When Knitting Was a Manly Art

It’s been nearly a month since my Mother’s death and it’s time for me to quit feeling sorry for myself and try to start connecting with the real world. Eileen says I’ve been too withdrawn and if she notices, it’s time for me to make some changes.

First, I really want to thank everyone who left comments. Sometimes I wonder if *anyone* is really reading this blog and especially since there hasn’t been much in the way of posts recently.

I’ve started to knit a bit again. Nothing special. Just the beginnings of a toe up sock the Queen Kahuna way. I don’t intend on any pictures until I’ve made some real progress.

A bit of cooking, including a spaghetti sauce that came mostly out of my head and was a big hit in the household.

3 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, medium dice
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 28oz can whole tomatoes (try to find Muir Glen Organic)
1 14.5oz can diced tomatoes (once again try to find Muir Glen)
8 oz sliced mushrooms
3 tablespoons dried Basil
1 teaspoon dried Thyme
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon fish sauce (honestly.. try it..)
Kalamata olives — pitted and sliced — a goodly amount you probably can’t over do the olive

Heat oil over medium high heat until shimmering. Add onions and cook until the onions are translucent, about 3-4 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant (another minute).

Add diced tomatoes and whole tomatoes, crushing the whole tomatoes and all the juices. Add sliced mushrooms, herbs, fish sauce and sugar and simmer for about 30-40 minutes until thickened. Add olives and heat through for about 5-10 minutes.

While all this is cooking, boil 4 quarts of water. When the water begins to boil, add 1 tablespoon of salt and then 1 pound of spaghetti/linguine (I really like Ronzoni) until done to your satisfaction (10-12 minutes). Save about 1 cup of pasta cooking water and drain the remaining.

Combine sauce and pasta and use extra pasta water to thin the sauce down if needed.

Sprinkle on a good Parmesan and enjoy…

Afterthought You’ll notice that there is no added salt or pepper. Between the salt in the canned tomatoes, the added salt from the fish sauce and the salted water for the pasta, *I* didn’t find a need to add anything. You might want to add either to taste.

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My Mother died at about 9:30 this morning.

She had a stroke Tuesday afternoon and after an early positive diagnosis, she went downhill very fast on Wednesday. I spent about 5 hours by her bedside on Wednesday and was on my way back to Salem this morning to visit her again when I received the call.

I was very close to my Mother and luckily I was able to spend a couple hours with her this past Thursday. Just the two us talking. I’m going to miss her. When things were bad, I could always count on her to make me feel better.

The past couple months have been tough, and this just adds to it. I feel lost right now. I’m not taking the blog down, but I don’t expect I’ll be posting again for some time.

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It’s been a while since my last posting, but work and a slowly reviving nursery have left me with little time for much else.

Mentally, things are going pretty nice, but the restaurant has gotten crazy in the last two months. While I’m still cruising close to the 40 hour/week mark, I feel like I’m *always* working. I have a 10 hour shift every Monday, an 8 1/2 hour shift on Friday (which means closing on the busiest night of the week — sometimes that 8 1/2 hours expands to more like 9 1/2). And on top of that, Sunday is one of our only three closed days (Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter) and to keep my hours up, I worked a 6 straight days this week with 5 closes. Ah, but I did get a pay raise (making *nearly* $11/hour).

Nursery is starting to come alive and Eileen’s first plant sale is less than three weeks away and that means when I’m not cooking, I’m planting and cleaning up plants.

Still knitting a tiny bit, just so I can say I’m doing it. Nothing of interest to report.

Yesterday was my 61st birthday and I spent it working. I’m closing the restaurant tonight, but I’ve got the whole weekend off and I intend to sleep in late tomorrow and then see if I can find a good way to celebrate.

Don’t Mess With The Old Guy

An old prospector walks his tired old mule into a western town one day. He’d been out in the desert for about six months without a drop of whiskey. He walked up to the first saloon he came to and tied his old mule to the hitch rail. As he stood there brushing some of the dust from his face and clothes, a young gunslinger walked out of the saloon with a gun in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other. The young gunslinger looked at the old man and laughed, saying, “Hey old man, have you ever danced?” The old man looked up at the gunslinger and said, “No, I never did dance. I just never wanted to.” A crowd had gathered by then and the gunslinger said, “Well, you old fool, you’re gonna’ dance now,” and started shooting at the old man’s feet. The old prospector was hopping around and everybody was laughing.

