Things taste different to me than they did when I was a kid.  Once in a while, that’s even a good thing.  My mother used to get grapefruit - usually when she was dieting - and I’d try it.  Nasty stuff.  She’d get some more a year or so later and I’d try it again - still nasty.  But a while back, I watched a co-worker peel and chunk a ruby red variety of the fruit in the lunchroom and it looked so appealing that I had to give it one last try.  It was awesome!  I’m guessing that the intervening years of genetic selection, experimentation and development have something to do with the marked improvement in flavor.

But flavor isn’t always the goal.

I have grown my own tomatoes and let me tell you - there is nothing like the taste of a tomato, just off the vine, lightly salted and still sun-warm.  They tasted that good to me as a kid too and my mother never grew tomatoes; she got them at the supermarket like everybody else did.  They were medium sized (not like some of the giants you see today), bright in color and full of flavor.  As I live in an apartment now, I can’t grow anything.  If I want tomatoes, I have to buy them.  They are still beautiful to the eye - especially the “vine-ripe” sorts, where a bit of stem and a leaf or two are carefully left on the fruit to cultivate that “home grown” impression.  But they have very little flavor.  The goal in tomato production has been to create an appealing looking item with a long shelf life - this has been somewhat successful - at the price of leaving the resulting fruit with only a vestige of its former taste.

It’s the same story with corn on the cob.  What’s currently available is a very pale shadow of what was available years ago.  It looks nice and last a lot longer in the produce bin but you might as well butter a paper towel tube for all the flavor it has.

I sometimes wonder what all is going on.  I wonder if its my tastebuds or just the fact that I’m getting older.  While I concede those factors may have something to so with it, it isn’t the whole story.

Take ice cream.  Regular supermarket ice cream used to be pretty good.  Now it’s just cold.  If you want flavor, you have to go to a premium style and spend a lot more money for it.  Marketing has no qualms about playing with your tastebuds if it means improving the bottom line.

Coffee has gone this way as well.  You used to be able to go down the coffee aisle in the A&P and practically be assaulted (in a good way) with the heady scent of freshly ground Eight O’clock, Bokar or Red Circle coffee.  Though Red Circle is no longer available (and the A&P markets are likewise long gone) Eight O’clock and Bokar still survive.  Tasted them lately?  Feh… For coffee that tastes like coffee you have to go elsewhere and pay a lot more.

Take milk.  Anyone around my age probably grew up on whole milk but we’re raising kids who’ve never tasted it.  Even McDonkey’s serves 2% milk now.  It’s not a huge reduction in fat content; whole milk has only 3.25% butterfat and one cup contains 146 calories.  One cup of 2% milk has 122 calories - not a lot of difference.  You might argue that’s an improvement even if it’s a small one.  Maybe.  Have you tried 2% milk in your coffee?  Ever had chocolate milk made with 2% (and try to find a pre-mixed chocolate milk that isn’t)?  It has no flavor.  Of course it’s only the partly the fault of the milk - chocolate has changed too over the last 40 years.

I guess what I’m ranting about is what I think of as the Great Tastebud Dumbing Down.  It’s a slow process, but it clearly works.  We will trade flavor for longevity, lower fat content and prettier presentations.  Have you looked at the sugar and/or sodium contents on low-fat products?  They’re often right through the roof because removing fat removes taste and that has to be compensated for somehow.

What crystallized this for me is that I made spaghetti sauce yesterday for the first time in years.  I’m not sure why I wanted to except that I had the ingredients on hand and just felt like it.  I used to do it all the time, but it became more and more convenient to just buy a jar.  It wasn’t home made, but it was okay.  What I’d forgotten is that it’s not an arduous process and how much better the end result was because I can control the sugar and sodium content and because my mushroom sauce has over a pound of fresh mushrooms in it rather than about a dozen slices.  Small slices.  Sadly, home made isn’t cost efficient.  Maybe, if you grew your own ingredients - but I don’t know anyone who grows mushrooms :)

Last night we had our first watermelon of the season - that quintessential summer fruit.  It’s color was lovely and its consistency was great - crisp without being hard or mealy.  In the years since I was young, watermelon growers have developed a variety that’s touted as being seedless.  It isn’t really; the seeds are smaller, softer and pale in color rather than large, hard and black - but they’re still there.  This variety has gone over so well with consumers that the old-fashioned seeded variety doesn’t seem to exist any more.  Remember that flood of flavor you used to get when you bit into a big, red, juicy chunk of watermelon - practically lit up your brain with summery goodness?  Well, that doesn’t exist any more either.

