Stitch In My Side

The un-bridezilla

I am a reluctant bride.

That is not a statement about my desire to marry Justin, it is a statement about being a "bride". When Justin and I were still thinking that we would get married in Baltimore I walked out of a couple of potential reception locations after hearing the words, "...and this is where the bride will get dressed. We don't have a space for the groom, but that doesn't matter because it's really just about you anyway."

Actually, not to be pedantic about it, but the event that we are potentially spending thousands of dollars for the privilege of hosting on your property is a WEDDING. That's a celebration of two people bringing together their family and friends to celebrate their love and committment and desire to MARRY. It is not simply an opportunity for the bride to don a poofy white dress and twirl around and be admired by all. I mean, there's some of that inherent in the day, but people. People. It's about more than that. Needless to say, I am not the bride they are catering to.

When I bought my first wedding magazines I was honestly more embarrased than if it had been a pile of porn, and I gladly took the plain paper bag that was offered and high-tailed it home, so that I could look through them while safely tucked away on my couch. I looked through all 700 glossy, smelly pages and while there were a few things that looked nice, it all looked kind of...

...the same...

White dress, check.
Enormous diamonds, check.
Matchy colors and favors, check.
Some pretty flowers, check.
A well matched groom, check.

In that order.

The more I looked at the wedding ideal, the more I felt that the way to make this day ours was not to try and personalize things by having a certain type of ribbon tied around the jordan almonds, but to just plan this as any other party that we would host. In which case the order would be:

Good friends
Fantastic food
Plenty of booze
Fun music
Lots of pictures

And in case I haven't mentioned this before: I love to throw parties. Granted, it's a bigger party with a lot more logistical detail than I have planned in the past, but I figure if we hit the things on that list everyone will be happy. For good measure, we'll also try to throw in a few extras, but those are the basics on which I'm going to spend the most time.

That, and finding the perfect shoes.

Chocolate Truffle tart

Last night I made the chocolate truffle tart from the February 2007 issue of Gourmet.

I love this issue, and plan on working my way through quite a few of the recipes in it. Last Friday we had some friends over for dinner and I made the Meyer lemon souffle for dessert. It turned out beautifully, although I would have liked it to be a teensy less eggy and a bit more citrusy. On the next try I'll try more zest and a little more juice, so that the brightness of the citrus really has a chance to shine.

Um, where was I?

Right, chocolate truffle tart.

I had a date for a book club meeting tonight, and decided that it would be a perfect time to experiment and to give away most of the fruits of my labors. On Molly's recommendation I made it last night, so that the flavors would have a chance to develop. What I did not consider when choosing to do this is that we are recovering from a snow and ice storm here, and although the roads have mostly been cleared, cars all over the city are frozen into their parking spots. So the tart that I made in advance was sitting in my fridge mocking me when I got the call that book club had been cancelled. Mocking me, I tell you.

Luckily today is February 15th, ie. the day after Valentine's Day. So tonight I sliced up the tart into slivers, wrapped them in parchment paper and delivered them to all of my neighbors. They all think I'm a little Martha already, so why fight it? The way I see it, everybody wins. I get rid of the tart, they get to smugly label me as a weird random tart-maker, and we all get to eat the most fabulous truffle tart ever.

The recipe can be found here.

I used Ghiradelli 60% bittersweet bars for the filling, Green and Black's Organic Cocao powder for dusting, and to make it a little more interesting, I sprinkled Australian Murray River salt on the top. It was just a light sprinkling, but it was a lovely contrast to the rich, creamy texture and fruity sweetness of the tart. I would only use this or fleur de sel to garnish, as the flakes are big enough to notice, but they still melt away easily. A coarser salt would be too intense, and a finer grain would probaly just give the tart an unpleasant salty flavor.

This tart is gorgeous, silky and rich and complex. It is truly impressive and very easy to make. One last thing: do as Molly suggests, and eat it at room temperature for the maximum effect. Otherwise it is good, but the details just don't pop. Think about it, when was the last time something baked tasted best when pulled straight out of the fridge? Give it some counter time, and stop by to admire your work while it is warming up. It's well worth the wait.

The golden ticket

Justin works for just about the best non-profit ever, where he gets to do his bit to save our little corner of the world, and has fantastic benefits like 3:1 matching funds for charitable contributions, four weeks paid vacation and a bonus week of vacation between Christmas and New Years. Every year they have a company wide raffle, where several pairs of round trip tickets to anywhere in the world are given away.

Let me just repeat that: Round trip tickets for two, ANYWHERE in the world.

