I used to think that if you were “tightening your belt,” it meant you were making a decision to be more frugal from now on. I thought that somehow, the act of belt-tightening signified how strict you intended to be about sacrificing luxuries, the minute discomfort around your waist acting as a constant reminder of your thrifty new lifestyle. For instance, if you saw a pair of shoes you liked, the tightness of your belt would snap you back to an awareness of your no-unnecessary-purchases policy, and you’d put the shoes back with your head held high. “Thanks, belt,” your wallet would whisper. And your belt would be like, “No sweat, Mr. Folderson!”

I’ve recently had two disappointing revelations: wallets don’t talk, and “tightening your belt” clearly means that you’ve been forced to make sacrifices already—namely, you’ve sacrificed the expense of food because you couldn’t afford to eat properly, so now you’re too skinny and you have to tighten your belt to make your pants stay on. Because you’re also too poor for new pants. I find this profoundly depressing, as figures of speech go, and preferred the talking wallet.

For the last year or so, John and I have been doing what I might once have classified it as tightening our belts. We decided to do this because we don’t ever want to have to do the thing it actually means. (For what it’s worth, I will probably never use that expression again. I don’t like how casual it is. It’s like slapping Tiny Tim in the face.) We’ve just been trying to get smart and save a little cash. That’s all.

In the process, we’ve developed all kinds of praiseworthy domestic habits, like eating in, packing lunches, and stretching leftovers. As it happens, the cornerstone of all these positive advances has been one delicious weekly chicken. You’d be amazed at everything you can do with just one chicken a week.

In fact, not only would you be amazed, but you will be amazed, because I’m going to tell you all about the weekly chicken—which, by the way, you’ve probably already noticed is an excellent name for a poultry- or cowardice-related newsletter, and you might as well forget about it because I’m calling dibs. Just in case I launch a newsletter one day. For cowards. Or poultry farmers. Or cowardly poultry farmers, who either fear poultry or raise poultry that fears everything.

So. The weekly chicken. It’s a big chicken and I roast it on Monday. That’s the easiest meal of the week. Apart from unwrapping and washing the chicken (a task in exchange for which I’m convinced I should be exempt from literally all the other household chores, because washing a chicken is probably as gross as cleaning the toilets AND throwing out the oozy leftovers from the back of the fridge), the oven does most of the work.

I’ve had so much chicken-roasting practice, I could do it with my eyes closed. The only reason I don’t is because I am prone to kitchen accidents as it is and John has told me he prefers it when I don’t burn myself on the oven and scream about it.

Instead, I’m going to take all my chicken practice, and I’m going to run it all down for you. If you’re uncertain about chicken-roasting, you may find this educational. And if you’re perfectly certain about chicken-roasting, you can compare my method to yours! Then you can scoff at the parts that I do differently, and feel all kinds of superior! I mean, not that that’s the sort of thing I would do.

(I would. I do. I do that all the time.)

(But then I remember for later.)

(And I try the new way and if it’s better than my way I pretend that’s the way I’ve always done it. Zero conscience.)

So! Here’s how I roast a chicken, and always have since the dawn of time and I didn’t get any ideas from anybody*:

1. Put the chicken in the sink. You’re going to want to contain this mess by any means necessary. I use a plastic grocery bag for chicken-tainted items, then tie it up tight and bury it in the garbage to help contain the inevitable stench.
2. Unwrap the chicken and look in its butt. Has anyone crammed a sack of its own organs up there? Don’t worry, it wasn’t the chicken mafia. Butchers do this in case you want the organs for a recipe or ritual. They wrap this stuff separately to protect the rest of us from being reminded of how much chicken organs look like itty bitty people organs (I presume). Just yank that sucker out. You can save it for stock, if you like, or you can throw it away and forget it ever happened.
3. Rinse the chicken, inside and out, under cold running water. (Take it easy with the water pressure, unless you want chicken-water to ricochet onto everything in a five-foot radius.) Hold the chicken up by its little wings and make it do a dance; this may help distract you from how much it sucks to rinse a chicken.
4. Pat the chicken dry with a paper towel (or a kitchen towel you never want to see again) and place it—the chicken, silly—in a roasting pan.
5. OPTIONAL: If you’re starting ahead of time, consider dry-brining. Chickens are notoriously lazy, especially when dead. They’ll sit around all day if you let them. Put yours to work! Rub about a tablespoon of kosher salt all over both sides of your rinsed-and-dried chicken so the salt can work its moisture-magic while the chicken sits covered in the refrigerator. Overnight is ideal, but even an hour or two is better than nothing.
6. OPTIONAL: Sneak something delicious under the skin. Just before your chicken goes into the oven, slice up some garlic, butter, peppers, or anything else that might taste delicious. Slip it under the skin of the breast and anyplace else you can see an opening. An opening in the skin, that is, not in the chicken itself. The skin protects your garlic/peppers/deliciousnesses from burning.
7. Select your spices and mix them up in a little bowl with some olive oil. It’s easier than putting the seasoning directly on the chicken, and if you’re using aromatics, it gives you the opportunity to let those flavors infuse the oil itself. There’s a spot near the back of my stove that gets warm when the oven is preheating, so I like to rest my seasoning bowl there for a little infusing action. Note: Don’t add salt to your seasoning mix if you’ve already dry-brined the chicken!Here are a few seasoning suggestions:
   • Basic Awesome Chicken: Garlic powder; dried parsley; black pepper. If you’re in a rush or like to keep it simple, this is plenty.
   • Spicy: Add fresh sliced jalapeno, crushed dried chilies, and/or ground cayenne pepper to the Basic Awesome Chicken seasoning combination.
   • Southwest: Cumin; cilantro; garlic (minced and/or powder); paprika; lime juice.
   • Thai: Curry powder; garlic (minced and/or powder); black pepper; hot pepper; a pinch of ginger. For an extra boost of delicious, add some lemongrass and shallots to your seasoning and pulverize it in a food processor, then cut additional lemongrass stalks down to the length of the chicken and stuff them inside.
   • Jerk: Cumin; cilantro; oregano; cinnamon; allspice; minced garlic; black pepper; cayenne pepper; a punch in the nose. HA! Jerk joke!
8. Spread the seasoning all over the outside of the chicken, on both sides. Use your hands. You will hate this.
9. OPTIONAL: If you like, you can wedge something into the chicken’s cavity, where its organ-sack used to be. I sometimes put a whole onion or a few cut stalks of lemongrass in there to flavor the meat from the inside. Don’t worry if doing this makes you feel obscene. That’s normal.
10. OPTIONAL: You can also add vegetables or grains to the pan. They’ll soak up the juices that run out of the chicken, and the chicken will in turn get some flavor from certain vegetables. See the table at the bottom of this post for ideas and tips on keeping your chicken company.
11. Cook the chicken breast-down first, then flip it halfway through cooking, so that it’ll roast evenly and the delicate skin on the breast won’t stick to the pan at the end. But here’s a secret: Sometimes, I don’t flip my chicken at all. Sometimes I put it in breast-side-up and I leave it breast-side-up the whole time and you know what? It cooks fine, the white meat and the dark meat are both delicious, and nobody seems to notice a difference. I’m just saying. But you, you should flip your chicken. For the sake of your dignity.
12. I like to roast my chickens at 425F and set the timer for about 15 minutes per pound. The higher temperature results in a crispyr skin. But if you’re roasting vegetables as well, you’ll probably need to set the oven to 350F and increase the time to about 20 minutes per pound. Once the timer goes off, take the chicken’s temperature; you’ll probably end up putting it back in the oven for 15 more minutes or so, but it’s good to check anyway, to ensure that you won’t dry the meat out. (The idea is for the internal temperature of the chicken to reach 165–170F.) If you’ve stuffed anything inside the chicken, expect it to take another 15–20 minutes total.
13. Pull it out of the oven, drape a piece of foil over the top (don’t seal it, just sort of lay it there) and leave it to rest for 10–15 minutes before carving. That’s just enough time to set the table, which you could’ve done while the chicken was roasting, but let’s face it, you started checking Reddit and forgot you were even cooking. Roasting chickens is just too easy.

