And lo, there was much finishing, and it was good

Who, me? Absent?

Okay, you win. I've been quiet here for a while, but look! I've been doing things, and I have photographic proof!

I finished that gigantic pink scarf:


And I finished knitting my TwitKAL/Wanderheart shawl, which looked like this before blocking:


...and is currently stretched out on the rack floor, drying into its newer prettier shape:


And I finally Navajo-plied the second bobbin of Rubies and Sapphires Merino that I spun during last year's Tour de Fleece:


Hmm. That doesn't seem like much, does it?

I've also been baking and going to the beach, though not at the same time (yet — someday I'll have a solar oven, mark my words!).


Random baking pic


Random beach picture. Tiny crab waves hi!
And I've been working on my Big Black Socks and on a secret knitting project for my Santosha Swap partner (which I could probably actually post about, since only the organizer knows which partner is assigned to who ;)), but those aren't ready for photography yet. ;D

So ... see. I've been doing stuff. And there is more stuff yet to come. Think productive thoughts at me, 'cause I'm still going strong now ... but I can use all the encouragement I can get!

Baking binge of dooooom! (and the best pie crust recipe ever)

The baking bug bit yesterday. The final tally: two loaves of bread, a blueberry pie, four cookies, two pastries and a kitchen strewn with bowls, spoons, baking pans and cookie sheets. Oh, yeah, and two happy crafty pirates. Let's start with the two loaves:


If you read along with my captions on Flickr, you'll know that I got a copy of the book The Bread Baker's Apprentice for Christmas (and I love its scholarly obsessiveness; now, if only I could find an equivalent book for making Asian-style noodles, or pasta in general...). This bread is emphatically not made using the formulas in that book. I started to browse it yesterday and quickly realized I would get sucked into trying to absorb all the important but technically-not-essential-for-making-edible-bread details if I attempted to use it for immediate baking purposes. So rather than fail to make bread because I was too busy reading about bread, I basically glanced at the recipes on the back of the flour package and kinda-sorta-but-not-really followed them/made something up.

The result was a little flat, but it's definitely better than not getting to eat bread that night. ;)


And now I have an admission, and a rather reluctant one, but I share it with you for the sake of all those out there who have done what I did: I made pie crust dough mumblemumble ago and then left it languishing, wrapped in plastic, in the fridge until it (for shame!) got a very very few telltale specks of mold on it.

Now, I am not advising that you do what I did. However, I will tell you what I did, and since I am sitting here now typing this post, clearly I did not die from it. ;) This is what I, horror of horrors, did yesterday: I cut off all the outside bits of the pie crust dough, rolled it out, and baked it anyway. With some questionable also-languishing blueberries that I combined with the juice of one questionable and languishing Kaffir lime. The result was probably far better than I deserve for disrespecting my ingredients.


That, folks, is my first double-crust pie ever. I used a star-shaped cookie cutter to cut out part of the top crust. Conveniently, this made star-shaped leftover bits for me to bake with my mangled but unbelievably good jam pastries.


What's that you say? There are only three cookies and I said there were four? Hmm, wonder where the fourth one went ... ;)
Breakfast this morning? PIE! The best blueberry pie I have ever eaten. I share with you now the God of All Pie Crust Recipes, courtesy of Smitten Kitchen. Try it at your peril — it may provoke incurable urges to conquer pie-crust-based recipes you have never tried before, and you may never again want to eat pie crust from any other recipe. (At least, it was that good for me. Just the leftover bits with a bit of jam smeared inside them were so good I swear to you I teared up.)

So now I'm a-gonna go have me some dinner, and for dessert? You guessed it.

10-minute semi-homemade wrap chips

Let's say there are times when you have a craving for a food that's not in the house. And maybe, like me, you try to ignore it for a while, but the craving just keeps coming back. And then finally, after staring desperately into the pantry (or the fridge), you throw some likely-looking ingredients together, apply your current best level of kitchen skill, and hope for the best.

Sometimes this leads to miserable failures. (Remember my jury-rigged desperation noodles?)

And sometimes you pull off a win. :D This is one of mine:



The craving: crackers.

The result:

10-Minute Semi-Homemade Wrap Chips

Ingredients:

• wraps — the kind you stuff with sandwich-type fillings and roll up to eat (I used a leftover Toufayan wrap)
• olive oil
• sea salt
• freshly-ground pepper
• garlic powder
• paprika

Now, I don't want to make this seem more complicated than it is. Really, you need only three basic ingredients: something resembling a wrap or burrito skin (soft taco shells would also work), some form of oil you don't mind baking and eating, and your seasoning of choice.

How to make them:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Spread some olive oil on the wrap. This doesn't need to be very precise; I poured some on one side and used a spoon and the wrap itself to spread it around.

Sprinkle seasonings on.

Cut up the wrap into chip-shaped pieces. (I cut mine into wedges.)

Place wrap pieces on a baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes (or a little less — check around 8 min to make sure they don't burn).

