But I’m spotting a trend here, hatched with my Ozma’s Delight sweater: the contrasting hem.

that's my berry red hat with the blue/purple hem facing, and my blue/purple sweater with the cherry red hem facing!

I didn’t set out to do this! It just kind of happened. It’s too warm to wear the hat yet, but I’m ready when the chill comes. And as for my Laurayana sweater, the front and back are finished, one sleeve is finished, and the 2nd sleeve is half done. Then I just have to sew the shoulders together, pick up and knit a very few rows to finish the neck (stockinette, so they do a little tight curl), and then sew in the sleeves and sew up the sides. Sewing pieces together is always a bit of magic, and I really kind of like doing it. It’s careful work, close handwork, just my kind of thing.

So the soup-making spree is a memory now, and we have quarts and quarts (and gallons and gallons) of amazing soup in the freezer, ready for the winter. In addition to all that, my husband also made a beautiful batch of gravlax, which we’ve been enjoying.

that's 18 quarts of homemade cabbage soup. I KNOW! 18 QUARTS! and we also have french onion, probably 8 quarts.

here's the cabbage soup, for a close-up. it's thick with yummy cabbage, and shreds of brisket, and chunks of tomato. and the broth is a lovely sweet-sour flavor, deepened (of course) by the complexity of his homemade beef stock.

it's hard to really appreciate this, since it just looks like a piece of salmon; he scraped/rinsed off the salt/sugar/fresh dill blanket that it cured in for a couple days. sliced paper-thin, and either eaten plain (my way) or on pumpernickel bread (his way), it's so fresh and delicious. tastes like the sea, kind of. the delicious salmon sea.

So yeah, it’s been a knitty-foodie several days around here, punctuated by long walks in the park, marathon Breaking Bad watching, and naps and cups of tea and writing. Doesn’t that sound heavenly……..

40 lbs. marrow bones post-roasting, pre-simmering. current status: STOCK!

Today he’ll be caramelizing 10 pounds of onions for the french onion soup, and chopping god knows how many pounds of cabbage (20, I learned!) for the cabbage soup. I don’t know if you can tell how giant that stock pot is, on the left, but we have three pots about that size now, filled with a very light, rich beef stock.  YUM. One thing is for sure, my house is going to smell great this afternoon.

In addition to relaxing and eating a really luscious meal yesterday, I got some knitting done. I don’t have a good hat, and my ears get very cold very quickly, and then I get a terrible earache. Kelly gifted me a hat pattern for my birthday, so I cast on yesterday and nearly finished — will do so today. It’s A Hat for Eudora, but I call it Berry Welty.

Berry Welty -- my birthday hat! That's a peek of madelinetosh DK in iris, for the hem. Sometimes you just need a hat, you know?

Yesterday we also took a nice walk — where else, Riverside Park. I noticed something kind of weird, but it’s just the schizo aspect of this part of autumn:

leaves ahead of me.....

no leaves behind me.

So happy fragmented Friday to you; I hope you are enjoying this late autumn day, whatever you’re doing. Here’s a Thanksgiving poem that’s really not about Thanksgiving:

Home For Thanksgiving

The gathering family
throws shadows around us,
it is the late afternoon
Of the family.

There is still enough light
to see all the way back,
but at the windows
that light is wasting away.

Soon we will be nothing
but silhouettes: the sons’
as harsh
as the fathers’.

Soon the daughters
will take off their aprons
as trees take off their leaves
for winter.

Let us eat quickly—
let us fill ourselves up.
the covers of the album are closing
behind us.

-Linda Pastan

them's marrow bones, friend

My husband trekked out to Queens Chinatown to buy 40 pounds of marrow bones (half the price he could get them in Manhattan, so well worth the trip!). He does this every late fall/early winter, though I don’t think he used to get 40 pounds. It’ll eventually produce the most lovely, delicate beef stock that’ll find its way into his drool-worthy french onion soup, and his hearty cabbage soup, and even a rich lentil soup studded with the leftover ham from our Thanksgiving feast.

Today, though, is the kind of smelly day, though it carries hints of the great tastes to come. He’s been roasting the bones to get them that rich mahogany color, then he’ll simmer them for lots of hours. It’s good to do this when the weather is so cold because he can set the giant pots outside overnight so the fat can solidify and then be lifted off in a huge thick disc, leaving just the delicate stock. And oh my is it good. His french onion soup has so much flavor, you’d never ever think it was nothing but this stock and caramelized onions. No other flavors, and none needed — his stock is so rich and delicious. He makes his own croutons for that soup, and he uses the best cheese of course, but the star is the stock.

It’s cold and raining, and I’m about to head out for my downtown journey. As Laura said in her last comment, I hope I at least see something fun or strange, some great NY story! At the least, I’ll leave here with daydreams of soup floating around in my head.

Last night I slept straight through, from 11pm to 7am this morning. Those of you who sleep like I do, give me a hallelujah! And amen, sisters.

