Self care on a winter weekend

 Bitter cold and windy, even the sunshine is not tempting me out.  But it's a good time to catch up on things I promised myself to cook.  Here are some of the frozen sweet potato gnocchi, and a couple of hot Italian sausages, plus while I was running a hot oven, heads of garlic roasting to make a garlic spread

The gnocchi were frozen uncooked, so they have to do the diving into boiling water phase first, before they go into a 400F oven to roast for about 20 minutes. I just plunged them in still frozen, made no difference. Sausage was frozen, just thawed enough to skin them, then same oven, same period.

The garlic needed about 20 minutes more, still in a hot oven, doused liberally with olive oil.  When it's cool, I'll squeeze out the softened garlic, great for a spread.  You can use this all over the place, specially good for garlic bread.

 

And here's lunch.  Also another helping of same for tomorrow.

 

 And everywhere is evidence of my industry, now doing humble duty in the kitchen.  Left a painted tote bag, I made a lot of these at one time, and taught other people how to, great fun.  Stuffed with my hand-knitted face cloths now relegated to be kitchen and floor cloths, but sturdy? you can't wear them out.  I made them in order to try out new stitch patterns as well as to have useful things.  On the right is the bag I wove years ago, using a pattern from the Weaving without a Loom book, and still holding up after much use, now stuffed with kitchen cloths.  I don't use paper in the kitchen, but I do use a lot of cloths.

Some blessed soul has suddenly started uploading some of my favorite books in audio form on YouTube.  Here's a Georgette Heyer. And they have excellent readers, who understand the text and the humor and where the  emphasis should go.  Which is more than I can say for a lot of the audiobooks on the library apps, which are strictly amateur night at the Bijou.  This book accompanied today's spinning, plying and cooking.

Onward, new reading on my Kindle, Lisa See never fails when I'm wondering what would be nice to read next.  And since I got it via the library app which lets me download onto my Kindle, not onto a device with a refreshing screen, which gives me migraine, all the better.

 So I guess I'm set.  Keep warm, if this applies!  Find your snowshovel, that's advice to me, since it's outside in the storage closet, and I may need it to dig the door open..

Takeaways from glorious day, and gnocchi

Yesterday turned out to be glorious beyond expectation, from the solemn ceremony, to a president with actual plans for governing, complete with powerful women there in their own right, to the young poet, Amanda Gorman's,  moving performance of her poem The Hill we Climb, to the celebrations later and the fireworks. A few takeaways, not good pix, but best I could do:

The artwork installation of 250K flags to represent people who would have been there

Amanda Gorman, brilliant poet with political high ambition

Words I love to type: The Vice President and her husband!  We're nearly there, folks  The glass bell was a symbol of the glass ceiling almost gone at this point in this arena, anyway.  Most of it was done online, and I really think they should always do it this way.  Instead of posh balls in the evening which hardly anybody can go to, and very nineteenth century, anyway, assuming het couples and touch dances, this was so much more inclusive, all kinds of people getting to be seen and heard. 

And today, on a humbler plane, I had an adventure turning Misfits sweet potatoes into gnocchi, using and adapting a recipe I found at AllRecipes

I didn't roast the sweet potatoes, just microwaved them tender.  Mashed with a fork. Here the egg's already blended in. Here's the nutmeg I grated, garlic ready to crush, salt, wholewheat flour. I liked this recipe because it didn't just say put them all together, flour an all.  It did suggest adding the flour bit by bit till a nice soft dough happened.  Which I did, and used a lot less than the two cups of the recipe.  I used some on my hands, some on the board.

And here you see the first batch, followed by two more.  This recipe made enough for several meals of gnocchi.

Two batches into the freezer, not cooked.  I'll cook when I use them eventually. For today's lunch, a few at a time into the boiling water, not too many, you don't want to take the water off the boil.

Then they float to the surface after a couple of minutes, always a period of wondering if they will until one brave soul goes first and everyone else follows.

Then some fresh grated parmesan, and it's lunch.  I don't buy grated cheese partly because it's not hard to grate as needed, partly because there's an additive in it to stop the bits of cheese from lumping up, and I'd just as soon not eat the additive.  No doubt it's safe but I doubt if it adds anything nutritious to the meal.

This worked fine, and the gnocchi did not come apart in the water, always a concern with handmade pasta dough.  It occurs to me that this might be a very nice addition to pumpkin or carrot or any soup in that family.  Cooked ahead and added after blending, just to heat through.  Yes, I'll do that at some point.

I can tell I'm recuperating from the glorious end to the bad four years, because this morning I had an ocular migraine, not long in duration, but a sign that there was stress and it's been lifted.  I had one similarly when Bannon was fired from the White House.

So now all's good.  I'm claiming the stimulus $ on my tax form, which  was already printed up with that line item included even before they were sending the stimulus $ out, a sure sign they did not expect to actually complete the job.  A bit of a giveaway, too.  Forms already printed here and ready to file once I get all the doings filled in.  But they won't accept tax filing before February 12, owing to a massive backlog of work from last year.  Millions of filings yet to be addressed. I don't envy them their job.