First things first

The winner of my birthday contest is Amy at Knit Think! She’ll be getting this box o’ knitting mathoms and other goodies.*

Thanks, everyone, who entered this contest. I really enjoyed reading about your favorite knitting!

(*Before I took this picture, I put everything in the box to make sure it would all fit, then spread it out on the table. How much do you want to bet that when I try to put it all back in the box again it won’t fit the second time?)

It’s time for the final installment of my contest series. The first contest prize was a set of cookbooks, won by Chappy’s Mom. The second contest prize was a trio of IKEA big blue bags, won by Uberstrickenfrau.

I mentioned my fondness for the Hobbit tradition of giving gifts on one’s own birthday. Typically, these gifts are mathoms, described by Tolkien as “anything that Hobbits had no immediate use for, but were unwilling to throw away.” (Michael Quinion points out, quite correctly, that there’s plenty of use for such a word in our own society. Take a look in your basements, closets, and plastic storage totes, and you’ll see exactly what I mean.)

The cookbooks were mathoms. The IKEA bags—well, not so much (but maybe they’ll be employed as mathom storage). For my final contest, the prize consists mostly of mathoms of the knitting-related type.

First, there’s Crazy Aunt Purl’s book, Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair. The very excellent Blind Purls gave me this book, and now that I’ve fully digested it, it seems only right to spread the Crazy Aunt Purl love and send it to a new home.

I’ve been sorting through my yarn stash, and I’ve come across quite a bit of yarn that, frankly, I’ll never use. It’s all decent stuff—all sorts of different fibers in a variety of colors and totally unused. Some of these skeins are leftovers from past projects. Some were gifts that just don’t suit my knitting style. (With so little time and so many projects, I’ve resolved to knit only things I really want to knit with yarn I really want to spend a lot of time with.) And some of it is “where the hell did that come from?” yarn that must have snuck into my stash when I wasn’t looking because I honestly don’t remember how I got it. All of these balls and skeins of yarn are true mathoms. I know I will never use them, and I’m confident that they can find a good home with another fiber enthusiast. I won’t list all the yarns here, because I’m still in the process of selecting them from my stash. Suffice it to say there will be a lot.

I’m also including one of those IKEA big blue bags, ’cause I really love ‘em and thing everyone should have one. And something yummy—though not, alas, any chocolate or meltable items, now that spring is here and temperatures are rising.

If you’re interested in getting this box o’ stuff, leave a comment to this post and tell me about your favorite thing that you’ve knitted (or crocheted, if you’re more of a hooker than a needler). If you’d rather post about this in your own blog, that’s fine; either include a link there to this post or put a comment here telling me to go read it there. On May 7, the eve of my birthday, I’ll randomly select one winner from all entries.*

My favorite knitted item? Hands-down, it’s one of my first projects: a baby blanket I made for Sylvia. Yeah, the seaming is really bad. But she loves this blanket, and I love her, so there are happy feelings all over the place.

*Alas, once again I must restrict this contest to residents of the USA. The mere thought of filling out customs forms for this package and dealing with international postage rates makes my brain hurt.

I really enjoyed reading the entries for the cookbook contest! And I especially loved the recurring theme of “here’s an awful meal I made for someone I love…who ate it without complaint.” So sweet!

The winner (determined by writing names on pieces of paper and randomly choosing one) is Deb at Chappy’s Mom! Congratulations, Deb! And thanks to everyone who posted their stories!
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I feel I ought to share my own tale of culinary tragedy. Well, I’ve made many mediocre meals, but there are two true disasters that come to mind. The first was when I was in high school or so and was instructed to roast the (then-thawed) whole chicken my mom had pulled out of the freezer that morning. This was in my pre-vegetarian days, but even then I think I knew less about meat preparation than I do now. I seasoned the chicken, put it in the pan, and put it in the over…all without removing the bag of stuff (giblets? guts?) from the interior. (I didn’t even know it was in there, much less that it had to be removed.) Yeah, we did not end up eating chicken that evening…

The other disaster involves literally burning the teflon off a non-stick pan while trying to stir-fry something. I’ve actually done this twice. (And I’ve since learned that teflon does not like being covered with oil that is then heated to a very high temperature.)

