Here come the holidays

Hello! It's been quiet around here, hasn't it? Too busy to try new recipes or work on crafts? I don't really have any excuse. I'm just lazy. But if there is any time of year that calls for recipes and crafts, it's this time of year! Tomorrow my office is holding a Thanksgiving potluck at lunch time. I'm going to bring some home made mashed potatoes, but what's mashed potatoes without gravy, right? (Personally, I don't need gravy on my potatoes, but this isn't about me.) Not wanting to cave and buy gravy or a mix at the supermarket, I decided to try making gravy from scratch. And because I didn't have any extra pan drippings laying around, I had to find a recipe that substituted drippings with oil or butter. So I kind of melded a bunch of gravy recipes together and came up with something resembling gravy. Since I'm not a big gravy fan, I can't really say for sure if it is good or not, but I'll find out tomorrow!

Since I pretty much winged it, I don't have a real recipe for the gravy, but I'm sure I used at least the following:

Basic roux:
2 tbsp unsalted butter (melt in pot first)
2 tbsp all-purpose flour (add to melted butter)
1 cup broth (I used mushroom broth)

Flavor (stir in as desired):
2 cloves freshly chopped garlic
half onion, chopped
splash of soy sauce
salt and pepper to taste

My office is also holding a cookie exchange and crafts fair in a few weeks. I can't participate in the crafts fair because, well, I don't actually "craft" much, but I am thinking of getting in on the cookie exchange with the Oatmeal Butterscotch. According to the rules, I have to make one dozen cookies per participant. There will be 8 to 12 participants. Yikes. Better make them bite-sized cookies.

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Posted by greeeenwithenv to Bumbling Bees - Food at 11/15/2006 07:03:00 PM

Fun with Fennel

I've been super busy, but now I'm at home recuperating from a nasty cold. A couple of weeks back, I bought some fennel at the local farmer's market. What a lovely vegetable! I've experimented with it a bit; in salads, pasta, and in soup. For those of you who don't like the anise-like flavour, cooking it mellows it out a lot. But for superb crunch and flavour, fresh is the way to go!
Here, I threw together some romaine lettuce with tomatoes, fennel and lemon cucumbers (deliciously crisp, from the farmer's market), topped with some balsamic vinaigrette . Raw fennel bulbs are crunchy. Kind of like celery, but not stringy.







Here's a recipe I got from The Quick Recipe, from the writers of Cook's Illustrated. There were some really great recipes in here. I think I'm going to have to get my own copy some time soon. This is pasta, with tomato, basil, fennel and some parmesan cheese on top. Light and delicious!














And this pot of delight is a tomato, zucchini and fennel soup. It's made extra flavourful with fresh basil, chicken broth and white wine (the first time I'd ever bought alcohol for my own use). It was really simple, an example of the type of recipe you can find in books written by Brother Victor D'Avila-Latourrette. This particular recipe came from his twelve Months of Monastery Soups. What I love about his books is the emphasis on fresh, seasonal ingredients. They're very healthy, and for the most part are very frugal, too.

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Posted by Lana to Bumbling Bees - Food at 9/24/2006 02:54:00 PM

Noodle Sauces

I've been messing around trying to come up with easy sauces to go on my regulation plain white Shanghai noodles since Boyfriend is no longer allowed ramen (see "Health Food Ahoy!"). For a while, I've been depending on my soy-sesame combination. That's this:

1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon or so of sugar
A sprinkling of toasted, crushed sesame seeds.
Toss with noodles. Serves 1.

But after eating that for 2 months, I got bored of it. So here's my new one.

2 teaspoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons sushi rice vinegar (the pre-sweetened kind)
1 teaspoon regular Chinese white rice vinegar
1 teaspoon fish sauce
1 stalk chopped scallion (just the green bit)
Light sprinkling of chile flakes
Toss with noodles. Serves 1.

Tastes vaguely like soba. It's good! It'd probably be even better cold, too. At least, until I get bored again...

