Self care on a winter weekend

 Bitter cold and windy, even the sunshine is not tempting me out.  But it's a good time to catch up on things I promised myself to cook.  Here are some of the frozen sweet potato gnocchi, and a couple of hot Italian sausages, plus while I was running a hot oven, heads of garlic roasting to make a garlic spread

The gnocchi were frozen uncooked, so they have to do the diving into boiling water phase first, before they go into a 400F oven to roast for about 20 minutes. I just plunged them in still frozen, made no difference. Sausage was frozen, just thawed enough to skin them, then same oven, same period.

The garlic needed about 20 minutes more, still in a hot oven, doused liberally with olive oil.  When it's cool, I'll squeeze out the softened garlic, great for a spread.  You can use this all over the place, specially good for garlic bread.

 

And here's lunch.  Also another helping of same for tomorrow.

 

 And everywhere is evidence of my industry, now doing humble duty in the kitchen.  Left a painted tote bag, I made a lot of these at one time, and taught other people how to, great fun.  Stuffed with my hand-knitted face cloths now relegated to be kitchen and floor cloths, but sturdy? you can't wear them out.  I made them in order to try out new stitch patterns as well as to have useful things.  On the right is the bag I wove years ago, using a pattern from the Weaving without a Loom book, and still holding up after much use, now stuffed with kitchen cloths.  I don't use paper in the kitchen, but I do use a lot of cloths.

Some blessed soul has suddenly started uploading some of my favorite books in audio form on YouTube.  Here's a Georgette Heyer. And they have excellent readers, who understand the text and the humor and where the  emphasis should go.  Which is more than I can say for a lot of the audiobooks on the library apps, which are strictly amateur night at the Bijou.  This book accompanied today's spinning, plying and cooking.

Onward, new reading on my Kindle, Lisa See never fails when I'm wondering what would be nice to read next.  And since I got it via the library app which lets me download onto my Kindle, not onto a device with a refreshing screen, which gives me migraine, all the better.

 So I guess I'm set.  Keep warm, if this applies!  Find your snowshovel, that's advice to me, since it's outside in the storage closet, and I may need it to dig the door open..