{"id":3937,"date":"2018-12-10T18:43:34","date_gmt":"2018-12-11T00:43:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shirlsu.com\/?p=3937"},"modified":"2018-12-11T12:17:18","modified_gmt":"2018-12-11T18:17:18","slug":"more-fun-with-food-and-knitting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shirlsu.com\/?p=3937","title":{"rendered":"More fun with food and knitting"},"content":{"rendered":"

My family includes several diabetics (me too!)\"\"<\/a> so when planning holiday food gifts, I try and stay away from typical candies, cookies and sweet treats.\u00a0 Don’t get me wrong, we still love those things but when making them, I cut as much sugar as possible.\u00a0 I prefer to lean more toward low fat, protein-rich goodies.\u00a0 In this vein, I LOVE making and giving jerky!<\/p>\n

When my local grocer ran a sale on chuck roasts, I bought several with the idea of making jerky for holiday gifting.\u00a0 I whipped up a batch of marinade, soaked the trimmed, thinly sliced beef and loaded my old 4 tray dehydrator.\u00a0 The jerky turned out wonderfully but I could tell the dehydrator was struggling.\u00a0 I remember my DH and DS working on it several years ago to squeeze a little more life from this 40+ year old, very used (and loved) appliance so after talking to Jake, we decided I should purchase a new one.\u00a0 I can pass the old one down to him and he can fiddle with it and \"\"<\/a>hopefully make it last a little longer.\u00a0 He LOVES jerky (as do his friends) so he’s excited about the prospect of making his own.\u00a0 It sounded like an excellent plan to me.<\/p>\n

Upon finding a heavily discounted model on Amazon, I bought it and the new 8 tray Nesco Gardenmaster\u00ae arrived on Saturday.\u00a0 Oh my gosh, I LOVE it!\u00a0 Now I can make double batches of everything and with its hefty-sized fan motor and heater (twice the wattage as the old model), foods will dry faster and more evenly.\u00a0 I immediately sliced and began marinating more jerky.<\/p>\n

As I was loading the dehydrator trays with beef today, I remembered some mushrooms I mistakenly purchased (already had a big package and bought more).\u00a0 Since I still had 3 empty trays, I sliced those mushrooms and added them to the drying \"\"<\/a>session.\u00a0 My house smells AWESOME with the combination of drying jerky and mushrooms.\u00a0 I will gift the jerky and keep the mushrooms to include in home cooked recipes without worries of spoilage.\u00a0 Win\/win!<\/p>\n

Knowing my son and his best friend (my adopted son) are wearing knitted hats this year, I’ve continued to make them.\u00a0 I figure if the guys like to wear knitted hats, they should have a wardrobe of ’em!\u00a0 They are fairly mindless to knit and I have yarn to use and time to use it.\u00a0 I enjoy the knitting and they enjoy the hats so it’s a winning combination.<\/p>\n

This first hat is another Sockhead Slouch Hat<\/a> like I’ve knitted before.\u00a0 It’s a popular style with the guys.\u00a0 This one used Knit Pick’s Stroll Hand Painted Sock Yarn<\/a> in colorway ‘Coffee Shop’.\u00a0 I sent it home with Jacob to give to his friend but Jake decided to \"\"<\/a>keep it for a while before gifting it.\u00a0 Stinker!<\/p>\n

I made another one using Knit Pick’s Stroll Hand Painted Sock Yarn<\/a> (it was on sale; what can I say?) but this time in colorway ‘Koi Pond’.\u00a0 I’ve made socks using this same colorway but had extra yarn so made this Swirling LOSY (Left-Over Sock Yarn) Hat<\/a>.\u00a0 If neither of the guys likes it, I’m sure Jacob can find someone that will enjoy wearing it.<\/p>\n

That’s it for now.\u00a0 Please have a safe, snuggly warm week.<\/p>\n

Shirl<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My family includes several diabetics (me too!) so when planning holiday food gifts, I try and stay away from typical candies, cookies and sweet treats.\u00a0 Don’t get me wrong, we still love those things but when making them, I cut as much sugar as possible.\u00a0 I prefer to lean more toward low fat, protein-rich goodies.\u00a0 (continue reading…) <\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,11,41],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shirlsu.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3937"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shirlsu.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shirlsu.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shirlsu.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shirlsu.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3937"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/www.shirlsu.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3956,"href":"http:\/\/www.shirlsu.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3937\/revisions\/3956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shirlsu.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shirlsu.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shirlsu.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}