Bumbling Bees

Changes to Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service

2012-01-27T22:27:00.001-05:00

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Dear Google user, We're getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and replacing them with one that's a lot shorter and easier to read. Our new policy covers multiple products and features, reflecting our desire to create one beautifully simple and intuitive experience across Google. We believe this stuff matters, so please take a few minutes to read our updated Privacy Policy and Terms of Service at http://www.google.com/policies. These changes will take effect on March 1, 2012.
One policy, one Google experience

Easy to work across Google Our new policy reflects a single product experience that does what you need, when you want it to. Whether you're reading an email that reminds you to schedule a family get-together or finding a favorite video that you want to share, we want to ensure you can move across Gmail, Calendar, Search, YouTube, or whatever your life calls for with ease.	Tailored for you If you're signed into Google, we can do things like suggest search queries – or tailor your search results – based on the interests you've expressed in Google+, Gmail, and YouTube. We'll better understand which version of Pink or Jaguar you're searching for and get you those results faster.	Easy to share and collaborate When you post or create a document online, you often want others to see and contribute. By remembering the contact information of the people you want to share with, we make it easy for you to share in any Google product or service with minimal clicks and errors.

Protecting your privacy hasn't changed Our goal is to provide you with as much transparency and choice as possible, through products like Google Dashboard and Ads Preferences Manager, alongside other tools. Our privacy principles remain unchanged. And we'll never sell your personal information or share it without your permission (other than rare circumstances like valid legal requests).	Got questions? We've got answers. Visit our FAQ at http://www.google.com/policies/faq to read more about the changes. (We figured our users might have a question or twenty-two.)

Notice of Change March 1, 2012 is when the new Privacy Policy and Terms will come into effect. If you choose to keep using Google once the change occurs, you will be doing so under the new Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. Please do not reply to this email. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered. Also, never enter your Google Account password after following a link in an email or chat to an untrusted site. Instead, go directly to the site, such as mail.google.com or www.google.com/accounts. Google will never email you to ask for your password or other sensitive information.

Sourdough Starter, Day 1

2010-07-18T16:20:00.005-05:00

Guess Kea and I are both back in grad school and have bread on the brain!

Last spring I started a new masters program in Public Health that took up all my non-work time, thus the lack of postings on this blog. Having taken the summer off from school, I've been happily filling all my free time with seeing friends that I ignored, picking up knitting projects I'd set down, and using cooking equipment that had been gathering dust.

One of my goals for this summer is to create a nice, healthy starter so that I can take that next step into breadmaking and tackle sourdoughs again. A few years ago I tried making a sourdough starter by following instructions from the Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book. The starter went through all the textbook phases and was fine, but I was never happy with the bread that I made with it. Looking back, I was still too new to breadmaking, terrified of making any small mistake, and probably set my expectations too high (for myself and my bread). That, plus I couldn't bear throwing away all that starter every time I wanted to refresh it. This time, I am using instructions from Maggie Glezer's "A Blessing of Bread." Her starter instructions are the only ones I have come across that starts off by saying that she uses the minimal quantity of flour and water to reduce waste. Ahh...girl after my own heart! She also reassures her readers that organic flour, distilled water, and (after the starter is established) weekly feedings are all unnecessary, thus taking a lot of the expense and pressure out of the endeavor. What's not to like?

Unlike Kea, I can't complain of the same difficulty in finding good bread. Here in DC we have our fair share of respectable bakeries, but there is an undeniable gratification about making your own bread, and especially one from your very own starter. So for the next few weeks I will be documenting the process of my starter on this blog and hopefully inspire my fellow Bees to try their hand at one of their own, too. Wish me luck!

Bread in London

2010-05-15T14:58:00.000-05:00

Greetings from London, everyone. I haven't posted here in almost a year. I don't know if any of you still check this site, but I figured I'd come and say hi to anyone who might be listening. I'm most of the way through my master's degree, exams and term papers are over, Boyfriend's been "kidnapped" for a family vacation, I've got the house to myself for a week, and for the first time in months I have free time on my hands. And I need an excuse not to start working on my dissertation right away.

Since this is a food/craft blog, let me start by saying that bread in England is bland. Well of course bread is bland, you might say. It is bread. But the grocery store bread you get here does not even taste like bread. It tastes like...nothing. The white bread tastes like styrofoam. The brown bread tastes like cardboard. I gave up on grocery store bread and went to the local bakery. It was marginally better, but still tasted like a puffy matzo cracker. Compared to British bread, even the humble, standard Hong Kong "Garden" loaf is bursting with nutty aroma. I can't understand it.

So now that I have free time, I've taken matters into my own hands and started making my own bread. I am operating under the general principle that the more egg, milk, butter, cheese and cinnamon (but not at the same time) I add my dough, the better. I have no idea how any of this works scientifically, but I don't care as long as it turns out anything but bland. Or burnt. Burnt is bad.

I've got some whole grain-ish, eggy, milky, buttery dough rising right now, and I'll post pictures when it's done.

Aside from the bread and the sausages (don't get me started on the sausages - ick), I am enjoying quite a lot of the food here in London. I can get so many ingredients that were rare or ridiculously expensive in Hong Kong. Like almond powder. Or whole wheat flour. And the yoghurt! It is so cheap and plentiful, I don't have to make it at home anymore. Boyfriend is in love with the cheese. And the Vietnamese food here is much better than what you can get in Hong Kong.

But seriously? How does every single commercial bakery in this country screw up bread?

3 Chicks + 3 Recipes = New Friends!

2010-03-22T18:48:00.012-05:00

My boss is fond of telling me that I am an introvert, and it's true. I enjoy spending quality time with just a few people versus large groups, but because I also enjoy my "quiet time," it means that I am usually slow to make new friends. I am delighted to be able to say then, that I have two new friends - Liz and Kim - with whom to share my love for cooking and eating. It all started when Liz decided to pop in a DVD of Julie and Julia on a transatlantic flight. Liz hadn't been too enthusiastic about the movie but figured it would do for some mindless entertainment. Ironically, she loved it so much that as soon as Liz got off the plane she wasted no time and started a blog, cast an open call for partners, and picked out a cookbook.

And so, that was how my DH and I found ourselves at Liz's house with her husband Tri, Kim (Liz's cousin), and Kim's BF on Sunday evening, faced with a mountain of red chili peppers, several pounds of ground sirloin, a package of truffle butter, a dozen different spices, and more.

While the guys heated up the grill and sipped wine on the deck, Liz, Kim and I got to work deciphering three recipes from the Top Chef cookbook/web site:
spicy fire wings with pineapple-jicama slaw,

black truffle burgers (sorry, cookbook-only recipe),
and strawberry apple crisp.
Despite some glaring editorial mistakes that required some educated guesses on our part (three QUARTS of chili peppers, people? Really??), the food all turned out excellent, if you can't tell from the photos, and we had a great time getting to know each other and messing up Liz's kitchen in the pursuit of a Top Chef-calibre gourmet meal. You'd never have guessed that Kim and I had never met before this, and that the three of us had never been in a kitchen together before. We made an super team and got dinner out on time, in a good humor, and without any major snafus. Two hours of cooking passed in a blur of happy chattering and a coordinated dance around each other and the butcher block island.

Thanks Liz! Can't wait for the next lesson!

Photos are all courtesy of Liz's DH, Tri, who is a fantastic photographer. Aside from working a 9-5 job, Tri also photographs local boxing matches for an online boxing magazine. Check out his other great pictures at www.tringuyenimages.com!

Holiday Baking

2009-12-06T11:20:00.004-05:00

Yesterday was the perfect baking day. It started raining at 12am and didn't stop all night. By late morning, the rain had turned into big, wet snowflakes. It was cold and messy outside, so I stayed home and made a stew and dessert. The plan had been to start making candies for my holiday care packages, but it was too humid so it had to be cake instead. Well actually, a tart. An Austrian Linzertorte, to be exact.

I love Linzertortes. I love to make them, because the results are a lot more impressive-looking than the actual effort - they are as beautiful as making a perfect lattice-top pie, but much quicker and easier. I love the way they taste, and I love that if I have any extra dough, I can make Linzer cookies with them. I could also do away with the entire tart and go straight for the cookies, which are just as gorgeous, and travel well in holiday cookie tins.

I used this recipe from epicurious.com because it called for almond flour, which I had on hand.
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Linzertorte-109549

Traditional Linzertortes all use a nut flour - usually almond, sometimes hazelnut or walnut. The recipes that didn't use ground nuts I passed on, because then I would just be making a spiced tart, not a Linzertorte. The nuts are usually what the store-bought versions skimp on too, which always makes for a huge disappointment. I don't have a food processor so I prefer to buy the nut flour. Almond flour is the easiest to find and least expensive. The large proportion of nuts to flour in the dessert makes the crust particularly fine and crisp-crumbly. While it's baking, the butter baking with the almond makes the most amazing sweet, rich, nutty aroma. Although the recipe is straightforward, the use of nut flour and almost a full jar of jam makes it a relatively expensive dessert to make, but oh, so worth it. You be the judge.

Ice cream

2009-05-05T07:44:00.004-05:00

It must've been a couple of years ago that my mom first told me about how it's possible to make ice cream in a ziplock bag. I'm not sure why I haven't tried to make it up until now, considering that I've been experimenting with sorbet, but it was probably because I didn't know where to get rock salt.

If I'd ever bothered to look, I'd have noticed that coarse sea salt is available in my local supermarket for pennies.

So last weekend, I assembled a carton of milk, a bag of ice, some sugar, some vanilla flavouring, and some coarse salt.

At first, I tried the ziplock bag method. That's where you put the milk with flavourings inside a small sealed ziplock bag, which is in turn placed inside a larger bag full of ice and salt. And then you shake it. And shake it some more. And shake it until your hands freeze. And then you put on some oven mitts, and shake it again. Until, supposedly, it turns into ice cream. Unfortunately, my arms got tired first. I decided that the ziplock bag method is a novelty stunt good only for entertaining small masochistic children.

So then I dumped the partially frozen milk out into my rice cooker's pot (not having any other metal containers of the right size), and sat it in a mixing bowl full of salted ice. I stirred it first with a whisk, and then with a spatula, which was much less tiring.

It's remarkable how cold the salt makes the ice - frost condensed from the air started forming on the surface of the outer bowl.

Eventually, the mixture stiffened into something resembling a lumpy soft serve, and when it stopped getting any stiffer I tipped it into a container and put it in the freezer.

And there I stopped. And the ice cream got very hard. It probably would've been a better idea to take it out and give it a stir every hour or so, like I do with sorbet. But it was still good. It tasted like those milk popsicles, and was even better with chocolate syrup. I used 2% fat milk, but whole milk or even heavy cream would have made a much richer ice cream. I think I might try making frozen yoghurt next. If I can make that much yoghurt.

The flavour of money

2009-04-28T05:39:00.003-05:00

I've figured out how to make my home-made sorbet taste all fancy and expensive.

Put basil in it.

Or rather, infuse the basil in the hot simple syrup, if you want to get all culinary.

And now that I know how fancypants sorbet makers get their sorbet to taste like that, all I can say is, that's so cheap! I was expecting magical fairy dust, or something.

Knitting Is An Adventure

2009-04-11T02:52:00.008-05:00

I've been on a roll lately, and this is my latest project - the second top I have ever designed completely from scratch. Well, not completely from scratch - I got the hem edging pattern from my stitch dictionary, Knitting Stitches by Mary Webb.

When I started this project, I didn't know how it was going to look. I had a vague image in my head of a square neckline, and some patterning on the bottom edge, and knitting it in the round so there would be no seams, but other than that, I really had no idea.

The white-and-red flecked yarn was another one of those discount balls from a Fa Yuen Street yarn stall... It appeared to be made of cotton, and thought that it would be enough for a tank top, but I was wrong. I ran out when I was nearly up to the armpits.

So, it was time to find some more yarn. I knew I wasn't ever going to be able to match the colour, but I figured a colour change would look OK. I raided the yarn stores and found myself two balls of deep orange cotton, and another two balls of grey lace weight crochet string. I decided to knit both strands held together to make up the thickness.

Cotton costs an arm and a leg! But no matter, I pressed on.

And then, I knitted all the way up to the shoulders and found I'd miscalculated. My colour change was located at least an inch too high. It looked ridiculous, like a baby's bib. But I didn't want to frog it, so I carefully detached the top part from the bottom part, added a stripe, knitted up another inch of orange, and then painstakingly grafted the two halves back together. I can now say that I have taught myself how to graft ribbing. It was horrible. The only instructions I could find on the internet made no sense, and it was only by squinting very hard and exercising my full (but limited) mental capacity for rotational symmetry that I managed to figure out which way the yarn should be threaded when the knit stitches changed to purl. I'm thinking that organic chemistry majors would have a significant advantage over me in kitchener stitching.

Here's a picture of my grafting-in-process.

I should write up some better instructions myself.

And then I got up to the shoulders, grafted those together, and then I decided I wanted short sleeves. I'd been reading about knitting sleeves top-down in the round, by picking up stitches around the armhole, and using short rows to form the cap. I decided to give that a try. The hard part was trying to figure out to vary the steepness of the the short rows correctly, which meant trying to imagine what the sleeve would look like if it were spread out flat.

First attempt - Sleeve too big and too wide.
Second attempt - Added decreases. Sleeve no longer too wide, but now too short.
Third attempt - Used steeper gradient. Sleeve longer, but had excess material bunching around the armpits.
Fourth attempt - Added decreases around the armpits. Sleeve looks OK. Except yarn has been frogged so many times, it's starting to look a bit manky. Oh well.

And finally it was done.

Of course, the minute it was done I dropped a spare rib with barbecue sauce on it and then got crapped on by parrots, so it's going straight into the laundry. Sigh.

I am definitely going to try to write this pattern up and sell it on Ravelry, even though working out the size conversions is going to be a nightmare. I'd be happy if I made back the cost of my yarn.

Oh right, I forgot about my mom's poncho

2009-04-06T10:46:00.004-05:00

I made a poncho for my mom this past winter, but didn't get around to having her take a picture of it until now. I got the wavy scalloped pattern out of a stitch dictionary, and just kept going, and going, and going. This is definitely the last time I will ever make a poncho. I began it in August and finished it in early December; I think my brain was starting to melt towards the end.

At least I used up all my grey acrylic yarn. Now I can load up on more interesting ones, yay.

By the way, acrylic doesn't have to be stiff and nasty. It softened up nicely after being blocked under a hot steaming iron, and acquired a lovely drape. The pattern holds its shape, it's machine-washable, and won't ever need to be blocked again. In a household where wool sweaters periodically get shrunken in the wash, this is a good thing.

My mom seems to like it a lot. She says her friends have been complimenting it, so I'm happy.

Trying out Ravelry

2009-03-26T13:44:00.003-05:00

At Lana's suggestion, I finally decided to set up a Ravelry account, and man, my head hurts. I feel I've been given a military fighter jet to travel 2 blocks to the grocery store, and I'm sitting in cockpit staring at the controls going, "Okay, what do I do now?"

I can theoretically see why some people would need all those features (Lana, how does your stash fit in your house?) but I'm as basic as basic gets. My entire yarn stash fits into a single plastic shopping bag, I don't plan projects far in advance, I don't have a pile of works-in-progress, and I don't collect patterns for future use. My entire process consists of picking up some discount-bin yarn, going "I think I'll make a hat this week", Googling around a bit, and then pretty much winging it.

It's going to take me a while to figure out how this works.

I've managed to upload a picture and details of one project so far, and am trying to figure how to submit patterns. (Apparently it takes a couple of weeks to get approved). Guess I'll be hogging Boyfriend's digicam for the next couple of days, documenting my past projects. I lost most of my old photos in the Great Hard Drive Crash of 2008. At least this time I'll get to take pictures in daylight, and it'll be an opportunity to photograph some really old items that didn't seem worth blogging about because they were old news.

The perfect sponge cake

2009-03-20T12:25:00.006-05:00

After years of trial and error, I have perfected my sponge cake! And now I shall cackle like a mad scientist. Bwaahahahahahaha! It's ALIIIIIIIIVE!

No, I didn't make it up from scratch. I originally got it out of a microwave cookbook my aunt gave me years ago, memorized it, lost the original recipe, forgot it, half-remembered and half-improvised it, tweaked it, substituted plain flour for cake flour, took out some baking powder, fudged the oil-to-milk ratio, put back some baking powder, found a better way of mixing it, and finally I'm happy with it.

It doesn't taste of baking powder, it rises a good amount, it doesn't collapse into a pancake on the bottom, it isn't dry, and it isn't lumpy.

It is so smooth and so fluffy and so moist. Just like the cupcakes you get from Chinese bakeries. I suppose it's not even a true sponge cake because it contains egg yolk and oil, but it sure tastes like one. Any food scientist care to explain why the addition of fat doesn't seem to collapse the air out of it?

Recipe:

Ingredients:

3 eggs - separate the whites and yolks, keep the yolks
1/2 cup sugar

1 1/4 cup plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 tsp vanilla essence (or 1/4 tsp vanilla extract)

Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius
2. Whisk egg whites and sugar together until stiff peaks form
3. In separate bowl, sift flour, baking powder, and salt together.
4. Add milk, vegetable oil, egg yolks, and vanilla essence to the flour and mix well.
5. Fold the flour mixture into the egg whites
6. Pour into ungreased 5" X 9" loaf pan/cake tin, and bake for 40 minutes or until skewer comes out clean.
7. Cool upside-down. (Balancing the corners of the cake tin on the rim of a saucepan is a good strategy). Pry from edges of cake tin with knife, and tip it out.

Fleeced: This is the Scarf That Never Ends...

2009-03-20T12:08:00.004-05:00

I managed to buy half a metre of black fleece on sale, and used it to line my curling stockinette scarf. Thanks to MooCow for the tip on TechKnitting - the instructions for sewing knitting to fleece were great. It came out a bit wobbly, but still good.

It took foreeeeeever. I mean, Hole E. Cow. I made that scarf way too long - when I wrap it round my neck it dangles almost to my knees. I've learned my lesson. Never will I knit a scarf in stockinette again. Especially not one longer than my bed.

Cloudy Cardigan - completed

2009-03-11T13:14:00.005-05:00

It's not a very good photo because I had to use my laptop's webcam - didn't want to wake Boyfriend up to borrow his digital camera and card reader - but you're not missing much. It's not like there's any intricate detail on this one.

The fastening is a hair bobble tie that I picked up in Mong Kok for pocket change. I originally wanted to use one of those gigantic goofy-looking safety pins, but I couldn't find one.

I'm actually quite pleased with the way I fit the sleeves. The last time I tried to improvise a sweater (several years ago), I got the armhole and sleeve shaping a bit off and the material bulged out a bit strangely from the shoulder. This attempt turned out much better.

If anyone's interested I'll be happy to post the pattern, if I can remember what the hell it was I did.

Cloudy Improvised Cardigan

2009-03-10T03:33:00.004-05:00

I managed to get to Fa Yuen Street market to buy some giant balls of discount yarn. For HK$15, you can get a ball of yarn almost as big as your head, yielding 2-3 times as much as a normal skein. The yarn merchants only come out in the winter - in warmer months, they switch to selling costume jewelry - and you'll probably never find the same colour twice, so you've got to load up while the getting's good.

Two giant balls of blue, white and grey variegated was just enough to make me a cardigan. For once, I managed to take a picture of while it was still a work in progress, so here's the back and part of one side. It's finished now, I just don't have a picture yet.

I'm not that happy with the colour, which puts me in mind of the Microsoft wallpaper background circa 1995 (there weren't many choices), but it was an opportunity to practice designing my own garment on the cheap. You wouldn't believe how many times I've had to rip it out and start all over again.

You see, I've imposed something of a dilemma on myself. I have so little patience with patterns that it's rare that I'd follow instructions from beginning to end for anything bigger than a hat. I don't want to make someone else's idea. I want to make my own. But since I won't follow instructions, I've limited my options for learning new techniques, so for years I've been basically stuck on "knit" and "purl".

To try to get myself past that, I bought a basic stitch dictionary. It lets me cobble together various stitches so that I can at least pretend that I'm innovating, which prevents me from getting bored. It's also useful for learning the basic principles behind knitting, which are never really explained in whole-garment patterns. So that's how I put my cardigan together.