I don’t know if you noticed, but a lot of those steps were optional. There are plenty of Mondays when all I do is rinse and dry the chicken, season it, and drop it in the oven. DONE. But I like having an arsenal of little tricks to make it different from week to week.

So that’s how I make dinner, every week, mostly from the couch. After dinner, John strips the remaining meat from the bones and seals it in a plastic container. He makes sandwiches for the entire rest of the week, and I make stock with the bones and vegetable scraps. The stock only needs some extra veggies and rice to become soup for another weeknight, because chickens are goddamn magic.

Mmm, soup. Now I want to tell you about stock. But I think that’s enough chicken discussion for one day. You go roast something and I’ll talk to you later.

*A lie. Obviously. I get lots of ideas from everywhere, all the time, including friends and relatives and passing comments from strangers. For instance, if you’re the person who uttered the phrase “dry brine” at that bar that time, or something completely different that I could’ve sworn sounded like “dry brine,” thank you! It was you who prompted me to read every article I could find on the subject of brining and dry brining—which isn’t technically brining—and then encourage the Internet, including you again, to try it. Unfortunately, that encouragement is also your reward. There will be no royalties. Um, thanks again.

Related posts:

1. Hot Pepper Pasta Salad with Roasted Corn and Cilantro
2. The one and only chicken salad
3. The Apex of My Laziness: Easy Garlic Chili Oil
4. Sweet Garlic-Chili Roasted Pork with Savory French Toast

Propulsion Gel Fun by Laggy

It used to be cool to be too cool for school, but times have changed. No longer is it necessary to lie to coworkers about how many times you’ve seen A New Hope, hide your comics behind old issues of Playboy, or change into your Severus Snape costume in the movie theater bathroom. Being into stuff is finally cool, and talented craftspeople everywhere are cashing in.

Here are 10 of what I think are the very best geekery-driven shops on Etsy, serving everything from screen-authentic props to adorable jewelry for guys and girls. And remember, every dollar you spend in a nerdy Etsy shop is a dollar that goes to a like-minded fan, who’ll use it to make new advances in the art of cool stuff for you to buy. It’s a positive cycle!*

1. IDentity Props, California, USA
   

   Stargate ID by IDentity Props

   Umbrella Corp, S.H.I.E.L.D., M-I-6, Black Mesa, Torchwood… the list goes on. And on. And on and on. At the moment, IDentity Props has 17 glorious pages of double-take-inducing fake ID cards, customized with your photo, info and optional holograms. Just don’t use them to sneak into bars, underage scalliwags. They’re too cool to have confiscated.

2. Laggy Creations by Maggie Ramey, California, USA
   

   Save Me Barry by Laggy

   It’s impossible to choose a favorite print from Maggie Ramey’s shop. Adorable Portal illustrations (like the one at the top of this post), Nuka-Cola ads in every flavor—even a spot-on Misfits design with the tongue-in-cheek caption, “SAVE ME, BARRY!” Her style is cheerful, retro and winky, and I can’t wait to see what she’s going to come up with next. Considering how affordable each 11×17 print is, I might need to start looking into a bigger apartment.

3. PicaPicaPress, Colorado, USA
   

   Space Invaders stud earrings by PicaPicaPress

   This cute handmade jewelry hearkens back to all your favorite nerd things: the Triforce, Pacman, Star Trek communicators, Tetris pieces, Tom Servo, the number 42, and lots more. Each piece is lovingly hand cut and polished and made from quality materials. The prices make these the perfect just-because gift.
   

4. 

   Dean Trippe Draws

   Dean Trippe Draws, Georgia, USA
   In addition to a set of pretty adorable superhero silhouette decals for the back of your minivan (you know, instead of just ordinary human outlines of the members of your family), Dean Trippe offers some excellent illustrations, including a couple of covers for a fictional comic called “Spacetime’s Finest.” If the phrase “team up to save the world” does anything for you, you’ll dig this series.

