New Holiday Traditions: Crafty Exchange!

By the time you're reading this, my good friend L will have received her new quilt that I based off of  Susan Beal's "Bright Furrows" design in Modern Log Cabin Quilting. This, after a long facebook exchange where a former student of Zips' posted a link to the "Bigger on the Inside" shawl pattern with the note "if anyone can do this, you can!" Being a huge new Doctor Who fan, and not a knitter, I knew when to call for help. So I appealed to L, who is a knitter, and we struck a deal (after much enthusiastic "really!?" and many excited exclamation marks): I quilt her a lap quilt, and she knit me a cool TARDIS shawl!

Zips helps me iron the seam allowances away from the center square.

L gave me her fave colors: robin's egg blue, sable brown, and maybe some red-orange. I ran with it, and got a stack of quarters to work with.

And after piecing the quilt top, was left with several spare log cabin squares and a ton of leftover 1 3/4" strips, mostly in the blue and brown (it's one of those cut-as-you-chain-sew kind of patterns). So I went nuts with these in improvising the back of the quilt. I was really happy with how it turned out-- it turned into a kind of reversible quilt! 

 Here's the finished back (most of it, with Zipper patrolling the perimeter).

And the finished front of it too. Much more logic to the arrangement. Look at 'em furrows! 

I sent it off yesterday, and L should receive it tomorrow, just in time for Christmas. I can't wait to hear from her when she does get it, and I'm holding off publishing this particular post until I know she's already laid eyes on it. And you can bet I'll be posting pics when I get my hands on the shawl she's knitting for me. I can't wait! I'm really excited that someone other than my immediate family will be (hopefully) enjoying the fruits of my labors. I hope I have another crafty exchange with someone else soon. This was really fun!

New Eats: Vietnamese Meatless Meatballs (Xiu Mai Chay)

Okay, since I'm playing some catch-up here, I'm going to go in for a two-fer-- offering both a restaurant recommendation and a fantastic drool-inducing recipe. First off, Zips and I are newly back from the Oakland area. We had an academic conference in early November, and the culinary highlights included not only managing to find our way back to Millennium Restaurant in San Francisco, but also finding some amazing new digs in Old Oakland. We actually stayed at the exact same (closet-sized) hotel we stayed at two years ago, but went the other direction in our explorations of the local environs. In contrast to the Vegetarian Vietnamese restaurant (with the cool neon sign blazing in the window, you know... the one we didn't care for...), Zips found and took me to Le Cheval, a wonderfully elegant Vietnamese restaurant that has a robust vegetarian section on its menu. 

  

It has an airy, spacious dining area. 

The veggie goi cuon were delicious. I had lemongrass tofu, and Zips enjoyed her vegetable curry. The Vietnamese coffee was to die for (as my mom would say).

Now that I've spent some time in the bay area surrounded with, no steeped in multiple Asian American food traditions, I'm a little wistful. So to satisfy my own longings, I'm offering up an excellent recipe I cobbled together back in July.

The Vietnamese meatball can be used as a filling in a lettuce wrap (which we did) or alternately in a baguette sandwich banh mi xiu mai chay (which I will definitely be doing soon-- when I have success, I'll post it here!). They're typically made with chicken or pork, and nước mắm, but we use Quorn chik'n tenders and a soy sauce-based nước mắm recipe. This one's nearly vegan, but I used an egg to bind the ingredients together. If you're a clever vegan, I'm sure you already know a work-around.

Xiu Mai Chay (Vietnamese Meatless Meatballs)

12 oz. bag Quorn chik'n tenders defrosted in a microwave until room temperature. Chop in a food processor and squeeze out excess liquid
3 cloves fresh garlic minced
1 Tb. minced lemongrass or fresh ginger
1 Tb. chopped fresh mint
3 Tb. chopped cilantro
1 1/2 tsp. cornstarch
salt and pepper
2-3 Tb. Nước mắm chay*  

Mix everything together and add 1 beaten egg. Shape them into meatballs about 2" in diameter.

Here's the super-ultra secret ingredient trick: **Roll the meatballs in sugar. I put some sugar out onto a plate and rolled them around. Place them on a parchment lined cookie sheet and bake at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes.


Voila! The sugar caramelizes in the oven. They're savory, fresh, moist, a little sweet, and perfect to wrap in lettuce and dip in nuoc mam chay. Enjoy!

