Enough on the personal fronts, as for my awesome cooking skills: bourbon chicken. Just like the mall, except better because it takes about 40 minutes to make. See? Much better. I actually got a picture because some friends came over to eat it. So I present to you my dinner (that I didn't eat).
And yes, that is good short grained rice that is sticky and delicious. The recipe was a mishmash of about 5 others on the web but it does involve a cup of bourbon whiskey so be prepared to drink the rest of your whiskey afterward. Last night I came home to a sick, stuffed-up Tad so I made from scratch matzo ball soup with the left over chicken. I added a little lemon and ginger to it to make it a more invalid meal but he said it was delicious. It looks amazing, I must say. I also finally bought Tad's charger just yesterday for his phone. Took me a while I must admit but there it is, done.
Here's the recipe for my bourbon chicken:
- 2 lbs chicken breast, skinless, chopped into bite-sized pieces
- 1 cup bourbon whiskey
- 1/3 cup light brown sugar
- 1/4 cup orange juice
- 1/4 cup soy sauce
- 1/8 cup rice vinegar
- 1/8 cup red wine vinegar (I might go balsamic next time)
- 1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
- 2 smashed cloves garlic
I have also been knitting more. Somehow, and I hope my book tells me, I have been picking up stitches as I go. I started with 40, not a hard number but enough to make a decent sized scarf, and at the largest point counted 59. I don't know how I do that. I am almost through the first skein and am sometime today I feel will be forced into the yellow and a new stitch. If I follow what has been suggested to me it is seed, knit one, purl one. I still don't know what purl is but there's a video just waiting to be watched! Oh well, back to the cold dreary winter of my discontent. And knitting. The winter of my knitting.
Now living in the land of Bourbon (seriously, they've got a Bourbon Passport; you follow the Bourbon Trail to all of the distilleries in the state and get a t-shirt), I appreciate your Bourbon chicken, and it does look mighty tasty. I think I will add that to my must nom list for the future.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of your 19-stitch difference, you could have several issues, both of which are easily fixed, but the fix is kind of annoying. My first suspect would be you've been picking up a stitch on either side of your work, meaning, that at the beginning of a row, you're knitting two stitches from the back of the last row. It does look like that (especially if the last stitch was a purl), but it's just the yarn being deceitful. Typically, if you pull the yarn around front to look like its intended stitch, it will align in back and look like it's one stitch as it should. The other issue could be split stitches; instead of getting all of the plys from your yarn knit together, a few are breaking off and looking like new stitches which are being knit twice. That's really a matter of your personal tension and gauge and will improve each time you knit. In terms of remedying the situation, I'm not sure that there is one for this particular piece; you can either frog it (pull it all out and start again), or keep knitting at 59 stitches per row (and when you get to the other side, you could taper back down to 40, which could be kind of cool). Typically, when I knit pieces that need very specific numbers, I put stitch markers on my needles at 10 or 15 stitch intervals (or marking repetitions in patterns, which I did on the lacework I posted on facebook), so if I do find my current row looking a little long, I can go back and re-count, unknit, and re-knit the proper amount (I figure counting to 10 is a little bit easier than counting to 40). In truth, I typically knit one repetition between markers, and then go back and count to make sure that I have the requisite number of stitches before going to the next marker. I find it to be a nice safeguard, as it's much less irksome to me to unknit a row of stitches than it is to pull out an entire section, which is completely harrowing and frustrating.
You're making great progress for being a fledgling knitter, and I am really quite happy that you've decided to join us (I wish I could say that in a creepy, zombieish voice and have it conveyed over the internet...please adjust for such inflection). Also, please feel free to tell me to shut up if you don't want anymore advice :)