Now Norma Knits

Yogurt in the Crockpot. You Got Questions, I Got Answers

Ann asked, "What's with the powdered milk?"

It adds more body, thickness, flavor, protein and calcium. What's not to love?

Jackie asked, "What are you using for starter?"

I used Stonyfield Farms plain nonfat yogurt. It was just what David happened to buy that day, so it's what was in the refrigerator with the freshest "use by" date. I wanted to use the freshest I could, so that I'd have good strong cultures. I also had some Greek yogurt (sadly not Fage) whose brand I cannot remember. If I didn't have the more-fresh Stonyfield, I would have used that. The Stonyfield is awesome in my book because it contains so many varied cultures. From now on, though, I have my own starter -- I'll just use a bit of my previously made yogurt.  

Sandy asked, "What about sweeteners?"

One reason I want to make my own yogurt is to avoid sweeteners, though I usually do add a teeny bit of maple syrup or honey or homemade jam (rose petal jam, anyone? OMGIT'SAWESOME) to the yogurt I eat. I put a large amount of yogurt in the bowl, and put maybe a teaspoon of one of those things on the top, and sometimes have it with half a banana or a few raisins. This way, though, I can make it a TEENY bit of sweetener to suit my taste, and I can control the amount that goes on there. David always eats his plain. And there is no other crap in the yogurt like gelatin or carageenan or high-fructose corn syrup or, egads, artificial colors. Not that I would buy yogurts that have those things in them, but still.  

Sandy also asked (Sandy had LOTS of questions, and then she went ahead and made her own yogurt, heh), "How did you wrap the towel around the crock pot?"

Well, actually I didn't. I tried to, but I was all fumbly, and I was paranoid that it would catch on fire in the oven or something. I used the oven because: My house is relatively cold, and so I was worried my crock would cool down too fast for proper fermentation if I did not put it in the oven. Bread doesn't rise here anymore unless I jack up the heat especially for it, but then I don't bake bread anymore, so it's not an issue. 

But anyway, here's what I did:  I turned on the oven to preheat it to "warm."  I have no idea what temperature that is for my oven. I turned the oven off. I put the still-warm crock full of milk with culture, with the lid on, inside the now-warm oven, and turned on the light to the oven. Then I went to bed. It just so happens that I had to get up before dawn the next morning (4 a.m.) because Abigail had to catch a plane, and that was the same time I wanted to take out my yogurt (6 hours' worth of fermentation was my goal), so it all worked out well. Next time I will start my yogurt early in the morning and be done before bedtime. But anyway, when I went to get it, I felt like that oven was HOT, even with just that light bulb on all night. And I was nervous that I had killed the culture. But nope, the yogurt was perfect and I hope the cultures are still alive. I won't know for sure, I guess, until I use them for my next batch (which will probably be today or tomorrow) and see if the cultures are still alive.

What I learned: This process is super-easy and relatively foolproof. For example, the original linked post where I got the recipe and info said to leave the crock with the lid on for something like 3 hours to cool down from 180 to 120 degrees F before putting in the culture. It had already taken my milk much longer than the 2 hours 45 minutes they said it would take to heat up to 180 (I used a whole gallon of milk, instead of a half), and so I was getting impatient by that point. I left the lid off, and even stirred the hot milk with a large metal spoon to cool it down more quickly to 120 -- about a half hour or less. And I didn't use the towel around my pot. And I'm not sure what other directions I did not follow, but because it all turned out so well, I am convinced that it is quite foolproof. 

Several people asked, "So that's yogurt. What extra steps do you do to make it Greek yogurt?"

I put a coffee filter inside a mesh strainer and placed it over a bowl. I filled it up with yogurt and let the whey drain off. Voila! Thick Greek-style yogurt. 

No one asked, but I'll answer it anyway:  Do you really save enough money to make it worth the effort?

First of all, there is really no effort. Seriously, it's the easiest thing I think I've ever done in the kitchen except open a can of Diet Pepsi, and it's just soooo much better for me. 

