Granville Complete!

Granville is off the knitting needles, finally! It only took me 504 days. Nothing about it was hard, but for some reason, I kept on starting and stopping, and starting and stopping, and starting and stopping this project. I raced through the front panels and the sleeves, and then it sat. And then I raced through the back, and then it sat. And then I blocked the pieces, and then they sat. You get the picture.

The yarn is Hemp for Knitting's Hempwol in color 040. The cables really pop with this yarn, and it's light and warm. However, maybe due to the hemp, it's a little bit itchy. I'm hoping that this hoodie will soften up the more I wear and wash it.

The Face of Optimism

We pass by this sign often, and today I finally got around to snapping a picture of it. It's on the side of a fairly busy residential street, and the thought of a cat crossing right here makes my heart skip a beat. The world is dangerous for outside cats!

Greaseball only goes in the backyard, and I supervise him when he does that because if I didn't, he'd eat all the weeds and then throw up. I suppose we're lucky in that he's never wanted to climb a tree or climb a fence. Fifty-Fifty would periodically escape, and we'd have to convince her to come off of the roof of out from underneath our neighbor's deck. She was an adventurer, but Greaseball? Not so much. He likes napping.

Brown Derby

One leftover ruby red grapefruit, some nondescript bourbon, and honey make a cocktail worth singing over! Shake together 3 parts bourbon, 2 parts grapefruit juice, and 1 part rich honey syrup with ice. Strain in to a glass and enjoy! If you're feeling fancy, add a grapefruit peel twist. I wasn't feeling fancy.

I had some cheap scotch that the boy bought from Trader Joe's that I used instead of the bourbon, and it was still delicious. Is it sad that the only things I buy at Trader Joe's are toilet paper, dried pasta, and booze? Their produce is covered in unnecessary packaging and never looks fantastic. Once in awhile, I'm seduced by their avocados, but they all ripen at once and then at least one of them will end up in the compost pile. Where I grew up, TJs was the best supermarket around, but now I'm spoiled by multiple farmers' markets (the El Cerrito Tuesday market has the best Asian vegetables), Monterey Market, and Berkeley Bowl West.

One thing I cannot find in the Berkeley area is bulk peanut oil. I go through a 3L bottle of peanut oil every 6 months because I use it for stir-frying and everyday cooking where olive oil's taste doesn't fit in.  Before I buy another plastic bottle of peanut oil, I'd like to find somewhere I can refill my existing bottle. If anyone has any nearby options, please let me know! A friend informed me I can find what I'm looking for at Rainbow Grocery, but it's far from me.

Dehydrated Snacks

Can a healthy snack replace a salty, crunch potato chip? This is what I wanted to explore when I got a new dehydrator. All my experiments with nut cheeses meant that I needed something to spread said cheese on. I was buying chips and crackers, but decided that a homemade spread deserved a homemade cracker.

First up was an amaranth cracker. Making it was simple enough: boil 1 part amaranth with 2 parts water. Add salt and any other seasoning you desire, and spread the mixture 1/4" thick onto dehydrating tray, and dry at 115 °F for 10 hours or more. I liked them, and the boy thought they were "not his favorite." His dislike over these could be due to me not seasoning them very well, but I liked them. They had good crunch, although it was like eating tobiko at a sushi restaurant: you find yourself chewing bits of amaranth minutes after you've finished the cracker.

Attempt #2 was beet chips. I read about making crispy beet chips, starting from raw beets. I thinly sliced the beets in the food processor, and then drizzled them with olive oil and a dusting of salt. They were dehydrated at 115 °F for 20 hours. Does beet taffy sound good to you? If so, you'll love these chips. If it sounds disgusting, avoid at all costs!  I liked them, but they weren't crisp. Further web research shows that maybe I need to fry them first, and then dehydrate them.

Attempt #3 was flax crackers, and for these, I borrowed a juicer. (Having a Vitamix, a juicer, and a dehydrator made my kitchen feel like a regular hippy hangout.) I juiced beets and carrots, mixed soaked flax seeds with some of the vegetable juice and pulp, and dried the mixture out for 10 hours, again at 115 °F. This time, success! While I need to work on scoring the dough so I can break apart the crackers into snackable sizes, the crunch and taste of these are perfect for dipping.

Attempt #4 was just as disgusting as it looks. I mixed together nut pulp, leftover from making nut milk, tahini, and I forgot what else into a dough and dehydrated it. These were recycled into dog biscuits.

I'm losing hope over my leftover nut pulp. The energy to freeze it for future use isn't worth it. I've read that I can dry the pulp, but it's flavorless! Sure, there's fiber, but there are more pleasant ways to get fiber into my diet. So far, nut pulp is good for dog treats and worm food.

Smoky Negroni

Substitute mezcal for gin in the Negroni recipe, and what do you get? A smoky Negroni, which is even better than a regular Negroni! I got the idea from Speisekammer's bar. There, it was served with a fancy vermouth, but I only had the non-fancy variety at home. Still, it was delicious.

