Pirate Pants

... are what all the cool ladies are wearing to bed this summer.




Pirate Pants 1 and Pirate Pants 2

 
Some while ago I made my other half two pairs of woven cotton sleep shorts. A slightly shorter while ago, the pair made out of very light cotton decided to rip, leaving only one pair of sleep s.horts, which puts a bit of urgency on the washing/drying cycle. So I bought some random cotton jersey with a skull-and-crossbones motif on the grounds that jersey would be easier to run up a pair of sleep shorts in (I'm fussy about woven sleep shorts: they have to have french seams, since the main purpose of sleep shorts is comfort. Jersey ones have an overlocked seam right side out). I quickly put them together and handed them over, and sighed a sigh of relief... only to discover that they were so comfortable that my other half now refused to wear the surviving woven cotton pair.

So over the break I put together a plain red pair with pirate patches from the leftover fabric of pirate pants no. 1, and we now have two pairs of sleep shorts in circulation again. Yay! The patches on the centre back seam are to ensure that they go on the right way around. Sometimes when you're sleepy it can be difficult to figure out which way is the right way...

I don't know the pattern: my mother in law makes beautiful sleep pants for all her children, born and acquired, and I copied our size onto cardboard one day so that I could have a template. I'm guessing something like Simplicity 4889.

I made myself a very sedate long grey pair to replace a pair of elderly flannel ones which now have rips on the back thighs from seam to seam and are somewhat less comfortable and more drafty than they used to be.

Christmas Cherry Cake

This is traditionally made at Christmas in my family - because we live in the southern hemisphere and Christmas is in mid-summer. Nothern hemisphere residents might find this a little difficult, or at the least very expensive to make at Christmas. I believe the recipe might be a clafouti, but whatever it is, it's delicious.

Pastry
2 cups plain flour
2 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp baking power
pinch salt
4oz butter

Filling
1.5 lb cherries
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 egg yolks
1 cup sour cream

Preheat oven to 400 F / 200 C.

Pastry
Sift flour, sugar, baking power and salt togther into a bowl. Cut in butter and rub in (or use a food processor). This will not make a dough, but a sandy, crumbly mixture. Press into an 8" square or 25cm diameter baking tin. No, it will not fall apart. Promise.

Filling
Stem and pit the cherries (I recommend the Cherry Chomper by Talisman Designs. It looks like a toy, works like a dream and is so much easier on the hands than the pincer-style ones)
Place fruit on uncooked base. Mix together cinnamon and sugar, sprinkle over cherries.
Bake in a hot oven (400 F, 200 C) for 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, mix together the egg yolks and sour cream. Pour over the cherries after they have cooked for 15 minutes, then cook for a further 30 minutes.

Serve cold. Guard jealously.

I can't eat wheat, so I'm trying this with Rowie's sweet shortcrust pastry mix as a base.

Thai Red Curry Kedgeree

Watching Jamie's Christmas, I was inspired to make a kedgeree with what I had in the cupboard, which turned out to be:

Olive oil
1 large brown onion
1 clove garlic
1.5ish heaped teaspoons of thai red curry paste
2 - 3 cups cooked rice
1 bunch coriander
2 eggs
100g smoked trout

Chop onion roughly, cook over medium heat in olive oil until translucent. Chop garlic finely or put through garlic crusher, add and cook for a minute. Add thai red curry paste, and mix together, cooking for a few minutes. Add more olive oil if the curry paste is too dry.
Add rice, adding some water if the rice has dried out a bit (I was using leftover takeaway rice), and stir until rice is nicely curried.
Reserving a few leaves for garnish, chop corainder roughly, getting finer when the stalk gets bigger. Stir into rice. Turn heat down to medium low and let cook for 10 - 15 minutes. Try to not to stir too much if you like crispy bits.
While the rice mixture is cooking, hard-boil two eggs. Peel, chop in quarters and add to rice mixture.
Chop or flake smoked fish roughly, add to rice at the very end and stir through until warmed.

Later update: adding roughly grated ginger (about 1.5 cm) and using thai yellow curry paste are also to be recommended.

Eat while watching more cooking shows for inspiration.

Flourless Chocolate Biscotti

I finally managed to make a reciped I've been wanting to try for some time, and it is delicious. The horrible oven in our mountain abode nearly destroyed the result, but they were saved... and they are lovely. These are courtesy of the Food Network Canada and can be found here. In case they decide to remove the page, I am copying the recipe here... with added notes.

Ingredients

• 3 large eggs at room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup light brown sugar
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 3/4 cups brown rice flour
• 1 cup regular cocoa powder, packed
• 1/4 teaspoon fine salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
• 3/4 cup shelled pistachios
• 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips or chunks

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Line a baking tray with parchment paper.
2. With electric beaters or a standing mixer fitted with the whip attachment, whip eggs, sugars and vegetable oil until frothy and pale, about 4 minutes. Sift rice flour, cocoa powder, salt, pepper and cloves and stir into egg mixture by hand. Fold in pistachios and chocolate chips or chunks.
3. On a work surface dusted with rice flour, turn out dough and shape into 2 logs, each about 12 inches long. Place onto prepared baking tray and press flat, so each log is about 2 1/2 inches wide. Bake for 30 minutes, until surface of biscotti logs crack a bit. Let cool for 20 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 325 F.
4. Remove biscotti logs from tray and slice on an angle into 3/4 inch biscotti. Return to baking tray and bake for 12 minutes. Remove pan, flip biscotti over and bake another 12 minutes. Let cool completely before packing in an airtight container.