5. Synaptees by Aaron Fimister, Scotland, UK

   
   

   Blue Sun by Synaptees

   If this Etsy shop had a real life brick-and-mortar location, I’d have to start taking my meals there. I wouldn’t want to leave. Designer Aaron Fimmister pairs masterful typography with clever slogans like “I just Nevilled up,” as well as authentic-style recreations like the Fringe Division logo and Lister’s London Jets Zero-G football shirt. There’s even a Firefly/Star Wars crossover tee. Oh, and did I mention you get to choose your colors? Order one of everything, throw your old t-shirts away, and keep one of those mail-forwarding forms handy, just in case Fimister does decide to open a store one day.

6. Cool Like That by Darling Niki, California, USA
   

   Etch-a-Sketch Laptop Sleeve by CoolLikeThat

   Harry Potter fans, I hope you haven’t been carrying your Kindle/laptop/iPad around without a Cool Like That cover. How is anybody going to know which house you’ve been sorted into? Eco-friendly felt and gadget-safe Velcro closures make these handcrafted techno-cases some of the most darling available. Don’t overlook the Etch-a-Sketch design, either. Of course, as soon as more colors become available for the Tuxedo case, I’ll be dressing my next computer up in it. My eleventh computer.

7. Suzy and Leo, Belper, UK
   

   It's Always Tea Time by Suzy and Leo

   There’s no longer any excuse for meaningless jewelry. With Suzy and Leo, you can get a handmade bracelet or keychain that says any of a number of adorably geeky things, like, “SPOILERS,” “Mischief managed,” “So long and thanks for all the fish,” or my personal favorite, “I solemnly swear I am up to no good.” Check out their extensive collection (chiefly comprised of Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland and Doctor Who stuff), and remember, this shop is also happy to do custom orders. Choose your favorite obscure quote! It doesn’t matter what it is. Avatar fan? You’d probably love a bracelet that says, “My cabbages!” Love Robocop? Perhaps you’d enjoy a “Bitches leave” bracelet most of all.

8. Bruce Loves You by Olivia D, Perth, Australia
   

   Doctor Who's Valentine Card by Bruce Loves You

   Bruce also loves Doctor Who, Harry Potter, and Captain America, among other things. These charming prints and buttons are designed by an artist in Australia with a definite taste for bold shapes, bright colors and red bow ties. Basically, run. To her shop. To buy things.

9. Crafting Tiger, Utah, USA
   

   Live Long and Prosper by Crafting Tiger

   Tis the season for greeting cards! Tis always the season for greeting cards, in case you haven’t noticed. If you’re sending someone a purchased paper sentiment, it’s always best for it to be hilarious, unusual, or handmade. Crafting Tiger manages all three, with cards ranging from delightful Doctor Who quotes (“Hello, Sweetie,” and “I love your stupid face“) to slightly deranged Star Trek greetings (“Live Long and Prosper, Bitches“).

10. Rhythmic Metal by Trent Stocking, Oregon, USA
    

    Battlestar Galactica belt buckle by RhythmicMetal

    Hot Topic has worked tirelessly over the years to ensure that every poseur on the street has a skully—or worse, a wristband—emblazoned with a Mario mushroom or Link’s sword, making it extremely difficult for throwback video game accessories to seem desirable. But Rhythmic Metal is pushing back. Handmade from vinyl and steel, these super-swish powder-coated belt buckles are unique, sexy and undeniably tasteful. They pay homage to a range of respectable fandoms, including Star Trek, Star Wars, BSG, GI Joe, Metroid, and much, much more. Oh, and dinosaurs. In case you’re into dinosaurs.

*One positive cycle deserves another.

(This article is cross-posted from Word of the Nerd.)

Related posts:

1. An Etsy apartment
2. Oh, boy! A Quantum Leap-inspired shot and the ThinkGeek winners
3. Happy Draw A Bird Day
4. 10 Cute Things to Do in the Next Two Days

A couple of weeks ago, while I was singing and dancing about lemon curd, I may have glibly referenced the terribleness of scones in the United States. I stand by that. In my experience, scones are dense, dry and tasteless. I suspect that people only eat them because they think it makes them seem sophisticated and worldly, and maybe also because muffins are kind of embarrassing to eat in public.

How. EVER.

I recently tried an Australian scone recipe, expecting very little. Even awful scones, I figured, would be one more thing I could cover in glorious lemon curd. And then the unforeseeable happened, just like Mayhem said it would.

They were amazing.

They were fluffy inside, a little crisp outside, and satisfying all over. When they first came out of the oven, they were also warm. And when they stopped being warm they didn’t stop being fluffy, crisp and satisfying.

Imagine the ideal buttermilk biscuit. The inner texture of these scones is similar, but with neither the turns-to-glue-in-your-mouth property that characterizes drop biscuits (a quality I happen to love, but didn’t miss) nor the tough breadiness of the rolled-out-and-cut-into-circles biscuits. These scones were, I might venture to say, more perfect than a perfect buttermilk biscuit.

They were easy. And I made them with things I already had in the house. And they didn’t take a lot of time or cleanup. In fact, by the third time I made them, I figured out how to do it with just one mixing bowl, a couple of measuring cups and spoons, and a baking sheet.

That third time? That was the day after I found the recipe. After I tried them once, I made another batch the next morning for breakfast. Then in the evening, I made them again because I had company. And then I was out of cream and I thought, yeah, I should probably hold off on buying more cream for a little while, because I’ve eaten like two dozen scones this week.

I bought more cream the next day. You only live once.

Related posts:

1. It’s like an English muffin-muffin-bagel
2. Berry oat crumble
3. Speckled Butterbeans and Cornbread: They Go Hand in Hand

I’ve temporarily sworn off the corner grocery store. It’s in an incredibly convenient spot, and we’re typically willing to put up with quite a bit for the privilege of walking to our peanut butter in nice weather, but last week I had a shopping experience so bizarre that now we’re on a break.

Yesterday I was going to draw it for you—the bizarre experience—in a pithy manner, but it turned into hours and hours of what I can only describe as doodle therapy. I filled 26 sketchbook pages with a detailed account of exactly what went wrong, complete with exposition.

