Food & Cotton

Previously on this blog, I mentioned that I'm in love with my new cookbook - King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking. I've made another item from it - Cherry & Chocolate Chip Scones. I know, what's with the fruit & chocolate chip kick? The whole grain in this one is barley flour, 2 to 1 with all-purpose white. They came out very wet - like wetter than cookie wet but drier than a cake. So I made them dropped scones even though they were supposed to be shaped into a circle than cut into wedges. I can't figure out what I did wrong. It called for either 2.5 cups of whole wheat or 2 cups of barley; I went barley and apparently that made all the difference. Perhaps my barley isn't whole grain and that makes it wetter? Or perhaps I fluffed up the barley too much before measuring it? One of the techniques the book recommends is weighing all ingredients. The next time I try these or any recipe from the book, I might do that instead of going by volume. The seemed to bake up fine. They taste awesome and I'm trying to hold myself back from polishing them off. The cherries just aren't doing it for me, however. They are pretty anemic. They are dried Bing and I think I was expecting the tart dried sour cherries. So I'll make a note to tried to find those next time.

Also check out the plate in the picture. Mr. Thystle has given the go ahead to get some salad plates like the one pictured above. So I'm gonna pick up a half a dozen in turquoise and half a dozen in red. Apparently, I'm still stuck on this color combo. Should look nice with our cobalt blue dinner plates we already have. But salad plates seem to be much more our speed for smaller meals (or making dinner seem bigger since it takes up more of the plate) or a sandwich or anything more than our 5 inch saucer plates hold.

Here's how the cotton sweater is coming along. This was the back about 75% of the way done. Currently, I'm actually done with the back and about 75% of the way done with one of the front panels, but just getting around to getting photos off the camera. I'm on a knitting high after taking 4 months to finish those darn socks and I'm scouring Ravelry, finding all sorts of things I want to try. My queue is about 20 projects long right now. Hrmm, interesting... I've also made 20 things in my knitting career as well. But what's so great about a sweater is that once you do a sweater you can do ANYTHING. I'm serious. Knit a cozy for the Golden Gate Bridge? No problem! But this - a Scaruffle - is the next item on my list. Got the needles. Got the yarn. Just gotta finish the sweater first.

On the gardening front - my final two potato seeds are sprouting. I thinned out my first round of radishes even though their roots are just barely starting to swell. They were shading out the carrots underneath. If you'll recall, I sowed them at the same time with the idea being that you harvest the quick producing radishes just when you should start thinning the slow sprouting carrots. But these are some seriously slow radishes and I don't really like radishes but I do like carrots. So I'm playing favorites with my veggies.