dinner for two
With two clergy people with odd schedules in the house, and cats who have so far resisted all attempts to train them to take on any share in the domestic affairs of the household, dinner is sometimes a hit or miss affair.
We had a real winner last night, and I'm documenting this so I can remember:
one box Coconut Ginger Rice (one of those Thai mixes in the Asian foods aisle)
extra-firm tofu
one zucchini
a handful of carrots
one red pepper
onion and garlic
I sauteed the veggies and the tofu and tossed them in with the rice mix while it was cooking. At the end I mixed in dried cranberries, almonds and green onions, and drizzled it with lime juice.
Given that we polished the whole thing off last night, I would say it was a hit.
The Coconut Ginger rice mix definitely needs a little sweet something to balance out some of the curry flavors. I think next time I might toss in golden raisins or another dried fruit that's a little sweeter than the cranberries.
Satisfaction of a home-cooked meal AND bonus points for using things in the pantry stash.
Labels: cooking
Knitting Content!
I picked up the needles again late this summer and I've been in a flurry of frogging projects that no longer interest me, finishing up projects that were languishing on the needles, testing out some new ideas, and trying, vainly, to use up stash.
Dishcloth from pattern in
Creative Knitting. Spur of the moment stash-reducing project. The actual color is more purple than blue. Bernat Cottontots, size 8 needles.
More stash-busting. This is
Aibhlinn. It used at least 2 and some skeins of Wool-ease from stash. I was hoping it would use up all four skeins, and it's possible it used up 3 and some, but it lived for a while in the trunk of my car, and then for awhile in the bottom of my knitting bag while my knitting was on hiatus, and now I'm clueless how much it used up. The pattern calls for this to go to 24 inches, I quit at about 20 as it seemed perfectly big enough. Benjamin Bear agrees with me on that assessment. The swirling rib stitch pattern is simple and fairly memorizable but looks really cool. And, I learned how to bobble!
These two dishcloths were the result of playing around with some ideas from
Mason-Dixon Knitting . I don't know that I'm ready for an entire bedspread of mitered squares (the ends! the sewing up!) or an entire Log Cabin blanket (the ends!) but I found these projects to be lots of fun. I could feel myself ready to keep going on the Log Cabin. That log cabining, it's addictive, and I can totally see why those
Mason-Dixon women are so into it. These are all Lion Brand Cotton--the mitered square dishcloth is actually the second in a series, but my mitering got off in the first one. Who cares? It's a dishcloth. All are doing duty in the kitchen as we speak.
In this season of retreats, conferences, meetings and diocesan conventions (and the ongoing whatever-you-want-to-call-it in the Episcopal Church), it's a good time to keep one's hands busy.
ordination photo round-up
In which a field house becomes a worship space.
St. Christopher's wall hanging does not quite disguise the scoreboard, but since St. C's can take all the bonus points we can get, there's no complaining here.
In which we have a new bishop
or, as my friend
Paula referred to it, BishopStock '07. Which is not to imply that any priest named Stock was made Bishop.
Anyway, the Rev. Dr. Edward Konieczny is now the Rt. Rev. Dr. Edward Konieczny, Bishop of Oklahoma. It only takes 3 bishops to make one new bishop, but like a wedding, it just can't be that easy. There were Native American drummers (which I could only hear, not see, as I was out in the "West staging area.") There were two big screens to televise the service to the whole field house. There was Taize. There was the Presiding Bishop. Iactually think half of the congregation was in the procession, in some form or another.
I had one part in the service myself, which was the chanting of the Psalm, which was set to a lovely melodic setting by a musician in the Diocese. I need to write her a thank you note, because it's not that often that one gets to sing a Psalm setting that is actually, you know, pretty. When it was time for me to sing, I went up to the lectern and prayed that my voice would hold out (I had been suffering from a cold all week, and promptly after the Psalm, what was left of my voice was done. I've been reduced to silence and IMing with friends. Instant Messenger is a gift to extroverts with laryngitis).
I got to sit in the very front row along with the other worship leaders for the Ministry of the Word, so I got to see it all, mere yards away from me. It was all beautiful and perfect, and I was keeping it together until our retiring bishop handed our new bishop the crozier. And guessing from the sniffles around me, I wasn't the only one who got a little teary at that point.
The other discovery of the event was that the Holy Spirit can apparently manifest herself in the form of the Oklahoma City Emergency Alert System. The actual moment of ordination itself happened a little before noon. As the other cantor started singing the Taize setting of "Veni Sancte Spiritus," the sirens went off. I held my breath--and then it became clear that the Spirit was indeed working. The Taize piece is set in A. Apparently, so are the sirens. The cantor went on, the ordination went on.
The events of the whole weekend have left me remarkably peaceful about the upcoming House of Bishops meeting and whatever emerges from that for the future of the Episcopal Church. That's either the work of the Spirit or the great quantities of herbal tea I've been drinking to help move this cold along.
Thanks for all the help
Actual ODOT sign on I-40:
"Beginning September 10. Various lanes closed."