A few days before Christmas we were chatting about the honeymoon, and I mused that it sure would be nice if Justin won the raffle this year, wouldn't it just be nice timing? Three days later, Justin called me at about 9:14 am and said, "I got it". After a moment of confusion, it sunk in that HE. WON. THE. RAFFLE.

(Sorry about yelling here, but holy shit, he WON THE RAFFLE.)

Folks, we have a honeymoon! Now, the question is where to go? The whole world is suddenly open to us, and we have been having a hard time picking a place.

Unfortunately, there are no flights to Antarctica so my top place is out.

When we first got engaged and started talking about where to go on our honeymoon, we were thinking of going to the Balkans- Justin is obsessed with all things Central European, as well as being a poly-sci geek. I am also interested in the region, but am particularly excited about visiting what is supposed to be some of the most beautiful coastline in the world. (Pisces, love water in all its forms, and nothing makes me happier than getting to do my best lizard interpretation by laying on a beach and soaking up the sun until I just can't stand it and have to jump in the water to cool off. Rinse. Repeat.) We have been rethinking this, Europe is close enough to us East Coasters that it doesn't have to be a hugely expensive ticket and is something that we could reasonably afford to pay for ourselves some other time.

Justin is now fixated on South Africa, and while I am moderately interested in going there, my imagination has not been piqued in the same way as his. There are other places in sub-saharan Africa that I am more interested in visiting, although I am certainly not ruling it out.

I would love to visit Thailand, from what I have heard and read it is spectacularly beautiful, with a varied geography (mountains, lowlands, coast) in a relatively small area, so it is easy to see a lot of the country. Let's not forget to mention the spectacular food and the beaches. Ah, the beaches.

So, the question for you, my (four or five, I think) readers is: Where would you go?
Have you been somewhere that you would go back to in a heartbeat?
Have you been somewhere that was so awful you can be wheedled out of lurkdom to warn us away from it?
Is there a place that you have always fantasized about visiting, that would be at the top of your list if someone handed you a free ticket?

We are taking any and all suggestions, and would love to hear from you.

Salle de bain

Well, it looks like the "Dustbowl 2006" tag needs to be changed, to "Dustbowl, Ad Infinitum". When I finished the laundry room Justin asked me if I was really likely to work on the bathroom during the hot, sweaty months of summer in Baltimore. I conceded that it was not likely that much would get done, so we just closed off the back of the house and tried not to think about what was back there until the weather cooled off.

This is what it looked like when we left off:

Finally, after all of the trips of the summer (San Diego, Colorado, Australia, LA, Washington, France), and a bit of time to regroup we cracked open the back door, dusted off the power tools and I got back to work.

For this project I have mostly worked on my own, and when I can snag Justin we work together. It has been really frustrating at times, and has been a much slower process than it should be because I am limited by my size, my strength and the fact that I only have two hands. I would love to have a laborer to work with, but have not found a way to do that without feeling like I was putting myself at risk. Driving up to the 7-11 and picking up a day laborer doesn't seem like a clever thing for a woman alone in a house to do, and posting to Craigslist doesn't seem significantly better. So I have slogged along, albeit sloooowly, and with more swearing and bruises than is strictly necessary. It was a huge boon for me, then when John came to work with me for a week. (During that time, we got the joists and the subfloor down, hung the pocket door and tore out the old back door and built the frame for the new door to go in.)

FLOORS:
So, when starting back up after the summer break, I had to start with finishing the demolition, tearing out the last of the floor and drywall. Once the floor was out, I needed to build a new system of joists, to create a level floor. The room was originally built as a porch, with the floor sloping to the back for water to run off of it. Add to that a significant left-leaning sag as our 135 year old house has settled, and it made for a seriously warped floor. In the corner where the shower now stands, the new joists were about an inch above the old ones, while in the opposite corner (where the toilet will be, to the left of the back door) the new joists are nearly five inches above the old ones. It was a ridiculous job; tedious, frustrating, and difficult. After several false starts, it did finally come together, and the day that we layed down the subfloor was so SATISFYING!

This picture shows the original joists exposed, the pink strings are marking the point that we had to build up to in order to make the subfloor level:

This picture is of the new joists, before the subfloor was put down:

Subfloor! It's staring to look like a room:

DOORS:
When we decided to move the bathroom into a larger room I decided that I wanted to have a stand-alone shower, as well as keep the tub. In the old bathroom we had a shower curtain hanging around the clawfoot, which meant that you had to step up a couple of feet to get into the shower, and baths always ended up feeling a bit claustrophobic. In order to keep the tub and cram in a shower we had to put in a pocket door, as a regular door wouldn’t have room to open and close freely.