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Posted by Kea to Bumbling Bees - Food at 9/14/2006 12:11:00 PM

Goodbye, Central Star Ferry Pier

Here's a dying burst of nostalgia for you guys who haven't been back to HK in a while. They're demolishing the Central Star Ferry pier, and building a new one somewhere off by the IFC 2 tower. Here's an article. Click the link to see the picture of the new ferry terminal building - an awkward, Disneyish looking faux-colonial structure seemingly designed by cutting a lot of pictures out of travel magazines and gluing them together. I'm no expert or anything, but it looks like the architect borrowed a bunch of shapes from 19th century British architecture without understanding anything about the structure, proportions or visual balance of those buildings. This is our government's idea of historical and cultural enrichment, by the way. Perhaps I should be glad that it isn't pink, or covered in bathroom tiles.

When you come back to Hong Kong next time, the Central waterfront as you know it will be gone. They're putting a mega-mall on the site of the current pier. And then they're going to reclaim some land and put a highway in front of the mega-mall. If we're lucky, we'll get a strip of park in front of the highway - but nobody's going to bother to cross a highway to get to it, and so the waterfront will be dead, boring, ugly, and hostile to pedestrians - just like Admiralty. There's also some question as to whether the Star Ferry will be able to survive as a business in its new, inconvenient location. It expects to lose a full third of its passengers. Goodbye, Star Ferry, we loved thee well.

Another vague attempt at tailoring

These are the most recent clothes I've made, mostly by reverse-engineering clothes I already had. I used a tank top to get the measurements for the width of the halter top. And I took the measurements for the pants from a pair of gauchos my mom got me from the US, but I made them long instead of mid-calf length. (Calf-length pants annoy me in some way I can't quite describe - it's like they're neither fish nor fowl, or something.)

I can write up instructions if anyone's interested.

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Posted by Kea to Bumbling Bees - Sewing at 9/06/2006 07:04:00 AM

Green bean salad

Now here's a simple one. You can do it in the microwave.

You need:
Green string beans. (I get the foot-and-a-half long, really dark green ones from the Chinese market. I got no idea what they're called. I guess any will do though.)
Peanut butter
Soy sauce (I use Chinese dark soy. Japanese cooking soy is too sour.)
Sugar
Toasted sesame seeds (Optional. I make these in advance and keep them in a jar.)

1. Wash and break the green beans into 2 inch segments.
2. Put the beans in a big bowl, add a bit of water in the bottom, cover with a plate and nuke on high for 3 or 4 minutes.
3. Pour off a little of the now hot water into a smaller bowl, drain the rest. Run the beans under the cold tap.
4. Melt a small dollop of peanut butter in the hot water. Add an amount of soy sauce equal to the amount of water in your bowl, a couple pinches of sugar, and the sesame seeds. You may have to fudge with the proportions a little. You're going for not too salty, not too sweet, not too bland. It should taste good on its own. Pour it on the beans.
5. Put in fridge until cold.

I read on some website that you should bruise the beans with the back of a knife first to speed their absorption of the dressing. But leaving it in the fridge for an hour accomplishes the same thing.

Incidentally, the same sauce goes pretty good on noodles.

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Posted by Kea to Bumbling Bees - Food at 8/31/2006 10:53:00 AM

Greatest Fish Ever

We got one of those mini toaster ovens with an adjustible temperature setting so now I can bake! yay! My digicam power cable's gone missing, so I don't have any photos, but I devised a really awesome way to bake fish last night. This is without a doubt the best fish I've ever made. It's like the typical Cantonese steamed fish with ginger and scallions, but with a twist. Best thing about it is that you don't even need to add any oil since you seal the moisture in with aluminium foil.

1 largish sole fillet (I guess any fish fillet will do, but I like sole. It stays soft and flaky and it's hard to screw up. Also, it's cheap. And most likely environmentally sound to eat. What more could you ask of a fish?)
1 scallion, chopped
A handful of chopped coriander
2 slices of ginger, chopped finely
2 tablespoons dark soy sauce (Chinese)
1 tablespoon lemon juice*
2 teaspoons Tianjiang You. That's a really unusual sweet soy sauce. It tastes almost like pancake syrup. Bought it by accident, now use it for glazing meat. I guess honey's a good substitute.

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees celcius (390 F).
2. Place fish fillet on a large piece of aluminium foil in a baking dish.
3. Spread the ginger, scallions and coriander on top of the fish.
4. Drizzle the lemon juice and soy sauce on top of the fish.
5. Dribble the Tianjiang You evenly over the fish.
6. Take up the corners of the foil and wrap the fish, sealing all the juices and seasonings inside the package.
7. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until white and opaque.

