The fruits of my not-quite labours...

This post is very pic-heavy, so be warned! I just figured I'd show you all what I've been up to this week... I roasted a few pumpkins:

I cut up a bunch of fruit to freeze (the idea here is to make jam when it's a bit cooler in my un-air-conditioned kitchen!):

Those are frozen kiwis and apples on the top shelf, and trays of pears,
strawberries and peaches on the bottom one. Please forgive the ugly ice packs.

These are Bing cherries (lots more in the bottom of the freezer),
pumpkin puree from last summer, and an absolutely stupid amount of
frozen rhubarb from my mom's garden!

Something new I found this year - PLUMCOTS!!! I can't wait to try
these. Just going to do these plain because I want their flavour to shine.

And while I was digging around in my late mother-in-law's old recipe booklets, guess what I found? A VINTAGE BALL BLUE BOOK!!!! For a home canner, this is like finding a Guttenberg bible!

No idea what year it's from,but the cover price is 10ø!

And yet to be processed are some yellow plums I got an EXCELLENT deal on, and some roma tomatoes from the Orleans Fruit Farm. I bought some crab apples too, but the kids gobbled those, so none for canning.

(Sorry those pics are fuzzy... I was literally taking pictures into the bottom of my fridge). And of course, there's this weekend's project... the cantaloupe!

This - and the gorgeous display Mother Nature puts on - is the reason I love fall so much. It's a time of preparation, of anticipation. It's a time where we put things by, like squirrels and bees, to get us through the long, cold darkness of winter. It's a time for knitting cozy warm things, and for stewing fruits and vegetables on the stove in anticipation of these things becoming scarce (or at least prohibitively expensive). It's a time of apples and pumpkins and spicy goodness, and a time to kick piles of leaves while walking in the forest. It truly is a time of thanksgiving for all that we are given. I hope you all take the time to enjoy it to the fullest!

Next post: KNITTING!

With the smallest of efforts...

The smallest effort is not lost. Each wavelet on the ocean tost aids in the ebb-tide or the flow; each rain-drop makes some floweret blow; each struggle lessens human woe.                                                                                           ~ Charles Mackay

I have no idea who Charles Mackay is, but I like him :) Day three has dawned bright and early. And the change in seasons means that I just want to bury myself ever-deeper in the covers and sleep until noon. Especially on a day where I spent the previous evening peeling and chopping kiwis for the freezer so they wouldn't spoil before I could use them in jam! I'll confess I probably went to bed a tiny bit later than I should have. 

I stayed on track food-wise yesterday. Ate about 200 calories more than the previous day, but still kept well under my goal. I was kind of peckish around bedtime, but I figured it'd keep until morning. I also did my walk at lunch time, but didn't end up going to the gym later in the evening.  My right ankle was a bit weird, and I didn't want to push it. Got on the scale this morning (yes, I know, I'm obsessing), and with two short days of concerted effort, I am down FOUR POUNDS. Holy Toledo! See, now THAT kind of result is motivating! I have a long way to go, but THAT kind of success makes me want to blow my goals out of the water. 

I've been kind of bummed at the lack of knitting time lately. Other than at knit night, I never have time to touch it. Part of that is because renos in my apartment mean there's a new mess waiting for me every night when I get home (red brick dust everywhere), and because I'm trying to keep the house neater, I'm actually doing, y'know, HOUSEWORK in the evenings. There's also the fact that I'm back at school, so are the kids, and they've started swimming lessons again as well. Busy family is busy! If I'm going to finish Tempting before Rhinebeck - remember Rhinebeck? I'm going to Rhinebeck! - I need to bust a move on it!

So many fantastic things should be happening in my kitchen, but I've a) not got the space right now, and b) not got the time... ARGH. I do hope to get at least one batch of jam out of the way on Saturday. That cantaloupe in the fridge isn't going to last forever. So that's why cooking posts have been scarce of late. I did make an awesome batch of cabbage soup at my mother's last weekend. I can't remember if I've shared that recipe before, but Mom swears it's as good as the Habitant canned cabbage soup we used to get when I was a kid (that's high praise indeed from my mom!)

