2010-06-20: A Little of Column A, a Little of Column B
Both handcrafts and food, in the very same blog post.
Finished!
A real, big finished item. Check out Genevieve, made from soft squishy Cascade 220, which I am currently living in. I liked it so much, I splashed out on a really nifty shawl pin, handmade by celtsmith on Etsy.
It's a nicely made brass pin with copper embellishments, super-sturdy, and with a project name like "Genevieve," thematically suitable. Even better, he threw in a free ring for me! How's that for service? I'm not usually a big jewellery person, but this ring is light, simple, and pretty in a way that suits my personal aesthetic really well. Fancy cardi, fancy shawl pin, fancy ring— I'm feeling a bit princessy lately.
It's been chilly lately, and my Best Beloved has ended up with a sinus infection. I have been making lots of what I call "Hot Lemon Drink" which is created as follows:
Cut a lemon into thirds, and cut a thin slice off of one of the thirds. Squeeze the rest of the piece into a mug that has two generous teaspoons of honey. Add a couple of slivers of fresh ginger and the thin slice you cut off the lemon. Pour just-under-boiling water over that and steep for a few minutes, stirring to make sure all the honey is dissolved.
And just to play catch up, since I had the camera out anyway, here are a few other things I've made but haven't shown off yet.
First up is this scarf I made for Mr Wiggins, with some free alpaca/wool yarn his mum gave me when she was clearing out a few things in her house. The stitch pattern is a nice honeycomb pattern I found in an issue of Yarn Magazine, but I wanted it to look nice on both sides, so I knit it in the round. It's also extra warm that way.
Next up is a spontaneous sock I started making with the leftover handspun from my Easter Show project. It's really soft and nice, featuring a short row heel (which is the only type of heel I can do without written instructions) and a checkerboard style stitch pattern I made up off the top of my head. I just hope I remember how to make #2!
These mittens I've made as a present for a friend, and they are my first serious attempt at stranded colourwork. Quite possibly I raised the bar a bit too high by choosing a cotton yarn for them. They came out OK, but I'd love to try again with wool.
My main current project is a new t-shirt. Remember the hemp and cotton from February last year? It's finally getting some attention. I doubt I have enough to finish the shirt, but I have plenty more fibre to card and spin up when I do run out of this skein. I started this on WWKIP, and it's being knit as a top-down raglan.
2010-03-20: Fierce Competition
In which I take it up a notch
Maybe it's just me, but I suspect even the most casual hobbyist at some point likes to pit their skills against another, just to see how they stack up against someone else. Human nature, I think, and definitely Andrea nature. When I was a child my parents enforced a no-scoring rule for most games because I'd get so agitated when I wasn't winning. I'm glad they found a good way to help train me out of my competitive nature at such a young age, but it still sneaks out from time to time.
This time it was to get a gauge of where my handspinning and knitting had evolved to. I intended to try my hand at the Arts Competition for the Sydney Royal Easter Show (if you are from the US, think County Fair&mdash it's the closest analogue).
I'd actually been meaning to enter for a while, but the deadline for entering would always slip past me or I had some excuse not to do it (like the wrong number of pattern repeats in a sock). This year I went crazy and entered in two items, just to sort of create that useful sense of panic that would goad me into action.
I finished the smallest and simplest entry (the second idea hasn't make it off the spinning wheel yet, but will be finished eventually), which was to spin some lace-weight yarn and knit it into an article of clothing. I made a small Moebius strip of lace to be worn around the neck as a scarf.
When I delivered my entry in person to the Olympic Park showgrounds earlier today, I had to bring my entry over to a labeled area on a folding table and put it with the other entries in my particular category of the competition. I didn't see much and I didn't look closely, but there were already plenty of beautiful handspun lacey shawl things sitting folded on the table that put my little teeny scarf to shame, even if it was a Moebius strip.
But here are a few reasons why I'm still proud of my effort, despite having seen plenty of other knitting efforts on other blogs that just blow me away:
- I started in December and I made the deadline
- Even though I was not only knitting something, but making the yarn as well!
- I achieved a decent, well planned handspun yarn with a clear idea in mind (and thanks to some lovely tops provided by Wooldancer)
- I started with a known technique (Cat Bordhi's Moebius cast on), but other than that the pattern was completely my own made up thing
- It is truly a one-of a kind thing, and something I will wear and enjoy even if I win the RAS Booby Prize (is there such a thing?)?
- Most of all, I did it! I finished and entered, and I already feel more motivated to try something bigger and better for next year.
2010-03-18: Pico de Gallo
The other kind of southern cooking I like.
This is probably the last food post for a while, and then I will start blogging about my handcrafts again. But first let me show you one of my favourite food secrets.
It looks like an innocuous, prosaic bowl of fruit salad. Then you take a bite and find the most amazing, mouth-watering surprise: mixed in with the sweet is the tang of lime and the soft, slow burn of chile powder.
