Tikka Masala

Hi, it's Rainbow. I'm too lazy to log out of my husband's account and log back in with mine to post this correctly.

I recently ran across a recipe for tikka masala that actually seemed like it could work out to be similar to my favorite paneer tikka masala dish from Biryani. I took a picture of the recipe from my friend's cookbook and made my version of it on Friday night. It turned out great!

I chopped an onion and added tomato sauce, yogurt, and paneer along with the spices from the recipe. I also added a little black pepper. We finished off the leftover's tonight for dinner.

I'm publishing this here because I'm hoping to not lose this recipe.

About half a year ago or so I found this fantastic recipe for ranchero sauce, as in huevos rancheros. I made a ton of it and put a bunch in the freezer. It's all gone now and I really would love to make more. But I can't figure out where I got the recipe. I think it was on one of my iphone recipe apps, but after spending a bunch of time trying to find it, I've finally given up. t's sad because it was so good.

Weekend Fun and Due Date

The best part of my weekends right now is that my honeypot is around. Otherwise he's at work.

I took it pretty slow this weekend. My energy levels are pretty low these days. Today's my due date (according to the 20 week sizing ultrasound.) My other due date was the 7th and that was based on my own information. Any day now I should be "popping." I'm completely ready and slightly desperate to have that happen. I'm really uncomfortable right now.

Yesterday I made a pair of purple yoga pants complete with a fold over top that I can wear right now, and when I'm not "big bellied" also. I only really have one other pair of pants that I can wear right now and I'm liking wearing them a lot more lately.

Earlier in the day we went down to San Leandro and hung out with my honeypot's sister while she unpacked. She moved into a house close to a new teaching job she took. It's a super cute house with a great back deck. It'll be great for parties.

Today I went to the Renegade Craft Fair and then had lunch at Plant. They both were really awesome. The craft fair had so many really creative vendors and inspiring artists. Quite a bit of the style of the crafts there remind me of Portland, OR. I bought a really cool purple coat even though it was breaking my rule. (I'm not allowed to buy clothes that I can't try on which means anything not maternity.) I couldn't pass this coat up, it's not something I would ever run across again. It's just that cool and creative.

Plant is this amazing restaurant that I'd heard about before from my honeypot. He ate there after a bike ride and loved it. I was also really impressed with the food. I had the garden burger, but the name doesn't describe how amazing it was. It was this lentil and beet patty with tons of other stuff (vegies and seeds) on really good bread with a side salad. They had lots of vegan options and everything just looked amazing. The best part is that they were still serving brunch and it was probably 2pm or so. Too bad it's not closer, we'd probably go there often. I'll have to do my best to remember it for when we're in the city and hungry.

Then we went to the park and played with juggling clubs, whips and just watched the dogs and people. Today was beautiful and sunny. I didn't last long in the park though because currently it's really hard on my body to sit without back support.

Cooking and Cleaning

I've been using my free time to cook a lot lately.

Yesterday, was a day where I kept myself really busy all day long. I never had a moment of down time and was on my feet most of the day. It helped me sleep really well last night.

Today, I wasn't moving quite as fast. After I had breakfast, I fell asleep on the couch for an hour, and then I got up and have been doing stuff, albeit a little slower.

Yesterday, I made kimchi, yogurt and green curry for dinner. I ate some of the yogurt this morning, and it came out pretty good. I couldn't figure out how to "cook" it though after I added the cultures because our oven doesn't go that low. Instead I put a couple candles in the oven and hoped for the best. It seemed to work ok.

The kimchi was actually a lot of fun to make because I had to pound the crap out of all that vegetable matter. It's currently sitting on my counter fermenting right now and will sit there for a couple more days.

Right now I'm making ranchero sauce. We're having huevos rancheros for dinner tonight. I've always wanted to figure out how to make a decent ranchero sauce. It's not completely done yet, but so far it tastes great! I'm hopeful that I've found my recipe.

In other news I started reading "The Red Planet" by Robert Heinlein last night. It's pretty good and I'm about half way through. I'll need to find a new book soon.

