Lazy weekend...

Ah, the lengths I will go to in order to avoid cleaning house!

But first, I feel that I must pay some tribute to my UFO, which is feeling lonely and unloved given that I have not worked on it for about 6 days...

Truth is, I'm rather bored with this one. I should just finish it off now (it could be either a tunic or a dress, depending upon when the yarn might run out). Hard to tell the bottom shape because it's on 24" circular needles. Yarn is Ranee by Kerzner. Pattern adapted from a tunic pattern in the most recent Knit.1 mag. I thought the main colour was all black... instead it turned out to be all midnight blue except for one skein. Oh well. I shall persevere...

... and now back to my latest obsession: PRESERVES!


Far more colourful than my current knitting (which is probably why the digression, I would imagine).

And here they are, one by one (drum roll, please...)

1. Giradiniere Pickles (Italian Garden Pickles) - recipe by Lucy Crubb, in Delia's How to Cook, Book 3:

Ingredients: red onions, zucchini, egplant, fennel bulb, red, yellow and orange bell peppers, mushrooms, grape tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, white wine vinegar, bay left, rosemary, thyme and peppercorns.

2. Moroccan Preserved Citrus - original recipe for preserved lemons by Elizabeth David (I think)
Although you can't really see them here, I added limes and oranges as well as the lemons. Other ingredients: coriander seed, cumin seed, bay leaf, lots of sea salt, water.

3. Giardiniera - The Spicy Gardiner's Wife (adapted from #1, above)

This is what happens when I run out of white wine vinegar and have precious little other vinegar left. I stuck in red wine vinegar and some leftover shallot sherry vinegar I had made before ... and a ton of red chilli flakes. My name for it is a play on the "giardiniere" in the original recipe, which means "gardiner" in italian.

4. Pickled Green Onions - my recipe (and damn and blast that Loblaws does not seem to know what wild garlic is)


Ingredients: green onions, white wine vinegar, whole garlic cloves. That's it. But I'm still really craving toursi (pickled ramps or wild garlic shoots...) SIGH.

5. Sour Dill Pickles - Delia in How to Cook, vol. 3

DH will have to tell me how these turned out because I do not like dill pickles! Ingredients: fresh dill, coriander seed, cucumber, cippoline (the recipe called for shallots, but $#&@*$(&*@#(&* Loblaws didn't have them in either! What's going on?). Don't know if they will be less sour with the cipolline. Oh well. I don't eat them anyway! ;-)

6. Roasted Vegetables in Oil - my idea

This is a bit of an experiment. I'm actually trying for a flavoured oil with roasted veg flavour. I took the leftover veg from the Giardiniere (#1, above) minus the grape tomatoes, added some sundried tomatoes, panroasted the veg then covered in boiling oil (PurOliva - half canola, half olive oil so that it will refrigerate better, it is hoped). I will let this sit for about a week and see what happens.

I've also prepared a 7th thing, which is flavoured extra virgin olive oil (the cheap kind - Gallo - I buy it in the 3 or 5 litre tin). It's not quite ready yet. It is my own recipe and called "Pink Lady". The name comes from the name of the main herb (rosemary) plus pink peppercorns - not the colour of the oil.