Miss T's Mystery House of Yarn & Horrors

Dr. Evil Says...

Thanks, I'll get my own f#@%!!#n snack...

 

...if I have to go all the way to China!

Feeding Frenzy

Some of you must not have made it to the big sale at the Bigger! Better! New and Improved! Double Ewe last week, because when I got there, this yarn was still left.  Amazing it was, too, because the waters had been chummed and quite a feeding frenzy was in process.  So of course I dove in and bobbed for a few skeins, too.  Bwaaa haa ha!

(Yes, I may have developed a small Ty Dy addiction.  So what?  I need more market bags, so I can carry more yarn.)

What Did We Do on Labor Day?

 

 

 

 

Ahhh....sauce for the winter.

Knitting Evidence!

I know, it seems as if I’ve been doing nothing but cooking lately.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  I’ve been knitting, too, really I have.  I just haven’t finished very much, probably because I’m working on too many things all at once.  A row or two on this one, and a row or two on that one, and it doesn’t appear that much is happening.  I’ll show you a few things anyway, just so you don’t -- what is it they do with fallen knitters?  defrock?  deskein? deswatch? -- me.

I’m pretty darn close to being done with my Net Bag of Justice.  This has become a surprisingly controversial pattern at my favorite LYS.  It’s easy, but there is a silly little thing you have to do with moving the stitch marker that indicates the start of the round every other row.  That move makes the mesh swirl a bit; it also makes a lot of knitters cranky.  It is hard to remember which way you’re moving the marker, so that means a great deal of pattern-checking when you’d like to just be flying along.  I’m not as militant about it as some of the women I've talked to, but yeah, it’s a bit pesty.  Otherwise, I like the design, and I love the yarn.  (I have evil plans to design a market bag of my own, using more Ty Dy.)

  

There’s Seraphim, partially reincarnated.  I got halfway through the second lace chart, and realized I’d made some sort of silly mistake waaaayyyy back.  A TV watching mistake.  Me being me, I didn’t fudge, I ripped.  Ripped all the way back to a point before the lace begins, counted diligently, and started again.  The yarn is so marvelous to work with that I don’t mind knitting so much of the shawl over again.  And yes, it frogs beautifully.  I’d buy more of this in a heartbeat.  I’m going to try to get moving on this piece now, because I really do want it to wear this fall.  It’s very soft and snuggly.

 

Last (at least of the projects I’m showing you today--there are more), I’m trying to fly through the buttonbands for the Eternal Cardigan as fast as possible.  I’m sick of these buttonbands.  Sick of this sweater.  I want it done, blocked, sewn up.  I’d rather be wearing it than knitting it, because it has dragged on way too long.  Next week, I’ll work on some buttons.  Must. Finish.

In case you’re wondering (I would be), no, it’s not possible to pick up stitches and knit the button bands directly onto the sweater.  They have to be knit bottom to top and then sewn on, because they’re encrusted with cables and bobbles and other stuff.  Plus I really think I need to add an i-cord edge, too, to give it a more finished look.  See why I’m totally over this one?

I have another sweater in progress, and one I’d like to start.  Yes, after a long hiatus (sort of), I think I’m back to making sweaters.  The screamers next door were packed off to school this morning, and it’s blissfully quiet in my neighborhood.  I’m going to go attempt to be creative.  Catch y’all later.

  

Green Chile Eggs

Glory, glory, hallelujah!  The Hatch green chile is here!

Friday was the Very Best Day of the Year at my grocery store.  The one day each year when green chiles arrive from Hatch, New Mexico.

Almost makes me cry, and not because the chiles are hot.  (Which they are, beautifully so.)  I used to live in the Mesilla Valley, about thirty miles from where these chiles are grown.  Best chiles on earth.  They look like Anaheims, but they’re a million times more flavorful, and they only grow in that particular part of New Mexico.  The whole valley is fragrant from the chiles this time of year.  Can you tell I miss it a wee bit?

It’s always a happy surprise when I see them in the store here -- the produce manager is lucky I don’t start dancing and singing, frankly.  This time, I quickly loaded up bags with about nine pounds of chiles.  Not much, really, once they’re roasted.

Roasting is simple, even if you’re not at the Hatch festival and don’t have access to one of the chile roasting guys.

Lay them out on a baking pan and put them under the broiler till they’re black on one side.  Flip and blacken the other side.  All there is to it.

