Dyeing an armchair cover

This dear old chair was adopted after a family friend moved to France.

 

It is a very nice shape, I think anyway, but looked a pretty shabby. Getting it reupholstered would cost hundreds, so we got a cover made out of tough off-white calico.

 

I can't really stand white things, and they can't stand me either, so the plan was always to dye it a different colour. I settled on green.

I played about with different Dylon greens. Tropical Green was a bit too headachey bright but I didn't want something as dark as a full-on Dark Green or as dingey as Olive Green. 

Below are the swatches where I used different ratios of Olive and Tropical Green.

50:50; 75%Tropical:25%Olive; 83%Tropical:17%Olive, 100% Tropical Green.

I plumped for 75:25 and bought the hand dyes. The cover weighed over a kilo so I bought 4 packets.

  

I realised too late one of my rubber gloves had a hole in it...I had a green hand for days, literally. Wear gloves! 

Result:

 

The colour it was in the dyeing bucket was kind of the colour I wanted, and it washed out and dried a fair bit lighter. After a couple of weeks walking past it I decided to go in again and this time, use the machine dyes, as I was annoyed that even after following the instructions and breaking my back turning and squishing and mixing it for a full 15 minutes, I still got a big blodge of blue dye on one arm. I reckoned using the machine dye would give a more even finish.

This time I tracked down a packet of Dylon's Amazon Green, which seems to have been discontinued. I used that and a packet of Tropical Green again. Each pack can do 600g worth of fabric for the full shade of colour, so I thought this would give it a good dose, especially as it the cover was green already.

 Boy was I right!

 

That's more like it!

Next I plan to bleach print it. I just need to design and make the stamp/stencil.

Lentil and Mushroom Burgers with Halloumi

Ohhh yes. Thank you Sarah from My New Roots, a source of constant inspiration.

 

 

I altered this recipe - I used Portobello mushrooms instead of wild mushrooms, and I didn't have any olives so just omitted them and hoped. Plus I added grilled halloumi and some caramelised onion chutney, as I had a mushroom burger with those at a gastropub recently and it was really good.

Seriously seriously good food.



Blackcurrant Frangipane Tart

 
My mum is amazing! I came home to this - blackcurrant frangipane tart. She even did gluten free pastry.

It looks pretty and summery and it tastes like pure comfort food.

 
Recipe:

• Pastry - see Coconut Cream Pie recipe 
• 125g blackcurrants, washed, topped and tailed
•  1 egg
• 1 egg white
•  170g sugar
• 100g ground almonds
• 70g butter, room temperature
• A pinch of salt
• 170ml milk

1. Oven to 190°C. Butter a 24cm (9½in) round ovenproof dish.

2. Make the pastry case.

3. Blind bake it.

4. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy

5. Add the almonds, egg and egg white and mix

6. Stick mixture into the pastry case

7. Scatter blackcurrants on top

8. Bake for 40 minutes until golden and firm.

It is divine with some sort of creamy yoghurt, Rachel's Gooseberry Yoghurt was perfect.

Yes that is another home-grown runner bean salad...

Runner Bean Salad

I picked my first little bunch of beans today!

 

And I knew just the sort of thing I wanted to do with them....and it turned out really tasty, so here's the recipe.

Ingredients (serves two):

Pesto ingredients:
handful of fresh basil
half a handful of pine nuts
half a clove of garlic
teensy bit of fresh chilli
olive oil
sea salt
wholegrain mustard (optional)

Main stuff:
some runner beans
some uber-tasty little tomatoes
leaves if you want them: lettuce, rocket, etc
half a handful of pine nuts

 
First, make the pesto: I used a pestle and mortar because it was far too small a quantity to put in the blender.
1. chop up the basil leaves finely
2. chop up the garlic and the little bit of chilli finely
3. mash up the pine nuts with a bit of olive oil...

