If you find yourself wondering what to do with the latest foot soldier of the Giant Zucchinis From Hell army, you can turn it into a moist chocolate cake that even the most ardent squash hater (eg, Matt) will scarf down.

I really liked this cake because it wasn’t sickly sweet or fist-in-your-face chocolatey. (In truth, concentrated chocolate gives me migraines, so I avoid flourless chocolate cakes, 70% cocoa dark chocolates, etc.) The texture was exactly what I like – moist and dense. No frosting is needed. Also, it comes together like a quick bread, so it’s minimal work in the kitchen.

Original recipe is here. On the basis of some of the reviews (and considering the contents of my larder), I used applesauce instead of oil and sour cream instead of buttermilk. To ensure that I didn’t have a soggy cake, I extracted as much liquid as I could from the zucchini. I also omitted the nuts and chocolate chips.

2 1/4 c all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter – room temperature
1/2 cup applesauce – smooth (plain or with cinnamon)
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup sour cream
2 cups grated zucchini

Heat oven to 325°F. Butter and flour a bundt pan (“Fiesta” pan with Pam+flour spray was OK). Peel zucchini, shred. Squeeze out the moisture and put it in a strainer. Sprinkle 1 T sugar on zucchini, mix thoroughly, macerate until ready to use.

Whisk flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt into medium bowl. Cream sugar (less 1 T) and butter. Blend in applesauce. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla extract. Mix dry ingredients alternately with sour cream in 3 additions each. Squeeze as much moisture out of zucchini as possible, mix into batter. Pour batter into prepared pan.

Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 60-70 minutes. Release from pan after the cake is cooled enough that the sides are free.

I used peeled zucchini because I didn’t want Matt to see the zucchini shreds. I think it worked pretty well.

I read a lot of food ‘blogs (full blogroll here), and I’ve seen a couple by people who are cooking every recipe from a famous cookbook (eg, the Julie/Julia project, breadbasketcase, and others). However, I just came across a pretty unusual food ‘blog – Carol of Takoma Park, Maryland, is cooking her way through the entire French Laundry cookbook. To me, this author brings home cuisine to another level. She documents many steps in the process and adds hilarious commentary, too. If you like to read about food, I urge you to check her out!

In knitting news, I loved the winner of the Meg Swansen knitting camp themed contest – The Devil Wears Zimmermann!

I’d meant to talk about this earlier in the summer, but what can I say, time got away from me. Anyway, this is my first year attempting to grow food!

Last May, I put together a raised bed. The picture shows what it looked like in May. I bought a book about square foot gardening and faithfully followed the directions (move over, FSM, I now worship at the altar of Mel). Anyway, I am a gardening moron, a true black thumb (remember this?), so I figured this would probably be more of an observational year, to get my feet wet and see what might happen.

Well, the spinach bolted before I realized it was ready. Something ate 2 of the 3 soybean plants as soon as the green bit pushed out of the soil. (Matt snickered, “You’re planting soybeans? Because there aren’t enough soybeans growing in Minnesota?”) Birds or rabbits got to the strawberries. The garlic and potatoes have pushed leaves up, but I haven’t unearthed anything and don’t know if things have changed underground. The basil did well until we went on vacation earlier this month, now it’s a little straggly. The snow peas have produced large pods – so large, in fact, that I’m a little afraid to eat them. Two of the 25-or-so bok choi seedlings turned into plants, but they were smothered by giant cauliflower leaves.

But cauliflower! That seemed to thrive, despite my neglect and inexperience. Behold:

It was grown without herbicides or pesticides. I didn’t even add fertilizer. Whoa.

If you’re a lace knitter, you probably have heard of Susannah Lewis and the book Knitting Lace. It’s OOP and has been fetching pretty pennies on ebay. According to this, there’s a slim chance that the book could be reprinted (perhaps by Meg Swansen and Schoolhouse Press?) if the copyright holder agrees.

It would be great to have this back in print. I sent an email tonight. See SimpleKnits for the contact info. Just as Skacel didn’t know the demand for pointy lace needles, maybe the museum doesn’t realize a market for this book is out there!

Do you remember, a few years ago, some marketers decided that it was really cool to call everything “EXTREME”? I remember things like extreme sports and extreme doritos. Around that time, I made a chicken salad for a friend’s potluck, and I called it “extreme chicken salad” because it seemed so ludicrous. Anyway, the name stuck, and I recreated the recipe over the weekend.

This is one of those approximate recipes, just add things in whatever combination pleases you. I prefer to have a veggie:chicken ratio of about 2:1. I didn’t measure when I prepared my salad, but here’s a guesstimate of what I put in:

1 to 1 1/2 c cooked chicken breast, shredded or chopped into small pieces
1/2 small red onion, chopped
4 ribs celery, chopped
1 c red grapes, cut in half (try to get crunchy grapes, if you can)
2 T fresh dill, chopped
1/4 to 1/2 c mayonnaise
1 t salt
1/4 t curry powder
1/4 t mustard powder
lots of fresh cracked black pepper

I don’t like thickly dressed salads and dislike mayonnaise in sandwiches, generally, but this doesn’t taste right without it. However, be stingy with the amount of mayonnaise that you put in.

