Recipe and location!

OK OK, you commenters! You want the recipe? It is really too simple to be called a recipe, but here it is.

There are lots of variations depending on how much I feel like indulging or being in a diet mood.

Take one corn tortilla (straight out of the freezer is fine) and butter one side of it.

OR

Spray your frypan with non-stick stuff (Julie and I call it Spray'n'Stick)

Heat the frypan a little.

Spread the other side of the tortilla with Kraft Cheese Spread and put it in the frypan, butter side down,

OR

Put the tortilla in the frypan and then put as much grated cheese on top as you like.

Break an egg over the cheese/cheese spread. Break the yolk so it runs over the top. It shouldn't run over the edges much, if at all. A corn tortilla is just the right size for an egg.

Put a lid over the frypan and leave it until the egg is cooked. The base of the tortilla might be just going crispy by this stage. Timing of this isn't really critical.

Take it out of the frypan, cut with scissors into quarters. Add some chili if you like (and I particularly like Smoky Chipoltle Tabasco which is available from USAFoods online. Great service from them.

Sometimes I add some grilled bacon or ham on top too. Quick, easy, tasty. Love my breakfast!

Now, where do you get the tortillas? I used to get mine at Coles Broadway. San Diego tell me that Coles in Hillsdale (near Pagewood) stocks them, so I am going to go there and stock up. If you go to any supermarket and ASK for them they might stock them for you.

And if you are very good, next time I will give you my mother's recipe for Enchiladas. Oooh, yummy.

Now THAT"S customer service

I love corn tortillas. Just love them, and always have. Once you could only get them (rarely) in tins. Then you could buy them by making a trip to Brookvale and getting big frozen stacks of them. In the past few years, happy days! You could buy these from Coles! Wonderful.

For the past three weeks they haven't been there. Anxiety levels rise each week. Then I found a packet in the Wraps of the World section (as opposed to the flat bread section.) Rummaged around, but there was only one pack.

In despair, I went to the maker's website http://sandiego.com.au - and sent them an email asking about stockists, and whether Coles had stopped stocking them. I also included one of my favourite breakfast recipes - a quick cheesy egg tortilla.

Well. Stand back and wait for the result! I got an email almost immediately thanking me, and asking whether they could use the recipe. They also suggested that I use Coles' customer feedback form to request that they stock them. I also got information about why my Coles had stopped stocking them.

Then I got two calls - one asking whereabouts I lived, then the next letting me know the closest stockist. Then I got ANOTHER call saying they had some packets they would like to send me - would home be best, or would I like them delivered to a shop close by? Three packs arrived in the mail today.

Let me tell you these are the BEST TORTILLAS IN THE WORLD, and this example of customer service is the best I have ever experienced. The company should be very proud of itself indeed.

Thanks to the Gringos at San Diego Tortilla Factory!

Veggie knitting explained

Heather asked me what the phrase "veggie knitting" means. I'm sure all you keen knitters out there know exactly what I mean....

It means that you can completely veg out while doing it. It turns the knitter into a vegetable. You can do it while holding a conversation, or paying close attention to the television, or while admiring your puppy. A bit harder to do while said puppy is chewing the ends of your knitting needles, but even so....

It is code for stockinette stitch - one row knit, one row purl. Great lengths of it are extremely boring, but there are definitely times when that is all you can cope with.

Two alternatives to veggie knitting are lace and fair isle. My next project is (are?) lace socks with 24 different rows of an eight stitch pattern, including knit two together, slip one knit one pass slip stitch over, slip slip knit, yarn over, purl one in all kinds of combinations over those eight stitches/24 rows.

Fair isle is easier (I think) - for you non-knitters it is knitting with two or more colours. It has challenges like holding the yarn in both hands and knitting in both English and Continental style, floating your yarn behind long sections of one colour and so on. I find fair isle easier because it is easier to rip up when you make a mistake, and following a coloured chart is easier than seeing whether all the lace holes are in the right spots. Phew! See why veggie knitting is so soothing and boring at the same time?