 
4. Mash the whole lot together with some sea salt...

 
5. Chop the beans up a bit and blanch them in boiling water for 4 minutes - you want them to still have a crunch.

6. Strain and let cool for 5 - 10 minutes. Meanwhile dry fry the pine nuts to very very lightly toast them.

7. Mix some or all of the pesto into the beans, and mix the halved tomatoes in too.

8. Leaves, beans and tomatoes, pine nuts. Easy.

Almond Chicken Curry

The internet is the best thing that ever happened to me in the way of learning to cook. Don't get me wrong - I think with absolutely everything becoming digital, we can become disconnected from grounding, earthy things - we don't even need to speak or even message someone to find out what they're doing, let alone go and visit and hug them, we already know it all from their facebook feed. When was the last time you had a spare 15 minutes with nothing useful to do - did you ponder about life and death or draw something, or did you check your emails?

 

But I think cooking is a creative, come down to earth thing, and there's nothing that has helped me develop my passion and breadth of experience anywhere near as much as the internet. Have you noticed old people call it the 'world wide web?' If you call it this, you are old, and it's time to play on your eccentricities.

 

The thing is, the other day I knew exactly what I wanted to eat: chicken curry, with some sort of thick, a bit creamy, almonds-blended-up-into-a-paste, a bit cinnamony, not necessarily terribly spicy, sauce. Don't know where the craving came from, haven't eaten anything like that for ages, and only when someone wimpy orders something like it in a group takeaway. So, I knew what I desired, and I was very much up for spending an hour or two creating it. But if the 'web' wasn't in existence, how would I make it? I could ring round my neighbours and see if they'd got a curry cookbook. I could take one out from the library? But the thing with cravings is, you have to seize the moment, because if you hang about too long, it goes away, but if you catch it and feed it what it wants, nothing has ever ever tasted so good.

 

 

 

The other thing about getting recipes from the internet is, you can look at as many different people's takes on the same sort of dish, and decide what's essential, what's not, and what you might do differently. YEARS worth of cookery book learning, condensed into one or two meals.

 

I found a few recipes for the almond chicken curry I wanted, but this one was just perfect. It's from eCurry: http://www.ecurry.com/blog/indian/curries/gravies/murgh-badami-curried-chicken-in-almond-sauce/ 

 

I chucked in some prunes that needed using up, they were great. I've made this dish three times now, I absolutely love it.

My Favourite Salad

My lettuces were ready for eating (i.e. about to get out of control, we're not talking baby leaf) today, so it was definitely salad for dinner. This is my favourite salad, which I'll be honest, takes a long time if you make a decent amount of it because of all the sweating and roasting of vegetables, but you could whip it up in 40 minutes if you made a small, unsweated batch.

 

 



 

Ingredients:

 

1 aubergine

2 red peppers

1 courgette

some sort of earnest lentil

feta cheese

fresh mint

red onion

fresh salad leaves

tomatoes (if you like)

 

1. Sweat the aubergine and courgette by chopping them into chunks, sticking them in a colander and pouring tons of salt on them, and leaving them in the sink for 30 minutes.

 

 

2. Meanwhile, roast the red pepper chunks in a bit of olive oil at 200C if you're limited with oven space. Should take about 30 minutes.

 

3. Rinse the salt off the other veggies, and pat and squeeze them dry with embarrassing amounts of paper towel. Roast them for 30 minutes as above.

 

4. Meanwhile, cook your lentils. I use green speckly ones and they usually take about 35 minutes. Apparently you shouldn't boil them like hell, just simmer.

 

5. Leave the lentils to cool or even run some cold water through them if you're eating soon.

 

6. Chop up some feta, some red onion and some mint and bung everything together.

 

7. Eat with lots of fresh leaves. I chopped up some tomatoes and spread a bit of my homemade (with hazelnuts this time!) pesto on them as they were a bit boring.

I usually put the lentilly salad on the bed of leaves but my bowl overflowed...

Elderflower Champagne

It's that lovely time of year again, the elder trees are all suddenly going for it, blooming away. I am taking advantage of this. Off I went to collect the elderflowers in my new basket. The recipe says 25 heads of elderflower, which sounds like loads, but it only takes about 5 minutes to collect.

Recipe for 10 litres:

·       6.7 litres hot water

·       1.170kg sugar

·       Juice and zest of 7 lemons (I just peeled the rind off them, we'll see if it works)

·       3 tbsp white wine vinegar

·       25 heads of elderflower

1. Put the hot water and sugar into a large container (a spotlessly clean bucket is good) and stir until the sugar dissolves, then top up with cold water so you have 6 litres of liquid in total.