This picture is of the pocket door installed, and of John, who was brave enough to work with me for a week:

There is also a back door that opens onto a deck that overlooks the garden. We had to replace this door for a couple of reasons: the old door didn’t fit well and leaked into the house, which had rotted out much of the frame and floor below it, and anyway the door and frame needed to be taken out when the floor was leveled, as the bottom would have been about four inches below the new floor, also as it is a southern exposure and some of the best light comes from that side of the house we decided to put in a glass door (which will be frosted so that we don’t show our states of undress to the rest of the neighborhood), to let in the light. John and I took out the old door just in time for a major storm to come in, so we had a fun time working with torrential rain and 60 mile-an-hour wind gusts being kept outside with nothing but contractor bags and staples.

A picture of the hole in the wall before the door was installed:

VENT:
Our old bathroom didn’t have any venting at all, and would get seriously musty in the summer, so I was determined that if we were going to do this much work on the room, at least it wouldn’t be a mold hazard when we finished. Installing the fan and ducts was a bear, as I ended up needing to cut through supporting beams on a load-bearing wall in order to get access to the great outdoors, as well as cut a hole through the exterior wall of the house. As with every other task in the project, it was tricky and dirty and a real pain in the ass, but in the end it all worked out.

INSULATION:
This was a big one, as Justin and I are committed to making our house as energy efficient as possible. We insulated every possible surface; putting down a layer under the floor, so that the heat can’t rise from downstairs, installing soffits under the roof, and insulating the ceiling, and putting insulation in the outside walls, and foam anywhere that we could see light coming in through the outside walls.

DRYWALL:
Much like our floors, the walls were also extraordinarily uneven, which could not be ignored when we were putting in the doors and framing the shower. This meant that all of the studs needed to be furred out so that would be level from floor to ceiling. The wall that has the window in it had a nearly three inch slant over an 8 foot span. That meant that on every stud that existed, I attached a new 2x4 that was even with the old one at the top, but stuck out beyond the old one by nearly three inches at the bottom. Once the new framing was built, Justin and I hung the drywall. Our neighbors Marc and Lynn helped us with the ceiling, and we are so grateful for that.

SHOWER:
The shower has been a crazy project, and will get its own post soon enough. Suffice to say that I had to build the frame, which needs to be level in every direction, and square. I can’t fudge this one too much, as we’ll be tiling the walls and base, which will show if anything is off. I am also building my mortar shower pan, rather than installing a prefab one. It is harder this way, but will allow the shower base to also be tiled, which will look so much better when it is finished.

Here is the shower pan with the first layer of mud, before the liner was installed:

Finally, here's the room so far:

STILL TO DO:
-tape and mud the drywall
-paint walls/ceiling
-paint bathtub and radiator
-hang cement board in the shower
-pour the last layer of concrete for the shower pan
-install shower door and window
-tile and grout shower
-install toilet and sink
-install floors (bamboo, in case you’re wondering, or even reading anymore)

Not a stitch

I have not been knitting lately, have not even picked up needles or thought about a project for nearly a month.

The last project that I finished was a set of Christmas stockings comissioned by one of Justin's bosses. I was to replicate a pattern that her mother-in-law had used to make stockings for all of her grandchildren, and a couple of children had been born since her death. I started with counting every stitch and rewriting the pattern, then had to make a couple of stockings. It was a tedious project, and in the end took far more time and energy then I was expecting. I was trying to complete them for her to send off for Christmaas, and running up against that deadline was not helping my frustration. In the end I sent them off with Justin without even taking pictures of them, so I don't have anything to show for the work that went into them, but that's OK. In the end, I am glad to have made them for her. Knowing that I was able to help extend a family tradition is pretty wonderful in its own right, whatever frustrations that I had along the way pale in comparison.

I was expecting to start a new knitting project right away when the stockings were done, to get the juices flowing and get back into working on something I was inspired by. Instead, I got back into the bathroom renovation (bottom photo) in full force, working on it for as many hours as I could stand it, in hopes that it would be finished some time soon. Between the exhaustion of physical labor and the mounds of construction dust that were accumulating in every nook and cranny of the house I just never got up the energy to start a new project, or to shrink wrap it every night so that it would remain workable. Now as the bathroom coming closer to being finished, I am contemplating what my next knitting project will be.

Above and beyond

We spent New Year's Eve at home, joined by friends Melanie, Rich, David and Shana for dinner, drinks and a rousing game of Boggle. It was the first time I'd played, and being a little drunk and in the presence of some of the smartest people that I know, it was not my finest moment. I managed not to be shamed into never playing again, which is a good thing.

