No Knitting, but some cooking...

I really haven't knit anything since finishing the wee baby sweater--I've got a touch of carpel tunnel or something that's bugging me so I'm resting the old wrists.

I did cook some good chicken last night, though. My husband was pretty effusive with the praise, so I thought I'd "publish" the recipe here.

Chicken Breasts With White Wine Caper Sauce

Makes: enough chicken for two adults and one preschooler

Ingredients:

2 chicken breasts
1 T olive oil
small amount of flour
salt and pepper
dry white wine, a wine good enough that you'd want to drink the rest with dinner. I used a cheap but respectable chardonnay.
1 or 2 T heavy cream
1-2 T capers

Flatten the chicken breasts by putting them in a large Ziploc bag or similar, then whack them with a the bottom of a heavy skillet until they're both the same thickness, around 1/4". Put maybe 1/8 c or less of flour on a plate, and salt and pepper the flour generously. Dry off the chicken, if it's wet, with a paper towel, then dredge the chicken very lightly through the seasoned flour.

Pour the olive oil into a heavy but NOT non-stick pan. Heat on medium high. (I have a gas range which runs pretty hot, so adjust for your own). When the olive oil shimmers, but before it smokes, put the chicken in the pan. Let it cook undisturbed and uncovered until it's got a nice deep golden brown crust. Turn it over, pour 1/4-1/2 c wine in the pan, enough so the wine completely covers the bottom of the pan maybe 1/8" deep, cover, reduce heat to medium, and cook until done, which is 170F. Because you're adding the liquid, you can overcook this a little and it's still fine, which I discovered when I realized my meat thermometer was set to Celsius instead of Fahrenheit. When you check the chicken, if all the wine is evaporated you can add a little more to the pan; don't let your pan dry out. You will want enough wine to end up with enough sauce to pour over the chicken breasts, maybe 1/4 cup.

Remove the chicken from the pan. Add the cream and capers (drained), and stir to release any tasty brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Taste for seasoning, mine needed pepper but not salt. Cook the sauce until it's come together and thickened nicely, maybe a minute.

If you've got picky picky toddlers around, pass the sauce separately. Otherwise, artfully pour the sauce over the chicken.

Here in Californy

No pictures yet, because I forgot the camera, but I finished the Baby Sweater just in time for the Baby's arrival.

Whee, my friend had her baby and everyone's doing great.! I can't wait to see him, I'm bringing her boys up to the hospital after dinner so they can meet their new brother.

Happy day!

The Book Meme

Am too fried to think up my own content, so I stole this from Mim:

1. Hardcover or paperback, and why?

Paperback, unless I can't stand waiting, because of price.

2. If I were to own a book shop, I would call it…

"I'll Take Romance!" I used to sell books with a wonderful woman named Lynne. We worked for a chain, but had a fantasy that we'd move all the people we liked to work with to a resort town and open our own shop specializing in genre fiction, just fun stuff people read for pleasure. There would be no crabby people because people on vacation are in a good mood already, and we'd only make them happier by selling them fun books. We named our fantasy shop "I'll Take Romance".

3. My favorite quote from a book (mention the title) is…

"The means are the end--it's the great lesson of the Twentieth Century". From one of Rosemary Edghill's Twelve Treasures books, the ones with the elves and the library students.

4. The author (alive or deceased) I would love to have lunch with would be…

I know it's cliche, but I have to say Jane Austen, Mother of the Novel.

5. If I was going to a deserted island and could only bring one book, except for the SAS survival guide, it would be…

A big doorstop by a dead guy, maybe the Yale Shakespeare. No fat Russian books, I'll already feel crappy enough being stuck by myself.

6. I would love someone to invent a bookish gadget that…

There should be a thing like a remote control you can aim at people to freeze selective sections of the space-time continuum so you can finish a sentence/paragraph/book before someone asks you if any socks are clean.

7. The smell of an old book reminds me of…

My happiest moments in junior high.

8. If I could be the lead character in a book (mention the title), it would be…

And it has to be the protagonist? Hmmm, then I pick Venetia from Heyer's Venetia. Or maybe The Grand Sophy, but something from Heyer. You'd get the witty lines, the great clothes, and of course the hero!

9. The most overestimated book of all times is…

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Seriously, once you've read the title, you've read the best part of the book.

10. I hate it when a book…

has an epilogue that ruins the ending.

Baby K socks

Awww! I can never get over how cute the baby socks are!

This one's for baby K, who is the little brother of one of my son's friends. Last week at gymnastics his socks were falling off. Well, we can't have that! I'll try this one on him today and see if it fits or is slightly large, amend as necessary, then finish the second sock for next Tuesday's gymnastics.

Edit: I shoved this one on baby K's foot today and it fits, so I'm go for the other sock!

The yarn's Socks That Rock left over from my first completed pair of socks, peds with a picot edge from The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns. I was knitting them when I met poor David the first time. Rest in peace and mercy, my friend.

Think you'd pass it?

I'm having a blog contest! Whee!

Some of you may know that I, in my early to mid-30s, went back to college to study to teach high school social science. Well, I had a kid instead of a teaching career, but now and again I run across fun materials and approaches I sort of put on the back burner for my future teaching career. Here's one for you--questions from the revised US citizenship test which will be used beginning next October.