Add to all this my aversion to careful measuring and math, and what you get is a lot of trial end error, mostly error. I had to figure it out as I went along. I learned how to make a stockinette stitch folded hem. I learned that the vast majority of lace patterns (and I must've tried five or six before settling on rows of simple eyelets) look terrible in a knobbly, variegated yarn. I learned that my arms are a lot thicker than I think they are, and that sleeves contain a lot more material than you'd think they would. I learned how to make button holes (much more straightforward in crochet than knitting!). I learned how to shape an armhole, and a sleeve top (tricky). I learned how many rows of half double crochet are needed to stabilize stockinette stitch edge curl (five). And I learned how to sew an invisible seam.

I figure with all the frogging I did, I must've knitted two backs, three sleeves, and 1.5 fronts, just to make 1 sweater. You wouldn't want to subject expensive yarn to all that frogging.

I'll try to get a picture of the finished product up soon - it's in the wash due to an unfortunate parrot-related incident.

Scarves!

2009-03-10T02:53:00.006-05:00

Winter seems to have come and gone early this year. It was hot through November, freezing in December, miserable through January, and then unexpectedly warm and muggy in February. Now the cold seems to be making a final comeback before we launch full on into rainy season, and it's only the beginning of March.

So I never got around to blogging about my knitting projects because I thought winter would last a bit longer. In fact, by the time I got anything made it had already started to get warm. Here are two scarves I made to replace my favourite fuzzy brown scarf I lost on the train, but by the time they were done, I didn't need to wear them anymore.

This is the stripy scarf I made out of various leftover scrap balls of yarn. I didn't think apple green and maroon would ever look good together, but spaced out with the grey, the combination isn't bad. Unfortunately, I made the classic rookie mistake of knitting in stockinette stitch, and now it's got a fearsome curl that even steam-pressing won't eliminate. I'm thinking I'll have to sew a backing on to straighten it out, but haven't decided what to use. Fleece might be too heavy (and expensive!) and I don't fancy the thought of knitting another piece that long in plain garter. I do have a mile of maroon T-shirt material in my closet that was given to me by my mom's friend who owns an underwear factory in Shenzhen. Might look hideous though.

And here's my bamboo scarf. I bought three rolls of bamboo yarn from Spotlight, the giganto-Australian craft store that opened a branch in Kowloon Bay last year. It's a bit pricey by my standards, so I can't make anything much bigger than a scarf, which is really too bad. It would make such an amazing long cardigan or tunic. Bamboo is a surprisingly soft, silky, drapey fibre, and I can't help getting mental images of assembly lines manned by pandas chewing through the stuff. The only drawbacks are that the yarn splits easily (not a big deal) and that it must be delicately washed and can't be tumble dried.

I did a simple slip stitch pattern to show off the length of the yarn, but now that I look at it, there's a bit too much garter stitch going on and not enough slipping.

Guess that's what happens when you hate frogging even more than you hate following patterns.

Christmas Packaging Tips

2009-01-18T15:16:00.007-05:00

This year for the holidays our family decided to exchange food gifts instead of expensive presents. Given the current economy, I'm sure that we were not the only ones to do so. Little did I know what I was getting into. Making and/or purchasing the food items was the simple part. Each household got a bar or two of chocolate from ACKC, a local chocolatier, some spices from local spice company Vanns, a package of peanut brittle, and a package of biscotti. All were items designed to travel well. For local friends, I made up a batch of cranberry white chocolate chip cookies and extra peanut brittle.

Nice, right? Yeah, nice, until you have to figure out how to package everything. Am I the only idiot who did this?? I went to Michaels (3 separate occasions), JoAnn, Pearl Art & Craft, Target, the Container Store, World Market, and even CVS. None of these were in the same location except Michaels and JoAnn. Even that did not work in my favor. I had to purchase cellophane online from JoAnn because every store I went to either did not stock it or had run out. I looked on Martha Stewart's Web site for ideas, but her ideas, while beautiful, involved buying hard-to-find items or things that came in large quantity that would have to be stored, like red and white cotton string. That comes in bulk cones that weigh about 2 lbs and contain over 9,000 ft of string. The other options was to buy things from her craft line, which is not inexpensive.

I worked out my own solutions in the end, but given the amount of difficulty I had in locating everything, I thought I might note down where to find several particularly elusive items.

1. The biscotti were packaged in cardboard gift boxes with clear windows. These came from The Container Store.
2. The 1/4 lb coffee bags held the granola, and also came from The Container Store. They stock both items year-round and are priced quite reasonably, especially given the fact that I looked EVERYWHERE else and could not find anyone willing to sell less than 500 to me. I guess not many people want to buy just half a dozen bakery boxes and coffee bags.
3. As noted earlier, I purchased rolls of clear and colored cellophane from JoAnn online. The cellophane is better than wax paper for wrapping cookies in paper containers because grease will not seep through the plastic. The colored cellophane is more attractive too. If you have the patience, you can also use it to wrap the cookies on their own. Tie a pretty ribbon or a strip of patterned paper around it to give a nice touch.
4. Knowing that the USPS was not going to care about the heat and humidity around my packages, I purchased mini desiccant envelopes to keep my cookies and brittle in good condition until they reached their destinations. I found a good deal at http://www.silicagelpackets.com, but you can buy them from camera supply stores, too.
5. To decorate the plain white biscotti boxes, I used a glue gun to apply thin red or green ribbon at the base, and then added a festive cardboard circle to the top. A short box got glittery cardboard letters instead. I did the same with the coffee bags full of granola. The cardboard cutouts came from a box of decorative cutouts meant for scrapbooking.
6. I purchased my treat bags from Michaels as well, and they were TERRIBLE. I made the mistake of putting the peanut brittle into those packages, and they poked right through the bag, making a big mess. Next year I will go back to treat bags from Target - those have never let me down.
7. Mini Christmas tree ornaments from Michaels came in a set of 16 and looked very nice tied to bags of cookies.

Hopefully this list can save someone some time next year.

Adding a fleece lining to a knit hat

2009-01-18T14:56:00.006-05:00

This is Part II to the story of that white hat I knit following Elizabeth Zimmerman's instructions in Knitting Workshop. Nice hat, but unfortunately, it wasn't windproof. As I intended to give it to my brother-in-law to fend off Ohio winters, something obviously had to be done to beef it up. But how does one sew a knitted fabric to a woven one? The answer came from a wonderful blog called TECHknitting that shows you step-by-step, with clear diagrams, the solutions to all those questions that keep knitters up at night. I followed her instructions and here are some pictures.

First I pinned the fleece over my brother-in-laws head to make sure I had the right size. I then cut out the shape and sewed it up right-quick on my sewing machine. Coulda done it by hand, but the machine was there and made neater, closer stitches than I could ever hope to. As you'll notice in the picture below, the lining is a little bigger than the hat itself, but that's OK because the hat will stretch a lot, while the fleece (which does have horizontal stretch, but not vertical) will not stretch nearly the same amount.

Next I flipped the knit hat inside out, and placed it INSIDE the new fleece lining, which was right-side out, as you can see from the picture. I then followed TECHknitting's instructions on how to use the overcast stitch to create a stretchy seam so the hat would stretch over the wearer's head, and voila, I was done!
I didn't take a picture of the finished hat since it doesn't look much different and my brother-in-law wasn't around to model it anyways. It went in the Christmas care package I sent over (more on that later). He loved it, but unfortunately, so does his wife. She refused to take it off for the first day; by that night he admitted defeat. No worries though. I had more of the same lovely Green Mountain Spinnery yarn left, with which I knit him another in a Fair Isle pattern. I have lots of fleece left over so that one'll be lined, too, once he shows up to let me measure his head again. Thanks for the helpful and clear instructions, TECHknitting!

Knitting on the edge

2009-01-16T07:41:00.005-05:00

Ok, so when I’m bored at work I surf Ravelry… (hey, at least it’s not p#rn). The other day I found this awesomely cool scarf knit knit by Raveler Mimizuku* using - get this!! - HER FINGERS.

I wrote the person who did it and she was kind enough to share this Japanese-language YouTube video. No translation necessary. Check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0M9GHV46vs

It also helps that she went to a yarn store that wound up three types of yarn for her to make such a unique yarn. Ahhh...the Japanese always do it better.

*Mimizuku has no blog or Web site of her own to link to, otherwise I would do so. I have tried to give credit where credit is due.

Chocolate Marshmallow Cookies (Part 3?): Fan's Attempt

2009-01-10T21:21:00.004-05:00

I'm going to a potluck party tonight, so what better time to try Kea's cookie recipe? It was pretty much a breeze, but next time I may opt for a dark chocolate bar with less cocoa content. I picked a 100% cocoa bar. It might be a little too intense for some people (i.e., not hardcore chocolate lovers!). Of course, when the first sheet of cookies finished cooling, I had to test a cookie! It was "whoa" at first bite. Kea, this is an amazing recipe. I had to remind myself that I was baking these for the party, so after one more "test", I packed them up. I'll report back here if I get any feedback. Thanks for sharing your recipe!

PG-13

2009-01-04T23:34:00.002-05:00

I learned how to say "oral s*x" in Cantonese today.

It's amazing, the things you can pick up from watching television without parental supervision.

Awesome Ass-Kicking Chocolate Marshmallow Cookies (Part 2), Plus Ninjas

2009-01-02T12:31:00.006-05:00

Boyfriend has a coworker/friend who we call the Food Ninja, so named for his amazing and stealthy ability to make food disappear extremely quickly. Many a time have we sat down to dinner with him only to discover a dumpling here, a french fry there, vanish right out from under our noses. Many a time has Boyfriend set out a large bag of chips at the office for everyone to munch on, only to come back moments later and find them all gone. Since there are only five people in his office, this is very impressive. And usually the only evidence is a particularly satisfied look on the Food Ninja's face.

So for Christmas, I made the Food Ninja a batch of cookies. And then I wrote "Awesome Ass-Kicking Chocolate Marshmallow Cookies" on the box, and drew a ninja on it. Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of it before I gave it away. A few days later, I received this email from him, fowarded via Boyfriend.

"Please tell [Kea] she has taught the Food Ninja the all important lesson in life that is to savour good food. The ass kicking cookies proved to be so ass kicking the Ninja couldn't finish them in under 2 seconds; he had to savour each and every one of them. Thank you, they were beautiful."

I'm not normally that good of a baker, so this made me very happy. And then he asked for the recipe. I've tweaked it since last time, having procured some pure cocoa powder. So here's the non-hack recipe.

Ingredients

1 1/4 cup plain flour
2 tbsp pure cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

100g butter (slightly less than half a block)
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg

Dark chocolate fragments (break up a Lindt bar, and then break up each square into 4 pieces)
Mini marshmallows

Directions:
1. Sift the dry ingredients (flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt) together. Set aside.
2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, whisk in egg.
3. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture, combine well.
4. Refrigerate dough for 2 hours. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 175 degrees celsius, and line cookie sheets with baking paper.
5. Roll the dough into 1 inch balls with a chocolate fragment and a marshmallow stuffed inside. Make sure no marshmallow or chocolate is exposed, it'll melt out.
6. Place 2 inches apart on baking tray, and bake for 10 minutes. They should be still soft to the touch when removed from the oven.
7. Allow to cool on tray for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire rack.

If you are any fan of chocolate at all, you have to try these. I may never invent a recipe this good ever again, not least because I have no idea what I'm doing and I just got really lucky. These kick so much ass they have to import extra asses from China just to fill the demand for kicking. If I may say so myself.

Lentil Tagine

2009-01-02T01:16:00.003-05:00

In a curious exchange of roles, I always worry that my parents, particularly my father, aren't eating properly. Just because dad is relatively healthy for his age, he insists on eating like a boy of twenty; beef, heavy sauces, tonnes of sugar in his coffee, and sweets. (I know where I got my sweet tooth from!) And then, when it's just the two of them, it's easy to get into a rut and eat all sorts of unhealthy and/or unimaginative (!!) things.

The thing is, I know they appreciate good food, and they can be made to be adventurous, too. So, I took a little gamble and made a Moroccan lentil tagine using our pressure cooker. I say it was a gamble because they don't often enjoy things with a lot of "foreign" herbs and spices (that is, those not normally used in Chinese cuisine), especially cumin, which the tagine has.

I still don't think my dad enjoyed this very much. He ate it, but when my mother complimented the dish and had more, he didn't say anything, which is tantamount to saying he didn't like it. However, my mother has never hesitated to tell me that something I made doesn't taste good, so I feel that I can trust that she truly liked it. A, who isn't much for stews, seemed to like it well enough, too. The greatest compliment came from my cousins, though. They tried some when they came over for New Year's dinner. They're terribly picky (at least, I think they are, but I'm a foodie), but kept going back for more.

New Year's En Famille

2009-01-02T00:39:00.004-05:00

A and I have been spending Christmas and New Year's at home in Oregon with my parents. We had dinner on Christmas Eve at my uncle's house so, apart from A making some mashed potatoes to bring over, we didn't cook too much. For New Year's, we had my uncle's family over, and I was in charge of making dinner. After the excesses of Christmas Eve, I wanted to be sure that we had a slightly healthier (though still delicious!) meal for New Year's. I started early in the morning, marinating the chicken, baking dessert, and working on the cobb salad.
This was my first time making a cobb salad (a little too much trouble, wouldn't you say, for one person?), but I absolutely adore eating them; everything is perfectly bite-sized so that you don't have to have bits of salad green hanging out of your mouth. I roughly followed the recipe from Cooks Illustrated, making the dressing, but approximating all the other ingredients. I used turkey bacon instead of pork bacon, too. There was so much salad, and no big serving plates in the house, so I rubbed our wok with oil (to prevent rusting) and used it as a serving vessel; it was perfect. Everyone really enjoyed the cobb salad, and it was pretty much demolished.
In order to encourage everyone to have more vegetables, I also made a simple Asian salad, with mesclun mix, sliced almonds, dried cranberries and mandarin oranges. I also made an Asian-inspired dressing to go with it, mixing together balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, olive oil, salt, pepper and a dash of sesame oil. This salad quickly disappeared, as well.

We also had oven roasted Brussels sprouts with whole cloves of garlic. A deemed them slightly overcooked, so he didn't take any pictures. But, as a fan of Brussels sprouts, I think they were still delicious.
A was responsible for marinating and cooking the steaks. My family is not fond of sirloin, and normally goes for rib eyes. However, we've found that flat-iron steaks are excellent, too. Moreover, they are conveniently sized in approximately single-person portions, so we decided on flat-iron steaks, which were a success. Really, I think porterhouses and T-bones are over-rated.
My uncle brought over two fresh Dungeness crabs, which we steamed Cantonese-style with ginger and scallions. These were served with dark Chinese vinegar. I'm a very lazy crab-eater, meaning I can't usually be bothered to eat more than a piece or two. With my added handicap of braces, I only had one piece, which was enough to satisfy me.
For dessert, A had requested key lime pie. This request, coming from him, surprised me, since he dislikes sour things almost as much as our father does. It turned out to be an excellent choice, however. Even dad went back for more, and it was deemed very refreshing after a large meal.
The only thing that didn't really get eaten was all the rice we had made, for the eight of us! We had so much rice left over, A made fried rice today (by himself, for the first time). I won't embarrass him with the telling of it (ask him yourself!), but the rice is all gone now, too.

An Italian Thanksgiving...and more

2008-11-30T14:59:00.007-05:00

Lana and our brother came to visit for Thanksgiving this week. No one was too excited about having a bird for the holiday meal, so the DH and I suggested an Italian theme instead. We had recently tried out a recipe for meatballs that we'd seen on an episode of Bobby Flay's Thrown Down. The challenge was over meatballs (DUH!), and the competition's secret recipe involved the use of four eggs per pound of meat. I'd never heard of using so many eggs in a meatball recipe - it was so decadent. Anyways, the meatballs turned out beyond expectations - soft and tender, almost souffle-like. They were better than any we'd ever had in a restaurant, and it's made it into our standard roster of meals.

So, on Sunday I threw eight eggs into two pounds of ground chuck, mixed in chopped parsley, onion, black pepper, salt, and a cup of pecorino. I then added enough bread crumbs to make everything stick, formed golf ball sized meatballs, baked at 350 for 25 minutes, and froze them for T-day. For sides we had garlicky green beans (so the DH would have some greens) and golden-crusted brussels sprouts, from a 101cookbooks.com recipe.

Dessert had to be Italian, of course, and tiramisu is always a crowd pleaser. Lana and I made a tiramisu using a recipe my friend Andrea gave me from when she worked at the Mandarin Oriental hotel. I had asked if she had a tiramisu recipe using a pate a bomb (egg yolks whipped with sugar cooked to softball stage) so that we wouldn't have to choose between eating raw eggs or trying to find pasteurized yolks, which is what most tiramisu recipes ask you to do. My friend's recipe turned out excellent - thick and rich-tasting but with a texture that was light as a cloud. We soaked Italian Savoiardi with a mix of espresso, Godiva liquor, and Amaretto and laid down two layers of cookie. I dusted pure cocoa powder on each layer of cookie and on the top layer, and sprinkled grated chocolate over everything just before serving. The recipe is below - our 2.5 qt vintage pyrex cassesrole was filled to the brim. Unfortunately I didn't think to take a picture before it was completely demolished by my brother, who claimed not to like tiramisu.

Andrea's Mandarin Oriental Tiramisu

Ingredients
mascarpone 500g
gelatin 12g

Pate a bombe:
yolks 140g
sugar 260g

whipped cream 500g

Savoiardi dipped quickly in coffee and liquor combination of your choice (do no oversoak - center of cookie should still be hard)
Grated chocolate
Directions:
For pate a bombe:
- Add about 1/2 cup of water to the sugar, stirring with your finger to make sure there are no dry spots. Heat the sugar to 121 celcius, or softball stage. Meanwhile put the yolks in the bowl of a mixer and give it a minute or two of whipping.
- When the sugar has reached softball stage, restart the mixer on high and immediately pour the hot sugar in a slow and steady stream down the side of the mixing bowl onto the eggs. Try to keep the whipping attachment from whipping the syrup around the bowl before it hits the yolks - this is best done by directing the sugar syrup straight down the side of the bowl. Pour all the sugar out, but do not scrape the bottom. Immediately set the pot in the sink and fill with hot water.
- Whip yolk-sugar mix at high speed until increased in volume, pale yellow and forms ribbons. - Set pate a bombe aside and continue with rest of recipe.

- Pour cold water over gelatin and let sit until soft.
- Meanwhile, whip the 500g of cream until stiff and set aside in refrigerator.
- Drain gelatin well and place in medium-sized pot over low heat until liquified.
- Add mascarpone to pot and stir/whisk vigorously until mascarpone is just liquified and warm, with no lumps, but NOT hot.

To combine:
- Fold mascarpone mixture into pate a bombe in two additions.
- Fold whipped cream into this in two additions.

Assembly:
- Lay down a 1" layer of tiramisu cream in your container.
- Dust with cocoa powder.
- Add layer of cookie and try to fill in all corners.
- Add another layer of tiramisu.
- Repeat above.
- Smooth tiramisu over, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least overnight to allow it to set and flavors to develop.
- Before serving, remove plastic wrap, dust with final layer of cocoa powder, and finish with grated chocolate.
- Buon appetito!

Everyone likes tiramisu except for the DH, so I also made up a batch of pate sucree and pastry cream for these pretty fruit tarts that we later during their stay.
We had them with the HUGE grass-fed steak Lana's advisor gave her when he was cleaning out his freezer. It was literally enough to feed a family of four. Anthony gave us a break and whipped up this classic steak dinner for us the day after Thanksgiving, and learned how to roast brussels sprouts during the same meal. The spices he used on the steak made the house smell good for two days after. With luck, next year he'll be making a standing rib roast for us.

Eww...vegetables!

2008-11-30T14:28:00.004-05:00

My husband has the tolerance of a militant five year old for all things green. It's not that he's a huge meat-eater either. He is just very particular and can happily get by on a sandwich or a bowl of cereal for dinner. Unfortunately, I can't do that, so I've been spending much time and energy trying to come up with new ways to make green foods enticing for him. I draw the line at pureeing food for him. He is not a baby.

We have had some successes. For green beans, that has meant copious amounts of garlic or bacon in a quick saute. Since we cannot live on garlic green beans alone though, I have tried other vegetables too. Turnips are out. As are parsnips. No cabbage. He cannot stand the smell of cooking brussels sprouts or cauliflower. He pretends that Shanghai bok choi and broccoli rabe don't exist when they appear on his plate. Peas are the devil's spawn. Celery is tolerated as long as it is minced into oblivion.

A few weeks ago I picked up a beautiful multi-colored bunch of swiss chard at the farmer's market up the street. When I came home, I showed the DH the pretty bouquet, hoping that the rainbow colors and innocuous-looking green leaves would pass muster. Below are pictures of the dishes I came up with that even my picky DH managed to polish off.

