Favourite Things

Martha’s Macaroni-and-Cheese

It’s summer! Despite the rain, and dreary skies, and the chill in the air, it’s still technically summer and I couldn’t be happier. This will be my second summer in Montreal, and I can’t wait for it to really start. Everyone was moving in and out of apartments yesterday, but I’m staying in my little apartment another year. I’m hoping to do a few touch-ups here and there, but overall I love my place like crazy.

Since I had 2 exams Monday, I didn’t get my act together on the blog. Don’t worry – I’ll make up for it from here on out. I have a couple of great things to share, as well as a brand new project that I’m working on, which is going to be totally awesome. Stay tuned for that!

Today, it’s a mac-and-cheese kind of day where I am. It’s rainy. It’s dark. It’s cold. It’s blah. I made this mac-and-cheese a couple weeks ago, but boy am I wishing I had a bowl right now. I made it right this time: making sure I had all the right ingredients (not just winging it with what I had in my fridge), used real butter, baked it in my Grandma’s casserole dish, tore up baguette for the top, and felt like a regular Martha! For me, the key was the chewy bread “crumbs” – they added a really nice texture that contrasts with the softness of the pasta. I really can’t see myself making any other mac-and-cheese recipe ever again. Except if I’m lazy and just make it from the box!

I used Deb’s recipe, which is adapted from Martha Stewart’s famous recipe. There are many adaptations, but it’s all the same really: lots of butter, lots of cheese, lots of pasta. Carbs. A lot of carbs. I ended up using the Pecorino Romano cheese instead of Gruyere, mostly because I’m a cheapskate and Gruyere is more expensive. My mac-and-cheese was delicious with Romano, as I’m sure it would have been with Gruyere. But just in case you’re a cheapskate like me, go with the Romano and it’ll still taste super-duper.

My favourite part was piling all the sort-of-al-dente pasta into the pan with the cheese sauce. I just think it looks awesome. How do they do that? How do they make tiny little macaroni noodles so perfect? I left it like this for a few seconds before stirring it all in together. By the way, the cheese sauce is out of bounds. If you wanted to stop and dip some leftover baguette into it and eat a bunch of it, I would not judge you. I would understand you.

But it’s worth it to wait until there is pasta and bread involved, until it’s been baked, until there’s a glass of fruit punch (sadly, that’s not red wine, though I wish it had been!) in your hand and you’re ready for a beautiful lunch. Comfort food, for real.

Do you love macaroni-and-cheese? What recipe do you normally follow? Or what brand do you like out of the box? Happy eats, folks!

5/10: Red & Grey Checkered Blanket

Finally.

For better or for worse, that was the first thought I had once I was finished stitching together the last few rows of this blanket. That’s not to suggest I don’t love it with all my heart – because I do, trust me – but I was ready for this project to be finished. My sewing machine arrived the other day, and summer is fast approaching, which means it’s time to set my sights on other projects! Summery ones. As much as I have grown to love knitting, and as much as it entertained me during this cold winter, I’m ready to learn something new and come back to knitting when the weather gets cold again.

This blanket was not only a labour of love, it is a physical representation of how I learned to knit. Which means it’s totally imperfect. You can literally trace my progress: the first few squares I knitted separately, because I was afraid of messing it up if I did more than one at a time; one of the squares is slightly bigger than the others because I forgot to count my stitches before casting on; there are wonky lines from switching colours and forgetting to keep track of where I was before I switched. I love that I can look at it and go “here’s where I learned how to cast on! And here’s where I learned to switch colours!” It’s beautiful for that.

And it does the trick. All my friends love it, because it’s so soft and comforting. They don’t see its imperfections, and I’m starting not to either. I’ll never consider it a waste of time – it kept me occupied for several months, it taught me how to knit, and it keeps me warm. No, it probably won’t last forever. But don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good enough. I’m so proud and happy to have done this project and learned a great new skill in the process. It doesn’t bother me that it’s not an ‘expert job’.

I got my inspiration from Elise’s black-and-white blanket, but I think I went about it a lot differently than she did. Hers is a good deal more clean-looking than mine, by the way, so maybe go with her method! As for me, like I said I started quite slowly. I just did one square at a time, lining them up to make sure they were roughly the same size. The beauty of this blanket is that it’s so stretchy and cozy that it’s not too big a deal if all the squares are the same. I stitched the squares together with a darning needle. Then once I was more confident, I started switching colours (my favourite way is described here) – be careful to always switch colours on the same side! I made that mistake. Once I had a row of 4 squares, I cast off and stitched it to the previous rows.

My blanket is 3×4 squares, and it’s the perfect size for me. It’s big enough to comfortably cover a back, pair of legs, or a curled up napping body. It looks lovely draped on my bed. But it’s not huge, I didn’t want huge.

I used Bernat Softee Chunky yarn. It’s a pretty cheap, and comes in a whole bunch of colours. I’ve used it for most of my knitting projects, but only because I don’t have much selection at my local crafts store! I knit this whole blanket exclusively in garter stitch, aka plain old knitting.

I love it. I’m thrilled it’s done. I can’t wait to move onto other projects. You can see the rest of my 2012 DIY projects so far here.

Around Here

Around here, there’s been a lot of book-learnin’. A lot of library-goin’. A lot of sitting on a chair. Not a lot of sunlight.

Even still, around here there’s been a lot of small, quiet, magic moments. Like the time I learned how to make poached eggs. Or the time I ordered some pretty labels and a date stamp and some photo paper and made my own day. Or when I made ginger syrup and let it simmer all night, making my apartment smell divine. There was also the arrival of my sewing machine! And the completion of my first sewing project! And there have been a hundred other sweet moments lately: like hysterically laughing with your BFF in a way you only can after studying for hours, or eating a quiet lunch and sneaking in a few pages of a book, or finding great new music on 8tracks.

All in all, even though exams are stressful and sassy (in a bad way), it’s nice to take a second to be grateful for all the goodness I have in my life. Lucky girl.

(But man, am I ready to be done!)

Happy Wednesday.

Summer Jar

This is what my summer looks like. A little jar of colour, that I’m not allowed to open until May 1st. It’s like Pandora’s Box, I’m telling you!

I pinned a date night jar a few weeks back, but I thought it’d work well for summer plans. I realize that it’s not likely for us to be at much of a loss for things to do during the summer, because there’s always something happening that’s fun. I still kind of like the idea of emptying the whole jar before September 1st!

My best friend and I sat in my bed, scrolling through our brains and online summer activity lists to come up with all the most fun things we could think of. I scrawled them all onto multicoloured slips of paper with a black sharpie, and she folded them in quarters and put them in the jar. Teamwork!

We used a little colour-coding system (because I’m more of a nerd than you know) to keep track of which activities take more planning (ex. camping) and which take less (ex. making sangria). We ended up with:

  • Red = we can do it today! (ex. swing on swingsets)
  • Pink = we can do this in a day or two! (ex. throw a dinner party)
  • Orange = we just need to plan a little, but we can probably do it this weekend! (ex. go camping)

Like I said, I doubt we’ll ever be at a loss for what to do, and I’m sure a lot of activities listed in the jar will be ticked off without even having to look at the slip of paper – they’ll just happen naturally. But just in case we do need inspiration, my little colourful jar of summer will be there to offer it.

This is an amazing thing to do on a study break, because it makes you so optimistic about your life post-exams!

Happy studying, my loves. It’s almost summer!

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