Misfits lasagna and curry plant

The lasagna came to be. The Misfits ricotta and other cheese, mezzaluna? mezzanine? mozzarella, that's the one, were very good, and now mostly used up. I also used a fancy Misfits egg in the ricotta mixture.

I did boil the pasta briefly, just a couple of minutes for home made, and it held up just fine to handling, also to being frozen then thawed then boiled. 

So here's the earliest stage

The next processes were too involved to stop and wave a camera about, but there were several. 

Meat sauce cooking for ages then a bit on the bottom of the dish so the pasta wouldn't stick, I suppose. They always tell you to do that. Pasta on the right, water briefly went off the boil after it was put in.

The number of tools this dish needs is amazing. 

But it came out nicely. 25 minutes foil hat on, 25 minutes hatless. I baked it on a sheet pan just in case it bubbled over. It bubbled over inside the dish instead, between the foil and the glass, dang it. 

I did get the cook's first slice privilege, though.

With a bit of green salad and mezzaluna, why not. And it was good.

I did manage to maneuver the lasagna in foil out of the dish to freeze it, using both big spatulas and some basic language.  

And Handsome Son's next dinner is all set, easy. Probably mid February.  Valentine's, president's Day,  59th wedding anniversary, thereabouts. I count them anyway, though the other half of the act has been with the choir celestial for many years now. 

And here it is, last day of January and I still haven't done a jigsaw puzzle. They might end up with the gallon of water and the first aid box as part of the survival kit. There seem to have been so many interesting things to do first.

Speaking of which, here's the curry plant with new growth.

I've been picking the lower leaves for cooking all winter, so it doesn't seem to mind. It's a wonderful flavor, use wherever you'd use bay leaves, but better. 

Indian cooks use it a lot because it really punches up vegetables, and my Indian friends are mostly vegetarian. This came from next door, dear Aditha, great gardener.

Storm's passed on to batter New England, and here..

 This is where we are today

Blessed neighbor knocked close to a foot of snow off several cars including mine, but I can't dig out behind it yet, too cold for me, temp still in the single digits Fledermaus.

So I'll let the sun help, meanwhile, the machboos rubyan coming to an end with today's lunch, I may as well thaw the doings for that lasagna I've been boring on about.

The foil-lined dish is because I'll be freezing it. I can lift out the baked lasagna, leaving the dish free, freeze the l. and when I'm ready to reheat, put it back in the dish. This brilliant idea is not mine, just saw it when I was looking up ingredients.

And a slice or two of that mozzarella will get into this evening's salad, with the tomato slices and a bit of Thai basil, no Italian basil available right now. 

I liked this combo for years, eagerly looked for the farm mozz and tomatoes and basil every year, before I knew it was a thing, with a name. Which now escapes me. Joanne or Mary are sure to know it. Oh wait, I think it's caprese.

And in the same mailbox as the weather, came this lovely reminder of good weather.

Peonies. I love them and have no room to plant them. So I enjoy the pictures.

I finished the Elizabeth Gilbert, and ended up ready to recommend it, particularly the bit where she demolishes the case that you can only make art through suffering. 

There's also quite a bit of fun to be had in letting materials steer you. It's not easy, whoever expected that, but it's not all grim either. 

Now I've embarked on

Which was my recent book club choice and I finally got it online, too late for the book club, but oh well. 

At first I was reluctant to read yet another book about the second  wife of a successful writer once professor, in an affluent New York life but anyway I started. And I'm finding it very readable anyway. 

The birds are going crackers at the feeder, both of the red bellied woodpeckers, cardinal, Carolina wren, juncoes, all at once right now in the sun. The smaller birds and the cardinal are whipping up the crumbs knocked down by the woodpeckers' vigorous beakwork. Also queuing up in the nearby tree waiting to be seated.

So that's today chez Boud

Snow day and stitching

The snow is still falling, no paths dug yet, only one pass of the plow.

This is the town adjoining mine, same conditions apply.

Home is warm and snowbound, and the birds are out in force at the feeder. Yesterday there were male and female red bellied woodpeckers, always separately, a fierce little goldfinch fighting off juncoes twice his size, Carolina wrens, bluejays and various little brown birds.

And the endlessly talented embroiderer who writes the Fils et Aiguilles blog just showed her blackwork, here stitched in red thread. Go check her blog. She doesn't post often but it's worth waiting for.