* I used that fake lemon juice you buy in little bottles at the supermarket. It's not very sour. I suggest using less if you squeeze real lemons.

(Question for Lana: If I find a recipe in the book, but then modify it, can I post it up on this blog? Or is that still copyright infringement? No, it's not this one. It's for sponge cake.)

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Posted by Kea to Bumbling Bees - Food at 8/31/2006 10:15:00 AM

Hidden Treasure

I've been so busy - and so tired - lately that I haven't had the time or energy to do much knitting. I've been working 40 hours a week at my day job, and another 10 to 16 hours at night at a restaurant. Thank God I quit the restaurant job (conflicts with one of the managers - a woman), and since the semester is starting soon I've finished up my temporary assignment at my day job, too.

Today was graduate student orientation for the Biology department. Tomorrow, all day long, will be the general graduate student orientation. Then, Friday morning, will be the first TA meeting for the introductory biology course I'm going to be a TA for.

But it feels good to be going back to school. I was in such a positive mood that I decided to try and locate some local yarn shops, something I've been meaning to do since I moved up here in April. Well, the first one I couldn't find, after driving around for half an hour.

The second address I had was for Eastside Weavers, in Troy, NY. The directions were simple enough, but they landed me at a little dead-end street in front of a huge house with a lovely garden, and no signage at all. I didn't want to assault unwitting homeowners with, "Do you sell yarn?" so I was hesitant to try the doorbell. Not a person in sight to ask, either.

Then I noticed a "Come In, We're Open" sign on the garage door. I finally plucked up the courage to ring on the doorbell. I was about to leave when an elderly gentleman opened the door. As he was telling me, "She'll be right with you," the garage door started sliding upwards, and rows and rows of colour greeted my eyes. Yes, I had definitely found it.

Pat Bohrer - who, dyes her own rovings and yarns, spins, weaves and paints silk scarves - taught herself to spin almost 16 years ago. She went to a fiber festival where she saw someone spinning, and wanted to learn. Then her husband bought her a spindle for Christmas, and the rest is history.

Lining the walls of the garage and basement of the house, she has cottons and cotton blends, wools, alpacas, silks and even the hunk of wonder I bought, camel!!! Well, it's a 50% silk, 50% camel laceweight yarn in lovely shades of purple and grey. And Pat is so kind; she took me on a tour of her house to see her looms, and let me play (i.e. try to spin) with a drop spindle while she wound up the yarn into a centre-pull ball for me!

I'm hoping to squeeze out some time in between classes, TA-ing and research to learn how to spin, because Pat offers lessons. This yarn is so special (and a birthday gift to myself), I'm going to have to be on the lookout for an interesting shawl pattern to do it justice. I'm thinking I'll go look at A Gathering of Lace again; I seem to remember them having some spectacular patterns. There's almost 1600 yards in this ball, which should be enough for most shawl projects.

I have tried out a couple of interesting recipes lately, so stay tuned for that!

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Posted by Lana to Bumbling Bees - Girls with Purls at 8/30/2006 08:34:00 PM

Hummous recipe

In search of healthy foods, Boyfriend and I decided try making our own hummous. This is because it costs something ridiculous in Hong Kong, so it's actually cheaper to make it ourselves. I also like to be able to control what goes in it. I like a stronger tasting hummous than most people as I don't like the taste of plain chickpeas all that much. Here's a recipe we made up:

1 can 'o chickpeas.
1 tomato
1/2 a bell pepper (or 1/4 red and 1/4 green)
2 cloves garlic
Basil/Italian spices to taste
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 tablespoon crushed toasted sesame seeds
2 tablespoons medium spicy salsa

1. Chop the vegetables into chunks
2. Drain 2/3 of the liquid out of the can of chickpeas, save the rest.
3. Put chickpeas, liquid, and olive oil into the blender and blend until mashed.
4. Bit by bit, add the veggies, garlic, and seasonings to the blender until everything is all pulped and mixed together.

