Peanuuuut, peanut butter.. (and jelly!)

We, as a family, have embarked on new lengths for our personal health: gone is store-bought bread and peanut butter. I'm now making it myself. It's incredibly easy. For peanut butter you put the peanuts (dry roasted, no added anything) in the food processor and grind until it's as smooth or chunky as you want it. Smoother takes longer, chunky not so much. Dribble some honey in the mix for however degree of sweetness and some canola oil if you want it smoother and that's it. You can add salt and mix right at the end but we like it without. For the bread I just do a basic whole wheat recipe for a 1.5 lb. loaf in the bread machine. It's whole wheat flour, sugar, salt, water, and yeast. If you want herbs, add herbs before the yeast. That's it. It's extra time to prepare and extra dishes to wash but it's not crazytown-like and the prices of store-bought bread are making my eyebrows raise ($3-$5 for the true good-for-you whole grain) and it just feels good. I'll willingly eat this bread and I figured I'll have to make a loaf every 2 days during the week for Hubby and SuperGirl's lunches.

Now if I could just find a way around the nitrate-injected, sodium-rich lunch meat. Any ideas apart from me having to bake 2 chickens every week? The Biggest Loser cookbook suggested getting a meat slicer and scale to weigh everything but when I mentioned that to Hubby he gave me a funny look. I don't think I'd want to own a meat slicer with a 19 month old and 4.5 year old anyway...

The rasta/newsboy hat is nearly finished. I finished the brim and all I have to do now is cut out the template in the plastic mesh and sew it up in the brim. SuperGirl is so excited about the hat. She can't wait to give it.

I did find some things about that pattern that needed further explaining (which I penciled in just in case I decide to revisit the pattern) and I have a re-occurring question about my personal knitting: ssk. Is it supposed to look THAT different from K2tog? I get a little line crossing in my ssk when in k2tog it tucks in nicely. Again, any thoughts? I thought I was doing it right but possibly not. It's consistent so I'm not going to redo anything but it's something I would like to correct if there was a pattern that called for things to look more superficially symmetrical.

The hat looks cooler with each finishing touch. And the cool thing is (especially for those of you with big hair issues, SuperKaren!) this hat can be made for dreds, big hair, or just extra floppy-ness simply by adding more cable repeats. It was a pattern to fit the varying degree of expression. Cool beans! :)