I decided, what with the fall weather and all, that macaroni and cheese would be just the thing for dinner yesterday. I love macaroni and cheese. It’s one of my all-time favorite comfort foods. I like my macaroni and cheese — baked with just the right amount of butter bread crumbs on top and with a high cheese-to-macaroni ratio.

#1 Son likes macaroni and cheese, too. But not my macaroni and cheese. When faced with a choice of what I like to think of as the good stuff or that stuff that vaguely resembles food product that comes in the blue box, #1 Son will take the blue box every time.

But #1 Son isn’t here. On Sunday he was in Dallas. Far, far away from the evils of my macaroni and cheese — the good stuff.

Now, I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed sometimes, I’ll admit. But I’m a reasonably intelligent person who can usually be counted on to dress herself, hold down a job, and be a responsible member of society. So, one would think that when going to the store with the express purpose in mind of picking up the ingredients for macaroni and cheese… well, one would expect that I would remember…

macaroni

wouldn’t one? Although, as it turns out, mac and cheese made with a combination of penne, rotini and radiatore is actually pretty darn good, and has the added advantage of not requiring another trip to the store.

Thank goodness I remember the cheese.

To those of you who commented on my spoiled child who needs attention burglar alarm — it’s been installed in this house for 10 years with nary a problem. I guess it’s OK if it gets a little attention once per decade. My alarm, like ET wants to call home. But, unlike ET, it hasn’t much patience when it doesn’t get a response. If the new DSL filter doesn’t do the trick, I am going to ask if we can move that particular ET-call-home test to maybe a little later in the morning. I mean… 5:00 AM? Not my time of day.

But really… I have to share this with you!

Look at those little clams! The shells are white chocolate, and the clam is this sort of dark chocolate mousse stuff, and look – it even has a little pearl! Aren’t those just cool. And the little chocolate presents with the gold ribbons. And the little chocolate roses.

P made these — made them with her own hands!

My knitbuds at Tangle had a little party on Tursday night in celebration of my birthday. I was shocked and awed, because believe me I wasn’t expecting anything. And in my wildest dreams I never would have expected…

… the best cheesecake I’ve had in my entire life, also provided by the amazing P.

I wasn’t able to snap a picture before 1/2 of it mysteriously disappeared. But this is better anyway, because I can show you how cool the swirly center was. And you can see that it has an Oreo crust.

Yeah… the whole evening was pretty much death by large quantities of chocolate.

Fortunately L brought some baked brie with bread to provide a little counterpoint and soak soak up some of the sweet.

It was a happy death.

My first clue that something was afoot were these balloons tied to the back of a chair in the knit circle. That and the usual suspects all saying you get to sit here because it’s your birthday.

Oh… I had so much fun! And I can’t begin to thank everyone there enough. It was just cool.

When I left Tangle, I hurried to meet #1 Son for dinner. He wanted to take me out for my birthday a day early, because he left for Seattle with his band on Friday night for a couple of days.

And I had to eat.

I tell you, gentle reader… greater love hath no mom than she will pretend to eat a tostada (it was the smallest thing I could order) after polishing off some of that cheesecake. But it was great to get together with #1 Son. Our schedules seldom jive anymore for longer than 5 or 10 minutes. That’s what happens, I guess, when your kids grow up.

Oh… and just maybe the evening included a little bit of knitting.

I can’t show you more than this because, well, it’s a surprise. (LT, avert your eyes!) But aren’t the colors just glorious in the sun!

Lisa writes that she’s been eying the Seasilk. Lisa… get out now while you still can. If any of this falls into your hands, you will be instantly addicted for life.

I’ve knit with silk before, but this stuff is just something else again.

Shelly — OK… I need to know more about why you were geologizing at Swan Valley in the Pleistocene. I mean… c’mon, girl! You can’t leave a comment like that and then expect me to let it lie there!

Happy weekend, everyone!

When I was a little girl, way back only shortly after the dinosaurs, my favorite ice cream flavor was Butter Brickle.

We didn’t have ice cream very often. It was a treat that was almost always reserved for family picnics and gatherings during the short Idaho summer. The grown-ups in charge of ice cream purchasing almost always stuck with the big three – vanilla, strawberry and chocolate – because almost everyone liked one of those. Sometimes, just for variety, they’d get Neapolitan. Yeah, yeah… my relatives really think outside the box.

