Let Us Speak of Pickled Things

Here lately, what with the interest in canning, I have given a lot of thought to pickled things. I love them. I love pickles in many forms, and I know that it's a typical food in the south, but I am not sure about other places. Anyway, we had a dinner party last weekend, and I put together a few of my favorite pickled things of late and called it an appetizer. They were hits, so I thought I would share these with you.

These pickled cucumbers are struggling to find a name with me. They need a special name because they aren't even pickles really- more like brined cucumbers. And they are also very Asian-flavored- lots of ginger and fish sauce. But they are crisp and crunchy and have about a thousand different uses- they are great on top of a peice of grilled tuna, great in sandwiches, on crackers, or just crammed into your mouth while you hang out on your deck, all bundled up and pretending it's spring. I adapted this recipe from a marinade I found in one of our cookbooks on modern asian and thai cooking.



Asian Briney Cucumber Thingys

3in peice of fresh ginger, grated
2 garlic cloves
just a bit of thai chili paste or maybe a dash of Sriracha
5T sugar
5T fish sauce
juice of 2 limes
1/3 c of water
2 cucumbers, seeded and sliced sort of thin

mix it all up and toss in the cucumbers. at first the cukes will not be very well covered by the marinade, but within about 20 minutes they will give up some of their juice and kind of settle in. Let sit overnight. This will keep for about 10 days in a sealed container.

I feel like people should make the most of what's available locally. This is double true when you are lucky enough to live in a fishing town, where local shrimp can be bought pretty much fresh off the boat. If you can't go down to the docks for your shrimp, find the best ones you can get. As with all things, that is the difference between goodness and greatness.

Pickled Shrimp
Adapted from This Recipe

2 pounds shrimp, peeled and deveined
large onion, sliced thin
green pepper, rough chopped
1C vegetable oil
1 1/2 C ketchup
2C Apple Cider Vinegar
1T yellow mustard
3T worstershire
1t Old Bay
a few shakes of salt, pepper, and hot sauce

mix up everything but the shrimp in a giant bowl. drop the shrimp in boiling water for just a short short time- like one minute. Seriously. It won't look to be fully cooked, but the vinegar will continue that process. If you fully cook them when you boil the shrimp you will end up with some very tough shrimp, and we all know that's not fun. Serve with crackers.



Have a great weekend! There are buds on the trees here, and the dogwoods are in full bloom. I will be popping Claritins, enjoying the view, and wishing for more pickled things.

Knitting on St. Pats

It's St. Patrick's Day, so it is not only awesome that i have completed, photographed knitting to show you (and knitting in progress for that matter, now that I think of it- I have sucked on that front too.), but that knitting is also green in color. Fancy that.

My Wicked Sweater. Eh.
I am very proud that I knit an item of clothing, and it hasn't fallen to shreds or burst into flames. And short sleeved sweaters are actually feasible for me to own, what with us having like two weeks of winter. But I tell you what, right up there with No Wire Hangers, EVER is no worsted weight sweaters. Ever. It's a bad look for me. That, along with me knitting this probably a size or so too big means that there's a boxiness to the middle that honestly I have worked way to hard at the gym to get rid of. Oh well, win some, lose some. Here is the Rav page, and the yarn is Cascade 220 in Irelande. Hmm. How appropriate.

The Textured Shawl, for more worsted weight fun:
(and the shawl is sitting with my Oxalis and actually looks kind of nice with that purple. Maybe I will knit the plant a shawl as well.) I shopped at home for this- there are three balls of this stuff that have been hanging around for ever. I think it's so funny that I am knitting a shawl. At first i thought that maybe it was like my transformation into someone's grandma or something was becoming more complete. But no, it turns out they are kind of trendy and fancy right now. you don't wear them with the point in the back, you wear them in the front sort of like the stars of Young Guns II or an old timey bankrobber or what not. It's The Cool Thing To Do, and this is the first time in a while that I have been aware of what the cool thing is, I am running with it.

In neon green.

I hope your St. Pat's is loads of fun, and reeks of cabbage. We are cabbage-less, but BF informs me that he will be staying in and having a one man party of sorts. Goober Go Bragh!

Playing Hooky

Younges Island, SC

It's rainy, I'm tired, and I should be in spinning class right now. I should also be sharing a thought provoking post on pickles, or perhaps modeling a new green sweater for you, but all that will just have to wait. Sometimes not doing what you should be doing is the best thing to do.

Yep.

The Jelly Jar Is Half Full

I tried.

I failed.


Sort of.

this is yet another foray into yet more uncharted territory. Up above in those sunny pictures, you see some Three Citrus Marmalade, from Well Preserved. This book was a Christmas gift, and I fell in love with the idea of preserving small batches of things at the height of their awesomeness (really, in December, who doesn't dream of a time when zucchini is in season?) and having them to enjoy later. Each recipe for preserving something is followed by a handful of recipes that use that item as a key ingredient, and I must say, those recipes are sexy.

Yeah, I called them sexy.

So, for the first time ever I made marmalade. I got to use my candy thermometer, I carefully processed all the jars like i should have, and all of them sealed. I understand the process and no longer have a fear that during water bath processing, all the jars will explode and glass shards will go in my eyes. Vivid imagination + generalized fear of the unfamiliar = eternally living in a B horror movie, if only in my own mind. So that's the good thing.

