Random Chatter: 1/6/13

Our whole family went sledding on our hill yesterday, and I have to tell you that I love that our kids are getting big enough that we can do stuff like that together now.  (OK, so the almost-two year old probably wouldn’t declare it her favorite activity but at least she didn’t cry the whole time.)  Sledding is actually quite fun even for the ol’ mom!  However, my kids are always getting snow up their arms and I want to find a shirt that has fingerless mittens or something on the end of the sleeves, because we can’t ever keep their regular mittens tucked into their coat sleeves.  Or do they make some sort of glove/mitten liners that go up to your elbow (for kids)?  I looked online a bit, but couldn’t find anything, so maybe I am looking for something that doesn’t exist.  Please comment if you know of anything like that!

Speaking of fingerless mittens, I got this pair at Target on clearance last week:

I love them!  I’m so much more likely to wear them than gloves since I can still use my fingers.  And they are nice and long so they go past my wrist quite a bit – when I wear regular gloves my wrists end up getting cold, so I’d rather wear these and have cold fingertips but still be able to use them.  I’m now definitely a fan of the fingerless mitten.

In December, I decided I wanted to cook all the way through a cookbook, so I picked one out, received it for Christmas, and started cooking from it on New Year’s Eve.  The book is The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman and I’m really enjoying it so far.  I have no goal as far as timeframe so it could take me four months or all year.  (I suppose my goal is to have it done by the end of 2014, but I don’t anticipate it taking me all year.)

So far, I’ve had a few hits and a few that were “eh” but that I’ll do again with some adaptions.  The only thing I’ve been disappointed in so far is that I don’t think the book’s directions are very well edited; there are a lot of what I would consider incomplete instructions (for instance, I don’t think it’s good to say to cook something for a certain amount of time without telling the reader what should happen to the food during that time.)  Oh, and telling people to mix bread dough in their stand mixer outfitted with a paddle instead of a dough hook is just a bad idea, as is evidenced by the number of people who have broken their Kitchen Aids with the recipe.  So, I’m not learning a lot technically from it and I can’t give the author’s instructions the benefit of the doubt anymore, but my main goal was to force myself to try new ingredients and get out of a rut and it’s doing that, so I’m happy.