Into freezer bags they go.



Now what, you ask?

Well, New Mexicans put green chile in everything.  Seriously.  Potato salad, mayo for sandwiches, burgers, stew...you name it, somewhere in the state of New Mexico there’s a recipe that includes chile.  Here's an easy one:  Miss T’s Green Chile Eggs.

Are those not the most beautiful eggs?  My friend Sete has an egg connection, and gets them from a farm once a month.  She hooked me up.  Thanks, Sete!

So.  Crack however many eggs you normally crack for scrambled eggs and whip them up with a little cream, about a tablespoon per egg.  Either half & half or heavy, depending on how decadent you’re feeling.  I was celebrating Chile Day, so heavy cream it was.

Put on gloves.  These chiles are not to be trifled with.  Peel off the blackened skin and chop the chile.  You’ll need maybe half of one.  The rest can go in the fridge for future chile adventures.  Smells incredible, doesn’t it?

Saute the chile in butter, and when it’s all nice and sizzly, turn the heat down.  Pour in the eggs, and dot them with cream cheese.

Slowly scramble.  Slowly!  Your husband should be tapping his foot in the dining room, wondering when the hell the eggs are going to be done -- that slow.  The cream cheese will melt and vanish into the eggs.  Yes, heavy cream and cream cheese, plus incredibly rich eggs from good old-fashioned bug-fed chickens.  Doesn’t get much more wicked than that.

Turn off the flame when the eggs are just this side of being done.  They’ll sit in the hot pan for a moment while you spread jelly on English muffins, and then they’ll be perfect.

Long live the Hatch green chiles!

Mysterious Knitted Object in Process

Any guesses now?  (No fair guessing if I've told you what it is!)

Don't Believe Everything You Read

One of the things I’ve noticed about beginning knitters is that they tend to believe madly, deeply and faithfully in the infallibility of patterns.  Patterns are gospel from on high, instructions which must be followed to the letter no matter what sort of mayhem results!  Something really horrible is sure to happen to me if I don’t believe in this pattern.  It takes a bit more experience to recognize that knitting patterns are written by regular people, some of whom are crappy proofreaders.

Allegedly trustworthy sources, i.e., big yarn companies that have a lot of resources and staff and should be taking the time to proof their very nicely-printed, glossy patterns, can be the worst.  Case in point:  This pattern published by Classic Elite.

I remember it being five or six dollars when it came out in 1995.  The pattern appeared in a full page ad on the back of Vogue Knitting, which surely cost enough money that you’d expect the product which arrived after you put your check -- yes, a paper check! -- in an envelope and stamped it -- yes, actual mail order! --  and mailed it to Classic Elite, to be a whole lot better. 

In fact, it’s absolutely riddled with errors.  Some obvious, some which sneak up on you when you think everything’s going along fine.  But all of them could -- and should -- have been caught before anyone forked over money and tried to knit from this thing.

I’m almost done with the sweater (I’m knitting the cardigan), but far from done reworking and redesigning to get around the publisher’s boo-boos.  Let’s have a closer look at that photo, shall we?

 

Got that?  Anybody want to explain to me how to K on the RS and P on the RS?  I’m also curious why I should cast on 16 stitches to work a 9-stitch chart.  Perhaps the remaining seven stitches are sacrificial offerings to Classic Elite?

Ah well.  I will not be defeated by the foolishness of braindead (or entirely absent) proofreaders and designers.  I was prepared in the first place, when I read in the pattern description that this is a “very challenging design.”  

Damn straight.  But not because of the knitting.  Beginning knitters, take heed!

The Iron Chefettes Sneak Up On You a Week Early

Allez cuisine!

Has desperation set in at Chez KnitThink?  I mean, Eva Peron aprons?  Dinner rolls dpn-ed to her head?  Are we supposed to be distracted from the food?

I, for one, will not be thrown off by an apron (cool as it is).  No, I shall fight the old-fashioned way, with good food and bad photography!  Think about it folks, Amy is now out of dead celebrity aprons.  Between now and the end of the CSA season, she’s going to have to face me on level ground, with spatulas, whisks and cookbooks.  And I am not without a few secret weapons of my own...

This week’s raw materials:  A Hungarian hot pepper, a Japanese eggplant, corn, a Jimmy Nardello pepper and an orange bell pepper, watermelon, onions, fennel, garlic, cucumbers, summer squash, tomatoes, red potatoes, salad mix, and cilantro.  Whew!

