Yesterday's Textiles and Tea featured a guest host, weaver Melvenea Rogers, who was so vivacious and enthusiastic she carried along the reserved weaving historian Pat Hilts, and brought her out very well.
She weaves on an antique timber frame loom, and recreates patterns she's found in early German manuscripts. She also creates commissioned church banners for the liturgical year.
She founded a textile museum out of her family home, which has grown and been added to over the years.
She's a serious historian and researcher, and combines that with her weaving practice, where wool is her preferred fiber, followed by linen. She's spun cotton, but that's less emphasized in her work.
Meanwhile back in the kitchen I assembled the cast of characters for a new batch of berbere. This is an Ethiopian spice mix, and some of the components aren't readily available. I used the Together cookbook recipe this time, rather than the more fiery Marcus Samuelsson mix I first made.
I love the fresh smells of all the spices as you grind some of them and use others already ground.
If you see the recipe it lists fenugreek, which you don't see in my array there. What you do see is methi seeds. It's the Hindi name for fenugreek. It's a green leafy plant. It's like the relationship between cilantro and coriander: one's the plant, the other its seeds.