I am not posting that today.

Instead, I’m going to post pieces of it in casual installments, so I’ll seem less crazy. (After yesterday, it’s evident that seeming crazy is a very real risk right now.) Eventually, I’ll get around to telling you about the with-the-benefit-of-time-and-a-little-perspective-not-really-that-big-a-deal-after-all-but-still-very-very-weird thing that happened that day, but first I need to give you a sense of what a strange store it already is to begin with, and I know you don’t have all day.

So here’s one of the things about our neighborhood store that we normally let slide, even though it bothers us: One of the cashiers is not nice. I mean, she’s a real jerk. And her orneriness is thrown into sharp relief by how sweet the rest of the staff is. They’re just shy of too nice, in fact. Like, they’re almost so nice that you’d worry they might be making meat-dolls of you in the deli and calling them Princess and giving them tea parties, but not quite. They’re probably a notch or two less nice than that, which is just about the perfect level of niceness. All except this one lady.

She seems like a smart person who could probably be good at her job if she wanted. But she’s grumpy all the time, like an old cat that’s been working weekends and doesn’t get along with its neighbors. Everything irritates her and she doesn’t care who knows it.

So that’s one thing I don’t miss since I’ve started doing all my shopping at the Trader Joe’s down the street. Of course, skipping the regular store leaves me at the mercy of the trading gods and their mysterious inventory whims. Sometimes, there are no green beans. Often, there are no chickens. It has made me creative.

This pasta salad, for instance, which is delicious hot or cold, used to be a taco recipe. Ever since the first time I made tacos this way, we have yet to make any other kind of taco. But this time, I couldn’t seem to find the tortillas. Instead, I came across some stuffed pasta I’d never tried before. It was labeled “Perline with Prosciutto.” Further investigation has revealed that it might actually be called “fagottini,” but I think I understand why Trader Joe made that call.

The combination of feta, bacon and dates is one of my current favorites. Sweet, smoky and salty, together again! If you have little flour tortillas and sour cream and some cooked pork, you can stir the sour cream and feta together and load everything up for a tasty taco experience. But if you want pasta instead, this is another exciting bacon-feta-date side dish that’s now on our permanent menu.

Related posts:

1. Hot Pepper Pasta Salad with Roasted Corn and Cilantro
2. Flux Capacitor Rice
3. Last Meal: Beer & Bacon Mac & Cheese
4. Pumpkin date bread with chocolate chips…in the bread machine!

Curd is an ugly word.

Maybe not to you. Some words are only ugly to us in America because we aren’t used to hearing them. The words that sound most similar to curd—curdle and turd, for instance—evoke things we prefer not to associate with our tea and cookies, which could be why we don’t see a lot of curd around here, and more’s the pity.

Obviously, it’s not the first time (toad in the hole) that a food (Welsh rabbit) has translated poorly (spotted dick) from UK English to US English. Over the years, I’ve worked to build an extensive internal English-to-English dictionary that has saved me from many a comical misunderstanding, but it’s taken my whole life so far to build what limited vocabulary I’ve got, and there’s constantly more to learn. What makes things so complicated is that not only do many UK English words differ from what we in the US would say, but some UK terms also have completely different meanings on this continent. Take for example the scones with which I enjoyed this sweet and tasty lemon curd. Be not misled: scones do not seem to be in England what they are in America.

It doesn’t end with food, either! It’s lots of things. Like clothes. For instance, I had lumberjacks wrong for years.

It makes a hell of a lot more sense to wear a garter belt than suspenders with a bra and high heels. And while we’re on the topic, are those lumberjacks wearing pants? The one on the left is!

This curious inconsistency leads to countless opportunities for confusion. An English boy I once knew used to collapse into fits of giggles whenever he saw the massive Old Navy marquee which at the time simply read, “PANTS.” And on the first episode of the second season of Sherlock which aired recently, I noticed that Watson turned to a bathrobe-clad Sherlock and asked if he was wearing any pants, when clearly his legs were bare. Curse the international ambiguity! But here’s the particular implication that’s puzzling me presently—my current Pants Conundrum, if you will:

Do they have sweat pants in England? What are they called? Not sweat trousers, surely. Gross.

Anyway, lemon curd.

If you’re not immediately familiar with lemon curd, think of it as a dessert condiment. (A dessert condiment that I totally eat for breakfast all the time.) It’s silky-smooth, tart, and reminiscent of lemon candy, except it’s easier to spread with a spoon and doesn’t make your teeth feel furry.

Until recently, I had had very few opportunities to taste lemon curd, although it had always been amazing. Since I’ve never known an American who made it, I long believed that it must be complicated to prepare, or that it required some kind of special lemons you have to import from the British Isles, probably with a Union Jack and a little palace guard stamped on the rind. Not so! It takes 15 minutes and four ingredients. So apart from the name, I can’t think of a good reason why curd shouldn’t be more popular here, except possibly its awkward context. Like jam, it isn’t really of much use all on its own, so unless you make a point of sitting down with something to spread it on (or you see nothing wrong with slurping up jam by the spoonful), curd is a little bit weird.

That’s why I am encouraging all of you—yes, even you!—to set aside some time and biscuits this week and whip up this light, sweet lemon curd (seriously! 15 minutes!). You will eat it and you will feel happy. You will think you have tasted the sun. (In a good way. Not in a Bagel Bites way.)

And if you don’t like lemon, choose a different fruit! Any juicy citrus fruit can easily take the place of lemons in this recipe. I myself made some navel orange curd from one large orange, and I found it sweeter and milder than its lemon counterpart. I also recommend lime curd! Imagine key lime pie, but on a biscuit. Imagine it until you fall into a dreamy delirium and see visions of pie filling and fluffy biscuits floating on sailboats across the peaceful sea and into your open mouth. Then get up and go to your kitchen. Also, maybe take a multivitamin? I’m not sure hallucinations are a normal reaction to reading about fruit spread.

