Recipe: Chocolate and Peanutbutter Squares

Seriously, who needs Reese’s? Which is a great discovery, because peanut butter and chocolate is not a popular combination here in Korea, so if I want any peanut butter cups, I have to haul them back from Canada in bulk in my suitcase. The less i can depend on bringing stuff from Canada, the better, so I was really happy that these turned out to be just as good, if not better than the store-bought stuff, and with ingredients (mostly) available at my local grocery store! Yay!

Adapted from recipe here

Chocolate Peanutbutter Squares

Base:
3/4 c. digestive cookie crumbs (crush up and whirl in blender)
3/4 c. light brown sugar
3/4 c. powdered sugar
1/4 c. flour
1/2 c. butter, melted
3/4 c. peanut butter

Top:
180 g. dark chocolate bars, broken in small pieces
3 T. butter

Combine cookie crumbs and brown sugar in bowl, sift powdered sugar and flour in, and mix well. Add melted butter and mix well. Add peanut butter and mix well again. Press into two 8″x8″ baking pans lined with wax paper. Heat chocolate and butter in pyrex measuring cup in microwave for one minute or so, or until half melted. Take out of microwave and stir until smooth. Pour evenly over both trays, and use the back of a spoon to spread carefully until smooth on top. Chill until set, then pull out of trays and cut into 1″ squares. Makes 128 squares, though many of them “go missing” before you can actually store them in a container in the fridge to keep.

Why I Knit

I learned to knit, like a lot of girls, when I was about 10, from my Nan (I love my Nan). I didn’t do much with it at the time, but then picked it up again when I was in high school and knit this big ol’ striped blanket using a pattern another knitting friend gave to me. My ex-fiance still has that blanket. Then university got in the way and I didn’t knit again until just after I got to Korea. There was this Roots blanket that looked like a work sock, which I had seen at Sears for some exhorbitant sum, and I thought, as all knitters/crafters do, “Hey, I could make that cheaper!”

So I went to the awesome wholesale yarn market at Dongdaemoon and bought a ton of cotton for 40 bucks and went to town. Though, being an inexperienced knitter, I didn’t realize that the cotton was pretty much laceweight and, by choosing to knit it in a 3×3 rib, how much it would expand to, and cast on way too many stitches. Eight years and just over a quarter of a million stitches later, the darn thing is still on the needles. Only about 15,000 stitches to go, and it will be done! And it shall be the coolest and most idiotic thing I have ever made.

But I wasn’t working on it constantly for eight years. I think I didn’t even look at it for three years at one point, so even though I had something on the needles, I can’t really say I was really into knitting all that time. But the desire to craft was percolating in the back of my brain somewhere, and then, without much warning, last year, something snapped as I walked past the little knit shop in the subway station near where I was working–there was a big table full of bins of cheap and colourful acrylic (green! green yarn! the colour of grass in the spring!)–and I walked away with a huge bag of rainbow colours and a crochet hook. I came home and taught myself to crochet that weekend and went to work on another blanket (hey, they’re square and you don’t have to fiddle with things like sleeves and collars and buttonholes…). Then another, with the leftover scraps, then another, and then yet another. I kept waiting for the thrill to wear off and for this to turn into one of those temporary obsessions that peter out after the first little while, but it didn’t happen.

Then I was in Canada, hanging out with family for the whole winter. I scoured Value Villages all over Toronto for bags of unused yarn and sweaters to unravel for yarn; I went to Michael’s and Walmart for cheap yarn, and I even got a chance to go to a real (oh, bliss!) yarn shop (they had sheep outside!) and drool all over their handspun yarns and displays and spend way too much money for two hanks of Sea Wool (oh what, oh what shall I make with them??). I went to the library and took out almost every single book and magazine they had (the librarian scowled at me as if I was doing something wrong–neither of us knew exactly what, but taking out 44 books on knitting HAD to be wrong, somehow) and then proceeded to cram my brain full of every scrap of information I could about designing and shaping knit garments. At the same time I cast on for nearly a dozen projects, and knit and frogged, and knit and cursed, and screwed up and started over and knit and knit and knit, and then ripped out again, changing designs as I went and being woefully wrong, time and time again. I loved (am loving) every single minute of it. Especially when I had to completely frog sweaters that I had already spent hours/weeks on…my mother was horrified that I could so gleefully pull and pull and pull until there was nothing left of something I had spent so much time on. No worries! More knitting for me!!

And while I knit, though I do think about my life, my career, and how long I can go without a job, and human nature and a million other things, I think quite a bit about knitting. And of course, since I am really the only one I know who knits (this much), and since the knitting bug seems to be intensifying, rather than fading, I think about why I knit. This is what I have come up with (so far):