First, I promised to chop everything up SMALL and toss with a sausage over pasta. (I have discovered that pork is my friend in my quest to make vegetables palatable.) That went over quite well, and to my relief there were few "green bit" casualties at the end of the meal.

As there was a LOT of chard, I had to figure out another way to use them. Ironically, that was even harder as I discovered that I did not like chard very much either.

It's been freezing cold here and as we'd been making a lot of barley-based soups, we had some barley on hand. Instead of putting the chard in a soup though, I came up with this barley, sausage, onion and carrot dish that was actually very quick to prepare. Start boiling water for the barley and let the barley simmer away while chopping and sauteing the other ingredients. By the time that's done, the barley is ready to be tossed with the rest, making a very warm, satisfying meal in itself. I used this to stuff some roasted red peppers, which made for a pretty presentation, but taste-wise wasn't really worth the effort.

Even I didn't mind the chard in this dish.

Lastly, I used all the rest of my chard in another recipe from 101cookbooks, the Chickpea Hot Pot. I had a giant cauliflower hanging out in my window sill, and a carton of brown rice left over from a meal at P.F. Chang's, so I threw everything into a pot and had a lovely soup for three meals. I have to say though, that after 8 meals featuring it, I was glad to see the last of my bouquet of chard!

Chocolate marshmallow cookies

2008-11-28T12:23:00.004-05:00

We had a very warm autumn this year. It stayed hot throughout September. And then October. You could wear a t-shirt outdoors at night for half of November...then bam, it got cold. Winter's finally here, giving me a craving for baked goods. Baked goods with lots of chocolate. Nothing like chocolate to relieve anxiety over grad school applications. (I hope there's a special circle of hell for people who write application forms. Three essays for one school, are you kidding me?)

I modified a cinnamon cookie recipe to make these cookies. Pure chocolatey goodness.

100 grams butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup cadbury's drinking chocolate powder*
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup dark chocolate shards or chips
1/2 cup mini marshmallows

Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl. Whisk in the egg.

In another bowl, sift the flour, salt, baking powder, and cocoa powder together.

Thoroughly combine the flour mixture with the butter & egg mixture. Chill in refrigerator for 2 hours, or freezer for 1/2 an hour.

Preheat oven to 175 degrees celcius

In your palm, take a spoonful of dough, place a chocolate shard and a marsmallow on top, and then another spoonful of dough on top. Roll it into a 1 - 1.5 inch ball.

Place on cookie sheet lined with baking paper, at least 1 inch apart. Bake for 10-12 minutes.

Makes about 2 dozen cookies.

The chocolate and marshmallow melt together in the oven and permeate the cookie. They also makes the centre slightly soft. Remind me to post a picture when I get a chance. Boyfriend's got the digital camera and he's working late. For now you're just going to have to trust me. These are good.

* I didn't have pure cocoa powder. If you're using pure cocoa, increase the sugar and flour content, and reduce the cocoa powder. I don't know by how much. Experiment.

Ex-T-shirt Dress

2008-10-27T00:40:00.004-05:00

Here's another one of Boyfriend's unwanted t-shirts modified into a dress. I cut the sleeves off, removed about five inches of material from either side of the body, reduced the size of the armholes, and then sewed the sleeves back on.

And yes, Parrot insisted on being in the picture.

Hearst Castle Shortbread

2008-10-19T09:02:00.007-05:00

"A" came to visit me and my DH yesterday afternoon. She has a serious sweet tooth so in honor of the occasion, I went shopping that morning and got the ingredients for this shortbread recipe from 101 cookbooks that I've been dying to try out. The little story behind the recipe is fascinating, but I won't recount it here as you can read the original account on Heidi's blog. The cute mini butterfly shapes she used were also an inspiration, so I drove out to Michaels to see what I could score as I had only large, palm-sized cookie cutters. It being two weeks before Halloween, the store was all stocked up for the holiday and I ended up with a set of mini Halloween-themed cutters for two bones.

Like all shortbread recipes, this one does not contain any liquid. The most basic shortbread recipes contain only butter, flour, and sugar, but that's very basic, not containing even any salt. A pinch of salt is desirable though as it adds depth and complexity any cookie. The Hearst Castle recipe uses salt, all purpose flour, butter, and confectioner's sugar, and - the surprise ingredient - a touch of baking powder. Many traditional recipes use rice flour to achieve that delicate crispness that the best shortbreads offer, but I had never seen a recipe calling for baking powder before. My curiosity was piqued as most of the shortbread recipes I'd tried over the years yielded heavy, greasy cookies.
Half an hour before "A" arrived, I patted the dough together and wrapped it up. By the time we came back from our stroll around the Old Town historic district, it was properly chilled and we were ready to start cutting out our cookies. I showed "A" how to pound out the cold, stiff dough evenly with a French rolling pin. She took to it like a natural, clobbering the thing into a nice, even round. I also shared a pastry school secret to using minimal flour while preventing the dough from sticking to the counter - pick up the dough with a bench scraper and move it in between every roll so that it doesn't have a chance to be rolled right into your surface. We cut out pumpkin and ghost shapes and, looking at the amorphous ghosts, "A" joked that they could double as snowmen in two months. The cookies were shoved into the freezer for half an hour and 11 minutes in the oven later, we had ourselves these lovely bite-sized treats. The cookies are barely sweet, delicate, and with that elusive tender crispiness. I think I would like it a teensy bit sweeter next time, but otherwise it's the nicest shortbread cookie I've made. I was going to decorate them with orange icing, but they taste so lovely on their own, we left them alone. "A" is on the train back up to NYC as this is being written, maybe making a dent in the little bag she took with her.

My first sweater

2008-10-10T19:16:00.007-05:00

I've been drooling over sweater patterns for years, but it has taken me a long time to screw up the courage to actually attempt one. When I finally did, I was cautious and decided that a baby sweater would probably be a smart and manageable first project. This was especially daunting as it would be the first big project I would start without my knitting coach, Lana. Eventually (with some online help from Lana) I settled on this simple pattern that is knit in one piece from the top down. As a bonus, it also served as my intro to lacework. As with every new project, it started with the best of intentions and lots of excitement, but because of a pattern error I ended up doing and undoing the sleeve 6 times (yes....SIX). To say that was frustrating does not give the statement enough color. It also slowed me down considerably and made me very unenthused about the project for a good three months.
Last night I finally blocked it and sewed on the little red buttons. It's done! I'm glad I stuck with it, because it's quite lovely. I used a cotton/merino wool blend on a large needle so it's super soft and drapey. Hopefully the recipient and her parents think it's nice, too.
Now that I look at it, the arms look a little long, but then, what do I know about baby clothes?

NB: I was asked where the pattern came from. The good news: it was free from Knitwits Heaven. There were several errors discovered earlier and they had published corrections in blue but - the bad news - the last correction was dated September 2007. Beware, the sleeve error still exists on row 32, when you start the sleeve.

Hong Kong Borscht

2008-10-08T00:01:00.003-05:00

Once in a while I get a craving for Hong Kong borscht soup. Hong Kongers borrowed the recipe off the Russian refugees who passed through in the early 20th century, but must have ditched all the ingredients that made the locals grimace in bewilderment or disgust. There are no beets in it. Served at every diner and coffee shop in the city, the Hong Kong concoction is actually a tomato soup with cabbage and beef. It ranges from cheap-and-nasty diluted tomato paste swill to quite hearty versions which are pretty good in their own right, even if they aren't really borscht.

I decided to try making some at home. Vast quantities of it in fact, so that I could keep it in the fridge and reheat portions all week for lunch. I made it up as I went along, but I managed to produce something that tasted quite authentic. Or rather, inauthentic. (If you successfully commit culinary blasphemy, is that a good or a bad thing?)

I'm going to cut my portions in half here, since you probably don't want a whole vat of the stuff.

You need:
1 large pot

1/4 catty stewing beef (about 150 grams or 5 ounces). You can use a bit more if you want.

3 tomatoes
1/2 a small cabbage
1/2 an onion
3-4 carrots
1 large potato

1 can tomato paste
2-3 tablespoons ketchup (no kidding)
1 cup beef stock (or 1 beef stock cube, dissolved)
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1-2 cups water, depending on size of your pot

1 bay leaf
2 sprigs thyme
1 sprig marjoram (optional)

Chop the beef up into bite-sized cubes. Chop up all the vegetables.

Put everything in the pot, bring to a boil, cover, and simmer for at least an hour.
Season to taste with salt, pepper, and if it's too sour, sugar. Chili flakes optional.

But not a real green dress (that's cruel)

2008-10-01T04:46:00.003-05:00

In the song "If I had a million dollars" by the Barenaked Ladies, a young man sings about all the things he would buy his sweetheart if only he had the money, one of which was a green dress (but not a real green dress, that's cruel).

My green dress certainly didn't cost a million dollars. It was free. I made it out of one of Boyfriend's old t-shirts, which he was going to give away because it didn't fit him ("this is how fat my mom thinks I am"). If it's knee-length on me now, imagine how big it was before I trimmed a good 6-8 inches off each side. The pocket used to be a sleeve. I'm pretty happy with the results, even though the colour is admittedly less than ideal.

There's still a couple of other old Boyfriend T-shirts that I intend to convert into dresses. I'll upload more pictures when I get a chance.

Italian Tomatoes

2008-09-09T14:56:00.001-05:00

I was looking over old photos I'd taken of a food class I took in Italy and came across a series of bodacious tomato shots taken at a market in Bologna.

I can't imagine why I didn't post these pictures sooner, but here they are.

Looking at all that round, fleshy red make me nostalgic for the gorgeous bounty of European markets in summer.

Grey Cars, Silver Linings and Korean Food

2008-08-19T20:27:00.006-05:00

I had car trouble today, and my year-old grey VW Rabbit (his name is Peter) had to get towed to the dealership today. Some waiting ensued. The car miraculously fixed itself, I was charged ridiculous amounts for an oil and filter change, but I did get something out of all that: some better soon dubu (a Korean tofu stew). I've tried making soon dubu before, following a recipe I found online (I can't remember where), but although it satisfied my craving of the moment, the flavour just wasn't as complex and intense as I've had at Korean restaurants.
There is a Korean grocery store near the VW dealership, and I picked up some pantry items for the Korean kitchen: some chili soy bean paste, and salted shrimp. The recipe I had only called for the salted shrimp, but I figured some chili soy bean paste - to bump up the spiciness, and the flavour since I wasn't using beef or pork - wouldn't hurt.
Soon dubu is all about the tofu. I can never get enough of the extra soft, extra silken tofu you find in little tubes. I got these at the Korean grocery, too.
That zucchini/squash is from the CSA, but I think it is (or is very similar to) the type of squash I saw at the Korean grocery, and that I've eaten in Korean restaurants. It has a slightly softer texture and more delicate flavour than the darker green zucchini you can normally get.
I departed seriously from the recipe. What follows is what I did, and not necessarily what you should do for an "authentic" recipe. Instead of beef or pork, I had a seafood mix, which I marinated with ginger juice (I grated, then squeezed, a large piece of ginger), minced garlic, sesame oil, white pepper and soy sauce.
In addition to scallions, I added the squash, onions and daikon.I started out sauteing the onion and squash (I would have added the daikon at this point, but I forgot I had daikon until later in the cooking process), and adding chili powder, salt and a little bit of soy sauce. Then, I added water (you could also use beef broth) and kimchi (I added my daikon in at this point, too) and brought it to a boil. I used some of the cooking liquid to thin out a bit of the chili soybean paste, and added that back to the pot. The tofu is gently spooned in, then the seafood is added. After a couple of minutes, I stirred in some salted shrimp, chopped up hot peppers, and the scallions.

The recipe I based this all off of said to put a raw egg yolk and some sesame oil on top of a bowl of soon dubu for serving. I just cracked an egg into the bottom of a bowl and ladled some hot soon dubu on top. Soon dubu should be served very, very hot, with steamed rice.

Soon dubu is very quick to make, no long cooking times involved. This was a definite improvement on my previous attempts, but it still isn't as richly flavourful as I remember it ought to be. Next time, I may actually use beef, and see if that helps.

Small Packages

2008-08-19T20:20:00.003-05:00

The best gifts really do come in small packages. Look what Kea sent me! The sweetest, most considerate gift because she remembered that, during my trip to Hong Kong earlier this summer, I looked for cute hair clips in vain.
Look at the cute goodies inside! It would be difficult to choose my favourite, they are all so pretty. Thank you, Kea! They're perfect!

Suddenly, a sweater

2008-08-17T15:36:00.003-05:00

I have a finished sweater! I haven't been blogging for a while, so it must appear that I conjured it out of thin air, but the Green Gable pattern from Zephyr Style is such a quick, easy knit that I finished it in two weeks from knitting on the bus to and from work, with a little knitting time at home some evenings.

This top is knit from the top down, and is entirely seamless. I'm not a huge fan of finishing seams, so I enjoyed this construction method immensely. Knitting from the top down also allowed me to try on the sweater as I made it, to ensure a perfect fit. That's in theory. In practice, I only tried it on once before I finished. I transferred all the stitches to waste yarn so that the sweater would pull over my shoulders, and made sure that it fit correctly under the armpits after I had separated the sleeves from the rest of the body.

Pattern: Green Gable from Zephyr Style
Size: Small
Yarn: Brown Sheep Co. Cotton Fleece (80% Cotton, 20% Merino Wool; 215 yards/100g; 5 stitches per inch)
Colour: CW-550 Mariner Blue seconds (I got this at a discount, because it was a dye lot reject)
Purchased from: Little Knits
Start Date: 29 July, 2008
Finish Date: 12 August, 2008
Needles: Size 5 Denise interchangeables, and Size 3 KnitPicks classic circular needles
Yarn usage: I bought 3 skeins of Cotton Fleece, but only used a little more than 2 skeins.

New skills: Is knitting from the top down a new skill? It was so easy, I'm not sure if it counts. I did, however, use the magic loop method to finish the sleeves, because I didn't have two pairs of 16-inch size 3 circular needles, just one 32-inch needle. After seeing some pictures of it being done in books and on blogs, figuring out how to do it when circumstances demanded it was like learning to run after walking. It may have been easier with a longer circular needle.

Thoughts: I think that this is the perfect pattern for an advanced beginner, or even an adventurous one. There is some simple shaping, a little bit of a very simple lace pattern, and some ribbing, but otherwise it is all stockinette stitch, with no seaming to put you off from finishing. Therefore, it contains all the basics you need to go on to knit something more complicated. It's easy to ensure a great fit, and the finished product is so much more exciting than a scarf!

Scalloped Tomatoes

2008-08-17T15:00:00.004-05:00

I've made scalloped potatoes before, but I didn't know that you could make scalloped tomatoes.
We got a lot of huge slicing tomatoes in the CSA, though, and a recipe in our newsletter for scalloped tomatoes, so I thought, "Why not?"

The recipe was very simple. Just saute some finely chopped celery, onion and hot peppers together. Add some whole wheat flour (I used a mix of all-purpose and cornmeal, because it was what I had on hand). Meanwhile, lightly toast and butter 3 slices of whole wheat toast and cut it into cubes. Add the tomato and half the toast cubes to the onion mixture and season it. Then, add some Dijon mustard and sugar. Pour everything into a baking dish, top with the rest of the toast cubes, and bake for about 50 minutes.
I didn't quite know what to expect for this dish, but it wasn't soggy at all. The other vegetables and toast give the tomatoes some texture, and I was surprised by how good it tasted, too. It may have been the Dijon mustard that saved it all from being bland.Here is a picture of my healthy and delicious meal that night, the chicken pot pie that I made, with scalloped tomatoes. How I'll miss farm-fresh vegetables after the CSA season this year!

My First Chicken Pot Pie

2008-08-17T14:17:00.003-05:00

Did you know that I absolutely adore chicken pot pie? Even when they were a bit of a goopey mess in the college dining halls, or the pre-made frozen affairs you find in the supermarkets, I adored them just a bit. But I had never made my own chicken pot pie before. Recently, I was telling a coworker about the CSA pie that I had made, and he said it sounded a little like a chicken pot pie, without the chicken and the cream. And he went on to tell me how easy chicken pot pie is to make, and how his father makes a really delicious one. Well, how could I resist? I had most of the makings of a chicken pot pie already, I just needed some chicken. (Another bid at using up CSA vegetables.) Since it was my first attempt at this, I followed a recipe from Cooks Illustrated. First, you cook some chicken breasts in chicken broth. Then, you saute some vegetables (onion, celery and carrots) until tender-crisp. A sauce is made with butter, flour, the broth, and milk. Once that thickens, you mix in the chicken, vegetables, peas (I used cut up green beans) and parsley. Season with salt and pepper. It was late when I got home that day, so I didn't want to bother with making my own crust. Instead, I bought some pre-rolled crust from the supermarket. I wanted a double-crust chicken pot pie, so I followed the instructions on the box to blind bake the bottom crust. Bad idea.The instructions had said simply to prick the crust and bake it. I should have followed my instincts to line the crust with parchment paper and fill it with some pie weights (a.k.a. dried beans). With the crust so shrunken and inflated, I had to abandon it. Good thing I had the top crust left. I would just have to make a single-crust pie. So, the filling goes into a deep-dish pie plate (all of the filling filled the pie plate perfectly)
The pie crust goes on top, with vents cut in. I put the pie plate on a baking sheet before putting it into the oven, which was a good thing. The filling bubbled over and out the sides a bit, so the baking sheet saved me from a big mess in the oven. After the filling was bubbly and the crust golden brown, the pie was ready.

The filling tasted great, although I probably should have put a little more salt in. All the farm-fresh vegetables that went in, still ever the slightest bit crisp (instead of overcooked and soggy) gave the pie a wonderful texture. I shouldn't be lazy about the crust next time, though. I should definitely blind bake with pie weights. Also, the pre-made pie crust was sweeter than I liked. It could just be the brand that I purchased, but next time I may decide to make my own crust. Or, perhaps I'll just top it with biscuit dough. If I had enough ramekins, I could even make single-serving pot pies. Yum!

CSA Pie

2008-08-17T13:54:00.004-05:00

This year, as with last year, I am helping out at the Fox Creek Farm CSA, which entitles me to some free produce every week. At this time of year, the fresh vegetables are coming in in such abundance, it's a challenge to keep up. Moocow told me about a Farmland Vegetable Pie recipe on Epicurious.com that could make use of a lot of the produce that I am getting now. Tonnes of summer squash, tomatoes, scallions, garlic, corn and basil. With squash coming out of my ears, I settled in to make this CSA pie (about a week ago now) with something that felt like relief.
I made the crust using the instructions in the recipe, which uses a mix of all-purpose flour and cornmeal. This is a double crust pie, and the bottom crust is lined with slices of hard-boiled egg.
I cooked up a big pot of pie filling. Although I had red tomatoes, I decided to buy yellow tomatoes (which are used in the recipe), and I really liked the way they tasted and looked. The cut pie looked like a slice of sunshine.
The recipe also called for okra, but I didn't have any. I just put in more summer squash, and some onion. I think the okra would have helped to bind the filling together some more. However, since I cooked the filling first, before putting it into the pie, I was able to drain away a lot of the excess liquid. (Also, the recipe tells you to salt the squash and drain it, and press it dry, which helps.)
My medium-sized pot full of filling was more than enough to fill the pie. Leftovers are good by themselves, or in an omelette After adding the top crust and cutting some vents in the crust, it went into the oven.
The pie tasted delicious. The filling was light and full of the bright flavours of fresh summer produce; it makes for a pleasant change from cream based fillings (although there was cheese in the filling). I wasn't that impressed with the crust, however. It was dry, bland, and not very flaky at all. If you're thinking of making this pie, I would go with a different recipe for the crust.

The crust notwithstanding, I would consider this recipe a success. Just remember to read the instructions over carefully before you begin, to streamline the process. I think the recipe can be very versatile; you can use almost any vegetables that you may have lying around.

I would like to take some credit.....

2008-08-17T13:40:00.004-05:00

My friend/coworker/boss Jane (that's not her real name, but oh, well) was the one who went with me to Eastside Weavers for our first spinning lessons on a wheel. We were both seriously hooked but, whereas I managed to keep spinning on my drop spindle, Jane came across a used spinning wheel for sale (it was ridiculously lowly priced) and snapped it up.

Click here to read her posts about the spinning that she has been doing, and the beautiful yarn that she has produced. I didn't do any of the hard work, and I probably don't deserve any credit, but I would like to take some credit all the same, for bringing Jane to Eastside Weavers. Of course, if I do so, and she goes into debt buying fibre and spinning equipment, I might get blamed for it......