The first incarnation of pico de gallo I met is the typical one you find in most Mexican restaurants in Southern California: diced tomatoes, onions, jalapeños, and cilantro (coriander). It would usually get served with a basket of freshly made tortilla chips automatically, free with the meal. But one day when I was in high school we came across this powdered spice mix stuff called pico de gallo that said it was supposed to be served on fruit. Huh? We asked the guy who was selling the stuff and he explained that where he came from in Mexico, this was "real" pico de gallo and they had fruit salad with this stuff all the time. My family has always been reasonably adventurous on the food front (mainly thanks to my Mom), so we bought some slightly skeptically, but willing to try it out once.
Try it we did, and this dish remains one of my favourite things on a hot summer day.
It's been a long time since I've had this kind of pico de gallo, mainly because I was never entirely sure what goes in the special chile powder you sprinkle over the fruit. Rather than experiment with making my own, I finally ended up finding some here and put in a big order for other Mexican food treats I don't normally find as well. The package was delivered last week and on the weekend I went into a cooking frenzy, making a big batch of chicken adobado, home made frijoles refritos, rice, and of course, pico de gallo with coconut, papaya, watermelon, cantaloupe (aka rockmelon), and a peach that was just on the verge of becoming overripe.
Traditional pico de gallo also usually involves cucumber and jicama, but I felt like something sweeter and I doubt I could find jicama anywhere in Sydney anyway.
There's also more about pico de gallo on Wikipedia.
2010-03-14: Breaking Bread
In which I attempt to overcome my mental hurdle with making my own bread.
Muffins, I can do. Scones, (American) biscuits, sure. The odd banana bread loaf, no problem. But one of my favourite things is a really nice, dense, crusty yeast bread, and this I have never even come close to mastering.
A while ago I got a bread machine through an employee incentive program at work (how often does employee of the month get you a bread machine?). At that point I thought, here we go: foolproof bread. I just put the ingredients in the machine and it does all the hard work! No longer would I have to peek into a towel covered bowl in the warmest place I could find in the kitchen and try and guess if my dough really had doubled in size. Is 1.5 times close enough, or does it really have to be doubled? And if I accidentally kinda cook the dough in the oven because there was no warm spot in the kitchen and I made the oven too hot, is there any way to salvage it? All these questions would now become obsolete with my new high-tech, shiny, dough-kneading, perfect temperature bread machine.
Except you still have to get the measurements right, and if the dough is too wet or too dry you still get BREAD FAIL.
I did make some OK loaves of bread in the machine, some I even enjoyed pretty well. But none of them were quite as nice tasting or as pretty to look at as a beatifully shaped sourdough loaf from the bakery.
So I was Googling around for random stuff as I am wont to do at work when I am waiting for some progress bar to go from 99% to 100% (always the longest period of time in any progress bar), and I found something that I hoped would help me crack the bread code.
I've had Brasserie Bread loaves before; I'm always on the lookout to try breads that don't have preservatives and other random useless ingredients in them. I didn't know much about the bakery itself, though, or realise that the offered a very popular Artisan Baking course. I had to book myself in waaay in advance, but I figure that was a pretty good recommendation, and in the end it was definitely worth the cost and effort.
Even though I had worked out which bus to take from work and tried to plan out my trip ahead of time, I ended up taking a taxi to Banksmeadow. The location doesn't really recommend itself if you don't have a car at your disposal. I got there early, though, and promptly locked the keys in the bathroom when I changed out of my work clothes (way to go, AJ, awesome first impression you made on the instructor).
Pretty soon the other 9 participants in the class arrived and we got down to the business of learning about sourdough starter cultures, dough shaping, and other cool hands-on stuff that nobody had ever really walked me through before. A lot of the theory was stuff I already understood, but when it came down to actually executing those steps, it was good to have someone watch you & let you know if you were doing it wrong and how to correct it.
There were also a couple of nice bonuses: a tour of the bakery and its operations, and a taste test of a bunch of different breads the bakery makes with wine & cheese.
We started off with some basic ingredients for our own sourdough bread: starter, flour, malt, water, and salt (the simpler the ingredients, the better the bread IMHO). After mixing and some kneading techniques, we were given some pre-made dough to practice shaping the bread into traditional loaves: batards, boules (dinner roll sized), braids, and baguettes. While we let our loaves rest before baking, we had a wander around the bakery (people still hard at work packaging up bread for the morning deliveries and finishing off pastries... drool...). After everything went into the ovens, we had the taste test (I did not eat dinner, I just had bread and goats cheese which were so filling and tasty I was fully satisfied).
Then we had the moment of truth— seeing all of our shaped loaves come out of the oven and look like "real" bread! I think most people in the class were pretty impressed with the results, even though we had pre-mixed dough and industrial ovens helping insure the perfection of our bread. The sourdough we made from scratch came home with us to ferment overnight and be baked at home, a combined final exam and homework.
I had so much bread, I took one loaf and some small rolls into work, which were promtply devoured. And my final exam results? I'd say I got a solid C+.
My homework loaf was not pretty, and it didn't form a proper crust. I blame this on insufficient oven temperature. I probably didn't pre-heat the oven for long enough, and the thermostat on my ancient gas oven is definitively broken, and I have never bothered to work out what temperature the oven actually gets to.
But it passed, most importantly, because despite the crust and the blobby shape, it tasted exactly right. It was some of the nicest tasting sourdough I've ever eaten, and it's already gone.
I have definite plans to further investigate making my own starter.
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.