Miss T's Mystery House of Yarn & Horrors

Counting

The mistake I’ve made most often with my Anniversary Mystery Shawl is the good old missed yarnover.  I’ll be flying along thinking things are going just fine until I come to a repeat that’s missing a stitch.  I have markers between the repeats -- very necessary with this pattern -- so it’s easy to find precisely where the problem is and backtrack to fix it.

But backtracking does slow things down.  Particularly as often as I’ve been doing it.  So I’m now counting my stitches after each pattern row.  Takes a few minutes, but doesn’t take as long as unknitting does.  Count, count, count.  Much counting around here.

 

I’m also counting the days until our big house project will be done.  In fact, the lights in Casa Mystery will be out for a week or so, starting tomorrow, while furniture is moved into strange places where it doesn’t usually live, and pretty new tile is laid downstairs.  I’ll be checking email sporadically (and maybe even responding to it), but won’t post anything new here until it’s all done and my office is back to normal.  There will be a large wooden thing in it which will completely block the desk.  And my temporary office (the newly painted yarn boudoir which is pink! pink! pink!) has no internet connection.  Well, it used to.  But there was an incident.

Yeah, that means no food this Friday.  Sorry.  Next Friday?  We’ll see.  Depends on when the tile is done, so I hope you have something in the freezer you can defrost and throw on the grill. 

See you in a week or so.  In the meantime, I’ll be knitting, reading and attempting to work during all the chaos.  If you miss me terribly, leave a note with the guard at the gate.  He might come out of the guard house to deliver it if you bribe him with cheese.

Happy Knitting!

Orange Chipotle Shrimp

I admit, I’m one to try multiple variations of things, each one being a slight tweak of the one before.  It’s like buying the same hue of yarn over and over (don’t even try to tell me you don’t do that).  Certain combinations just work. 

It was only a little more than a month ago when I posted a recipe for Spicy Orange Shrimp, and here I am again with shrimp, oranges, and peppers.  The other recipe was Asian-inspired.  This one has a Mexican flavor.  Isn’t our world great?  Give different people the same ingredients and they’ll come up with marvelously varied things.

This recipe was not only good, it was fast.  Incredibly fast.  And this was one of those weeks in which fast, easy dinners were looked upon quite favorably by the inhabitants of Casa Mystery.  (A week in which we were grateful to not be eating frozen pizza every night.)  Basically, you marinate shrimp in orange juice, zest and chopped chipotle.  Then you cook it.  Yeah, that’s all there is to it.  The recipe is here.

Since it was a million degrees on the day I made this and both of us refused to go outside, the shrimp didn't wind up being grilled.  I cooked it in a non-stick skillet instead, with all its marinade.  This made for quite a delicious sauce -- I’d certainly make some rice or noodles or something next time, to soak it up.

Would I make this again?  Absolutely.  In fact, it’s going on the short list.  More easy dinners will be needed in the coming weeks, I suspect...

Olympic Training, Part Two

What do you think?  It’s not as jazzy in a photograph as the Raspberry Mer-Made is, but the recipient will like it better.  She wears lots of black.

Here’s how it looks in the Blocking Simulator 3000:

Yarn:  Reynolds Andean Alpaca in Black, stashed approximately 20 years ago.  I have enough for a sweater, so this little bitty shoulder shawl won’t be the last time it makes an appearance. 

Pros:  Nice to knit with, heavy enough that I can use size 9 needles and knit fast, but should have better drape than the Mer-Made.  Plus I should win a medal just for using stash yarn this old!

Cons:  Can’t think of any, other than the fact that the alpaca is a bit hairier to knit with.

Verdict:  Yes!

Olympic Training Begins

My first Forest Canopy swatch.

Yarn:  Blackberry Ridge Mer-Made Wool, in Raspberry.  They call this a “heavy-medium” yarn, so it’s sort of a heavy worsted. 

Pros:  Knits up insanely fast on size 10 needles.  Scrumptious color to work with.  It’s stash yarn, which should convey extra glory if I finish.

Cons:  Because of the yarn weight, the finished piece isn’t likely to have the drape I want.  Color might be a bit much for the intended recipient (Mom).

Verdict:  Hmm.

Next up is some really old stash yarn.  I mean, deep stash. 

I have higher hopes for this one.  Stay tuned.

Ravelympics? Me?

Bezzie’s right about the name.  It does sound like some sort of disorder you don't want to know about.  But I’m plunging in anyway.  Call me crazy, but I've signed up for the Shawl Relay, the Sock Put and the Gift Knits Pentathlon.  I figure this is as good a way as any to get some Christmas knitting done.  I know I'm going to be glued to the Olympics (the only sports thing I actually like), so why not?  Of course, it was Amy who put this idea in my head.  Loves to get me in trouble, she does.  Good friends are that way.