When I was getting out of bed, my husband shouted from the living room — something like “oh, you’ll want to take a picture of this!” So I scurried in and grabbed my camera in an effort to capture the brilliant morning sun on the tree outside my window.

it's like the tree was the light source

Really so much more breathtaking than the photo reveals. Cameras are great for some things, but they miss so much.

Fragment #2: I eat very well, and mindfully. I’m trying to eat for my bones, eat for my muscles, eat to minimize inflammation, eat for general health. I don’t eat white flour (at all, really) or sugar (much), I don’t eat processed stuff. I eat a lot of vegetables and fruit, which is easy because I love it. We have so much wonderful food available in our neighborhood, with fresh markets on the corners and fruit vendors on the street. And a bite of very dark chocolate every day — it’s for my health! REALLY!  (No, really.) But now and then life also is enriched by a treat…..made into a ‘treat’ because it’s special and unusual and rare. This morning I had to go to the Post Office to pick up a package (restraining myself from going off on a rant here), and I passed the new Crumbs Bakery that just came to my neighborhood. I passed it on the way to the Post Office and it registered hmm…maybe on my way back… So yes, on my way back home I decided today was a good day for a treat. If you’re going to do it, do it right!

treat for me, as a reward for having to deal with the US Post Office.

this ain't no hostess cupcake.

It was DELICIOUS. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and slowly, and with lingering relish.

Fragment #3: Silt wash. My Audrey in Unst will be brown, the gorgeous silt wash colorway. Today I am doing a manuscript evaluation, which means I can knit while I read. I won’t be doing the swatches for Audrey while I read, that’s too focused, so I’ll finish the back piece of my Laurayana and get going on a sleeve. Back, sleeve, front, sleeve, that’s my plan. Then tonight I’ll swatch Audrey. Yippee!!

Happy Friday y’all. Here’s to sunlit trees and chocolate treats. And a good night of sleep.

this is the just-dawn light. katie and trey got up MUCH earlier than they'd have liked, but it's worth it (easy for me to say!)

two pork butts so big it takes the both of them to turn them.

that's just shy of 20 pounds of pork butt. How many more times can I say pork butt? PORK BUTT. I am so mature.

How did I get so lucky!! My husband cooks fantastic meals for me every night, we eat fantastic meals on fantastic vacations, and now my daughter and her husband make fantastic meals for me. Granted, I put in my time on their end of the spatula — many, many long hard years of getting dinner on the table every night after a long day of classes and work — but this feels like a big bonus.

Katie’s frying some okra to accompany the pulled pork sandwiches we’ll have, and there’ll certainly be leftover Halloween candy — if not, we’ll have her pumpkin cookies for dessert. And I think there’s a gallon of Blue Bell chocolate mint chip ice cream in the freezer. Have I said it’s kind of about the food already?

Chuy's bean and cheese burrito. What they serve in heaven for dinner.

Trey got this margarita with a beer combo. Over the top much?

There just isn’t any Tex-Mex in New York, and while we can kind of make it ourselves, it also isn’t the same in some way. So the first thing I eat when I make it home to Texas is something gooey from Chuy’s. After that, it has to be barbecue, which obviously means Texas barbecue, which means excellent meat smoked very slowly for a long time, with a thin sauce served on the side, to enhance and garnish the meat. We don’t slop the sauce on the meat while it’s cooking, that’s just not right. I do love sausage, but what I always get is the chopped beef sandwich. OH MAN. We made a little trip to Taylor this afternoon and to soothe a difficult journey, we stopped at Louie Mueller Barbecue, hands down the best Texas barbecue anywhere. Seriously. Such an old-timey Texas place; many of the older men standing in the [long] line were wearing starched long-sleeve button down shirts in Longhorn burnt orange, with the little UT Longhorn symbol over the pocket. The younger ones wore UT t-shirts. Your food is placed on a piece of butcher paper, and if you get brisket or something that’s not a sandwich, they add a stack of 4 pieces of white bread … plain old white sandwich bread, along with a little pile of sliced onions and very thin-slicked pickles. Because that’s how you serve barbecue. I had a chopped beef sandwich with a side of coleslaw, a Shiner Bock beer, and peach cobbler for dessert. I’m surprised my heart is still beating, I thought I was dying while I was eating that delicious food.

these people know good eating when they see and smell it. man.

chopped beef sandwich -- what they serve in heaven, for lunch

Zagat rated, in case you can't trust your nose.

Tonight for dinner we’re having beans and cornbread, which is just ambrosia for an old country girl like me. Big Daddy would save a piece of cornbread and then, after dinner, he’d crumble it in a big glass of milk (sweet milk, he always said) and spoon it out, moaning the whole time, with pleasure. And oh I love that, too.

Those old, humble foods that our people ate before us are really the best, aren’t they?

I don’t remember this being a problem in my younger years.

Seriously, if you know how to do it so it works, please let me know! I’ll say a little prayer in your honor every time I peel an egg.