Okay, I thought the salsa would be weird. Boyfriend suggested it. But I tried it, and I swear it's good. It gives the hummous a slight tangy kick. It's also a bit of a pain to toast and crush the sesame seeds, but it's well worth it. I like to do a whole bunch in one go and store them in a jar. They're good on noodles, too.

It's probably easier to use a food processor, but I don't have one. My blender can handle it if I add the ingredients bit by bit and put it on a low setting. Sometimes things get stuck and I have to stop it and give the pitcher a bit of a shake.

Fishy salad

The recent heat wave in the Bay Area, along with all the summery recipes on this here blog, inspired me to make a yummy dinner salad for myself. But what? I took a daring route and bought fresh fish for the very first time at the market. For some reason I’ve always thought that seafood was difficult to cook, but I like seafood and need more of it in my diet. I selected the cheapest decent looking thing I could find, which was two fillets of rock cod (I think). I also bought some packaged portofino and one English cucumber. I’ve been wanting to test out the brand new vegetable peeler my dad gave me for my birthday. I’m very picky when it comes to peelers, and he picked out a great one (but only after I shot down his first choice).

So when I got home, I rinsed the fish and seasoned it simply with salt, pepper, and some dried garlic and herb, then quickly pan fried it. I used half of the cucumber and peeled off all the skin (rind?), then cut it into random bite-sized pieces. I was in a rush, because I was hungry! The fish was already flaking nicely, so I layed the fish and raw cucumber on a bed of portofino. I drizzled my most favorite sesame and miso salad dressing (this can make anything taste good; if the fish hadn’t turned out well, I would’ve doused the whole dish in this) on top, and finished it off with some sesame seeds and a bit more pepper.

Voila!



I liked how it turned out. Nothing fancy, but it made me feel good. One fillet was enough for one serving, but I helped myself to another serving of this salad and finished off all the fish. Now I’m not (too) afraid of cooking fish anymore! Yay!

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Posted by greeeenwithenv to Bumbling Bees - Food at 7/31/2006 02:21:00 PM

Patchwork Cushion Cover

Note: I posted this in the sewing blog yesterday but for some reason it did not appear in the main blog.

I've been procrastinating a lot lately, so much that I found myself doing something resembling quilting. I made a patchwork cushion cover for my sofa cushions. I have no sewing machine, no pins, no chalk (I used a felt tip) and no patience for measuring, so making this one cushion took two days. One down, three to go.

My original cushion covers were Hideous Loud Print Orange and Modern Art Lime Green. Boyfriend pronounced them the ugliest pillows on earth. We had just bought them in a hurry so our friends would have something to sit on during our housewarming gathering 2 months ago. It's a small apartment and we don't have enough chairs. Red, blue and plaid is a big improvement. (Remember the plaid cow? It's the same cloth.)

I'm a bit worried about the inside seams fraying all over the place since I didn't have the patience to bind them all individually. I'm thinking of buying some of that iron-on interfacing and sticking it on. I'd just have to get an iron first. I'm also wondering how it would fare in the washing machine. I left about an inch of room for shrinkage, but what if the different kinds of cloth shrink differently? Oh well, I guess I'm not washing them anytime soon. I wonder if the laundromat will cold wash them and then give them back to me wet to hang out to dry?

Health Food Ahoy!

Last month, Boyfriend got his blood tested and his cholesterol is through the roof. The maximum amount of cholesterol a person should have - he's got twice that amount. But if you looked at his diet last year when he was living alone, you wouldn't be surprised. I'm sure you've all heard horror stories about what males living alone survive on. Eggo waffles. Hotdogs. Canned foods. Cup noodles. McDonalds. It's not that Boyfriend can't cook. He just lost the motivation do so, having a soul-sucking 6 day a week job which left him with no energy except to sleep and watch TV. On top of that, he has this morbid curiosity about combinations of food that can only be described as revolting. He got to the point where boiling ramen was too much work. He ate cream of mushroom soup straight out of the can. He ate half a package of ham for lunch. Not ham sandwiches, mind you, just the ham. He ate ketchup on rice, with crabsticks. And possibly mayo. He snacked on cocktail cheese sausages as if they were potato chips. Vegetables were either of the frozen variety, or a can o' corn.