This is really virtuoso stitching, both sides look the same.

It was introduced to England from Spain by Katherine of Aragon. The reason it's two sided is that it was used on collars and cuffs, both sides showing. I've done this kind of work and it's not easy! Usually in Elizabethan times it was in black thread, like this

You'll see motifs like this in portraits of the period. 

Meanwhile it's about keeping warm here. I still haven't started a jigsaw puzzle. January seems to have gone by so fast, hardly had time. 

Misfits box, the reveal

Familiar thump on the front step.

Too heavy to carry in, so I partly unboxed on the step. Then brought the doings in in stages.

Here's the first of my orders including dairy and eggs. I'm happy, and a bit amazed, to report that every item in the list arrived, in good condition. 

Even the New Hampshire free-range  eggs complete with pix of the two farmers and their baby, aww.   I also have butter from Vermont, yay.  And a sneaky bit of salmon because I'm worth it..

If you think this is a lot of food for a single old party, this is my total food supply for three daily meals for two weeks. I don't do local takeout or shop-bought bakery. 

Seen that way, it comes into perspective. Also the fish and chicken will go into the freezer and last several weeks. And I'll be feeding other folk here and there. Also it keeps me off the streets, so there's that. I am sometimes asked this, so I'm putting in the explainer ahead of time. Not about the streets, about the quantity.

So this is a very good delivery. I'm going to let them know.

I'm all set ahead of what we're told will be a big storm. Sometimes they say this and very little happens. Sometimes they say this and two storms collide at once overhead and we get Sandy, from which after what, nine years, there's still  visible damage. 

So we'll see. Everyone in the path of whatever this snowstorm's called, keep warm, keep safe, dance in the kitchen.

Resting on Laurels today

Machboos rubyan was a great success. Handsome Son did it great justice and the evening went FIIIIIIINE.

The overhead light is a task light, very white, for working, so it washed out a lot of color.  But the dish, by the usual table light, was fine, lovely and golden and browned, sizzling hot, smelling like a Bahreini kitchen!

The halibut, a first for me, was just lovely, cooked along with the shrimp, both ready together. 

Anyway it came off really well. And the hand-dipped chocolates and tea afterwards were decadent.

I feel like someone who completed a big project! And we discussed other ways with the same rice, such as hot sausage..this has possibilities. It's definitely joined the repertoire.

Meanwhile, back at the Kindle, I'm reading this

I'm not a big Gilbert fan, usually find her too excitable and breathless and sound-bitey, but this came recommended by Flossie Teacakes, from whom I learned to love English paper piecing, so I thought I'd try it.

She has a couple of interesting ideas about creating. One is that it's not the realm of a chosen few, which I very much agree on. Another is that whether you make a living or not from your creative work, is irrelevant to the work, yes to that too. And you need to honor your ideas when they arrive, not set them aside for a better time. 

She notes the phenomenon where several unrelated people are seized by the same idea at the same time, no way of knowing about the others. Happens in science, math, writing. It can cause a lot of heartburn, too, people thinking their idea was stolen. 

Happened to her and Ann Patchett about a novel. They handled it in a very classy way. That's a story worth your reading.

So far, so good. I may take these pearls and let the rest of the book go. And she'd probably say fine, my work is done! She's nothing if not good natured. 

I have zero commitments on my schedule today. Maybe I will finally try one of those jigsaw puzzles I've been keeping for January, just in time for February..

And dinner is leftover spicy rice with some fresh cooked shrimp and halibut. Hygge.

Part Three of Boud's Excellent Yesterday

I did, after all, get power back in time for this Textiles and Tea, with Murray Gibson. Blogger refuses to insert the image here, so read on.

He turned out to be a lot less grim than his picture. His driving force as a tapestry weaver, is to create works that are best exoressed in cloth. 

This is not as obvious as it seems, as you'll see when you note people painting what photography can do, or drawing what weaving would do better, or stitching what painting would work better for. Every subject doesn't belong in any old medium.

He's also interesting  in that he's equally at home creating realistic images and abstractions. He explains this as realism seizing a moment in material life, and abstraction seizing an idea.

Left, realistic image, right abstraction.