Now, your reward. It’s National Poetry Month, as you undoubtedly know. There’s a thing going around facebook trying to get up a Poet’s Strike, which cracks me up. But your reward is the following three poems, each of which I love for one reason or another. You’re welcome. Below the jump, in case you are a poetry hater or just don’t have time:

my favorite bits are indicated in red:

Evening

Rainer Maria Rilke

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that falls;

and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion
of what becomes a star each night, and rises;

and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately stone in you and star.

Nero’s Deadline

Constantine Cavafy

Nero wasn’t troubled when he heard
the Delphic Oracle’s prophecy.
“Let him beware the age of seventy-three.”
He still had time to enjoy himself.
He is thirty years old. It’s quite sufficient,
the deadline that the god is giving him,
for him to think about dangers yet to come.

Now to Rome he’ll be returning a little wearied,
but exquisitely wearied by this trip,
which had been wholly devoted to days of delight—
in the theaters, in the gardens, the gymnasia…
Evenings of the cities of Achaea…
Ah, the pleasure of naked bodies above all…

So Nero. And in Spain, Galba
is secretly assembling his army and preparing it:
the old man, seventy-three years old. (ha! I love that twist!!)

Never make babka when you’re upset.

And its corollary:

Never ever make 2/3 of a recipe of babka when you’re upset.

For some reason, babka recipes make 3 loaves (these are good: one, two). Well, we’re just two little people, even though one of us (hint: not me) eats on the scale of a small family, especially where sweets are concerned. But anyway — we don’t need three babkas. So I put the list of ingredients in an Excel spreadsheet, multiplied each line by .66, and bingo: the ingredient amounts I’d need for 2 babka instead of three.

Would’ve been great, it was a smart plan, blah blah blah, but then, inside the recipe would be a statement like “using 10 T of butter” which did not represent the entire amount of butter. So I had to figure out what portion of the 3-loaf recipe 10T counted for, then try to take that portion of my butter. You can see the nightmare. I’m sure.

in case you don't know, this is chocolate babka (not the lesser cinnamon babka, cf Seinfeld). it's a very eggy, buttery bread wound up and twisted around a filling of chocolate, sugar, and cinnamon. RIGHT?

I was not having a great morning, after a bad night of sleeping/not sleeping, and my nerves were shot from too much coffee. Shaky hands, brittle mind, the whole “you shouldn’t be making babka, Lori” shebang. Which, of course, I stupidly ignored.

Hence, this advice post, in which I hope to spare you the similar anxiety and angst and absolute abject…running out of A-words here…failure. (Unless it’s not a failure, in which case I’ll post later.)

A photo that captures my weekend, therefore, would have to be me at my computer. BO-ring. So instead, here’s a shot of Texas caviar, the cold black-eyed pea salad I eat every New Year’s Day. It’s a southern tradition to eat black-eyed peas for luck, but guess what? It’s actually an ancient Jewish tradition. The Talmud recommends eating them at Rosh Hashana for prosperity in the coming year. Many Jews moved to Georgia in the 1700s, so of course that tradition came with them. Southerners recognized a good thing when they saw it, and adapted it to their New Year celebration (and adding the obviously un-Kosher ham hock, but that’s what makes it so good!).

So with no further blathering: Texas caviar. It’s damn good – meaty and spicy and limey and jalapeno-ey.

eaten with tortilla chips, so good it'll make you slap your mama

sturm und drang - i prefer storm and shadows

Progress on my 52nd birthday sweater! It’s looking so good; I put it on my footstool to go take the cranberry bars out of the oven, and when I came back the shadows were so dramatic I thought I’d snap the photo. I got nearly this far yesterday, only to realize I’d done the small twisted-stitch cables all wrong so I frogged the whole damn thing. I’m beyond where I was, so alles gute (where is all this german coming from!! i don’t speak german. though i am descended from a bunch of germans, all of whom were named Frank Peters, who arrived in Texas from Hanover in the early 1800s). ANYWAY. I love my sweater. It’s darker than it looks in that photo; the sunshiney parts are so blown out, but the other parts are so dark that the combo just freaked out my camera.

tandoori chicken with grilled onions and zucchini

Look at the yummy dinner I had last night – garlicky tandoori chicken, making my mouth water just remembering it. I’m not kidding; my salivary glands in my jaws are having painful spasms.

And here’s the “stuff” part of the post title. I decided to take the afghan I’m knitting for my vacation knitting.

the pattern is Totally Autumn (Anne Hanson) and the yarn is Cascade 200 Heathers

It’s a simple pattern, no extra gadgets are needed (cable needles, materials to hold sleeves, markers, nothing). Plus, I really want to get it done, and when I’m at home I seem to be more likely to work on sweaters now that I’m a dedicated sweater fiend. This way, I’ll get it done, it’ll be more special since I completed it in Laos and Cambodia on our vacation, and when I get home I can dive headlong into my sweaters. For my “just in case” knitting, I’ll take the purple owl eyes scarf. I can’t imagine that I’ll finish this afghan, but you never know.

Hope you’re having a great Sunday, a lovely weekend, and doing some happy knitting.