The OEconomist

I posted this a while ago as a WIP, but forgot to mention I’d finished it.

The shawl is the Icelandic feather and fan one from Cheryl Oberle’s “Folk Shawls”, knitted in New Lanark Mills’ aran-weight wool in (IIRC) gritstone. It was left over from an earlier cardigan.

The shawl starts in a fairly standard way from the centre top, just at the back of your neck, and you increase at either edge and twice in the middle every second row. However, after a while you start increasing at the edges on the way back too, meaning that instead of increasing 4st for every two rows, it’s 6st. This gives the shawl long trailing ends that it wouldn’t otherwise have.

I’m not 100% sure how I feel about the shape of it. It’s not quite as cozy and nice to wear on the sofa while watching TV as a plain triangular one, but it does work better in public, worn sort of scrunched in the centre and draped like a scarf. I think its scarf-like properties would work better in a lighter weight yarn, though. I enjoyed knitting the pattern a lot, so I will probably try it again in something more lightweight, another time.

The red ones in the middle are the new ones. The yarn is Lana Grossa Meilenweit tweed, so as you can probably see the red yarn has black and brown tweedy flecks in it. I really liked it, and would happily knit more socks with it.

The pattern is just my personal basic sock pattern (all three pairs in this photo are knitted from it), with one new variation: I usually cast on 72st, but for these I cast on 84st and after I was done with the 2×2 ribbed cuffs, I decreased 3 stitches every half inch or so, four times. This makes them fit my huge calves better.

Every time I do this, I end up saying “It’s been a while since I did this”, and here I am saying it again.

Noe Valley Farmers’ Market, 3 blocks up the hill from my place, Saturday morning.

• Tomatoes (two kinds)
• Strawberries – probably the last week for it
• Cauliflower
• Broccoli
• Beans
• Basil
• Onions
• Garlic
• Squash

Then the local hippie grocery store for dairy products and stuff: milk, cheese, eggs, butter, yoghurt (small tub), and a loaf of bread.

Plans:

• Potato frittata – tomato salad or beans or broccoli on the side
• Chickpea curry (from last week) with broccoli (work lunches)
• Baked cauliflower and cheese
• Pasta e fagioli (sauce from frozen)
• Home-made yogurt

ObTomatoSalad:

Just some tomatoes, basil, and a pinch of salt and a bit of pepper. To be honest, it could’ve used more salt, because the tomatoes were just that sweet.

Scary fact: in my head, I’m starting to say tom-AY-to instead of tom-AH-to.

In other news, I made aforementioned the potato frittata tonight and OM NOM NOM. There are photos and there’ll be a post later.

A week ago, my friend Rach suggested I turn my back porch into somewhere nice to spend time. I thought about it a bit but wasn’t sure how. Where would I put all the stuff that was stored back there? But I managed to move things around and got some cheap, sheer curtains, and now I have this:

The porch is fully enclosed with glassed-in windows and a secure locked door. The space available is about 4′ x 6′. So I pulled one of the armchairs out of the living room and grabbed a little bookcase which had been doing duty as a bedside stand (but not performing very well in that function) and brought in the wooden sewing box that can act as a little table, at least for holding a cup of tea or my breakfast bowl.

The chair’s been out here for a few days now, on trial, and the impressive thing is that I’ve eaten breakfast every day since it’s been here. It’s nice to have somewhere relatively sunny to eat!

There’s a power outlet here and I’m going to run a few cables around and get a lamp and a radio in here (an Internet radio, even), but I’m planning to not have a laptop charger. That means I can use my laptop here, but I can’t sit here ALL DAY and use it.

The bookcase will be a new home for my knitting and cookbooks. Currently I have my favourite, most frequently used cookbooks on a shelf in the pantry, and the less frequently used ones in the living room at the other end of the apartment. This will bring them all near the kitchen, if not in the kitchen (the kitchen is through the interior window on the right of the photo) and give me a nice spot to sit and peruse them.

I’ve been eating really badly lately, and I want to get back into good habits, so I’m going to try and post more often.

This was tonight’s dinner: puy lentils with bacon, leeks, and a mustard vinaigrette, served over spring greens. On the side, oven-roasted tomatoes.

First up, the tomatoes. I got this from one of Madhur Jaffrey’s vegetarian cookbooks, and she got it from someone in Australia. It’s odd that I got an Australian recipe in such a roundabout way, but there you have it.

The best tomatoes for this, in my opinion, are small romas at the peak of ripeness, from the farmer’s market. Unfortunately I didn’t make it to the market yesterday, so these are from the greengrocer’s, and aren’t quite as ripe or flavourful as I’d like. But that’s OK! The oven-roasting intensifies the flavour wonderfully.

Slice your tomatoes in half lengthways. Put them on a baking tray. As you can see below, it’s OK to crowd them. Drizzle with a little olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper (and optional herbs, if you feel like it — dried oregano is a good choice, or fresh thyme), and pop them in an oven that’s on its absolute lowest setting: around 100C/200F. Leave them for at least a few hours and they pop out looking like this:

I grabbed a couple at this point and then put the rest back in the oven, where they’ll another few hours; they can go as long as overnight, if you want, and they’ll get drier and more intense the longer you leave them. The roasted tomatoes will keep quite happily for a week in the fridge.

But that wasn’t all I had for dinner. I also made a lentil salad. This is a favourite recipe of mine that I haven’t done in a while, and it’s very flexible, so this is more a set of guidelines than anything else.

You will need:

• Some kind of flavourful meat with a bit of fat on it: bacon, sausage, etc. Today I used 3 rashers of bacon. Other times I’ve used 2 sausages, or about 6″ of Spanish-style chorizo. So, not too much — this is a really economical way to use meat, and I love doing this sort of thing with meat and legumes.
• Some kind of oniony vegetable: leek, shallot, or just plain onion. You want about one small onion, one large leek, or equivalent.
• About 1.5 cups of dry lentils. I like Puy lentils but you can also use plain brown lentils. As long as they’re a type that will hold their shape.
• Something to flavour the water you’re cooking the lentils in: stock, or a couple of bayleaves, or whatever. Needn’t be too rich, and you can do without if you don’t have anything appropriate in the pantry. Today I used bayleaves and a couple of cloves of garlic.
• 1/4 cup vinegar (I usually use red wine vinegar)
• 1 tblsp wholegrain mustard
• herbs (I used parsley and thyme today) finely chopped
• black pepper

Put the lentils on to cook with some water and flavouring if you’ve got it. Meanwhile, cook/brown your meat then add the oniony things and saute til translucent. Don’t bother to strain off the fat from the meat; it will become part of the salad dressing and is tasty. If your pan could use deglazing, throw in a splash of water and do so. Turn the heat off.

When the lentils are done, strain them (removing bay leaves or whatever) then toss them in the pan with the meat and stuff. Mix the remaining ingredients together to form a dressing, then pour over the lentils and mix through. Adjust flavours if necessary by adding more salt, pepper, vinegar, or even a pinch of sugar if you think it needs it.

This makes about 4 serves to eat this way. I think it makes a really good lunch for work days.