Some knitting and some baking

I've started my 2nd sweater of 2014: Dragonflies, by Joji Locatelli. My goal is to knit two sweaters this year, and I'm optimistic I'll manage it given my progress so far.



It's going well so far. The lace is more complicated than anything I've done recently, but I'm getting into a rhythm with it, so all is good. I still have to focus entirely on the charts, but I think it will get easier as I go.

Other than knitting, I've been baking. The other day I made pita / pitta for the first time, and it was so awesome.



Delicious, and surprisingly easy. Will make again. I used a recipe from How to Bake by Paul Hollywood. The pockets are magical. Or maybe it's just yeast that is magical. In any case. Eating fresh, warm pitta with store-bought hummus just made the hummus seem sad, so next time maybe I'll make the hummus as well. (I used to make hummus frequently, but laziness has taken over these days.)

Magical.

It's not as warm out today as it was a few days ago, since Scotland's participation in the UK 'heatwave' was rather brief, but I am still enjoying a very magical iced coffee.



This is Magical coffee - cold-brewed coffee with cinnamon and brown sugar. My first time cold-brewing, but definitely not last. Delicious!

I did the whole thing in a cafetiere / French press, and the press seemed to do enough straining on its own. (We normally use a cafetiere for coffee, so all our coffee is coarsely ground.) I used less coffee - 3 coffee scoops (which I think are tablespoons), since I only used just over two cups of water. I also used less sugar - more like 2 tblsp, but next time I might use even less. I kept the cinnamon the same, because I love cinnamon. I used coffee ice cubes, since I made some the other day when it was rather warm and hadn't had a chance to try them yet.

Edited to add: the combination of cinnamon and sugar kind of gummed up the French press, so next time I might add the sugar afterwards. This wouldn't be an issue with straining, I guess.



Oh, hello, by the way! I ATEN'T DED and all that.

Stuff and things

I've been meaning to write about all sorts of things lately, and just never getting around to it for no apparent reason. I will get around to it, though. Later. In the mean time, I am knitting - progress on my Colo(u)r Affection was stalled for a while when I encountered some epic yarn barf. I say encountered, but really, it started out as slightly twisted yarn, and I made it a lot worse by ignoring it and pretending it would go away on its own.



All is now untangled, though I had to make several cuts in the yarn to do it. The good thing about knitting stripes is that I don't feel bad about having to join new yarn. The largest salvaged ball might see me through to the end of the project, though. We'll see.



Also check out my awesome and delicious green smoothie. It's a bit chunky, but I don't mind. Smoothie above contains an apple, an orange, peanut butter, oats, ginger, spinach and water. It tasted very fresh. This seems like a good way to eat more green stuff - I love leafy greens in all sorts of forms, but somehow still don't eat enough of them, so why not try them in drinkable breakfast form? Mmmm probably the best smoothie in the world?

Lemon poppy seed cookies

I made some cookies, and managed to get photos when they were only mostly gone.



The recipe I sort-of followed is here. These are a bit of a departure for me, since I mostly bake brownish things - the result of subbing in brown sugar and whole-wheat flour, and using lots of spices. I do love some cinnamon... but in this case, these were lovely as is, without too many substitutions.



I say without too many because I tinkered with the fats. The recipe calls for butter, but I can never resist reducing and substituting when butter is involved. In this case, I reduced the total fat to about 6 tblspoons (from 8), and used roughly equal amounts of butter, vegetable oil, and virgin coconut oil. In actual fact, the butter measurement was very rough - basically two vaguely tablespoon sized chunks. But anyway. The subtle coconut smell while the cookies were baking was delightful, but there isn't a strong flavour of it once baked, at least not in the small amount I used. This was my first time baking with coconut oil, and I'll probably experiment with it some more. It's mostly saturated fat, so despite all the hype, I doubt it is that much healthier than other saturated fats, but whatever.

Oh, and I left off the glaze mostly out of laziness. They are delicious without it, anyway.