Remove from oven, let cool a bit, and EAT!

Mine were super-crispy, and good both by themselves and also with lemon hummus. Bet you can come up with your own awesome seasonings ... and you could even make dessert chips. Nom nom nom.

Gratuitious noodle photography!

I admit it. I've been feeling down in the dumps lately, which is why I've been so quiet. But today I cheered myself up by making my very own ramen noodles, from scratch!

Some of you may be aware that this is my second attempt at homemade noodles. My first attempt was made of pie crust that had been sitting in the fridge for a while. I figured that it was dough, and noodles are made from dough — so I could probably turn it into some form of edible noodle, right? And if a little half-Asian girl is desperate enough for a noodle bowl that she turns to pie crust, who's to point fingers? This is what I made the first time:


...before I ruined them, or maybe they were born ruined, their tempting noodley appearance just a falsehood to lure me into trusting them. They tasted like soggy, sweet glue. (That's about on par with what happened when I tried to use nori sheets as a ramen additive. Yeah. Um. Unless you really like the taste of oceany oceany seaweed — like REALLY — I don't recommend doing that.) I have a suspicion that I may have neglected to actually get the water all the way to boiling before I threw them in ... or maybe there's just something in pie crust that makes it not work as pasta.

Anyway, I tried again from actual scratch tonight. You know. Like, I mixed flour and egg and water and salt, and kneaded it until I was sure I was going to pound it into mush. Then I flattened it out with a rolling pin, cut it up, and boiled it — harsh, I know, but it turned this:



...into this:


Which obviously has a couple of extra things in it. ;) And it was very nom.

I basically used these directions on Instructables, although my measurements weren't very precise. The only thing I bothered measuring was the flour; everything else, I just guessed at. Which meant I had kind of soggy dough to start with and I'm not sure if that's what supposed to happen, but I kept throwing flour at everything that wanted to stick, and kneaded and kneaded and kneaded, and eventually the dough looked kind of like a very small lump of rather elastic bread dough.

And while I did attempt to use parchment paper at first, it didn't get along well with the initially-super-sticky dough ... so suffice to say the kitchen counter now basically has swathes of dried glue on it.

But hey, it'll come off. And hey! I made pasta! Noodles. Same thing. Next time I need to figure out a way to boil the noodles IN the broth with the vegetables and tofu, because I miss the broth flavor being in the noodles. That might just amount to using an obscene amount of broth (so there's room for the noodles to move around in the pot AND room to fit the other ingredients), but someone who can make noodles from scratch should be able to find a use for some extra broth, right? ;D

I know what I want my next noodley leap forward to be ... but I'm not telling until I'm more certain I can actually do it. Wahahaha! The noodle-maker has a noodle mystery. ;)

Semi-wordless Wednesday: two loaves and three knits

A pictorial tour of what I've been up to lately:


Swatched for a new knitting pattern. Can you guess what it'll be when it's done?


Almost finished this Lighthouse Gansey sock. Must ... keep ... knitting...


Finally wove in the tails on this long-unfinished vest. Yayyy for finishing five-year-old projects!


Baked a super-flat but tasty loaf of bread. Note to self: Use fresh yeast.


And then baked a less-flat but also slightly less tasty (though still good) loaf of bread. Fresh yeast = taller bread. Who'd've thought?


Here's the inside. Nom nom nom.
I also read a book and went to a birthday party (thing), but those aren't crafty ... they're just things crafters do sometimes to be able to say they don't always have their heads in a pile of yarn or a box of beads. ;)

Piratical homebodying: of purple knitting and revisiting scones

So although I was a slacker and didn't blog almost at all while I was in New York, I did capture photographic evidence of my craftiness. See? Look!


That's the sleeve of a hooded shrug I'm test-knitting. (Right now I'm stuck in the sea of stockinette stitch that is the back of the shrug, but I only have a few inches left. I'll make it out soon!)

And last night I was finally driven to action by the endless march of food shows that the first mate and I tend to watch. I wanted cupcakes, but I made scones:




Date and raisin scones, to be precise. The cupcake avoidance was partly due to lack of ingredients, and partly due to having No Clue about how to make the kind of cupcakes that I really want to make. I crave the irrationally gourmet kind of cupcake — the kind I'd be happy to pay $2.50 for two bites of. I was never a cupcake fan, by the way, before I worked at an office job where someone with good taste, a lot of money, and a kindly heart got me addicted to the uber-awesome variety. But now? Now I NEED to figure out how to make my own. Any book or blog recommendations, me hearties? ;)

Anyway, the scones turned out pretty well, considering I've taken a five- or six-year hiatus between batches. We didn't have any baking soda, so I had to limit myself to baking powder, and dates and raisins were all we had enough of, so in they went. But all in all, they still kick the butt of all the scones I've ever bought from anyone else. And that's a win. :D

Better Than Ramen Almost-Instant Noodles

Don't tell anyone, but I like ramen. I like ramen a lot. The same stuff college kids are supposed to subsist on, except with tofu and bok choy and chilis (and I don't drain the broth — that's the good stuff!). That said, I know there are better ways to make the same thing — and to make it better.

