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Restingmotion

  • Spring Produce

    I know I’ve said this before but the hardest part of the culinary year is that time between New Years and the beginning of spring when there is little available in my region that is really appealing to eat. Oh there are exceptions, some fine fish in season, the mushroom man grows Shiitake and Oyster mushrooms locally, and they become the mainstays of our diet. But trips to the store are often dreary expeditions and the thought of preparing meals is not something that I always look forward to.

     

    This year’s upheavals in our personal lives have also contributed and I have not been finding great inspiration in the kitchen. Oh we eat well, usually simple grilled meat or fish and some kind of simple vegetable, but I have not eagerly made the transition to planning and cooking three meals a day, it has been many years since this was a part of my daily routine and starting up again with the post-winter dearth of appealing produce has been difficult.

     

    All that is about to change.

     

    The local farmer’s market begins on Sunday, the best Mother’s day treat I can imagine. And although I don’t expect a lot this early in the season, I know there will be fresh greens and mushrooms, fresh eggs and freshly killed chickens that I don’t have to drive an extra 20 miles to collect.

     

    But far more exciting events have been taking place as well. A day or two ago I received a call: “Are you still interested in ramps?” I was asked. And today I looked out the kitchen window to just in time to see a big basket of ramps and morels being carried up to our front door.

     

     


     

    For the first time in what seems like a lifetime, I spent the morning and early afternoon planning menus, cleaning produce and dreaming of all the things I can prepare. Dinners will be filled with ramps and morels for the next few days, although I am also planning on collecting more morels for the freezer. I read recently about freezing ramps as well, and that idea sounds intriguing. I haven’t tried it yet, but the idea of extending the ramp season even just a little bit it is tempting.

     


    Aren’t they lovely?

     

    I would have thought that the ramps would have been out for some time by now, and they might well have been, but I hadn’t seen any in the market or on my walk. I did see a few at Adams last week, but they looked old and wilted and even somewhat slimy. Usually the low areas, bogs, and fields along the streams feeding the Hudson River along the trail I normally walk are covered with ramps this time of year, but they are just beginning to appear. I can’t figure it out. The trees have leafed out right on schedule, their schedule must be daylight dependent, because many other things are late, I suppose those plants that depend on soil temperature to tell them when it is safe to emerge are the ones that are reluctant to spring forth this year.

     

    Well, we have ramps and morels now. And I am grateful. And I enjoyed cleaning the ramps and planning the menus, weighing out the morels for coming meals and I even put some aside to freeze. It was a wonderful day in the kitchen. A piece of pork loin was defrosted for dinner and I decided to try stuffing it. I spent a good bit of time poring over recipes, looking at what I had in the larder and deciding how to proceed, stuffed pork loin has not previously been a part of my repertoire, but I think it will be now. Most of the recipes I found called for too much bread and spice; I wanted the flavors of the morels and ramps to come through, so I stripped the ingredients down to the most basic elements. Somehow, it worked.



     

    Pork Loin Stuffed with Morels and Ramps

    Serves 4 to 6

     

    1/2 pound morels

    2 cups     stock    (I used capon stock because that was what I had on hand)

    2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

    1 tablespoon butter

    9 ramps finely chopped

    1 garlic clove, finely chopped

    1/4 cup fine dry breadcrumbs, I used Gillian’s gluten-free breadcrumbs

    2 pounds boneless pork loin roast

    Sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

     

    Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

     

    Reserve 6 mushrooms and place them in the veal stock. Set aside. Finely chop remaining mushrooms and place them in a bowl.

     

    In a large skillet, heat 1 ½ tablespoons of the olive oil over medium heat until hot but not smoking. Add the chopped ramps and garlic to the skillet and sauté until softened. Stir in butter and allow to melt. Add contents of skillet to bowl containing chopped mushrooms. Add bread crumbs and a generous dash of salt and pepper. Allow stuffing mixture to cool to room temperature.

     

    Make a hole through the length of the pork loin to use for the stuffing. Using a long knife pierce the loin through the center to the far side. Then turn the loin around and pierce again from the other end, aligning the cuts as well as possible. Then stretch the opening as much as possible to create a 1 ½ to 2 inch wide crevasse in the middle of the pork loin. Working from both ends, pack the stuffing into the opening, pushing toward the center. Rub the outside of the pork loin with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.