I used the recipe from Joy of Baking, along with the extremely helpful instructional video posted there. The recipe calls for fresh lemons, eggs, sugar and butter. That’s all! I have started leaving the zest out of the recipe (try as I might, even with a micro plane, I am terrible zester), and I don’t find that the curd suffers. Your mileage and your curd may vary, but will definitely be gloriously delicious. Yeah, you heard me. Delicious mileage. Gloriously so.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re trying to decide between “Delicious Mileage” and “The Curd Suffers” for your next album title. Well, don’t! They’re mine. As soon as I learn to be a musician. Aaaaaany minute now.

One last thing. My fellow countrymen, do your nation a favor and start saying curd as much as you can, in any conversation you can wedge it into. I’m sure we’ll get used to the sound of it eventually. Surely there’s some trace of colonist DNA in all of us somewhere that hears it and recognizes it and doesn’t think about spoiled milk, or worse. Let’s work together to activate that part of our collective ancestry!

Curd.

Curd.

Curd curd curd curd curdcurdcurdcurdcurd.

Yeah, it could take a while.

Related posts:

1. Scones again, naturally
2. Summer Meets Fall: Apple-Nectarine Parfaits with Maple Yogurt
3. Hummus for Dessert: Peanut Butter Chocolate Hummus
4. Berry oat crumble

This past Christmas, I opted for an exaggerated spirit of cheerful thriftiness and handmade a bunch of presents for family and friends. I knew I could make nicer gifts than I could afford to buy, like this chunky improvised scarf, which now lives in Ohio with my dear friend Njicki. (I embellished it with a yellow flower pin, from a tutorial I spotted on Pinterest). It—the scarf, not the flower—is very warm. The flower is exactly as warm as it looks.

Although I didn’t use a pattern for the scarf, indicating that one doesn’t need a pattern for such a scarf, I would like to make another scarf like it someday and if I don’t write it down, no matter how simple it is, I’ll never be certain whether I’m doing it the same way, or what the hell I did in the first place. Often, throughout the day, I find myself thinking, “I’ll have to remember this for later,” and even as I’m thinking it, my brain responds by becoming actively aware that no remembering will be done. It doesn’t even pretend that it means to remember. It’s like it’s shouting, “NOPE!” and laughing in my face. Of course, I have to tip my hat, because laughing in my face is, owing to the position of the brain within the skull, something very few things other than my brain can actually do.

So. Since I have no choice but to write the pattern down anyway, I may as well share it with you. If your brain is anything like mine, you’ll finish reading this, scan the pattern for difficulty, think, “Yes, I’d like to make this someday,” and then promptly forget what it was called, where you saw it, or what in fact it was. Months from now, out of nowhere, you’ll get a shadow of a vague idea that you’ve once seen something—”I think it was some kind of…knitted…headband?” you might say—and you’ll suddenly feel very strongly that you would like to find this thing and make one of whatever it is. You’ll grapple around your brain and your browser history, unsure what you’re looking for except that it’s exactly what you want, and it’ll be right there, a blurry teal silhouette (“…or was it yellow?”) at the edge of your memory. And there it will stay until it teeters off into the deep pit of things you forgot you ever meant to remember, like the phone call you answered last week with “Let me call you right back,” and how to use the Periodic Table.

But just in case.

(By the way, you can see in this photo that somehow, I connected one strand of my scarf backwards. It, uh, adds an element of handmade charm. Whatever I did wrong, I corrected it in the pattern. Normally I wouldn’t post about it until I’ve had a chance to snap a new photo, but I like this scarf as it is in spite of that little error, so please use your imagination.)

Njicki’s Braided Scarf

(On Ravelry)

Materials: 2 skeins Sensations Sumptuous yarn (you should have less than half a skein left over), which is available exclusively from Joann’s, or yarn of a comparable thickness.

Tools: Size 17 knitting needles [link], stitch holder.

Notes: Each of the braided strands of this scarf is formed by a long stockinette rectangle just five stitches wide, which then curls into a tidy cylinder for convenient braiding. The look, as shown, requires a super chunky yarn such as the one recommended, which is sold at Joann’s. The gauge is less than 2 stitches per inch.

Cast on 5 stitches, leaving behind a 14″ tail. Tie this tail securely and do not work it in to the knitting.

Row 1 (RS): K1, (M1, K2) twice. [7]
R2: P. [7]
R3: K1, (M1, K1, M1, K2) twice. [11]
R4: P. [7]
R5: K2, (M1, K2) 4 times, K1. [15]
R6: P. [7]

The scarf is now worked as three separate strands, which will later be braided. Only five stitches will be worked at a time. Keep the remaining stitches on your needles while you work each strand. This will become bulky to turn, so take care that your working yarn isn’t getting wound around your strands.

Row 7: K5 and turn.
R8–129: Continue in stockinette stitch, ending with a K row.

You should now have one needle with 5 stitches on it in your right hand, and another needle with 10 stitches on it in your left hand, connected by the long strand you’ve just knitted. Trim and tie off the working yarn (with about 10″ tail),  and leave the 5 stitches of the finished strand on your right hand needle for safekeeping as you work on the others. K into the next 5 stitches on your left hand needle, and repeat rows 8–129 to create this second strand, again ending with a K row, and again cutting the yarn. Carry both disconnected five-stitch-wide completed strands on your right hand needle as you repeat this strand-making process with the final five stitches.

You should once again have all 15 stitches on one needle, with the yarn cut between every 5 stitches. Move the first five stitches over to the second needle, and the center five stitches onto a stitch holder, so that you can now move each of the three strands separately. Carefully braid the three strands together, then place all 15 stitches back onto the same needle, facing the same direction, with the working yarn (still attached to the skein) toward the tip.

Work Row 130 across all 15 stitches.

Row 130: P. [15]
R131: K2, (S1P, K1) twice, (K2tog,  K1) twice, K1.  [11]
R132: P. [11]
R133: K1, S1P twice, K1, K2tog twice, K1. [7]
R134: P. [7]
R135: K1, S1P, K1, K2tog, K1. [5]
R136: P. [5]
Bind off knitwise, leaving a 14″ tail.