Mmmm cookies. Will make again.

Strawberry Lemonade Bars

As of last weekend, we've been living in Edinburgh for two years. This called for celebration! So I made some lemon bars.



These are my approximation of the Pink Lemonade Bars from Smitten Kitchen. The only deliberate changes I made were using strawberries instead of raspberries (because that's what I had on hand), and using only about 2/3 of the butter called for in the base. I also accidentally used icing sugar instead of granulated sugar for the base after misreading the recipe. Not sure how that happened, but it turned out fine.



They turned out really well, despite the fact that I nearly burned them. (Icing sugar to cover up the borderline charred spots, FTW). The first time I made lemon squares / bars years ago from another recipe they never set properly, and I was left with lemon gloop. Delicious, but not exactly what I was aiming for. This time, it took longer than it was supposed to, but they did definitely set, and I could cut them into bars without (too much) mess. Hurray! I'm glad they turned out, since I so rarely do fancy baking - things with sugar dusted on them? Things that need to cool before cutting and devouring? What?



The strawberry addition was nice, and smelled really good while cooking, but wasn't overwhelming in the finished product. That's cool - they are meant to be lemon bars after all. Next time I'll try the recipe with raspberries as written and see how it goes.

SWAP zomg

The weather here has been grim for the last little while. Rainy, or when it isn't raining it's foggy, or gray, and dark - even though we still have many hours of daylight. I try to stay cheerful in the face of awful weather, since there's not much else I can do about it, but I have to admit that it's starting to get to me.

A ray of cheerfulness and excitement permeated the grim, gray morning today, though, since it was opening-up day for the swap I recently participated in on Ravelry. The idea behind the swap was for everyone to send their parcels off on or around a certain day, and then we'd all open them on the same day. Unfortunately, one or two swappers still haven't received their parcels, but they were gracious enough to let the rest of us open up today anyway.


I've had this parcel taunting me for a few weeks, since my swap partner was super-speedy about sending it to me. To resist the temptation, I kept it hidden under piles of paperwork, but today it came out.


Then I opened it, greedily.


And took out all the goodies. Note the postcard that shows a KFC shaped like a chicken. Whahey!

Required in the swap were yarn, a pattern (gifted through Ravelry on the day), a postcard from your home town, and a local item. My swap partner Jen aka phantominblue, lives in Georgia (the US state, not the country), and filled the package full of lovely things with attention to local details.


First, some gorgeous Shibui sock. Despite the fact that it is so grim outside and there's no light, the colour turned out fairly close. It's full of beautiful greens. She also made some stitch-markers that match the yarn. I do love green. There's also a Gone With the Wind magnet - the author lived in Georgia, and it features prominently in the story. I'm ashamed to admit I've never read it, though I have seen the film.


Moving on to the consumable items, there's peach tea - because of Georgia's famous peaches, and some local honey. Mmmm honey. Georgia is also home to Coca-Cola, so Jen included some soft-drink-inspired candy in the form of 7-Up jelly beans. In her note, she mentioned that even though 7-Up isn't part of the coke brand, she thought the candies would probably taste better. Fair enough! I'm not a cola fan, in any case, so it works out.

To round it all off, she sent a ravelry gift of Martina Behm's Magrathea pattern. This is a beautiful scarf / shawlette, (with added bonus of being Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy themed) and I'm looking forward to casting on.

So, thank you Jen! This totally made my day, and I feel so spoiled.

Bread and WOOLFEST

I made some delicious bread last week - definitely the most successful bread I've ever made. The recipe I used was Paul Hollywood's easy white bread from the BBC food site. I don't watch tv so I have no idea who this Paul Hollywood fellow is, but the recipe turned out rather well.



Mmmm crusty bread. It didn't actually burn on top - it got a bit dark, but for some reason the pictures make it look charred.