Kids Clothes

Tomorrow we're celebrating the third birthday of my friend's twin girls. I had little idea of what size they actually are, but I used some pattern measurements to figure out the height and waist of size 3. I'm hoping that these sparklie skirts either fit well, or are too big. It would be a bummer if they were too small.

I got to use my newly rebuilt serger and also the ruffler foot that I'm still really excited about. Both skirts together probably took me 4 hours total, possibly less. I also used my serger to fasten in the elastic waist band, which is a first for me. I historically haven't used my serger to do things that don't require cutting, and it works pretty well.

Nourishing Traditions and the Attraction to What We Can't Have

The other day I was hanging out with Krista and she mentioned this nutrition cook book whose basic angle is that whole unmodified foods are best for you. And that our society's obsession with altering food formats (by homogenizing, sterilizing, or denaturing) is seriously detrimental to our digestion and general health. This book also promotes eating fermented foods.

While I was in college I got really into this type of nutrition; and was a huge advocate of this philosophy. My philosophy is still pretty closely aligned, however I am a vegetarian and this book isn't completely on board with that. I also feel strongly about only eating foods that have a low glycemic index.

As a side, there's been studies that have linked folks who eat fermented foods with less incidence of allergies. I've been taking a probiotic recently and my honeypot took it for some days. While he was taking it he had less issues with his body reacting to certain foods. Interesting, no?

I'm going to make yogurt today, and see how it goes. Wish me luck.

On another note, my serger has been breaking needles for several weeks now when it shouldn't be. I finally brought it in to get it fixed because the timing probably is off. It'll be gone for a week and now that it's gone I've come up with all of these projects that I want to do. Why are we attracted to things we can't have? I must be patient.

Has a Week Really Gone By Already?

I'm always amazed at how fast time passes on by.

There are lots of high lights this past week. Like my in-laws visiting, going to the California Academy of Sciences night exhibit to celebrate a friend's birthday, hanging out at the Thornton's complete with a watermelon seed and cherry pitt spitting contest, visiting with my friend Krista and her daughter Molly (so cute!), sneaking up to win a game of settlers, watching The Hangover (pretty entertaining and that has a character that reminds me of somebody I know), starting to write my first iPhone webapp using iWebKit, and yesterday going to Angel Island to celebrate another friend's birthday and hiking the 5 mile perimeter trail. It felt really good to hike and hang out with friends, but I can really feel it today. Besides all that, I've been running loads of errands. They never end, it seems.

Another highlight for me has been our screen printing adventures. My honeypot and I have been hanging out a lot this past weekend and we've been exploring the world of screen printing. He's done it a couple times before, but I haven't. I've had really bad luck getting good screens to come out and am going to work at it again, possibly today. The onsies pictured are my honeypot's first two color design.

In other news my Mother had emergency surgery mid week due to a hernia in her small intestine. It sounded really painful, and they finally operated on her to solve it. She's recovering well, and sounds in good spirits. It's pretty lucky that they figured out what was wrong and were able to fix it.

And another not so great thing that happened this past week is my iPhone tweaked out .. again. Just randomly my phone was acting really weird so I rebooted it (which in the past has solved it's responsiveness issues), except this time when it came back it had no service or software it appears. There's an image above. Apparently when they die, they die hard. I've had other random issues with my phone before, and while I still like what it does and mostly how it works, I find it really annoying that it's not dependable. Thankfully it only dies infrequently, or I would have ditched it a while ago. As it turns out, I rebooted it again and presto(!) it's all back to normal, even going so far as to remember all my data. I guess it was a hiccup.

Stained Glass

Last week my stained glass window class ended. It was super fun and it gave me a new understanding and respect for how amazing the stained glass is that my father-in-law gave us for our wedding. You can see a picture of it in this post. The lines are super thin which means his glass pieces perfectly fit together. And I can tell you how hard that is. Very hard and very tedious.

Anyway, here's a picture of my piece from the class. I like doing stained glass, but it's filled with tedious, time consuming steps. I may do it again, but I'm not sure. Another thing to consider is the expense.

