Learning New Things

I have been totally transparent with our Covid experience.  We stay home and only grocery shop every two weeks and get cat food once a month.  

So, I keep finding that I don't have enough of something to make a new recipe I see and when we do get to the store that one thing is usually out.

This is not me complaining, this is me adapting and learning how to cook without things and have it still turn out really good.

For instance, I wanted brownies but there were no gluten/dairy-free mixes left at the store.  So we took a cake mix and instead of doing what it said, I used:
1 egg
1/4 cup oil
and 1/2 cup water

Fold everything together.  It will look like sludge.  If there is still a floury look to it add a bit more water a tsp at a time.

Bake 30 minutes at 350 degrees in a greased pan

Ta-dah!  Yummy brownies

Then I made this:

There was no baking powder at the store or yeast.  But there was a bread mix that had a yeast packet so I made Focaccia!

1 bread mix
1 tsp rosemary
1 package instant or rapid yeast
1 1/2 cups warm water
1 tbsp honey
1 tsp salt
4 tbs olive oil

Put the bread mix and rosemary in a bowl and fluff it up a bit for good measure

Warm your water to between 120-130 degrees

Add yeast and honey to the water and let bloom for 3-5 minutes

Fold yeast/honey water, salt, 2tbps oil to dry mixture until it becomes like a thick paste if you are using a gluten-free mix.  

(If you aren't...you will get a nice dough that will need to rise for a bit before putting in the pan.  Then lay it out.  Poke holes.  Season.  Fill and bake.)

Pour the paste on a lined baking sheet use half the oil on the bottom so it doesn't stick.

Spread the mixture the best you can and then make dimples in the bread by poking your fingers into it.  Let the pan sit covered for 30 minutes.  The dough will not rise like gluten dough but it will get more substance to it.

Optional:  you can fill the dimples with tomatoes, olives, pepperoni - anything your little heart desires.

Brush oil on the top and sprinkle with anything you want.  I used garlic and Italian seasonings.

Bake for 25-30 minutes and then let cook for 10-12 minutes while amazing smells waft through the house and call family members to the kitchen with their enticing aroma.

Enjoy!

Or...dip in some olive oil that is seasoned with anything you like, garlic, crushed red pepper, Italian seasonings...

Then again, you might want to make soup to dip it in.  I made Split Pea Soup which was much easier then I thought.

• Take a cup of split (green/yellow) peas - I didn't know there were yellow peas and they add a bit of color to the soup.  Soak them as directed. Rinse them after soaking.
• Dice onion and grate a carrot (a cup each)
• Garlic to taste - we like a lot
• Some kind of meat - we had pancetta
• A tbsp of butter mine is the non-diary kind which makes it really more like oil
• Water or broth

Cook down the garlic and veggies until they are mushy.  

Add the meat - I cooked mine mostly first and drained off the grease.

Add soaked and rinsed peas and broth/water to cover - I used chicken broth instead of water because that's how Mom taught me.

Set it to simmer.

Check on your soup every 15 minutes and give it a good stir making sure nothing has burned on the bottom.  Add water or broth as needed.  

Everything will break down over three hours and become nice and creamy.

I tasted everything at the end to see if salt was needed but the pancetta seasoned the soup nicely so I only added some freshly ground pepper to tie all the flavors together.

So, yeah...been really enjoying cooking again and learning a lot in the process.


🤗 (socially distanced hugs)

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Sending love and light to everyone being affected by this virus.  
May you be safe.  
May your loved ones be safe.  
🙏
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I am always learning new things.  Our world is shaped by how we have learned to see it and when something challenges that reality, it can mess with a person's head for a bit.

So, I wanted to do a simple tutorial this week and I picked one of my favorite stitches called Feather-and-Fan which uses decreases and increases to make a piece of lovely lacy fabric.

Or so I thought...

I have always heard that Feather-and-Fan and Old Shale are the same Shetland pattern, but they are not.

In WWII someone used them interchangeably and then it just caught on.  It isn't clear if Feather-and-Fan is a simpler variation of Old Shale and since most stitches were orally taught we may never know a clear answer.

Old shale isn't even really called that.  It was originally Old Shell named after the tracks left by the sea on a pebbled shore.  Shael is how the Shetlanders pronounced shell.  

So, the pattern that I love is really Old Shell.  It is easy to see how one pattern could have sprung from the other if someone wanted to really shorten Old Shell, but they look totally different as I will now demonstrate.

Abbreviations


K - Knit
K4tog - knit 4 stitches together at the same time

K4tog tbl - knit 4 stitches together at the same time through the back loop
P - Purl
YO - yarn over

Old Shell - a repeat of 18 stitches 

Row 1:   Knit
Row 2:   Knit
Row 3:   K2tog 3 times, (YO, K1) 6 times, K2tog 3 times
Row 4:   Purl

These three projects are from various years in my knitting career.  I have always loved this pattern.








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Feather-and-Fan - a repeat of 14 stitches

Row 1:   K4tog, YO, (K1, YO) five times, K4tog tbl, P1
Row 2:   Knit1, P13

I added an extra P1 to make the row more have more continuity IMHO.  So my rows looked like this:

Row 1:    P1, *K4tog, YO, (K1, YO) five times, K4tog tbl, P1*  repeat ** until end
Row 2:   *K1, P13* repeat ** until last stitch, K1

I also wanted to note, be careful to get all four stitches.  Sometimes I missed one and sometimes I added one since they were hard to distinguish especially when knitting them through the back loop.  Sometimes I needed to wiggle my needle a bit to get it to fit as well because it can be super hard to make it through all those stitches.

If I had to pick a favorite it would be Old Shell.  I like the paired increases and decreases as they flow in a wave-like motion.  It is easy to memorize and becomes almost like a Zen mediation.  

The actual Feather-and-Fan pattern is hard on my hands.  The K4togs are really tough.  The pattern is easy to memorize but I can't find a groove as I have to stop to make the decreases.

But that is my opinion you may find otherwise.  They are both beautiful with variegated yarn.

Next week we will talk about a really cool textured stitch the Woven Basket Stitch.

Thanks for reading!

If you have any questions regarding this or any of my other tutorials, please feel free to leave a question in the comments.

Happy crafting!

Ruinwen

😀

If you would be interested in an in-depth article on these stitches, this is a great link with many Shetland historians and knitters chiming their two cents in the comments.