baking

here comes santa claus

On May 23, 2010, in it's the little things too, joy, travel, by Lori

Well, anyway, we’ll be flying over the North Pole when we go to Laos and Cambodia in the fall. Want to see? I’m so excited!

That leg will be 15 hours, following a Great Circle, then we’ll change planes and fly 3 hours to Phnom Penh. We’re flying Cathay Pacific, which may well be a great airline, but it’s not Singapore Airlines, which is the airline we flew to Vietnam. But I don’t care! It’ll be my 2nd flight over the North Pole, I am a very very lucky girl. Here are the specifics, once we’re there:

I just finished watching The Big Sleep and spinning – what a nice morning! I slept in so late – 9:30! – and wish the day weren’t half over, but what to do. You need a lazy day now and then, right? Now I think I’ll make some bread, my favorite ciabatta recipe, and then do some knitting, and maybe a little more movie watching. One of my goals is to see all the AFI’s top 100 films, so there’s an abundance waiting for me. I hope you’re having such a lovely Sunday too!

Tagged with: AFI top 100 films • baking • bread • Cambodia • ciabatta • great circle • Hong Kong • Laos • lazy • Sunday • The Big Sleep • travel

today’s mission(s):

On April 3, 2010, in Food, baking, joy, sweets, by Lori

Baking some bread

Making pizza for tonight’s dinner

pizza

Since I’ve been dying for cake: yellow cake with chocolate frosting

AND cutting out a linen dress, cleaning the floors, doing some knitting — because it’s so springy outside, and tomorrow we’re heading out to Astoria, to our favorite Greek restaurant for a leisurely afternoon.

Happy happy spring!

Tagged with: baking • bread • cake • pizza • plans

diary of a V-Day Eve

On February 13, 2010, in Food, baking, frogging, knitting, lace, recipe, shawl, sweets, by Lori

It’s been one of those 2 steps forward, 3 steps back kind of days. I spent the morning redoing things on the blog – things like tracking down plug-ins, finding dumb API keys, rediscovering the widgets I’d used, rewriting my “about” page, stuff like that. I’d been happy with things the way were, so I wasn’t working in the spirit of doing it right/better this time, but rather trying to recreate what I’d had. Ah well. I’m mostly there, just minus all my posts.

On the knitting front, I made it through the entire part of the shawl chart with the big set of nupps. And they were fun! I definitely learned how to do them better by the last row of them, but I was happy enough. Then, knitting the last set of lace rows to complete the chart, and *clunk*. Something was way wrong. After each row – partly due to overweening pride – I’d stopped, stretched out the lace, admired it, looked for problems, found none. After each pattern repeat, I rechecked the stitches. If each pattern repeat was correct, and each row was correct, I’d be in good shape, right? And yet I’d really screwed up something, somewhere. How hadn’t I seen it in all my looking?! Too much pride, too much “look, isn’t that cool what I did?” I guess. And so I had to pull that whole section out. Had I put in a lifeline? NO.

So I held my breath, got out a small tapestry needle and a roll of dental floss, and tried to put one in, below the nupps chart. A tiny little stitch at a time, through the cobweb-weight lace. plink. plink. plink. plink. plink. Across the row…..and then pull pull pull pull, unknitting. It worked, and so now I begin again. At least this time I’ll do the nupps pretty well from the very first row. So with the shawl too, I’m back where I started.

My sweetheart and I have been dieting – him on Atkins, me on low-cal – but here it is, Valentine’s Day (tomorrow). We’re going out for dinner at our favorite Ethiopian restaurant, Awash, and then we’ll come home for something sweet. He really loves blueberry coffee cake, so I just popped one in the oven. Photos of a slice tomorrow, but for now, The Making of the Coffee Cake, followed by its recipe.