Today was “Copy Your Favorite Garment” class:

Make a pattern without taking your garment apart. Pattern–making experience is not necessary, but you must have sewn clothes, know garment construction plus sewing/pattern terminology. This class is for those who cannot find a pattern or can’t fit patterns but own a garment that fits (and not mind pinning it and getting some wash–away ink on it). I’ve taught this class for 15+ years at local stores and since 2004 at the Experimental College.

It’s thru’ the Experimental College at the UW (it’s a student group), which is a great resource if you’re in the Seattle area.

GothLoli PA Dutch mystery skirt

I wanted to take the class because i have this fabulous skirt which never fails to receive compliments — but for which i have no pattern.  The awesome things about this skirt are:  #1, it has sixteen gores.  #2, the fabric is weird and quirky.  I tend to think of it as a GothLoli Pennsylvania Dutch skirt.  Can you imagine how fabulous this thing would be over layers upon layers of tulle??

The weird thing about this skirt is that Mom and i aren’t sure where it came from.  We found it in my grandmother’s sewing things when we were cleaning out her sewing room.  The gores were sewn together and the zipper was hand-basted in.  But all it took was one flip to the inside of the skirt and Mom and i knew instantly that my grandmother had not put it together — the seams were shockingly uneven and rough.  But the skirt mysteriously fit my waist, so i brought it home.  Put in the zipper, fitted it with my usual band-less waist, and sewed up the hem.

The more i wear it the more i love it.  (Tho’ i don’t wear it often because the ironing of it is a pain.)  The more i wear it, the more i want more skirts in the same pattern (okay, ironing be damned).  But there are no patterns for mystery skirts!  And so today i learned the basics of making a pattern from the garment itself.

And now, i shall make more and more skirts just like it.  First up, a skirt in this:

alphabet: red-lime (by applesandorange, @ Spoonflower.com)

Oh.  My.  Freaking.  Word. I loved this fabric the instant i saw it.  Yes, it’s a Spoonflower fabric — and, yes, that means that 1 yard of cotton will cost about $18.  I would normally not pay that much for fabric if i were buying it at a local store.  (The most i’ve ever paid for fabric was $15 a yard, but it was Japanese fabric in an adorable owl pattern and the drape and feel of the cloth was absolutely divine.  And that is the careful-est sewing i have ever done on any garment.  You bet i didn’t want to mess it up.)  But i think, for a design that i absolutely adore and at a cost that will go to support an independent designer, i might be willing to make an exception to my upper-limit for fabric cost and buy this one.

Ladies and gentlemen!  Our e-stenciler works!!!  [paroxysm of joy]  Once we’ve sobered up from our celebratory drinking, we’re going to start planning a test run of the mimeo/duplicator.

Rex Rotary 2202 (e-stenciler)

*  Today success smells like burning because the stylus actually sparks and burns as it’s making the stencil.

The dreaded rapini!

One of the veggies i have come to dread seeing in our farm share is rapini.  It might even be time to tell our farmers that we just don’t care for it and can they please stop giving it to us (we’ve likewise rid ourselves of both cabbage and fennel).  But i refuse to give up without a fight!

Sunday night Andy sauteed last week’s rapini, then tossed it on top of penne pasta.  He’s also shouting from the sidelines here that he’s pretty sure we’ve tried it as just a straight-up sautee.  Probably.  We’ll sautee anything once.

What i dislike about rapini is that it tastes bitter, no matter how we prepare it or how long we cook it.

Suggestions for a last-ditch effort before we write it off?

Our goal this year with our weekly CSA farm share is to learn how to prepare everything we get.  We do have many cookbooks, but sometimes we still wind up vaguely baffled by something from the box.  This year i’m going to try to post about these inscrutable ingredients so as to solicit suggestions and recipes from you, Oh Internet.

greenish/purple-ish, ruffly kale

This week:  kale.

At least, i’m pretty sure that’s kale.  Russian kale, maybe?  You tell me!

I recall that we’ve tried to work with kale in the past.  Once we took another variety of kale and roasted it until it was crunchy, then ate it like the leaves were potato chips.  It was alright.  Andy swears he remembers trying a kale soup last year, but i think it might have been collards.

Mostly, i’m sorry to say, kale seems to sit in the bottom of the crisper drawer until we’ve realized it’s rotted and feed it to the worm bin.

So!  What are your favorite kale recipes?  Suggestions, recipes, links all welcome in the comments!

As i read more about about gardening and growing food at home, i became increasingly interested in acquiring a kit for growing mushrooms.  Both Andy and i love mushrooms and, depending upon the variety, they can be dead easy to grow at home.

Surprisingly, i had to trick him into trying it.  Why he initially resisted i do not to this day quite understand.

I accomplished this trick by taking him to a “Mushroom May-nia” day put on by the Puget Sound Mycological Society at our local natural history museum in may of 2008.  Not only did the mushroom day include talks and exhibits about mushrooms, but we also got to each make a kit for growing oyster mushrooms — perhaps the easiest mushrooms to grow at home.

This is often the trick with Andy — make it free and right in front of him.  Heh.

Well, those 1st kits of ours never did produce any oyster mushrooms, but by then we were hooked on the idea.  I bought a book.  Ordered a catalog.  Plotted.

In the spring of 2009, Cascadia Mushrooms appeared at our farmers marker.  Ah HA!  I pounced at the opportunity and we came home with an oyster mushroom kit.  This time it worked extremely well and we were able to get several delicious harvests before the extreme hot weather in late july pretty much killed the kit.