Clearing Your Drain Naturally

2008-08-17T13:07:00.003-05:00

Commercial drain cleaners, used to unblock your drains, are some of the nastiest, most toxic chemical cocktails you can keep in the house. When you consider it, anything that can dissolve away hair, as well as the grease that builds up from soaps, must be seriously corrosive.

If, however, you have long hair (as I do), every once in a while, something must be done to keep your drain working freely. Firstly, I use drain guards/hair traps religiously when I wash my hair, to keep most of the hair that I shed from going down into the drain in the first place.

Second, don't be lazy. You can probably clean out a good portion of any caught up hair from you drain fairly easily. No, it won't be the most pleasant of tasks, but mechanical removal is the most environmentally friendly option. If you want to take this one step further, you can buy a snake (a.k.a. an auger) that goes down into your drain/the pipes to clear blockages.

When you have tried to remove any easy to reach blockages, and your water is still draining sluggishly, you can use this recipe for an all-natural drain cleaner. I tried it about a week ago on my seriously slow bathtub drain, and it worked like a charm. A week later, and it's still draining perfectly.

You will need:

1/2 cup baking soda

1 cup distilled white vinegar

1 pot of boiling water

Pour as much of the baking powder down into the drain as possible. Follow with some of the white vinegar. It should start to fizz and bubble. Mix together the rest of the baking soda and vinegar, and pour it slowly down into the drain. If you have a drain plug, cover the drain now. After 15 minutes, (remove your drain plug if you used one) pour the boiling water slowly down into the drain.

It's as simple as that. I did read somewhere that you shouldn't pour boiling water down your drain if you have plastic pipes because they might melt. Instead, just run hot water from your tap. Also, don't do this if you have just tried using a commercial drain opener, as the vinegar can react with the chemicals in the drain opener to create toxic fumes.

Andean Plying: Cool!.......Ouch!...Umm, help!?

2008-07-26T11:20:00.006-05:00

It was a quiet Friday night at home last night because I had been struck by a bad attack of allergies. A perfect night to ply those yarn singles that I had finished before Moocow came to visit. (Moocow has the pictures from her visit, so I am waiting for her to send them to me, or post some herself).

I don't have a lot of fancy spinning equipment. Just my drop spindle and my hands. I did want to make a 2-ply yarn, though. (That is, a yarn made by spinning two singles together.) Without another drop spindle, bobbins, a lazy kate, or even a ball winder, I decided that my best option was to experiment with the Andean Plying technique.

What does the Andean Plying technique do? Well, it is a method of winding yarn singles off of a single spindle - and onto your hand - in such a way as to produce a centre-pull "bracelet" of yarn, from which you can pull both ends of yarn at once, without creating a tangled mess. That means that you can make a 2-ply yarn from just one ball of yarn, instead of working off of two spindles, two bobbins, or two separately wound balls of singles.

I decided to follow the winding-off technique on Mielke Fibers' page, because they had decent diagrams. Then, off I went, winding away. It looks complicated to begin with, but soon I watched in amazement (then, in mounting concern) as more yards of yarn singles than I had imagined began to accumulate on my left hand. I quickly came to understand why others have written that their middle finger begins to turn blue.

I also learned a couple of other important lessons:

Before you start Andean Plying, eat and drink something, go to the bathroom, turn on your answering machine, and make sure nothing is on the stove. Once you start, you have to finish!
When the instructions say to keep track of the ends, they mean it! Don't lose that loose end that you started with amidst your growing ball of yarn. Believe me. I learned this the painful way; I had to rewind my bracelet because I couldn't find my other end! (See how super-neat my ball of yarn is, with just a single loose end? That isn't the goal for Andean Plying.)
I like my middle finger, and don't want to lose it. Don't try to remove the yarn by manipulating your finger. Ouch! You slip the ball of yarn off your hand as you would a boxing glove. Then, you slip the resulting bracelet around your wrist.
Do not overload your drop spindle with singles. You fingers (mainly, your middle finger) is only so long. You may run out of room on your hand if you have too much yarn to wind on.
I want a Handy Andy, to save me further pain and frustration.

If you think about it, whoever invented the Andean Plying technique was a genius. A sadistic/masochistic genius, but a genius all the same. Trust the instructions, follow the directions, and it really works!

So, having had the opportunity to practice my winding technique twice, with the bracelet of yarn on my left wrist and the two ends of singles firmly in hand, I proceeded to spin/ply them onto my drop spindle. I was surprised by the change in texture that the plying produced. Whereas the singles were fairly solid, firm threads (probably overspun by yours truly), the plied yarn was softer and fluffier.
Since I didn't have a skeinwinder/yarn swift or a niddy noddy, I wound my plied yarn off of the drop spindle and onto the back of a chair.
Then, I tied four sections around the skein with figure-8 ties, to keep the skein tangle-free.
Here's a close-up of the figure-8 tie (and the yarn!).
Then, I soaked the tied off skein in some Eucalan, a lavender scented wool wash with lanolin.

Soaking the plied yarn relaxes the yarn and evens out any extra twist from over-spinning, so that the finished yarn is balanced, bouncy, and ready for knitting.
Squeeze (don't twist! or rub!) the water out of your skein of yarn and press it in some towels to remove most of the moisture.
Then, hang the skein up and hang a small weighted object at the bottom of the loop to balance that twist. I just hung another clothes hanger on the bottom, weighted with a little pouch with things inside it.
That skein of yarn is still drying, but I will have pictures of the finished yarn soon. Now that I have gone through the entire process once, I feel ready to spin the wine red corriedale that Moocow chose, way back when, for me to spin so that she could knit a pair of Elizabeth Zimmermann mittens.

Soap Nuts

2008-07-23T17:56:00.003-05:00

I had never heard of soap nuts, until someone left a comment on my post about natural cleaning, and suggested it as an alternative to buying environmentally friendly laundry detergents. I ordered 100g of soap nuts, from this site, to try it out. There should be enough soap nuts here for 40 loads. I am going to sew up some extra drawstring pouches and mail some to my family so they can try using them, too.

What are soap nuts?

Soap nuts, also known as soap berries, are plants in the genus Sapindus, so called because their seeds (actually, the shell of the seeds) contains saponin – a natural detergent – and can be used to make soap.

Soap nuts also have medicinal applications (they are used to treat eczema, psoriasis and head lice, and to remove freckles!), they have antimicrobial properties, and can be used to clean fine jewelry.

Why use soap nuts?

Soaps nuts are an environmentally sound alternative to commercial detergents, which contain a lot of harsh additives that are harmful to you and to the environment. (Check out this website to read more about the hazards of commercial detergents, and for information on some "green" detergents.)

In contrast, soap nuts are 100% biodegradable, hypoallergenic, and a safe, natural way to wash your clothing. They are even gentle enough to be used to wash silks, woolens and other delicate fabrics. In addition, I have read that, when washing your clothing with soap nuts, you don’t need to use fabric softener.

At between 20 and 50 cents per load (depending on where you buy, and whether or not you buy in bulk), soap nuts may be a little more expensive than your dollar store commercial laundry detergent, but it is comparable to other commercially available, "green" laundry detergents.

How to use soap nuts

You can purchase soap nuts (normally in the form of dried shells, but also available as a powder, or as soap nut liquid) from several online sources. Most of the websites I looked at included a cotton, drawstring pouch with your purchase.

To use soap nuts in your washing machine, place 3 or 4 soap nuts into a drawstring bag and throw it in with the wash. You can reuse the same soap nuts for 4 or 5 loads of laundry, depending on how heavily soiled your clothing is. After that, the soap nuts can be discarded, or composted.

You can also boil soap nuts in water to create a liquid soap, with many potential applications. Check out the websites listed below to find out how to make liquid soap, to read about the many ways in which you can use soap nuts, and to buy soap nuts.

http://www.ecohousekeeping.com/soapnuts.html

http://www.zamuta.com/

http://www.laundrytree.com/

http://www.nhallnatural.com/lasu.html

I'm Smokin'!!

2008-07-14T21:31:00.004-05:00

What had been sitting around for over a year (the natural, undyed Corriedale roving that I had bought at Eastside Weavers back in April, 2007), I actually finished spinning (for the most part) in a matter of three days. Once I finally figured out when to spin the spindle, when to pinch the yarn, when to draw out the fibres, and when to let go, it was a true pleasure watching the yarn grow magically from between my fingers. Now, my drop spindle no longer drops at the drop of a hat. *Ahem, excuse me.* That top-most layer of yarn on the drop spindle (the thing that looks like a top) actually looks pretty decent!

Of course, these are just yarn singles (i.e. a single ply of yarn). Now, I have to figure out how to ply them together to make a two-ply yarn. Hopefully, that won't take me another year.

Mint: FAIL!

2008-07-14T21:21:00.005-05:00

Not to turn this into a competition or anything, but when it comes to growing mint, I am among the worst. See for yourself.

Tiny, tiny leaves

Long scraggly stems like vines

Let this be a sort of ego-boost for Kea and MooCow!

Spinning on a Wheel

2008-07-13T19:13:00.004-05:00

Way back in April, 2007, I bought a drop spindle and some fibre and - armed with an hour of so of patient instruction by Pat Bohrer of Eastside Weavers - was determined to become proficient at spinning with a drop spindle, so that I could move on to real spinning, with a wheel. For the first week or so, I was diligent about practising every day or so. However, as my free time became almost non-existent, my spindle was put to one side. I would pick it up every once in a while to touch the forming yarn, but I didn't spin it. My yearning to spin didn't disappear, however. I read articles about drop spindles and spinning wheels, and about spinning in general. I looked at numerous websites selling spinning wheels and drop spindles, dazzled by the beauty of each piece. I came to realise that drop spindle spinning IS real spinning.

So, even though I resolved to learn how to spin on a wheel this summer, I know I can be content to hold off on buying a wheel of my own until I have the space and the money, because I think that I can be equally content with experimenting with different drop spindles. Yes, beautiful drop spindles can be expensive, too, but still only a fraction of the price of a wheel. However, I may still have moments of weakness!

Today, my friend Clare and I visited Pat again at Eastside Weavers. Our time there passed in the blink of an eye as Pat let us practice using niddy-noddies to wind skeins of yarn, and sat each of us in front of a spinning wheel (Clare got to use a Louet, while I practised on the Ladybug!!) and let us spin until we were felt that we had gotten the hang of it. I think Clare and I each had an, "Aha!" moment, when the drafting, feeding, and treadling motions just seemed to click.

We then plied the singles that we had spun, to turn it into a two-ply yarn! I can't show any pictures of us spinning, however, because I was so excited that I forgot my camera in the car. I can't show pictures of our finished skeins of yarn either, because we managed to leave them at Pat's. I am hoping to go back when Moocow comes to visit, so I will retrieve them then.

I almost bought another, lighter drop spindle (to spin finer yarns), but I will look around a bit more, for that perfect spindle. I didn't leave empty handed, however. I bought two skeins of gorgeous blue/purple berry coloured silk/merino sock yarn.

And also a skein of this superwash merino, with shades of pink, yellow, orange and peach that looks like a sunrise.

I also volunteered to be a sample knitter, to knit up some of Pat's beautifully dyed yarns in patterns that would display them to best advantage, and Pat gave me something to work on. I'm going to keep that a secret until I've found the perfect pattern for it.

Unfortunately, Pat had to stop renting out her spinning wheels, because they weren't being taken care of. Otherwise, I would have rented one to practice on. The Ladybug was so cute, it is definitely a contender, when I am ready to get a wheel.

Borax

2008-07-13T18:41:00.004-05:00

This is part of a series describing the basic supplies you need to in order to clean your home, the natural way. They include distilled white vinegar, baking soda, lemons, hydrogen peroxide, salt and, optionally, borax and washing soda. I will start with borax, since my aunt specifically asked about it.

Borax. What is it? I’ve always known, vaguely, that people used to use it to clean things, but I didn’t know the first thing about using it, where to buy it, or even what the packaging looked like.

Now that I’ve determined to switch to natural cleaning products (bringing as many of my family and friends along with me as possible), I decided a little research was in order. A lot of the following information was taken from Wikipedia's entry on borax.

What is borax?

Borax (a.k.a sodium borate, sodium tetraborate, or disodium tetraborate) was discovered more than 4000 years ago, and is a naturally occurring mineral salt that is mined commercially, primarily in Turkey, California and the southwestern U.S., Chile and Tibet. It can also be produced synthetically.

What does it look like?

Borax is a white solid, normally available in powder form. The powder dissolves easily in water.

What is it used for?

Borax has many wide-ranging applications. It is an ingredient in many detergents, as well as in enamel, pottery, glass, ceramics and makeup! In Europe, it is used as a food additive. It is also a flame-retardant and insecticide that kills ants and fleas.

Insecticide? Is borax safe?

Just because something occurs naturally doesn’t mean that it is harmless. Exposure to high levels of borax can cause respiratory and skin irritations. Ingesting it can cause abdominal pain and nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. In severe cases of borax poisoning, a dark, red skin rash may appear.

However, borax is not considered acutely toxic. You would have to be exposed to quite a large dose for it to be harmful. In laboratory experiments with rats, the LD50 of borax was 2.66 g/kg (and 2.66 grams of a powder is quite a lot).

[The LD50 for a substance indicates how much of the substance was required, in laboratory tests, to be lethal to 50% of the experimental population. Often, rats are used.]

Where can I find it?

Believe it or not, most supermarkets across the country carry borax in their laundry detergent aisle, although you may never have noticed it before.

One national brand is 20 Mule Team Borax. Their website includes lots of hints and recipes for using borax in numerous applications.

Should I use borax? How should I use borax?

Considering borax is not 100% non-toxic, is it necessary (or even worthwhile) to keep it in the house at all? You can probably clean your house, possibly your entire house, without using borax. Many natural cleaning formulas don't call for borax and, by all accounts, still work very well.

I have never bought or used borax, myself. However, many of the recipes that I have seen for tougher stains or cleaning jobs require borax, so it seems that it does boost cleaning power a lot. So, if distilled white vinegar, lemon juice, baking soda and salt don't seem to be doing an adequate job, you may want to turn to borax before reaching for a store-bought, chemical-laden conventional cleaner.

In any case, keep borax away from young children and pets. Wear gloves when handling, and avoid inhaling any of the powder (you might want to wear a face mask, and/or work outside).

You can look at this website, and this one, to find out more about borax, how you can use it, and some recipes for home cleaning agents.

Just to get you started, here is a basic recipe for a laundry detergent with borax.

Laundry Detergent

1 part borax

1 part washing soda

Mix together the borax and washing soda (both are powders). You can use this like regular laundry detergent, and this mixture will keep indefinitely.

Next time, I will talk about washing soda, which is not the same as baking soda. Also, stay tuned for information about soap nuts, which a reader of this blog told me about. They are absolutely amazing!

Happy Bread

2008-07-12T17:33:00.005-05:00

I baked bread today. Nothing extraordinary or new or peculiar happened that made me post this picture. I just like looking at happy bread, and I thought that I might share my food porn. It really came out beautiful, smelling sweet and warm, and ENORMOUS. It sprang to double the size of the pan. And now I am happy thinking of how it will taste with some butter spread on it.

Is sewing for the birds?

2008-07-11T20:54:00.005-05:00

I'm going to try to get my act together and use these new-fangled "tags". I've never successfully caught on, and since I post so rarely, I was stuck on the original design of this blog, in which we had to post to the separate food/gardening/books blog first. Anyways, I've been dabbling a bit in sewing recently. My sister, planning to upgrade to a Singer, gave me her old sewing machine a while ago. It didn't have a manual and it wasn't threaded, so I never used it. Even though my mom is a seamstress and deals with sewing machines day in a day out, I didn't want to bring it to her. But thank goodness for my crafty friend Rita, who figured out how to thread it and even sewed up some birds for my birthday party guests and me.

Sewing in action!
If you look closely at Rita's sweater in the top left corner,
you'll see that it's printed with balls of yarn, needles, and
thread. Awesome sweater!

These little stuffed birds are adorable and so easy to make by machine or by hand. I'm still a little clumsy with the machine, so I don't mind handsewing. In fact, handsewing these cuties while watching tv (in a well-lit room, obviously) or listening to music is what I call a relaxing evening. It's great for beginners and for using up fabric scraps. And hey, instant gratification!

The pattern is available here. If I make enough, I may create that sweet mobile.

Healthy Decisions

2008-07-09T18:09:00.008-05:00

My uncle passed away recently, after battling cancer for the past five years. He, and my aunt and cousins, were much braver through all of this than I think I could ever be. But he is not the only member of my family who has been touched by this illness. I heard a recent statistic that said that one in every three people will develop cancer.

Perhaps it is the undeniable proof of our mortality, and my belief that it may be due, in part, to the various toxins and pollutants that we are exposed to in our daily lives, but I have been worrying about my family's health, and anxious to make sure that we all do everything we can to live as healthily as we are able.

The first thing we can do, of course, is to try to buy organic produce as much as possible, and to avoid processed foods. To that end, I am a full supporter of buying locally from farmer's markets, taking advantage of any natural food supermarkets, joining CSAs, and growing your own food organically.

Green Clean

Recently, however, I have been thinking a lot about house cleaning. Women used to clean their houses without the dozen different cleaners that we keep in our cupboards today, and they used to clean them with things that we could safely eat. I've decided that I want to switch back to natural methods of cleaning, and I did some research at the bookstore for books that could help.

Green This!

If you want to read about why it's a good idea to return to natural cleaning products, and what kinds of nasty chemicals and toxins are contained in most commercially available cleaning products, I would recommend this small volume, Green This!

Green Housekeeping

Green Housekeeping contains lots of "recipes" for making natural cleaning products that are quite simple, along with generally good advice on how to make your house cleaning more environmentally friendly.

Better Basics For the Home

And, if you are interested in finding the right recipe for every possible cleaning application, as well as homemade skin-, pet- and everything-care recipes, Better Basics For the Home probably has everything you could want, and more. You can also check out the author's website.

Although I think each of these books is useful in its own way, and there are many other similar titles available, since I'm living in a small apartment and don't have that much time (or space) for mixing a large variety of cleaning recipes, I chose the well-organised but fairly comprehensive (and stain- and water-proof) Green Clean (pictured above). None of the books is very expensive, and I figure that the money I will save in cleaning products will quickly recover the cost of purchase.

And it's so simple. All you really need to clean most things in your home are:

white vinegar,
baking soda and/or washing soda,
hydrogen peroxide,
lemons,
salt, and possibly
borax

That's it. I will still buy environmentally friendly dish soap (I am currently using Sun and Earth dish soap, although other brands might be Seventh Generation, Ecover and Method) and laundry detergent (I am currently using Biokleen's powdered detergent, which is available in a cardboard carton, instead of in a plastic bottle).

I am thinking of sending weekly e-mails to my family members with recipes and information I can glean from the book I ordered, others at the library, and the numerous organic/natural cleaning websites. There are so many advantages to switching over (it's healthier, less expensive, more environmentally responsible), I hope that they will all be interested in and able to do it.

Of Mice and Men: Summer Resolutions

2008-07-09T17:52:00.005-05:00

The summer is half gone, and I have yet to announce the summer resolutions that have been simmering in my mind since the end of last semester. Of course, I was away in Hong Kong. Then, my uncle passed away while I was there and, within a week of coming back to Albany, I was flying out to L.A. again for the memorial service.

I had decided that I needed summer resolutions because I never seem to be able to do anything about New Year's resolutions. You make those over the winter break (if you're a student, as I am), but then the spring semester begins, and you're way too busy to stick to them. Therefore, I think it is a better idea to make summer resolutions. Even though I will be busy this summer, too, I stand a better chance of making a good head start on these. I also have concrete objectives, rather than just a number of vague goals, by which to measure my success.

Lana's Summer 2008 Resolutions

1. Do more exercise.

This includes:

at least one 20-minute walk each week. I would especially like to walk along the Hudson River waterfront, near to which my workplace is conveniently located. Also, this would be a good way to get to know my neighbourhood, which is fairly nice for walking.
pilates; at least 30-minutes once a week. I also plan to get at least one private lesson this summer (probably all that I will be able to afford), to make sure I am doing it correctly. For the other times, I will be investing in more exercise DVDs.

2. Do some knitting.

I didn't do any knitting this past semester. Fixing the sleeve of the department secretary's sweater doesn't really count.

First priority is finishing up my numerous UFOs, especially Moocow's shawl.
Use some of the lovely yarn I bought at Webs.