Your scarf should now have a 14″ tail dangling from one corner on each side. Tie a small knot at the end of each of these tails.

Cut four 29″ strands of yarn. Tie a small knot at each end of these as well, and attach one strand by its center to the middle of each end of the finished scarf, leaving both knotted ends of the strand dangling. Then attach a strand in the same manner to each corner of the scarf that doesn’t already have a tail. You should now have five strands of yarn dangling from each end of your scarf: one on the corner (your starting or ending tail), two in the middle, and two on the opposite corner.

Gather the strands from both ends and tie them in a bow so that the scarf is now a loop. Weave in any loose ends, making sure that they’re first tied so that they won’t end up working their way out.

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1. Put a hat on something.

Two years ago, Erica of Erica’s Sweet Tooth put two dollops of frosting and a strawberry on top of a brownie and changed my life forever. I, too, want to put a tiny santa hat on something while there’s still time. I’m too busy to make brownies, so maybe I’ll stack two scoops of ice cream on top of each other, jam a pretzel stick into each side, make it wear a strawberry hat and call it a festive snowman. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t, but either way I get ice cream. To be honest, this is the basis on which most of my life decisions are made.

2. Make reinbeer.

I want to make regular beer into six tiny reinbeer like Modern Mom did. Because why the hell not, you guys? It’ll take ten minutes and everyone will smile at how silly it is. Plus it guarantees that there will definitely be beer at Christmas.

3. Bake hot cocoa cupcakes.

I don’t want to be a liar: Yes, the more involved a project is, the less likely I am to get it done between now and the day after tomorrow so no, there isn’t a great chance that I’m going to get to make Julie Coffman’s adorable hot cocoa cupcakes. BUT LOOK AT THEM. Obviously I’m going to want to make them, regardless of whether it’s likely to happen. And sometimes, just wanting to do something is enough to make you tired of baking. So it’s kind of like I have an excuse.

4. Make my nails pretty.

It doesn’t look easy, but I think I could do it. On my left hand. Right hand, I have no idea.

5. Totally obliterate something with glitter.

John doesn’t abide glitter. I understand why. But that doesn’t mean that deep down, I wouldn’t love to grab a bunch of stuff and destroy it with a good sparkling. It’s sort of like the holiday spirit lives in glitter, you know? Maybe glitter is an instrument of the holiday spirit, and once it covers a thing in its festive-yet-insidious cloak of twinkle, it’s somehow able to leech life energy from that thing and use it to imbue the environment with a supernatural level of Christmassiness. It’s evil and awesome, like Darth Vader apparently (as John explained the other night in Target).

6. Make my own damn fudge-covered Oreos.

The stores by us didn’t put any out this year. What the hell is up with that? Fine. WE’LL DO IT LIVE.

7. Make this year’s Christmas Card ornament.

Although I never get around to sending out Christmas cards myself, I love the cards that other people send to us. I will save this year’s cards in the form of a second Christmas card ornament, just like the one I made last year, and with any luck, I will have it on the tree before the holiday passes. But since the tree will probably stay up a couple of weeks after Christmas (that’s another thing I never get around to), it’s no big deal if I slip this one in a little late.

8. Make tiny ornament earrings.

I have ear wires and I have tiny Christmas tree ornaments, so there’s really no excuse for not making these. And this year, for some reason (maybe some kind of mineral deficiency?), I’ve had a sudden attraction to the cheesy, terrible side of dressing up for Christmas. I’ve been wearing a ring with jingle bells on it. And I bought a hideous Christmas sweater and transformed it into a hideous Christmas cardigan and then I wore it in public. Around people I know. I kind of want to take all of this back now and tell you I was only joking, but it’s true.

9. Put out some clever luminaria.

So easy to do, but also so easy to put off. I would love to set some of these out in front of our apartment. They’re just so warm and inviting and patently hazardous.

10. Go see the lights.

If I manage to get through more than one or two of the projects on this list in the time I have left, I’ll need a break, and driving around to see the lights will be the perfect reward. But I’ll wait until Christmas night, because I don’t want to have to fight all the last-minute holiday shoppers on the road. Those lazy, procrastinating jerks.

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2. Ice cream Christmas trees, and a recipe contest
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I rarely bake cookies, so when I do, I almost always choose a new, never-before-tried recipe, in the interest of adventure and an increased return on the laborious exercise of measuring things with measuring cups (ugh). The exception: McCall’s Old-Fashioned Sour Cream Cookies. Probably half the cookies I make—ever—are these.

They’re the perfect cookie, and therefore the only recipe worth returning to. They’re sweet, soft, and wonderful, and they need absolutely no decoration or intervention of any kind. They require only ingredients you’re likely to have on hand (unless you are out of sour cream) and take just a few minutes to mix. They’re good hot out of the oven, warm that evening, and in various stages of staleness as they sit. They travel well, being uncrumbleable, and they’re never not awesome. There is no better use in the world for a whole thing of sour cream, a cup of butter, and two eggs than this recipe.

So I made them for the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap, a new holiday tradition that began this year with over 600 participants. I made them and mailed them and they were enjoyed by three amazing ladies whose holiday homes I was happy to help infuse with sugar and joy. The best part? Getting to discover three new bloggers: Rachel from Croissant In The City, Teri from The Freshman Cook,  and Kristen from Confessions of a (Not-So) Domesticated Newlywed.

Actually, it’s a tie, because the best part was also the extra dozen cookies I saved for myself.

Wait, it’s a three-way tie! No, a five-way tie! Because the other best part was the three different kinds of cookies I received from Kate at Passion for Life, who makes a mean sugar cookie; Missy from Cooking for Two, whose local-to-Oregon hazelnut thumbprint cookies gave us a taste of the west coast; and Traci, a local girl from Yellow Wish Bone, who sent some tasty chocolate chip oatmeal cookies in a fancy coordinating package. I had planned to post pictures of everything, but before I got my act together, John and I ate up all the cookies. So please take my word for it: they were all beautiful. Thanks, you guys!

 

Here’s the recipe for the cookies I mailed out. My favorite cookie recipe in all the world.