If you want to make your own smoky Negroni, mix together equal parts mezcal, sweet vermouth, and Campari. I was out of Campari last night, so I made it with Aperol, resulting in a less bitter drink. Hey, since I'm already messing with a classic cocktail, what's one more substitution?

Bottle Drying Rack

Homebrewers are all familiar with the accumulation of beer bottles on the kitchen counters. The bottles can't be thoroughly cleaned in a dishwater due to the beer sediment, and therefore they pile up until they reach critical mass (i.e. someone gets fed up and starts complaining).

Our excuse for letting the bottles pile up is that we didn't have a good place to dry them. I hate counter clutter and we have limited counter space, so anything that needs to be hand washed is dried and put away immediately - we don't have a countertop drainboard. It's hard to dry a bottle immediately unless you want to shove a small rag into it or use a hair dryer.

The boy wanted to weld a bottle rack, but again, it would pig up some room on the counter and it would drain on the counter. We compromised on a simpler solution: a drain board that straddles the sink and holds the bottles upside down. He found some wood scrap, drilled some holes, and problem solved!

(Actually, the problem is almost solved. Someone still needs to clean the bottles out with a bottle brush.)

The rack works well for wine bottles, too. We save those as well because we have a friend who grows grapes and makes way more wine than he can possibly drink, an excellent quality in a friend.

No More Boba Tea Guilt

Today marked another baby step in my quest to create less trash: my cobbled together boba cup!  I love boba (also known as bubble tea), but I get queasy when I get the plastic cup heat sealed with the plastic lid and the giant plastic straw. After inhaling another boba tea, I mentioned to my friend that I really need to stop ordering these drinks or think of a way to get the drink without all that trash. Since I so rarely get single-use cups nowadays, it felt odd and wrong to toss everything. (Yes, I've been living in Berkeley for a long time!)

I started by researching the crux of this setup, the boba straw. I found a glass option and a metal option, and after mulling over the two, I went with the 10" boba straw from The Mulled Mind. Once I had that, I had the other pieces of the setup at home. The lid comes from reCAP, and the jar is a Ball Pint & Half. The reCAP lid is for wide-mouth jars. If I were to buy the setup, it would cost around $15 (jar is $1.50 jar + $7.00 lid + $6.50 straw). Mine boba kit costs a few dollars less than that because I bought the lids and jars in bulk. The lid is the most expensive component, and it certainly isn't necessary - I like mine because I'm usually in my car when the urge to get a boba hits me, so this keeps spilling to a minimum.

For you Bay Area boba fans, County Cheese in Kensington makes a fantastic version. They use high quality tea, real milk (instead of that sketchy powered creamer stuff), and the boba is boiled in sugar water and has the right amount of chew. I always hate it when I order a boba and instead of being chewy, the tapioca balls are old and mushy or, almost equally as bad, the balls are tasteless because they have been boiled only in water. That defeats the whole purpose of the drink! I know there are some other boba places around that don't use the gross stuff, so please leave me a comment if you have a recommendation.

Monte Rio Getaway

Quick vacations are wonderful for getting out of a rut. The boy and I are enjoying our time off, and instead of scheduling a grand trip, we decided to make several small trips around the Bay Area. Monte Rio is less than 2 hours from us, yet it feels far enough away to let some of the daily-life stress soften up. Not having cell phone service, helped, too!

Sesame swam, although begrudgingly. She'll do anything to save her precious ball.

Mingus dug holes in the beach and sat proudly in them.

Sesame posed by the river...

And on tree stumps.

I found unexpected kimchi fried rice for breakfast at Dick Blomsters. This constitutes a successful vacation. Where we'd move if we didn't have to do X, Y, and Z is always a moving target, but Monte Rio is a strong contender.

If you want to see updates on the dogs, cat, and food more than once or twice a month, you can find us all on Instagram. My username is sungoldtomato.

Stingray Fish Cakes

The boy has taken up fishing, and while I do applaud hobbies that are productive and practical, I wish he would stop bringing sea monsters home. His first catch was a 22-lbs halibut, which was terrifying. The picture he took of it before he got home didn't have anything in the background to give me perspective, so when I rounded the corner of our house after he had it laid out, I pretty much screamed and ran back in the house. They look like aliens! His second catch? This 37-lbs stingray. Seriously, WTF? Can't he bring home some Dungeness crab or a nice little striped bass?

Our friend, the boy's fishing partner, graciously filleted the wings for us. Quick Googling turned up with French recipes for skate with browned butter, and also a bunch of unappetizing facts about stingrays, like how they secrete urea through their skin, so you have to process these suckers and use the meat fast.  We decide to make the brown buttered recipe. The taste of the fish was fine, but it was chewy.

What to do with chewy fish? Asian fish cakes seemed like the obvious choice. I made two versions: one Korean and one Thai (I omitted the white pepper from the Korean recipe and added two tablespoons of Thai red curry paste).

Both versions were delicious, although we need to work on our deep frying technique.  The cakes were bouncy, just like they were supposed to be. I have three tubs of fish paste in the freezer now that I can fry up and add to noodle soups and stir-fries. However, we mutually agreed that a stingray is on the "catch and release" list from now on. It was a lot of work for very little meat.