3. Do some sewing.

I have a beautiful Bernina sewing machine (which I bought used on Ebay), which I haven't used enough by far. I have a lot of sewing objectives for the summer. I want to sew at least one each of the following (in order of difficulty/time commitment):

an apron
a bag (I think I will make my first projects some grocery bags)
a skirt
a top
a pair of pants
a dress
curtains for the living room
a slip cover for the couch

I also want to learn to do the following:

machine applique
fit/alter a pattern, or create a sloper. If I am going to sew my own clothing, I want to make sure that it fits well!

I probably won't get through all of these this summer, but I am going to do my best.

4. Spinning

I want to take spinning lessons and learn to spin on a spinning wheel. I'm not ready to buy a spinning wheel yet, but I want to learn more about spinning, so that I can make an informed decision when I am ready to make the investment (if I like spinning).

rent a spinning wheel
take a couple of spinning classes

5. Dance classes

Nope, not of the bump-and-grind sort. That really isn't my style. I've taken ballroom dancing classes twice before, once in high school, and once in college. Both times, however, my partner was a female and, with both of us taking turns as the lead and trying to learn two parts, nothing really stuck.

Take ballroom dancing classes for at least the summer, and continue if time and finances allow during the semester.

6. Masters Thesis

I probably should have put this first! I want to graduate by this December, so I MUST work on my thesis.

7. Cooking

I am helping out at the CSA again this season, so I will be getting weekly shares of vegetables. I have lots of recipes that I want to try out, but I have three things in particular that I want to do.

Learn to use my pressure cooker, a Christmas present from my parents that has been sitting around.
Experiment with puff pastry.
Make more Chinese soups. In previous years, I would make healthful soups, with Chinese herbs, at least twice a month. I haven't done that at all this year. I bought two Chinese/English recipe books of Chinese soups, so I want to try the ones for which I can get ingredients.

8. Enjoy Albany

I feel as though I have been working non-stop since I came to Albany, and I haven't really taken advantage of all the cultural and natural resources available.

Budget allowing, try some local restaurants. No chain restaurants for me!
See an opera (I missed ballet season already, unfortunately) in Saratoga Spring.
Go to Lake George when N comes to visit
Go fruit picking at nearby U-pick farms: raspberries, blueberries, peaches, oh my!

9. GIS

I want to improve my skills as a GIS user. Summers are usually slower here at the DEC, so I hope to use my down time to:

learn how to use the Network Analyst module
complete some ESRI Virtual Campus courses
Read and work through the Idrisi Andes tutorials, since I had to fork over the money for the 9-month license for a class last semester

10. Blog more regularly!! At least once a week. You probably won't be interested to hear about work, and schoolwork but, hopefully, with all my summer activities, there will be more interesting things to blog about.

It does seem like a lot, doesn't it? I can't relax and laze the summer away, but I still intend to enjoy it by keeping myself productive, although well-rested (I hope). I've already started on a couple of my resolutions, so I'll probably be giving an update this weekend.

Hong Kong trip: A Belated Tale

2008-07-09T17:48:00.002-05:00

I was away in Hong Kong for two weeks at the end of May and in early June. I must say, I think it was a mistake to bring my big, clunky SLR-like digital camera; I was forever finding excuses not to take it out and about (the main excuse being the rain, which was almost unceasing the entire time I was there), so I don't have very many pictures to show for the time I spent there.

How quickly the body forgets 90-plus degree weather and 99 percent humidity! I lived there for 10 years, but it took some readjusting. It saps the will to be active; my brother was like a wet dishrag for most of our stay, perky only in the presence of air-conditioning.

My family and I had had plans to make a little side-trip somewhere, such as to mainland China, or Vietnam, or even nearby Macau. With the heavy rains, which seemed to blanket the entire region, and the situation in China, however, we decided to stay in Hong Kong.

I did get to meet up with a number of good friends from high school, not the least of whom was Kea. That, in my opinion, made the whole trip worthwhile. And, when I was tired of the dearth of home-cooking (my grandparents, with whom we were staying, never dine in) Kea and her SO invited me to their place and we cooked up a simple but delicious meal. I learned to make Vietnamese meatballs (yum!!!), we had lots of choi sum sauteed with garlic, and we also bought some fresh scallops, which we served steamed in the shell with loads of minced garlic and scallions. We chased that with freshly made lime soda, and lychees and mangosteens for dessert. I think that was one of the best meals I had the entire time I was there.

I'm Not the Worst Garderner In the World!

2008-07-09T05:06:00.011-05:00

Remember last year when I was complaining about killing off mint? Well, I'm still killing off mint. I don't understand. I moved it to a less sunny spot and it was doing so well through this winter, and now it's gone all scraggly again. As you can see here, almost all the lower leaves have turned brown and dropped off. Maybe it's the heat. Maybe it's the fact that it's been raining for a month (I did my best to keep it shaded). I know it isn't root-bound because I re-potted it recently. Oh well, maybe mint's just happier in cooler weather. But everything else is doing much better.

I managed to grow a lot of things from seed this spring, which is a first for me.

Thai and Italian basil:

Well, the green pot on the right was a gift, but the others I grew from seed.

Now I have more basil than I can possibly eat.

Marjoram: inexplicably stringy-looking, but otherwise healthy.

Parsley: I didn't know parsley grew this big.

And check this out. I planted bell pepper seeds from a bell pepper I ate, not really expecting anything to come of it, and I actually got a mini bell pepper. It was amazing to watch it grow on the stem (I swear it got bigger overnight), but it only reached a couple inches diameter when it dropped off. I have no idea why. Still tasted decent, if a bit bitter. I made hummus with it. If I'm lucky I'll get a couple more peppers before winter.

Meanwhile, I've been keeping my thyme alive. The one in the middle was a gift from Ceddy and Char at my housewarming party. I nearly killed it and for months only a few little sprigs on it survived, like the last holdout strands of hair on a baldie in denial. It would die, it would grow back, it would die again. More water, less water, made no difference. I called it the Zombie Thyme. Eventually I re-potted it in a half-gravel half-potting soil mix, and it made a miraculous recovery.

You sure learn some odd things on gardening sites. Who knew that chamomile tea and cinnamon are anti-fungal agents? That's how I prevented my basil seedlings from keeling over from damping-off disease this time around.

I also learned that commercial potting soil is usually too heavy. You've got to mix a bunch of perlite and vermiculite into it. So now I joke about spending my money on not just any dirt, but executive dirt.

My experiment with soil-less hydroculture was also an abject failure. Unless you stick to water-loving, abuse-proof houseplants, you have to go pretty high tech for it to work.

So maybe by now, I deserve promotion to World's Second, or possibly Third Worst Gardener? Because I'm still killing mint.

Sour Cherry Jam Update

2008-07-08T06:44:00.003-05:00

So I tried the jam mixed with blueberries over a vanilla panna cotta with granola (for crunch) and, well....WOW! You can really SMELL those cherries in there. Next year I think I shall make a double batch!

Sour Cherries and Sweet Jam

2008-07-01T20:39:00.005-05:00

I'd never had fresh sour cherries before. This year, I realized by accident that sour cherry season is upon us and so, in spite of my DH's grimaces at having to wake up early on a Saturday morning, I dragged us halfway to West Virginia to Hartland Orchard in Markham, VA. Unlike the more popular sweet cherries, which had already sold out, the sour cherries were selling for just $1/lb at this u-pick farm. (Not such a deal when you consider th $20 we spent on gas just getting there, but hey, where else was I going to find fresh sour cherries? There haven't been any at our farmer's markets, that's for sure.) When we got there, the only other people picking the fruit were speaking Russian and Italian, but boy, did they know what they were about. One guy even brought his own ladder and chatted on his cell phone while plucking choice cherries from the top of his tree.

Now, what does one do with three pounds of sour cherries? When life throws sour cherries at you, make jam!

Wisely, I used up the rest of a Williams Sonoma gift certificate on a nifty cherry/olive pitter, which made short work of my pile. I had changed into a dark-colored, old t-shirt just in case, but this fancy pitter, by OXO, has a little shield to keep cherry juice from splattering all over the place. It worked, and I stayed nearly spotless.

For the recipe, I followed the instructions inside the SureJel package of pectin I'd purchased. I didn't realize until recently how difficult it is to find pectin at a grocery store. Either they don't stock it, or they're sold out, or they have the wrong kind. (Pectin comes in full-sugar dry, low-sugar dry, no-sugar dry, and liquid forms.) I went to four stores before I finally found the regular kind of pectin I wanted. For some unfathomable reason, that store had placed it next to the ZipLock containers.

After you stem, pit and wash the cherries, you throw them into a deep pot (because the jam will spit at you when it starts boiling) with all the pectin. Bring it all to a rolling boil, then add all the sugar at once. Return to a rolling boil for one minute, skim off foam if necessary, and then ladle into sterilized jars. (Hartland does not claim to be an organic farm, but after an hour of picking, our hands did not have any of that sticky pesticide residue that I've experienced at other farms, so that was a good sign. The other positive sign was that there was no scum to skim off the jam. Being a novice jam-maker, it may be because cherries give off less scum than other fruit, but I still appreciated being able to skip that step.)

This is where I got into trouble. Since I didn't have a pot big enough to keep my jars in a hot water bath while I cooked the jam, and my stove didn't have enough space for that many pots anyways, I went with some advice I'd read on the internet about putting the cleaned jars on a towel-lined sheet pan in a hot oven. That was a good idea, until I set the towel on fire.

The smoke detector went off, but I thought it was just angry at me again for turning on the oven. Then I heard a cackling noise coming from inside the oven, just like the noise a fireplace makes. I opened the door and my towel was ablaze in the back corner. Of course, all this happened right at the moment my jam had reached the final boil, when it should be stirred constantly and vigorously for ONE MINUTE ONLY. I ignored the jam for the moment and yanked the sheet pan, jars, burning towel and all, out of the oven. I set the blazing pile in the sink and tried to put it out using my nifty All-Clad oven mitt (free with each outrageously expensive purchase). That mitt will never be the same again, but it didn't do the job. I didn't want to turn the tap onto the hot glass (which would shatter) and my hot, shiny sheet pan (which would warp), so I calmly moved all 7 jars off the pan, dragged the fiery towel into a corner of my tiny sink, shoved the sheet pan back in the oven, and turned the tap on. In retrospect, the oven method isn't a bad idea, but I really should've used a Silpat instead. The towel extinguished and my smoke detector still going, I finished making my jam, which only turned out to yield 2 1/2 jars.
After all that, I have only two aspirations for my first, botched attempt at jam-making. One, I hope it doesn't kill us, and two, I hope it tastes good.

Getting Acquainted with EZ

2008-06-29T17:30:00.006-05:00

I purchased a copy of Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Workshop almost a year ago, but what with going to pastry school and working, not only did I have no time to knit, but my hands were too tired and cramped from whisking, stirring and lifting to hold my needles for more than a few minutes at a time. Since I've left the kitchen and gone back to a desk job though, the urge to knit has kicked back in, and my hands are, after a four week rest period, up to the task again.

The first thing I did was to dive into EZ's book. I wanted to try knitting a baby sweater as a first step towards sweaters in general, but had no idea where to start. Now that I no longer have my personal knitting consultant on hand (aka astraea) for knitting emergencies, I realized that I now have to learn how to navigate a pattern and figure out a gauge all by myself. (Yes, astraea spoiled me rotten!) EZ and her daughter are known to generations of knitters for the wonderful books they wrote, not just on how to knit, but how to become one that can dream up and execute her own creations. Now, I'd read many positive things about EZ's charm and style but honestly, I was not prepared to fall out of my seat laughing when, in a discussion on the merits of circular vs. straight needles on page 12, I read this:

"I have a whole jar full of straight needles, and they gather dust....Just practice and see - and no needle will ever have a chance to slide away into the upholstery, or under the car-seat, or, worse, INTO THE DRINK."

Elizabeth boozed while she knitted! Now, that's MY kind of knitter!

Her style was so straightforward and encouraging that I ended up following along for the first Lesson on how to knit a hat, in spite of the fact that I had started off with the intention of knitting a sweater. I had two balls of very nice Green Mountain Spinnery Mountain Mohair left over from knitting my DH's hat two years ago so I put those to good use, and here is the result. I had a really good time making it, too. No stress or tears or broken bamboo needles like during my first two EZ-less hats. It has yet to be blocked and I'm thinking of sewing in a fleece lining, but I'm happy with it overall and am now an EZ fan for life!

[Bumbling Bees - Food] Basil, many ways

2008-06-13T19:33:00.001-05:00

Hooray, it's summer (well, almost)! That means basil. Lots and lots of basil. After being lured by its scent, I picked up a bunch at the farmer's market for one dollar. I would've liked a smaller bunch, but they only came in one size: GINORMOUS. I hard to start using this herb, and quick! What did I make?

Pesto, the old standby

Bruschetta

Pasta Primavera

Turkey Parmesan Meatballs

I made so much pesto and so many meatballs that I was able to freeze a good portion of each for later. And I froze the leaves themselves.

Basil cubes! I think I can
just toss these into a soup.

This is what's left of the basil after I used about two-thirds. Still a lot. Maybe I should just dry the rest. I also tried steeping it in hot water, and the tea turned out pretty nice! Any other ideas? The basil has been in my fridge for a week now, and it's not so fresh anymore, unfortunately. I tried to use it up as fast as I could!

Help me!!!

--
Posted By greeeenwithenv to Bumbling Bees - Food at 6/13/2008 06:38:00 PM

What to do?

2008-05-20T19:14:00.006-05:00

I have all this yarn, and so many (too many!) things I want to knit, that I need some help deciding. I bought enough of the Classic Elite Four Seasons cotton to make either a tank top or a cropped cardigan/bolero. I love this blue-red colour. It isn't at all garish, and won't make me look sallow as an orange-red would.

I have shamelessly borrowed pictures from other sites/people to ask for your opinion, but I'm hoping I won't get in trouble because 1) I am not stealing bandwidth, and 2) I have given credit where it's due. So, first up, possible patterns for the red cotton. This is Sahara, available from Stitch Diva Studios. I've seen some very nice ones that other people on Ravelry have made, with modified (and more modest) necklines and beads optional.Perhaps because it's summer (or it will be, even though it is still freezing here!), I have been obsessed with cropped cardigans and boleros! I like the nice, simple lines of the Fiery Bolero from Interweave Knits, which would showcase the smooth yarn and rich colour beautifully.And then there is Stefanie Japel's Drop-stitch Lace Tank (the one in this picture knit by Lilybeth), which has such interesting textures and her signature fitted shaping.
And, at the other end of the spectrum, a light, sweet yellow cashmere, merino and acrylic blend. I have a fleece hoodie in this shade of yellow that I have literally loved to death. It is time to retire it, which is why I was so happy to find this yarn (so soft, so smooshy!) in this colour. Rowan yarns (and this one, with cashmere!) are usually out of my price range (at least, enough of it to make a sweater with), so it's quite a treat for me, and am going to be very careful about choosing a pattern.

I want something classic - so that it won't go out of style and I can treasure it and wear it for a long time to come - but with enough interesting details to save it from being boring. Here are my many choices: Norah Gaughan's Pink Vintage Cardigan, which would be equally pretty in pale yellow.Carrie Bostick Hoge's Little Smocked Cardigan, which is another instance of my cropped-cardigan craving. I can just imagine wearing it over a sundress.Melissa Wehrle's Wallis Cardigan, which I very much want to knit this summer, but which may do better in a drapier yarn, such as the original cotton/silk blend that was used in the photo version.Pam Allen's Flutter Sleeve Cardigan, which was originally knit in a light, drapey bamboo/soy blend yarn.Another design by Stefan Japel, the Puff-Sleeved Feminine Cardigan (also from her book Fitted Knits), here knit by Charmaine. An ultra-simple wrap cardigan by Debbie Bliss, but I don't have any wrap cardigans.

Or this very cute, swingy cardigan/jacket from Vogue Knitting, designed by Margaret O'Leary. (The one in this picture was made by mzanita.

What to do, what to do?

I went crazy at Webs

2008-05-20T18:28:00.006-05:00

After not posting, or knitting, for months and months, I have come out of deep hibernation. It was a very trying semester, but I came through with flying colours (if not with a thesis!), and am ready to take part in real life again!

Last weekend, a coworker and I drove to Northampton, MA and went to the Webs annual sale event and, oh my, was it glorious! It is about an hour and a half from Albany, NY, and we very nearly ran out of gas on the way, but it was worth every minute.

So much yarn, so many yarn lovers, and such irresistable prices! I confess, I went a little crazy, although I did try to rein myself in there at the end. I could easily have come away with four or five times as much, which would have been a very, very bad thing. Financially speaking, of course.

So, what did I take home with me? 13 balls of the chunky weight Valley Yarns Shelburne in a light blue (above).....

6 glorious, silky-soft skeins of Bristol Yarn Gallery Buckingham in a rosy pink.....
10 buttery soft balls of Rowan Cashsoft Baby DK in the lightest lemon yellow.....
10 balls of Valley Yarns Florence, a fuzzy mohair blend....
8 skeins of this vibrant Classic Elite Four Seasons cotton yarn, in the kind of red I have been looking high and low for.....
And 10 balls of Jaeger Roma in a muted blue-grey.

Ahhh, my lovelies, I do have plans for you.

Yoghurt Attempt No. 2

2008-05-08T08:40:00.003-05:00

My first batch of yoghurt came out kind of lumpy and gritty. The taste wasn't bad, but the texture was off. A quick search of The Internet tells me that this is the result of too high temperatures. It makes the milk curdle.

This afternoon I decided to try again. I boiled up some cheapo UHT milk (I hear that even soy milk will work), let it cool down a bit more than the other day, and poured it several times through sieve in case any lumps had formed during the boiling. I stirred in the last two tablespoons my lumpy home-made yoghurt, poured it into jars, and placed the jars into a bucket of - not hot - but pleasantly warm bath water. This time I wrapped the whole bucket in aluminum foil and a big fluffy bath towel.

That was about seven hours ago. I just checked on it. The yoghurt's smooth but still a little on the runny side, so I'm going to let it sit for a couple more hours.

Making Yoghurt

2008-05-06T12:57:00.003-05:00

The first time I ate yoghurt was at the age of 9 or so, at a friend's house. My parents couldn't abide the stuff so there was never any in the house. My mom had always said it was disgusting, so when I finally got around to eating some, I was pleasantly surprised. I think it may have been grape flavored. But then I forgot all about it.

The second time I ate yoghurt was in Year 8 science lab. We did an experiment in bacterial cultures. Unfortunately, due to the class schedule, it stayed in the incubator for 3 whole days and by the time we opened it up, it had gone halfway to cheese. By that time I had so little memory of what yoghurt was supposed to taste like that I didn't even realize that anything was amiss until my Australian lab partner turned her nose up at it.

That episode left me with the impression that you needed all kinds of equipment to make yoghurt. Where was I supposed to get an incubator, or powdered bacteria? I don't even have a cooking thermometer. Today, I found out that all you need is a cup of store-bought yoghurt (one that says it's got live cultures), and a bucket. Or preferably a beer cooler.

First you need to sterilize a jar. And then, you need to sterilize your milk. Bring it up to boiling point, stirring frequently, and then let it cool down to a hot but not scalding temperature.

Wikihow says that the ideal temperature for culturing yoghurt is between 90 degrees F (32C) and 120F (49C). Since the human body is at around 98F (37C), that's about the temperature of hot bath water.

Then you add the pre-bought yoghurt, just 2 tablespoons of it, and then pour the mixture into your sterilized jar. Seal it, then dunk it in a beer cooler or bucket of hot bath water for 4-12 hours. Change the water whenever it starts getting cool.

I covered my bucket with aluminum foil (shinier side down) and wrapped it in several dish towels to keep it warm for longer.

When the yoghurt has solidified, pour off the excess liquid (whey), flavour it, stir, and put it in the fridge. I just added a teaspoon of sugar. Next time I might experiment with little fruit chunks. And the awesome thing about it is that it's self-perpetuating. I can use this batch to start off the next one!

I think I'm going to have some for breakfast tomorrow morning. The little spoonful I tasted seemed all right. Here's hoping that it doesn't make me ill.

My Boyfriend's buddy, who's Indian, says that his family doesn't even bother to incubate the yoghurt. They just leave the jar in the fridge overnight and eventually it yoghurtifies. I'll have to see if this really works. From what I remember of biology, the cold of a fridge doesn't kill bacteria, it just slows it down. So maybe if you leave it long enough, you'll still get yoghurt. Perhaps his family likes their yoghurt on the watery side for cooking? He says he grew up on yoghurt poured over rice. Some people are lactose intolerant; this guy's lactose dependent. He gets ill when he doesn't eat dairy products.