David eats about a gallon of plain yogurt per week. I had been avoiding dairy for many years, because I have those sinus issues that dairy adversely affects. But over the last year I have been cautiously incorporating more and more dairy into my diet again, and so far I seem to be not suffering any ill effects. So as a part of that, I have recently taken a big liking to Fage Greek yogurt. OMG, I've been eating it every day for breakfast. Love it, love it, love it; can't get enough of it. I've been buying it at my health food store, thinking it wouldn't be available at regular supermarkets. Then David noticed it was available, in the medium-sized container, at our supermarket, but he exclaimed at how expensive it was. $5.99 for the medium (only two cups) container. I asked, How much have I been paying for the LARGE container at the health food store, then?  (I'm notoriously bad at checking prices. I just buy and pay. Sometimes I gasp at the checkout counter, but that doesn't stop me from rinsing and repeating the whole process the next time I go in.)  The next time I went to my health food store, I checked the price. HOLY MOTHER OF L. BULGARICUS. Ten freakin' dollars for the large container, which lasts me four days. I guess in the scope of things, since it is so healthy -- very high in protein and calcium and it is REAL FOOD, and it constitutes my breakfast, that $2.50 per breakfast isn't really all that bad.  

BUT STILL.

I bought another gallon of Vermont milk (not certified organic or anything like that, but local milk anyway) for $2.99 the other night, which is really criminally cheap for a gallon of milk, but I digress. We usually pay from 4 to 6 TO TENNNNNNNNN dollars per quart for yogurt. My next FOUR QUARTS are going to cost slightly over $3 for all four. The savings are huge. It is easy and fun, and so why not?!

PLUS, I'M SAVING THE ENVIRONMENT: (ha)

Until they literally fall apart and can't hold yogurt anymore, I'm using the old plastic yogurt containers we had in the house for storing and serving the yogurt. After they die, I will use quart glass mason jars. All I will have to throw away send to the recycling center is one plastic gallon milk jug per week. If I really want to pull out all the stops, I might start buying the Vermont milk in glass returnable bottles. That is more expensive, but it would still be an overall savings. In the meantime, though, I'm sticking with the plastic milk jugs of Vermont milk that I can buy at my local convenience store.

I did use one Mason jar for storing my yogurt this time, and I can't stop looking at the beautiful white creaminess in the Mason jar. It's so beautiful, I'm thinking of just keeping this jar in the refrigerator as a decoration so I can open the door and gaze upon its loveliness any time I want. Good Lord, I'm a cheap date.

So what are you waiting for? Join the Bloggers' Crockpot Yogurt Brigade! (As opposed to the bloggers' CRACKPOT yogurt brigade. That's something different.)

 

Still Eating From My Garden

This weekend was full of good eating from the garden. Since it's almost the end of November, I can hardly believe it. Mind you, if I had a larger garden and more storage, it would not be all that unusual to still be eating root vegetables, winter squashes, and maybe even some cabbages if special care had been taken in their storage, even this far up in Vermont. But for me, with my tiny little patch and the lazy methods of storage I employ, it is quite something.

Friday evening I made a spicy bean and kale soup. I didn't use a recipe, but just followed my instincts, using the ingredients I had on hand. I used the wonderful Dolloff beans that I grew and dried. These were my first-ever attempt at growing a dried bean, and not only that, the seeds were a gift from a fellow Northern Vermont (but on the other side of the mountain) gardener. I loved these beans and am very excited to grow more next year from the beans I saved for seed.  I only ended up with enough this year for one pot of soup, because it was my first experiment with them and I didn't give them a whole lot of space in the garden. Next year I will devote three bean towers' worth of space to them.  In the wonderful soup pot were onions and garlic and kale and canned tomatoes, all from my garden. I spiced it up with some Liquid Smoke and cayenne pepper, and because I was a bit too heavy-handed on the cayenne, I added a small splash of sherry and a small splash of half-and-half cream right at the end to cool the cayenne down a bit. 

It was delicious and different, and as I'm writing this I wish I had more, but it's all gone. And I forgot to photograph it for the blog.  

Then, because my kale is still growing and I know I will kick myself later if I don't use it while it's here, for lunch on Saturday I made a kind of kale pesto. I chopped and steamed two dino leaves (as Manise calls them) of Lacinato kale, then I put it in a blender with some walnut oil, pecorino cheese, pine nuts, and garlic, and poured the pesto over an omelet and sprinkled it with a little more cheese.  

At the risk of sounding repetitive, I'll say it was......

.....delicious.

And different.

And holy cow.  

At the risk of sounding repetitive again, I wish I had some more!

And I forgot to photograph it. 

I was too busy devouring it.

Then Saturday evening I made chicken stew.  In the stew pot were onions, garlic, parsley, and carrots -- all from the garden -- and the one bag of peas I froze from the garden this year. I added mushrooms, celery, sherry, frozen corn and some herbs, and let the whole thing simmer for a long afternoon while I did my studying and knitting. I treated myself to some miniature parsley dumplings on the top of the stew. 