So now he's on medication and he's not allowed to have red meat, eggs, junk food, processed meats, or full cream dairy anymore. We read labels for trans fats (especially horrible in Asia where they put palm oil in everything packaged). We made hummus (it's too expensive to buy ready made here). We bought olive oil (also crazy expensive here). I'm grilling the chicken. I'm steaming the fish. I'm steaming the veggies. We're looking into cheese substitutes, butter substitutes, and meat substitutes. I'm buying those plain white Shanghai noodles instead of the eggy kind. And rice vermicelli. We replaced ham with smoked chicken because turkey costs too much. Tofu is our friend.

But now I'm craving cookies all the time. I open the fridge, look at the food, close the fridge, walk around the apartment, open the fridge again, and sigh. Oh, what I'd do for a chocolate chip cookie...

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Posted by Kea to Bumbling Bees - Food at 7/25/2006 01:26:00 PM

Coin Pouch

This is the other thing I've been doing instead of work. Boyfriend has this tendency to destroy his coin pouches. The zippers break. The seams split. I don't even know how you can split a seam in leather. Objects in his pockets must be subject to forces normally seen only at the centre of black holes.

I was at a craft store with my mother last week and spotted some hinged metal clasps. This eliminates the need for zippers. I got some extremely heavy denim and made a pouch leaving a whole 3/4 centimetre seam allowance, and then bound up all the edges with V stitching so that they won't fray. If this thing isn't indestructible, I don't know what is.

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Posted by Kea to Bumbling Bees - Sewing at 7/25/2006 01:17:00 PM

Grilled Eggplant Salad

I had the most delightful dinner tonight! Moocow sent me a recipe for a grilled eggplant salad, and I decided to try it out tonight. I didn't have the mint or parsley that was called for in the recipe, so I used fresh cilantro instead.

To go with it, I made some cold soba noodles. The perfect, light summer meal. Thanks, Moocow! And long live the aubergine! I adore you with all my heart and tummy!

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Posted by Lana to Bumbling Bees - Food at 7/20/2006 07:44:00 PM

From Garden to Plate

So those seedlings I started last month have, for the most part, grown and thrived. The borage, as you can see, has grown like a weed.

The basils, marigold, parsley and sage are great, too. Even the dill looks pretty healthy.












But the chives just aren't growing, something in the garden really likes nibbling on my nasturtium leaves, I'm not sure the calendula has come up at all, and I can't decide whether that stuff is chamomile, or a weed. The oregano could not be coaxed out of the soil. I think I'll have to try again with that one!


Still, I'm having fun! I wish I had time and space, and money, to plant all the things I want to grow. Several more kinds of basil, three or four varieties of mint, scented geraniums, thyme, lavender, rosemary, and vegetables!! Next year, I shall vegetables!

But, baby-steps. I've got my herbs, and I know how to use 'em! It was so hot today, even this evening, it was painful turning on the stove for a quick pasta with olive oil, green peppers, tomatoes and garlic. So I turned out two extra, easy "salad" items to stimulate my appetite.

Tomatoes with fresh basil from my garden, lightly drizzled with olive oil, and a cucumber salad with a yogurt-dill dressing (augmented with some dried dill, because my little dill plant isn't up to major harvesting yet). Pesticide-free, organic herbs that I've been waiting for! Ahhhhh!

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Posted by Lana to Bumbling Bees - Gardening at 7/17/2006 09:10:00 PM

What am I supposed to do now?

This is how big my plant has gotten now. Just look at this thing! I've already run out of stalk for it to climb up.

I don't understand why it's not growing more leaves. I see a few leaf buds, a couple of leaflets, even. But mostly it's just making more and more vine. Not enough sunlight, maybe?

I've tried moving it to a sunnier location (the middle of my bedroom floor, very awkward), but I still don't think it's enough. My apartment just does not get that much sun.

Would it help if I nipped the terminal bud off?

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Posted by Kea to Bumbling Bees - Gardening at 7/14/2006 04:27:00 AM

Mondo Democracy Bean of Doom

Okay. You know my democracy plant? The one I posted about two days ago? It's this big now.
It grew six inches in 2 days. I transplanted it to a bigger container, and it's already outgrowing it - the roots are starting to stick out the holes on the bottom. You can see the white roots pressing up against the side of the plastic.