Say No to Silicone!

2008-04-27T16:42:00.006-05:00

My new in-laws gave me a mountain of red silicone bakeware for my birthday last year, plus one beautiful red plastic mixing bowl with a spout and rubberized base. The mixing bowl I use almost daily and adore, but the red silicone...well, not so much. See, I have my own tried-and-true aluminum pans in all shapes and sizes. Some came from the supermarket, some from TJ Maxx, and some (like my specialty-sized wedding cake pans) came from the fabulous specialty store here in Old Town. Not only that, but I had an inherent mistrust of many of the new silicone cookware that seem to have exploded on the market in recent years. After all, why should I bake in plastic when I've never had problems removing cakes and breads using old-fashioned methods? The best way to remove a cake from a pan is to grease and flour thoroughly; then when the cake has cooled a bit, to tap its edges on the counter so that the bottom of your item is evenly unstuck. Besides, with all the scares about plastic hormones leeching into our bloodstream, why add another plastic to our lives?

Today, the dreary, suddenly cold weather and the fact that I had just purchased a 1/4 lb of blue poppyseeds from Penzy's, added up to the irresistable urge to make a lemon poppyseed cake. The only problem was that the recipe I had specified enough for a 9" cake, and the only 9" cake pan I own came as part of my gift set. I didn't feel like filling muffin cups or coming out with a loaf and a half, so I decided to try the silicone pan out. Here is the cake when it came out of the oven:
And here it is once I tried to unmold it. Obviously, tapping was not an option here, so I ran a knife around the edges and tried everything else...bouncing, peeling, twisting, all to no avail.

The stupid mold just held onto the cake like one of those plastic shower suckers that hold up your soap rack, literally ripping the bottom of the cake off.

Sigh...I won't throw the pan away. It might be good for moulding mousses or jellies, after all, but DO NOT buy this pan if you are looking to bake a cake. My neighbor's mom apparently also experienced the same problems unmoulding her cakes from a silicone pan. As for other silicone products, silicone brushes are also a waste of time. They just don't pick up enough. Silicone spatulas though, are indispensable, especially those that withstand temperatures up to 500F.

The cake itself is from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, and it's a beautiful sight to behold. My DH commented unflatteringly that the densely studded cake looked rather like it'd been taken over by mold, but I thought that it was a plus. Unfortunately, the cake was light on flavor, even after my addition of lemon oil. Just one stick of butter and one cup of sugar made for one very lean cake. I also made Madison's focaccia. That had only 2 tbsp of olive oil (that's a crazy amount for an olive oil bread!!) for three cups of flour, and the bread came out so lean, it was more like a thick pizza base than focaccia. Not that it didn't taste good, but it wasn't as advertised. Many people rave about her recipes on Amazon though, so maybe I have to try a couple more.

Losing the battle with Nature

2008-03-24T16:38:00.004-05:00

Last summer I set up a little herb box out my kitchen window. When the herbs died back in the winter, I didn't do a thing, figuring that I would just replace them in the spring. Well, lo and behold, they survive the winter and start looking all sprightly and green. Thoughts of parsleyed rice pilaf, chive omelettes, chives in vinaigrette start to float through my mind...I noticed that the chives tended to lean a little forward for some reason, but I figured they were just reaching for the sun.

Then, two days ago my new DH told me, "There's a bird sitting in your 'huh-herbs'," as he likes to call them. No wonder they were flat!! So I promptly stick little toothpicks throughout the box, thinking, "Take that, Bird! Now you try and sit your little ass in my grass!" This morning I looked out the window though, and there she was, bold as brass, cooing in my parsley. I shoo her away, and the little miss doesn't deign to fly away until I start lifting up the screen! She flies about 10 feet away to rest on a telephone wire and I grumblingly stick more toothpicks into my box. I should've known it was a futile gesture by the way she watched me so unconcernedly. In fact, now that I think about the way she was perched on the telephone wire, she looked rather....constipated. This afternoon my DH came home, looked out the window and said, "Your bird dropped an egg in the box."

And there it is. As are the felled toothpicks in the foreground.

My first, overwhelming urge was to pick the egg out of the box. But then I realized that I didn't have the heart to try to do something with the egg once I'd picked it up...throw it out our second floor window? Lay it on the brick ledge where the mother would knock it over as soon as she tried to move it? Turn it into a mini omelet with my new chives, as my evil aunt suggested? All would be bad karma. My DH called over his shoulder, "Face it, you lost the battle when the toothpicks didn't work," and he's right. Oh well, I can concede defeat gracefully when I must.

Now I have a buh-bird box instead of an huh-herb box.

Universal Poncho Pattern

2008-03-19T08:59:00.005-05:00

Looking at a poncho in a store, I figured that it was just a big rectangle attached to a small rectangle. "Hey, I could make this at home," I thought. So here's some instructions about how to determine the size of those two rectangles. This isn't the only way to assemble a poncho, or even the best way, but it's probably one of the easiest. I'm not going to say anything about how you make those two rectangles; whether you knit them or crochet them or weave them or cut them out of fleece, that's up to you. But here's how you get them:

You only need to make two measurements:

1. The distance from your shoulder to your wrist (s-w on the diagram). If you don't want to make a full length poncho, make this the distance from your shoulder to mid-forearm. Or from your shoulder to your elbow.

2. The neckline depth (nl on the diagram). This determines the size of the neck opening. It should be big enough to get your head through, but not so big that the poncho will slip off your shoulders. To determine the smallest feasible nl, take the circumference of your head, then divide it by 4. Unless you're going for a really snug neck opening (say, to make a turtleneck), you'd probably want to add a couple of inches to that. 5 inches was what I used.

Here's a bad drawing of the poncho being worn, viewed from the front:

Rectangle A is really big. It drapes all the way around, hanging over the right shoulder (the wearer's left shoulder).

Rectangle B is much smaller, covering only the left shoulder (the wearer's right shoulder).

Here's the two rectangles laid out:

Rectangle A is the width of one shoulder-to-wrist length (s-w). It is the length of 2 s-w plus 2 nl.

Rectangle B is the width of 2 nl, and the length of s-w.

And then you sew the red seam to the red, and the blue seam to the blue.

Then you can add a finishing to the neck opening. Maybe a round of single crochet to just to tidy it up, or pick up the stitches with smaller needles and add some ribbing. Or knit in the round up 8 or 10 inches to make a turtleneck or cowl neck.

And that's it. Pretty simple eh?

What to do with discount acrylic yarn

2008-03-19T07:40:00.005-05:00

As you all know, I am cheap. So when I saw gigantic 100g balls of acrylic yarn on sale for HK$5 each, I bought 10. I intended to make a poncho with it, but as it turns out, I vastly over-estimated the amount of yarn needed. I've made a poncho and a skirt, and I still have 5 balls left.

I like acrylic because I can dump it in the washer and dryer and not worry about it shrinking. In a house with parrots - messy, poopy, fruit pulp flinging parrots - it is pretty much the only way I'm going to wear knitted garments. My clothing gets much abuse.

But isn't acrylic stiff and scratchy and uncomfortable and ugly? A double knit weight acrylic garment can practically stand up on its own. Not if you block it. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I found out that you can in fact block acrylic, once.

After you've knitted your piece, you lay it out on a towel, spritz it damp with water, stretch and pin the edges down to the desired shape, shield it with another towel, and then press it with a hot steaming iron. Not actually iron it back and forth, but press the iron down, pick it up, move it, and repeat until you've done the whole surface. (Don't press too hard though, you'll flatten it.)

I'm no industrial chemist and I don't know how it works, but it "kills" the bounciness in the yarn. It will stay in the blocked shape more or less permanently. It gets a lot softer, drapier, and takes on a slight sheen. It won't be as warm anymore, but it becomes quite a pleasant material to wear.

There's my poncho. I didn't work from a pattern, I saw a similar poncho in a store and figured that it was just a big rectangle attached to a smaller rectangle. And then from the neckline I knitted straight up about 6 or 8 inches, enough to create a floppy mini-cowl. Unfortunately I haven't been able to wear it out much. This winter was so absurdly cold that the poncho was pretty much suitable for indoor use only. Also, I haven't figured out how to wear a poncho and carry a backpack simultaneously.

And there's my skirt. It's a slight modification of this pattern from knitty.com. I resized it smaller, lengthened it a bit (I don't want people to see quite that much of my thighs), and sewed a lining out of an old Boyfriend T-shirt. It is probably the most patterned garment I've knitted this far. It's certainly the most feminine.

The original pattern called for cotton yarn, and for good reason. In acrylic, it's not terribly practical. Too cold for winter unless you wear a thick pair of tights underneath, but too hot for summer. And in Hong Kong, spring and autumn last all of two weeks.

Wedding Cake by Candlelight

2008-03-12T08:37:00.001-05:00

We got married yesterday in an intimate civil ceremony in Alexandria, VA. Who knew it was so easy to get married here? No birth certificates, blood tests, or even a witness were required!

The cake turned out to be a different matter entirely. It was just the two of us, but of course, we had a wedding cake. I've been planning it for three months, but only started baking on Sunday after I got off work. Buttercream was made on Sunday. More buttercream and cake made on Monday. Tuesday (yesterday AM) I started slicing and icing the cake as soon as I jumped out of bed, and only stopped at 12.30, when it was time to get dressed and go to the attorney's office for our ceremony. The picture here was taken without a flash so everything's a bit romantic and golden-looking, but the cake was actually quite white.
There were many different combinations considered, but we ended up deciding on this simple yellow cake with vanilla buttercream and a lemon curd-blueberry filling. I think I should have made the Swiss dots smaller, but didn't really have time to scrape them off, repair the cake, chill it, and start over again, before we had to leave, so here you witness the very studly result. The flower topper, which consisted of liseanthus, hydrangea and freesia, was ordered from Helen Olivia in Old Town who did a fantastic job. The flowers made our car smell gorgeous on the drive home. As for the cake itself, it tasted heavenly.

Bread experiment

2008-03-07T18:08:00.005-05:00

I've owned a copy of the celebrated Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book for more than a year, but after trying out just one recipe (Manuel's Rye Sour), and not meeting much success, it has sat, unused and unappreciated, on my shelf. The four or five loaves I made from that recipe were squat, coarse, and the flavor did not compensate for the time invested in babying the starter. As readers of this blog will know, I have been baking from the Tassajara Bread Book instead. The format is a lot simpler and more straightforward, and it was a nice, unintimidating jump-off point into the mysteries of breadmaking. Still, after baking the same loaf six or seven times, I was looking to try something new when I found myself with a few hours around the house yesterday. Not wanting challah, I skipped over Maggie Glezer's A Blessing of Bread, another favorite. Reluctantly, I flipped through Laurel's book again, and chose the Buttermilk Bread recipe with some misgivings.

This recipe did not involve a starter and so was similar to the basic Tassajara Bread recipe. It could also be done in one afternoon, instead of five days. Unfortunately, when I started getting my ingredients together, I realized I did not have enough of either whole wheat flour (which was of dubious freshness anyways), or honey. Knowing that bread allows for substitutions, I replaced half the honey with some blackstrap molasses I had purchased from the coop down the street, and half the flour with all purpose. As I found out this afternoon when I finally gave the book a chance and spent some time reading it through, the first substitution was OK, but the second one was a big no-no. My poor loaves turned out dense and short because the AP flour didn't have enough gluten. Compare the picture above with this picture of my first experience with oven spring. Fortunately, the flavor is still very good, so at least they're edible. The molasses turned my bread a dark, almost pumpernickel color, but made the house smell amazing. I worried that the molasses flavor would overpower the bread, but once the loaves were done, it just left a nice dark caramel taste and was not objectionable at all.

While the bread was not a technical success, I am glad that it brought my attention back to this fabulous book which guides the novice breadbaker carefully, thoughtfully, through the age-old process of breadbaking with a deep spiritual respect for the loaf throughout. I wouldn't recommend it as a starting point for someone with absolutely no baking experience, as the technicalities it describes can be intimidating and are unhelpfully scattered through the book in disparate sections, resulting in much flipping back in forth. After the laid-back introduction by Tassajara though, it was the perfect next step. It starts with an introduction to the value of breadmaking in grounding us in the important things in life - family, community, health, and valuing the local over the global and corporate. It even quotes Gandhi. Then it eases you into a Loaf for Learning, which is a recipe intended for novices and old hands alike. Other recipes follow, interspersed with invaluable tips, techniques, and troubleshooting. I'm enjoying it so much, it's become my bedtime reading!

Chocolate Birthday Cake

2008-03-06T20:39:00.004-05:00

Made this cake last weekend for my brother-in-law-to-be's birthday, with some help from my SO. My awesome new KitchenAid Pro Limited Edition mixer (which deserves a separate blog of its own) made quick work out of the various components and was a joy to work with. The cake itself consisted of chocolate cake with a truffle filling and coffee frosting. Its walls are coated with chopped walnuts I had lying around (a last-minute addition to hide the airy holes in the whipped American-style frosting) and the rosettes on top are given an appropriate finishing touch with chocolate-covered espresso beans. I took a chance on an "untested" chocolate cake recipe from Best Recipes; between us Lana and I have made quite a few of the desserts from that book, and very few ever worked out right. This cake, however, was fantastic. It was light, tender, with a mild but definitely noticeable chocolate flavor, and no weird sour aftertaste. It's my new favorite chocolate cake recipe.

All in all, a tasty combination, but as you can imagine from such a rich cake, it went down like a lump of lead and kept us up all night!

Singapore-style Stir-fried Rice Noodles

2008-02-27T20:14:00.003-05:00

If you make tsai for Chinese New Year, you may end up with some leftover carrots and snow peas, as I did. Here's a simple recipe you can make to use up small bits of carrot, onion, scallions, peas and chicken. The Cantonese call it sing tsao chau mai fun, which translates roughly as Singapore-style stir-fried rice noodles. I'm not certain what makes it Singapore-style, though. It may just be the curry flavour!
As with all stir-fried dishes, ingredients are added in quick succession, so you should have everything prepared before you heat the wok. I slice my carrots thinly because I don't really like raw carrots. I also blanche the snow peas in salted boiling water, cool them with cold, running water, and then drain them. I marinate some sliced chicken with some salt, white pepper, sugar, soy sauce, curry powder and corn starch.
The rice noodles need to be soaked until they are quite pliable.
Heat a wok with some oil and add some minced garlic and the chicken. If you are using onions, cook the onions until semi-translucent first, then add the garlic and chicken. Brown the chicken and then add some water and cover the wok for a minute or two until the chicken is cooked. Add the rice noodles, sprinkle generously with curry powder, add a little bit of soy sauce, and mix thoroughly in the wok, stirring and turning constantly. Unless you use buckets of oil, rice noodles are going to stick unless you use a non-stick pan or wok, but a little bit of sticking is to be expected. (As long as you clean your wok while it is hot, the stuck bits will come right off.)

Lastly, add the your vegetables, such as snow peas, carrots and scallions.

Celebrate the New Year Together with Tong Yuan

2008-02-27T19:56:00.004-05:00

I started a small series on Chinese New Year foods a while back, although I really didn't do all that much to celebrate this year. Some New Year foods are normally only available around New Year's. Others have become available year round, such as these sweet, glutinous rice dumplings, tong yuan. I love them at any time of year but, since they need to be served hot, they are especially nice in cold weather. The shape, and the sound of the words, brings to mind togetherness during the New Year with family and friends.

You can make your own with glutinous rice flour, water and various fillings (people did, of course, make these by hand long ago), but neither Moocow nor I have had much success getting the right consistency for the dumpling dough, and it's so much easier just to buy them in the frozen aisle at a Chinese supermarket! My favourite are the ones filled with black sesame paste.
Heat a pot of water (volume of water depending on how many dumplings you are cooking) add some brown slab sugar and a couple of slices of peeled ginger. When the water is boiling, add the tong yuan. They will sink, so stir them once or twice to prevent them from sticking to the bottom of the pot.
As they cook, the dumpling dough will expand and the tong yuan will start to float. At this point, the tong yuan should cook for another 3 to 5 minutes.
Serve them in a bowl with some of the sweet liquid, which you can drink as well. You really should eat them while they're hot, but be careful because the runny filling is very hot and very sweet, so you could really burn yourself. There's very little to compare with the pillowy-soft, chewy outside and the sweet and warming inside of a tong yuan.

Not My Mother's Slow Cooking

2008-02-27T19:42:00.002-05:00

Ever since I started using my slow cooker last year, I've been wanting Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook. When I had accumulated enough points on my Amazon credit card, I went and ordered a copy. My brother has also, marvel of marvels, recently bought a slow cooker of his own, and I wanted to try out simple, delicious recipes that I could pass on to him.

The first one is a corn chowder. Not too many ingredients, I thought. Well, I guess young men think differently. I think he was opposed to all the chopping of onion, celery and potatoes. Go figure. The chowder turned out very well, though. I will definitely make it for myself again.

I also tried a pork ribs recipe, that used mustard and molasses. At the time, my local supermarket was renovating, and I wandered the aisles (up and down, up and down, and I wasn't the only poor, lost soul) for almost an hour trying to find molasses. Finally, I went to another supermarket. The ribs were nice and tender, but the flavour was not spectacular. I'm not sure my brother would go out especially to buy molasses for a non-stellar recipe. So, I guess the search for college-aged-male-friendly recipes continues.

I would like to report, however, that I tried a favourite of Moocow's, truffle french fries. I bought some frozen french fries from the supermarket and baked them in the oven (really, it's rather miraculous how nicely they turn out!) and dashed a couple of drops of white truffle oil (which I bought in Seattle's Pike Place Market when I went there this past winter break) on top.
The aroma of truffles, and truffle oil, is very strong and heady, and rather unique. It may not appeal to everyone, and truffle oil is quite expensive (truffles, even more so), but I liked the truffle fries. I also sprinkled some of my truffle oil on top of a mushroom risotto I'd made, and it was wonderful.

Mini Calzones

2008-02-27T19:24:00.003-05:00

I bought the most recent issue of Cuisine At Home. It's one of my favourite food and cooking magazines, but I don't normally buy it because the editors tend to assume that everyone's kitchen is equipped with a KitchenAid stand mixer and a large, powerful food processor. Those of us without such luxuries (myself included) would tend to find the recipes a little time-consuming. I couldn't resist their calzone recipes in this issue, however, and I ended up making mini calzones so I could freeze them for quick lunches at work.
The dough recipe was rather simple. You must, of course, allow time for the dough to rise. That's a picture of the second rising above, after I punched the dough down and divided it into two sections.
As the dough was rising, I started to make the filling so that it could cool down before I filled the calzones. I used three kinds of cheese: ricotta (not shown), boursin (my first experience of this soft cheese) and fontina (also a first, for me).

The filling had onions, eggplant and red bell peppers. And lots of cheese, of course!
I rolled out each ball of dough into a rectangle and placed three portions of around 1/3 cup of filling on the bottom half of the rectangle. Then, I folded the top of the rectangle down over the filling after brushing some water around each mound.
Then, I pressed down around each mound of filling and used a round cookie cutter to cut out each mini calzone.
I used the tines of a fork to seal the edges. After rolling out the second ball of dough, and re-rolling the scraps, I ended up with 10 mini calzones, which went onto a pan dusted with cornflour and into the oven.
A little time-consuming, but fun, and the results were very satisfactory, too! And it's the perfect non-messy lunch item, even though it would probably taste better reheated in an oven/toaster oven than in a microwave. Unfortunately, there are only microwaves at work (apparently, toasters are considered a fire hazard).

In Search of the Perfect Pie

2008-02-27T18:57:00.004-05:00

Remember that pumpkin pie I made back in October, the one whose crust peeled away from the filling and fell down? I swore I would make another, better pie, and get the crust right. And really, I love pies, but can't really call myself a good pie baker. But I would love to be a good pie baker, and so I have been on the lookout for good pie crust recipes, and a good, all-purpose pie cookbook.