There are endless variations on cabbage soup. You can add carrots, you can add tomatoes, you can add pork sausage if you want. But this is my basic recipe (which was arrived at when trying to reverse my mom's favorite canned cabbage soup LOL)

Simple Cabbage Soup

1 head cabbage, quarted and shredded
2 large or 4 small onions, quartered and thinly sliced
2 Tbsp olive oil
2-3 quarts of low-sodium beef stock
black pepper to taste
1/2 tsp celery seed

Heat olive oil in a wok over medium-high heat. Add cabbage and onion, stirring to coat. Sauté until softened, about 8 minutes. THIS STEP IS VERY IMPORTANT. If you do not sauté the vegetables before cooking the soup, you will get that god-awful boiled cabbage smell all through your house, and you'll be forbidden to ever make it again! That, and the sautéing process imparts a wonderful nutty flavor to the cabbage! DO EET.

Once the cabbage and onion has softened, transfer to a large stock pot. Add beef stock, celery seed and black pepper to pot, and return to medium heat. Bring to a rolling boil and reduce to a simmer. Continue simmering for 20-30 minutes. Serves 10-12.

©2012, Lynne Toll at http://blueceramicmug.blogspot.ca

This soup freezes beautifully, which is why my mother has me make it for her several times a year (she asks once she's run out of the frozen stuff). It's also DIRT CHEAP to make, especially if you use a box of bovril instead of liquid stock, or if you use HOMEMADE stock (gah... I can never do this - I have no space to keep it!). Cabbage is often 69¢ a pound or so. This last time, I added a head of Napa to it (yummy!) which added a bit of sweetness to the soup, so I added a 1/4 tsp of celery salt to offset that. Enjoy!

STICKERS!!!!!!!

Yesterday went well. I managed to keep my fat intake at 40% of my total calories (that seems a slightly more attainable goal than 33%) and although I didn't manage to get to the gym, I did walk to school and back - which is 1.25 miles each way! I did DRIVE to the gym... only to discover that I had left my gym bag (and thus, exercise-appropriate clothing) at home on the couch. SIGH.

I've recently become enamored of this blog here: Just Bento. I love bento!!! Little bits of different things all packed together like a present really appeals to me. It also helps limit portions, which is something I have a lot of trouble with. Now while I haven't rushed out to buy myself a bento kit, I do have a few Rubbermaid containers that will do the trick of containing the whole thing (the one I've been using this week is a tad small and I've had to squash things or pack them separately, I'll be moving up to the next size tomorrow). So yesterday and today, I packed myself little bentos for dinner and lunch. Last night's dinner was pancetta with raw veggies and dip, and a coco de nata pudding for dessert. Today's lunch was turkey meatballs with peanut sauce, more raw veggies and dip, and some dill pickles on the side. Breakfast involved a "thin" bagel (they're about the size of a slice of bread) and a pear.

So at lunch today, I had to walk to the bank to pay some bills for the office, so I figured I'd walk to the dollar store on my way back. The bank and the dollar store are in opposite directions from my office, so I ended up walking 1.13 miles! YAY! The whole point of the visit to the dollar store was to obtain..... *drum roll* STICKERS. I bought a lot of stickers, y'all. I got heart stickers and butterfly stickers, and cutesy animal stickers and dolphin & shark stickers and Winnie the Pooh stickers... I may have gone slightly overboard with the stickers. But my September calendar now has TWO shiny new stickers on it (we went with a heart and a little chibi horse today) for my exercise and eating yesterday!

I had my first class last night - I'm taking a course called "Lexique du français moderne" and it's really interesting, if really REALLY technical and a bit heavy. I think I'm going to like this one. Granted, I can't knit in class (too much note-taking involved), but I did get a bit of knitting done on Tempting during the break. I can't wait until Friday night when I can work on it uninterrupted again! Yes, I do spend a good deal of my non-knitting time wishing I was knitting... I may be slightly obsessed.

This weekend is going to be a bit crazy. I have ALL THE FRUITS to deal with in my kitchen. I went for groceries and they had big bags of kiwis for half-price (they're a tiny bit soft). CHEAP KIWIS. I may have bought them all *ahem*. This makes five different kinds of jam & preserves that need to be dealt with soonish. The apples are frozen, as are the cherries and the peaches, but that's still a lot of fruit to deal with. Peaches, pears, apples, cherries, plums, cantaloupe, kiwis. Holy fall harvest, Batman! I'm not even sure I have jars for all of this, even including the ones I brought back from Rob's. Never mind the ridiculous number of onions I bought last week to perhaps pickle or perhaps make onion chutney with... OH CRAP. I forgot about the tomatoes!! GAH! (if anybody wants to come over and help me can, I will be your willing slave forever... wait... no, I'll just be really grateful!)