The bad thing is that i HATE the resulting marmalade. HAAAAAAAAAATE. And you know who is to blame for this? Me. That's who. I mean in retrospect, I should have known that while i like oranges quite a lot, I don't like grapefruit at all. Lemon- eh. So why I thought that a great thing to make would be Three Citrus Marmalade with grapefruit and lemon- well, I'm just not sure.

Now back to the good thing. It's actually a Great Thing. While stirring and canning and timing, I got that smug feeling that I thrive on. And since my shady little yard that is patrolled by mongrel dogs isn't conducive to growing things, the next best thing is buying stuff that other people have grown, and putting it in little jars to store away for another time. The bonus is that BF REALLY enjoyed the process. Surprisingly so. It involves science, precision, gadgets, and squirreling away food- not sure why I didn't realize sooner that this could be his life's work. I figure since I am In Charge when it comes to the kitchen, he will be a great little minion, and lord knows I do love to Supervise. But yay! Another thing we like to do together, and another thing that has me looking forward to a good Southern Summer- long growing season, lots of time for trial and error.

Another Outing

Spring is most certainly arriving here, and that means that it is the season for outings. We are playing Tourist in our own town a lot lately. It's great for a transplant like the BF and for a jaded local like me to be able to go enjoy these things together.

This week we visited the Angel Oak. It's the oldest living thing east of the Mississippi. It's 65 feet tall, at least 1500 years old, and just awe inspiring. We arrived bright and early on Sunday, and were able to catch the most beautiful light...through the fence because the park didn't open till 1 on Sundays. Doh!


By the time we went back, it was close to the end of the day, and the clouds had moved in. Stunning still, but there was something about that light.

Dresser Update

so I have this old dresser, a freebie from my college roommate. It was a freebie to her. Back then I got it and it was a wacky green with wooden handles. Very farmhouse.

I got the bright idea to paint it a crazy purple (i still love that color, i think it's very dramatic.), take off the hardware and...do nothing else with it for like 5 years. Here it sits, housing lots of sewing doo dads.



And here it is now, still housing sewing doo dads, but in a much more stylish way.


With minimal begging, BF installed some knobs and a fun little handle. Although I am sort of over decals, i still have an inner squeal every time I see this one.

Now here's where we talk a bit about a shift that I am seeing in many of my creative endeavors. You see, those handles are ever so slightly not perfectly aligned. And ya know what? That's okay. Because I have realized that the vision of perfection I have in my mind is the greatest reason why it takes me, oh, EONS to finish things. I am really finding it easy to accept Good Enough these days. Because Good Enough is better in about a thousand different ways than Half Finished.

On Napping

[Taken on Sunday]

Ravelympics Redux

Yay! Another knitted thing! Two, actually!

These are socks that I made during the Ravelympics, a super cute little knitting Olympics hosted by the knitting Cyber-Leviathan, Ravelry. (I really just wanted to use the word Leviathan. I heard it last night during a show about dinosaurs and have been itching to use it since. It's a great word, leviathan.)

I want to interrupt this post to say that the slow photo uploading times of Blogger, combined with the generally terrible upload speeds of Knology mean that I have been sitting here watching those gray dashes whirl around that yellow triangle for some time now. That's annoying.

so, here are my socks! Let me just say once again, in case I have never said it on this blog before: handknit socks are one of life's greatest pleasures. If you ever by chance happen to save a knitter's life and they want to know how to repay you, you should ask for handknit socks. Everyone that knows good things should have at least one pair. But don't ask me for them; they are a pain in the ass. I am a slow knitter, and although i had lots of Real Life type things slowing me down, I persevered. Yay! Be all that you can be! Wait no, that's the Army.



Top photo is wildly inaccurate in regards to color, but that's ok. Bottom photo is probably closest, although they are a bit greener than that. Lovely all the same. Sigh.

One thing I have been trying to do lately is take part in all manner of challenges and what not. Meeting my goals makes me feel like I am actually accomplishing something. That has really become important to me. I did the Ravelympics and am currently taking part in two challenges at the gym. Being competitive and really wanting to feel obligated in some way to anything Outside the Home is helping to define my days a bit. And that's nice.

what about you? Did you knit? Did you crochet? Did you finish?

As a side note, I would like to say that I really enjoyed the Real Olympics this year. I watched a LOT of them, and I like how there are sports that are fun for People Who Don't Like Sports. Like biathlon is my new fave. Curling is up there too. LOVE skeleton, if for no other reason than to giggle at the terrible angle at which athletes are shot at the start. Spandex, running, full-on butt shot...not so cute. And also if you are a weepy sap like me, you get a kick out of seeing people achieve their dreams, try their hardest, and put on display all the good things that there are in the spirit of competing. What? No, I wasn't crying when the whole arena gave the Georgians a standing ovation. i just had something in my eye.

Oh! Knitting details:

Pattern: Embossed Leaves (found in the Best of Interweave Socks or some such thing)
Yarn: Classic Elite Alpaca Sox
Needles: US2's for the ribbing, 1's for the socks