Delicious.

And yes..... different.  And we feasted on that for two days. 

And we saw that It Was Good.

All the better because so much of it came from our own backyard. 

The inventory of riches from this year's garden is dwindling. There are a few carrots left -- enough for another stew or another two meals of buttered or roasted carrots, or the addition of grated carrots to several salads.  There is a gallon-size bag of beets. There are four bulbs of garlic. There is a basketful of yellow and red onions. There are about nine pints of canned tomatoes, and a quart of frozen zucchini and two quarts of frozen green beans. There are two jars of pickled beets, and about six small jars of rose petal jam, and one quart of frozen asparagus, and two big buttercup squashes. The kale is still growing, as is the parsley. The broccoli is, too, but it's producing hardly any florets -- still, a handful once in a while is better than nothing. And the Swiss chard is still limping along, as well. 

I'm thankful for what is there, and I treat it with great reverence. But if we had to survive on this, it wouldn't take us very far.  I wish there were some parsnips with those carrots and beets in the crisper bin. Next year I will plant parsnips. Please remind me.

I forgot to photograph all the bounty of the weekend's table, so I'll give you a sneak preview of something I'm knitting.  

Heh.  I took about 20 photos under the Ott Lite, but this is the only one that accurately reflects the colors. So there you have it. Quite the sneak preview, eh?
 

Caramelized Squash & Apples -- Somewhat of a Recipe

Oh. My. 

Sundays this time of year are often for experimenting in the kitchen. Yesterday I decided it was finally time to cut up a couple of the squashes I harvested a while back. I only ended up with two butternut squashes from the garden this year, and I've been rather loath to use them up, but really, how silly is that? I grow them to eat them, right? 

Oh, golden nuggets of wonder! This method really did them proud -- adding flavor interest, without being overly sweet. There really isn't much of a caramelized glaze to this. If you want that or want it sweeter than just a hint of sweet, of course, just add more brown sugar.

But oh, how nice it smells while cooking. Autumnal and spicy.

The two squashes were rather small (or at least I thought so until I cut them both up), so I used them both. I also cut up four small red onions, and four smallish apples from our local applefest a couple weeks ago, that had gone almost mushy (they go bad so fast). If I had had some cranberries on hand, I might have sprinkled a few of those in the mix. 

I coated the vegetables and fruit with sunflower seed oil from Rainville Farm which is about eight miles from here. I then added a generous sprinkling of cinnamon, a little sprinkle of kosher salt, and about a tablespoon of brown sugar -- just enough to help to bring out the naturally sweet flavors of the squash, apples and onions. I mixed it all up and put it in the oven, spread out on a large roasting pan, at 350F for just under an hour, giving them a couple of stirs along the way. 

I served this dish with local chicken breasts coated in maple-chipotle glaze. 

Holy cow, was that delicious. 

Sometimes the simplest of combos just totally rocks the house. 

Unheard Of

 

A giant salad composed entirely of vegetables from my garden.  

All right, I hear you.  I put those in my blog all the time; it's no big deal.

But not on October 8th.  

This salad, from my garden, on October 8th?  

Crazy talk!

(This is northwestern Vermont, need I remind you?)

But it's true.  

In the salad we have:  baby spinach, microgreens (various mystery baby greens from a seed mix I planted in September), sprouted sunflower seeds that fell from the sunflowers I grew this summer, baby kale, baby Swiss chard, broccoli, carrots, red onions, tomatoes (there are now only THREE left from my summer pickings -- I'm stunned and thrilled that they've lasted this well), parsley, chervil; and believe it or not I found some blueberries on a bush that were still edible and delicious, and a great addition to the salad.  In order to gather the ingredients for the salad, I felt like quite the forager, and looking at my garden in its end-of-the-season state, I had my doubts that I'd end up with enough for a decent salad.  Au contraire!

We enjoyed this salad on Thursday with maple vinaigrette and a nice little piece of steak from a local farm. It was arguably even more fabulous than a salad in the dead of summer, given that it is such an unexpected treat for this time of year, and it was packed with the freshest of flavors, antioxidants, vitamins, minerals & phytochemicals. 

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Hey, maybe you'll spot me on the NYC Yarn Crawl this weekend.  At the very last minute, it turns out I am delivering Mr. Jefferies for visitation with his parents, and they are very busy, so I need to keep myself entertained in the city for the weekend.  Aw, darn.