It's been brought to my attention that many people have difficulty posting comments. I choose to believe that this is why I get so few of them (and not because I get, like, zero traffic LOL). Sorry about that. Apparently it's a known Blogger issue, but I didn't know about it before I signed up! I'll do a bit of research and see if it's worth my while to move everything over to another site. In the meantime, those of you who are facebook friends can leave me comments there (and several of you have been) or if you really wanna tell me off for something, my email address is listed at the top right of the main page :) Cheers!

A Renewal of Faith...

Just about everyone who knows me knows that I've been struggling to lose weight recently. What a lot of you don't know is that I've been struggling with my weight for about 25 years. I first became aware of my "body image" when I was 12 years old. Puberty had been kicking my ass for a couple of years by this point, and I noticed that I was starting to fill out a bit more than I liked. I had grown about a foot between turning 10 and turning 11, and suddenly stopped growing, so I was not at all used to the body I was now finding myself stuck with.

All through my teen years, I felt fat. I wore baggy clothes and half the time wouldn't wear a bra to school. I stopped taking care of myself... only showered when my parents forced me to, didn't brush my hair half the time, etc. Puberty had left me with a rather monumental set of breasts, and they had attracted some unwanted attention before I even left grade school, so I wasn't eager to show my body off at all. We had very poor eating habits at home - usually some pasta from a box thing (oh the disgusting stroganoff... I hated this stuff with every fiber of my being, and my dad would make me sit at the table until I had finished the whole thing - sometimes it was 9 or 10pm before I got to leave the table!), very few vegetables (and they were all canned), and a bowl of either popcorn or chips in front of the television every night.

Looking back at pictures of myself now, I wasn't fat. I wasn't in shape, but I certainly wasn't fat. That didn't come until I got pregnant. I was probably about 10 lbs or so overweight when I got pregnant in the spring of 1998. Suddenly, I was eating all the time, and I mean ALL the time. I was not exercising at all, first due to morning sickness, then due to sciatica, but mostly due to laziness. I ballooned from 170lbs to 245 when I delivered. The entire time, I had been asking my OB if I was gaining too much weight, and he kept telling me not to worry about it. I used that as justification to sit on my ass and do nothing. A walk to the grocery store (all of two blocks) the day before I went into labor just about killed me. I had to sit on the stoop outside the store for about 30 minutes to recover.

Over the next thirteen years, I've gained and lost and gained and lost and gained and gained and gained. I've tried South Beach several times and am now finally deciding that it's too restrictive and I end up doing worse than I would if I just ate reasonably. I've gone through periods of absolute obsession with the scale, stepping on at random times during the day, weighing myself every single day and going crazy over the numbers. I've gone through periods of regular physical activity and other periods where I was binge eating on a regular basis and barely moving at all. I've gone through brief periods of feeling and looking fantastic and (longer) periods of looking and feeling like a tub of lard.

I've been telling Rob the last few days that I think I've been going about this the wrong way. I keep failing because I don't SEE any changes in myself, and so I give up. I need a tangible, VISIBLE means of tracking my progress, and I think the stickers will help with that. I need the positive reinforcement, but it has to come from ME. I grew up with far too much negative reinforcement in my life, and it's time to buck that trend.

Currently, I'm going to the gym twice a week and trying to walk a set distance on the days I don't go to the gym. I was trying to stick to South Beach and that just wasn't going well. So what's the plan? The plan, currently, is to simply reduce my food intake to a certain caloric amount, and to try to limit the fat portion of that caloric amount to no more than 33%. Each day I reach that goal, I get a sticker :) Each day I do my physical activity for the day (either going to the gym or walking my minimum time/distance), I get another sticker. If I hit a certain number of stickers in a given month, I get a small treat - either a book I've been wanting, or a CD or a ball of yarn or SOMETHING that's not food-related. These are my rewards for treating myself properly and making myself a bit healthier (I'm toying with the idea of adding a bigger reward if I have a perfect month - like a piece of new clothing, but I'm not there yet).

I know I can do this because I believe I'm worth doing it for. More importantly, my boyfriend and my kids believe I'm worth doing it for. The kids have been going out walking with me and encouraging me at every turn. Rob has been my number one fan and cheering section. I'm always going to be a curvy girl (even bone-thin at 14, I had wide hips and boobs), but that doesn't mean I can't be a healthy one!

Truly, Madly, Deeply..... CRAZY

My upstairs neighbour plays guitar. This normally doesn't bother me, even when he plays late at night. Today, however, he's been trying to teach himself Savage Garden's Truly, Madly, Deeply. This means he's playing the song over and over again trying to get certain bits right. So far, I have counted FORTY-SEVEN repetitions of the damn song. Now I like Savage Garden as much as the next girl, but COME ON!!!!!