*: Oh yeah, while I'm at it. I have adapted the quintessential Vietnamese sauce, Nước mắm to a delicious, fishless variation. Having traveled in Vietnam as both a carnivore and as an herbivore, I assure you, this one passes muster with my Vietnamese relatives! Zips refers to it as our

"Righteous Indignation" Nước Mắm Chay

1 garlic clove minced
juice and pulp of 1 lime
2 Tb. rice vinegar
2 Tb soy sauce (we use low-sodium kikkoman most often)
1 tsp. garlic chili paste (Sambal Oelek)
1 tsp sugar

These are the ingredients I always use. Once you get a feel for how spicy/sweet/salty you like it, you can certainly fudge the measurements. You can also add scant shreds of carrot to garnish it. This is a perfect dipping sauce for the meatball lettuce wraps, or for cha gio chay.

Long Time, No See!

I cannot believe I've only posted once in the entire year.  Granted 2012 has been a rough year in our household.  I try to keep Zipper's blog our happy place, so I've tried to wait for the waves to die down before writing an update. But now it's nearly the end of the year. We've been from L.A. to New York City this year, and I've only written one single post! So, gentle reader, I'm going to attempt to catch things up as much as possible. The fall semester is winding down, so I'll have a little more time to play. I promise before too long, I'll review a couple of restaurants, show a couple of crafty projects I've worked on (am working on), and offer a few new recipes before the year is out.

Here's the quilt I'm currently working on for a dear friend who is knitting me a fantastic Doctor Who themed scarf in exchange.

Here's a tantalizing starter at Le Cheval-- a Vietnamese restaurant in Oakland that Zips took me to.

Ooh, and look: I made the ratatouille recipe that was the basis for the dish in the movie Ratatouille!

In short, I hope to have Zips Veggie back up and running. This is also the very last time I make a New Year's Resolution to post something every single month. It's like when I tell a class that we'll get out early that period. It's like an immediate hex that causes the class to run long!  

New Year! New Treat! (Happy Early Spring!)

It's been far too long since I've posted something new. As a matter of happy coincidence, I found myself baking last night. Zips had had a nibble of some delicious orange cranberry mini tea scones from Trader Joe's over the weekend. Wanting to have some tea and scones with our new evening ritual of watching Downton Abbey, we found ourselves without any kind of sweet treat. We combed the grocery store's bakery section for something tea/muffin/scone-oriented. Resolving to find something to cook at home, Zips came up with an excellent vegan cranberry orange scone recipe for which we already had everything we needed! (When I make these again-- and I will-- I'm going to add a tsp. of vanilla and some sliced almonds!)

Vegan Cranberry Orange Scones are freaking delicious!

Preheat oven to 425.

2 c. flour

1 c. whole wheat flour

4 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

2/3 c. dried cranberries

(2/3 c. chopped walnuts-- we left these out. As I said, I'd add maybe 1/2 c. sliced almonds instead.)

Mix these together and set aside.

1/2 c. veg./canola oil

1/2 c. maple syrup

2/3 c. orange juice

zest from 2 oranges

(I'd add 1/2 to 1 tsp. of vanilla extract here too)

Mix wet ingredients together. Then combine wet into dry ingredients until a thick dough forms. You can spoon these by large tablespoons onto a cookie sheet, or pat into a rough rectangle and cut into wedges (yields about a dozen). Bake for 12-13 minutes until lightly brown.

We drizzled a glaze over the top that was made of powdered sugar, orange juice, and orange zest. It really made these zingy!

Because these are vegan, I'm sure they're far better for us than the Trader Joe's (whose ingredients include both butter as well as buttermilk). And ours are freaking delicious! They're crumbly and chewy instead of hard and hollow (as some scones can be). And although we omitted the walnuts, I think because of the whole wheat flour they also have a nice vaguely nutty flavor. We're already going to need another batch. We're only up to episode 5 of the first season and we only have 6 scones left.

Extra Citrus? Make some candy!

All of the holiday-themed magazines out right now are chock full of special goodies to eat and gift. Fudge, rum balls, cookies, breads-- Zips has caught the fever!

So in one of them (one of Martha Stewart's?), there were instructions for candied citrus peel. We have some excess lemons, a couple of oranges, and a new bag of limes. I only wish we had some grapefruit to add to it!

Candied Citrus Peels

Citrus! (2 grapefruits or 3 oranges or 4 lemons, or some of everything and throw in a lime while you're at it!)

4 c. sugar

water

The instructions are fairly simple, cut six slices into the peel of the fruit (but not through the fruit part) and peel away. Then use a small knife to slice away as much of the spongy, bitter white pith as you can. Slice into thin strips and cover in a pot with cold water. Bring it to a boil, dump the water, and repeat until you've brought it to a boil 3 times. Remove the peels and reserve in a bowl.

Then mix 4c. sugar with 4c. cold water. Dissolve and bring it to a boil, stirring and making sure the sugar doesn't crystallize on the sides of the pot. When it's boiling, add the citrus peels and lower the heat. Simmer (don't boil) without stirring until the peels are translucent (this takes about an hour). Turn off the heat and let them cool down. Remove peels and pat dry with a paper towel (you can reserve the sugar water-- you've just made a quart of citrusy simple syrup!). Then toss the peel strips into some sugar and spread out in a single layer on a wire rack for 30 minutes to dry.