Sometimes Nothing Will Do But a Big Bowl of Oatmeal

This was my special treat yesterday (wishing that photo were clearer).  I love, love, love good chewy steel-cut old-fashioned oatmeal, cooked just so.  I love most hot cereals, actually.  For some reason it is extra-delicious when I have it in one of my Laura Ashley Chintzware bowls.  It just is.  

I can't eat it on a work day, because it does not stay with me.  I get ravenous, hypoglycemically shaky, and brain-dead about an hour and a half after eating it.  But I love it so.  Yesterday I had it fully dressed with walnuts, cinnamon, raisins, and just a touch of maple syrup and milk. Mmmmmmmm.  And then I ate a whole cow about an hour and a half later. I exaggerate.  Only half a cow.  

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P.S.  We have 13 donations to the Red Scarf Fund, totaling $390, since my post on Thursday.  Let's keep up the super-fabulous great work!!!  

Be sure to notify me by email (at norma[dot]knits[at]gmail[dot]com) of your donation to be placed in the drawing for the lovely red needles. (See my Thursday, September 24, post for further details.)

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P.P.S.  As of this writing (10 p.m. Saturday evening), there are already 32 members in our new Alert the Media! Ravelry group that I just started yesterday.  That's just not riiiiiiiight.  (Kidding! It's awesome! Keep it up, people!  I really NEEEED another thing to do. Srsly, I do.) 

But we still don't have a banner/button.  Halp!  

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EDITED TO ADD:  Thanks to Silvia and her Photoshop skillz, we have a banner and a badge, and I love them.  Thank you, Sil!!!  

Bushed

Yesterday I:

• made a plum compote kind of thing with fresh plums, a little water, a little maple syrup and lemon juice, which I simmered till it was saucy and served on the
• gluten-free pancakes I made, which are definitely not on my present diet (but they were delicious and worth every calorie); and I
• did considerable prep work for my next CART event, part of which was reading this article, which in turn, due to its content, got me fired up to get outside and 
• harvest the beets; 
• manage the compost bins (which means emptying and spreading the contents of one that was completely ready, and then relayering the contents of one that has been in the waiting position, so that it will decompose better); and then I
• shelled some Dolloff beans that have dried since I picked them last week;
• prepared the beds for planting the garlic, which involves shoveling out a few inches of soil; setting it aside; adding bone meal and blood meal and lime and loosening and turning the soil;
• planted the garlic (two 3X3 beds, and one 3X6 bed -- I believe I planted 72 cloves, which should yield 72 bulbs if all goes well);
• purchased three bags of Intervale compost and spread it, with the replacement soil, on the three beds in which I planted the garlic (they just await some mulch of either straw, spoiled hay, or shredded leaves);
• pulled out some vegetable plants that are past their prime for the year;
• moved two raised beds to what I hope will be better locations for next year;
• refilled them with their soil;
• fertilized the asparagus with more rock phosphate;
• threw Mr. Jefferies' toy so he could chase it, and beg me to throw it for him again, 2,319 times;
• untangled his tie-out cable 29 times;
• brought in some broccoli and Swiss chard;
• watered the new plantings;
• cooked dinner, which was composed of salmon filets; a salad that I concocted of raw broccoli, raw garlic, red onions, an apple and some celery dressed with sunflower oil, apple cider vinegar & maple syrup (it was surprisingly delicious); cooked beets; and wilted Swiss chard;
• backed up my work files off my computer, and did some long-overdue deleting of old files;
• wrote this post

I am wiped out.  Today I may do nothing at all.  Or I might take care of the strawberry bed by cutting back the plants; finish the new compost layering that I didn't finish yesterday; reposition the old compost bins in "better" locations (I am forever searching for that sweet spot that is perfect); and make pickled beets.  

Or

I may do

NOTHING.

at ALL. 

The Payoff - Part 3

The garlic is a huge success story this year.  I have given away at least 20 large bulbs, I am going to plant at least 12 bulbs' worth of cloves this fall for next year's harvest, and I will have enough garlic to take me through the winter.  Last year I purchased my seed garlic, but this year I have zero dollars' outlay in garlic. And it is the best garlic in all the land (or at least I think so).  I am one happy, heavily-garlic-breath'd, garlic lover.