This is very good with multigrain bread.

Those of you who have read this ‘blog for a while surely knew without a doubt that I would not leave the Pomatomus socks as they were, with 1 foot an inch longer than the other. I had to let it stew for a while, but neither did I want it to become a TOAD (trashed object, abandoned in disgust), so I set my jaw and went back to the socks this afternoon.

Some of you thought I’d changed gauge during the project, but in fact, I had simply knit the patterned area for too long before beginning the decreases for the toe. It was a simple matter of ripping back to the appropriate row and starting the toe from that point.

For all the teeth gnashing, the entire repair took less than an hour.

Now they match!

Bayerische sock
Fancy silk sock from here
Madder-dyed Corriedale and osage orange-dyed silk from here

I feel like I did a lot of work, but the actual progress seems pretty limited.

Didn’t want to plunk down $600 for an iPhone? (I played with one at an Apple store last week and thought they were pretty slick but not worth the cost. Incidentally, I spotted my first one in the wild last Sunday.) Anyway, you can see a handknit version here. It looks a little clumsy (y’know, in a loving way!), but the idea made me laugh.

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I’m keeping a moderately sleepy eye on E3 developments because, interestingly, many of my friends are in this business. Although I am decidedly not a dedicated gamer, I find myself super excited about a forthcoming Wii game:

Only 2 Wii activities have proven to be a timesuck for me – Wii Sports and Smooth Moves – but even then, I don’t think I’ve held a Wiimote in my hand since April. A new DDR (Hottest Party) is supposed to be released in October; between that and Wii Fit (with balance board, as shown in the demo above), I’m fairly certain that I will be coaxed back to the console post haste. I just have to watch out for Wiiitis.

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In my last bit of random news, I found a funny sentence today: “Nineteen percent of patients in the study by Yang et al were not visible mammographically.”

Uh… Where’d they go?!

One of the traditions of my office is to bring in “treats” on your own birthday. This year, I made cheesecake brownies. I used this recipe once before, many years ago. Although I couldn’t remember exactly how the brownies turned out that time, I remembered liking them.

The recipe comes from the sadly out-of-print Stars Desserts by Emily Luchetti. If you come across a copy, snap it up. It is so worth it.

5 oz bittersweet chocolate
2 oz unsweetened chocolate
1 3/4 stick butter, unsalted
2 c sugar
5 eggs, large
3/4 c + 1 T flour
pinch salt
20 oz cream cheese
1 t vanilla extract

Heat oven to 325 F. Butter a 9×13 pan (bottom and sides). Melt chocolate in the microwave, stirring frequently. Cool slightly.

Cream butter and 1 1/4 c sugar until light and fluffy. Add 3 eggs while beating, mix until well incorporated. Stir in melted chocolate, mix until smooth. Stir in flour and salt. Reserve 1 c of chocolate batter, spread remaining batter in the pan.

Clean bowl and beater. Cream cream cheese and 3/4 c sugar until light and fluffy. Add 2 eggs and vanilla extract, beat until smooth. Spread cream cheese mix evenly over chocolate layer. Scatter spoonfuls of chocolate batter on top. Draw diagonal hash marks through the batter with a knife to marble the surface.

Bake for 50-55 minutes until a skewer in the middle exits with a moist crumb. Cool at least 1/2 hour before cutting.

Yes, they were rich and dense and very good in small pieces.

I thought I had a large stash (well, yes, I do). Dude, if you clicked on that link, please remember that those pictures are from nearly 4 years ago. Use your imagination.

The “flash your stash” posts on April 1 always made me giggle/cringe inwardly because many people showed a stash that would fit into maybe a single Rubbermaid bin. (Btw, I’m not “for” or “against” stashing – some of us do, some of us don’t, we all have perfectly good reasons behind our choices, and it’s what it is. Moving on.)

Then I saw Amy’s stash and was put in my place, so to speak. But Amy’s stash is not entirely personal stuff – she runs a wool business, I figured it was at least partly commercial inventory.

And lo, now I’ve seen the mother of all stashes. Go look here and drop to your virtual knees. Sugoi!

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On another note, the van Eaton fly-n-tote wheel does *NOT* fit under an airplane seat. Or, at least it did not fit under seats in the airplane that I was flying on. It also does not fit in the overhead bin in its fully folded configuration. (If I take it out of its bag and raise the maiden, it will fit lengthwise, but then it’s a bin-space hog and slides around the compartment without any protection.) I couldn’t count the number of eyes rolling in my general direction as I struggled with finding a place to store this wheel. Bad bad bad. Love the wheel – but from now on, it’s for car trips only. (I’m not knocking the design – I suspect that it used to fit without a problem in older, larger planes.)