2010-03-11: Biscuits and Tomato Gravy
On comfort food and starting over again.
Not a lot of people I meet know about biscuits and tomato gravy and most (like my beloved Mr Wiggins) think it sounds a little weird and gross. Especially in Australia, where "biscuits" don't mean fluffy scone like quick bread rolls. Until the internet arrived, there were very few people outside my family who knew what tomato gravy was. Now I can see that there are plenty of other places where you can find recipes.
This, however, is the one that I learned from my mom and subsequently tweaked to suit myself. My mom learned it from her mom, who probably picked it up in Georgia or some other southern state when my mom and her siblings were growing up as wandering minister's children. It was one of my favourite breakfast treats growing up, and nowadays when I'm really after some comfort food on the weekend I make this and scrambled eggs for pure, unadulterated bliss.
Like the best home-cooked recipes, this one has nothing resembling an exact measurement. You just have to practice until you get it tasting the way you like it. This is also just enough for one person, since I can never convince Adam to give it a try.
First I make the dough for the biscuits. I use the "Aunt Daisy's Biscuits" recipe from a recipe book my mom gave me called Georgia Plantation and Historical Homes Cookbook (good luck finding your own copy, just ask me for the recipe sometime). When the biscuits are in the oven baking, I start making the gravy.
- Slice or chop 2 big, juicy, ripe tomatoes
- Heat some butter in a skillet
- Fry the tomatoes in the butter, adding salt and pepper, until the flesh starts to soften and the skin curls up and separates
- Pour some milk in over the tomatoes until they are completely covered
- Dissolve a couple of teaspoons of flour in a little more milk. When the milk in the pan starts to bubble, add the flour and milk paste to thicken the gravy.
- Let the gravy cook until it gets as thick as you want it. There should still be chunks of tomato left. Adjust the salt and pepper if needed; it should be really savoury, with enough salt to really accentuate the flavour of the tomatoes and enough pepper to give it some zing.
At this point, the biscuits should be out of the oven cooling. I scramble some eggs, take a couple of biscuits and split them in half, smother them in gravy and put the scrambled eggs on the side. Then I sit down and enjoy.
I've been on a real comfort food kick lately (much to the detriment of my waistline). 2009 was a tough year for me, which is why I didn't really blog much. A new house, a renovation, a partner who fell seriously ill in the middle of that and a hectic last minute move into the new place. It took the rest of the year just to start feeling normal again.
So my not-yet-renovated kitchen is getting some creative cooking use, and I turn back to the recipes from my childhood (hard to come by good Mexican food and Southern Soul Food in Sydney, so I extra-enjoy it when I make it for myself).
I'm still knitting, and spinning, and those creative outlets haven't suffered too much from my Year of Insanity. I should have an update soon on my very first entry into the Royal Arts Show!
Here's to all the little things that bring us comfort when outrageous fortune starts slinging arrows.
2009-02-24: We Rogues of Wool
A knitting Sea Shanty
I normally don't blog videos and random funny stuff, but this combines two of my most favourite things (knitting and sailing), and it was cute, so now you must suffer through.
Found on this amusing thread on Making Light was a link to a webcomic called Little Dee which has as a character a vulture that likes to knit called Vachel. And then they made a movie about him. Hilarity ensued.
2009-02-22: Facelift
Reviving my neglected blog.
For the past several months, my life has been consumed by a big project, so this particular website has lain dormant, although my spinning and knitting efforts have been toodling along quietly in the background. However, my other big distraction is getting to a point where it might be wrapping up soon, or at leasat it no longer needs all my dedicated attention and blogging energy, so I decided, what better way to re-launch my creative web space with a new site design?
The little girl is me, of course! I'm guessing around age five or six, somewhere along the southern Californian coast, engaged in a very typical activity for young me, which was playing in the ocean.
Let me see if I can re-cap all the stuff I've worked on for over a year now.
I completed my first "real" jumper, the "Cozy V-Neck Pullover with Deep Ribbing" from Fitted Knits by Stefanie Japel. Although I've made a couple of jumpers before, they were kind of my own random creations and came out not exactly the way I'd want. For once I decided I needed to follow a pattern and better understand the concepts of shaping and putting together a jumper before going off on my own, and I was pretty pleased with the results. Ironically, it is a teeny bit too big, so I didn't really succeed 100%. But thanks to the Patons Inca I used to make it, it is warm, soft, and comfy, and I wear it frequently to combat the hand-numbing overkill aircon at my work office. If I had any complaint about the yarn, it would be that it pills a bit, but what should you expect from a fuzzy yarn? I haven't bothered to take a photo of the completed item yet, mostly because I'm too busy wearing it to take a photo of it. If you must just imagine the photo on the left with sleeves and a finished neck.
This project was the first step of a bigger idea to include more handmade items in my wardrobe. Shopping for mass produced clothing rankles me on several levels, and I need a new wardrobe, so the idea is to slowly replace items with handmade ones (by myself or others) until most clothing I have is made to fit me, look the way I want, and produced as locally as possible.
I also finally finished the TOFUtsies Sock Club December pattern, only 6 months late! I gave these to a friend who had seen me knitting the October socks at a barbecue. I am a sucker for compliments.
Speaking of both socks and gifts, Mr Wiggins had complained that I was giving all my handknits away to everyoe in the world but him. Now it pains me ever to think he might be neglected and I am usually overjoyed to make him something, so I was excited when we sat down with my stitch pattern book together and picked out some things he liked and I developed a sock design just for him.