Dogwood buds do indeed look like E.T. heads (and chickpeas). In just a few weeks the ghost trees in my neighborhood will be making their (fleeting) appearance.

Whenever the seasons turn, I love seeing other people’s blog posts—and photos—about these changes. Back in February a guy in Portland was talking about forsythia blooms, last month someone in South Carolina showed off the daffodils in her yard, and right now I’m telling you all about my dogwoods.

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Don’t forget to enter my cookbook contest. (Please! I need to find a good home for these books!)

Real-life/local friends are eligible to enter. And though the thought of rigging the draw so I don’t have to give any money to the USPS is tempting, rest assured that local friends have no more chance to win than far-off ones.

And if your own shelves are groaning under the weight of too many cookbooks and you don’t want to enter the contest, that’s fine. But please do feel free to share your tales of cooking woes and triumphs!

I have a lot of cookbooks. A lot.

With the exception of the top shelf (which is glass and can’t bear much weight), this bookcase contains only cookbooks. An identical bookcase on the opposite side of the piano contains the overflow (a few more books, back issues of Cooks Illustrated and Vegetarian Times, file boxes of printouts and photocopies), but the bulk of my cooking library is here.

For a long time I worked hard to increase my cookbook collection. But last spring, when we remodeled our living room, I resolved to have no more cookbooks than those that would fit comfortably in the bookcase. No more stacking them higgledy-piggledy, leaving towers of books in the corners of the room because the bookcase was full.

So I went through my collection as honestly as I could. Haven’t opened it in years? Gone. No chance I’ll be using it in the near future? Gone. The result: a nice stack of cookbooks that need a new home.

Here are the vegetarian cookbooks:

• Vegetarian and Vegetable Cooking, by Christine Ingram
• Indian Vegetarian Cookbook, Pat Chapman
• The Complete Vegetarian Cuisine, by Rose Elliot
• The Shoshoni Cookbook, by Anne Saks and Faith Stone
• Natural Foods Cookbook, by Mary Estella

And here are the nonvegetarian cookbooks

• Martha Stewart’s Healthy Quick Cook, by Martha Stewart
• The de’Medici Kitchen, by Lorenza de’Medici
• Pizza Art, by Karin Neidermeier
• Fresh Start, by Julee Rosso (one half of the Silver Palate and New Basics duo)

These are all great cookbooks, and they’re all in like-new condition. But they overlap with many of the ones already on my shelves. (For example, I have a gazillion books on Indian vegetarian cuisine. Well, maybe not quite that many. Let’s call it a half-gazillion.) And because these are the ones I consult very rarely (if ever), they obviously need to find a new home.

If you’re interested in getting a box full o’ cooking inspiration in the mail*, leave a comment to this post and tell me about your greatest culinary triumph—or your most horrific culinary disaster. (If you’d rather post your tale in your own blog, that’s fine; either include a link there to this post or put a comment here telling me to go read it there.) Each story is an entry, so if you have a triumph story and a disaster story, you get two entries!

I’ll let this marinate for a week. Next Wednesday evening (April 9), I’ll randomly select from the entries one person to get this mini-library of gastronomic goodness!

*I regret to add that, because of exhorbitant postage rates (ah, international media mail, how I miss thee!), this contest is open only to people in the USA. There are a lot of books, and the box will be heavy!

Today’s mail brought a special treat: the prize I’d won by guessing that Blindpurls was moving her blog to Wordpress! She sent two skeins of Merino 5 from Crystal Palace Yarns and a copy of Crazy Aunt Purl’s book (which looks like it will be lots of fun to read!).

A day when something that’s not a bill or an advertisement arrives in the mail = a good day.

A day when yarn arrives in the mail = a stellar day. Heh.

Thanks so much!

Fifteen years ago this month, I decided to become a vegetarian. My reasons then and now are varied and rooted in ethical, environmental, social, and health concerns. I had been thinking about vegetarianism for a while at that point, and the proverbial straw for me was an article in the January 1993 issue of Outside about an athlete and fitness trainer named Steve Ilg (and later I read his book, The Outdoor Athlete, which is somewhere in the book storage room in my basement).