One new ground rule:  This week, and this week only (unless we change our minds), we’ll each be posting about only four recipes.  Because time is short.  There’s the State Fair to go to!  We have to save some room for greasy fried things on sticks!

On to the food.  First up, a way to use fennel that would make it sufficiently palatable to the M.E., who is not overly wild about its licorice flavor.  Yes, I’m back to winging it.  I sauteed the fennel and Mr. Jimmy Nardello the Pepper with lots of garlic.  About five cloves.  Added some thyme and a bit of dried fennel seed.  Then I boiled red potatoes, drained them and tossed them with white wine while they were still steaming hot.  Mixed them with the sneakily sauteed fennel, plus some Nicoise olives and a quick dressing of oil, white wine vinegar and grainy mustard, and got this:

Oh yes, I sprinkled it with grated Parmesan, too.  (Good thing I take photos, or I’d never remember what I’ve done!)  Big thumbs-up from the Not-Sure-About-Fennel Contingent.  Well-disguised fennel, and the salad was quite nice with some spicy pork tenderloin.  We’d both eat this again.

That was not my secret weapon.  It was delicious, but not of secret weapon caliber.  Read on.

I’ve been bummed about corn this year.  We just haven’t had any that’s been really good, and although I hate to say it, the corn we got in this box was not an improvement.  Very small ears, very pale kernels that didn’t have much flavor.  There are ways around these things, however.  Corn can be jazzed up.

I cut it off the cobs and fried it in a little butter and oil, with orange bell pepper and roasted poblanos.  Spiced it up and added a bit of heavy cream, cilantro, and topped it off with some lovely brown-sugar cured trout.

'Twas splendid, despite the corn.

That wasn’t the secret weapon, either.

As you may have noticed, there was summer squash again in this week’s box.  I do love summer squash, and I’ve been trying to fix it in different ways so that, despite my affection for it, the dreaded Summer Squash Fatigue Syndrome (SSFS) doesn’t set in.  This week, summer squash goes Japanese!

When I was a kid, my dad grew pattypan the size of Frisbees.  My mom would slice them, dip them in egg and flour, fry them, and then we’d season them with soy sauce.  Very tempura-like, and I love it that way.  So I decided to take it one step further:  tendon.  No, not that stringy stuff inside your arms and legs.  Tendon is a Japanese rice bowl dish, and if I ever find myself in a little Japanese joint around lunchtime, it’s my favorite thing to order.

We sort of used the recipe I linked above, but weren’t in the mood for dragging out the deep fryer, so the M.E. pan-fried the squash, as well as some chicken and green pepper.  We piled that on top of rice, and sauced it with this, which is incredibly easy to make if you start with dashi no moto, which is basically a fish teabag.

Here's the sauce:

 

The tendon:

I can’t say the word yum emphatically enough.  Lordy, do I ever wish I could eat this every day.  Alas, I cannot -- it would be the death of both me and my kitchen.  A girl can dream, though.

That still wasn’t my secret weapon. 

I’m getting to it now, though.  Four dishes, remember?  My last creation for this week captures the essence of summer in a pure, yet unique way.  I prepared for it weeks ahead of time by ordering special materials and tools on the internet.  Any guesses?  Didn’t you wonder why, instead of being tormented with a vegetable he doesn’t want, the Chairman is sitting nicely in front of a piece of cheese?

See, the essence of summer is tomatoes, and there’s really no way to improve on a great summer tomato.  The best thing you can do is set it off with a little salt and, say, some good bread and a slice or two of mozzarella.

So I made mozzarella.  Yeah, even though I didn’t have an Evita apron to catch the splashing whey, I. Made. Cheese.

Super-secret cheesemaking supplies:

 

Highly necessary cheesemaking book, acquired at a flea market last year for $2.  By the same author (and cheese equipment supplier), recipe for 30-Minute Mozzarella.

Those things, plus a gallon of organic milk and a microwave, will result in cheese.  My photos aren’t the greatest, because the thing about making cheese is that you have to pay attention and you can’t stop to take pictures.  But despite the sketchy documentation, this was one of the most fun things I’ve ever made. 

You add citric acid and lipase to the milk, and heat it until it starts to curdle.  That’s a special dairy thermometer, and it has to be watched very closely.