Right around that time we traveled to the US and this was my on the road knitting project. We arrived for my dad's wedding, visited a bunch of relatives in between, and then went to San Diego Comic-Con. Here is one of the socks being worked on while we were in one of the interminable queues for panels.
Both Mr Wiggins and I were happy with the finished product, although for some reason I minorly botched the heels. I was completely mentally unable to do my usual short row heel on these socks, and did a very sad imitation of a heel flap from the bottom up, without any good reference material. Subsequently the heels are a bit tight for the boy when he puts the socks on, but they are still wearable and are ultimately keep-my-feet-warm-at-home socks, so the fit isn't a deal breaker. However, I have been inspired to do another pair at some point for him with better planning and execution.
Next up (I think) was my penultimate pair of TOFUtsies sock club socks — February's Hugs n Kisses pattern. Since I had already worn hols in the toes of the other 2 pair I made for myself (I am really bad about trimming my toenails sometimes) I kept this pair for myself. I used the last yarn and pattern as my Kris Kringle present for the Sydney December WWKIP Holiday Shindig at the Opera House. I also had a go at making a small makeshift lightbox for taking photos of my work. It didn't work 100% perfectly (I need a better lamp or multiple lamps), I do like the way it diffused the light much better and evened out the photo.
There's been spinning too! Oh yes, even a bit of a spinning revival for me. I made my PIF swap partner Jenny this handspun from some of my gum leaf dyeing experiments. I really liked it, although it's very subdued and "natural" looking, so I was a little worried she might think it bland. Fortunately she really appreciated the yarn! By the way, if anyone's still interested in that swap, technically I have 2 more PIF gifts to make for someone in order to fulfil the swap terms.
I also continued dye experiments with some commercial fibre-reactive dyes. I ordered some Drimarene-K from Batik Oetoro and experimented a bit with dyeing non-protein fibre; in particular a bunch of de-gummed hemp I originally got several years ago from Ecoyarns. I found the process really simple but I need more sensitive scales to measure the dye a little more accurately. My crappy kitchen scales don't handle 1g increments well enough. But I like the colour I got by accident.
I decided to blend it with some of the odds and ends of cotton I had lying around and so weighed out different batches of cotton and hemp and began blending them on my hand carders. Here's what I have so far, which is the green-dyed hemp and some naturally (olive) green Pachuko cotton. It's still on my bobbin as spinning has gone back on hold since around Christmas. However, I'm keen to get back into this as soon as it's practical, because spinning long draw finally clicked for me on this project, and whee! Does it fly!
I also worked on some really lovely yarn made from roving given to me in the Tea Cosy swap, way back when. I enjoyed this lot as well, since I was really having fun dividing up the different colours to produce different effects in the yarns. I made this into a beret that needs to be revisited, as it's a little too floppy for my head. Once I redo the band (or maybe felt it?) I will get a funky button from All Buttons Great and Small to finish it off.
The last of my completed projects was another pair of handspun & handknit socks. Again the pattern was of my own design. I was thinking about entering them into the Royal Easter Show when I realised that they had different numbers of pattern repeats on the cuffs (not drastically, but enough to be noticeable once I blocked them). Otherwise they were soooo beautiful. Grrr. When I get some motivation I will re-knit the longer one so they both match. I've tried them on and they are the perfect, comfy, lounge-around socks.
I think that's enough for now! Hopefully more to follow in less than six month's time.
2008-05-12: Mother's Day Scarf
Happy Mother's Day to my great mother
My brain makes a noise right now and it is something like: Blshghrhrhrggghgghuuugh.
I'm at the difficult
end of a difficult project at work, and work/life balance has gone completely out the window. My kitchen has been
feral, my clean underpants nonexistent, and dust bunnies have taken over large swathes of my apartment.
But I did find a coping mechanism, and that was to work on this:
Which soon very quickly turned in to this, which is good, because I had planned it as a gift for my mom:
It is a scarf version of the Clapotis pattern by Kate Gilbert, available for free at Knitty. Here's a close up:
After a couple of false starts it was a really breezy pattern; so much so that I had it memorised about 1/4 of the way through and was knitting away in line for the Neil Gaiman signing at Kinokuniya. Since we had lots of time (we were nearly last in line & there were hundreds of people present) I got most of the second half done in one day, and two Kinokuniya employees came over to have a look & we talked fibre geek speak for a while (hope I do run into them again at a Stitch n Bitch someday!).
I've already shown the photos to Mom, who was very appreciative & is keen to see it in person when I bring it on my next US trip in July. I just blocked it over the weekend and it looks extra nice with clean crisp edges and corners.
2008-03-23: Nitto seetaa bukku
Entering the bewildering world of Japanese knitting books.
Thanks to the insidious influence of Andrew, I have now found another way to make knitting even more challenging for myself than it already is: making knitting patterns in a completely unfamiliar language.
Although thanks to many years of watching subtitled anime, I know the proper usage for the phrases gomen nasai and baka, I am entirely unable to read Japanese. However, when I was at Kinokuniya this weekend, I was compelled by the amazingness of the patterns to pick up these two gems.
The charts look pretty manageable but I think the biggest hurdle will be working out what needles, weight of yarn, and tension I need to complete the patterns. I've also read that patterns are usually only provided in one size, and if I need a different size I will need to create my own chart. Sounds like fun, time to get out the graph paper!
Here is my link roundup of useful info I will need to start tackling these babies.