I’m going to work on a Forest Canopy Shawl for my mom, and a pair of pink socks for my pink-loving mother-in-law.  Watch this space -- yarn photos coming soon.

There's stilI time to sign up if you're as nutty as I am, so check out the rules right here.

Lace Marches On

I do like to give a little progress report on Monday mornings, just so you know I’ve been doing something.  Here’s Stonington:

You can see that the center square is finished, and I’m a little more than halfway through the border on the first side (at the top).  Much border to go.  This is perfect deck knitting:  easy, fun, no squinting at a chart.  Only happy knitting.

I’ve started the third clue of the Anniversary Mystery Shawl.  Yes, of course I’m way behind just about everyone else.  What of it?

Still looks like a wad at this point, but you can sort of see that there’s lace hidden in there.  The pattern, now that I’m into it, is fun, but it requires more squinting than Stonington does.  (Markers between the repeats are helping enormously with this pattern, though.)  It’s a pi shawl, so with every clue the number of stitches on the needles and number of rows per clue double.  So this one is substantially slower to knit than the first clue was.  The next clue is going to take forever.

And that’s it.  I hope you weren’t expecting more.  Because that’s it.

Truman Capote’s Family’s Cornbread

I’ve never quite trusted anybody who doesn’t like cornbread.  I mean, bread.  Made with corn.  The beauty in that formula is obvious.  Cornbread recipes, however, are not things I typically experiment with.  That’s because my family has been making the same one -- the same absolutely perfect recipe -- for many, many years.  (The only exception, up to now, has been the recipe I use for jalapeno cornbread.) 

I had to rethink my stance, however, when the very cool Crescent Dragonwagon came out with her book, The Cornbread Gospels.  She’s my kinda cook.  And she has a deep, abiding love of cornbread.  So how could I not try something from her book?  (Which I begged for at Christmas, of course.)  It’s a fabulous book, with more different kinds of cornbread than I knew existed, and lots of great stories.  You could sit down and read it like a novel.  (I might.)

Lo and behold, it contained the family recipe from one of my very favorite authors, Truman Capote.  There was a man who knew how to write about food.  His forward to Myrna Davis’s The Potato Book will make you more desperate for potatoes -- and ice-cold vodka -- than you ever realized you could be.  (If you can get your hands on a copy of that book, by all means do.)  And his story, “A Christmas Memory,” about his cousin Sook’s annual fruitcake making extravaganza, is one I return to again and again.  I can't get enough of it.

So, when I saw that the Capote family recipe in Ms. Dragonwagon’s book came from Miss Sook herself, I absolutely had to make it.  You can find the details of the recipe here.  It goes like this...

If you’re doing this on a hot day like I was, turn the A/C to the "meat locker" setting.  Preheat the oven, put some bacon grease in a cast iron skillet and stick it in the oven.  Yes, of course I keep a jar of bacon grease in my fridge.  Don’t you?

Mix eggs and buttermilk together. 


Then comes the cornmeal.  Oh joy and rapture, I still had some genuine, Georgia stone-ground white cornmeal left.  Ain't that purdy?


Mix it with baking soda, salt and an eentsy bit of sugar.  Now, I’m normally not one for sugar in cornbread, but this is such a small amount that you really don’t taste it.  I think it’s just there to balance the flavor of the buttermilk.  Best way to make sure your dry ingredients are nicely incorporated is to stir them really well with a whisk.

Then things happen very quickly.  I couldn’t take photos of this part.  Mix the buttermilk with the dry ingredients.  The oven should be up to temperature by now, so put on your mitts and take out the skillet.  Pour the batter into the skillet.  Yes, it will sizzle like crazy.  That’s good.  Bake it until it’s nice and golden brown.

All together now, Mmmmmm.


And it was.  Very mmmm.  Different flavor than my usual recipe, because of the buttermilk.  More tangy than sweet.  And quite good.  We ate it with turkey chili and an avocado salad.  I know, I know, it’s July.  I’ve told you before, the M.E. and I are addicted to chili.  We’ll eat it damn near anytime.

Would I make this again?  Definitely.  It’s not going to edge out my family’s recipe, but it’s quite a good contender for second place.  Really, it’s impossible to have too much cornbread.  Blessings to Truman Capote and Miss Sook, wherever they are, and blessings to Ms. Dragonwagon for publishing such a great recipe.

Just In Time

In the nick of time for sweltering, buggy, humid and generally horrible July weather, I have finished my Snowdrops!

I’m waiting on that cold front they promised...

