The Rest of the Cuteness

By popular demand (but mostly self-pride?) here is the full set of pictures in our 2013 Calendar featuring Pumpkin the Guinea Pig!

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Sriracha Eggplant Tofu

AKA the first successful tofu dish I've made!  Found the lovely recipe over at Kalyn's Kitchen via Foodgawker.  The best thing about this recipe is that she tells you exactly how long to cook the eggplant, it doesn't come out mushy like I was afraid it would.

Oh man, the first time we tried to improv some tofu, I accidentally bought silken tofu to try and stir fry it.  It turned into mush!  But extra firm fries up golden and so pretty.



We've been trying to add more meatless dishes to our usual routine, so this was a pretty tasty foray into that!

A Freezer with a Face?

Ok, so I know it seems like I haven't made any crochet projects in a while, but it's mostly because of the secret project!  Here's a little yeti that I've been working on (slowly) from Voodoo Maggie's book!  He's really cute, and he has a butt!  I'm afraid that he's pretty stylized, so it may be hard to tell at first glance what he's supposed to be.  One of my lab mates was thoroughly confused and thought he might be a freezer with a face.



Haha, love all the little toes.

A Secret Holiday Project!

I've been working on a secret little project with N as a holiday present.  Remember his guinea pig Pumpkin from before?  We shot a themed calendar, one picture for each month.  It's the cutest thing ever.

Here's our January shot, one of my favorites!



Isn't this adorable? N calls this "weaponized cuteness".

Pumpkin was such a cool cavy about the whole thing, he really hammed it up :)  No guinea pigs were harmed in the making of this calendar, and plenty of treats and veggies were had :)

And yes, there was definitely some frantic crafting/crocheting to make all the props.

Halloween

Haha, it's not too late to post Halloween photos is it? Because I still want to show off my lackluster costume!  We got a little into the spirit of Halloween and picked up a big pumpkin to carve on the day of!  It's not too hard to carve it without the kit tools, but we did go through a few different things before just settling on a steak knife.  I guess a serrated edge is best!



And we're still procrastinating on trying to roast the pumpkin seeds.

Sea Bass and Carrots

Ok, so, I have to apologize for the lack of posts lately.  My little camera took a dive off a table and is having a "lens error". But in any case, I'd been searching for these pictures for a little while and completely forgotten that they must have been taken on N's camera.

We whipped up this delicious little dinner way back in early summer when we were first starting to harvest our carrots.  The carrots were something like a year old but only yielded these little runts.  And since it's San Diego, pretty much all vegetables give up trying to grow with the seasons.  These actually were planted in November, haha.  Earlier garden photos here.



Have you ever tasted a really fresh carrot?  Like straight out of the ground fresh? They have this amazing crispness and crunch.  I figured that the texture of the carrots you get at the store was just how they came.



I know it seems fancy, but we got these lovely sea bass steaks at our local grocery store in the 50% off display case because they were about to expire.  Topped with a little butter and salt, baked at 400F, then broiled for a couple minutes, they turned out amazing.  I was a little nervous about preparing such a nice piece of fish :)  Plus, we took all those carrots and sauteed them in butter, they really caramelized nicely.  One of my favorite dinners we've made!

Meet Dragon (and Bunny)

This is Dragon.  She has a little pet bunny. Aren't they cute?

Lol, I feel like I could write a short children's book if I keep going like this.

When I found this pattern at Ravelry, I was super determined to start right away.  Well, I did the head while waiting at my brother's basketball thing and realized that the head was huge and how was there any way this is right?  It basically seemed like the head and the body were not going to go together in any kind of predictable way. I set it aside for a while and finally just made the rest of the pieces and put it together.  It's very kawaii.  Classic big head, little body style.  Finished, she actually stands up on her own with the support of a little tail and is about 6 inches tall at the tip of the horns.  I'm glad I'm done with this one though, because all the finishing details were driving me crazy!

P.S. Sorry for the terrible, poorly-lit photo. It's hard to take pictures at 7:30am :(