The recipe calls for 40 g of butter, which seems like a lot... I've never made bread that had butter baked into it before, but it was tasty. Next time I might try with olive oil, since it is easier to deal with. Though maybe the butter is what made it so good.



One thing that I always feel unsure about is kneading. Specifically, how long to knead bread. I've heard various things about how the dough should look / behave when it is kneaded sufficiently, but I can honestly say I've never managed to get it to pass the window-pane test. (Even then, it has usually turned out okay). In this case, I think the dough was too stiff, since it was difficult to knead and I was at it so long that my arms were aching. I eventually gave up without knowing if it was enough... but it rose perfectly, so whatever. Next time, more liquid? Bread-baking experts - what do you say?

In other news, I'm going to Woolfest this weekend! I'll be there Friday and Saturday, helping out at Ruth and Belinda's booth. Come say hello if you happen to be passing by! (I'm the one who is neither Ruth nor Belinda. Obviously.) We can have an awkward/joyous "I know you from the internet" moment. Anyway, I'm pretty excited, since I've never been to an event like this before. Especially since I've been working a lot lately, so I might even get to spend a little money on lovely yarn.

Still here...

Hello blogosphere! It's been a while, but I'm poking my head in to proclaim that I am still alive, and the blog isn't dead. I haven't been around much because....

I got a job! Hurray! It's only a temp job, but it's in my field and it's much-needed experience (not to mention much needed cash). So far I'm really enjoying it, and I'm trying to get as many shifts as I can in case the work dries up. It's also exhausting - I think I've been working 6 days a week for the last few weeks, even if it is usually part-time hours.

That's what I've been up to. I also had a birthday, for which I bought myself some yarn.



This is Millamia Naturally Soft Merino. I bought it in the SuperKnits sale in January, and hid it under my bed until my birthday, so it was almost a surprise to open it at last. I intend to make Gavotte by Cecily Glowik MacDonald. The lovely Zut gifted me the pattern as an RAK, and I'm keen to start swatching. Once I finish my wedding knitting. Or maybe before.

Speaking of wedding knitting, my shawl is still a fluffy white blob, but I've done 8 repeats of the 9 called for in the pattern, so it is getting there. I may do more repeats, since I have lots of yarn left - I guess I'll see what I have time for.

Lastly, I tried that soda bread again, this time with only a pinch of salt. That did the trick, and this time it was definitely edible.



Though it looks much the same as the first time around. Whew! I think I've forgotten how to blog. I intend to make some thoroughly colourful soup tonight, so here's hoping I have more to write about soon.

Brownies with an orange twist

Can I just say: NOM NOM NOM. Okay. Now that's out of the way, I made some brownies.



These are my latest variation on the Best Cocoa Brownies from Smitten Kitchen. I followed the recipe mostly, but was forced to put this into variation territory when I ran out of cocoa powder part-way through. To make up for having less cocoa powder than required, I substituted some Orange Hot Chocolate powder I had - a few heaping tablespoons worth. (Whittard's, if anyone's interested). Since this has sugar in it already, I reduced the sugar I added separately. I also used less butter because I ran out of that as well - but not significantly less, maybe 10 g less? No noticeable effect.



Result: moist, dense brownies with a slight orange-y taste. Not overwhelming, but quite pleasant. In the future, I may try this with orange zest instead of orange hot-chocolate. I bet that would taste even better.

bread FAIL

Yesterday I made soda bread.



Looks lovely, if I do say so myself. I was pretty excited about it, and took lots of pictures when I got it out of the oven.

Unfortunately, it turned out inedible. I'm not sure what happened, since I'm positive I followed the recipe to the letter - this one, from The Really Good Life. Or maybe that was my problem. What made it inedible was its incredible saltiness. I nearly always cut down on the amount of salt in recipes, but this time I didn't. Other people don't seem to have had a salt problem with this recipe, so maybe it's just me... Still, it was so salty that even my dude balked and spat out the piece he tasted. Disappointing! If I try this recipe again, needless to say I'll cut down salt to a mere pinch.