Busy Day

Today was an active day. Here's what I did.
-had breakfast with my honey
-clear out the walkway of overgrown plants
-swept the sidewalk on both sides of our house
-replaced my office desk with a table and got everything set up again
-made chocolate chip cookies
-cooked dinner
I also canned some red sauce last night, and canned some tikka masala as well.

My honey put our new toilet in the upstairs bathroom, played his guitar, and other things too.

My Honeypot got a guitar

He's been playing and fiddling with it for days now. I think he's a fan.

I had a crafty weekend. I attempted to strip the dye out of two pairs of pants worthy of "reworking." This is the first time that I've ever not been successful. It's almost like no dye came out at all, even though the bath it was in turned dark grey, like normal. Something went wrong, but it's unclear what went wrong.

I also dyed this skirt that I love. It's purple with some tie-dye flair. (I had stripped the dye out of it several months ago.)

I also made another batch of beer. This time it's a ginger beer. I added some tea and saaz finishing hops. It's my first time making anything quite like this.

Sometimes yar comes over and we have a limited number of games that the three of us can play. We added another one to the collection. It's called Citadel.

Craft Time!

I've recently been interested in working with knits in some sewing projects. I have some vague memories of having lots of problems sewing with knits. But that was a long time ago, and my skill is probably higher than it was at that time.

I purchased a couple colors of knits last week and today I finally made something.

I can see how it would be hard to work with this fabric. It doesn't really have any memory of what shape it was when it was flat and square. Also, it's stretchy in one direction but not in the other. So it's even more important to be careful how you build items.

I understand the use of starch and sizing a whole lot more.

17h 20 mins until we leave

Last night I got my v2 prototype LED hoop done. It's a harder plastic so it was much harder to get the electronics in side.

The hooping action is much better because it's stiffer.

The downside is that because it was so much harder to split open the tube, I wasn't able to hot glue the leds inside. So basically if it has any force on the leds, they're going to pop into the tube.

Oh, well. It's what I can manage given the time left.

4 days and 13 hours

Until we're on our way out to the playa. (For some reason blogger has a config issue and is failing on image uploads..)

This past weekend was a whirlwind of activity. There was the birthday dinner for Marc. And friends hanging out crafting until 3:30am in the morning. There was breakfast with Rose and her Mom and sister at the new restaurant down the street. And then so many things to prepare for Burning Man.

This is the first year that I will not have a day off before leaving for the playa. It makes it quite a bit more hectic getting everything together because I have to squeeze it in around work. Add to that the fact that I can no longer go to stores that have short open hours - like fabric stores. It's a little more planning ahead than I'm used to.

The picture is of a hat and cape I made for this year. I'm really excited about the hat (and all the other flair pieces I'll soon get to wear.) I think having the shoulder protection will really help me get out during the day. It can be so sunny out.

Erika's a human backpack!

sir cuss boot camp

We had a casual craft night tonight and I sewed the "backdrop" of our bm theme camp. I think it came out good. The picture doesn't really do it justice, but you can tell how wide it is. And it goes up into two points, but those parts were folded back.

I'm really excited about this year's burn. I think it's going to be fun and good.

I've had these really weird ridges in both of my thumb nails and they would grow out over time. They seemed to appear in the same frequency, every couple months or so. I think I figured out what they were. I was about to push my cuticles back a couple weeks ago and it occurred to me that this would be about the time that the ridge would start. So I didn't push my cuticles back at all at that time. And the last ridges are about to grow out. It's pretty weird and shocking to me that I was hurting myself so much and not noticing.

Crafty Weekend

This past weekend I brewed a blueberry IPA with only a finishing hops. I realized during the Anchor Brewery tour that when I homebrew, I use too many hops for my tastes. That's pretty silly. So this time I refrained from using hops much and used a blueberry extract instead. I love the smell of hops, especially when I'm brewing. I don't much like to drink hoppy beer though. Perhaps the Moss Street Brewery is being resurrected?

I also started making costumes for our Circus Cafe Burning Man theme camp. I have this really fun tutu made out of a variety of colors. And I have so many more ideas of things to make.