The food was great fun to plan and make. We started with gougeres and a baked brie, covered in cranberry pepper relish and sliced almonds. For dinner we ate lamb chops marinated with garlic, rosemary and olive oil, with brussel sprouts braised in cream, a gratin dauphinois, and shitake mushrooms in a basalmic reduction. Everything on the table came from our local farmer's market, and it was a lovely thing to behold. We also had a salad of baby greens, peppadew peppers and pomegranate, brought to us by Melanie and Rich. For dessert I made chocolate souffles, topped with the salted caramel ice cream. It turned into a big gooey mess, but it was TASTY!

Today, the doorbell rang and I was surprised to see a FedEx guy standing at the door, with a box of flowers. I clearly looked confused, because he looked at me and asked if it was my birthday or anniversary. When I said that it wasn't he asked if I had a boyfriend or husband who had something to apologize for, and when I laughed off that suggestion he just shrugged and said, "I guess it will be our little secret, then". I walked inside and opened the package, to find a lovely bouquet of irises and a thank you note from Shana and David. How classy is that? I am totally impressed, and a little smitten with our new friends. What can I say, I'm a sucker for flowers.

Salt

I am a bit of a salt nerd. Whenever I am traveling I look for interesting local specimens, some of which I add to my own collection, and some of which I give as gifts to unwitting friends who wonder what they have done to deserve a kilo of salt instead of chocolates or some local pottery. As I was cleaning my cupboard yesterday I had quite a pile on my counter, and thought it would be fun to document the array of colors, sizes and flavors that are currently found in my pantry.

So, from the top:

::Gros Sel Gris de Guerande::
Bought in Brittany for about a Euro per kilo. It is made from evaporated seawater, and is full of minerals that lend it a rich, complex flavor. It is my standby salt in the kitchen, currently residing in my salt grinder and used for everything from salad dressing to pasta water and any run of the mill seasoning. The crystals are very wet, and range in size from teeny tiny up to a nearly centimeter in diameter.

::Fleur de sel::
Also bought in Brittany, where it is harvested when the west wind blows and forms a thin layer of salt flake on the evaporation ponds. The crystals are small and flake-shaped. Traditionally this was harvested by women, as it was considered too time consuming for the men to deal with (they would get paid by weight for the salt harvested, and as you can see this is much smaller and lighter than the grey salt). The women would then use the proceeds to buy household items. I’m guessing this has changed drastically since this salt became hip- it’s now sold for enormous amounts everywhere outside of Brittany.

::Australian Macrobiotic Sea Salt::
This is a grey, large crystal salt as well, harvested in the same manner as the salt from Guerande. I use it anywhere that calls for nice big grains of salt, like roasting chicken or seasoning meat.

::Australian Murray River Salt::
I love this salt. It is my favorite these days, with a light pink color and pyramid shaped crystals. It is harvested from the Murray River in Australia, where salination is a serious problem for grazing and farm lands, so buying it helps solve some environmental problems, too. This is the salt that I sprinkled across the top of the caramels, as the grey salts were too big, and the fleur de sel too tiny.

::Pink Himalayan Salt::
This salt is harvested in the Himalayan mountains, from deposits that were at one time ocean beds. It has a lovely pink tinge to it. It is small grained, and I use it in lieu of regular fine grained sea salt.

::Hawaiian Aelea Sea Salt::
This salt is medium grained, and has a lovely vivid pink color that comes from clay and iron oxide deposits. I use it to garnish when I want something that is going to really stand out, like a bowl of steamed edamame.

::Hawaiian Black Sea Salt::
This one is from Trader Joes. The black color comes from charcoal and it ends up staining everything it comes into contact with (including your mouth). I thought it would be an interesting garnish salt, but because the color bleeds, I just don’t end up using it much.

::Truffle Salt::
This was a gift from Justin’s sister- it is a fine grained sea salt that has been infused with truffles, and it is potent. It has an incredibly rich and deep flavor that goes well with meat.

::Fine grained iodized sea salt::
Because even in a kitchen with nine (nine! how did that happen!) kinds of salt, one needs to have a plain old fine grained salt for things like chocolate chip cookies. I pretty much only use this one for baking, when I need something that is going to dissolve easily into a batter.

Caramel Ice Cream with Fleur de Sel

Inspired by the salted caramels that Justin and I made for Christmas, I decided to try making the salted caramel ice cream recipe that was published in the NYT this past October. I had all of the ingredients, and with the use of Lily's ice cream maker, I was able to pull it all together. The picture above is the first taste, as it came out of the ice cream maker, but before it was frozen, so it's a bit soft. According to Molly over at Orangette it will firm up into something even more perfect after a few hours in the freezer. I'll let you know how it was received at our New Year's Eve dinner, when it tops the bittersweet chocolate souffles that were made just to accompany it. Yum!