He advocated vegetarianism partly out of compassion for animals but also out of the belief that eating meat negatively affects your body and makes it hard to reach your fullest potential when rock climbing, kayaking, cross-country skiing, etc. (In the early 1990s he also advocated—well, for himself, at least—wearing a Kajagoogoo-esque hairstyle. Fortunately, he no longer seems to be riding that trend.)

Aside from infrequent longings for seafood (for which vegetarian substitutes are few and far between), I haven’t missed meat. I never was a steak lover, pork chops didn’t thrill me, and even Thanksgiving turkey never appealed to me much. I’m still pleased with my decision—and delighted to have married a vegetarian (Jan’s coming up on twenty years this fall, I believe) and happy to be raising a vegetarian daughter.

So it seems only fitting that I recently had an urge to return to an old culinary favorite. Yes, I love Deborah Madison’s cookbooks (and Madhur Jaffrey’s and lots of other people’s), but when I am looking for vegetarian food that can be described as “homestyle” or “down home” or “comforting” or “basic,” I turn to something like Laurel’s Kitchen or the Moosewood cookbooks—both the ones by the Moosewood Collective and the ones by Mollie Katzen.

One of the first cookbooks I ever bought was Katzen’s Enchanted Broccoli Forest. I bought it during my first semester of graduate school, when I was responsible for cooking all of my own food (since I no longer lived in campus housing) and worked in a local health-food store.

I loved this book—I still do. My copy is food stained and well worn, and my favorite recipe in it is the one that give the book its title. Rooted in a bed of herbed brown rice held together with eggs and cheese is a forest made up of broccoli trees. I hadn’t made this dish in at least nine years, and I’d forgotten just how good it is. So had Jan, who remarked, “I didn’t remember that this dish was so good.” Sylvia wasn’t terribly impressed (she’s in a food phase now, and it seems there are only about three or four things she’ll deign to eat these days), though she did love the “magic broccoli forest.”

This weekend, the main branch of my county library system held its semiannual book sale. It’s a major fundraiser for the library and draws lots of people, including out-of-towners and used book and DVD dealers (who pay the membership fee so they can attend the members-only Friday evening sale–and clean out many of the more valuable items).

I’ve considered paying the membership fee so I could go early, but while waiting in line yesterday morning for the library doors to open for the general sale, I chatted with several people (including one library staff member) who told me that the Friday evening book sale was a madhouse, jam-packed with rude people elbowing each other out of the way. No thanks–I like my bargain-book hunting a lot more leisurely!

And even though I didn’t shop during the “first pick” hours, I still managed to come home with four tote bags full of books. When the doors opened, I made a beeline for the room with the children’s books, where I found thirty-six items to bring home for Sylvia. At fifty cents each, they were a bargain.

She got six books right when I came home. The five Christmas books will be brought out next month, the Easter Bunny-themed book will appear in the spring, and the rest will be rolled out gradually over the next few months. I found a couple of the Sweet Pickles books (which I had as a child–and adored!), as well as A Book of Seasons, by Alice and Martin Provensen. We already had Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm and The Year at Maple Hill Farm, by the same authors. Jan grew up with those books, and it’s fun to to see how much Sylvia loves them, too.

I went to the sale intending to shop only for Sylvia, but I ended up coming home with a few things for myself. When I stopped by the shelves with craft books in the general books area, my friend Pat (whom I’d seen half an hour earlier) was there. “I found a few books I think you should get,” she said, “and I was going to bring them back to you, but now you’re here, so here they are.”

What did she find for me? For starters, there were Barbara Walker’s Treasury of Knitting Patterns and Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns. (I should add that these are both first-edition hardcovers in near-pristine condition.) She also found Barbara Abbey’s Complete Book of Knitting. (Another first-edition hardcover, with the original dustjacket, even!) Pat said something about how these were really great books that I should add to my library, but she didn’t need to convince me: I already knew of the Walker books and had been thinking for a while of getting them, and even though I hadn’t heard of Abbey, Pat’s recommendation was all I needed.

