a knit

The wool swatch I nearly ate thinking it was a triscuit became this dress:



I love it. All I wanted was for those two colors (offensive marigold and offensive dusty pink) to look weird together. Mission accomplished.



I would write a pattern for it but why? It is just a simple ass raglan sweater dress. I cast on for a wide neck, increased in a roughly 15/30/15/30 (obviously these numbers do not add up to 100% but you get the point) fashion until it felt loose and comfortable, and knitknitknitknitknit in plain stockinette alternating the colors every row with my favorite 1X2 twisted rib on all the edges. This dress was a favorite one for me to bring to the pub as motor skills and concentration are not required although a strong motivation to continue sitting in one spot is. I knit it on US #10 Addi Natural Turbos so it is quite loose and went quickly.

Knitting has been kind of slow recently because of the tape on my knuckles. I punched the wall on accident climbing.

gringos need mayo

As I mentioned before, mayo is essential to authentic Southern cuisine. Soy Floridian, but I was raised in a southern household (all three sides are from southern mississippi) and I love grapeseed oil veganaise. Here my favorite mayo recipe is:

Tostones y Southern Style Mojo

1 green plantain
1/4 cup veganaise
4-5 cloves of garlic
1 lime
1 fistful cilantro
safflower oil

Heat the pan and oil to medium high and cut plantain into 4-5 stout bits. They need flat ends to stand on. Stand the plantains up in the pan until both sides are golden and the middle feels kind of squishy. In the meantime, chop up the garlic and cilantro and combine with the veganaise and the juice from the lime. SMASH plantains with something wide and flat like a plate. Make sure there is plenty of oil in the pan and put the plantains back in. I like to fry the shit out of them until they are super crunch and just about transparent from the amount of oil they have soaked up. Maybe paper towel them, and be generous with the mojo. Feeds one.



I prefer a 1:1 ratio of tostones to garic cloves.

POPCORN!!

Love recently invested in a large tub of unrefined extra virgin coconut oil and filled up a jar for me. Over the last year I've been kicking a lot of old bad nutrition habits and one of my worst long time bad habits was microwave popcorn. Blast O Butter. The really bad stuff. It was the last thing that I was cooking on a regular basis in the microwave and it is a late night staple. One night I got home exceptionally late and inebriated and my roomies were already tucked away in bed so I made some popcorn with refined coconut oil on my camp stove outside. WOW. wow. WOW!! REAL popcorn! No microwave chewyness. No "butter". I was hooked.

Even more hooked when I tried it with UNrefined coconut oil- deep rich coconut taste on fluffy popcorn. I wanted that taste with curry and I knew Love, being from a curry loving culture, would want that taste, too.



I forgot to bring my loose popcorn and all he had was one bag of the Terrible Paper Bag Popcorn. So I was on a mission to save the popcorn from whatever lie within the paper bag. Orange poison. Curious, I put a generous fingerful in my mouth. Neon flavor. Absurd and single faceted. In context it is addictive, the flavor overrides all kinds of common sense mechanisms my body uses to communicate proper nutrition requirements. The real danger of poison-food doesn't come from what it does to your figure or arteries, it is in how it blinds your perception of food and your body.

In a mesh strainer, I ran the contents of the bag under hot water until I couldn't see anymore orange. Still greasy, of course, so I lobbed on the baking soda, again hot water, still greasy, soaked in vinegar, again hot water, wiped off with paper towels. Love thought it was OK to eat at that point but I swear I still tasted some of the Poison in the final product. We ate it all but I will have to make the real deal very soon. I don't think the microwave bag popcorn is intended to be used on the stove. Here recipe is:

Coconut Curry Popcorn

1/2 cup loose popcorn
3 tablespoons unrefined extra virgin coconut oil
1 tablespoon your favorite curry
sea salt to taste
the lid that goes to your pot

Melt the oil in a pot. You'll need a pot big enough to hold all the popcorn when it is popped but small enough to where the oil will come up about halfway on the kernels. Put the kernels in, cover, when they start to pop, shake the shit out of it (keep the lid on though). When the popping slows or you think you're burning it take the pot off the heat and give it a few more good shakes. Take the lid off and salt and curry it up. Enjoy.

friends, fiber and food

What's on my needles today. To be thigh highs for me, but mostly for my man.

I love my friends, I love how they think when I knit plain stockinette it is gorgeous and when I don't get as far as they thought I would on a sock they are disappointed and that they want me to be proud of them for quitting cancer sticks. I am very proud, I love my friends.



This is knitshits, and the more I learn about food and the more I learn about fiber the more I find they are kin. Food is medicine and fiber is food for the outside of your body. They are gifts from the plants and the animals and perfect for our minds and bodies. Lil Dubz is a new vegetarian and I want to share some of my shits along with my knits. I brought the ensalade de aguacates in the blue bowl to our potluck and here the recipe is:

6 hass avocado
2 big juicy tomatos
1 head of garlic
1 big bunch of cilantro
1/3 cup grapeseed veganaise
5 limes

Combine the juice of 3 limes, the veganaise, all the garlic all chopped up, and half the cilantro. Add one avocado and smash it and combine it as best you can to make the dressing for your salad. Cut up the rest of the avocados and tomatoes and gently fold them in. Finish with a wreath of cilantro and lime.

& mitts to match

I loved knitting the garter lace scarf for my Maw Maw so much I made little garter mitts to match.



Pattern is:

Cast on 27 sts.

First row and every odd row: KNIT

even rows 2-6 and 24-38: K, (K2tog, y/o, K, y/o, K2tog) 5 times, K

even rows 8-22: K14, y/o, K2tog, k2tog, y/o, k, y/o, K2tog, K2tog, y/o, k4. (knit mirror image for other mitt: k4, y/o, K2tog, k2tog, y/o, k, y/o, k2tog, k2tog, y/o, k14)

Bind off however you like and block with an emphasis on the scalloped edge. Mattress stitch selvedges to complete mitt and weave end ends.

Happy New Year, yall.