The spider is his signature on every tapestry, signifying the weaver, spiders being the best weavers of all, even creating their own thread.

The bottom image is about the work done by young students in the l'Arche program, like ARC in the US, I think, an agency to support and offer opportunity to young people with cognitive disability.  He's very involved in spending time with the participants in this program, and finds that they love studying and working in tapestry.

He's very ready to acknowledge the teaching he's had and the debt he owes to great teachers. He seems to have continued the tradition of generous teaching, since a lot of the comments were shout-outs to his own teaching!

He currently teaches college level and is in fact teaching this morning on Zoom, and

 trying to adapt to this new way of teaching, enforced by Covid. 

Check his website. He's a very good tapestry weaver and a nice man, great combo.

That was part Three of yesterday.

Today is the next stage of the Dinner. 

Prepping the fish, and the halibut separated very easily, so the fish is all marinating now, to cook at the last minute. After which I'll dress it in the lemon juice and garlic mixture in the bowl.

The onions are not quite caramelized but nearly, and I'll reheat them with the rice this evening.

Meanwhile, here's what I hope to live by

Boud's excellent Three Part Day

Not exactly planned that way, but here goes.

Part One was the rice part of the Dinner.

This took most of the morning, just as well I divided the cooking over a couple of days. It's not just about time, when a person gets older, it's about energy too. I need enough left to enjoy the meal and the company tomorrow.

Anyway, started with a debate. The recipe says firmly to leave the rice soaking in water for two hours. The rice people say never do that, never, you'll drain off flavor and nutrition. So  I  did soak and drain, but saved the rice water for soup, see below.

Then the assembly of the doings and the discovery that I didn't, after all, have ground coriander which I was sure I did. Much searching, and I concluded I must have used it up in a spice mix, reused the container and forgotten to get more. I also didn't have green chilies, no idea about them, but nevermind.

Well, considering all the flavors in this dish, one or two instruments missing from the orchestra isn't a problem.

Here's the draining of the rice to save the water.

Here's the onions and various other items, tomatoes, spices, garlic, ginger, cardamom frying together

Then the addition of the stock and several processes later, here's the cooked rice.

Now in the fridge to warm up tomorrow and it smells good enough to warrant the labor.

Tomorrow is about the fish, now thawing in the fridge, marinating, cubing the halibut, frying in another selection of spices, before heaping on top of the hot rice to serve.  There will be a lot. 

Then I thought, after a lunch of Red Chowder(!) I thought I'd start on the blogpost.

Then the power and wifi went out. This triggered a visit from next door and a call from down the street, was it just them? No, it was out all over.

So part two of the day was walking then dozing over  a Sayers book on my Kindle, and generally keeping warm in a cooling and darkening house.  It was very quiet with no systems running. I could hear geese flying over.

Power came back in time to catch Textiles and Tea, about which more tomorrow. I'm a bit spent, low in spoons right now. 

But so far so good with the Bahreini dinner.

Change of plans

 I originally was going to make a lasagna for Handsome Son's monthly dinner-with-Mom event. Then, the noodles made and stored in the freezer, logistics intervened.

His free evening is Wednesday, and some of the lasagna ingredients are in my Misfits box which arrives Friday.  They've extended their range to include dairy and eggs as well as fish and meat. This is good, if it works, organic food at reduced prices, at the door, saves me a big shop as well as $$.

I do like to get out and shop for a few items, since for a single older lady, it's a chance to see other humans, always a good thing. But a longer list means more exposure and more waiting at the checkout, which I'd rather not do 

So I took advantage of the chance of ordering eggs and dairy in addition to the produce,and changed my Wednesday plans. When the ingredients arrive, I can make the lasagna and freeze it for a future dinner.

Meanwhile here's the new plan:

To learn to pronounce it, go to the Ottolenghi Test Kitchen YouTube channel. The cook starts with how to say it. It's a recipe from Bahrain, where she's from.

It's also, like a lot of Ottolenghi, quite a performance to produce. Many ingredients, many lovely spices. 

I don't have access to prawns, so it's going to be the rest of my Misfits shrimp, smaller but okay. And I will add in halibut, diced.

Today I started with a vegetable stock I made from my frozen bag of peelings from recent Misfits boxes. There's enough over for a future soup. And specially for this recipe, it included a stick of cinnamon. The house smelt very savory today.