The other day I picked up tortellini and sweet Italian sausage for supper.  What I really wanted to do was pick up fast food - something I didn’t have to prepare and that wouldn’t heat up the kitchen.  But...that’s not terribly cost-effective.  So I was good and stopped at the market instead.  I knew this wouldn’t take much time to prepare and would be really good.

We tend to do tortellini very simply and, usually, without tomato sauce.  It is boiled in well salted water (if you don’t add enough salt to the pasta water, you won’t be able to add enough salt at the table for it to taste right) and then tossed with butter, garlic and lots of freshly ground pepper.  This time, I was going to cut the sausage into “coins”, fry that up and toss that in as well.

So, I cooked the sausage and the tortellini and tossed them together.  Then I ladled out the mixture (useful creature, a ladle, good for dishing out small, slippery pasta pieces) into two bowls, adding butter, garlic and pepper to both.  Then I shoved forks into the bowls, grabbed paper towels and headed for the living room.  We often eat there in the warm weather because the kitchen is so small and it’s usually cooler elsewhere - especially immediately after food preparation :)

I must have gotten butter on my fingers and not known it.  As I headed into the hallway, on of the bowls jumped out of my hands and all the pasta and sausages attempted to grow wings and fly.  They didn’t do too badly for insensate little lumps but, alas, the attempt failed and they all wound up on the hardwood floor.  Well, one landed on the throw rug in the hall, but there’s always one, isn’t there?

I handed the other bowl to Myria and set about cleaning up the mess.  This is always a problem for me.  I get so embarrassed and frustrated by my own clumsiness that I can’t bear the thought of anyone seeing the results of it.  I don’t want to talk and I don’t want help.  Just leave me alone and pretend it didn’t happen, please?

Sigh.  Of course when I had finished cleaning up, Myria insisted on sharing what was left and made a bowl of soup to help give a little more substance to the meal.  I could laugh about it once I had calmed down but oh man - sometimes I think I shouldn’t be allowed out in public :)

Revamped and re-started the Harry Potter scarf.  I’m going to be making two of them for my nephews and as they are still pretty young, I felt some scaling down was necessary.  That meant going to DPNs rather than using a circular but after the first couple of rows, it wasn’t a problem and I am quite pleased with the progress.

The scarf is 48 stitches around (the stripes are 24 rounds tall, if you’re curious) and I’ve found that slipping the 24th and 48th stitch, every other round creates natural fold-lines on the inside so that the scarf lies nice and flat.

I also started the Cross Your Heart Scarf in the mystery yarn I wrote about last Friday.

The yarn is very shiny and slick and I’m beginning to suspect a rayon component.  This is being worked on US 5 bamboo needles and a good thing too!  I tried aluminum needles (hoping to be able to use a US 6) but it was totally impossible to maintain any sort of regular gauge, not to mention having to hold the needles and the stitches and the yarn in a death grip to keep things from sliding into my lap.  The bamboos are doing pretty well, though I would prefer wood - but the closest size wooden needle I have is a US 4 and that’s just too small.





Those bits of brick and slate drift across the beige in an almost Oriental fashion (at least it strikes me that way) and looks very pretty to my eye.  There are advantages, sometimes, in not knowing what to expect - if you enjoy being surprised.  I hope there’s enough yarn to give me a reasonable length (crossing fingers) as I have a velvet suit that this will look amazing with!

Which I will not, of course, wear when I am attempting pasta :)

The last time I was in the mill, I found this in the $1 bin.





It came just as you see it - no ball band, no information whatever about content, length or anything else.  The intriguing thing about it is that each side of the ball looks different.

