Field and Fen

 On Freecycle this is on offer 

I'm refraining from checking into it. Trying to move the dolls, not bring in flamingoes. 

Yesterday's Textiles and Tea guest was Annie MacHale, inkle loom weaver. If you follow the thread you'll see an inkle loom if you're not familiar with it. 

It's a narrow loom, designed with a huge long warp, for making bands, belts, straps, even shoelaces. Her colors are standout.

This is a manipulated image, not woven like this!






At the White House, representing her state of New Mexico. 

She's written two how-to books, available directly from her, and she's a cheerful, generous weaver, great fun to be in her company.

Long ago I was offered an inkle loom as a downsizing gift and declined it. Just not my thing, too linear, so I hope it went to someone who would love it. But I did research it a bit before realizing it's too confining for me, though a huge pleasure to people who own them.  

Annie says of spinning -- not her thing! Different strokes.

Yesterday's walk was possibly the last of the foliage before the overnight storms and falling temperatures swept through.

And I made my version of lasagna

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.

 This is where we are today

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

 I credit blogista and local friend Marilyn with the idea of rolling lasagna noodles to bake instead of the usual lasagna dish.

I had to change things, though. Great opportunity to use leeks. Ever since I accidentally ordered enough leeks to feed the Eastern seaboard, I've been alert for ways to use them.

And I found I had lasagna noodles, to my surprise. I checked a couple more ideas on YouTube, ended up doing it with my own inevitable changes. No ricotta, nor mozzarella, used plain whole milk yogurt, no spinach, tired of broccoli, used a mass of steamed leeks. Nutmeg, seasalt, great fun rolling up the noodles and finding the filling which I hadn't measured, was the right amount. 

Here's where the invention came in: instead of the planned bechamel sauce, I thought it would be interesting to use the rest of a recipe of pancake batter, thinned a bit with milk. Just to see  

Added in plenty of parmesan and cheddar to the batter, grated on my cheese grating board (!)

The verdict: very good thing I used the tangy yogurt instead of ricotta and mozzarella. The yogurt tang, along with the strong leek flavor worked fine. It would have been bland otherwise. The pancake batter worked surprisingly well, upped the stick to your ribs aspect, and held down the richness.

In September when it cools down, I'm going to start the dinners with Handsome Son again. This is a likely menu item. 

A bit more work on the doll happened, and here she is with legs, rocking lace stockings. Fiberfill courtesy of Helen who doesn't read in here, hem lace courtesy of Judy who does.

The head looks disproportionate right now, but once she's dressed in big skirts or whatever, it will work.  Her face will be much smaller than you might think now.

Usually makers work on the head first, and attach it to the body later but I'm working in a different order. I'll soon be trying my hand at sculpting the face, watch this space.

And it's Misfits box day. So here's this week's haul. 

Lovely fruit, even including apricots. The season is only a week or so long in this region so some years they aren't available at all. These look very good. If they aren't excellent eating, there will be a bit of apricot jam. Or maybe an apricot pasty or two. I tasted the cherries, really good. Different variety from local ones, smaller and sweeter.

Not too much prep this time. My knives are now sharp, in fact I sliced a bit off my thumbnail cutting the cauliflower. No harm done, just a shorter nail than before. And it was much easier to carve out the cauliflower core.

 Very crisp romaine lettuce, not too big. Salad this evening. 

Good day, pretty much. Now to read a newly downloaded Bess Crawford, on the sofa, keeping cool.

I've been noticing for ages at the back of the high kitchen cabinet, half a box of lasagna noodles, and been vaguely planning to use it up.

Several obstacles, the ground beef which is a meat never on my radar, or any other beef for that matter. The mozzarella which is a summer thing here, eaten with fresh farm tomatoes. Not lasagna weather. The ricotta, ruhgahda as the younger Mrs Soprano used to say it, just never in my kitchen. The tomato sauce likewise.  The only things I had were the noodles, sausage and tomato paste.

And then there's the cost, more than Christmas dinner when you add it up.

The actual cooking is okay if you have time. Which I did today. And realized that my hot Italian turkey sausages, the kind you can skin, to use the meat, would work fine. And it went from there. First finding a pan the right size. Why do recipes specify the size in inches instead of capacity, since that's the measurement incised into the pan? So the recipe also involved finding a ruler.

Shopping trip. Rationalizing that it's only once every few years, as I see the checkout totals. I went to an expensive store, only the best, since it's only once every few years.



A lot of prep, boiling the pasta,  and cooking on the stove, chopping and sauteing, mixing,  long simmering of the sauce, then assembly, then baking, and finally it emerged smelling pretty good. And then you have to wait for it to be ready to cut.



This is dinner today, then a series of future meals, including a couple of meals for handsome Son's freezer. And there's spare ricotta, must find recipes, and spare tomato sauce, in the freezer. And it's only once every few years.

And then I found another half box of lasagna noodles, arghghg.





But here comes the cook's first taste. This really shouldn't wait a few years before I make it again. It's waaaaaay good.

The farmshare this time of year becomes a pressing priority to those of us froogle folk who can't bear to waste food.  So the jam, and the tomato sauce, and the veggie quiches, and all that happen. As well as a frenzy of chopping and slicing and prepping for the freezer.  I did give away a bunch of eggplant to happy neighbors, too.

Today I made some sort of dish, can you help me name it, blogistas? 






anyway, I used a glass lasagna pan, rubbed with butter -- I save butter wrappers in the freezer from the rare times I buy it, use them to butter pans, then toss, works lovely.  

And put in a couple of handfuls of zucchini sticks, cut like big french fries, four ears of corn, cut off the cob, four eggs beaten with kosher salt, fresh ground pepper, a big swoosh of Italian seasoning stuff, turmeric, handful of grated cheddar cheese.  

Poured this over the vegetables, sprinkle of red pepper on top.  Baked at 350 for 30 minutes.  This, yet another kitchen experiment, worked fine, as you see my lunch serving.  The veggies were still bitey, not too soft, nice flavor, very fresh.

This was my second course,the first being a tomato cubed and salted and that was all it needed for a wonderful first course. Simply nothing better than a tomato fresh from the vine.  I never eat them in winter -- that's when I use my spaghetti sauce from the freezer.  Anyway, the tomato was gone before I thought of a pic, oh well.

Nonfood things will return to this blog, promise.  Oh yes, gardening exploits, hm, yes, been doing those, too. But you don't need to hear about my allergy issues, that's been a feature, too, but too boring.