McCall’s Old-Fashioned Sour Cream Cookies

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McCall’s Cookie Collection, 1985. Makes about 4 dozen.

• 3 cups sifted all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup butter or regular margarine, softened
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla (or 2 teaspoons grated lemon peel)
• FOR THE TOPPING:
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1. Sift flour with baking powder, baking soda, and salt; set aside.
2. In large bowl of electric mixer, at medium speed, beat butter, sugar, and eggs until light and fluffy.
3. At low speed, beat in sour cream and vanilla until smooth.
4. Gradually beat in flour mixture until well combined. Refrigerate 1 hour.
5. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Lightly grease cookie sheets.
6. Drop batter by slightly rounded teaspoonfuls, 2 inches apart, onto prepared cookie sheets.
7. For the topping, combine 1/2 cup sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle a little on unbaked cookies.
8. Bake 10 to 12 minutes, or until golden-brown. Remove to wire rack; cool.

 

 

Note: In the next few days, a roundup of all the Food Blogger Cookie Swap recipes will be available, and I will link you to those so you can check out all the participants’ favorite recipes! In the meantime, another blogger is putting together a roundup of cookie exchange recipes as well, on At Home With Rebecka. So that should keep you busy for a little while.

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I like to say yes to things. I try to keep it at a manageable level, like one or two quality yeses a week, so I don’t end up yesing myself into a tense little corner. That means I have to shop my yeses around and make sure I have yesed the best possible yes. That’s why, for this week, I’ve agreed to be a judge for the first VeryGoodRecipes.com recipe challenge. It makes sense, because I judge stuff all day long just for the hell of it, so I might as well get some kind of recognition for it, and an official title. Then it’s like all my needless everyday criticism has been valuable practice. Yes.

The theme of this first contest is “White Christmas,” and each judge was asked to put together a recipe as an example. These are my white Christmas trees. They’re yummy, and they’re so stupid-easy you’ll facepalm all over yourself when you see what they’re made of. Hey! Don’t you roll your eyes at me!

The contest, by the way, is open to all participants (not just food bloggers), and the winners get to go shopping for luxury spices and stuff. Here’s the hook:

What dish do you think of when you hear “White Christmas”? You can of course cook with white ingredients such as white fish, white chocolate, white asparagus, white truffles, white vegetables, chicken, cream, coconut milk etc. But your recipe does not have to be all white! It needs to be festive and have a “snowy” feel. You can be creative and imagine a snowy presentation, for instance sprinkling snow crystals (drops of cream, petals of white edible flowers, and a lot of other ingredients) or trying to create a snow-covered landscape one can eat!

You’re probably thinking about mashed potatoes and sausage gravy and tofu and all kinds of other traditional festive delicacies, and you’re probably right, but these white chocolate-covered ice cream-filled waffle-cone trees are my official example of what the contest is about to me. They’re cute, classy, fun and simple, not to mention extremely white and Christmassy. Think they’re too white? Not Christmassy enough? Ought to be covered in a soft white cheese? Submit your own recipe and prove me wrong.

Mind you, just because I’m a judge and you already know how much I totally love you, that doesn’t mean you necessarily have a leg up in the contest, because it’s not up to me alone. Here are all the judges you’ll have to impress with your recipe:

1. Alex from Food 4 Thought
2. Anne from Les Recettes du Panier
3. Han Ker from Hankerie
4. Me! Kristina! from Knuckle Salad!
5. Quay Po from Quay Po Cooks
6. Rachel from Blissfully Scrumptious
7. Russell from London Eats
8. Suzy from Suzy Eats
9. Vanessa from Vane Valentine

You can do it, though. I believe in you. Knock ‘em dead.

Personally, I’m easy to impress. You don’t have to come up with a complicated recipe or employ advanced techniques to knock my socks off. Just surprise me a little. For instance, the “recipe” I made up as an example has only a few ingredients: Ice cream, ice cream cones, and chocolate. I used two kinds of chocolate because I’m super fancy, but if you can only handle thinking about one kind of chocolate at a time, that’s okay. Don’t make your brain explode right before Christmas. Your family would be so sad. It’s not worth it.

I’m not kidding about it being simple: these trees are nothing but chocolate-covered ice cream cones filled with delicious ice cream of your choice. There’s nothing advanced about it, and it’s easy to make during the day when you’ve got company coming over later. You can decorate the trees with candies or shredded coconut or anything you like—I enlivened a few of mine with sprinkles and edible stars—or you can leave them alone and let them be elegant snow-covered pines. The secret to making the outside look pretty? White chocolate is piped with a frosting tip, using absolutely no skill or attention to neatness. My specialty.

To make six trees, expect to use six servings of ice cream (one gallon is more than enough), between one and two bags of white chocolate, and half a bag (at most) of milk or dark chocolate for the inside. Like I said, you can just use white chocolate on the inside too, if you’d rather. No brainsplosions.

First, you’ll need to level the cones so they stand up straight. Waffle cones generally aren’t flat at the top (sugar cones are, though, so they make an easier option… it’s just that waffle cones are so much more awesome in every way), so you’ll want to carefully chip away at the edge of each cone, pinching to break off bits from the taller side until they’re level enough to stand up straight when you set them down.

Save those cone-crumbs, because they make a great topping for future ice cream sundaes!

Then coat the inside with a thin layer of melted chocolate. This will protect the cone from getting soggy once you put the ice cream in.

Take the ice cream out of the freezer ahead of time to soften, then carefully fill each cone with softened ice cream, doing your best to shove it all the way down to the fill the narrow tip. Smooth the top over so the cone can still stand up and return them to the freezer.

After the ice cream has hardened up again, cover the outside of each cone by piping melted white chocolate in vertical rows from bottom to top. Don’t stress about this! They look great when they’re sloppy.

You want your chocolate to be melted, but not red hot, so take your time filling the pastry bag, which will allow your chocolate to become a little bit thicker and easier to work with. Remember, melted chocolate is softer than frosting and doesn’t pipe the same way, so if you try to cover your tree in piped stars, for instance, you may find that the stars don’t stand up the way you’re expecting.

