Mersydotes

You've come to the end of your round or row or project, and it's time to tidily bind off your yarn and weave in all those pesky ends.  But what to do with that last bit of yarn sticking out from the final stitch?  Just pull it around back and weave it in?  Nah- there's a sleeker way to handle it called an invisible join.  Essentially, you just make a faux extra stitch to conceal where you stopped stitching. Here are the steps:  1. Once you've finished your work, cut the working end of the yarn and bind off. 2. Now your loose end looks like this, sticking up through the last stitch.  We're going to weave it in so that it lays flat and you won't be able to tell where you stopped.   3. Thread the loose end onto a darning needle, and identify the next stitch to the left. 4. Insert your needle from front to back and draw the yarn under both loops of that stitch.  Your yarn should now be at the back of your wo...

I used to think that there was a big secret to cooking that only a select few ever figured out.  Some "perfect" technique for each food that was the only way to do it justice.  How to roast the "perfect" carrot.  How to make the "perfect" strawberry jam.  But then one evening, I sat down with my family to steaming baked potatoes that had taken me hours to make but tasted just like every other baked potato I'd ever eaten, and I thought to myself, "Isn't it all about making something simply taste good?  Why should everything have to be complex and 'perfect'?"  If you can bung a potato into the oven, forget about it, and transform it into deliciousness, then that's good cooking! So here's my latest obsession: an iconoclastic one-pot pasta that doesn't care about perfection.  So what if it isn't al dente?  So what if the sauce isn't an all afternoon project?  Every ingredient tastes tasty- isn't that the p...