I don’t remember many ice cream flavors back then. Sometimes on Sunday we’d go for a drive to a little town called Swan Valley. It’s along the South Fork of the Snake, on the way to Jackson Hole. There wasn’t much in Swan Valley (still isn’t) but a highway T-intersection, a bar, a gas station. And the Swan Valley Commissary, home of the square scoop. Nowadays the Commissary offers 30 flavors of ice cream displayed for your pleasure. Back then, the proprietor would ask my brother and I what flavor we wanted. We have vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, he would say. Even then I was a chocoholic and bro always wanted strawberry. The proprietor would return from the freezer with a big tub of ice cream. I guess we’re out of everything but vanilla. He’d use the coolest little scoop to serve our ice cream. It made little ice cream blocks instead of balls. I’ve tried for years to get one of those scoops. If you’re ever in the area, check it out.

But I digress… Sometimes, like on my birthday, I really got to pick the flavor I wanted. And I picked Butter Brickle. (Mama usually bought a 1/2 gallon of Neapolitan also, so everyone can have what they like.)

I was blessed by having a birthday late in the summer right before school started, when the weather was almost always perfect and everyone was ready for an end-of-summer bash. The blessing was tempered by getting to always share my birthday party with my Great Aunt Florence. In my later years I came to appreciate Aunt Florence very much. But when you’re 6 or 8 or 10, you just don’t want to share your party with a cheek-pinching sister of your grandmother.

So Mama let me pick the ice cream.

Butter Brickle became harder and harder to find, and by the time I was in high school there just wasn’t any. Although I’ve tried a lot of wonderful ice cream flavors, I missed my childhood favorite. Figuring that the internet is a large place, and somewhere there might be some Butter Brickle stashed away, I googled to see what I could find.

I found out that Butter Brickle was the trade name of an English toffee made by the Fenn Brothers Ice Cream and Candy Company. That company was liquidated in 1970 (thus the dearth of Butter Brickle). The secret recipe and the trademark were sold to the Heath company, which already manufactured an English toffee bar (i.e. the Heath bar) that was essentially identical to Butter Brickle. The Heath Company was sold to a Finnish company in the 1990’s, and then to Hershey in 1998.

Hershey, I learned, makes a Butter Brickle ice cream — but only in 3 gallon drums that won’t fit into my freezer.

But today at the grocery store I spotted… drum roll please

Heath Bar Ice Cream

I don’t remember whether Butter Brickle had a toffee swirl in it. But when I tasted that first bite of Heath Bar Ice Cream, I was transported back to those lazy summer picnics — mustard on my fingers from the hot dogs; trying to balance Mama’s amazing and dense potato salad on a plate made from (it seemed) tissue paper; tossing balls and jumping rope; Aunt Florence letting me blow out the candles; and getting to pick the ice cream.

I’m a big girl now. I drizzled a little Kahlua over it.

The Mudstone socks were finished today just in time to catch the last of the late afternoon light. They are visiting the honeysuckle growing on what I like to call the “ugly fence.”

Frank Lloyd Wright once said something like… a doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only plant vines. I’m not responsible for the ugly fence. My former neighbors were. I have no idea why they felt compelled to build a fence that doesn’t match any other fence in the neighborhood. But I liked them. They were nice people. I planted vines.

So, the Mudstone socks are finished. I’m OK with how they came out. They’re not my favorite pair of socks. But I like the colors and they fit very well. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do at the top. After futzing around for awhile, I finally just did a 1×1 rib using the Mudslide color, topped with a crochet bind-off.

Here is the shadow knitting revealed in all its hard-to-read glory. Use your imagination just a little here, please. Tilt your head slightly to the right. Starting from just above the heel and going up the right side, it says SOCK. Now tilt your head slightly to the left. Starting at the top and going down the left side, it says SOCK. See it? Do you? Click on the pic for the biggy version.

Yeah… not that successful, eh? When they’re on, I can’t read it at all. Oh well.

Shall we call it purl as you go? 🙄

There won’t be much bloggage for the next few days.

Remember how desserts is stressed spelled backwards? Yeah, well… I’ve been hitting the desserts pretty hard lately.

So I’m heading off for a much needed and long over due little jaunt away from town. I’m heading up north to the fair city of Victoria, BC. If you have never had the chance to visit Victoria, it’s a charming city where almost everywhere is within walking distance or a short bus hop. The weather is lovely and the people are friendly and I always have a wonderful time there. Also, there is Lush and Roger’s Chocolates, and I hear there might even be a yarn store! 😉

Victoria also has the advantage of not being terribly far away from home, and at the end of a ride on my two favorite forms of transportation: trains and boats. I could drive to Victoria. But why do that when I can take a train and a catamaran?

