Blueberries and Corn

Have I mentioned recently that I love Pioneer Woman? If not, I wish to make that abundantly clear right now. She's smart, she's witty, I think she's amazing.

She posted a recipe for corn muffins lately, using a really basic recipe for the muffins, but then doing the brilliant addition of dried blueberries. Had to try adding dried blueberries to my normal (back of the cornmeal box) corn muffins. Delicious!!

In her recipe, Pioneer Woman uses a mix of buttermilk and regular milk. I don't generally have any buttermilk on hand, but happened to today. I used straight buttermilk, no regular.

The amazing sourdough smell coming from the oven when they baked was a good sign. Biting into a much more tender, less crumbly, very flavorful blueberry-corn muffin was the final reward.

I think I may just need to keep buttermilk around more. We make cornbread in some form most weekends for breakfast.

If you haven't visited Pioneer Woman, please go do so. If you haven't tried buttermilk in corn muffins, you really should.

"Turn Off the Tap" - A rant in list form.

By turning off the water when you shampoo and condition, your family can save up to $100* per year depending on where you live.

* Savings for a family of 3.

This is the statement on bottles of Suave shampoo and conditioner as part of their "Turn Off the Tap" program to promote water and energy savings. It is also featured prominently on the suave.com home page.

This campaign was probably based on someone saying "Hey, if people turned off the tap while they scrubbed with shampoo, they would use X gallons less water. Wouldn't that be great? People could save money, and at Suave we're all about people saving money!" Then some advertising guy ran with it and made it a "campaign". At no point did anyone logically consider whether it was feasible or reasonable to do.

To me, it is completely illogical unless you make a pile of other assumptions:

1) The shower in question uses some sort of mechanism which allows instant on and off of the shower AND
2) that shower mechanism maintains the selected temperature of the shower when the water has been temporarily turned off AND
3) the above mechanism is either hands-free or only needs one hand - which would be covered with shampoo/conditioner and thus very slippery.

Let's consider a real life situation. I live in a house which is about 35 years old. We have a standard water heater in the basement. The primary shower, used every day for 2 showers, is upstairs on the second floor. This shower has independent hot and cold controls which are standard knobs.

"Turn Off the Tap" would have me do the following:
a) Completely wet down hair.
b) Turn off shower.
c) Pour shampoo in hands.
d) Scrub up hair, covering both hands with slippery shampoo suds.
e) Use slippery hands to turn water back on, while standing out of the spray so that I don't freeze/burn myself getting the temperature adjusted again.
f) Rinse hands and hair.
g) Turn off water again.
h) Pour conditioner in hands.
i) Slick up hair with conditioner (really, this takes about 10 seconds, max.)
j) EITHER wait in the rapidly cooling room for 1-3 minutes (as recommended by the "best results" on the back of the conditioner bottle) OR go straight to the next step,
k) Turn the taps back on, with my very slippery conditioner-covered hands, while standing out of the spray and having to readjust temperature so I don't freeze/burn myself again.
l) If I went straight to K, I can then spend the 1-3 minute conditioner time doing all of the other cleaning jobs BUT if I didn't I have to do them either before or after the whole shampooing/conditioning/water-on-off sequence - because I personally don't use shampoo or conditioner as body wash. Doing these jobs before or after extends the total time in the shower, thus using more water.

With all of the temperature readjustment, I think there is no question that I would end up using significantly MORE water trying to "Turn Off the Tap", as well as having a really unpleasant and longer, colder shower.

$100/year = $8.33/month = $0.27/day (based on a 30-day month) = $0.09 per shower (since their number is based on 3 people in the family, assuming each is taking a shower a day).

Is all of that really worth 9 cents? Isn't there somewhere better to promote water savings? Turn off the tap when you brush your teeth? No problem! Try to take a shorter shower overall? No problem! But turning off the tap when you shampoo and condition is just dumb.

Now I'm sure that someone is going to say "But that technology does exist! You can get an uber-programmable shower with in-line hot water on demand, and single button control, and and and..." To which I would ask: "How much does that cost?" Probably thousands. So I should spend thousands of dollars to remodel and redo my bathroom with the latest technology all so that I can save 9 cents a day?!

Gimme a break.

Post edited multiple times to get all the formatting to work correctly. >.<

Maybe ...

.... it's a sock this time. First, an elaborate swatch. Second, a sock for someone who is not me, but has wide very short feet. Because 4.8 inches does not equal 4 1/8 inches (headsmack).

Because of the difference the patterning makes, the sole was 5" and the instep was 4.75" when I started the expansions this time. I tried the sock on after finishing the setup for the heel, but before turning. And it seems to fit. So I boldly went forth, finishing the heel last evening while listening to Bob's Big Band at the dNote. Fun band, fun venue, great food.

I even got to setting up the leg patterning! I'll be continuing the lattice up the front, mirroring it on the back, and doing 2x2 ribbing between. I'll figure the cuff when I get there.

Wow! It might be a sock!

I told kiddo that if I have to rip this one out, then the yarn doesn't want to be socks. But I think it wants to be socks now.

Because they're pretty

Cupcakes. On a Monday. Why?

Because they're rainbow cupcakes. Because they're yummy. And because we needed to.

The continuing stooooooorrry

Yup. Still summer. Kiddo's being awesome. Things are going apace. She read a book in 45 minutes today. One of the A-Z Mysteries, which are supposed to be for her grade level. Fun little stories, by Ron Roy and John Steven Gurney, kind of equivalent in length/depth to the Magic Treehouse books. I think she needs to work more on her Nancy Drew - the A-Z series are "candy" books, Nancy is good solid protein for her. We've signed up for every reading program immediately accessible for whatever coupons, benefits, and rewards might be provided for what she will do this summer anyway.

The recalculated sock is going very well. I'm about halfway through the increases, and it's beginning to resemble a sock. It also fits much much better than the elaborate swatch.

The yellow quality of the pic brought to you by my marvelous camera and the halogen light on my desk.

Today, forts were built, summer homework was done, sock was knitted upon, recycling was recycled, books were read, Wii Fit was played, we biked to the library (and back), and kiddo finished the watermelon.

Yay! for the first week of summer vacation. May the rest continue in the fashion begun.

Elaborate swatch

So, the sock's first incarnation has proved to just be an elaborate swatch.

On starting the patterning my gauge morphed from 7.5 st/inch to 6.5 st/inch. I didn't realize this until I got to the heel, and there was no way to recover at that point. Not so much with the fitting of the sock when it got to the length and the heel. Unless I was making these for someone with very wide, very short feet. Which I'm not.

Ripped it out and rewound the yarn.

Recalculating and will start again in a moment.

Sock

Can't say socks yet, because there is as yet only the start of one. But soon there will be another.

I'm using Cat Bordhi's Ridgeline architecture for these. I like Riverbed too, but have found that the Ridgeline seems to fit my feet a little bit smoother.

Once I finished the standard toe increases, I started the quilted lattice pattern over the "central" 15 stitches of the top of the foot. This was well before the expansion increases, but I wanted to start the pattern asap rather than waiting until halfway up the foot.

I have started the expansion now, and it's going smoothly. Just have to remember which rounds are plain and which are pattern for the center and which are increases. Once I get past the heel, I'll decide what to do up the leg. I don't want to go with the full quilted lattice, but I may but one mirroring up the back and do a line of ribbing between. Or something. I'll make that up as I go.

Oh yeah, the yarn is Plymouth Yarn Happy Feet DK. I'm working on #2 bamboo dpns.