Yummies

PiaChit Chat

urter

I’m not intending for this to become a cooking blog, but I thought I’d share a few recipes I’ve stumbled across lately, to show my appreciation that other people blog about delicious food and well, to share with those of you who like food.

Also, it’s a way for me to remember the links and not lose them among my bookmarks 😉

Chive blossom dressing

Almond meal glutenfree crackers

My absolute favourite for old bananas – it’s in Danish but perhaps you can do a Google translate thingy on it? Add cinnamon or cocoa, oatmeal (they get a bit soggy the day after), glutenfree flour, lots of things work. They may end up a little flatter, but the spicyness of the brown sugar (muscovado?) is awesome.

Kale and strawberries. Now, this sounds lovely, but when are the two ever in season together??!

Massage your kale

I’ve managed to grow a few things in the garden this year, this time I’m starting out slow with a few things instead of trying to plant a whole field of clay at once. So I may in fact become more cooking oriented as time passes. I’d love to study herblore, both for food and medicinal purposes. But that will be in another lifetime or my head will explode.

And finally, I got a lovely recipe for paleo bread at a family gathering on Sunday:

  • 500 g assorted nuts, seeds or gluten free muesli
  • 5 eggs
  • 1 dl oil
  • 2 tsp. salt

Grind nuts as finely or coarsely as you like, perhaps roast them first. Add the rest, bake in bread mold for one hour at 160° C. Tastes good fresh or toasted. And I bet you can add herbs or other spices too. Nigella on top perhaps?

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Butterfly effect

PiaChit Chat

Make sure you watch all of this – it’s not quite over when you think it is…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dnDeo0yhIws]

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All things by immortal power,
Near and Far – Hiddenly
To each other linked are,
That thou canst not stir a flower
Without troubling of a star.

                                Francis Thompson

Point and shoot

PiaGallery

I found out that my new to me little pocket camera actually does quite good macros. I can’t see a thing on the display outdoors though, so I’ve developed a new (to me) style of taking pictures. I simply wave it around, try to point it in the general direction of something and click. Play with over- and underexposures in the sun etc. The macro lens I have for my SLR is a 90 mm and gives a completely different perspective compared to the wide angle of a tiny camera.

For starters I’ve been doing garden walks since so many things are in bloom right now, but I’ll continue to explore this method time and again just to get out of my regular groove. How about deliberate out of focus for instance? The columbines are going now, so I promise next time it will be something else…

The photos are unprocessed apart from resizing – exposure and colour are all from fiddling with camera settings. No crops. Some have been more deliberately composed, most are randomly aimed at the target.

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Just mordant

PiaPlant Dyeing

For those of you experienced in plant dyeing, this is nothing new, but I thought I’d post an image of mordanted yarns to show the colours you can achieve from that alone. It’s not a complete collection, no iron mordant for instance, just what I happened to have on hand today. 😉 And an unmordanted skein on the right.

mordant

I’ll return to my semi-regular schedule probably, when I’m done ruminating over having to put my 3 y.o. cat to sleep yesterday. And I’ve just now realised I don’t really have much in the way of photos…. 🙁

Dalton 2011
Dalton 2011

Nettles 2013

PiaPÃ¥ dansk

nettle4

Having been taunted by the lovely greens on other peoples’ yarns, I decided to do this at least once, even though I’ve always thought it would just give a pale yellow.

I first used the method described by Jenny Dean, where you chop up the plant tops, pour boiling water on them, steep for a day, then boil as usual. I recommend using sturdy garden gloves while chopping, unless you need a new pair of rubber gloves anyway. (I don’t know why this came as a surprise, as I frequently draw blood when making salads. What does baffle me however is the fact that my left thumb is still the same size and shape!)

I started off with 350 g of plant to 25 g of yarn, because that’s what I’d picked. Dean’s recipe says 1:1, but MotherOwl suggested at least 8:1 which was good advice. Anyway, simmering/boiling the yarn didn’t give me much of interest. So I decided to keep it under 60° C and that made the green much more vibrant. So I ended up doing an unmordanted skein for a paler colour, one to modify with iron and one cotton, as it apparently can give dark green with iron. It did, but then rinsed out to a dark grey-brown. Could be the tannin mordant, could be that Jenny Dean doesn’t rinse her yarn, but since iron makes it brittle, I always do.

nettle1

For some reason, the alum mordanted skein doesn’t show correctly with the others, so here’s one of it on its own which I think is more true.

nettle2

Brændenælder

Jeg havde egentlig diskvalificeret nælder som farveplante, fordi jeg forestillede mig at den bare giver en fesen lysegul. Men der er nogen som fremviser grøn, så jeg måtte alligevel prøve. Jenny Dean skriver bl.a. at det med jern giver mørkegrøn på bomuld.

Først brugte jeg Deans metode hvor man hakker bladene, hælder kogende vand pÃ¥ og lader stÃ¥ til dagen efter, hvorefter man koger, farver osv. som “normalt”. Jeg anbefaler at bruge havehandsker nÃ¥r man hakker, med mindre man alligevel trænger til nye gummihandsker. Jeg ved ikke hvorfor det overraskede mig, for jeg har ofte blod i mine salater. Til gengæld er det forbløffende at min venstre tommelfinger stadig har sin oprindelige facon!

Den normale metode med kogning gav en kedelig khakigrøn, sÃ¥ jeg besluttede at forsøge med en lavere temperatur og bruge bladene med det samme – sÃ¥ et kort bad pÃ¥ 60° og sÃ¥ et par stykker i jernbad bagefter. Og det blev en hel del bedre! Bomuldsfeddet blev dog grÃ¥t efter skyl, mÃ¥ske pga bejsning med garvesyre, mÃ¥ske fordi Dean ikke vasker sit garn bagefter, men eftersom jern mørner garnet foretrækker jeg at gøre det.

Efter råd fra Uglemor brugte jeg omkring 10:1 plante:garn istedet for det gængse forhold 1:1, og det må siges at være vejen frem. Ellers er jeg ret sikker på, at garnet rent faktisk var blevet fesengult!