Still, it does look gorgeous, doesn't it. ;)

most photogenic cookie?

The other day I made Orange Gingersnaps. After finding this recipe on Pinterest ages ago, I'm glad I finally tried it. I shoved nearly 2/3 of the batch in the freezer afterwards so I could make them last longer. Mmmm. I love the way orange and ginger combine.

Generally, I fall back on blobby oatmeal raisin cookies when I want to bake. They are delicious also. But these... these are even pretty, if I do say so myself! (And if I can make these look pretty, so can anyone.)



I mostly followed the recipe (shocking), but predictably made some changes. Instead of using shortening I used half butter, half vegetable oil. I didn't use as much molasses, since I've found that treacle available in the UK is much stronger than the molasses I always used in North America. I learned this the hard way making gingerbread one year - the stuff turned out black. I only used about a tablespoon this time, which was plenty.



Technically, I shouldn't call these gingerSNAPS since most of them don't really snap. Other than the last baking sheet full which I cooked a little longer, they ended up quite chewy. I did this on purpose, and I'm glad it worked, since chewy ginger cookies are awesome. They work well as crunchy cookies, though, if that's your thing.

Next time I make them, I'll use less sugar and maybe less butter in the oil-to-butter ratio, although I suspect that will make them tend towards crunchy rather than chewy.

hearty soup

I said summer never came to Scotland this year, but almost as soon as I said it the UK had a "heatwave." Well, autumn is reasserting itself after a few warm days. Today I was glad to remember I had some soup already made, just waiting in the freezer for a cold, drizzly evening. Even better, I took pictures when I first made it, perhaps thinking I would blog about it before now, so I wasn't tempted to wrestle with my camera in the dark.

Okay, so I never said it was an appetizing picture. It was delicious, honest!

This is Mushroom Barley Soup from the Tall Grass Kitchen. It was tasty the first time, and just as tasty after defrosting, although the carrots disintegrated a little. No worries. I also added broccoli this time, since everything is better with broccoli. (Oh, I'm the only one who thinks this? Haha. Ah well.)

I found the recipe while browsing Gojee.com, a recipe aggregator website that I discovered not too long ago. Although it does some things that other recipe sites also do, such as sorting recipes by ingredients you already have, I love the presentation on Gojee - gigantic, delicious photos for each recipe possibility. Food Pr0n.

The Unphotogenic Kitchen: Pasta / Noodles with Ginger-Garlic Peanut Sauce

It's still light out at dinner time, which I love. So, I took some pictures of my dinner.



Noodles with Ginger-Garlic Peanut Sauce, Chickpeas, and Peppers
Serves one.

Pasta or noodle equivalent of your choice (I used penne)
Half a can of chick peas, rinsed and drained
Bell peppers or other vegetable (I used half a red pepper, and a quarter yellow one.)

1 clove of garlic, minced
1 smallish chunk of ginger, minced*
1 heaping teaspoon of peanut butter
1 tablespoon sesame oil
splort of soy sauce
pinch of ground cayenne
pinch of ground cumin
boiling water

Cook your pasta/noodle equivalent. While it is cooking, combine garlic, ginger, sesame oil, peanut butter, soy sauce, and spices in a bowl. Mix until even, adding boiling water to get desired consistency.

Drain noodles. Add chickpeas and chopped peppers. Drizzle sauce over, and stir to coat everything.

Eat!



Bonus: this is vegan, assuming your pasta/noodles aren't made with eggs.

Next time, I'll add some lime juice to the sauce. My glass citrus-juicer thing shattered (as glass does when you drop heavy things on it), and I haven't replaced it, so my lemon and lime usage is way down these days.

*How does one accurately measure the amount of ginger? My ginger chunk was probably about 1.5 cm square. Er cubed?