I've had a really hard time motivating to work this week. I wonder why that is. I still love my co-workers, but I just don't really want to work much. I suppose to be more specific, you could say that I'm no longer "obsessed" with work. I'm enjoying my summer.

Oh, yeah, Yar - I have appropriated your sweatshirt. It's very warm! You better come over and visit soon if you expect to get it back.

Prototype Done

I finished it. I only have a really sore thumb and small spot bleeding on the tip of my finger. A small sacrifice for an led hoop.

Top picture is a 2 second time lapse of me hooping. The bottom one is without time lapse.

Half Way There

So after much learning, and thinking it would work when I turned it on (and it didn't)....

It Works!! (Well, half of it, so far)
The wiring of one set of colors, the blue LEDs are working!
The other color is going to be yellow for this prototype and there will be a total of 30 LEDs.
It was probably better that it didn't work on the first try - or I would have gotten too much confidence and possibly been sloppy for the next set. The wiring was a simple swap of some leads on the chip, and presto! It worked.

I actually shouted will glee when they lit up!
On to the other set, and then putting them all in the hoop and securing them in place.

LED Hoola Hoop Prototype

111 posts is somehow lucky.

Tonight, after weeks of gathering together the supplies and thoughts on the LED hoola hoop, I started construction. I realized I was missing some things, so tomorrow I'll have to go to Lasher's or this place as a last resort. I think it's pretty much going to work the first time, but I have plans to make even better ones later. This is going to be a hoola hoop year for me.

Hippy Skirt!

I have this skirt that I completely love (No, not that one pictured.)
It influenced me to make a similar one out of cotton (using fabric I already had!). The final product is pictured on the left.
In the process I learned how to correctly do shirring (pix). I only had to tear out the top shirred part 4 times before I figured out how to do it right. I was quite frustrated until I remembered that I have this sewing book - purchased for me in the 80's when I was just starting my sewing interest. It's an artifact from the past, much like my Betty Crocker cookbook that's in the 3 ring binder.
The steps for making this skirt was 1-serger the tiers, 2-gather each tier onto the one above it, 3-then add the rows of shirring to the part that sits on your waist or hips. When I was done sewing it, I dyed it some fun colors. This was a fun project. It brought back memories of my tie-dying days. (Did you know there was a time when I was making around 3 thousand t-shirts [and other items] a summer? - I basically made all the tie-dyes that this relatively large craft/fair vendor sold. As a result, I'm a pretty good tie-dyer - I have lots of experience, though it's starting to get a bit rusty now.)


This first picture is after I was done sewing it - and about to dye it.
Here's what it looked like after dying it, but before it was finished fixing.
And here's the back of the finished skirt. The first picture in this post is the front.

Snow, Travel and More Crafts

We were up at Squaw Valley this weekend playing in the snow. My company had its yearly planning session up there during the week and then we got to stay up there through the weekend. What an excellent fringe benefit! My honeypot came up on Thursday night and we skied on Saturday. It was the most perfect conditions because it basically snowed the entire time I was up there, but amazingly enough, it stopped snowing for the entire day of Saturday and was relatively warm. Perfect!

Something I realized on our way home from there is that I leave for India on Thursday. Whoa, I haven't even begun to plan for this trip at all. Besides not having prepared my materials for what I'm teaching while I'm there, I haven't even begun to research where I'll be going and what I'll be doing with my 5 days off at the end. I'll be back on Feb 19th.

My honeypot lost the last hat I made him, so I've been working on this new hat design. I've never crocheted a hat from the center out radially before. I'm following the pattern in this new book my mother-in-law gave me for xmas. It's been a pretty great gift. I'll let you know how it comes out.

Latest Craft Project - 4 Color Crochet Hat

My mother-in-law gave me this fantastic crochet book and some yarn for my birthday. The yarn is really nice and the book is awesome. I chose a pattern and made this hat this past weekend. I'm really happy how it came out. I've historically avoided patterns because they can be too restrictive. With this project it really helped me learn the correct name for various stitches and the end result is something much nicer than I might have come up with on my own. (It's hard to see the difference between the orange and red in this picture - but you can see the difference in person.)