I have put a set of photos of the process on Flikr, to see them, click here.

Holiday sweets

Candied and chocolate covered orange and lemon peel
(Orangette and Citronette)
*
Chocolate covered caramels with Australian Murray River salt
*
::Truffles::
Cardamom and Black Pepper topped with Vanilla Sugar
Lemon Myrtle and Verbena topped with Meyer Lemon zest
Kahlua topped with Espresso bean

This Christmas, I decided to stop my cycle of wanting to find the perfect gift for everyone in my life, and being willing to spend more than I probably should to get it. Justin and I took a look at our finances, and decided that we wanted to give gifts that were thoughtful and lovely without having to spend beyond the disposable income in a pay period (no debt!). So we decided to make a gifts for our nearest and dearest- an assortment of truffles, caramels and candied citrus- all handmade with fresh, fair trade and organic ingredients.

It was a fun process, aside from the first failed batches of caramel (note to self- there is a reason that all of the recipes call for heavy cream, and as it turns out half and half is not an adequate substitution!). It took three days of solid kitchen time, and probably about 3 pounds of holiday weight gain to properly do quality control, but it was well worth it in the end. All of those sheets of treats were just beautiful to behold, and it was utterly satisfying to send them off and know that we had created every last bite that our friends and families would enjoy.

What's in your kitchen?

Justin gave me three fabulous foodie presents this Christmas:

-A pass for cooking classes
-An anthology of the best food writing of 2006
-The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollen

I love to cook, and love to eat. I am also a well-educated consumer, and choose to make thoughtful choices every day about where I buy my food, how it has been grown/raised, how far it has traveled to arrive at my door, and how processed it is.

That is not to say that I adhere perfectly to my principles- one can occasionally find me at my local Trinidadian eatery, enjoying a succulent curry chicken Roti and choosing not to think about the fact that the chicken I am currently consuming is most definitely not organic, nor was it free range or even humanely slaughtered for that matter. If I was more principled, I would either not eat out (the horror! all that food not tasted! all those things gone undiscovered!), or I would only eat at restaurants that serve local and/or organic ingredients. We have one of those in Baltimore, and it is horrible. Actually, I take that back. The food is fantastic- the service and the prices are outrageous (and not in a good way).

But I digress. I am only a couple of chapters into the Michael Pollen book, but I am already horrified in ways that I didn't expect to be. So far there has not been a lot of new information for me to digest, it is rather that all of the disparate facts that I have already read are all presented together in one place, so that the connections cannot be ignored. That we are ruining our individual and public health, our environment and our economy all in one fell swoop with the batshit crazy ways that food is raised in this country makes me so angry.

I felt this way after reading Fast Food Nation, and was gratified to know that I was already on the right track, and that there were simple choices that I could make to ensure that was not contributing to the problems described in the book. However, I feel that the issues raised so far in The Omnivore’s Dilemma are much harder to resolve. Only buying meat and dairy products that were raised on grass- not corn, soy, animal products and byproducts, or some other food that was never intended to be consumed by those animals- not totally simple, but since the stuff I buy from our local, organic producer already meets those standards it’s possible. Not eating any corn or soy products ever again- not so much so.

Short of never buying anything that has been prepared or preserved in some way, I don’t know how to avoid contributing to the industrial agricultural complex. I am now reading my food labels even more closely, which is kind of exhausting. I am all about being a conscious consumer, but sometimes I just don’t want to have to think about whether something contains a certain product, or if it is fair trade, or if it is organic, or any number of things. I would like to be able to just take that jar of olives off the shelf and know that when it says ‘kalamata olives in olive oil’ on the label, that doesn’t mean ‘kalamata olives in oil, with some corn byproducts, and unpronounceable chemical compounds, that a little kid was forced to pick for pennies a day’. It doesn’t seem like much to ask, really.

I know that most of what I buy contributes to an alternative economic and moral landscape than that of factory farming and industrial agriculture, but what worries me is the cumulative effect of the complacency that we all have. When I look in my fridge and cupboards I can see that most of what I have in my house will meet the standards that I have set for myself, but what is even more obvious to me are the items which don’t meet those standards. Those items that were bought because I was in a hurry, or short on cash, or just feeling too lazy to read the back label to see if the front was lying to me. Those are the items that I know most people are buying for those same reasons, and I worry that the negative effect of contributing to the mainstream ends up exponentially greater than the effect of supporting an alternative. Like adding a drop of water to a tsunami, instead of a ripple, so to speak.