think i’ll go for a walk…

As many of you may have noticed, especially if we are more-than-internet friends, my life sort of cycles between stressful and pretty fun, depending on my exam schedule. Right now I’m cycling back into “pretty fun,” and celebrating by doing some things that I like.

Crocheting the big blue blanket (I’m almost done! Working on the eighth skein! Does anyone know how to finish a giant granny square!), which is slowly taking over my desk.

Cooking delicious food – this is the beginnings of Spring Salad With New Potatoes. (With fresh peas! I forgot how much I love shelling peas, but it is one of my favourite kitchen jobs ever, right up there with peeling potatoes.) It was one of my better cooking decisions.

Also, knitting socks. These are Gentleman’s Socks In Railway Stitch, done in indigodragonfly Merino Sock. The colourway is You Got Peanut Butter In My Trout, which is a delightful name for anything, and the yarn is very squishy and fun. Plus: blue and brown, the obvious choice for peanut buttery trouts everywhere.

not quite knitting

When I first start a vacation, I always cycle through the same basic stages. “Vacation?” I first say to myself. “This is the BEST EVER. I’m going to do so many FUN THINGS. I’ll never be tired again!

This elation lasts for approximately an hour (give or take), before I get bored. Quickly, it becomes clear that I’ve completely forgotten how to do fun things, except in short two-hour bursts bookended by work. So I start thinking of things I can do, and end up making work for myself. You know, fun work. Things I’ve seen other people blog about, or have been meaning to do around the house, but haven’t quite had the time for. Projects.

In other words, I made my own jam this week.

It wasn’t a terribly labour-intensive process, much to my surprise. I used the freezer jam recipe on the back of the pectin packet – 1.5c sugar to 4c fruit, which was a surprisingly low ratio, as all the reading I’d done led me to believe that freezer jam involved several cups of sugar for every cup of fruit. This definitely wasn’t the case with the pectins I was able to find in my local Canadian Tire.

I smushed up three cups of blueberries and one cup of raspberries – all awesome local Ontario fruit from the farmer’s market – mixed in the pectin, and put the concoction into jars. The whole process took maybe an hour and a half, and I’d totally do it again, because the jam is delicious. I’ve gone through half a jar already.

I think, after a few days, I’m finally starting to get the hang of relaxing. But the projects are definitely helping.

she says i'm much too thin, she asks me if i'm sick

IMG_7778, originally uploaded by pirateygoodness.

Remember that healthy eating kick? I’m still totally on it, but I am not made of stone.

These cookies are – according to Smells Like Dessert – the absolute Holy Grail of chocolate chip cookies. I’m not entirely sure I agree – they’re good, but they’re not so good that I’m going to quit on my trusty family recipe. (They are also HUGE. Like, ENORMOUS. I can see why the recipe calls for making them so large, because they are a lot softer having been baked like that, but. This definitely makes giant, Starbucks-sized cookies, and one is more than enough.)

I also did something a bit weird with this recipe, which may be why I didn’t love them quite as passionately as the original blogger. When I went to start baking, I discovered that my brown sugar was hopelessly hard and unusable, so I tried a substitution gleaned from the internet: one cup of white sugar and a quarter cup of molasses to replace one cup of brown sugar. It worked out – the texture of the cookies is perfect, and they’re not too sweet – but there is a bit of a molasses-y aftertaste. I don’t mind it, really? But it definitely changed the character of the cookies.

Song of the Entry: Jack’s Mannequin – Holiday From Real