These olive oil cakes with lemon and thyme look DELICIOUS, don't you think?  I love the Pioneer Woman food blog. 

Also, I NEED to make this, so I can whip up amazing Thai-style stirfries at the drop of a hat. Mmmmm.

And last but not least, this afternoon I plan to make fresh pasta. Lots of fresh pasta. I'm thinking: black pepper pasta, pesto cannelloni with my own frozen pesto sauce and home-canned tomato sauce, and butternut and sage ravioli (sage from my garden and butternut from our local CSA).

Homemade pasta isn't hard to make - even ravioli. I was really surprised to find that out! Homemade ravioli tastes amazing and freezes beautifully. I like to make lots, and have loads of fresh pasta on hand in the freezer.

So I guess these cold, sunny winter days inspire me to cook. What are you guys cooking up, in this cold and dreary winter?

This post has nothing to do with herbs. I'll just make that clear from the beginning.

This post is about knitting, and charity knitting in particular. My mom gave me a huge bag of leftover yarn scraps. I had been making tons of fun and crazy sideways scarves using scraps, and that's certainly fun. But...these scraps inspired me to google "charity knitting", and I found this project: Knit a Square.

Here's the basic idea: Use your scraps, and knit or crochet simple 8 inch squares. Send your squares in, and volunteers will sew them together to make colorful, warm blankets to be given to the many, MANY needy AIDS orphans in Africa.

You can knit or crochet your squares, they have GREAT instructions for both. You can use absolutely any kind of yarn you have on hand. Don't know how to knit or crochet? This is the perfect way to learn! They have clear instructions on their site, including free how to knit e-classes!  I love that these are small, mindless projects. They're easy to carry around - I always have knitting on hand, you never know when you'll be stuck waiting somewhere. I also knit while listening to music, books on tape, or watching TV.

Donna and I are going to be working on some squares for this project. If you're local, and want to knit some up, feel free to give them to us when you're done and we will gladly pay the postage and ship them in. If you need yarn, let me know - we have lots of scraps and are glad to share.