If you'd like to play my little contest, cut and paste the test into your blog. You can answer the questions publicly on your blog or privately. After you write down your answers, leave a comment on my blog and I'll send you the link to the answers provided by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and you can score yourself. You can keep your score private or reveal it on your blog. My goal is purely to encourage you to self-evaluate, so I'm not scoring, just encouraging you to look at the test and think about citizenship. Everyone posting the questions on her or his blog by October 15th will be entered into a random drawing to receive a yummy yarn prize from my stash.

Anyone want to play? Here you go:

Civics (History and Government) Items for the Redesigned Naturalization Test

American Government

A: Principles of American Democracy

1) What is the supreme law of the land?
2) What does the Constitution do?
3) The idea of self-government is in the first three words of the Constitution. What are those words?
4) What is an amendment?
5) What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution?
6) What is one right or freedom from the First Amendment?
7) How many amendments does the Constitution have?
8) What did the Declaration of Independence do?
9) What are two rights in the Declaration of Independence?
10) What is freedom of religion?
11) What is the economic system in the United States?
12) What is the "rule of law"?

B: System of Government

13) Name one branch or part of the government.
14) What stops one branch of government from becoming too powerful?
15) Who is in charge of the executive branch?
16) Who makes federal laws?
17) What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress?
18) How many U.S. Senators are there?
19) We elect a U.S. Senator for how many years?
20) Who is one of your state's U.S. Senators?
21) The House of Representatives has how many voting members?
22) We elect a U.S. Representative for how many years?
23) Name your U.S. Representative.
24) Who does a U.S. Senator represent?
25) Why do some states have more Representatives than other states?
26) We elect a President for how many years?
27) In what month do we vote for President?
28) What is the name of the President of the United States now?
29) What is the name of the Vice President of the United States now?
30) If the President can no longer serve, who becomes President?
31) If both the President and Vice President can no longer serve, who becomes President?
32) Who is the Commander in Chief of the military?
33) Who signs bills to become laws?
34) Who vetoes bills?
35) What does the President's Cabinet do?
36) What are two Cabinet-level positions?
37) What does the judicial branch do?
38) What is the highest court in the United States?
39) How many justices are on the Supreme Court?
40) Who is the Chief Justice of the United States?
41) Under our Constitution, some powers belong to the federal government. What is one power of the federal government?
42) Under our Constitution, some powers belong to the states. What is one power of the states?
43) Who is the Governor of your state?
44) What is the capital of your state?
45) What are the two major political parties in the United States?
46) What is the political party of the President now?
47) What is the name of the Speaker of the House of Representatives now?

C: Rights and Responsibilities

48) There are four amendments to the Constitution about who can vote. Describe one of them.
49) What is one responsibility that is only for United States citizens?
50) What are two rights only for United States citizens?
51) What are two rights of everyone living in the United States?
52) What do we show loyalty to when we say the Pledge of Allegiance?
53) What is one promise you make when you become a United States citizen?
54) How old do citizens have to be to vote for President?
55) What are two ways that Americans can participate in their democracy?
56) When is the last day you can send in federal income tax forms?
57) When must all men register for the Selective Service?

American History

A: Colonial Period and Independence

58) What is one reason colonists came to America?
59) Who lived in America before the Europeans arrived?
60) What group of people was taken to America and sold as slaves?
61) Why did the colonists fight the British?
62) Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?
63) When was the Declaration of Independence adopted?
64) There were 13 original states. Name three.
65) What happened at the Constitutional Convention?
66) When was the Constitution written?
67) The Federalist Papers supported the passage of the U.S. Constitution. Name one of the writers.
68) What is one thing Benjamin Franklin is famous for?
69) Who is the "Father of Our Country"?
70) Who was the first President?

B: 1800s

71) What territory did the United States buy from France in 1803?
72) Name one war fought by the United States in the 1800s.
73) Name the U.S. war between the North and the South.
74) Name one problem that led to the Civil War.
75) What was one important thing that Abraham Lincoln did?
76) What did the Emancipation Proclamation do?
77) What did Susan B. Anthony do?

C: Recent American History and Other Important Historical Information

78) Name one war fought by the United States in the 1900s.
79) Who was President during World War I?
80) Who was President during the Great Depression and World War II?
81) Who did the United States fight in World War II?
82) Before he was President, Eisenhower was a general. What war was he in?
83) During the Cold War, what was the main concern of the United States?
84) What movement tried to end racial discrimination?
85) What did Martin Luther King, Jr. do?
86) What major event happened on September 11, 2001 in the United States?
87) Name one American Indian tribe in the United States.

Integrated Civics

A. Geography

88) Name one of the two longest rivers in the United States.
89) What ocean is on the West Coast of the United States?
90) What ocean is on the East Coast of the United States?
91) Name one U.S. territory.
92) Name one state that borders Canada.
93) Name one state that borders Mexico.
94) What is the capital of the United States?
95) Where is the Statue of Liberty?

B. Symbols

96) Why does the flag have 13 stripes?
97) Why does the flag have 50 stars?
98) What is the name of the national anthem?

C. Holidays

99) When do we celebrate Independence Day?
100) Name two national U.S. holidays.