The dog loves the baby

Heather came over the other day for a visit and a chat. She brought Rosie too, and we were both filled with a certain trepidation about this introduction. It is not without good reason that we call Majic Mr. Squiggle. He adores everyone. Anyone who shows the least interest in him is likely to be bounced on Tigger-like, licked, nibbled, and generally rumbled. How on earth was he going to cope with a crawler (Rosie is not quite one year old) and how was she going to cope with him?

After the initial introduction of nappy-changing (you can read the gory details in Heather's blog) Rosie was put on the floor. There was a little licking of the face, but Rosie seemed to like it! She started to laugh - a big proper belly laugh. Majic was not sure what to do.

Rosie thought that Majic's toybox was a good place to start, so grabbed a couple of his toys and started chewing on them. This is good for her immune system. Majic seemed reacted with equanimity - well, apart from a couple of bouts of Crazy Pug (aka the Pug Scuttle) through the house at speed, which Rosie thought was hilarious. At no stage did Majic jump on her or be anything but gentle. They played for an hour and a half, perfectly happy. Stay tuned - will Heather ever let Rosie have her own dog? Will we have more playdates for them? It was a charming episode.

Some photos as proof:

Veggie knitting completed

It hasn't taken tooooooo long, and there was minimal ripping apart, and the veggie knitting plain black jumper is DONE! I love it. The lace edging on the sleeves is perfect and I'm glad I didn't do more on the hem. Not sure whether I would do that double basque again but it looks OK. This is a standard Patons pattern and I've done a cardigan in this size before. The set-in sleeves and shoulders are just right for me - I'm a bit narrow in the shoulder, and the fit is really good. I am delighted with it. And the pug fur shows up so nicely on it!




Now on to the socks I began in October in Hawaii. The first one is about a third done, so I will look forward to a smaller and more complex project. There are other plans in the pipeline, of course. Some involve beads.

Majic Moments

Last weekend Majic went to the Pug Picnic in Centennial Park. He had a fantastic time with around 30 other pugs, and was the toast of the occasion. He really should be called Mr. Squiggle (and often is) because he just LOVES people and he spent much of the morning squiggling happily with this young woman and the young man next to her. They just loved him, which is, of course, totally understandable.



He is extremely energetic, and I have been renamed Kate-a-pult! Here he is in a fairly typical "pose" - full flight retrieving his pink squeaky which has been thrown a hundred times. He loves his toys. We can be sitting calmly when suddenly a dog-slimed toy is pressed against our leg, and the boy says Pleeeeeeeeeze? Who can resist.



That dirty pillow in the background, by the way, is not slovenliness on our part. This is one of Majic's girlfriends. She is a real slut, just lies there and takes it. Sorry, no more of that.....

He has a fine appetite, burning off lots of calories in all kinds of ways (I thought there was going to be no more of that talk???). In the morning he gets puppy biscuits. Many pugs like fruit, and Majic loves it, so I've taken to giving him his very own little bowl of fruit salad and yoghurt when I make ours each morning. He enjoys it, and I love his little yoghurt chin. Here he is sitting in his own special way, legs arrayed on either side, with evidence of breakfast.



Does it sound like we are having fun? Of course we are. This weekend again we dedicated a significant portion of time to dogtainment. Obedience class on Saturday arvo. He is about to graduate from beginner to intermediate. Today I made a big batch of dog food (yummo!) for the freezer, and then this afternoon we went to Cafe Bones in Leichhardt where he had a puppy biscuit and we had coffee and little cakes. He enjoyed to socialising, so did we.

Too cute to knit!

 

How can I knit when I have a little face like this peering up at me? He is full of beans and we spend hours throwing toys for him. But he sleeps a lot of the day, being a dog. And my word of today is a favourite word. Dogs are CREPUSCULAR. They come alive at those twilight hours, dawn and dusk. During the night he sleeps, during the day he is relatively quiet, and will get quieter as he gets older.

I am, however, still knitting the endless veggie knitting black jumper. The last bit is the neckband (V-neck) and then the sewing up. There is a backlog of other projects awaiting attention, but wait... there is that little dog distracting me again!!!