Viewed from one side, it appears to be a silky, solid beige.  Viewed from the other side, it has a variegated look with brick and slate tones mixed in.  When you unwind a few yards, you can see that the brick and slate colors are very short and almost random amongst quite long stretches of beige.  I have no idea if this is consistent through the ball.  It’s about a DK weight and has little elasticity.  I’m guessing there’s a cotton or linen component.  It could be almost anything but I don’t think it’s soft enough to be microfiber.  I’m also guessing that it might be Classic Elite but again, that’s by no means a sure thing :)

If any of you have any idea what this might be, drop me a line?  Curiosity won’t kill me, and I’ll eventually use it anyway - if for no other reason than to see how it works up - but it would be nice to know its name.

Goldie isn’t terribly fond of having his picture taken and he seldom sits still, hence the somewhat fuzzy nature of this photo.  He has the most interesting eyes; they are actually two colors.  There is a gray/blue/green shade around the pupil, while the rest of the iris is gold.  You can see the demarkation line in the picture, but the colors aren’t very pronounced.

He’s finally beginning to relax, thank goodness.  Due to some Siamese in his background, he’s always been a talker but after Fluffy left us on Sunday, Goldie went silent.  He also wandered around the apartment, over and over, poking into closets and looking in corners and under furniture for his father.  He’s getting back to normal now, beginning to talk again and not obviously searching any more.

We both wish you all a happy and safe holiday weekend - and for those of you outside the states, the same except for the holiday :)

There are, I suppose, as many reasons (and combinations of reasons) to knit as there are knitters.  It seems to me that creativity is held up as the golden, shining, ne plus ultra of knitting, as though that is the thing to which we should all aspire.  Other reasons, such as pleasure in craftsmanship, love of color and even the joy of making are shouldered aside as lesser and somehow unworthy.  One person knits because it helps them to manage stress.  Another, because there is no other way to obtain that sweater or hat and another because a new washcloth is needed after Junior used the old one to mop up his spilled finger paints.

But it seems that many in the knitting community don’t see these as valid reasons. 

Another stockinette sweater?  A Harry Potter scarf?  Where’s the creativity in that?  Why bother?

I submit that creativity is over-rated.  I don’t mean that’s it isn’t valuable, only that it shouldn’t be held as the only valid reason to so something - anything.  For example, I need a hat.  Should I buy one?  I could, certainly, and that would be the end of it.  One nice, new hat, acquired and stashed in the closet awaiting its debut in the colder weather.  On the other hand, I’ve got several cupboards full of yarn and more needles than I can conveniently count.  I could make a hat - and I did.  I used a pattern that was born in someone else’s brain in combination with wool I had in the stash and I made what I needed.  Was it creative?  Not in the least.  Was it satisfying?  Vastly!

Being able to make the hat is enormously rewarding to me because it means I was able to fill the need out of my own resources and ability.  For me, that’s a critical issue - the being able to do it myself - because that means I don’t have to rely on a store to provide what I’m looking for.  It means that even if the item I’m making goes out of style, I’ll still be able to reproduce it - so long as I don’t lose the pattern :) It gives me a measure of autonomy.

A dear friend knits almost entirely for stress relief.  She tends to work on simple things without a lot of texture or fussiness and she turns out beautiful pieces.  Complicated patterns would defeat the purpose for her and simply add to her stress level.  Should she not bother because what she’s doing isn’t particularly creative?

My aunt knits dishcloths, washcloths, hats, scarves and mittens.  Period.  And the patterns haven’t varied in 30 years.  Her family always has warm, winter gear and her bathroom and kitchen are always stocked with fresh cloths.  Should she be embarrassed by the lack of variation?  Should she not call herself a knitter?

I’m not trying to be disingenuous here.  Most of you know that I can get very creative when the mood strikes me.  All I’m arguing here is that creativity isn’t the only reason to do something and isn’t always the most important consideration.  What we are all doing (in my opinion) is filling the need - whatever our particular need happens to be and I find it fascinating that knitting (among other things) is flexible enough to be so many different things for so many different people.

Oh, and the reason to bother making a Harry Potter scarf?

Because you want to :)