Sooo ... This isn't strictly crafty, but I did make it, and I did NOM it:


And it IS much better than cheap flavoring-packet-type ramen. Om nom nom nom. Why did I wait so long to finally make my own Asian noodle soup? It takes the same amount of time as "normal" ramen and it's uber-better. Want some? Here's how to make your own. It's darn easy. :D The hardest part might be finding the ingredients — if you have a local Asian market, you should be able to find all of them there.

You need:

• Asian noodles — Whatever kind you want should work; I used Vietnamese wheat noodles, but at some point I'll try it with soba. However much you'd like to eat is the correct amount. ;) I used about 4 oz of noodles, but I'm a bit of a noodle pig.
• A soup base — Chicken, beef, fish or vegetable bouillon would all work, or you can use something fancier, like miso paste (though actually, you'd have to add the miso paste later in the recipe than I say to below, after the boiling is over, because boiling it kills the flavor quite a bit). I used tom yum (Thai hot and sour soup) paste, because I am obsessed with tom yum. You could also use pre-made stock or broth of whatever kind you favor.
• Vegetables — I like to use leafy greens, particularly bok choy/joi choi. You could probably use spinach or kale or even watercress. I used joi choi for the noodles in the photo.
• Tofu (cubed) — or you could use pre-cooked meat or a meaty thing that cooks quickly, like shrimp.
• A smallish cooking pot with a lid (mine probably holds about four cups of water at best), a bowl, an eating utensil (fork or chop sticks), a stove, and maybe a hot pad to rest the burning hot bowl on. ;)

Make it so:

1. Put water (or stock/broth) in pot. I use two cups or a little less, which is what fits comfortably in the type of bowl I use; your mileage probably varies. If you're not going to keep the broth, you just need enough to cook the noodles.
2. Put noodles in pot, and pot on stove. Turn burner on high setting; you want the contents of the pot to reach a boil quickly.
3. If using a bouillon or soup paste, stir the desired amount into the water. (Yes, before it boils.) If you care to know, I used two big spoonfuls of tom yum paste. Your chosen additive should have directions on the container. Any other seasonings you want to add (salt, pepper, herbs) should go in now.
4. Put cubed tofu into pot. Cover pot and leave to reach a boil.
5. In the meantime, prep your veggies. Wash and chop your greens.
6. If your stove is like mine, the pot will boil probably before you're done washing and chopping. When you can pause in what you're doing, open the lid and stir the pot a bit, making sure everything is evenly distributed in the water so it cooks and seasons evenly. Turn the heat setting down to medium and put the lid back on.
7. When veggies are ready, throw them into the pot and put the lid back on.
8. When the veggies are cooked to your liking, your noodle bowl is done. I usually limit the vegetable cooking time to 2-3 minutes so they and the noodles don't get soggy/mushy.
9. If you're draining the broth off (Noooooo! Well, okay, if you must ... but that is the good stuff...), do it now, and serve. If you're not draining the broth, carefully pour the contents of the pot into your bowl. I usually use the "put the bowl in the (clean) sink and pour quickly while guiding food with fork" method, then move the bowl to the hot pad. You could probably use a spaghetti ladle for the noodles and then a soup ladle for the rest, too.
10. Eat, enjoy, live, be happy. NOM.

OMG! Marzipan knittings!

I must acquire marzipan and decorate edibles with knit things.

Raspberry cordial ... go!

Not a "craft," officially, but Brian and I just mixed up a recipe for some raspberry cordial. I used organic raspberries, Coombs Family Farms organic Grade B maple syrup, and E&J XO Limited Release Vintage Reserve brandy. We'll probably test it in 10 days or so, just to see how it is. ;) That's August 29, so the clock's a-ticking...

Tra-la-la.

Working on a Lacy Round Washcloth today, potentially for a swap. It's a day late as of today, but hey, it's a slacker swap, so they should expect that sort of thing, right? ;) I'll send on Monday or Tuesday, really...

Almost done with Piggle. I got maybe a third of the way into the crown decreases last night before my brain zonked out and I reached the point where I know I shouldn't knit lace any more because I'll end up ripping it out anyway ... especially annoying if it's lace with decreases. ;)

Huuuungry. Why must my luck run so that people eat my food the day I splurge to buy it, after they've ignored my food for months on end? Siiiigh. It makes me sad, but then, I have a theory that I'm small enough that eating my food is a little like eating a starving person's food; I don't have enough of it, and I need what little I eat badly enough, that I'm justly territorial. Depriving me of my food is pushing me (further?) into the fat-burning reserves, and y'know, I don't have a lot of fat left to burn. I'm trying to get back to 100 pounds, guys -- as in, up. Don't eat my food. ;)