Happy New Year

As tonight is still Hannukah, here's my recipe for latkes, from my fabulous caterer Aunt with the same name as my mother, Claudia.

Latkes

4 medium potatoes, peeled
1 medium onion
2 eggs
3/4 Cup matzah meal or a roughly 50/50 mixture of all-purpose flour and corn meal.
Salt and Black Pepper to taste
Vegetable oil for frying

In wide low pan, heat about an inch of oil. Grate potatoes & onions (a food processor is a great way to go). Add eggs flour or meal & salt and pepper. Mix well. The oil is hot enough when a drop of water flicked into it spits back. Spoon the latkes out in clumps into the hot oil, smooshing them a bit with the back of the spoon to make them flat. Fry until golden brown, making sure to flip them and brown both sides.

Serve with applesauce or sour cream.

*note* The number of latkes this recipe renders depends on the size of latkes you make. We usually end up grating like.... 25 potatoes, and then making everything else up as we go, but this is the basic proportions. We have a big family that eats alot of latkes.
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Happy New Year! Some bloggers have resolved against resolutions... but I guess I've never seen resolutions as they're generally thought to be. I see the turn of the new year as a good time to reflect on where you were last year and where you want to head in the future. It sort of forces you to think about it, when you might have been ignoring it for a good long time otherwise. So I set goals for the new year and I consciously work toward them whenever I can. Here are the areas I'm working on:

Knitting: Last year, I decided I wanted to design more and be published. This year, I want to keep a better knitting design notebook. I have an idea floating in my head for a knitting book. I know everyone and their pet hamster's cousin is publishing a knitting book these days, but this would be more of an "Art and Knitting" book. Hard to describe, and I don't want to jeapordize my chances by talking about it too much. But I will need to keep a much more meticulous notebook for this to be feasible.

In this vein, I also want to design more sweaters. Garments with multiple sizes instead of just a one-size-fits-all approach. I will continue to design lace, so no worries for those craving more shawls. Designing lace shawls is my love, and I won't give that up, but I need to branch out. To help facilitate this sweater design process, I've been looking for old pattern drafting books. I have a really great one that I've actually used to draft my own clothing, but I want some more. Ones with a bit more innovation. If you've got any ideas or recommendations, I'd love to hear them.

The situation for both of these goals seems to be right. For the book project, I need a better digital camera (which my parents gave C and me for Christmas), and for the designing stuff, my whole family went in and bought me a dressmaking form. YAY!

Self Betterment: I have self esteem issues. Yes, I will readily admit that. I know why I have them, and the effect they have on my life, and things are getting better all the time in that department. But when I'm sick or really tired, the monster still takes over and I allow myself to get depressed. I have dealt with depression for years and finally learned to be myself and love myself this last year. In some ways, it's probably setting a goal of publishing designs and making it happen that's been key in that transformation. But this year I will focus on those weak times. I will not allow myself to loose focus when I'm sick and start to tear myself apart.

Web Presence: I'm working on finding a new site where I can sell patterns, and in the new year, I will be offering more books for sale (2 that will be posted perhaps later today, or maybe Tuesday, whenever I can get to a computer that will read my digital image card). And hopefully I'll have the Seraphim pattern up for purchase later in the week. I've signed up with payloadz.com, so the whole process should be much MUCH faster. It will allow buyers to pay through paypal and then they will receive an e-mail with the download code or something and then be able to get it almost instantly. No more waiting for me to check my e-mail. I'm also working on a site design and hopefully I'll be able to get that up in the near future.

There are goals in other areas such as finance, etc... but I won't be posting those here because some people I don't like very much read this blog occasionally, and I don't really want to give them any kind of advantage if I don't have to.

Thanks everyone for the healthy wishes. I'm doing better although I'm still coughing and pretty weak, but hopefully I'll be good to go to work on Tuesday. Happy birthday Cara! And Happy New Year to you all!

M