     

    Roast pork in the middle of the oven for 1 hour, or until a meat thermometer registers 160 degrees F. Transfer the pork to a cutting board and allow it to rest for about 10 minutes.

     

    While the pork is resting, place the roasting pan on top of the stove and add the stock with the reserved morel mushrooms and simmer, stirring occasionally for about 5 or 6 minutes.

     

    Slice pork loin and serve with sauce.

     

     

    This turned out really well and I will make it again. I think it would be quite amenable to other kinds of mushrooms and leeks or other onions. I might try it with garlic scapes in a few weeks.

  • Summertime and the Knitting is Easy

    Linentanka1

    Cool linen in taupes and blues just speak of lazy summer days.  A lazy spring weekend yielded a completed gauge swatch and the beginning of a summer sweater.  The swatch was actually started at Thursday knitting but did not progress far as my hands were to busy shoveling salty snacks into my open mouth, and the slippery Addi turbos that I had with me did not make linen knitting particularly enjoyable.

    Once I got home and switched needles however, this project became pure joy.

    My next project was one that I wanted to be simple and mindless, although I am seriously considering another simultaneous projects for those times when I am capable of actually focusing my attentions rather than sitting dumbly and letting my fingers mindlessly do the work.  This project was supposed to be simple stockinette.  It is double moss stitch, still easy-peasy compared to the tedious rice stitch of the last project.

    I am knitting a project that has been in my stash for a few years, it leapt out at me as I was searching for a potential yarn for some other dreamed-of sweater.

    Linentank

    The pattern is by Ram Wools  the yarn is Euroflax Linen in the colors pictured.  Summer days await.

  • Oh Bother

    I opened the mail one day this past week and found this magazine:

    Sabrina_2
    Now, I don’t subscribe to Sabrina and quite frankly, as I looked through it the first time I had a bad feeling.  I wasn’t sure exactly why I had received but had a sneaking suspicion that this meant I would not be getting something else.  My fears proved to be true.   Hidden deep inside the magazine, nestled between the pages, was a note from GLP International, the distributor who provided my subscription,  telling me that Hubert Burda Media is no longer publishing Verena and that they have substituted Sabrina for the remainder of my subscription.

    They also tell me can subscribe to Filati Handknitting if I wish, so the next thing I do is get on the web to see if I can rustle up a copy of Filati Handknitting so I can compare the two.

    There is no question in my mind.  Filati Handknitting is the magazine for me.  I got this issue:

    Filatihandknitting

    And it is loaded with wonderful patterns, far more exciting than those in the Sabrina.  You can see the designs here .

  • Finis!

    Well, the rice stitch cardigan is Done!

    Ricestitchcardigana10

    And here it is in all its glory, this photo taken just minutes after I finished sewing on the last button.  The sweater was pulled on and we dashed outside for a photo before the sun got to low in the sky for a decent shot. 

    By the time this one was taken it was too late to get any detail photos, but you’ve seen the details as we went along, right?

    I love this sweater, but yes, I can wait for it to be cold enough to wear it again.

  • Ladders

    Pictures of the rice stitch cardigan will be coming soon.

    Ribbing is my nemesis.  Or perhaps it is any stitch pattern with a count of 4, of which K2 P2 rib is only one of many options.  Needless to say the ribbed collar to the rice-stitch cardigan was not error free.  All those late night knitting hours were probably not the best idea.  But it is done.

    I did not rip the collar out and start over.  That promised too many hours of work with little guarantee that the same errors would not be repeated.  Instead, as I bound off the edge of the collar, I simply dropped stitches whenever I found a column which contained a purl that should have been a knit stitch, or a knit stitch that should have been a purl.  About 2 hours of work were still involved, as I figure I dropped about one-third of the columns of stitches, but not nearly as many hours as would have been required to reknit the entire collar.

    Collarladders

    All that is left is the edging along the lower front, the buttons and the buttonholes. 

    Then, perhaps, Spring knittnig. Or not.

  • I’ve Got Mail

    Looky Looky!  There was gold in my mailbox today!