When the gunslinger fired his last bullet, he holstered his gun and turned around to go back into the saloon. The old man reached up on the mule, drew his shotgun, and pulled both hammers back making a double clicking sound. The gunslinger heard the sound and everything got quiet. The crowd watched as the gunslinger slowly turned around looking down both barrels of the shotgun. The old man asked, “Did you ever kiss a mule square on the ass?” The gunslinger swallowed hard and said, “No. But I’ve always wanted to.”

The lessons from this story are:
1. Don’t waste ammunition.
2. Don’t mess with old guys.

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It’s been a wild couple of weeks.

We’re down two heads at the restaurant, both due to firing. One of the counter ladies had some questionable activity on the till that she didn’t want to come in and discuss and one of our cooks was fired for being overpriced and a pain in the ass.

I went from a bit over 30 hours/week to nearly 39 hours this next week, including a 10 hour shift on Monday’s and to top it all off, there was a basketball tournament in town this weekend with 56 teams competing and *of course* the winning teams showed up tonight about an hour before closing. Sigh.. Shut the Open sign off at 9pm, clocked out at about 10:15. Sitting here with a cold bottle of beer trying to wind down, but I need to get to bed soon, as I need to be back at the restaurant at 9:30 tomorrow morning. Yes.. But my paycheck will be wonderful.

Still plugging away on the third scarf and I even did a couple rows on the little sweater to just prove to myself that I knew where I was in the pattern.

Hopefully, more later

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My one and only day shift of the week. I’m in early to do morning prep prior to opening the restaurant. I and a single counter gal work the lunch crowd and then clean and prep the kitchen for the evening shift. We’ve been really slow since the first of the year and the boss has been cutting hours, trying to save a few bucks. Unfortunately, the slow nights also mean we’re closing earlier which means even smaller paychecks. Probably only 30 hours this week.

My Saturday day off was spent volunteering at the steam-powered sawmill down in Brooks, Oregon. It’s our first run since the end of last August and we had to work out a couple of kinks, but overall it was a good run.

Still knitting, but nothing yet other then a couple of Simple Sillys® (i.e. another knit wash cloth and a bias knit scarf for one of the young ladies at work). Still that’s better than I’ve done for the past couple of months and I’m actually packing along little projects when I leave the house. I keep looking at the little sweater, but I’m not yet ready to dig into it and figure out where I left off.

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I work in the food industry. Luckily, as a cook, I don’t have to deal with customers unless I want to. But I’ve witnessed a few examples of people who *really* need to remember the title phrase. Be Nice to Each Other.

Recently a contributor on Metafilter added a link to a blog in England which published The Manners Manifesto.

Easy things, like Smile and say Please and Thank You. Unfortunately too many people have forgotten how to be civil to each other. I need to remember some of the items myself.

OBCP (OBligatory Cat Picture) — Rudy and Halley enjoying the wood stove.

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If anyone is still around…

The holiday season is ending and so is my blues, for the most part, and it’s time for me to try to rejoin the world.

It’s actually been a pretty good holiday, overall. Snow on Christmas day and a wonderful snowy world on the 26th

On January 2 I played DD (Designated Driver) for one of the young ladies at work who turned 21 (Hi Jamie..). I haven’t been out late at a club in years and we managed to be the last people out of the bar at nearly 1am on the 3rd. Oh… And I was scheduled to work 3pm to close also on the 3rd. One tired old fart A good time was had by all. Unfortuantely Jamie doesn’t remember most of the last half, but we have pictures…

Still not knitting, but I’ve been helping out an older gentleman customer who learned to knit about 9 months ago after bypass surgery and the Doctor didn’t want him out amongst his dairy cows. He mostly does garter-stitch scarves in fuzzy yarn on big needles. Quick and easy and all of his grandkids love them.