2. Add the lemon juice and zest, the vinegar and the flower heads and stir gently.

 

3. Cover with clean muslin and leave to ferment in a cool, airy place for a couple of days. Take a look at the brew at this point, and if it’s not becoming a little foamy and obviously beginning to ferment, add a pinch of yeast.

4. Leave the mixture to ferment, again covered with muslin, for a further four days. Strain the liquid through a sieve lined with muslin and decant into sterilised strong glass bottles with champagne stoppers (available from home-brewing suppliers) or Grolsch-style stoppers, or sterilized screw-top plastic bottles (a good deal of pressure can build up inside as the fermenting brew produces carbon dioxide, so strong bottles and seals are essential).

5. Seal and leave to ferment in the bottles for at least a week before serving, chilled. The champagne should keep in the bottles for several months. Store in a cool, dry place

Homemade Summer Food Things

We had a sun-drenched barbeque and I thought it the perfect excuse to make a couple of things I've wanted to for ages. Get them under my belt. The first, PESTO.

I made the classic pine nut and basil version, but I ended up making the vegan version as I didn't have any parmesan.

3 handfuls washed basil leaves
1 handful pine nuts, lightly toasted
1 clove garlic
squeeze of lemon juice

1. Whizz up in food processor.
2. Add as much olive oil to get it to be a smooth paste.
3. Stir in plenty of sea salt, and some black pepper.

Tasty on fresh bread. I also made some salad dressing with it. More lemon juice, more garlic, more oil, more salt and peper. Was alright.

That flower you can see is from my one and only lupin plant that I managed to grow from seed and keep alive for a year and a half! I snapped it's lovely flower spike off when bumbling past it, and decided not to get very annoyed by this but to admire it in the kitchen - turns out they're excellent cut flowers, it's lasting for ages. I think I must be appreciating it much more now than if it was still in the garden. Hooray. Right anyway next food thing:

 

The cover girl cake! The cake on the cover of my new favourite baking recipe book: Honeybuns Gluten Free Baking, by Emma Goss Custard. That book is amazing. This cake - the raspberry and white chocolate cake - has no flour and intriguingly, no butter in it. It's made mostly out of ground hazelnuts. And you roast the raspberries in honey and cinnamon sugar. Everyone loved it.

 

Lastly, I did an impromptu elderflower cooler type drink. I only had a handful of elderflowers (they've only just started blooming round here), and not much time, so I boiled up a saucepan of water with some golden caster sugar, quite a lot really, not sure how much, peeled the rind off a lemon in strips, and added the flowers, lemon peel and hot sugar water to a big bowl and let it sit and think about things for a couple of hours, then added it to a big jug of icy water last minute. I didn't strain it, a. because everyone had turned up and it would take too long to find something resembling a muslin cloth and b. because I thought it looked quite exciting with all the flowers suspended in the mysterious murk. I provided a tea strained for people to pour it through instead. It was quite a hit.

Basket Case

I finally got to make a proper basket!

 

 

Mum knew I'd always wanted to so she booked us in on a basket-making day.

 

Very chuffed with my basket.

 

Soon it shall be full of homegrown veggies!

 

 

Coconut Cream Pie

I made my first ever coconut cream pie! Pete, Mum and I were dreaming about them so much I had to make one for us to eat.

 

Gluten-free, naturally. It was great! I have no pictures of the inside as it got eaten so quickly, but basically it's a pastry base, sweet coconut goo middle, and squidgey airy meringue on top. I read recipes for ones with whipped cream on top and I thought that sounded like the meringue version's rubbish cousin, but mine was so ridiculously sweet I can see why that would work.
 
Here's the recipe:
 
Turn the oven to 180C. Grease a 9 inch pastry tin.
 
GLUTEN FREE PASTRY:

• 225g/2 cups gluten free plain flour
• pinch salt
• 110g/ 1/2 cup cold unsalted butter, cubed
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 egg

Rub the butter into the flour and salt until it looks like breadcrumbs.
 
Mix in the sugar, then the egg. Try and make a ball of dough with it. Add a tablespoon of water if it won't stick together. And as many as you need until it does. You don't want it too sticky though. You just want it to come together.
 