1. It allows me to explore my creative energy
2. It is a source of aesthetic joy
3. It fulfills my need to create/nest; even though I don’t want kids, my biological clock does influence my levels of domesticity
4. It is a way to celebrate the domestic arts
5. It is in harmony with the ideals of sustainability and simple living (making your own stuff, opting out of rabid consumerism, being able to repurpose used materials)
6. It fosters an ethic of self-sufficiency
7. It is a form of materialistic anti-consumerism–enjoying the items you make and posess, while not having to depend on large corporations as much
8. It is an act of being different/non-conformist
9. It provides amazing sensual/tactile pleasures
10. I can play with colour–wheeee!
11. It is a reminder to honour the labour that goes into each item we own, teaching us empathy and respect for others from a global perspective
12. It values slow living and lets me practice delayed gratification
13. It’s all about design–design, baby, that awesome place on the corner of Art and Science
14. It allows me to focus on detail, by giving me the context in which to explore freely the OCD side of myself, without seeming abnormally anal
15. It gives me the enjoyable sense that I am good at something
16. It embodies the spirit of giving and nurturing–to self and others
17. It is a source of warmth and comfort
18. It allows me to be productive–at least I can do something with my hands while I wait or watch movies
19. It gives me more choice and better fit of clothes (especially as a plus size woman); I can choose styles I want in colours I want and I don’t have to schlepp through soul-destroying malls to find clothes
20. It is a skill I can use in order to re-use fibers and use natural fibers
21. It is a tradition, and by knitting, I can honour the women who came before, who passed these arts down through the generations
22. It fosters patience, a sense of humour, and peace and quiet
23. I devilishly delight in the linguistic elitism of knitting–i can rattle off knitting jargon (SABLE, UFO, KIP, tinking, frogging) and sound all cool, and nobody knows what I’m talking about, unless I deign to explain
24. It’s a good way to de-stress (watch your tension, though!)
25. It encourages me to participate more in life, by involving myself in the process of what I own
26. I knit for the pure pleasure of both the process and the product
27. It can be a spiritual/philosophical/intellectual challenge–knitting has deep meaning and symbolism
28. It is an instance, for me, of Maslow’s discussion of peak-experiences: “These experiences were of pure, positive happiness when all doubts, all fears, all inhibitions, all tensions, all weaknesses, were left behind. Now self-consciousness was lost. All separateness and distance from the world disappeared as if they felt one with the world, fused with it, really belonging in it and to it, instead of being outside looking in.”
29. It is fulfilling
30. It gives me time to think
31. I can have fun little conversations with the wool/pattern/designer
32. It is a path that leads to insight and discovery
33. I can kinda be part of the new DIY craft/punk movement
34. It is a product of my impatience–sometimes it actually takes forever to find what I want and I want it now
35. Through knitting, I can express my uniqueness/individuality
36. I’m friggin’ CHEAP–my Scottish blood??
37. It’s extremely practical
38. Taurus traits lend themselves to this kind of activity (stubborn, practical, down-to-earth, domestic, homebody-ish, sensual, materialistic, patient)
39. It is a way to practice mindfulness
40. I enjoy complexity
41. I like to learn
42. I’m a bit of a show-off (Look! Look what I made! I made this with my own two hands! Isn’t it awesome?!)
43. I love classic, romantic, timeless, graceful styles, and sometimes the fashion of the times leaves a lot to be desired (especially in my price range); on the other hand, the really great styles of the moment are also quite often out of my price range (did I mention that I’m cheap?)
44. Today’s clothes are cheaply made, and the price doesn’t really reflect the true cost of making the item
45. I like not flashy, but quality made designs
46. I’m single–knitting fills the time, replaces sex, gives me something to do other than change diapers and cook for a husband
47. It is one step in my Master Plan to become the crazy old maid cat lady who talks to herself, has wild hair, and goes to the grocery store in her housecoat (note to self: must get cat)
48. I like collecting (can you say SABLE? I’m working on it)
49. Maybe I will smoke/sleep/snack less?
50. It is deceptively simple–I can appear hugely talented without actually being talented
51. The coolest thing is that there are only two stitches but infinite combinations–kind of like the yin and yang of Taoism resulting in the myriad things, or like DNA, or language patterns/syntax, and other discrete combinatorial systems
52. It satisfies my inner geek: knitting patterns are like computer code
53. Misgivings about knitting being a bourgeois activity make me appreciate my life more
54. It encourages me to experiment more with different colours and styles that I would hesitate to choose off the rack
55. It’s a natural alarm clock–I wanna get up and knit now
56. It makes me feel feminine and domestic
57. It gives me something to say when people ask me what I’ve been up to lately
58. It also gives me a topic I can drone on infinitely about, allowing me to get certain people to go away and stop talking to me
59. It makes me feel like part of a community (yay for Ravelry!)
60. It’s probably the only area in which I have no fear of making mistakes–in fact, I want to make as many mistakes as possible, and there is absolutely no sense of personal failure if I do–in contrast to just about every other area of my life

That enough for ya?

Alphabet Auto-complete Meme

DSC01836, originally uploaded by nikkislipp.

Photo of orchids taken at a display at the university in Wolfville, March 2008

Another meme: seen here
This is how it works: Type each letter in the search box of your browser and list what the auto-complete function jumps to first.

Since I use both browsers, I’ll do both lists:

Firefox

A anthropologie
B bcbg
C cubis
D dramatic hamster
E ekdma
F frilling magknits
G g마켓
H hot dog appetizer
I ikea
J japanese spinach sesame
K knit encroachment
L lily elsebeth lavold
M my cake wardrobe
N Nashua Handknits: occasion
O ok캐쉬백
P purl encroachment
Q quicktime
R rose and radish
S sherman heel
T threepotatofour
U utube
V velvetlava
W why me nickpapageorgia
X xp sp3
Y youtube
Z zara

Explorer

A amazon 200 ripple
B bcbg
C cherry clafoutis
D dulce de leche
E eyelet border facecloth
F flickr
G gookjae Electronic Center
H honeybee pattern knit
I infiniti
J jandabown
K knit ripple pattern
L logen 이사
M mission falls kits
N naver
O oxford day korea
P platoon ost
Q quotes of the Day 12 February
R ravelry
S studio marlowe
T themoment nyt
U usb headset skype speakers
V vorbesti si
W whitehorse time
X xbox
Y yarn over eyelet border
Z zuma