While we looked over the bookshelves together, we found two other books that I ended up purchasing: Maggie Righetti’s Sweater Design in Plain English (first-edition paperback, third printing), and Debbie Bliss’s Great Knits for Kids (first U.S. edition, hardcover). The Bliss book is especially interesting because tucked among the pages are not only the original errata slip that came with the book but also the receipt from when the book was purchased in 1997, the year it was published. My guess is that this book was never used.

The general books were priced at two dollars for hardcovers and one dollar for paperbacks. Adding these five amazing books to my knitting library set me back a whole nine bucks. And as a bonus I get warm fuzzies for supporting my local library! Hooray!

Twelve people entered my blog-birthday contest, which asked entrants to name the three things they’d take with them to a desert island (and explain why).

In spite of some similarities (many said they’d bring an Internet-connected computer–who needs to bring a boat to use to get off the island when you’ve got e-mail and blogs to keep up with, right?), there was a lot of variety in the responses. Food items such as coffee and good wine made it to the list, as did spouses, children, and pets. Some people thought in terms of basic survival (Leatherman tool, anyone?), and the knitters all put yarn on their lists (though one declared that he wouldn’t need to bring needles because he’d make his own from twigs–talk about resourceful!).

I posted my own answers, too, and briefly considered making those items the prize package for this contest. But a solar-powered computer was way out of my budget, and tastes in yarn vary wildly (and not all entrants are yarnophiles). And Chuck Norris said he was too busy.

So I opted for stuff that I think would be nice to have on a desert island but didn’t necessarily make my list. (Come on, it’s hard to top a computer, yarn, and Chuck Norris, you know?)

Reading material: The Man Who Planted Trees, by Jean Giono. (And I’m delighted that the end of this contest coincides with Buy a Friend a Book Week. Hooray!)

Sustenance: Cherry Moon Green Tea (mildly caffeinated, so you can be alert when the rescuers arrive!), and chocolate from Iceland’s Nói Siríus’

Skin care: Pure shea butter soap from the Out of Africa project (the soap is handmade by women’s cooperatives in Benin, West Africa, and a portion of the price helps fund children’s education in Benin), and all-natural lip balm (with “NO FAKE CRAP” on the label–love it!)

Optimism: An affirmation ball (because when you’re marooned on a desert island, more than ever you need to be told nice things like “You smell nice” and “You rock!”)

It took some coaxing, but I managed to get Sylvia to draw a name from the hat, er, mixing bowl. The winner is Jennu!

Thanks, everyone, for playing! I really had a fun time running this contest and seeing what sorts of things people came up with. I can definitely see another contest in my future. Soon. Stay tuned.

Today’s Booking through Thursday (and yes, the Marsha suggested therein is me!):

Suggested by Marsha:

Buy a Friend a Book Week is October 1-7 (as well as the first weeks of January, April, and July). During this week, you’re encouraged to buy a friend a book for no good reason. Not for their birthday, not because it’s a holiday, not to cheer them up–just because it’s a book.

What book would you choose to give to a friend and why?

There are three books that I’ve given to people with some regularity. One is The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I’ve read this one in the original French and in English, and I’m pleased to say that this lovely tale about innocence and imagination and love translates remarkably well.

Another is The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster. From the first sentence (”There was once a boy named Milo who didn’t know what to do with himself–not just sometimes, but always”) to the end, it’s filled with clever wordplay, memorable characters, imagination, and humor. I love this book.

Unlike the first two choices, the third is one that most people don’t know, I think, and therefore one that I’m most likely to give these days. (In fact, it’s in the prize package for the blog-birthday contest I’m running right now. My own responses are here, if you’re curious.) It’s The Man Who Planted Trees, by Jean Giono, the tale (some say it’s true, though Giono says it’s not–the public’s insistence that it must be true is, I think, testament to how eagerly people want to believe in something good) of a man in Provence, France, who pretty much singlehandedly reforested the region by planting acorns every day during the first half of the twentieth century.

I love this book because of its optimism about how much good a single person can do and because of its encouragement to fill one’s life with meaning. I also love this book because, well, I love trees. They’re central to my doctoral research (on the so-called timber wars of the U.S. Pacific Northwest), so I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about them intellectually and professionally. And I’m reminded of them every day in my personal life: my husband (also a tree lover) and I named our daughter Sylvia.