Notes from the Unphotogenic Kitchen: Hummus

We recently got a hand blender as a gift from my parents. This is especially exciting because it has a small food-processor attachment thing. The reason this is so exciting? I can make my own hummus* again! I used to make it quite frequently at home with my parents' ancient food processor, but lately we buy it from the store. Which is fine, but too salty and not as awesome.

I'm weird about condiments and sauces. Can't stand mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup, vinegar, or even salad dressing. However, I use hummus as a condiment often: in addition to dipping things in it, I spread it on bread for sandwiches, and eat it with anything really.


Lunch is never photogenic.

Ahem. Half-assed attempt at food styling. More delicious than it looks, I swear!

I almost never have tahini on hand when I want to make hummus, so I use sesame oil, and it is still delicious. It's probably not as creamy as it would be with tahini, though. I tend to like it a bit chunky, so I don't mind at all. I also love lemons, so I use a lot of lemon juice. I like how the fresh sourness cuts through the nutty oil. The recipe I use the most is below, but works equally well without the spiciness and is open to endless adaptations.

Please excuse the wacky wacky metric measurements - this is what it says on my teaspoon and tablespoon measures!

Spicy Hummus
(adapted from New Light Cooking)

1 can chick peas, drained and rinsed (540 mL)
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
3 tbsp (45 ml) water (or more to achieve desired consistency)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tbsp (15 ml) sesame oil or 2 tbsp (30 ml) tahini
1 1/2 tsp (7.5 ml) ground cumin
1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) cayenne pepper

Blend all ingredients in a food processor. Eat with anything! Enjoy.



*I can never remember how to spell it the British way. Houmous? Hoummos? Hummous? Whatever. Also, I stubbornly continue to call it "pita" instead of "pitta." Transliterations are funny.

cultural differences, or snack food education

When I first lived in the UK a few years ago, I didn't experience too much culture shock, but I expect everyone around me got tired of hearing about the little differences there were. Now that I live with an English dude, I often find out about little differences that I didn't stumble upon on my own before. This seems to happen most often with food.

For example, this evening I read Smitten Kitchen's blog post about home made goldfish crackers. Remembering these cheerful snacks fondly, I exclaimed something to the effect of, "This blogger has a recipe for goldfish crackers! That's awesome!"



The outburst was met by a blank look from my fiancé.

"You know, goldfish crackers. They are cheesey and shaped like fish? Did you never have those as a kid?"

"No. Are they like Wotsits?"

"What are Wotsits?"

etc.

In a similar way, I've learned about eggy soldiers, Twiglets, jelly and ice cream, (ew, seriously, ew) and a host of other foodstuffs I can't call to mind right now. Likewise, I introduced him to poutine, beaver tails, and whatever rubbishy snacks I had as a kid. He put up with my moaning about the lack of readily available good peanut butter, until I found a suitably virtuous (no added salt, no added sugar) version at the health food store. Peanut butter is serious business. Anyway.

We're both a bit puzzled by some of the traditional Scottish things that show up on menus, though. Cullen Skink anyone?

(Not that there is anything puzzling about the soup in itself - it's the name that puzzled me!)

On chocolate

First, I want to thank everyone for their encouraging comments on my first maybe-pattern last week. I've put it up for testing on the Free Pattern Testers group on ravelry, tentatively called the Danube cowl. If you're interested in testing, go check it out there!

But what I really want to talk about today is chocolate. (So what else is new).

I may not have mentioned here, but February was a chocolate-free month for me. While I'm sure I've gone a month without chocolate before in my life, this was sort of a big deal because in February there's Valentine's day and my birthday, and a proliferation of chocolate eating opportunities. Needless to say, I enjoy chocolate, and might be a bit of a chocoholic. It's my "sweet" of choice, though it's even better when it isn't sweet. I could do without milk chocolate most of the time, to be honest. Give me the dark stuff.


The dramatic-looking chocolate that broke my fast today. It wasn't even very good.