Here's the fridge shelf getting ready for the Big Cooking Caper

Left to right, stock, measured ahead, ginger, almond slices, golden raisins, cooked baby Bella mushrooms.

Then on today's abbreviated shopping trip, the all important basmati rice base

So posh it comes with its own recipe sheet and philosophy of life.

Tomorrow I'll get the fish organized.

What this is about is,: rice with onions, garlic, tomatoes and various spices, with heavily spiced and marinated shrimp, and here halibut, heaped on top of it.

This includes a lot of my favorite things. And I suspect it will make plenty. It will involve a lot of the contents of my three, count them, spice shelves. Including whole cardamom pods, a big fave.

It's just not for the faint hearted. 

Meanwhile I'd run out of bread, while I was organizing this fancy exotic stuff. So  I  made a batch of walnut biscuits 

while I was hanging about in the kitchen trying to conclude that this Bahraini adventure was a good change of plan. Some biscuits went next door, hot from the oven.

Whatever comes of it, and I have had good results from Ottolenghi recipes, I can always quote my mom: it's all good ingredients!

Dessert, in case you wondered, is that dish of handmade chocolates you saw yesterday.

It's all good, even while I'm wondering why I am incapable of just planning a simple, easy dinner for handsome Son. Since it's only once a month, it's an event, I guess.

Embossing the easy way, and surprise visit

As promised, I hauled out the tools for hand embossing, glad yet again of the Winnowing that made this a couple of minutes' search rather than a frenzied marathon of pawing through crates. 

You need a light source, stencils, as Becki astutely remembered, and an embossing tool. 

On the left here, that blue thing is a corner punch, a nice touch for handmade cards and books, gives a rounded corner, very posh.

These tools are known to people who used them im the olden days to transfer Chartpak lettering, as ball burnishers. When you use them to emboss, they're embossing tools. 

The advantage of having them is that each end is a different size, so you can choose according to the size of the openings you're drawing around.  But other substitutes are fine, as long as they slide on the surface and don't stick.

The process can be as simple as taping to a window, creating your own stencils or just using commercial ones, and if you don't have a burnisher, a blunt knitting needle or even pencil will work. Kids like to use a pencil so they can see where they've been.

You can make this as original and elaborate as you want -- I've done embossing into large watercolors as part of the composition, using purpose cut cardboard stencils -- or you can do what I did here, and had a nice time doing, a couple of greeting cards.

The procedure: tape your stencil to a light source, window, lightbox, whatever you're up for.

Then hold or tape your card/painting/paper/ envelope, whatever you're embossing, over the stencil. 

Now firmly run your embossing tool all around the inside of the openings. You need to apply enough pressure to make the image sink into the opening in the stencil. You only need to work on the edges. The center will follow without your touching it.

You need to remember that you're working from the back, and right to left for lettering, if you're embossing to get a raised image. If you really want an engraved, sunken, image, work from the front, lettering the usual left to right.

Here are both

This one's embossed, raised

And this one's engraved, sunken

The back of each is the other. You can have an embossed front to a card, open it and on the left is the engraved image. And you can make use of this to make mixed images using both embossed and engraved in one composition.

So that's pretty much it. 

It was good that this subject came up, because I had a sudden surprise visit yesterday afternoon from a friend I hadn't seen for years. 

She threw my 80th birthday party, lovely person, the sister of the friend I helped care for with her in her final days at home. She, sister, Gary, all friends.

Anyway she came bearing home-dipped chocolates

Intended for Christmas, and finally got here. 

So that requires a little thank you card, why not an embossed one. Timely. Plain unlined 8x5 cards are good for this.

While I was looking for the burnishers, I came across these pens. I'm digressing here, as I tend to

I used to cut these from the wild grapevines growing behind the building I lived in, diagonal cuts to make two ends, dry them, and use them for drawing with ink I made from black walnuts, also growing out back.

This is what van Gogh used in his early drawings. I used to give them to my drawing students, with samples of the ink. So they had an authentic experience.

These are what Blake called rural pens in his Songs of Innocence, except his was a hollow reed. Same idea, also making his own ink, in the narrative.  This whole background was very interesting to adult students, seeing the connections across arts and cultures and history.

Anyway, enjoy your embossing/engraving adventures if you give it a try.