I used 1 cup of slivered almonds and no chocolate chips or chunks due to a mild pantry failure. For similar reasons, I used 1 tsp cinammon and 2 tsp ground ginger. Yes, we do have pepper, but the pepper grinder resulted in such large chunks I didn't fancy it. Note to self, get mortar and pestle for mountain house.

These are quite tart and cocoa-ey, but I adore them. Thank you Anna Olson (whoever you are).

Gravlax Summer Pasta

• 25g gravlax or smoked fish


• 1 punnet of cherry tomatoes


• approx 1 small handful thai or opal basil


• 1 - 2 cloves of garlic


• olive oil


• 2 large spoonfuls of low fat yoghurt


• juice of 1/2 lemon


• salt and pepper to season


• 2 servings of pasta (e.g. spaghetti)
  
  Slice the fish into small strips (approx 1 cm * 3cm)
  Quarter the cherry tomatoes
  Finely chop the basil
  Cook the spaghetti, drain and leave in the colander over a small quantity of the cooking water.
  Pour a splash of olive oil in a large non-stick frying pan and put the garlic through a garlic press into the oil. Start with the oil cold so that the garlic does not burn.
  Bring to mid-heat and cook until garlic is no longer raw.
  Add tomatoes and stir for a minute or so until tomatoes are hot. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
  Add fish and basil to the pan and stir until warm.
  Pour in some lemon juice, stir, pour in yoghurt and stir until all is amalgamated.
  
  Add pasta to pan and stir until coated.
  Serve.

The Pink and The Green

A few months ago I went to the Old Bus Depot Markets in Canberra (apparently there had been a sheep and wool show the previous week... my timing sucks). I found a stall which had skeins of yarn which each consisted of 3 mini-skeins. My four-year-old companion glommed onto a vivid pink and blue skein, and I chose a green and sparkly skein for her six-year-old sister. Unbelievably, I have actually finished the scarves (loop scarves, to help prevent untimely loss) while there is still cold weather ahead! I handed them over this weekend.

The colour sequence was determined by relative length of each yarn in the skein. The green scarf is knitted straight, the pink and blue scarf is a feather-and-fan variation which uses kfb rather than yo.

Staggering along

Well, it's been a shit of a year, which is partly why I haven't posted for well over a year. I started getting painful hands and feet in November 2008, and by early 2009 I had trouble walking, couldn't open a new milk bottle or water bottle and couldn't chop up vegetables. Eventually I was diagnosed with severe rheumatoid arthritis. I'm currently trying to get a combination of drugs to work, and it's not brilliant... but I can walk, open milk bottles and chop up vegetables without too much pain (these are my benchmarks), so it could be much, much worse. And I keep on reminding myself that of all the auto-immune diseases I could have developed, it's probably the least scary.

Work is also crap and not giving me much time for myself.

During this period I haven't been completely non-creative, although it's been close. I sent off my contribution to The Milkweed Project, pictures to follow when I get them off my other half's camera. The link is here, although my last name is misspellt.

I've made a pair of trousers for work which aren't a complete disaster, but the linen is a bit scratchy, which I'm not a fan of. I have enough fabric for another pair, but I'm not sure I want to use it.

I also dyed some yarn with my mother-in-law: we were given a large stash of yarn when a friend's grandmother died, most of it truly awful colours from the 80s. I invested in some Landscape dyes and spent some time transforming the yarn into more agreeable colours. My father-in-law, who is a man of useful hands, made me a lovely skein winder out of some scrap after I openly coveted the one he made my mother-in-law. I'm very lucky in my in-laws.

And finally, I've made myself a scarf. I've got several in the pipeline to knit, but because I never really need them, I never actually get around to finishing them (I only need scarves for the 1 or 2 weeks of winter I spend in Ballarat with my parents). The idea was that I would wear it in New York when I went for 4 days in November, but it was too warm most of the time. I did get to visit Habu, though. It took me a while to find it, and I think my colleague was a little nervous by the time we did so as it's a little off the beaten track. Never mind, it was worth it.
So, recipe for said scarf:

1. Buy a 2.5 m x 1.16 m length of greyish silk twill from ebay
2. Cut a sample off it to play with.
3. Hem the remaining fabric with silk thread leaving you with rectangle of 1.1 m x 2.18 m which weighs about 160 g.
4. Machine-embroider your tag on it.
5. Wash it, because the iron insisted on leaving residue on the silk at random intervals (I either need to clean my iron in some drastic way or buy a new one)
6. Fold it in half, matching the two short sides.
7. Accordion-pleat across the scarf as detailed in this tutorial on t-shirt dyeing, using a pleat width of 10 cm.
8. Roll up into a ball and secure with the rubber band you found after much running around the house with a perplexed look on your face.
9. Fill a vessel with 4 cm of water and add 4 g black dye.
10. Put the rolled-up silk into the dye, one spiral-side down. Microwave until done.
11. Repeat with Bloodwood dye on the other side of the spiral.
12. Take off the rubber band and unfurl.
13. Fill vessel with water and 16 g of Salmon Gum dye. Add silk, microwave until done, stirring frequently.
14. Wash, hang up to dry and wait nervously to see the real colours.