 

Then add rennet and stir, and let it sit until the curds break more or less cleanly when you stab them with a knife.

You pour off the whey.  Boy, was there a lot of whey.  Most of a gallon of milk is whey!  Who knew?  It was determined that the M.E. would be less of a hazard doing this step than I would, and he did do an excellent job of making sure that the entire kitchen floor was not covered in whey. 

I, however, got to do the very best part.  Wheeee!  This was entirely too much fun.  I could have kept doing it all day.

The reason for the rubber gloves is that the cheese is hot--see, after the whey removal, you microwave it.  Then you knead the clay cheese and stretch it and smush it around until it’s whey-free and all nice and smooth and shiny.  Microwave it again and repeat that process a couple of times, and voila:

 

That.  From a gallon of milk.

Fresh mozzarella is best eaten right away, so we cut bread and sliced up an heirloom tomato and made a quick salad with our CSA’s fabulous greens and some bacon...

 

…and that was dinner.  Truly one of the most delightful summer dinners ever, and it even came with its own show.  (I may have been doing a little dancing while I kneaded the cheese.  I told you it was fun.)  The mozzarella had wonderful flavor, and was a great foil for the tomatoes.  Simple, elegant and happy.  No question, I’m making this again, and I can’t wait to try homemade mozzarella on a homemade pizza.

Well then.  One secret weapon has been launched from each side.  Bodies everywhere!  Kitchens in flaming ruins!  Neighbors running for cover!  Dogs licking the floors!  (Okay, so dogs are always licking the floors.) 

We’ve each taken a hit....what will the next battle bring?   

Friday Food Special Monday Edition: Pensacola Gaspachee Salad

This is a very interesting recipe, which I ran across in a charming new cookbook, Endangered Recipes, by Lari Robling.

The idea behind the book is that the author believes deeply in the importance of family recipes, and the memories they evoke.  She didn’t want wonderful, old-school comfort recipes to be lost, and set out to collect her favorites.  As one who treasures old family recipes, I love this idea.  You just can’t have too many books of this sort, because each one brings an entirely different perspective to the table.  There are good things in Endangered Recipes, many of them familiar:  Welsh Rarebit, Boston Baked Beans, Green Goddess Dressing, Peach Ice Cream. 

I bypassed all those, of course, when deciding upon a recipe to test.  Instead I was drawn to the unusual, the recipes I’d never heard of before.  Perhaps the most obscure of them was the Pensacola Gaspachee Salad.  The name was irresistible, and it had one very strange thing in its list of ingredients.  I kept flipping back to that page, over and over.  How could I possibly make anything else?

The strange ingredient is Crown Pilot crackers.  In the dressing.  Now, unfortunately, just after this book came out, Nabisco took Crown Pilots off the market.  For the second time.  It’s quite the cracker drama.  I realized that the Crown Pilot cracker was simply a commercial version of hardtack, and that truly sealed the deal:  an opportunity to make not one, but two unusual recipes!  Surely, I figured, I could make hardtack.

In fact, it’s ridiculously easy.  The recipe I used is here (scroll down).

You mix flour, water, salt and a wee bit of shortening.  A bread whisk works well for this.

 

Mash it onto an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for an hour.

 

Then you’re supposed to take it out of the oven, cut it into squares, poke holes in it, and flip it over.  Poking holes in things is always amusing, but this stuff was poke-resistant.  Too hard already.  It just sort of split in a very uncooperative manner.

 

So I abandoned the poking, turned the hardtack over, and put it back in the oven for half an hour.  Et voila...

 

Several days later (one of the principal virtues of hardtack is that it stays pretty much the same, no matter how long it sits around, thus why sailors could travel around with barrels of the stuff way back when)  I made the salad.

The recipe commences with soaking hardtack in water for at least an hour, until it’s very soft. How on earth did anybody think this up?

I did the best I could in my attempt to create a proper bowl of cracker mush.  But an hour’s soaking was not enough, and dinnertime loomed.  So I went ahead and used the partial mush, which still had chewy bits of hardtack in it.  Actually, that turned out to be a good thing.  Read on...

You mix the hardtack with the rest of the dressing ingredients, which include mayonaise and cider vinegar.  I was still wondering how the original cook dreamed this up.  And that name.  It sounded so gazpacho-ish.  I had to do a little research.

