Practice...Practice...Practice and a Yummy Dinner

So here is a picture of the progress I have made so far on the knitting homework that Deborah assigned me to do. Not perfect by any means, but I am just trying to get comfortable going back and forth between knit and purl stitch.

Deborah wrote out instructions for me to follow. It goes something like this: Long tail cast-on of 30 stitches, knit 5 rows, purl 5 rows, knit 1, purl 1, knit 1, purl 1, knit 5 rows, purl 5 rows...and so on and so forth. Then repeat until I run out of yarn.

My goal is to try and knit at least a couple of rows each day. More if I go somewhere and I have time on my hands to practice my knitting. I know this is a slow process, I mean, I can't become an internediate or an advanced knitter overnight. It definately takes lots and lots of practice to get to that point.

Something I am much better at is cooking. I love to cook and bake and try out new recipes or come up with new concoctions by taking inspirations from various sources and adding my own spin on things. For example, If I am reading something online or watching a cooking show on tv, something might catch my eye and I'd think to myself, "mmm that sounds really good and relatively simple, I think I might try that". If I don't have access to all the ingredients I will substitute somethings and add somethings and make it my own. So, I was reading Chappysmom's blog about this absorption method of cooking pasta and I thought wow that is a great idea. Especially since my apartment is so small and I don't have a stove or a full kitchen. I only have a hot plate to cook on so this one pot method was perfect for me. So, basically this absorption method is just instead of boiling the pasta you cook it as though you would cook risotto. Here is what I did. I put olive oil in a pan threw some chopped garlic in then tossed in some whole wheat pasta and coated it with the olive oil for about two minutes then poured in some Pomi brand chopped tomatoes (I love these) and water. I also put two bay leaves, salt pepper, basil, and some sugar to balance the acidity in the tomatoes. I covered the pan and let it simmer until the pasta was a little soft but still needed some more cooking. Then I tossed in some zucchini and asparagus and let in cook some more. When it was all done I tried something new and stirred in a tablespoon or two of ricotta and parmesan cheese to make it all creamy. It turned out really delicious and I got a couple of meals out of it. You could always add meat to this too, but I really like it with just veggies. You could make this dish your own by adding whatever you like. It's really simple and you only have one pot to clean.