In the library, I came across a Joy of Cooking publication, All About Pies and Tarts. It has recipes from Joy of Cooking, but it also has photographs of the crust-making process. My friend, Anne, and I had a pie-baking party on February 1st, and we tried an apple pie recipe from that book. We used the flaky pastry dough recipe (which uses a combination of butter and shortening), and chose the apple pie recipe that involved pre-cooking the apples.
The pie turned out beautifully, if I do say so myself! Although I've been avoiding shortening (because of all the hydrogenated fats), it really does make the crust a lot flakier. Cooking the apple filling first meant that we didn't have to add any thickener (e.g. corn starch), so the flavour of the apples really shone through. We were able to drain away excess liquid coming out of the apples, so the filling wasn't too runny and the crust didn't become soggy, and the apples didn't shrink down anymore after baking, so we didn't have a gap between the top crust and the filling. I think I like cooking the filling first!
And, as I promised myself I would, I made another pumpkin pie. I used the Joy of Cooking pie crust recipe (as you can see, there wasn't quite enough to fit the deep dish pie plate). Following Moocow's recommendations, I blind baked it first, weighing the crust down with beans. I used the filling recipe I used last time, from The Essential Baker. After the adding filling, I baked the pie at 400 F (not as high as was called for in The Essential Baker, which had stated 425 F) for 10 minutes, and then reduced the oven temperature even more than in the recipe (which was for 350 F) to bake at 325 F for about 50 minutes.
Anne, who says that she is not much of a pie baker, either, gifted me with her pie shield, so my crust didn't burn this time.
And, look! The filling adheres to the crust perfectly. The pie also passed all taste tests, and the crust was nice and flaky, even at the bottom. I just wish I had time for more pie adventures!

Tofutsie Socks for Dad

2008-02-27T18:48:00.004-05:00

Last week a coworker and I made a trip down to New Paltz to meet the other Hudson River Estuary Program staff members, and attend a staff meeting. Since Clare was driving, I brought along a new knitting project to start, one that I've been wanting to begin for a while.

This sock (of which you can see the cuff) is going to be made of South West Trading Company's Tofutsies sock yarn, and it is made from soy protein and chitin (the material that invertebrate shells and exoskeletons are made of). Chitin has natural anti-bacterial properties, so the wearer's feet are less likely to get smelly (since the odour is due to bacteria).

The only problem with this yarn is that, unlike wool yarn, it isn't very elastic. Moocow bought some, too, and she ran into the same problems, where she cast on (to follow a pattern) a recommended number of stitches, and ended up with a cuff that was way too big. I'm not following a pattern, although I did start with a gauge swatch that included both ribbing and stockinette stitch. The sock still seems a little bigger than I would like. It might be all right for the leg, but I'm thinking of decreasing by a couple of stitches toward the ankle so that they won't be baggy.

Da Vinci Proportioned Scarf

2008-02-27T18:25:00.002-05:00

Last year, Moocow and I visited The Yarn Tree in Brooklyn, which was a wonderful experience. At the time, our younger brother had tagged along, and he surprised us by being very patient as we went a little crazy. And, for the first time in living memory, he actually took some interest in some yarn, and requested that I knit something for him!

So, although the luscious Blue Sky Alpaca Duotones was more expensive than I would have normally thought to buy to use for a scarf for him (if he throws this in the washing machine, it's a goner!!!) I bought two skeins.

I looked around for scarf patterns and stitch patterns that I thought me might like, and knit some swatches to see what needle size I would need. He was very vague about his preferences, though.

Then, recently, I was teasing him about his "monkey arms." Of course, he is very tall and skinny, so all his limbs are rather long, but I was certain that his arms were on the slightly-abnormally-long side. Well, when he told me that he hated short scarves, and that he wanted one that would be long enough to wrap comfortably and still reach down further than his armpits, we decided that what he probably wanted was a scarf as long as his arm span. So, of course, I took a tape measure and measured his arm span, which turned out to be around 6 feet 4 inches.

Have you ever seen a picture of Da Vinci's sketches of human anatomy, in particular the one of a man with his four limbs outstretched, drawn within a circle? Well, basically, an average person's arm span is that same as his height. My brother is 6 feet 4 inches tall, so I guess he doesn't have monkey arms after all.

He and I agreed on the My So Called Scarf pattern. However, when I realised how long this scarf had to be, I also realised that I didn't have enough yarn! When I went online to order more from The Yarn Tree, I discovered that this colourway had been discontinued. Slight panic ensued, until I located more (on sale) at Kpixie. So, with disaster averted, I cast on and started knitting at the beginning of this month.

With such a bulky yarn, and size 15 needles, it's been growing rapidly as I have been able to knit on the bus to and from work. It's already almost as tall as I am, and I'm 5 feet tall. ^_^

Bayerische Sock Finally Finished!

2008-02-27T18:10:00.003-05:00

First of all, allow me to comment upon the difficulty of taking a good photograph of a sock that you are wearing on your own foot. It is impossible to get the angle quite right.

But I have finally, finally finished this second sock of the second pair that I knit for my Sockapalooza 4 pal, Dawn, who has been incredibly patient. I finished it over President's Day weekend. Back in August, I sent her a pair of summery socks and the first of this pair of Bayerische socks, with an IOU for the other one. I was so sure that I would have this second sock finished in time for cold-weather wearing.
Although it is still cold and snowing here in Albany (it's really been coming down for the past two days), however, my roommate (who is from Texas, where Dawn is) tells me that winter is over down south, and Texans have been enjoying 80-degree weather. Bummer, on two counts.
I love how these socks have turned out, even though they took me forever to finish. I don't know if I'll ever knit them again, though, even if I would love a pair for myself. And there are so many other sock patterns out there that I want to try knitting, and so little time!

Year Cake

2008-02-10T10:44:00.001-05:00

What is more evocative of Chinese New Year than New Year cake, or nian gao? In the mornings or afternoons of the first few days of the New Year, as you're at home with family, or braving the cold to go visit relatives to greet the New Year with them, you will often find nian gao being fried up and served. Slightly sweet, slightly chewy, slightly melt-in-your-mouth, it is difficult to imagine a Chinese New Year without it.

These days, most people buy a round of nian gao from the supermarket, or a Chinese restaurant. At this time of year, they even serve it in the restaurants when you're having dim sum. Not all nian gao is made equal, however. Some manufacturers put in copious amounts of red dye (red being a lucky colour); I would avoid any pink- or red-looking cakes.

On Thursday, when I was calling all my aunts and uncles to wish them a happy New Year (it took over an hour and a half), one of my aunts suggested that I make my own nian gao, saying that it was very simple. Well, she told me how and, indeed, it sounded very simple.

Nian Gao recipe (provided by Hing-Yuk Lau Chan)

Ingredients (to make two rounds of nian gao):

1 lb glutinous rice flour
5 slabs of brown, rock candy sugar
3 Chinese rice bowls full of water (around 3.5 cups)

Make a light syrup by heating the water and sugar together in a saucepan until the sugar has melted. There is no need to reduce the liquid; this syrup is not meant to be thick.
Place the glutinous rice flour in a large bowl. Very gradually, add the syrup, mixing well after each addition. Aim to produce a smooth, lump-free batter. After all the syrup is added, it should resemble pancake batter.
Divide the batter evenly between two shallow, round containers that have been brushed with vegetable oil. I used 8-inch round baking pans. At this point, you can decorate the top with a dried, red date and/or some lotus seeds if you like. If you plan to cook the nian gao in the microwave, use glass or plastic containers. My aunt suggested that I use two takeout containers, the kind we often get from Chinese restaurants, and told me to cook the nian gao on the high setting in the microwave for around 8 minutes. Now, I don't know about you, but I have been trying to cut back on microwave usage, because I don't believe that it's healthy. In particular, I no longer put plastic containers in the microwave, so I wasn't about to zap my nian gao in plastic for a full 8 minutes! Either use a glass container, or do what I did, which is to use the more traditional method of steaming.

Make sure that there is plenty of water heating in your steaming vessel, because steaming takes much longer than microwaving! I used a wok with a metal rack set in the bottom to hold the pan above the water. Place your containers of nian gao batter into your steaming vessel and steam for 60-90 minutes. You'll want to check the water level once or twice, to make sure that you still have enough liquid. It pays to keep a kettle of hot water available, so you don't reduce the temperature of the steaming water too much when you add liquid.

You'll know that the nian gao is done when it has become slightly translucent, and there are no pale, batter-coloured patches left. If your nian gao isn't done after 8 minutes in the microwave, cook it for another 1 to 2 minutes.The top of the nian gao may have developed bubbles and become uneven while cooking. Brush the bottom of a large plate that fits into your pan/container with oil (or use the smooth bottom of a glass) and use it to press down on the top of your nian gao while it is still warm, to smooth it out. Cool the nian gao to room temperature, and then chill in the refrigerator overnight.Whether you're cooking your own nian gao, or nian gao you bought from the store, the process is the same. Slice your round of nian gao into pieces roughly 3/8-inch thick and approximately 2 1/2- by 2-inches in size. If your slices are too thick, the outside of your nian gao will burn before the inside heats properly.

In a bowl, lightly beat an egg. Heat a pan and add a little bit of oil. Dip each slice of nian gao in the beaten egg and place them in the pan. Pan fry for around 1 minute on each side, until the nian gao is heated through, develops a slight crust on the outside, and is soft and pliable, but still retains its shape. You don't have to dip the nian gao in egg if you are vegetarian. The egg just helps to prevent sticking.
Eat your nian gao while it is still hot and soft and chewy, but be careful not to burn your mouth! My roommate, and people at work, for whom I've made nian gao say it reminds them of french toast. I am happy to report that, although my round of nian gao wasn't as hard (think of a round of parmesan cheese) as what you buy from the store, it fried up beautifully and tasted great.

Happy Chinese New Year!!

2008-02-09T12:47:00.000-05:00

Happy Chinese New Year! I wish you and your families good health, longevity, prosperity, success in all your endeavours, and fulfilment of your heart's desire. I haven't posted since last year, according to the western calendar, but I thought the lunar New Year would be a nice time to start again. I have a lot of catching up to do, since I haven't been idle, but I'm returning with a little series on Chinese New Year foods.

Chinese New Year is one of my favourite times of the year. You can get together with family, eat lots of good food, receive lucky money (!), and remember all the interesting and wonderful traditions that are part of the Chinese culture.

For example, in my family, we try to be vegetarian on the first day of the New Year. No doubt this practice has its origins in Buddhism and, although my family isn't Buddhist, we observe this tradition because it isn't such a huge sacrifice, especially when you have a wonderful vegetarian dish to look forward to!

At home, we just call this dish tsai, which means vegetarian food; at this time of year, it clearly refers to this one dish that Moocow and I look forward to. We usually end up making a huge wok-ful, because everyone in the house has some, and we can have more throughout the day, or the next few days. It is very simple to make, and nutritious as well. The most important thing is to have the right number of ingredients, and the right kinds.

During the lunar New Year, everything has to be lucky and auspicious. Red is a lucky colour, as are most even numbers (though not four, which sounds like the word for death!!). The numbers eight, nine, ten and thirteen, especially, are considered lucky, so we make sure that we have one of those numbers of ingredients in the tsai.

This year, I soaked some dried shiitake mushrooms and wood ear fungus, which are always featured in my family's version of this dish. I keep the shiitake water because it contains a lot of flavour, and can be used instead of chicken broth. The snow peas and carrots are for colour and sweetness.
At Moocow's suggestion, I also soaked some dried lily bulbs, which signify togetherness at this happy time of year. They, and the small, red dates, are also slightly sweet. I never actually eat the red dates, but I like how they look. When I brought the tsai in to work the other day, however, two people said that they liked them.
You'll also want to soak some vermicelli (also known as cellophane or mung bean noodles). Normally, we would also want to put in a fungus called fat choi, which seriously resembles hair. It adds a certain flavour to the dish, and is very lucky because it sounds a lot like the word for prosperity. However, in recent years I've learned that this particular species may have been overharvested. It has become more difficult to acquire, and I certainly wouldn't want to be responsible for driving it to extinction, so I didn't use any.
Clean some napa cabbage and cut it into bite-sized pieces. You should cut them slightly larger than you would expect, because they shrink a little as they cook. Then, one of my favourites, is the dried tofu skin. You buy it in packages, and they're hard, brittle spears that you need to soak for a while (at least an hour), otherwise they won't cook properly. After they've soaked and softened, you can cut them into bite-sized pieces.

So, have you been counting? I had nine ingredients in my tsai this year. You can also put in peeled and sliced rounds of lotus root, sugar snap peas, snow fungus, or even dried oysters (soaked). "Dried oysters!" you might say. Yes, they aren't vegetarian. Somehow, though, they are kosher for this dish. Why? Well, my father had a story about how the Buddha called all the animals to a meeting (perhaps it was the one to invite them to the New Year's banquet, which decided their order in the Chinese zodiac) and, while he was talking, he had his staff in a pool of water. When he was finished and lifted his staff to leave, he found that some oysters had attached to it. This made the oysters "clean" and special in some way. I'm still not sure how it makes it all right to eat them, but there you go.

So, heat some oil in the wok and put in a couple of slices of peeled ginger. Then, stir-fry the carrots and snow peas and the wood ear fungus with a little bit of salt. This helps to keep the colours nice and bright. Don't stir-fry the shiitake mushrooms, though, because they can become tough. Set aside the carrots and snow peas. In the wok, with the wood ear fungs and ginger, add the napa cabbage, shiitake mushroom and tofu skin. Add a little bit of salt and some soy sauce and cook over medium heat until the napa cabbage is tender. The cabbage should release quite a bit of liquid as it cooks, but you may need to add water. If you have the water from soaking the shiitake mushrooms, use that.

Once the napa cabbage and tofu skin are cooked to your liking, add the red dates and lily bulb. Cook for a minute or two. At this point, I adjust the seasonings a little, with salt, soy sauce, a little bit of sugar, and white pepper. Then, add the vermicelli and mix it into the other ingredients well. You will probably need to add liquid in at this point. The vermicelli cooks quickly, so cook for just another three or four minutes. Taste, and adjust seasonings again, if it's necessary. At the end, add the snow peas and carrots back in and mix it all together. By this point, it's probably a huge wok full of food, and will give you quite a workout!

Serve it nice and hot, either on its own, or with rice. This is a dish that keeps well for a couple of days in the refrigerator. When you reheat it, either in a pot or in the microwave, be sure to add a little liquid. If you reheat it by steaming, that won't be necessary.

Desserts at work

2008-01-13T16:46:00.000-05:00

I started my externship at a major hotel in town back in September. The first few months were spent simply figuring out where everything was, trying not to make too many disastrous mistakes, and trying to work as efficiently as possible. All this was especially challenging as I started right at the beginning of the holiday rush and because we suddenly became understaffed in October when we lost a team member. While I haven't had much time to blog, I've been taking some pictures along the way. Now that things have slowed down a bit, thought I would share.

Yesterday afternoon at 3:00 we got a call from the restaurant manager asking for a custom chocolate birthday cake for a dinner guest. With a banquet of 400 arriving that evening and preparation for Restaurant Week madness to complete as well, no one really had the time to make a custom cake on such short notice. As I had been asking to be allowed to make and decorate a cake, the chef asked me to take care of this request. Luckily we make lots of cakes in frames - metal frames that one places inside a sheet pan and cake batter, mousse batter, etc., gets smoothed into it. The result is a large cake rectangle that can be cut as desired. Usually we cut them into 2"x2" squares for mini pastries, but on occasions like this, we just take whatever we need. This cake has a chocolate sponge base, a caramel mousse layer, and a chocolate mousse layer. All I really had to do was cut the cake, spray it with chocolate spray (thus the velvety look to the surface), and stick some chocolate shards in it, but it was still fun to get to decide how to dress up a dark rectangle! The guest ended up sending his compliments to the chef, saying that it was the best cake he'd ever had. Even though I had nothing to do with making the cake itself, it was still nice to know that one of our desserts made a guest happy.

The three desserts shown below were made for the New Year's Eve menu at the hotel. I think the chocolate box (also sprayed) was filled with a tropical fruit or raspberry mousse...can't remember now. The macaroon was filled with a silky dark chocolate ganache, and the exotic-looking ball is a solid ball of crunchy meringue on the top half, vanilla ice cream on the bottom half, and a chocolate ice cream core. Oh, and there was coconut sprinkled on top of the meringue.

Butternut Squash Risotto

2007-12-11T20:29:00.000-05:00

Risotto is one of my favourite comfort foods. It's something about the slow, gentle cooking over a stove. The smooth, creamy texture and satisfying starchiness (I love rice!), as well as all the endless variations, make it difficult to resist.

I haven't cooked much (and have really been eating rather poorly) for the past two weeks. The other day, I stayed up until 5 a.m. grading exams. Serves me right for writing a 13 page final! But today, with my Statistics paper out of the way, and just one more exam to go, I decided to indulge my craving to try this recipe from Cook's Illustrated. It really wasn't difficult, especially since I skipped the step where I heat the chicken broth with the seeds and string of the squash.

It turned out a little darker than I'd expected. Somehow, the organic chicken broth I bought was rather dark in colour. It may not be photogenic, but oh, it tasted so good! The flavour of the squash was enhanced with a pinch of nutmeg, some sage, and a sprinkling of parmesan. Now, if only I had a bit of tiramisu for dessert.....

A stab at bread

2007-12-10T11:56:00.000-05:00

About three weeks ago, I made my first stab at bread outside of pizza dough. It was also the first real bread I made that wasn't an inedible brick. And all the better that it was cinnamon swirl bread. It was so good, I made the recipe twice more.

The original recipe called for 8 cups of flour - something impossible to do in the average Hong Kong kitchen. Cutting it down to a manageable 2 or 3 cups required some tricky math and futzing around with the measurements: I need a little more water to proof the yeast, so a little less milk to balance it out? And I can't do 66.6% of an egg. Throw the whole egg in, and use a little more flour? I'm not really sure if I did the right thing, as the science of baking is a complete mystery to me. I also have little idea whether my substitution of ordinary plain flour for bread flour (the latter being expensive in Hong Kong), and vegetable oil for butter (trying to avoid saturated fats) made any real difference. The recipe also called for scalded milk. I don't know why this would be different from unboiled milk. Oh well, just do what it says.

But it did rise, it wasn't rock hard, and it tasted pretty good. The loaf just looks rather flat in the photo because my baking tin was too large. I knew a guy in college who routinely made bread without the benefit of a recipe. He just threw things together until they kneaded up roughly at the right consistency. It worked.

The first attempt was a bit thin on the filling. It said to just sprinkle a lot of cinnamon sugar and a few drops of water on the rolled-out dough and roll it up. I guess I didn't use enough.

The next time, I over-compensated by adding raisins, little chunks of apple, and apple sauce (which I have to make myself - you can't buy it here except in ridiculously tiny baby food jars), but there must have been too much moisture because the bread came out a bit doughy.

The third time, I eliminated the apple and apple products, used a lot more cinnamon sugar, and kept the raisins. And the imaginary Goldilocks looking over my shoulder, that picky picky girl, smiled in satisfaction.

Tis the Season!

2007-12-03T19:19:00.000-05:00

Yes, I do know how to make more than food, although lately I've been worried that I've gotten rusty at doing other things. Our Final Buffet was this weekend, and although we're not totally done with pastry school yet, we won't be cooking nearly as much from now on. (I'm not putting the pictures up here, since there are too many, but here is the link to the album.) Even better, we don't have any more long homework assignments, woohoo!!! The first order of the day was to get ready for Christmas, and with that, I headed off to Target to buy the shortest length of tree lights that I could find - 12 feet for around $2.00. As for the tree, our apartment is tiny, so we had to find an accordingly tiny specimen. For all the apartment dwellers out there, you'll understand how hard it is to find a real tree that's under 4 feet tall. In past years we've made do with a tabletop balsam tree from LLBean that costs $80, but this year we got lucky. You'll never guess where I found this little guy......Whole Foods, for only $25! Whole Foods calls it a "tabletop" tree, too, but they must have a huge table in mind. Doesn't it look perfect our little corner here? Even better, this tree reminds me of the scrawny, lovable little shrub in "A Charlie Brown Christmas."

Aside from getting the tree set up, I managed to get started on some stocking stuffers for the holidays, too.
This duo is going to work hard at looking cute on someone's refrigerator this holiday. Here they are going for a practice run on our fridge.

Another Day, Another Attempt

2007-11-20T23:43:00.000-05:00

I've pretty much eaten my way through the last of the CSA produce. I do, however, still have onions and potatoes. I've been saving these lovely fingering potatoes for various things, one of which was another attempt to reproduce those Indian-style potatoes that I ate at a friend's house a couple of years ago. This time I followed a recipe from Lord Krishna's Cuisine. Having learnt from my experience with her palak paneer recipe, I added some garlic and increased the amount of spices a bit.
This time it seemed a little closer to the flavour I remember. I have one more recipe I'm going to try. It's from a south Indian cookbook (my friend is south Indian). Maybe some combination of these recipes will reproduce it. This was tonight's dinner, by the way. Spicy potatoes, chicken with whole spices in a yogurt sauce, and some saag paneer I had made for the biology graduate student Turk'y (not real turkey) party.