*deep breath*

In other news, I woke up to a lovely thunderstorm this morning. I don't think there's anything in the world quite like waking up to pattering rain and rolling thunder in your storm-darkened bedroom, knowing that there's nothing at all you need to leave the bed for. I did eventually get up, but it was such a nice feeling. Last week, I called my boss at the store and quit my job :) Best. Feeling. EVER!!!!! So now my weekends are my own and I'm enjoying the new-found freedom.

Anyway, after I dragged my sorry butt out of bed, I sat at my desk and got frustrated at all the semi-balls of yarn lying around that I've used for various projects. I decided to do something about it, picked up two leftover bits of Lion Brand Homespun and... cast on another hat. *sigh* At least our fall charity drive will get a pile of stuff this year! I thought I had at most 30 yards of the beige, so it would do the brim and a few single row stripes before I switched all the way over to the red. Um.... so much for that. There was a LOT more beige left over, but at least now it's all gone. Only problem? I have enough red for a whole new hat. DAMMIT. But it's pretty.... lookit:

Incidentally, call me a yarn snob, but I hate this stuff. I hate working with boucle, and this is no exception. I only bought it because the yarn selection at the Walmart in Zion is woefully inadequate and it was the only "bulky" yarn they had. I knit some props for my sister-in-law because her photographer didn't have any infant props.

I also cast on a new project on Friday... I'm knitting Jenna Adorno's Tempting (from Knitty.com). I liked this top the moment I first saw it, and it was one of the first items added to my Ravelry queue. I'm finally attempting it. Kari's determination to finish her sweater and shawl for Rhinebeck kind of inspired me to do something insane, so I'm going to try to finish it for Rhinebeck. Oh, did I tell you? We're going to Rhinebeck :D Sue, Kari, Sarah and I are all going to pile into Sue's Jeep (I think it's a Compass) and head down Friday, October 19th after work, stay in Albany and come home on Sunday evening. I'm really looking forward to it, although I don't plan on doing nearly as much shopping as they are LOL Also bought my ticket to go to Rob's for US Thanksgiving. YAY Porter seat sales!

I'm off to knit and watch movies!

Progress report...

Progress on what? Well...on life in general, I suppose.

Contractor's still a bit of a jerk, but he's doing a good job and I'm not the one paying him, so meh. I have to admit, it's annoying to come home to a new and interesting mess every night, plaster on the bottom of the toilet seat (you'd think he'd wipe his hands before touching himself there, wouldn't you?), having to empty different portions of my house into others - last night, it was the cupboards on only one side of the kitchen. Thank goodness only one side, but the awesome news is - I'm getting a range hood! :D YEAH!!!! I've been moaning about the lack of one since I moved in! My back room is completely drywalled and patched, and he's starting work in the bathroom.

Cooking - I was a bit lazy last night. Skye had begged for a pasta salad from the deli, so Zachary and I were left to our own devices. We decided to go with shrimp with salsa and balsamic fig sauce. You wouldn't think those three things would go together, but OMG it was amazing. I then used the cooking liquid (leftover salsa and fig sauce) to make the most awesome stuff ever. I had a few small carrots going wrinkly on the counter, so I sliced those thinly, then tossed in a quartered and sliced onion, and then a pile of sliced portobellos I'd gotten for half-price at the grocery store. Only one tiny piece of mushroom was slimy, so I got an awesome deal there! I cooked that up until everything was soft and wonderful. Then I made a small pot of couscous with cottage cheese in it (TRY it, it's SO GOOD). I packed myself lunches for the rest of the week with a scoop of couscous and a load of veggie stuff on top. AAAAAAND then I promptly forgot my lunch on the kitchen counter this morning *sigh*

Instead, I went to the Table for lunch. Braised onions (my fave), roasted tofu with broccoli and cauliflower, braised red cabbage, and some awesome squash dish. I have now researched a recipe for braised onions and will be trying it this weekend *drool* This was also nearly half a mile from the office, so I got a good walk in before eating :)

Although this is a short week, it seems like the longest ever. A good deal of that is because Rob left at lunchtime on Monday, and time has been dragging since then. We've been doing the long distance thing for a while now, and it sucks more now than ever. The fact that we've never spent as much time together as we have this summer, in my mind, just shows how much better things would be if the distance didn't exist. I keep joking that he'll just have to marry me so we don't have to do this anymore (I have to admit, I love that it freaks him out a bit).