Google Books had a page from Southern Food: At Home, On the Road, In History, by John Egerton and Ann Bleidt Egerton, online.  According to the authors, there’s a heavy Spanish influence around Pensacola, Florida, which somehow resulted in gazpacho being transformed into a salad.  Tomatoes, cucumber, why do all that pureeing?  Just eat it with a fork.  Evidently there’s a bakery in Pensacola that bakes hardtack solely to satisfy the needs of folks who want to make this salad.  Could it really be that good?  Or is it one of those things you only like if you grew up eating it?

And then it hit me.  Gaspachee is not only a version of gazpacho created in a state which loves words that end in “ee,” it’s also a strange Florida version of a Mediterranean bread salad!  Maybe it would be okay.

On I went.  I cut up cucumber, celery, onion, tomato and green bell pepper.

 

I mixed the somewhat lumpy dressing with the vegetables, and we ate the salad with some beautiful fried catfish.

What was the verdict?  Well, it was fantastic.  Seriously.  If you’re a regular reader of my food posts, you know that my wonderful husband, the M.E., is not a big fan of salads.  He could go along for months without eating one, and never feel deprived. 

He had seconds.

Seriously, folks, you have to make this.  It really was that good.  Oddly, the chewy bits of hardtack were terrific.  I’ll make it that way again next time -- my Midwestern version of the Florida tradition -- and there will indeed be a next time.  I’m grateful to Ms. Robling for introducing me to this marvelous recipe and bit of Americana with the enticing description in her book. 

I’ll have to move fast to get another salad made before the hardtack’s gone, though.  Guess who thinks it’s the best treat ever?

 

The Iron Chefettes Ride Again....So Soon!

Allez cuisine!

This box did keep me busy.  Have a look:

 

A hot banana pepper, corn, collards, onions, garlic, cukes, summer squash, cherry tomatoes, green and purple beans, salad mix, and basil.  Plus there were the blueberries that Amy mentioned last week, and tomatoes.  We both bought them, so they count.

Let’s get the blueberries taken care of right away, since Amy wrote about hers last week.  Okay, so I’m slow.  But I made pie!

I have to say, pie scares me.  I’m not afraid of much in the kitchen, but I’m afraid of pie.  See, my mom makes the best pie crust I’ve ever had.  Anywhere.  And if you knew the two of us, you’d know that I’m not just saying that because she’s my mom.  We’re notoriously honest with each other--if one of us makes something crappy, the other one will say so.  No hard feelings, we’re just that way.  So when I say she makes the best, most tender, flakiest crust in the world, I’m not kidding.  Me?  I’m terrible at it.  I work the dough too long.  Can’t seem to not work it too long, no matter how hard I try, and it’s never right.

Looks so innocent, doesn’t it?  But it’s pure evil.  Out to get me.  Oh, I know what Amy’s saying.  Something along the lines of, “I told you baking was bad.”  But it’s not all baking.  I’m fine with baking anything but pie.  Which, alas, is also the baked thing that I love most.

This time, I didn’t use the vodka crust.  I really wanted to try it the old-fashioned way and see if I could finally get it right.  Guess what?  I couldn't.

 

It doesn’t look as if anything’s wrong, but the crust was slightly tough.  Not tender and flaky and perfect.

 
Mom made note of the fact.  I did, too.  We agreed that I need more practice.  “One pie a month,” she said.  I wondered who was going to buy me bigger clothes after I eat all this pie.  We also agreed that even though the crust wasn’t perfect, it was still pie.  Blueberry pie.  Which was gone in no time, because even an imperfect blueberry pie, if it is homemade, is a lovely thing.  (Although, between you and me, I’m still wishing I could get the crust right.)

 

Oh, and those blueberries were amazing.  Sweetest ones I've ever had.  I’m dying for more.

We sprinkled the sweet corn with chile and lime juice, and ate it with black bean and chorizo tortas.

Some of that gorgeous lettuce, and the tomatoes, went into BLTs.  I adore BLTs.  They are one of the main justifications for the existence of summer, in my book, and I have them as often as possible while I can.

 

One of the big favorites this week was definitely the Zucchini Ribbon Pasta, which Laura wrote up in the CSA newsletter.  You can also find the recipe here.  The M.E. was a bit worried when I made this, thinking it was going to be some treacherously bland vegetarian thing, but the recipe is somehow far more than the sum of its parts.  It’s truly fabulous, and he gave it a big thumbs-up.  I’m likely to make this again before the summer is over.

