DIY Sriracha Sauce

Rooster sauce? That's the gateway drug, but once you get sick of it, you'll find that there are other sriracha sauces worth seeking out. I made the switch from Huy Fong's sriracha sauce to Grand Mountain last year after trying it at Hawker Fare, so there was no panic in my household when the now averted sriracha crisis of 2014 started to make headlines. Since the only ingredients in Grand Mountain are chiles, sugar, vinegar, garlic, and salt, it couldn't be too hard to make, right? 

Chiles are in season now, hence cheap, so I sauntered over to my market and picked up some beautiful chiles still on the stem (2 pounds for $4 - what a deal). Using this recipe as the base, I cut the stems off a pound of chiles but left their green caps on.

I pulsed the chiles in the food processor until they were roughly chopped, then added 2 tablespoons of palm sugar, another tablespoon of evaporated cane sugar, two small cloves of garlic, and 1 tablespoon of sea salt. I pulsed the mixture until it was wet and the chile skin was about the same size as the seeds.

The mixture was put into a canning jar, and I left it out to ferment for 5 days, tasting each day after the 3rd day until I detected a slight sour tang. There was a bit of white fuzzy mold at the top, but it was easy to discard with a spoon.

I added 1/4 cup of distilled white vinegar, and then boiled the mixture for 5 minutes. When I tasted it after the mixture cooled down to room temperature, it needed some more vinegar, so I ended up adding an extra 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar.

After blending the sauce for a few minutes with a splash of water, enough water to get the mixture moving, I pressed it through a fine-mesh sieve. This step took the longest!

The result is a complex sriracha sauce that is hotter (and dare I say better?) than Grand Mountain Strong. It's terrific, and now I want to try this with different chiles and can it so I can have enough around until next year.

Have you made fermented chile sauces? If so, please leave me a comment because I'd love to compare notes and hear about your experiences. I have some green chiles I bought at the same time and I want to make another fermented hot sauce.

Take 3

Just in case you were wondering how big or small the hat is, here it is on Mingus.

I'm so excited about publishing my pattern! So far, 15 people have downloaded it and 7 people have it in their queues. One person has started it, and I've been getting lots of funny and nice email from people about the pattern. I cannot wait to see some finished projects!

Knit Thai Headdress, Take 2

The Tilden Park Scarf is an easy ruffled and ruched infinity scarf that adds a feminine touch to any outfit.

 I have a pattern written up and some friends are checking it over. Once they're done and I incorporate their suggestions, I'll release the pattern on Ravelry as a free .pdf file! Stay tuned...

ETA: My cat hat pattern is now available through Ravelry. If you're not on Ravelry and would like the pattern, email me and I'll send it to you. Don't forget to check out my other free patterns listed on the sidebar!

International Cat Hats, Thailand

Welcome to the first installment of International Cat Hats, the Thailand edition.

The Inspiration

The Plan

The Reality

Mr. Greaseball is a cultured cat. Although he hasn't been able to travel with us internationally, he has always been fascinated with different cultures and I oftentimes find him curled up on top of our travel guidebooks. Therefore, when the urge to knit a Thai headdress (chadaa) overwhelmed me, I could only think of one model. Yes, that's right: Greaseball.


Greaseball says "Sawatdee Khrab!" (hello) to Mingus.


Stay tuned for more International Cat Hats. You've been warned.

The Long Awaited Vacation Pictures, part 1

My apologies to those friends who check this blog in anticipation of vacation photos and don't really care about the goofy pets, food, or knitting. First of all, this must have been torture for you! Secondly, um, why are we friends again?!? (Just kidding... Or am I?) Your not so subtle emails asking about the trip and the photos, plus my embarrassment at almost having passed the 1-month return mark and only talking (incessantly, I might add) about the wonderful food I ate, has prompted me to dig out my trip journal for this recap.

Before we being, a little background: my father-in-law served in the Vietnam War (known as the American War in Vietnam) from 1971-1972. Recently, he felt a little tickle to return to Vietnam because he found the country beautiful and the people friendly. He offhandedly mentioned this to the boy and I, and in a matter of minutes, we all knew that it would happen. This trip has been planned (in the we're going sense, not the logistical sense) for over 2 years!

The original manifestation of this trip was going to be an epic bike tour of SE Asia, but finding a chunk of time for any sort of trip became a scheduling nightmare, so the trip was whittled down to 3 weeks in Vietnam and Thailand. We also punted the idea of a guided tour, since we felt confident that Lonely Planet, a sense of adventure, and sheer luck would keep us afloat. We tried to learn a little Vietnamese, too, but never got further than "Hello!" (Side note: saying "hello" to a woman in Vietnamese means figuring out if she is older or younger than you, so it was tricky, tricky, tricky.)

Let's begin!

Okay, so this is actually in the Taipei airport, but isn't it cute? Bok choy with adorable little aphids. I tried to find a stuffed animal or something like this in the surrounding stores, but I had no luck.

When we arrived in Hanoi, we were greeted by a boisterous, smoggy, yet charming city punctuated with honking 24 hours a day. Our guest house, Thu Giang, was a located in an alley in the Old Quarter and protected by the house cat.


The rooms were small, but the idea was to only sleep in them anyway. And for $15 (including the much needed air-conditioning), they were a good value.


Since it was late morning when we arrived and we needed to stay awake to minimize jet lag, we took a walk to Hoan Kiem Lake and Thap Rua (Tortoise Tower).




The Vietnamese have four sacred animals (tortoise, dragon, lion, phoenix), and these animals manifest in statues and monuments through the country.

My yarn radar must have been on, because we found this store right away. Amazingly, I did not buy any yarn. I blame jet lag.

As I've mentioned before, crossing the street was a harrowing affair. One must go steady and slow because doubling back, changing pace, or running across a street was a recipe for a broken bones. Drivers here try to anticipate your next move, which is entirely dependent on you not stopping and screaming "OH MY GAWD, I AM GOING TO DIE!" like I was tempted to do on many occasions.

Navigating around motorbikes was a special challenge in Vietnam because, just like many bike riders in the United States, motorbikes did not follow the traffic laws. They would ride up onto sidewalk and run red lights, the whole time peppering no one in particular with honks.

One thing I really loved in Vietnam was that everyone and everything was sized perfectly, for me at least. Here, I'm a shrimp! I am under 5-feet tall, but I still TOWERED over many Vietnamese women and men. The boy and his dad were giants here and could never shake the "bull in the China shop" feeling.

Here's proof of the boy's giantness in Vietnam. Sure, he has big feet anyway, but the 4-flights of stairs we had to take to our guest house room were particularly harrowing for him.

Hanoi is dense. Dense with people, dense with shopping and sight seeing, and dense with food. Don't come here expecting to find an idyllic, quite street on which to take a leisurely walk (although, the market below came close for a few minutes).

This is the night market that only happens on Friday nights. Looking for underwear, a pet bird, and some HVAC ducting? You'll find it here.

The one touristy thing we did was to watch the water puppet show. I had to drag the boy to the show, since he was expecting something campy and horrible. It turned out to be well worth the $1.50 ticket price, and then some. There was live Vietnamese folk music, beautiful costumes, and these intricate and slightly creepy (that is probably just my personal hangup) puppets performed jerky back flips in the air and swam in the water.

After two days in Hanoi, we were ready to move on to something more peaceful. Hence, Ha Long Bay.

To be continued...