New Shower Curtain

2007-11-20T23:36:00.000-05:00

At last, I found time to finish the shower curtain, which has been sitting around half-complete for months now (that's why there are all those wrinkles). W and I picked out the brown brocade to go with our 1950's style, pink formica sink counter. The previous tenants had gone for a pink and green colour scheme (I still need to replace those green blinds!), but we decided on brown and pink. It reminds me of chocolate sundaes and other chocolaty delights.

See the date on that photo? It was September when I was sewing it up and pinking the raw edges. For many weeks I was trying to find the right shade of metal grommet, buying and returning several times. After an aborted attempt to actually put in the grommets (not enough layers of fabric, or fabric too thin), I let it sit a couple more weeks before I finally went with simple buttonholes.

I had to stick some pink satin at the top, because they were don't to the last few yards of the bolt of fabric, and I didn't have enough for the curtain. I think it turned out rather well, though, don't you?

Seeing What the Fuss is About

2007-11-20T23:24:00.000-05:00

I was browsing magazines at the bookstore when it happened for the first time. I picked up a copy of that little publication put out by the Martha Stewart franchise, Everyday Food, and I was curious. Now, I've heard that MS's regular recipes can be very involved, and the idea is cooking for entertaining. Since I don't really have the time, or space, to entertain in great numbers, her recipes have never really interested me. But the recipes in Everyday Food did, indeed, look more like something I would attempt for less exalted occasions.

Of course, she has her own home furnishing, kitchenware and bakeware lines at Macy's and Kmart, she has numerous books and periodicals to her name, and she has become rather notorious. But I just wanted to see what the hype is all about. Do her recipes work, do they taste good, and are they worth the time? Of course, I know it's her Everyday Food team that actually works on the recipes for that little magazine, but I've managed to collect three issues now: one for October, one for Thanksgiving/November, and one special holiday issue with a lot of baked goods.

I had leftover pumpkin puree from making the pumpkin pie, so I decided to try the Penne with Creamy Pumpkin Sauce. It was just me, so I quartered the portions. I also had to substitute fresh rosemary for thyme, because my rosemary just hasn't been growing since I brought it indoors. And I may have substituted light cream for heavy cream. So maybe that accounts for the less than amazing results. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't wonderful. I guess I'll have to find another use for unused pumpkin puree!

Quinoa

2007-11-20T23:10:00.000-05:00

It's been about a month since I decided to start experimenting with whole grains. Chinese people eat a lot of white rice, which really isn't that good for you. I borrowed Whole Grains Every Day, Every Way, by Lorna Sass, from the library, and I'm going to try out different whole grains to see what they taste like and whether they're easy to prepare. If all goes well, when I go visit my parents over New Year's, I will introduce them to whole grains.

I took W on her first trip to the local co-op, and I stocked up on some quinoa, amaranth, wheat berries and steel cut oats. It's always fun going to the co-op. Quinoa [keen-wa] looked relatively easy to prepare, so I chose a recipe for which I had most of the ingredients, which happened to be the chile-scented pork chops with roasted red pepper dressing.

I overcooked the quinoa, I think, and I didn't have a strainer with sufficiently fine mesh (which may have been part of the overcooking problem), so I had some runaways. You have to be sure to rinse the quinoa thoroughly before you cook it (I forgot, and dumped it into my pot of boiling water, so I had to drain it and start again) because it has natural saponins in its bran layer, which taste bitter. After it's cooked, quinoa has a faintly vegetal aroma (it reminds me a bit of some Chinese herbs), but I didn't find it unpleasant.

I got a whole lot of quinoa, though, so I'm going to continue experimenting. There's even a recipe for a ginger quinoa cake in the book!

Taking Care of (Leek) Business

2007-11-20T22:44:00.001-05:00

What does one do with bags of leeks? I like them, otherwise I wouldn't have taken so many at the CSA, but I wanted to try something different from what I had been doing so far, which was potato leek soup (though I did make some of that, too) or lemon-dill fish fillets with leek greens.
I bought some gruyere cheese and a frozen pie crust, and whipped up this leek pie in short order. But it tasted really good; it must be all the cheese! And, since I was feeling a little guilty about said cheese, I paired it up with a healthy basil (from my little windowsill basil plant) and cherry tomato salad.
And, because it was so good, I made shepherd's pie again.
It went into the fridge, so I could eat it throughout the week. I gave some of the leek pie and shepherd's pie to a coworker at the Japanese restaurant. He's a rather notorious for being, if not a picky eater, than something of a gourmet. Perhaps he was being polite, but it was all compliments from him! Ah, the magic of cheese and butter!
And, as I've said before, I see nothing wrong with eating the green portion of the leek. In fact, I believe the French (great leek eaters) do so regularly.
This time, I just stir-fried them into some fried rice, instead of onions or scallions. They weren't tough or fibrous at all.

I'm all out of leeks from the CSA now. I guess it's back to buying vegetables from the supermarket for me.

Sock Saviour Revealed

2007-11-20T21:38:00.001-05:00

Was there ever a more undeserving sock pal than I? I was so disappointed when my Sockapalooza sock pal went AWOL, but Aunti MiMi become my sock saviour and has e-mailed me and kept me apprised of her progress. Then what do I do? It's been a couple of days since I received the incredible package my sock saviour sent me, exams (Remote Sensing - it's quite a challenge trying to identify man made structures and natural phenomena from satellite images), problem sets (remote sensing and statistics) grading, grading and more grading (I never though I'd be pulling all-nighters to get grading completed!) have sapped me of a lot of energy. I wanted to take some nice pictures and write a decent post to do these socks justice because they are simply gorgeous!

My sock saviour, Aunti MiMi, who lives in Minnesota, knit these socks from Fleece Artist Merino. It's hard to believe that there isn't even a smidgen of silk in the yarn, it's so silky and soft. It even has a beautiful sheen to it. And I couldn't have chosen a better colourway myself! It's a subtly variegated red, and red socks are so snazzy!

But MiMi didn't stop there! She sent me something else guaranteed to take my breath away! The cutest little bowl (I'm thinking condiments, tiny dishes of Japanese-style appetizers, and stitch markers) made by a potter/knitter in Minnesota, Jennie E. Lanners. Now that I've seen - and touched - her work, I'm not sure how I will control myself. Did you see the ball of pink yarn unraveling at the bottom of the bowl?

A lovely card, with a picture of some seriously sexy yarn, two delicious-smelling almond oatmeal soaps, and some hand-dyed yarn from Minnesota. It has all the colours that I've been especially fond of recently: powder pink, baby pink, pistachio, apple cream, sea foam green. It's too much! So much more than I had been expecting, and I love it all. You're the most wonderful sock saviour, and your socks were more than worth waiting for. Thank you, Michelle!

Sewing Inspiration

2007-11-07T22:51:00.000-05:00

First Kea sews some spectacular, spontaneous quilted cushion covers. Then, I come across a wonderful sewing blog, Sew, Mama, Sew!, that is currently doing a 30-day series on little sewing gifts, with links to fabulous tutorials and other crafty sewing blogs. I'm sure Moocow will be interested in the lunch bags, and there is an excellent tutorial for a quilted fabric wallet that I would really like to try my hand at.

So, if you like sewing, crafts, cute things, or just superb craftsmanship, head on over!

Cake decorating week

2007-11-07T20:10:00.000-05:00

We had Colette Peters, a well-known cake decorator, come spend two days with us and show us a few of her tricks. We got to decorate one cake each, using styrofoam as a base in place of real cake. Here's my cake.
I think it looks like it could be from a Dr. Seuss on Easter book. Everything, even down to the candle, is made of icing fondant. And before you go, "Ewww, fondant!" we used a high-quality fondant that actually tasted very good. I used to hate the very mention of fondant. When I came across it on wedding cakes, I would invariably peel off the stuff before taking a timid bite of the cake, which usually tasted equally gross. Turns out that all those cakes had been made with poor quality fondant. It guess it shouldn't have been a surprise then that the cake itself never tasted too good either. In any case, there is delicious fondant out there, so keep an open mind next time you see it on your plate!

This was my favorite cake from the class, again from the person who made the avocado chicken egg. Her pineapple-themed cake was topped with a ring of fondant that was torched to create what looked like a slice of roasted pineapple. Even Colette was impressed; she'd never seen or heard of fondant being torched. So if you guys see torched fondant somewhere in the future, remember you saw it here first!
Colette also taught us how to make various flowers using gum paste. Here's a peony I made out of gum paste. The aluminum foil is there to hold up the petals so the flower dries in the right shape.
Some dogwood flowers....
And a little gum paste bouquet...

Scrap cushion covers

2007-11-07T05:11:00.000-05:00

These maddeningly cheerful couch cushion covers are patchwork in the old sense, in that they're actually made of recycled scraps. The lining and backing are old Boyfriend t-shirts, the floral patterned squares are leftovers from one of my mom's sewing projects, and the plaid - well, you probably don't want to know.

I know it's just squares and rectangles, it's still the most complicated thing I've done in terms of quilting so far. I've always found that one of the most enjoyable aspects of sewing is the geometry, one of the few things I actually liked about high school maths. I think curved lines would be too fiddly for me, but next time I might tackle triangles. It'll be an excuse for me to re-learn my trigonometry.

Donut Muffins Revisited

2007-11-05T23:37:00.000-05:00

(Hopefully I get this right this time...)

You gals are on such a roll with all your amazing home-cooked (or school-cooked?) dishes! I'm going to backtrack a bit back to one of Moocow's posts from this summer when she shared her donut muffin experience. Soon after she sent me the recipe (which I have since found online, so I think it's okay to link: muffin recipe and interesting accompanying article), I bought a muffin baking pan. Months pass without it being used. Then a couple of weeks ago at the farmer's market, a bakery stall was selling something similar, which reminded me of the recipe. Cinnamon, fall, baking... those just kind of go together, don't you think? It was time to make the muffins.

Filling the muffin cups with batter

Baked and ready to be dipped

Post-dip

Mmmmmm.

Now, this was the largest recipe I've ever followed. I mean, six cups of flour?! I've never had to deal with more than three. And all that butter, whoa. But instead of halving everything, I prepared the muffin batter to the fullest and chilled half for later. The muffin was very dense, but cakey and crumbly and could still hold up to a fork cutting through it. I brought some over to a pumpking carving party the next day and was instantly asked for the recipe. This is one for my recipe library.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

2007-10-29T18:57:00.000-05:00

I don't think I ever ate brussels sprouts as a child, or ever saw what it looked like before it had been harvested and cut, but they actually grown on a long, tough stalk, which I thought rather fun when I got them from the CSA. I'd never eaten, or prepared, them before, but I did watch Ina Garten (The Barefoot Contessa) on the Food Network make some a couple of years ago, and it seemed simple enough. Toss the brussels sprouts (I cut them off of the stalk and washed them first) with salt, pepper and olive oil, and roast them in the oven.
They were delicious! Kind of like popcorn, but tasting like a cross between broccoli and green beans, and much healthier, too. They were a little crunchy on the outside, but tender, green and fragrant in the middle. You hear all these horror stories about brussels sprouts, and how much people hate them, but I don't find anything objectionable about them at all. This was my first time eating brussels sprouts, but it won't be the last.

Butternut Squash Soup

2007-10-28T21:19:00.000-05:00

I had two butternut squash from the CSA that have been sitting around, waiting for me to deal with them. I've had plans for those two squash, including butternut squash soup, butternut squash risotto, and roasted butternut squash. I tackled the soup recipe today, which involved sauteing some shallots in butter.
An unusual aspect of this recipe (from Cook's Illustrated), involves sauteing the seeds and stringy fibres from the squash as well. Then, water is added to this mixture.
The butternut squash is then steamed (that's a steamer basket hiding underneath all that squash) with the liquid that contains the butter, shallots, seeds and fibres. Once the squash is tender, the steamer basket is removed from the pot and the squash is allowed to cool down, after which the flesh is scooped out. The steaming liquid is strained to remove the seeds and string.

Then the strained liquid and steamed squash are pureed together (this was the easiest step for me, because I have my wonderful immersion blender) and cream, brown sugar and salt are added.
And here I have a huge pot of butternut squash soup - it's a good thing that W adores butternut squash. This soup is tremendously comforting, especially since the apartment is rather chilly. I really like how it turned out. I used light cream, instead of the heavy cream called for in the recipe. Perhaps it wasn't as creamy as it might have been, but I actually like the lighter flavour and thinner consistency. Next time, I might try throwing in a few sprigs of fresh thyme, which would get strained out with the seeds.

Pumpkin Pie

2007-10-28T20:55:00.001-05:00

After some unusually warm weather this late in October, it seems that it has finally started to cool down in earnest. The fall air has made me crave things made with apples and hard winter squash, such as apple crumble, pumpkin pie and butternut squash soup.

Spread out over two days, I made a pumpkin pie following the recipe in The Essential Baker, the book whose recipe I used for my carrot cake. Why did it take two days? Well, first I made the pastry dough for the crust, which had to chill for a couple of hours. Because I had things to do, I let it chill until the next day.

Rolling out the dough into a decent, properly-sized circle shape of even thickness was more difficult that I had anticipated, and I blame that on my rolling pin. It's the type of rolling pin that many household are no doubt familiar with: the centre barrel rolls, while you hold onto the stationary handles. Well, you just can't apply the right amount of even pressure. It was very frustrating, and I had to return the half rolled-out crust to the refrigerator several times because it was taking so long and the dough was warming up.

Finally, I had the crust rolled out and eased in to line the deep-dish pie plate. As the unbaked pie crust was cooling in the freezer (to prevent shrinkage when baking), I mixed together the ingredients for the pumpkin filling.
The filling went into the unbaked crust, and the pie went into the oven.And, around an hour later, a pumpkin pie - its filling still billowing up with heat - came out of the oven.
When the pie had cooled down all the way, however, the filling had shrunken and come away from the crust, all around the perimeter! This in no way affected the taste of the pie, which was very good. And it wasn't super heavy, overly sweet, or overloaded with spices, unlike many other pumpkin pies I have eaten. In fact, the filling was surprisingly light, and almost airy. This is a pie that you could have two slices of.
The only problems were 1) the crust was over-browned/slightly burnt, and 2) the filling shrank. It isn't so bad on this piece you see here. But on some of the other pieces, the entire side of the crust falls away from the pie filling and flops down rather pathetically.

I called Moocow to try to figure out what had gone wrong. She said, since the pumpkin pie filling is custard-like, it needed to bake slowly in a not-too-hot oven. That being the case, the crust should probably have been baked blind before being filled with the filling and baked slowly. When I had been following the recipe, I did think it rather strange that the crust wasn't to be baked first, but I decided to trust the recipe. Next time, I think I will try it following Moocow's advice. I'll probably shield the crust with aluminium foil, as well, so it doesn't burn. And, as soon as I can, I'm going to buy a simple, French rolling pin.

Plated Dessert Challenge

2007-10-28T14:53:00.000-05:00

We had our own "Iron Chef" challenge at school this week - we call it a "Market Basket," and were charged to create two plated desserts using specified amounts of sugar, butter, milk, cream, eggs, and tropical fruits (banana, mango, pineapple, and kiwi). We didn't have to use all the ingredients, but couldn't exceed those parameters. We also did not have to do two completely different desserts; we could make one dessert and plate it two ways. My entry was a pineapple shortcake.
The first one kind of looks like a classic French dessert using strawberries, called a Fraisier, but obviously this one has brown-sugar glazed pineapples instead. The cake was filled with vanilla bavarian, topped with a slice of dried pineapple, and sauced with a Madeira caramel. It looked nice, but I lost points for the flavors being too bland. My fault - after my dry run for the dessert earlier in the week, I realised it needed a little of the punchy lime syrup I also made, but as I had used a delicate yellow cake instead of the traditional biscuit, I was afraid the syrup would make it fall apart.

The second plate was a "deconstructed" shortcake, and the original plan was the bake it in a bundt pan, but I couldn't find one the right size. The brioche a tete mold I ended up using makes the cake kinda look like an alien spacecraft with a sail. This one got higher marks for taste because of the acidity and juiciness of the kiwi slices. Maybe next time I'll put kiwis in the middle of the first cake, too....hrm...

The other desserts below are a selection of the plates my classmates did.
This is a raspberry and whipped cream crepe gateau, or a crepe cake.

Here is a banana panna cotta that won raves from everyone.

And this handsome concoction is a rarely seen frozen "souffle." It's actually just frozen parfait, but it's molded in a ramekin to make it look like a souffle, and the core is filled with caramel sauce. There is a slice of banana in the middle to indicate its flavor. It's a really good-looking and delicious dessert. For some reason though, restaurants rarely have this on their menus so if you happen to see one in future, make sure to order it!

Shaker Corn Pudding

2007-10-27T22:27:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, I got four ears of sweet corn in my CSA share. Now that I have braces, I can't have corn on the cob. Instead, I decided to try a little something that I had always been curious about: corn pudding.

There are lots of corn pudding recipes out there, some of them with lots of cream, or cheese, or both. I didn't, however, want to overwhelm the fresh sweetness of this organically grown corn, so I turned to a very simple Shaker-style Creamy Corn Pudding recipe from Cook's Illustrated.

I am a great admirer of the healthful, simple, delicious goodness of Shaker cooking. This recipe is typical of that cuisine, and called for lots of fresh corn, grated off the cob, milk, eggs and fresh chives. What came out was an extremely light and appetizing affair, with the flavour of the corn enhanced by the addition of just enough milk and eggs.

One of these days, I'm going to try my hand at another Shaker corn dish, which is made from Shaker dried corn. I just have to figure out how to get my hands on some.

Gnawed-on Jack O' Lantern

2007-10-26T23:03:00.001-05:00

W and I bought a nice, big pumpkin last Friday so we could be properly prepared for Halloween. I hadn't carved a pumpkin since nursery school, but it was great fun! I saved the seeds, mixed them with some oil and spices, and toasted them in the oven.

This is our friendly-looking Jack o' Lantern. He probably won't look quite as perky by Halloween, though. The squirrels have been attacking him, and already his hat (the lid) doesn't fit anymore. Poor Jack! And darn those squirrels! Is nothing safe from them?

Pan-seared Toro Filet

2007-10-26T22:54:00.000-05:00

Working at a restaurant has its perks, and I think working at a Japanese restaurant must better than most, since most of the food there is relatively healthy.

My boss, knowing my love of food, gave me a piece of toro one Saturday night at closing time. Not just any piece of tuna, but toro! He said it wouldn't keep over the weekend (we're closed on Mondays, too) but that it would still be good cooked.

And, boy, was it! I just seasoned it lightly with salt and white pepper, a splash of sake and soy sauce, and some ginger juice. I served it with sauteed green peppers and mushrooms, and some colcannon. Sometimes, simple is best.

Carrot Nut Muffins

2007-10-26T22:44:00.000-05:00

Raymond, the farmer for the CSA I joined, grows really beautiful carrots. (In fact, all of his root vegetables, and garlic, are stupdendous.) I made my first carrot cake a while back (it was a behemoth) but one night, as I was studying, I felt the overwhelming need to bake. I couldn't afford to do anything too involved, so I settled on this carrot nut muffin recipe by Beth Hensperger in the Williams-Sonomo Muffins cookbook.

In the interest of saving time, I used the little mini-food processor that Moocow had left with me. It isn't terribly good, I'm afraid - the walnuts and carrots were very unevenly chopped - but I satisfied my baking craving, tested a new recipe, and got back to studying pretty quickly. And, I swear, it was just about the baking; I didn't have any muffins until the next morning. They were pretty good, too. And look, Ma, no icing! Definitely healthy enough for breakfast.

Colcannon and Creamy Beet Soup

2007-10-26T22:32:00.000-05:00

Joining a CSA this year has really broadened my culinary horizons. I've eaten vegetables that I wouldn't normally choose to buy for myself when shopping at the supermarket, and have cooked some interesting dishes, some of which I have been wanting and planning to try for a long time. Colcannon is one of them. I admit to a certain fascination with Irish culture, the food included. Colcannon, a traditional potato and cabbage dish, always struck me as being a comfort food. Armed with farm-fresh cabbage and potatoes, I made this dish that I had never eaten before. It was good, and just as comforting as I had imagined.
We've been joking all summer that Raymond, the CSA farmer, must really, really like beets. More often than any other vegetable this season, we have had plentiful, and HUGE, beets. I decided to try making a creamy beet soup, flavoured with the fresh dill that we received one week.

It wasn't such a shocking colour in reality, but more of a deep, purplish red. I can't say that I really enjoyed this soup a whole lot, though. I think I'll stick with my beets un-pureed.