Then -- oh joy and rapture! -- there were collard greens.  The majority culture around here is just starting to catch on to how good these are, but I’ve been crazy about them since I was a little girl, and I can’t have collards too often.  I wanted to try something different this time, and I kept thinking about shrimp and white beans.  Don’t they sound like they’d be good with collards? 

I admit, I’ve been winging the majority of these CSA recipes, just throwing in whatever seems to work.  In an effort to make better use of my cookbooks this week, I took the brilliant Lynne Rossetto Kasper’s The Italian Country Table down from the shelf.  Lo and behold, she knew what I was thinking.  (Mysteriously, she often does.  But that’s another story.)  I used her recipe for Spaghettini with Shrimp, Chickpeas and Young Greens as a starting point, and was happy that I did.  Okay, I left out the pasta, changed the can of chickpeas to a cannellini beans, and changed the mix of salad greens, dandelion greens and curly endive to collards.  But otherwise I followed the Gospel of Lynne.  Pretty much. 

I sauteed onions, peppers, and black olives.

Added the greens, earlier in the process than she does, because the collards were past the baby stage and needed more cooking time.

In went the beans.

And shrimp.  And there it was, a scrumptious dish, just what I wanted.

(It’s still cooking in that last photo, so if you think the shrimp doesn’t look done, you’re right.)  There were a few other details, of course, but I can’t remember them.  So get a copy of the book.  It’s well worth having if you like authentic Italian food.

Told you this was a busy week.  But wait!  There’s more!  I had to do something with the summer squash, something entirely different.  And one thing we really, really love is paella. 

I found the perfect recipe in Penelope Casas’s book, Paella!  This is pretty much the book to have if you want to make paella.  I’ll warn you, it takes a lot of prep.

 

But honestly, I love making it.  Paella is fun, and it’s really a treat.  It’s one of my favorite things to make when we have dinner guests, despite the fact that it requires so much last-minute time in the kitchen.  People always wonder why I’ve disappeared for so long during what should be cocktail hour...until they taste the paella.  Then they get it.  (They really get it when they see the mess in the kitchen afterwards.)

Conveniently, Ms. Casas had a recipe for Green and Yellow Squash Paella with Pesto.  It used the aforementioned summer squash and zucchini, basil, and a hot pepper (perfect use for that banana pepper).

 

It was really delicious despite, as noted by the M.E., the absence of any form of pork products.  I promised to sneak in a little sausage next time.

I made a Vietnamese chicken salad which was a perfect vehicle for some of those great cucumbers.  Yum.  I did use a recipe.  From, um, somewhere.  Don’t remember where I put it at the moment.

 

I sauteed green and purple beans (which all wind up green in the end) with cashews, shallots and sherry vinegar.  Yum again.  Note the pork chop in the background.

I made chicken and pinto bean burritos...

...which had nothing whatsoever to do with the CSA box, but they went along with this broccoli:

I know.  It just looks like slightly scorched broccoli.  But it’s actually Grilled Broccoli with Clary’s Exquisitely Wicked Marinade, from Crescent Dragonwagon’s brilliant doorstopper of a cookbook, Passionate Vegetarian.

And it is indeed exquisitely wicked.  You’ve never had broccoli like this.  Lime, adobo seasoning (which you don’t have to search for in a million stores--Google it and mix up your own), pineapple juice, rum and some other stuff.  It’s such a good marinade, I think I’ll try it with some other things, too.  Like pork.  Heh.

I love leftover green beans for lunch, so I made a bean salad with chicken, water chestnuts, walnuts, sesame oil and soy sauce.  There were regular old lunchtime lettuce salads, too, but I didn’t photograph them.

Oh, and I made a big container of refrigerator pickles with most of the cukes.  From this recipe, which is very good and is also surprisingly low in salt.

You’re probably worn out by now.  I sure am.  And I used a lot of actual recipes written by actual other people this time, so I’m feeling virtuous.  But that wasn’t it.  There was one more thing.  I made an odd and special recipe, one of our favorites this week, which was so interesting that it’s deserving of its very own post.  Come back on Monday -- yes, Monday! -- and I’ll tell you all about it.  I’m sure this is probably breaking some rule and Amy’s Dead Chairman will let me know about it, but what the hell.  I’m doing it anyway.