Golden Chicken

After a summer of taking photography I don’t feel like taking photos. First, because I gave my life over to that class for 9 weeks and I am burned out on photos. Second, there is no way that the crappy digital photos I take with my little cheap camera can compare to those black and white photos. I’m mighty proud of them and I would show them to you except that it’s not worth the bother of scanning them all in. But so you know I’m showing everyone one I meet. Strangers even. But that ended over 2 almost 3 weeks ago so I expect to be over it all soon.

While I haven’t been posting I am still living the food stamp challenge. I was listening with half and ear but it sounded like that went to be voted on last week. I never went to check. But for myself I have learned if all you want to eat is natural yogurt, trail mix with M&Ms, fruit juice popsicles, and frozen burritos that $21 of food lasts 2 weeks. So I succeeded in 2 of my objectives this summer; not going over budget and not cooking anymore than I wanted to. I think it can be agreed that eating healthy didn’t make it.

Most of it isn’t worth commenting on but I did do 2 note worthy things in the last month. First, in July there was a meat sale at Price Copper and I went and picked up a whole bunch of meat after class one day. It appears that when I am working on 4 hours of sleep that I am completely unable to do basic math in my head. I added it up 3 times coming to $19, then $21, then $19 again. So I thought it was good. Once I get the same number twice I figure I’m probably right. I wasn’t. It came to $25 at the check out. Since I didn’t spend the full $21 the week before or the week after it was ok, but really that whole thing left a sour taste in my mouth. And I now have pounds and pounds of meat I have to cook. I’m not much looking forward to that. But I’m set for when I have company over.

And having company over brings me to my next story. Last week. No, maybe 2 weeks ago now. I invited my game playing friends over for supper and some games. 5 people if you count the baby. I went shopping that day and spent $25. See a trend there? $25 seems to be a recurring theme. Anyway that $25 bought a bag of onions, 10 lbs of potatoes, 10 lbs of chicken, 4 lbs of carrots, 6 cans of Cambles Golden Mushroom soup, and just because, a dozen eggs.

I go home and put everything but the eggs in my electric roster. That is 25lbs of food for those of you that are counting. 25 lbs of food for 5 people (one is a baby) and that’s when my Pickett gene kicked in. I looked at that 25lbs of food. I thought of the 5 people (one is a baby) and decided it wasn’t going to be enough. So I walked back to the store to buy snacks. $12 more for grapes, celery, gram crackers, and the fixings for pineapple gram cracker dip.

After all of that, one person was a no show so after 3 people and a baby ate all we could I had 30 meals to put in the freezer and all the gram crackers and dip I could eat the next few days. So I didn’t even bother getting more food the next week.

Golden Chicken
10 lbs chicken
10 lbs potatoes cut in fourths
4 lbs carrots cut in 3rds
4 lbs onions cut in fourths
6 cans cambles golden mushroom soup

Place all in roaster and cook until done.

So you are wondering at what temp to set the roaster aren’t you? So am I. I cooked it for 4 hours and in that time I set it for everything from 250 slow cooker temp so it wouldn’t burn (but would it be done in time? Would it ever be done? Would I die of food poisoning from the cold chicken?) to 400 roasting temp (but what about the poor potatoes? They will burn to a crisp). For most of the time it was set at 325 and I think that worked well.

I haven’t posted much about knitting lately. Well, this summer while taking 2 classes I didn’t knit much. I didn’t have much time, but more importantly than that since we can always make time for knitting. I had already used up all of my creativity with photography. I just didn’t have a need to make anything else. I was satisfied with that and with the design work I was doing in Intro to Graphic Design. So I spent whatever free time I had reading. I did knit one sock 3 times to get it right. That too added to my not wanting to knit much. And when I say ‘to get it right’ I don’t mean fiddly little stuff but so it would actually fit a human foot.

And I have read Harry Potter! A friend loaned me his copy. Isn’t he a sweetie? Because of that I know longer have to avoid spoilers for a year. And we all know how successful that would have been. In just the 2 week since the book had come out I was already quickly closing browser windows on knitting blogs and sticking my fingers in my ears and saying lalalala while listening to NPR Saturday shows. That last part burns me a bit. If you can’t even listen to public radio without running into spoilers who can you trust in this world?

When I was loaned the book I was getting ready to spend the weekend with my family. I knew I wasn’t going to have time to read it there. I decided to not read it until I got back on Monday. I picked the book up from Ted at noon on Friday. I stuck to my guns until 5pm. I started reading it then and finished at 4am. About 1am I realized that even trying to wait had been silly and that I should have started reading as soon as I got it and that I might have gotten at least a little sleep that way.

But back to the knitting. The last 2 weeks during break I started a few sweaters but none of them were holding my attention. I did do a lot of spinning. I spun while listening to 5 of Douglas Adams books. But after all of that I hadn’t made a dent in the fiber and only had about half of what I needed and I sort of wound down on that too.

Then while listening to the Hobbit I knitted mittens. I am almost done with mitten number 4. I had thought to knit mittens until this cone of yarn was gone but I with mitten 3 it started to loose its charm and besides the book was over. Maybe with my next book I can pick it up again.
I had been reading about books on tape on spinning blogs for a while now and they are fantastic. The trick is getting one with good readers but that is a crap shoot.

Oh, and while listening to the Douglas Adams Hitchhikers series I also knitted 3 felted bags between spinning 8 ounces of alpaca and 2 ounces of silk. See? 2 hard weeks of work and I’m still only half done, if that. But I’m spinning the silk at work night and that is fun. I should finish up with the other 2 ounces in the next 2 or 3 weeks. Then it’s back to doing finishing work there.

I really dislike the finishing work but just a few days ago I noticed I only had 5 things that needed the ends tucked in and buttons sewn on left in my FO drawer. That is amazing and it’s because of work night. Although, I feel sorry for everyone else there since I have to announce at least 3 time a night I hate finishing work and wish I had brought my spinning wheel instead.

I don’t think I will be ready for TGIF this Friday with the camera but I’ll try for next week since I do have quite a bit to show.

School starts tomorrow. Two days after summer classes finished I was burning to get back. Now after two weeks off I’m dreading it.