For the entire rest of 2009 i checked the farmers market every week in the hope that Cascadia would return.  Finally, in december, there they were again.  No oyster kits this time, tho’ that was fine — now we wanted to try shiitakes.

misshapen shiitake

I’ve been faithfully spritzing our shiitake kit for almost a month now.  About a week ago i started to see little white buds, which was very exciting.  Except they’ve remained at the “little white buds” stage ever since, which has gotten increasingly disappointing.  I want mushrooms and i want them now!

Tonight, because the mushroom block tilts slightly forward, i decided to actually lift the block to make sure i was spritzing it evenly all over.  But the block resisted a little when i tilted it backward.  I looked at the bottom — and there was 1 lone shiitake growing thru’ the rack the mushroom block rests on.  A gentle tug and the shiitake came loose.

The poor thing was basically growing flat on top of its own stem, which is a little difficult to discern from this picture.  You can clearly see, however, the indentation on the cap from where it was starting to grow into the rack the mushroom block was resting on.

I expect it will be no less delicious for being a warped little mushroom.  And i certainly look forward to some of its little friends bursting into fungal flower over the next few weeks.

mushroom growing box

growing. Both the oyster and shiitake mushrooms require a humidity chamber which allows some light to reach the mushrooms.  It’s a myth that all mushrooms need darkness to grow.  They should certainly not be in direct sunlight, but they likewise don’t require complete darkness.  They do require a slightly humid environment.  I’ve found that the most successful box is actually a plastic Rubbermaid/Sterlite storage container with a rack of some sort (currently i’m “borrowing” one of the cooling racks from my baking supplies) in the bottom to keep the mushroom kit from sitting in water.  I spritz the kit once a day and keep the box’s lid closed.

buying.

• Cascadia Mushrooms is the only supplier i’ve purchased from so far, largely because they come to my local farmers market (and, like Andy, if you put it right in front of me and make it impossibly easy, i am way more inclined to do something).  They only sell kits for oyster and shiitake mushrooms.  I’ve been extremely pleased with the crops we’ve gotten from each kit we’ve tried.  The vendor is himself very friendly and easy to approach with questions and for advice.
• Field & Forest Products was the 1st mushroom kit supplier recommended to me, and they look to be an especially good source if you’re interested in mushrooms other than oyster or shiitake or if you’re interested in larger-scale mushroom production beyond just a single counter-top kit.  I want to try some TP mushrooms!

book. The book that was recommended by the Puget Sound Mycological Society way back at the event that hooked us on mushroom growing is The Mushroom Cultivator (Stamets, Paul.  Olympia: Agarikon Press, 1983.).  It is packed with information useful for both large- and small-scale mushroom growing.

starting the emmer

1)  emmer sprouts. I started some emmer sprouts on sunday.  I soaked them for 12 hours, then drained them and set them on the bar.  I kept mine in a quart-sized canning jar with a bit of nylon rubberband-ed to the top to make draining easier.  Tuesday i rinsed and drained them.  Wednesday i did the same.  Thursday i did the same, but my reference books said that emmer sprouts are tastiest after only 2-3 days of sprouting so we were able to sample them that night.

And they were pretty tasty!  I’ve always liked sprouts anyway — i remember being jealous of the kid in elementary school who always seemed to have alfalfa sprouts in his lunches.  These were much different from alfalfa sprouts since it’s mostly just the swollen seeds with only a little bit of sprouting going on.

emmer sprouts on day #3

Surprisingly, the flavor was really reminiscent of something, tho’ i couldn’t quite put my finger on what.  It was Andy who pinpointed the taste — cucumbers!  How odd!!  But enjoyable nonetheless.

Andy noted that these will be tasty sprinkled on fresh veggie salads.  I’m looking forward to putting them in sandwiches.  I’ve also been meaning to get into making cold salads — i think the sprouts will be good for that, too.

I’m also interested in this:

I’ve continued to experiment with sprouting gluten grains and turning them into bread. We’ve now enjoyed bread baked from these sprouted grains: spelt, kamut and hard white wheat. None of these have caused any gluten-intolerance symptoms in those of my family who are gluten-sensitive.

We know a few people who have problems with gluten and we’d like to learn to bake bread for them.

But also, y’know?  These sprouts are just tasty to snack on, too.  :)

2)  daikon pickles. Last night i started another batch of daikon pickles.  I love the oshinko served at our local sushi restaurant, so i decided to try making some pickles myself.  I bought a tsukemono crock at Shiga’s back at the end of summer because daikon were in season and super fresh at the Japanese vegetable stand at the farmers market.  The woman at Shiga’s gave me this quick recipe, which is how she makes her pickles:

• peel & slice the daikon
• sprinkle the daikon slices with salt
• pack the salted daikon into the crock
• weight the daikon with a (clean!) rock
• taste test the daikon every few days until they reach the level of pickling you want

tsukemono crock & sliced daikon

The 1st thing i learned was to be careful of oversalting the daikon.  My 1st batch was okay, but definitely salty.

The 2nd thing i learned was to prepare the daikon the day you bring it home from the market.  On my 2nd try, i accidentally forgot about the daikon for about a week, at which point it had dried out in the fridge.  The pickling process for the daikon is the same as for sauerkraut — that is, the salt leeches out the vegetable’s own juices which then turns into the brine that pickles the veggies.  My 2nd batch of pickles molded before it ever had a chance to pickle.

Yesterday i bought a daikon (from Uwajimaya, since sadly the Japanese vegetable stall at the market is gone for the season) and immediately prepared it for pickles.  The daikon was remarkably fresh and juicy.  This morning the juices in the pot are about 3/4 of the way up to the top of the daikon already.

There’s so much daikon in there (i almost didn’t have room for the stones to weight it down!) i’ll probably do a taste test every day just to see how the pickling progresses.