    Magazines
    This bounty should easily fill supply me with enough sewing dreams to fill out the rest of this week. 

    Rather than grabbing them all and indulging in an evening spent wallowing in sewing ideas, I shall savour them slowly, one a day, to make them last, hopefully until I can squeeze in a little time with the sewing machines..

    Perhaps I should start with the Burda.  I have been reading  about the patterns in this issue already over on Stitcher’s Guild.

    But then, perhaps I will start with Inspirations.  There is a magazine I always treasure even though it has been far longer since I last indulged my passion for embroidery than it has been since the sewing machines were primed and running.

  • Tired

    It seems like my intellectual capacity has dried up to the point is almost hard and desiccated. I wonder if there is a chance of its continued survival.

     

    Mostly all I feel is tired of late. It is not really that I am working that much harder. I do the same things I did when my beloved was away at work all day. It is not the fact that he is recovering from surgery and unable to help that bothers me, it does not. I do no more than before. But why do I grow impatient with the constant repetition, the constant little requests, the reordering of my day again and again? I am not frazzled, swamped or otherwise overwhelmed. I enjoy the time we spend together. And yet there seems to be no time for my own pursuits. I have sewn nothing. I steal small snatches of time to pursue a little knitting, but not enough time and little progress is made. I haven’t read a thing. The reading materials pile up higher and higher. Even finding time for exercise seems difficult. I get started and am interrupted; the time steals away and the impetus is gone. When I find a few moments to spare I desire nothing more than sleep, although even my attempts at sneaking off for naps are interrupted. I should not need them. I am not getting that much less sleep than usual; naps should be unnecessary.

     

    What is the source of this ennui?

     

    Last night I was up for a few hours in the middle of the night and I spent the time reading. I picked up The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which I had abandoned a month ago, when life got crazy all of a sudden, and I truly enjoyed reading it. Lost in the words on the page I blissfully passed a couple of hours until I realized that I was dead tired and was having trouble keeping my eyes open and my head upright. I went to sleep immediately after Michael Pollan had killed his boar and was disgusted with the necessary process of slaughter. You would think this image would keep me awake, but it did not. I had pleasant dreams of the rituals of food, and sharing memories with people one cares about. I woke up refreshed many hours later.

     

    And why, during another day, with endless tasks stretching out before me do I feel so exhausted again, unable to read, unable to knit, unable to sew, wanting only to curl up in a little ball and sleep, sleep, sleep.

  • The Long Goodbye

    I always seem to underestimate how long the actual finishing of a sweater will take.  I know, intellectually, that seaming up and knitting bands and collars etc takes time, but at some place in my knitters heart, once I am done with the actual knitting of the pieces of a sweater I think of it as done and I start moving on to dreaming of the next piece and preparing myself to spend time with a new project.  Hence it always comes as a bit of a surprise, although it shouldn’t really, that it takes longer to get the sweater out of my basket and onto the shelf than I expect.  Sweaters knitting projects are a lot like the kind of guest who says "its time to go" and then talks another half hour, then starts to leave and repeats the process over and over so that it takes an hour or more to get through the ritual of "leaving".

    I don’t actually begrudge the time spent finishing a sweater.  A sweater assembled well is a joy and I enjoyed sewing up the Rice Stitch Cardigan although I did put it off a while, not so much because I didn’t want to to do it, but because it required long chunks of undistracted time.  The collar is also proving to be a long process, which of course I would have realized had I actually spared the time to think about it.  The collar is about 60 inches long and 6 inches wide, all done in k2, P2 ribbing.  Each row takes forever. 

    Well actually each row takes about 15 minutes if I am awake and paying attention.  If I am tired the time can slow to 20 minutes.

    Twelve rows have been completed here:

    Ricestitchcardigan9

    24 more rows to go, a crocheted edge along the bottom band, and 5 buttons.  I estimate about another 6 to 7 hours.  Needless to say it will not be finished today.

