Thursday, June 28, 2007

miso tofu

dinner with out of town friends!

This served 3 small eaters for dinner with enough leftovers for one lunch tomorrow.


marinade:
2 tbsp red miso paste
2 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 c water
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp rice wine
2 large cloves garlic, pressed or minced
1 tsp chopped ginger
sprinkle of red pepper flakes
several leaves Thai basil, chopped

1 package firm/extra firm tofu

1 red pepper
2 large carrots
1 zucchini
1 long broccoli stem
1 small clove garlic
sprinkle of chopped ginger


Combine marinade ingredients in a square baking pan and stir to combine. Cut the tofu into 12 squares. Place them in the marinade and turn to coat. Let sit (maybe for half an hour?), turn, and let sit again. Julienne the vegetables. Heat a wok or cast iron pan with a small amount of canola or sesame oil. Cook tofu over medium heat, turning after about 5 minutes (or when the bottom is brown). Cook until the other side is brown. Remove from pan and set aside. Add chopped garlic and ginger. Then add broccoli stem and carrots. Cook for about 2 minutes. Add red peppers and zucchini. Cook a few more minutes, then drizzle with remaining marinade to taste. Cook until vegetables are tender. Spoon vegetables over rice or noodles, and top with several squares of tofu. Sprinkle with sesame seeds if desired.

Saturday, June 23, 2007

adventures in a cave

For a cute photo of today's caving adventures in a drainage pipe, click here.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

wedding washcloths


Several people I know had weddings recently. I made this set for Eliza's freshman year roommate and her new husband. I also made a set in fall colors for some other friends. This pattern comes from the book A Knitter's Stash. The recommended yarn is a linen, but this cotton was easier and faster to knit, and cheaper. The yarn is Cotton Classic Thaki, and these cloths are the garter ridge (light purple), lacy vine (magenta) and horseshoe lace (light pink). For the other set, I did horseshoe lace, tile and seed stitch stripe. For each I took out around 10 stitches in width, since I was using thicker yarn and size 6 needles.

A great Value Village find


Value Village is a thrift store chain in the DC area (I'm not sure how many there are, but there's one in Hyattsville and one in Hillendale). They sell these baggies of junk, and some of them have great things in them. I got this exciting button collection, along with some pipecleaners, two circular needles, and a few ribbons for about $5.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Norberta


I knit Norberta from the knitty pattern with exactly the yarn recommended. She is Eliza's, and they sleep together every night. I knit her a while ago, but Eliza took her to Miami to show off to her family and left her there for a several weeks until someone got around to mailing her. I hope that she had a good time hanging out with the iguanas and alligators.

A hat for Ming

This is a Louisa Harding pattern, with exactly the yarn they recommended. I knit it because one of the postdocs in my program had a hat just like it, and was lamenting the fact that she didn't buy two of them in case she lost one. When I saw the pattern, I thought it would be fun to knit her the hat she didn't buy! It looks better on the head than on the table. And the flowers are knit, not crocheted.

Friday, June 15, 2007

A new title!

Since I'll be moving in the fall and switching fields (goodbye linguistics, hello computer science), it seemed as good a time as any for a blog name change. It seems especially fitting that I learned a new way to purl yesterday, and I'm starting to get used to it. It's faster, but it makes the stitches backwards in the next row. I haven't decided whether that slows my knit rows down a bit, but I think in general it will make things faster once I've got it down. I've gotten things backwards nearly every time I've had to slip a stitch and had to take a moment to think about it and do repairs, but I suspect I'll figure that one out soon, too.

On the perl side of things (full disclosure: perl is not my language of choice, but knit and python didn't quite have the same ring to it), I registered for classes today, another step towards my new computer scientist self.