Roll it out on some foil. Gluten free pastry should be seen and not heard so you want it quite thin - 4-5mm.
 
Line your tin. You can't do it all in one unless you're a superhuman. I consider myself to have done well if I've managed to get a piece to cover most of the botton of the tin and construct the sides on seperately.
 
Blind bake for 15-20 minutes, or until it's looking dry and before it gets brown.

COCONUT GOO FILLING:

• 2 1/4 cups cream
• 3/4 cup sugar, plus 1/4 cup for the egg whites
• 3 eggs, separated
• 1/4 cup cornflour
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 3/4 cups dessicated coconut

1a. Put the coconut onto a baking tray and bake it in the oven for a few minutes, until it goes brown. This toasting gives it a better flavour.

1.  Put the cream and 3/4 cup sugar in a saucepan and bring to a simmer. Meanwhile mix up the egg yolks in a jug.

2. Pour the hot cream into the the egg yolks, slowly at first, stirring lots. If you stick it all in at once you'll get blobs of cooked egg. Leave a residue of cream in the saucepan.

3. Put the cornflour into the cream dregs in the saucepan and stir into a paste. Stir lumps out. Add the cream and egg mixture back into it, a teeny bit at a time, stirring to combine. When you've added enough that it's turning back into a liquid, add the rest of the cream and stir in.

4. Bring to the boil and reduce to a simmer. Cook it like this, stirring constantly, until it thickens, 4-6 minutes.

5. Take off the heat and stir in the toasted coconut and vanilla extract. Pour into your precooked pastry case and leave to cool completely.

MERINGUE TOPPING:

6. Oven to 150C. Whip up the egg whites with the remaining sugar to form stiff peaks. Spread over the pie, right to the edges, and bake until it's going lightly brown on the top, about 30 -40 minutes. You can bake it at a higher temperature for less time. The aga's on low at the moment so I just stuck it in there.

It's so sweet you need to drink a gallon of water after a slice and you feel a bit funny. I have plans for the next one - I think I'll make it as above, but whip up some double cream and somehow inject it under the surface of the meringue....like people inject jam into doughnuts.

 

Nettle and Dandelion Beer - Bottled

We bottled the nettle and dandelion beer!

We recycled old beer bottles and used a capping machine (sounds more sophisticated than it is, it's a bit like one of those big modern corkscrews with the two big arms).

 

Much to my amazement, it smelled very much like beer. We put a teaspoon of sugar in each bottle before filling and capping it, so that it will ferment a second time in the bottle, and get fizzy!

Nettle and Dandelion Beer

My brother is turning into a keen brewer, despite being too skint for much equipment, or indeed, ingredients. Therefore he was very excited to read about nettle and dandelion beer, something you can make from free and extremely abundant ingredients. Infuriatingly abundant for most gardeners.

The recipe says get a bin bag of nettles, a box of dandelion flowers (which is nice and easy as you don't have to dig up the roots and spend ages washing them), boil them for half an hour, strain off the liquor, add three and a bit kilos of sugar, cool it, add the yeast, done. Oh and some citric acid and yeast nutrient. Sounds easy as pie. So we picked a bag of nettles:

And a box of dandelions:

And then realised that we didn't have anything big enough to boil it all up in. People into brewing have big stainless steel pots and gas burner things to do it in, but we didn't so Pete spent all day boiling little batches in as many pots as we could find!

He does however have a big bucket to brew in, so eventually it all made its way in there and has now finished fermenting.

It didn't ferment for as long as we were expecting so the yeast might have died early. It might have gone horribly wrong! I'm not going to be the first one to taste it, that's for sure, it looks disgusting.

Its golden companion you can see there behind it is the mead! It's basically fermented honey solution. Isn't it beeyoitiful? It's been bubbling merrily for weeks now and shows no sign of settling down. I can't wait to taste that, but apparently I have to wait for a year, and then there's only that much of it! Honey is expensive.

Soon we shall bottle the nettle and dandelion beer....