For my trees, I used a leaf tip, squeezing the bag at intervals about an inch apart as I piped each vertical row. I also went all the way around each tree once and spaced out my vertical rows so they didn’t touch, then made a second trip around to fill in each gap with a new row, rather than trying to keep all the rows tight together the first time. Just do what feels right to you, and remember, you can experiment to your heart’s content on wax paper! Once your chocolate sets on the wax paper, you can pop it right back into the bowl and melt it again for a penalty-free do-over.

Keep these frozen until you’re ready to serve them. The white chocolate, even though it’s thick, will only make a hard candy shell in the freezer, unlike milk or dark chocolate which might break all your teeth. (The chocolate on the inside of the cone is only a thin layer, so you don’t need to worry there.) When it’s time to dig in, you won’t need utensils—but an extra napkin wouldn’t hurt. Yes. Yes to extra napkins.

Submit your recipes for the White Christmas challenge by Boxing Day, and good luck!

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I my Christmas decorations to look different from year to year. Since I can’t afford (or bear) to throw out all my holiday stuff and start over at the drop of a hat the way rich and/or cruel people must, like Dick Cheney or Oprah, I try to change out small things that have a lot of impact and a negligible price tag, which brings us to my DIY paper-snowflake placemats.

This might be the simplest tutorial I’ve come up with yet. Don’t laugh at me. Next week, I will bring you tutorials on opening and closing doors, getting water from the tap, and sneezing.

You only need three things to make paper-snowflake placemats:

• A few placemat-sized pieces of felt.
• Some fabric spray paint, which, unlike regular spray paint, doesn’t stink, can go in the washing machine, and can be purchased, even by minors, without ID. Fabric-based graffiti must be at a minimum. Let’s bring it back! Tag your neighbors in the pants!
• A bunch of paper snowflakes. Make these yourself, or have a child make them, if you have access to one.

Once you’ve got your snowflakes made, this project is practically finished.

But don’t worry if you suck at snowflakes. For most of my life, my paper snowflakes have looked absolutely nothing like snowflakes. I followed the rules as I understood them—fold the paper, cut holes along the edges, unfold—but they always turned out like this, more closely resembling overworked face-ham than snow from the sky. I bring it up because curiously, I still thought my paper snowflakes were super awesome, and I made them all the time, never once stopping to wonder why they were called ‘paper snowflakes’ if they were just meant to be ambiguous ham-shapes.

At some point, usually early toddlerhood, we all begin to question the world around us. For me, snowflake-wise, it happened in my mid- 20s. I saw a proper paper snowflake, noticed the familiar fold lines, and finally put two and two together. It’s a wonder my entire world view wasn’t disrupted. Luckily, my latent snowflake discovery didn’t lead to any further exploration or learning.

Anyway, now that I understand what I’m doing, my snowflakes are better. Not spectacular, but better. It’s not always easy to fold them properly into twelfths, and sometimes I don’t have the best luck freehanding nice points with the scissors. To simplify the folding, I made myself a little template I could print out with fold lines. That really helped. Then I figured, as long as I was at it, I might as well draw up a couple of foolproof snowflake shapes, too.

So now I’ve got a bunch of little snowflake templates I can print at any size, fold, and cut. When finished, the printed lines are barely visible, and the snowflakes are damn near Martha-Stewart-flawless.

I know it sounds anal retentive, but I swear, it’s such a time-saver, and sometimes it’s nice when all my snowflakes  match. At any rate, you don’t need a template! You are a free spirit! Go ahead and freehand your snowflakes! It’s super fun!

And if you should get tired of that…

…then just click these snowflakes to download each printable PDF template. There is no shame.

You probably already figured out how to finish this project while I was going on about snowflakes, so I’ll run through the rest quickly. Be sure to work someplace where you don’t have to worry about overspray, because this stuff stains. That’s its whole job.

First, arrange your snowflakes on one of your felt placemats. Now, you might be tempted to pin them down, as I did above, but beware! Pins make holes. Just remember that. Pins make holes.

Spray the whole thing, coating the felt as evenly as you can. My fabric spray paint instructions came with two valuable hints:

1. Always begin and end each spray on the newspaper, not on your work. When you first start spraying, and sometimes just after you stop, some paint splatters out of the can. You don’t want splatters on your placemat, especially if you’re using red. It’ll look like there’s been some kind of grisly slaying. Or sleighing! HA! But seriously, sleigh accidents are no joke. Except sometimes.
2. Spray in little continuous circles. This seems to work well for getting reasonably even coverage all over.

Don’t take your snowflakes off the placemat until they begin to dry. The paint will make the paper soggy at first, and if you pick up the snowflakes while they’re soggy and dripping with paint, then they’ll probably tear, and the paint will drip down and stain your white snowflake shapes. It’ll look neater if you just wait a few minutes.

After you remove the snowflakes, set them aside and lay them flat to dry completely. Then you can use them again!

Remember what I said about pins? And holes? The placemat on the left was pinned. The placemat on the right wasn’t. Paint dripped down through the pin-holes in the left snowflake and made little splotches. Sure, you can get crisper edges if you pin the snowflakes down, but is it worth the cost? You have to look inside your heart. That’s a question only you can answer.

Or I can help you. No, it isn’t. No pins.

That’s all there is to it! Craft finished! In minutes!

When they’ve dried completely (an hour should be plenty), set them out on your new, refreshed holiday table. If your placemats should meet their doom at dinner, try tossing them in the wash, and if they fare poorly, who cares? Cut some more snowflakes and make new ones! Because that’s how you roll now! You can just throw them out! Have new ones! Don’t even have to think twice! Oprah, eat your heart out!

Egad, what a horrible expression.

Total cost of this project:

Felt: 4 sheets at $.79 each = $3.16
Fabric Spray Paint: 1 can, purchased on clearance and completely used up = $1.50
Snowflakes: 8 sheets of printer paper at… uh… $.01 each? = about $.08
Total: $4.74
Per placemat: $1.19

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