If I can find an internet cafe in Victoria, I’ll check in with y’all. If not, I won’t be gone very long. Just a short out-of-town break.

#1 Son isn’t going with me. He has to work. And it’s good that he has a job. But I’m sorry he can’t go.

The blueberry cheesecake tartlet is courtesy of the bakery where #1 Son is employed. I really felt like I should have presented it in a somewhat more arty fashion, rather than just tossing it down on the table. But in the end I just took a picture and then ate it. Yeah… it was that good.

Being a parent can be tough. It would be so much easier if offspring came with user manuals or some kind of documentation. And not the kind that was translated badly by people who weren’t really on speaking terms with either the original language or English. But a good manual. The kind where there’s an extensive index in the back, and you just need to look up something like clean bedroom, how to enforce without battle and find all the answers. Wouldn’t that be handy?

I will never, ever claim to be the best parent in the world. But I have to admit that I did somehow bumble around and manage to do a couple of things adequately. For example, I raised my son to be a hard working, responsible member of society. And in return for that, I got a son who is now working in a small, locally owned…

bakery

… specializing in handcrafted breads, pies and pastries made from local, farm-fresh ingredients. Just think of the possibilities, there. I mean… did I do something right here or what?

Yesterday #1 Son called. He’d locked his keys in his car. Could I come by and let him borrow my keys? (It’s so nice to know he still needs his mom every now and then.) I could and did. The bakery was officially closed. But did I want a little something to take home with me?

And that, gentle readers, was how I scored a shaved-very-thin, piled high ham-and-cheese sandwich on a wonderful French roll along with a (get this) cheesecake tart. That’s right. Cheesecake.

Have you caught on that I’m rather fond of cheesecake? I should have take a picture of it, because it was lovely. But, alas, I ate it. 😆

Not much knitting has happened due to other meaningless pursuits like work that are taking up all of my good knitting time.

Those of you who guessed that the Mudstone sock cuffs were shadow or illusion knitting were indeed correct. I didn’t like the way it was coming out. It occurred to me that I was knitting the colors backwards, so that it was easier to read from the foot up rather than from the top down. Reasoning that not many people would be looking at my socks from the ground up (I’m so sharp), I frogged it out and started over. It’s better this time. But I don’t think I’ll reveal what it is until I get it finished. (It’s not a ship’s anchor.)

If it still comes out wonky and hard to decipher, then I’ll just say that Dave was correct and it’s “purl as you can.” In fact, from now on I think that if I’m knitting something that I’m not sure what it is, I’ll just ask the general public and pick the answer that sounds right.

I threw all of the names of the correct guessers into a hat and Kat’s name was drawn. So, Kat, if you will email me your snail mail address I’ll reach into my stash and find something fun to send your way.

I just found 1/2 of a bar of chocolate in my drawer. It was a present from one of the women I spent the weekend at the coast with a couple of weeks ago. I’d forgotten (really) that I stuck it in my drawer at work, just in case I needed it some day. Like right now. Oh my goodness… it tastes sooooo good.

Almost I can get back that wonderful calm energy I felt all that long weekend. Lazy shopping trips, long beach walks, talking, eating, knitting. It was all so nice.

It took no time for that to just fade away when I returned to the city.

I’m still here at work, finishing up a couple of things after most have left. The walls are being repainted, and a crew is here with ladders and such. They’ve turned a radio to a country station and are singing along to the music. 🙂 A little different atmosphere than the usual work-a-day world.

If I close my eyes and taste that chocolate, I can almost transport myself back to the beach.

Stressed is desserts spelled backwards…

The green basket weave socks are just past the point where I could legitimately make them anklets so I must admit publicly I will not wimp out. I will finish them. But they are not yet to the point where they go back to being mindless destressing knitting. I must finish them soon because I must start on the Sockapaloooza socks, Alice’s socks, the samples for the sock class, and several other socks ideas that are tumbling around in my head willy-nilly. It appears that 2006 will be the year of the sock, any other plans I may have made to the contrary.

Thank you to those who have asked after Kidd. He is doing better.

I have finally found a food that he likes. Fancy Feast Gourmet Gold with Ocean Fish and Salmon. Dry food. Kibbles. [shrug] I’ve been tempting him with all of the moist food, as close to Gerber baby meat as I can get and still be cat food — expensive little cans full of bits of yummy things with gravy poured over. He turns his nose up at them.

I filled a little bowl with the FFGGOFS kibbles and he spent a solid hour in the kitchen crunching away. Go figure.

Cats are strange.