  • Patrones Updaate, answers and comments

    To answer a few questions:

    Shannon and Christina write that Around the World in NYC carries Patrones and they are willing to ship.  I love Around the World and stop in there whenever I get a chance to walk anywhere near that neighborhood.  They were my source for several of the Patrones I got before the subscription.  They do ship and they are accommodating.  But competition for these magazines in NYC can be steep and you have to call while they have the books in stock, or just before they arrive.  I have had success with Around the World and Kinokinuya (for Mrs. Stylebook) with calling just before they expected a shipment to come in and pre-ordering a book.    But one has to keep up with publishing schedules and shipping schedules to pull this off. The standard issues of Patrones do not stay on the shelves long (if you are looking for large size editions, or children’s issues you will have more luck).  Neither store will sell a subscription for the magazines.   I have decided that I am just too disorganized or too lazy to go to the trouble if I can get the book shipped directly to me.  I have loved every issue of Patrones I have seen.

    Now some issues are children’s issues, I think about 4 issues a year, but I am not certain.  In the first 4 months I have gotten 1 children’s issue.  That is OK because I do occasionally sew for nieces, nephews, friends children, and grandchild, although I don’t generally write about it (except for some grandbabby sewing) because It is not as interesting to me as making adult garments for myself.  I know there will also be a couple of  large size issues but that is not a problem because I am not a small person to begin with, although the large sizes are often larger than I want, and I can alter anything I like to fit.  So we will see how it goes, if there are too many children’s issues, I may not renew.  Let’s see.

    As to price, the price of 288.4 Euros currently translates to $393.72 which is less than the Amazon subscription price of  $425.  The only rough part is figuring out how to fill out the Spanish subscription form, but there translators on the web to help you with that.  When I purchased my subscription the Euro was cheaper against the dollar and DH paid 321.89 for the subscription, so I can see how it would be beneficial to pay attention to exchange rates and subscribe accordingly.

    There are twelve issues.  At $322.00 for a subscription that works out to $26.8 per issue, not cheap but not that far off what I was paying on e-bay for the fast shipping from Germany.  AT the current exchange rate it is more expensive at 32.83 per issue.  Of course, if you just throw away the children’s issues it would be considerably more expensive.  Then you would have to decide if you got enough usable patterns out of each issue that it worked out in terms of cost per pattern. AT the moment, for my use, I would say I get more than $27 worth of patterns out of each issue, but I may have to reconsider if the dollar keeps falling against the Euro.  Luckily I have a few months, and lots of sewing time, before that decision will come up.

  • Iris Made Me Do It.

    Well, that is not exactly true, but she did help.

    Tealboot2

    You see, I had been eying these teal boots by Delman for several months over at Zappos .  They had been in my "favorites" since December I think, and I would periodically look at them and drool.  But I realize that teal boots are not a necessity, and I have many pairs of boots.  In fact I was just complaining that I have more boots than will fit into the allotted storage space and I was contemplating liberating a few pairs. I am not sure that will really happen, especially considering that I just purchased these boots and absolutely love them.

    After looking at all Iris Apfel’s beautiful books all weekend, and then staring longingly at these teal beauties, and noticing that they were STILL available in my size, I bought them.

    They fit perfectly, they are the exact shade of teal as several things in my wardrobe, and they coordinate perfectly with a favorite skirt that has proven very difficult to match and pair with other garments.

    Delmanflats
    As I placed the boots lovingly in a temporary spot in my shoe closet while I ponder the issue of expanded boot storage, I noticed that the oldest pair of shoes is also probably** a pair of Delmans that I thought extremely frivolous at the time, but which has proven to be a long term standard and favorite.

    These suede flats were purchased, I believe around 1985, give or take a year. and have been worn steadily, every season since.

    ***  There are actually three pairs of shoes from the mid-eighties still floating around in the wardrobe, but I believe these are the oldest.  These date just before the time my feet decided to suddenly grow from a 7 1/2 to an 8 1/2, much to my shoe-collecting chagrin, or there would be more survivors.  If my feet hadn’t grown I would still have the gorgeous royal blue suede and lizard pumps I wore on my wedding day.  My feet might have been in a transitional stage at the time, because I bought an 8, or they might have only come in even sizes,  because I am pretty consistently a true 8 1/2 in Delman and Ferragamo, my benchmarks for well-made, well-fitting, comfortable shoes.