Beef stew in the works

• 1 Spanish onion, chopped
• 1 lb. stewing beef
• most of a small bag of baby carrots, chopped
• 6 medium-sized potatoes, peeled and chopped
• frozen peas (I added enough 'til it looked like enough)
• flour (for dredging the beef in, before fry-starting)
• salt and pepper

Leek and Potato Quiche



For today's lunch, Kara and I shared my adaptation of Canadian Living's Leek and Potato Flan. I omitted the goat cheese and parsley. The cream/milk was substituted with soy milk. I also added a crust to keep the result from venturing to far into frittata territory (I find they don't reheat well).

I love it and Kara responded by eating most of a slice in one sitting. It's safe to say it's a big hit around here.

Another loaf of homemade bread



This iteration was based on the same recipe consulted for last week's iteration. I was all out of whole wheat bread flour, so this version uses organic, all-purpose flour. I used flax oil for the vegetable oil called for — mostly because I should use up the flax oil I've been keeping in the fridge. I should probably also mention that the eggs we keep in stock at home are always organic because I find that the non-organic kind irritate my stomach.

This is the best bread I've ever made, so it's fairly safe to say I'm going to make it again.

Tourtière double-whammy



After the wild success of my last foray into tourtière-making, I thought it would be a nice comfort food to make for dinners this week. One will be frozen for future use.

Continuing adventures in the land of homemade bread



It would appear that the secret to an excellently-proofed (risen) bread is sugar in the dough mixture. The recipe I consulted calls for ¼ cup of sugar (far more than the usual lack of sugar in the yeast dough recipes I've worked with). I cringed while I added it to the dry ingredients, but it made a huge difference in the final result. Consider me schooled.

Today's breakfast



Chocolate Chip Pancakes. Yum.

Walk off the Earth - Somebody That I Used to Know



Cover of the Gotye song. For those who haven't seen it yet.

And then there's this...



Just before anyone goes thinking that I am some infallible domestic goddess (those who've tried my burned and salty chili can attest to the fact that I am not), this is what happened when I tried to make old-fashioned chocolate fudge. The fudge was setting as I was pouring it out of the pan. The butter fudge I made earlier behaved similarly, but not to this extreme.

I'm either going to have to never use this recipe again, or figure out what I was doing "wrong".

Dairy-free fudge!



Ah, fudge. How I've missed the unapologetically sweet, lightly salted, creamy, crusty fantastic-ness that it provides. Since becoming lactose-intolerant, it was relegated to the realm of Guilty Pleasure With Lactaid — a realm that I dare not visit often.

Having discovered that others have created (damned appealing-looking) vegan fudge with success, I decided to take a crack at substituting the dairy out of a traditional fudge recipe. In this case, I made "butter" fudge by substituting soy milk for the milk, vegan margarine for the butter and Lyle's Golden Syrup for the corn syrup.

As it turns out, the substitutions I made makes this fudge vegan. Whatever its "status" is, I'm thrilled that I've made a damn good fudge and I can eat it, too!

Why I've been quiet...



...I seem to have been bitten by the knitting-bug. Hard. I've knit more pieces in the past few months than I have — in total — for the past several years.

Years ago, I did a simple Fair Isle swatch in two colours. The swatches pictured above are my first crack at complex colourwork. These swatches use both Fair Isle and Intarsia knitting techniques.

I developed the colour charts myself (not that making a chart of 8-bit sprites is that hard) and am working on them to practice for a commission I've taken on. My plan is to complete all six FFI Before Class Change Party Sprites before I start the commissioned sweater.

I don't know how I could possibly make this any more nerdy than it already is.