Broccoli Pasta Recipe à la Emmerr

 

Spaghetti
Broccoli
Philedelphia / equivalent
Slivered almonds (or just chop them yourself)
Cheddar cheese
Salt and pepper
 
1. Put pasta onto boil in salted water.
 
2. Halfway through pasta boilage, chuck broccoli florets into water with it.
 
3. Put almond slivers in a dry frying pan and heat to toast them. 
 
4. When spaghetti and broccoli are done, drain (hoik broccoli out if done before pasta).
 
5. Mix a dollop of Philedelphia in.

6. Add toasted almonds.

7. Finely grate some cheddar cheese over the top and grind some pepper over it too.

My First Sewing Project

...well, since the kite I made in year 6.

I made it with Famie, from the Burda 7494 pattern, in a cotton linen blend.

 
I've already been wearing it to WORK, yes that's right, I can work now.

Painting of MFC

This piece features a slice of vanilla cheesecake, a favourite dish shared by myself and MFC. I get the cheesecake bit and she gets the biscuit base. Neither of us like the other's bit so we are a cheesecake-sharing perfect match.

The only trouble with our glorious friendship is that MFC now feels entitled to jump up on outside tables and help herself to other people's lunch, and is now often found wandering into the house.

Crabfest

On the August bank holiday weekend, UNUMC climbers and friends from all over the country descended on Portland for the first ever and long-anticipated Crabfest!

 

Crabfest is a deep water soloing trip and was invented by Chivers. The weather was as follows:

Friday - rubbish

Saturday - rubbish

Sunday - amazing sunshine yet windy

Monday - rubbish

 

For this reason a lot of people who were going to come along didn't and elected instead to watch a lot of tv, however we still had a very impressive turnout of 20ish people! And it was awesome.

 

We camped at the White Horse Farm campsite in Osmington on the mainland. Or rather, glamped. Zappa and I brought with us a big marquee so that we could all be civilised. When we turned up on Saturday afternoon (oh come on, look at the weather) we thought, hm, let's take advantage of the fact that it's only drizzling and blowing a slight gale and put the marquee up, and of course after unloading it and getting started it hosed it down and we got soaked. It was actually pretty fun.

 

Zappa with his new waterproof case for his camera - the Dicpac. With the white horse in the background. It looks like a fake, that White Horse, I mean for a start it's not white and since when did the ancients put riders with riding hats on their white horses? In fact let's put this straight, I will google it. I bet it was put there in the last hundred years.

Oh ok well here's the Wikipedia article on it:

The Osmington White Horse is a hill figure sculpted in 1808 into the limestone Osmington hill just north of Weymouth called the South Dorset Downs, within the parish of Osmington.^[1]

The figure is of King George III, who regularly visited Weymouth, and made it 'the first resort', riding on his horse, and can be seen for miles around. It is 280 feet long and 323 feet high in size and is best viewed from the A353 road.

There is a legend that King George was offended that the figure was riding out of Weymouth — a sign that he was not welcome — and never returned.^{[citation needed]}

The television show Challenge Anneka restored the horse in 1989. However, the project was undertaken too quickly and some errors were made.^[2] A project to restore the white horse is underway.^[3]

In August 2011 pranksters added a 'horn' made from plastic sheeting to make the horse resemble
 a Unicorn.^[4]
The Osmington White Horse is the only figure that is a case of both leucippotomy and gigantotomy

Well there you go.

I had been commisioned to make a Crabfest flag and it was met with a very warm reception to the extent that it was carried round on a long pole wherever we went. It was even present and flying over our barbeque circle time in the evenings.

On Sunday the climbing and hilarity commenced.

 Scott experiencing the occupational hazards of a DWSer.

 

Stubie trying a dyno

Me and Aussie Kate's washpig who sadly got left behind when she and Jake left for Europe, so I thought I'd take it on a trip with me.

 

Zappa and Wil, and Caz up the top who looks like she's going to dive in like an olympic swimmer.

 

 On Sunday night it was dressing up night, the theme being aquatic.(look there's the Crabfest flag!) Adam, Zappa and Joey had to pay the price of not bothering to bring a costume by having to wear bikinis. No, you don't want to see the photos of Zappa.

I didn't have a tripod but I had to include this photo anyway. The marquee at night, filled with climbers, candles and port. Much merriment was had.

 

Does it get better than this? I mean really?