Help! What the $*!#^ is this plant?? I have never seen anything grow this fast! Soon it's going to take over my kitchen, strangle the parrot, swamp the apartment building, strand Boyfriend in the elevator for a week without a machete, and colonise the entire block.

Meanwhile, in this week's news, Hong Kong's notorious and much reviled former Minister of Security Regina Ip, a woman who made Maggie Thatcher seem nurturing in comparison, has undergone a full political conversion and announced her support for democracy. Maybe this plant is an omen.

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Posted by Kea to Bumbling Bees - Gardening at 7/08/2006 04:00:00 PM

My democracy plant

Meet my democracy plant. I got it at the democracy protest last saturday. Audrey Eu (the politician) was selling them. I don't know if you've seen these things, but they come as a big bean inside a ceramic egg. You're supposed to crack the top off the egg and water it, and hey presto, a bean plant with appropriately Festive Phrase (tm) printed on the side grows out. I have no idea how they do this - the bean pod itself was blank, so how did they get the words on the plant? It's magic. Unfortunately, I dropped the egg on the tram on the way home - the bottom just fell out of the paper bag! I was sad. I broke my democracy egg.

But I planted the bean anyway, and here's what I got. It says "universal suffrage" upside-down, in Chinese. Sorry I couldn't get a less blurry photo.

I'm gonna try really, really hard not to kill it. Maybe if it grows, we'll get some democracy? Come on magic bean, do your work.

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Posted by Kea to Bumbling Bees - Gardening at 7/05/2006 03:47:00 PM

Lunch Bag

This is what I spent most of yesterday making. I bought a Japanese craft book while I was in Japan, and I've been intending to make a couple of the bags in it (this one is a lunch bag, or a "bento bag") for a while.

Now that I'm settled in, I felt a hankering to take my sewing machine out. On Friday, after work, I passed by the Jo-ann's and went in to see if I could find a fabric to make into a shower curtain. I think I found what I wanted; it's a semi-transparent, linen-look fabric with see-through, coloured areas that form leaves and flowers on a cream background. I didn't have the shower stall measurements with me, though, so I didn't buy it. (You can't return fabric once it's been cut off the bolt!)

But, of course, I couldn't just leave without browsing the other fabrics!! I knew I wanted to make this style of bag, with the cute, handkerchief-style tied top. Then I found this pretty butterfly fabric.

The instructions were in Japanese, of course. The diagrams were fairly detailed, but with only the bare bones for instruction. I'm positive that some details were missing (for example, diagrams for cutting fabrics included a lining fabric, but the materials list didn't), and it isn't perfect, but it's functional!

I'm sure it will look better with an actual lunch inside to fill it out, instead of just my wallet and a notebook.

I'm going to sew another bag this weekend, hopefully. Andrea's birthday is coming up, and I know her handbag is falling apart at the seams. I just have to figure out how to attach the lining so that the seams are all enclosed (unfortunately, not the case with this bag), and how to attach the zip. It's been years and years (at least 6, by my count) since I've put in a zipper, and I've only ever put in 3!

Her birthday is July 3rd, and I'll be away on a roadtrip until the 4th, so I'll post pictures of the finished product after that.

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Posted by Lana to Bumbling Bees - Sewing at 6/25/2006 11:46:00 AM

Snoopy Shrank!

Did you ever buy ice-cream from one of those ice-cream trucks as a kid? There used to be one parked outside my grade school every afternoon after classes. You could get some pretty good stuff for 50-cents then: fake cigarettes that would blow out "smoke" (powdered sugar or something similar), push-pops, bubblegum tape, Nerds, ice-cream cones and bars........ You can't get any of that for 50-cents anymore.

Did you ever get one of those Snoopy ice-cream bars? I seem to remember them being a pretty good size (huge, to a seven-year-old), and Snoopy had a bubblegum nose. Had. Today, the company I'm working for had an ice-cream truck park outside and hand out stuff for free. It had been so long - it was a trip down memory lane - but I asked for Snoopy. Well, he was much smaller than I recalled him being. He came in the same-sized packaging as any regular ice-cream bar. And no longer did he have the pink, Rudolph-esque, bubblegum nose. Even though it was free, I still feel cheated. Is nothing sacred?!

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Posted by Lana to Bumbling Bees - Food at 6/21/2006 09:15:00 PM