Make it Fast, Cook it Slow and Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day is the answer to a
Dining on a Dime is pretty much what the title says it is. The recipes are very inexpensive to make and every one I've tried so far has tasted great. Well, except that time I forgot to add the water in the spanish rice. Liquid-free baked rice is not great, let me tell you! But hey, the more money I save on meals, the more money I have to spend on yarn.
1,000 Vegetarian Recipes is just flat out excellent. I'd bought this book a few years ago when my daughter & I went vegetarian and fell in love with it. Neither of us are following a vegetarian lifestyle anymore, but I still use this cookbook frequently. I don't even like vegetables all that much (I'm much more of a meat & potatoes & cake kind of girl) but every recipe I've tried so far has been excellent.
Last but not least on my list is Necessities & Temptations. I've been using this cookbook for almost 20 years. You'd think I'd have the recipes memorized by now, but I don't. Not because they are difficult, but because I seem to be incapable of memorizing anything. Necessities & Temptations has, for the most part, simple recipes with simple ingredients that end up tasting like I've slaved away in the kitchen for days. With most cookbooks, I find that I tend to only use one category of it's recipes. I only use the meat recipes, or the side dishes, or only like the deserts.... But with Necessities & Temptations, I find myself using, and enjoying, recipes from every section.
So, if you are looking for a bit of kitchen inspiration, click on one of those links or simply go to your local library and check out those cookbooks. I'm sure you'll be glad you did.
For knitting news, I've only knit nine more stripes on the fair isle scarf since my last post.
That brings the total number of stripes so far up to 29. I probably have another 12 or so to go before it's long enough. Progress has been extremely slow on this scarf because I've been on a scary movie kick. Intense, scary movies are not the best knitting option when every row is different. I either get absorbed into the movie & forget to start a new pattern row or something jumps out at me, I scream like a little girl & drop a bunch of stitches. It's not helping that I rearranged my desk/knitting/crafting area & now my back is to the room/door. The family keeps sneaking up on me. Sneaking up on me when I'm absorbed in a scary movie makes me scream & drop that many more stitches. I think I have knit every single pattern of this scarf twice, sometimes three times, now. First, I knit it wrong, then I frog it, then reknit it. It's a good thing I enjoy the knitting process.