The campus dining hall isn't open this summer, so those of us who are here doing research have to fend for ourselves. That means that in edition to reading and knitting, I've also been cooking. This was my dinner for tonight:
Potato soup, and a sort of pseudo-runza (more on that in a second). I was able to make these things because, when I realized I'd have to cook for myself all summer, I called my mom and said heeeeelp. She sent me an e-mail with a grocery list and a half a dozen easy recipes. Potato soup is one of my favorite meals on earth, and making it for myself was almost like being home. I used red potatoes, which adds color and texture to the soup, and also meant I didn't have to bother peeling them--w00t!
The runza was a little more improvised. For the uninitiated (which I'm guessing is most of you), a runza is a bread roll, stuffed with burger, cabbage, onions, and cheese. Your traditional runza would be about three times the size of the one pictured, and done with wheat bread. My mom has been making them as long as I can remember, and only recently did I discover that there's actually a restaurant chain in Nebraska for them.
The original plan was to make a large batch and freeze them, then reheat them like Hot Pockets. That didn't end up working out, in part because I have a roommate and we cook for two, and in part because, lacking the ability to make bread dough, I have to rely on whatever frozen biscuit I can get at Food Lion, which limits me to batches of eight very small runzas. I had three of those babies for dinner last night. At that rate, you can imagine how long eight of them would last between two people. However, Aud seems to really like them, so that's good.
I finished the first of my giant convertible mittens for Dulaan. It earned the nickname "The Tent" while I was working on it, but now I just call it my Man Glove. I was having some serious frustrations decreasing the mitten top there this afternoon. I had to rip back twice, and the yarn is a multi-strand yarn composed of six strands of two-ply yarn for a grand total of twelve plies--it's splitty as heck and even more frustrating. Also, as I was finishing off the very top, one of my cheap 'I made this from a 25 cent dowel' needles snapped in half. I have enough dowel leftover to make a replacement, but that really highlighted the frustration of the experience.
And I finished the big brother to my sweater bag. It's made out of the front and back of the same sweater. I felted it in the dorm room shower, using a big plastic Tupperware tub and my feet. And my hands. I made a huge mess in the bathroom, but I did get the thing to felt successfully.
For a strap--and I can't believe I'm admitting this--I cut a long strip out of the pant leg of an old pair of jeans. I wasn't really sure that I wanted to add the denim look, but it was free . . . I also cut out one of the back pockets and sewed it onto the inside of the bag. The way I folded the front and back of the sweater together created a nice flat pocket in the back, too. (You can't see it, but I decorated it with the same shiny star buttons I used on the other bag.)
And I figured, what's a messenger bag without a cryptic and snarky logo somewhere on it? The Greek there transliterates (once you add punctuation) to, "Ti moros ei?" which means, awesomely enough, "Why are you a moron*?" Prof. Casey brought that one into class one day. I believe it's a quote from Aristophanes, but I could be wrong on that.
You can BET I'm looking forward to the first time someone asks me what my bag says.
*And, yes, the "moros" is where we get the word "moron". Gotta love those Greeks.