This button I picked up at last night's event has a great crossover relevance, I think:

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This is the first year I have planted the Dolloff beans sent to me as a gift by Leigh, the Extreme Gardener.  I have never grown this sort of bean (it's the kind for drying) before, so I may have rushed the harvest a bit.  But I still have some of her seeds that I can plant next year, as well as some that I've saved that I hope will germinate also.  A little of those seeds go a long way.  I only planted one bean tower's worth of these, and there were only a few plants, but they provided me with a few meals' worth of delicious beans. I ate one meal of them cooked up like lima beans, dressed with a touch of butter, salt & pepper, on Saturday -- DELICIOUS! These are also excellent for chili, baked beans, and soups.  

I have given pole string beans a good chance for several years now, and I'm just not a fan.  A lot of it, I am sure, has to do with what you grew up with.  (This is also relevant to the canned tomatoes versus frozen ones -- I'm just not a fan of frozen tomatoes, I never use them, and they languish in the freezer untouched.  Canning is a lot more labor-intensive, but it's the canned tomatoes that I crave and use, so canning it is.)  I just prefer the taste and harvesting of bush beans.  For me, pole beans take forEVER to produce anything, they produce paltry amounts (this is sometimes given as a plus for pole beans -- they produce amounts you can use for your dinners without being overwhelming and being ready to harvest all at once, like bush beans are), but more importantly, I just don't care for the taste and texture as much as my favorite green and yellow bush beans. So bush beans it will be for me now, and the bean towers I have purchased will only be used for my new love -- the Dolloffs.  

I have just contradicted my claim about "it's all what you grow up with," but we'll just pretend that I did indeed "grow up with" the Dolloffs, ok?  Yeah, OK, good. 

We got this many carrots, plus a handful here and there that I pulled and ate throughout the summer.  I was worried when I pulled these up this weekend, because they are so thick, but they are sweet and tender all the way through.  I don't remember what variety they were, but this is the first year I've ever been able to grow carrots.  I credit the raised bed.  

The season is over for tomatoes and peppers and lettuces (I'll address fall plantings in a bit).  The broccoli and Swiss chard and herbs and kale and some beets are all still going strong, and it will depend on what kind of fall we have as to how much longer they will continue.  I've had some  years where I was harvesting kale and broccoli right up to December.  Last year we had a super-cold start, and they were done in October.  

On Monday, I fed the soil and the earthworms in the bed I had pulled the carrots from the previous day.  

I put down a thin layer of newspaper, wet it, then put a generous layer of kitchen cuttings that we had been saving in a giant bowl for a few days, coffee grounds, eggshells, and an embarrassingly large volume of rotted crap from the crisper bins of the refrigerator that I cleaned that day. Then I covered it with the carrot greens to keep it all moist and neat as it decomposes.  Ohhhh, those worms are gonna be happy!  In a couple of weeks, I'll pull it back just to see them working in there.  I love that. Ideally, I'd like to add a layer of composted manure and then a rather thick layer of shredded brown leaves or spoiled hay before the snow comes.  Then that bed will be all fertile and ready for next year's crop of whatever I decide to plant there.  In the meantime, my activities serve to feed and keep moist the remaining two large kale plants and three small Swiss chard plants that are there, and will keep them healthier longer into the season till they're killed by frost.

Now, the fall plantings: 

   

Here is the bed that I fully planted with mixed lettuce seeds at the 2nd week of August, after it had given me a full crop of yellow wax bush beans.  Only about six lettuce plants germinated.  Now they're all gone. At first I thought it was because the bed dried out, but I gave it a good watering after I took this photo and the one lettuce plant was doing well.  Then I went up there yesterday, and it was completely gone.  I've seen signs of rabbits around here again lately, and I am blaming them.  Odd that they have not touched other things, though.  Hm... 

The spinach seeds I planted at about the same time have done better in germination rates, but these are not doing much, either.  I don't think there is enough light, and I also discovered yesterday that, much to my surprise, the beds were very dry.  So I watered everything well, and we'll see what happens.  If we get a nice meal of baby spinach leaves this fall, I will be an even happier gardener.

The Payoff - Part 1

The garden pays for itself the whole season long for me.  I get enjoyment before the snow is gone -- in the planning, in the perusing of seed catalogs, in browsing the seed aisles of garden shops -- and as soon as the ground thaws in the spring -- in the digging, in seeing the seeds germinate and the plants grow and thrive.  It gets me out in the sun and air and gives me exercise, and provides me with a focused enjoyment from start to finish.  It keeps me on top of the weather patterns and it provides me with much to learn and much to study and research -- anything from botany and soil biology to ... you name it, really.  It gives me contemplative time, and makes me feel closer to nature. (I will never understand people who say, "I grew broccoli once, but it had WORMS ON IT. I said NEVER AGAIN."  Yes, people, it is growing outSIDE.  There might be WORMS ON IT. Sigh.)

