Comfort Food

With the cooler weather, my interest in cooking has increased. This weekend found me digging through cookbooks and hand-written recipes for old favorites that my mother and grandmother cooked: shrimp-rice casserole; sausage, beans, and greens soup; meatloaf. The food tastes wonderful with the crisp temperatures.

The recipes fuel my nostalgia and imagination. Recipe cards in my grandmother's handwriting often have the note "from Mama" at the top. I never met my great-grandmother, but I've heard some stories. She was a spicy, opinionated woman with a good education, but above all, she was practical. She would have found my kitchen ridiculous with the electric stove, the microwave, and the refrigerator. She kept her ice box until the last ice-delivery service stopped in the 1960s and was never fully convinced that a refrigerator and freezer could be trusted to keep the food from spoiling. I like to imagine that I know her a little because of her recipes.

Ideas to Inspire Fear

These are dangerous times for me. I'm off my game, and the predictable patterns are changing. I pay someone to mow the lawn, which is crazy because I love to mow the lawn -- it just hasn't worked out to be a possibility this summer. I spent yesterday evening hanging out with a bunch of dogs instead of listening to the President's speech on health care. But worst of all, my knitting mojo packed up and left town sometime in the summer.

I've been half-heartedly knitting one pink, white, and green sock. The pattern is the I-made-it-up-variety. Sadly it also belongs to the undocumented category, so it will never have a mate. Recreating it isn't a possibility. The fact that the sad little sock has been in my purse for months and gets knitted about 20 minutes a week borders on Kafkaesque. Right now I'm trying to decide whether I should finish it or if I should put it out of its misery sooner.

Meanwhile inspiration struck. Inspiration with a deadline. (Danger! Deadline!) My sister's birthday arrives in less than a week, and Ravelry has a lovely pattern for "The One Piece Backwards Ruana". The perfect teal, worsted weight Lamb's Pride wool is in my stash. Do I cast on? What if it is post marked on her birthday? She lives out of state so that adds several days in the mail. On paper the timing looks like an ill-fated plan. My fingers are itching. I thought about the project while I was a work. Even if I can finish in a timely fashion by, perhaps, Monday, I'm liable to be incapacitated by knitter's claw. Awww, who am I kidding? It's a terrific plan. I'll cast on.