is having as lovely a weekend as we are.