I understand now that those jelly citrus candies I used to eat are basically a synthetic version of these candied peels!

We like them so much, they may not make it into the gift bags!

White Elephants, iEnvy, and Other Holiday Things

I'll admit it. I'm a PC. I don't have an iPhone, and iPad, an iPod. Never have. Not sure I want one. It seems like switching from being right handed to left handed (or vice versa). All my music is on the amazon cloud, not iTunes. Like anyone else, I love the slick, feather weight, intuitive neato features of all of these iGadgets. I just don't have any and can't afford them and don't know if I'd ever want to make the switch. I've looked at the Kindle Fire thingy, and I don't know if I need one. I think I'm just working out iEnvy.

This doesn't stop me from going to a holiday party with a "white elephant" gift exchange where a contingent of the attendees do that thing where they bump their iphones together and whip out their ipads so they can shuffle through photos and play Angry Birds while everyone looks on with envy. Last time we got together, two of them set up their talking tom cat and talking ben the dog face to face and they repeated what the other said in their funny voices.

The gift exchange rules is under $20, and fair trade, homemade, or re-purposed. I decided to whip up an iPad cozy. Even better, I decided to whip up an iPad cozy that looks like an iPad!

I had to extract my felt from under Zipper, who has not moved from this stack (and is nestled in a ball in the same spot as I type this)

And did a lot of google image searching for the physical dimensions of ipads-- (and I'm not sure if they have a 1 or a 2!). And what the app icons look like. I'm also not sure what apps my friends have or would probably have. So I settled for Skype, Angry Birds, Safari, and the camera and photo album apps. I would've done the notepad, but didn't have a light yellow or brown. Same for the YouTube app-- that looks like a brown old-fashioned tv.

Stitching them on helped to add details.

I added a battery, and wanted to add more details to the top row, but decided to stick with simplicity

The cardboard inside is (hopefully) cut to the actual dimensions of the device itself. Secretly I hope the 3 ipad owners fight over who gets to take it home.

We figure this is the closest we'll ever come to owning one, but even holding the cozy makes me really wish I had something to stick inside it. Or maybe this is just iEnvy working on me again!

Starting the Holidays Early & Tarte au Citron

After having such a rough fall semester, Zips is feeling even more festive than usual. We've got our Christmas tree all set up. I've got orders to climb up on the roof to string lights before the week is out. Mixes of contemporary and classic holiday songs are blaring from every room. We even splurged on a light-up flamingo with a festive red scarf for the front yard (it suits the Southern New Mexico climate. Her name is Babs Johnson.) Zips found an amazing pinecone garland from West Elm, but it sold out almost immediately.

So I took it upon myself to put something together that might make her happy and approximate how cool this would've looked. There are a few pine trees on campus, so we drove out there and filled two shopping bags with the nicest ones we could find (and only when I dumped them out on my living room floor did I think about the possibility that critters might live in them!). I tied them in slip knots to some jute twine and ended up with about 14 feet of it! (hey the West Elm one is only 6 feet!) Now that I have this down, I should go looking for acorns too!

I put the leftover younger pine cones into a glass bowl for decor too!

Meanwhile, we've been growing several scrawny citrus plants for more than a year now. We've got a kumquat tree, several lime trees, a satsuma tree, and a dwarf Meyer lemon tree that has finally borne some tiny Meyer lemons! They're lovely, very tart, and floral. We had four ripe ones at once, so Zips suggested we do something special with them. In that same Good Housekeeping, there's a recipe for a simple lemon curd. So we decided to half it and make some mini Meyer lemon tarts with our baby lemons! From scratch!

Tarte au Citron:

1/2 c. sugar

1/3 c. fresh lemon juice

1 Tb. fresh lemon zest

3 Tb. butter

2 eggs

**You should prep and bake your tart crust beforehand and let it cool. I use a 1/3 c. shortening +1/3 c. butter + 2 c. flour recipe. Baked 2 mini-tarts crusts for about 15 minutes at 400.**

In a saucepan, melt the butter with the sugar, lemon juice and zest. In a bowl, whisk the eggs. Once the lemon mixture is melted/dissolved/incorporated, spoon a bit out and whisk it into the egg bowl. Spoon a little more in and whisk (in order to warm the eggs up a little). Pour the eggs into the saucepan and heat over low heat, stirring continuously, until the mixture thickens (about 15 minutes).

Then I poured the lemon curd into the tart crusts. I cannot wait to eat these! I'll wait until tomorrow, but it might be the first thing I eat on Thanksgiving morn!

Happy Holidays!