Navajo Tacos

 
You haven’t lived until you’ve tasted a Navajo taco.  Even if you’re 120 years old and have traveled the world, if you haven’t had a Navajo taco, you’d better keep breathing until you can get your hands on one.  They’re incredibly messy to eat (if you have dogs, they’ll be on high alert for the morsels you’ll inevitably drop on the floor), but so, so, so good.

The first time I ever tasted one was about six years ago, at the Santa Fe flea market, which is actually on the Tesuque reservation between Santa Fe and Taos, even though everybody calls it the Santa Fe flea market.  After a morning of shopping for turquoise and pottery, the M.E. and I made our way into the little building which bore signs promising lunch.  And what a lunch!  We found seats at the counter and shared a Navajo taco and a bowl of green chile stew.  This was not standard flea market fare.  In fact, the food was so good, we’re still talking about it.  Nothing frozen and nuked -- somebody who seriously knew how to cook was working that stew pot.

Now, the only problem with eating a Navajo taco (aside from the calories, but we won’t talk about that), is that you immediately want another one.  You want to have Navajo tacos for every meal, every day for the rest of your life.  But where I live, Navajo taco stands are not waiting on every street corner, or on any street corners.  I had to learn how to make them.

The basis of the Navajo taco (also called the Indian taco, depending upon where you are) is fry bread.  That’s why it tastes like no other taco you’ve ever had.  My mom used to make fry bread now and then when I was growing up -- I think one of our neighbors in the Southwest taught her the recipe -- and there was nothing better on a Sunday morning.  We’d dip it in honey and beg her to make a double batch next time.

I have Mom’s recipe, but something interesting crossed my path one day, and I had to try it.  Apparently, some of the Plains tribes incorporate flour from the Prairie Turnip into their fry bread dough.  I’d never heard of it before, so I was intrigued when I heard that an Indian-owned company was marketing fry bread mix with Prairie Turnip in it.  Now, if this is not your first visit to one of my recipe posts, you know I’m not a mix user.  I won’t touch a cake mix--I can always, always taste the chemicals in them, no matter how well somebody thinks they’re disguised.  I’m not big on convenience foods in general, but this sounded interesting.  All natural, no chemical gunk, and an elusive, traditional ingredient I couldn’t possibly lay my hands on,,,,,I bought a box from a vendor at the Midtown Global Market.

Couldn’t be easier to use.  You mix it with water.  Then let the dough sit for at least half an hour (it’s quite sticky, so the rest helps).


Roll or pat it out (flour the board).  In this case, large rounds for tacos.  If you want fry bread for breakfast, small squares are perfect.


Deep fry.  Isn’t that beautiful?

Absolutely delicious, too.  I must say, Woodenknife makes a good product -- I’d buy this mix again.  Not a whiff of chemicals, and it does have a slightly different flavor than the fry bread I was used to.  Maybe that’s the Prairie Turnip.  In any case, it was good.

You can find a list of toppings for Indian tacos in Beverly Cox and Marin Jacobs’s book, Spirit of the Harvest.  Or you can check out one of the numerous recipes available on online.  I improvised a variation on my usual beef taco recipe.

It’s best to have all the toppings ready to go before you fry the bread, since it should still be hot when you eat it.  

To make Miss T's Taco Filling, you’ll need:

pitcher of excellent margaritas (courtesy of the M.E., Head Bartender at Casa Mystery)

iceberg lettuce, shredded
cheddar cheese, grated
tomatoes, diced (I used grape tomatoes, cut in half)
pickled jalapenos, sliced (or salsa, if you prefer)
sour cream (optional--I didn’t put it on the tacos, but used it to top a small salad made with extra lettuce)

For the meat:

1 lb. ground beef (I used bison, I’m very into bison these days--great flavor)
cider vinegar, perhaps a tablespoon
tomato goo of some sort (sauce, paste, or in a pinch--ketchup, yeah, it works just fine for this)
chile powder
cayenne
ground cumin
onion powder
garlic powder (don’t trip about these--onion and garlic powder are traditional ingredients in Southwestern home cooking)
Mexican oregano
salt & pepper
1 can organic pinto beans, drained
water

Brown the meat in a non-stick skillet (no oil needed).  Add vinegar, three or four tablespoons of the tomato goo of your choice, and spices to taste.  Don’t be shy with the chile powder.  Simmer for ten or fifteen minutes while you cut up other things and sip margaritas.  Then add the pintos and maybe half a cup of water, and simmer a bit longer until it’s formed a nice sauce, not too wet but not dried out.  Adjust seasonings.  When the filling is almost done simmering, start frying bread.

Assemble tacos according to photo below.  Devour immediately.  Thank your lucky stars for fry bread.

 

Never Say Die