The garden feeds us with a steady supply of good, clean, nutritious, fresh food that I grew with my own hard work and love. It makes me enjoy cooking more and be more creative in the kitchen, and it makes it super-easy to eat local. 

Yesterday we had another one of our locavore meals. I bought a chicken from a local farm (3 miles away), and I stuffed its cavity with a red onion, three fat cloves of garlic, a large sprig of rosemary, a bunch of thyme, and a big bunch of parsley, and then roasted it.  I cooked one of the buttercup squash you see in this photo, and pureed it with a touch of Vermont maple syrup. I braised some mixed greens -- kale, Swiss chard, dandelions, beet greens, mustard greens, and bok choy, with another red onion and two garlic cloves -- in a little sunflower seed oil from a farm 6 miles from here.  Everything was from my yard except the chicken, the maple syrup, and the oil.  The rest was from within a six-mile radius. I love that.

I will admit there are times when I wish I had a staff to do the weeding or a bug-and-slug deinfesting, and it sometimes gets a bit overwhelming in the middle of the season, but each year when it's time to put it to rest for the year, I'm filled with nostalgia and loving feelings for Mother Nature and her gifts of soil and rain and sun and seeds and bees all over again.  

As always happens at the end of a garden season, this year I've got some regrets that I lost a lot of produce to the compost bin due to neglect -- regrets that I didn't get those many quarts of beans frozen or that 5 pounds of Swiss chard, or 10 pounds of asparagus, or the excess 4 quarts of black raspberries.  But if I focus on what I DID get from it, and when I have the tangible proof in hand of my labors and the garden's bounty, the payoff feels doubled and tripled and quadrupled. 

Here is a photo of some of this year's late-season takings from the little garden I have on my little 1/2-acre village lot, most of which is untillable because of its hilly topography.  

This is only a small fraction of one season's yield and a small portion of the story.

Stay tuned for The Payoff - Part 2, later in the week.

Garden Love and A Wee Diet Update

I went out to the garden first thing yesterday morning to see what was out there, since I had not been able to visit for a couple of days because of either lack of time or heavy rains.  

Among other things, I found one small zucchini and another couple of baby ones on the way (the zucchini plant seems to be on qualuudes or something -- it's been extremely sluggish all summer long); a Portugese hot pepper; many greens; a nice little serving of broccoli; carrots that are ready to be pulled; late-planted beets that are going great guns; and many more tomatoes, both green and ripe.  Blight has hit me a bit, but many of the plants are still strong and green.  I have a theory that the red tomato mulch must make the plants so healthy that they can fight off disease better.  I might just be cracked, but it does seem like a strange coincidence that a) the blight came to me so late when it has all but decimated everyone else's crops, and b) even as it's here, the plants are still seemingly able to fight it off with no intervention, and they are still producing very well despite all the rains and the cold nights we've been having.  

But the best little gift of all was to find these:

I planted some French green bean seeds (left over from my seeds from the season of 2008) on August 1st, and sadly I got very sparse germination.  But from those few plants, we had a most delicious meal of steamed haricots verts yesterday, and there are more to come.  After I lost most of my crop of yellow bush beans when the heat wave while we were in NYC made them go all big and tough, and this being so late in the season, these were especially welcome -- and soooooo delicious!  I can see another meal coming from these plants, and I can't wait.

Having so much produce at the ready has made it very easy to stay focused on the diet.  I feel great, and I've been working out regularly.  I love the FitDay site for being able to record everything I eat, to be able to plan my meals and make them fit into the parameters I have set up for myself with regards to calories, protein, fat, carbs, and fiber intake, as well as my calorie expenditures.  Progress:  I've lost 2.5 pounds.

Oh, That AnnaMarie!

Let's just say, the number of necessary gym visits has been increased.

And I will probably be taking her name in vain with every additional 30 minutes on the elliptical machine or the rowing machine or the hiking simulator.

But it was worth it.  

Not photographed:  Homemade ginger cookies and a latte courtesy of Barista Wes.

Mmmmmmmm.

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And there was knitting.  I cast on for the new wider Palindrome scarf.  

An added cable to the width makes all the difference!

I'm crossing the cables every 8th row instead of every 5th.  AnnaMarie says I'm a fast knitter.  Who knew?