I'm about half-way through the heel flap on these never-ending socks - okay, I know I'm making progress, and I'm not working on them all that much, but I'm not used to working with such fine yarn, and it's frustrating. This is why I knit and crochet BULKY stuff. LOL But they're so pretty! (sorry, no pics yet). I do have a picture of the hat I finished on Monday. I decided I wanted something small that would end quickly, since the kitchen curtain and socks are taking forever (let's not even mention Color Affection, okay?). So I knit up a Hurricane Hat in some Gedifra Airmix (discontinued) that I had lying around. This stuff is so soft, I bought all of it I could find when Knit Knackers was getting rid of it years ago. I had one skein of blue and six or seven skeins in different shades of pink. This is going to go into the pile for our fall charity knit-along in the Ottawa Area Ravellers group.

Oh, and worry not. I know the hat looks huge, but it really isn't. My foam head is just freakishly small *sigh* When I took Stephanie's Grok the Sock class, she taught us that the length of your hand from the base of the palm to the end of the middle finger is the length a hat needs to be before the decreases start, so I went with that. It fits me perfectly. I do, admittedly, have a big head, but bigger is better where hats are concerned. You want it to cover your ears... and you can always roll the brim up if it's too long. If it's too short, nothing can save it.

Tonight I'll be spending time reorganizing things around the house so we can find stuff during "the ordeal" and doing laundry, because... three people (including one clothes horse) = lots of laundry. Tomorrow is knit night, and I can't wait! :D If I can get my kitchen back into some semblance of order, then this weekend might see me making jam! I have a lovely cantaloupe I plan to make Marisa's Cantaloupe Vanilla jam with, and I'd like to make another batch of my now-infamous Peach-Ginger jam. My mom's cousins from Florida love this stuff so much, they ate an entire jar when they visited! Secret is to use super-fresh ginger and to add it with the pectin so it stays spicy :) Cheers!

I'M CAPSLOCK PISSED OFF!!!!

I came home on Tuesday night to be told that my back room and bathroom had to be emptied for the contractor who's been upgrading the apartments in our building. Okay... some notice would have been nice, but let's roll with the punches. My ex, kids and I got the rooms emptied and now the rest of my house is an effing disaster area, but you know what? I'm okay with this. It will mean a nicer apartment when we're done, right?

Fast forward a couple of days. Thursday night - last night - I came home to find that there was no electricity in the entire back half of my apartment. Bathroom, kitchen, back room and Skye's bedroom, all without power. NO notice, no contractor, no indication of how long the power had been off, nothing. WTF??? Dudes, that means that my FRIDGE and CHEST FREEZER had no power. It also means I can't make dinner because I can't turn on the stove, oven or any of my small appliances. Zachary and I managed to roll the chest freezer into the livingroom and plug it in there, and then we moved all the stuff from the fridge freezer to the big one. We also managed to put the meats & cheese from the fridge into the freezer, but everything else in the fridge is a write-off.

I left a note this morning for the contractor - on bright yellow paper at eye-level on his ladder, so he can't claim he didn't see it - stating that I found it unacceptable for him to leave me without power overnight and that he now owed me $50 for groceries. If this jerk keeps doing this kind of shit, I'm considering making a complaint through Régie des rentes. I mean, who DOES things like that?

On the plus side, I got to visit with a friend I previously only knew through Ravelry last night, before she moves to Italy. Man... ITALY. I am so flipping jealous :) But I got a box of books and a couple of house plants to remember her by :) Her philodendron is settling nicely into the corner of my office. I took the kids out to dinner last night to a place that serves 24 different kinds of poutine. Zachary had the ground beef / pepperoni / bacon poutine, and Skye had a chicken / bacon / onion poutine. I had a bloody salad. And I didn't even finish it... I think it's called Vidal? Food's not bad, but it's not cheap either. For the three of us, it cost me over $50. Ouch. Something tells me I would have been better served taking them to McD's...

My sock is coming along nicely, albeit slowly. If I ever find my camera (or any of the cameras, really), I will take pictures of a whole pile of stuff. This is part of what I hate about having to empty two whole rooms of my apartment - I can't find a bloody thing! Everything's either in the way or blocked off, and it's driving me up a tree! SOCK. Socks make me happy, thanks to the Yarn Harlot. Grok the Sock is an excellent class, and if you ever get the chance to take it, I don't care what it costs, DO EET.