The Boyfriend Socks, part 3
Thanks for yesterday's comments, everyone! I owe emails to a few people, and I'll get to those today, just as soon as I settle a few design issues with BF. My god, who knew he could be such a control freak over his socks.
MJ: I gotta measure your feet.
BF: Okay. (sticks out foot in MJ's face)
MJ: I'm kind of nervous about this whole project, you know, because it's for you and it *has* to be perfect.
BF: Yeah, perfect. (smirks)
MJ: I'll probably want you to try the first one on as I go along with it--
BF: In this heat?
MJ: --so that it fits, you know?
BF: On one condition: don't take any pictures. I'm getting hot just thinking of wearing socks in this weather.
MJ: That's fine, but in the end I'll have to take a finished and posed photo.
BF: Okay, whatever.
MJ: Okay, Mr. Skinny Ankles, I've just calculated your measurements according to the knitted gauge. I also compensated for stretch by taking away 10%, so the socks hug your foot. I can start on your socks today!
BF: Hey, will they be ready by this weekend? Maybe I don't need to do laundry for the trip.
MJ: Sixty stitches for 18 inches of sock, per sock? You'll be lucky I'll have one done by Friday, dude.
P.S.: I've been Cooking. (As an aside, why am I this chatty all of a sudden?) Yesterday while looking through my Filipino food blogs I found an entry on sinangag, known in other parts of the Philippines as kinirog or kirog, or simply, garlic fried rice. Filipinos *love* their garlic! Curiously, it has the same ingredients as the Italian aglio e olio pizza: olive oil, garlic, and salt. Too often people avoid foods because they're "smelly" or "strong", but what they don't know is that a little goes a long way. With garlic, bay leaf, or even anchovy paste only a little is needed to add that special flavor to food. Food is *meant* to taste good, so even if you see one of those smelly or strong ingredients in a menu description, try it because you may end up liking it.
So like I said, Filipinos love their garlic. I've seen my mom prepare sinangag with 8 cups of rice and a whole garlic bulb, and it tasted just fine. I made some last night--the only downside to this enterprise being that I didn't use a mini-chopper and as a result my fingertips smell of garlic (yes, I tried the stainless steel trick already). If you're adventurous, give this a try.
Mom's Sinangag
Heat up enough olive oil to sauté 6 chopped garlic cloves in a pot. You can chop the garlic into slivers or as finely as you want, just don't let them burn. Stir the garlic around in the oil until your whole house is headily fragrant with the smell of garlic. Add 3 cups of day-old cooked rice (Mom specified that it should be stale) and mix well, breaking up the rice chunks. I'd add just a bit of water and cover for a couple of minutes. Pat the rice down and cook on high until a crust forms on the bottom, then scrape it up and mix it again. Repeat until you've got lots of nice crusty pieces in the sinangag. Season to taste, and serve. (Rice is usually the main course in the Philippines, with meat and vegetables as sides. I heated up some Trader Joe's Palak Paneer with tofu to go along with it. BF loved it.)
