Mrs. Weasley?

yay! i finished the gryffindor scarf that i was making for Stacia. I will try to take some better pictures, especially of it on someone so that you can get the full effect but for now this is the best that i have. The pattern is from Charmed Knits that i got from Rachel! I used (as recommended) Cascade 220 yarn, which comes in a lot of great colors and is relatively cheap. Even though knitting a whole scarf in stockinette got a little old after awhile, it was nice to do something that required almost no attention. no fancy stitches to keep track of, simple color pattern. The pattern doesn't even require you to weave in the color-changing ends because it's knit in a tube, they just hide inside!

As far as food and baking goes, i am guilty of buying the latest Martha Stewart book, which is ALL COOKIES. Look, i know that i can probably get all (at least most of) the recipes online, and i told myself a month ago that this book is unnecessary, once i saw it i couldn't help myself. not to mention that i had a few Border's gift cards in my wallet...



By far the coolest thing about the book is that the table of contents is made up of pictures of the cookies! They are divided into "chapters" like "crisp and crunchy" or "rich and dense" and you can see them all easily at once.

Within a day we (me and Stacia, the aforementioned roommate) made the cookie on the cover of the book, Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies, and within a day they were all eaten. They are pretty much like a Gingerbread/Chocoalte chip cookie hybrid and although i think they would make a better Christmas/Winter cookie that spring cookie, they were still delicious!

spring deliciousness

soo its been a little slow with the posting.. i blame spring break as i haven't been near the computer much. BUT that doesn't mean there haven't been fantastic food goods around so let's get started:


1) i actually didn't have anything to do with any part of the baking process, but since allie probably won't post about her cupcakes, i may as well do it since they were too cute to ignore. and tasty.

Anyway, believe it or not the recipe is from the Martha Stewart website and can be found here. They came out really well, and the frosting is maybe the best we've tried. it's really light, but just chocolately enough. also, the cupcakes have toasted coconut on top, and i usually hate coconut, but it went perfectly with the frosting and vanilla cupcakes. I would recommend them to anyone, even though they were a little labor intense.

2) Alex, Hannah and I had an Ecuadorian night, and made Locro, a potato and cheese soup topped with avocado (mmm) then watched Que Tan Lejos, a completely Ecuadorian movie, filmed there, their actors, etc etc.



and finally, I didn't make this, but for my birthday, i ordered myself a lemon raspberry cake from Flour Bakery (where i used to work, probably the most delicious place on the planet. I took a picture just for fun

Our first bread (and serving suggestion!)

Woohoo, yesterday allie and i made bread for the first time! Again, we used my Martha Stewart book to get the recipe (Olive Oil Loaf) but we had to make a few adjustments because we couldnt find the exact ingredients.

As is pretty typical with our baking, we didnt have all the exact ingredients or equipment, so we just improvise and do our best. The recipe called for bread flour and fresh yeast, but we couldnt find either at the grocery store around the corner so we used whole wheat flour and dry yeast instead. I think that we both prefer it with the whole wheat flour anyway, its nice and brown. Also, we don't have a bread stone to bake on, so we just had to use a regular baking sheet which the bread kind of baked onto and we lost the bottom most layer of our loaf...


making bread is a really long process because you have to mix it, let it rise, fiddle with it, let it rise, etc etc. until its finally ready to bake. Fortunately we had Kings Quest 6 to play (and beat of course) in the waiting periods.

then allll morning i kept dreaming about eating our new bread with some goat cheese and sun dried tomatoes, so i picked some up on my way home from class and it was all i had hoped! first i just had the goat cheese and tomatoes, but then i put a little basil pesto and mixed greens on top too and that was even better!