Tidal Wave
4:23 p.m. - 2006-09-29


I had a disaster of germy proportions in the kitchen this week. I was brining some pork chops and thought the bag was secure standing in a container, but the minute I poured in the brine, the bag tipped and slopped a wave of porky germy badness all over my kitchen counter. What followed involved boiling water and paper towels and bleach and the death of my apple cake, which was caught in the flood. However, my counter is now gleaming, cleaner and more germfree than it has ever ever been. And the pork chops eventually tasted wonderful. I made a recipe from the Farm Journal Best Ever Recipes book which had me layer sliced potatoes with a layer of sliced American cheese (I was skeptical at this point), more potatoes, then the browned pork chops, and over all was poured a mixture of cream of mushroom soup, milk, and green onions. This whole casserole was baked for an hour and a half, and somehow the cheese just disappeared. That left me with tender pork chops on top of delicious scalloped potatoes. So this recipe is a good one and will be repeated. Without the flood, hopefully.

I finished the pinky lace socks and delivered them to Melissa. Now I am knitting on the Must Have Cardigan, but am finding it difficult to adjust from the fine fine yarn I was using to the knitting worsted weight I am knitting now. It seems to have confused my fingers. I have a bound book of empty pages that I got at that strange place in SF that day Auntie M and I and January went into the city. The place recycles stuff from industry, can't remember what it is called. Anyhoo, the book has been around for awhile still empty, but I decided to use it to write down my knitting gauges. I made a cover that says, surprisingly, 'Knitting Gauges', and then I looked for and found the stamp I carved that is a ball of yarn with needles sticking out of it. I colored the stamp with Marvy Markers, making the ball of yarn look variegated, then stamped the cover. Looks pretty good, and now I know where my gauge figures are. This is handy for machine knitting work.

The weather here is very warm during the day, but it doesn't really heat up until noon, so I save a half day on the energy bill running the AC. The nights are cool. There is another bee hive in the backyard, in the old pine tree stump, and this time he is going to deal with it. They are quite frisky, so it may take longer to dig the stump out than he thought, since running for your life uses up a little time.

The possible new pastor is speaking this Sunday, so we will see if we like him or not. I can't remember if the EG's will be there or not, I think they may be on their way to Cape Cod.