Mostly work is keeping me sane. It gets me out of the house and forces me to interact with people and that’s really what I need right now. I’ve spent too much of the past two months buried in my own thoughts. And working with a bunch of young people (nobody over 32 and most are 21 or younger) is keeping me young — or at least feeling young.

I intend to start posting regularly again, and right now my attitude is positive enough to believe I’ll follow through.

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A large part of yesterday was spent up in Washington at the Cedar Creek Grist Mill for their yearly Cider Press. They ran out of apples and cider before they ran out of people and some folks went home empty handed.

And a recipe for very simple Pumpkin Cake that’s perfect for this Halloween holiday and one that gets raves from everybody that’s tried it (and no.. It’s not one of mine).

Pumpkin Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Cake:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground allspice
¼ teaspoon ground ginger
4 large eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
1 2/3 cups granulated sugar
1 (15-ounce) can plain pumpkin puree

Frosting:
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 ½ cups confectioners’ sugar
1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, cut into 8 pieces and softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. For the cake: Adjust oven rack to middle position and preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour 13 by 9 inch baking pan. Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and spices in bowl. With electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat eggs, oil and granulated sugar until thick and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Reduce speed to low, add pumpkin, and mix until incorporated. Slowly add flour mixture and mix until only a few small lumps of flour remain, about 1 minute. Scrape batter into prepared pan and bake until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, 30 to 35 minutes. Transfer pan to wire rack and cool completely.

2. For the frosting: With electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat butter and confectioners’ sugar until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add cream cheese 1 piece at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition. Add vanilla and mix until smooth. Cake can either be turned out onto a serving platter and frosted or left in pan and frosted.

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Life is a bit strange right now. Neither good nor bad, Just not a lot of interest in much of anything right now.

Relationship with Eileen is the best it’s been in over a year, though the boyfriend is still in the picture.

We’re shorthanded at work again, I’m mostly working evening/closing shifts and it all leaves little time to mess around on the internet and for the most part I’m not doing anything interesting enough to report on. Mostly reading in my spare time, adding books to my account on LibraryThing. I can’t believe how many knittting books I have.

Very little knitting going on. Occasional stitch added to the scarf just to keep my hand in it, but nothing else.

Not much photographing being done either, though once in a while something catches my eye.

Saturdays have been my day to get away from it all. Just pack up and go somewhere, mostly on my own. Today I’m heading up to the Richland, Washington area for an “Apple Smash”. There’s a 100+ year old water-powered grist mill that will be pressing apples into cider and I’ll be joining the crowd.

A couple of weeks ago, I managed to *finally* get down to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon that’s the home of the Spruce Goose along with a number of very interesting exhibits.

And finally, no promises about when I’ll post again.. If my life ever straightens out, I hope to return to semi-regular posting, but I don’t envision that happening any time soon. About the only place I regularly touch lately is Twitter.

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Today is my first day off in 9 days. 8 of those were closings or late shifts. For the most part I love my job of cooking, but this run has really burned me out.

Knitting again, of sorts. Nothing on the little sweater, but I’ve started working on a couple of scarves that have been sitting on needles for way too long. It’s *good* to be knitting again.

Brownies. Does anyone like brownies? I’ve run across a very simple recipe that makes the tastiest and fudgiest brownies I’ve had in a long while. And dead simple.

3 oz Unsweetened chocolate
1 stick of butter (salted or unsalted) (8 tablespoons)
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
pinch of salt if you’re using unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract.

Preheat oven to 350F. Melt chocolate and butter in a small saucepan at very low heat, stirring occasionally. When chocolate is just about melted, remove from heat and stir until smooth. Stir in sugar. Beat in eggs, one at time until incorporated. Add flour and vanilla and stir until no traces of flour remain.

Pour into a greased 8×8 pan. Even out the batter and bake for 20 to 30 minutes, until set and barely firm in the middle.

Enjoy.

And finally an optical illusion that I just received in email.

Sitting on the edge of your seat, looking the the image, Mr. Angry is on the left.

Now stand up and move away about 10-12 feet. Now Mr. Angry in on the right. Weird….

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