I decided to quit chocolate in solidarity with my dear who gave up cheese for a while, but also because I wanted chocolate to be a special thing again. I was eating too much of it, and it no longer seemed like a treat. And you know, it's not actually good for you - whatever the chocolatiers say about its healthful properties, I'm fairly sure the saturated fat isn't brilliant in excessive quantities.

Anyway. I did it. I made it through a month without chocolate. Psychologically, I think my mission to do without brought on more cravings at first. After a while it wasn't even that difficult, though. I did receive a thoughtful gift of some chocolate about two weeks ago that I had to hide in the closet out of view...

Today I ate one of those gift chocolates, and it was kind of disappointing. Maybe that's a good thing, though. Oh yeah, chocolate. It's just a food, nothing more. A sometimes-food.

Dispatches from the unphotogenic kitchen

After seeing some gorgeous soft pretzels on This Boy Knits, I was struck by a desire to make my own. So I did. Except mine turned out more like un-pretzels.


A selection of mangled pretzels

Once I had formed the pretzels, they stuck so badly to the baking sheet that most of them got mangled as I tried to poach them. Next time I try this, I'll have to find a solution to this stickiness. Maybe my dough was too moist.



The ones that didn't fall apart completely swelled to become vaguely pretzel-y buns without holes. I suspect they didn't rise enough in the first rise? Maybe?

Anyway, they are very tasty despite their blobbiness!

Recipe from Smitten Kitchen.

bikers, baking, sundry

I just wrote a long rant about my inability to find/get a job, but it turned out super whiny, so instead I'll just say I am at the whiny stage of my January job search. Now have some pictures of baking.

Look, I made rolls:



My dude prefers rolls to regular bread for some reason I can't understand, so I've been trying out recipes and techniques. I'm no longer afraid of baking with yeast, although it's still very mysterious to me. I'm learning a lot.

For this batch I used this basic rolls recipe by the Hairy Bikers - we don't have a tv and I've never been a devotee of food television, but I must say it sounds like an excellent premise for a cooking show. Chefs who are bikers and also hairy? Woot.

Anyway, I've made these before and didn't get any photos, but this time I ran out of white flour so I used mostly whole wheat.



As a result, these turned out really dense. I happen to like really hearty bread, but I wouldn't recommend doing what I did if you only like soft, fluffy bread. To be honest, I'm not sure they were worth the effort: kneading for 25 minutes? Man. I guess it is good to get an arm workout any way I can.

so much butter

I have fond memories of baking an array of tasty treats with my mom in December, but mince pies weren't part of my holiday fare. Since meeting my dude, for whom mince pies are an integral part of Christmas, we've made pies together a few times, though we seem to use a different recipe each time. It's extra fun because this is one of the only things he gets excited about baking.

We made our mince pies using this recipe for pastry, and sort of this recipe for mincemeat, which we made a few weeks ago and kept in the fridge. (I say sort of because we used some different proportions of dried fruits, used butter instead of suet, and generally disregarded the recipe - as I generally do. But we were inspired by this recipe. It worked.)



They are tasty, but this is easily the most butter I've ever used in one time. Ever. Holy crap. We had to interrupt our baking to pop to the grocery store to get more butter because we didn't have enough. I am unapologetic about substituting things for butter in most recipes, but for shortcrust pastry like this vegetable oil probably wouldn't fly.

We halved the mincemeat recipe, but still had enough for double the pastry recipe, and ended up with 24 pies.



Mmmm pie.

Made it!

It's the end of November, and I can stop pretending. Blogging every day was interesting, and I managed better than last year. Despite managing to post every day, I'm not convinced I pulled off QUALITY posting every day. There's just not that much to show for my life these days! I feel much better about blogging when I have something to say or show. Next year maybe I'll try to knit a sweater in the month of November instead.

Here. Have a badly lit picture of some delicious cookies.



Mmmm. I might take a few days to recuperate and not think "what the heck can I blog about today?" constantly. Ahhh.