Step Into My Thimble

First off, THANKS MARIKO!!

Some lovely and tasty Japanese tea, soup, and a cute li’l notepad. Yay!

The birthday boy got a whole week of birthday stuff this year. Here he is with his cake:

The whole cake itself

The Butler family enjoying their slices

The cakes prior to frosting – red, ain’t they??

OK my take on this recipe, from Clare Crespo’s Yummy Fun, is this:

1. The cake batter is very VERY dense, without a really strong flavor, so don’t expect the end result to be like a fluffy chemical-y box cake. It is solid stuff.
1.5. If you use non-stick pans, you should still grease and flour them. I had a hard time removing my cakes without damage.
2. I used a new brand of vanilla extract (brought back from Mexico by my little bro) and it had a very light flavor. Before this bottle, I had some great, dark organic vanilla extract that I think would have given the frosting a much better taste. The frosting is very buttery and rich, but needs a strong vanilla flavor to help it not seem too waxy.
3. When you cook the milk & flour for the frosting, really watch it because it cooks and thickens quicker than you think it will.
4. This cake should be refridgerated after you get the frosting on, otherwise (esp. on a warmer day) it will be oily. But, let it get to room temp. before serving so the flavor comes out a bit (see No. 2 above).
5. The black gel frosting does make a nice accent for decorating this baby!
6. ABOVE ALL–wear an apron and put away any valuable linens, etc. because with two whole ounces of red food coloring, mixing up this cake can cause some serious stainage. I used a tablespoon of bleach with the dishes when I got done making it, and it helped clean up the wooden spoons and rubber spatula I used.

I was trying so hard at work yesterday to finish this. And I did, except when I tried it on the neck was soooo tight that there was no way I could get it on. I think those neck decreases made it smaller than the sleeve cuffs!

So I had to redo the neck at KIP, and I decided to skip the decreases and make the turtleneck longer. I finished it up right at the end of the night, and I wore it home! (Ends have not been sewn in yet, but that’s on the agenda for this evening.)

I have now, finally, finished my first major project *for myself*!! It’s about time. Thanks to all of the people in my KIP posse for the encouragement, tips, and fun times along the way.

In other news, tonight I’ll be making that red velvet cake. Stay tuned–it has a cooked frosting, which I am a bit nervous about.

Banff is thisclose to being done… it would have been done last night, except I underestimated the amount of time it would take to sew up the pieces nicely, and I had a total battle getting the stitches picked up around the neck. I finally had to give in and go to bed.

This morning I started over on the neck, and it’s looking much better. There are only 16 rows left on the collar, and then the rest of the ends to be sewn in (like 1,000). I’m going to try to do this at work today. Unfortunately I can’t upload pictures from the office, so you’ll have to wait until tomorrow…

And from trying it on, I think I am gonna have to block it a bit after all. I added 2″ to the body length but it’s still short as is.

At least I’ll be able to show it off at the KIP if it’s done!

7-9 pm, Letizia’s, 2144 W. Division
And everyone who goes to this is AWESOME!!

Happy birthday Rodney! All of 29 years old now.

Rodney’s family likes to make this breakfast called “Eggs & Soldiers” where the soldiers are strips of toast, to dip in your soft-boiled egg. Conveniently the “Weekend Knitting” book has a pattern for these little sweaters. A lovely birthday breakfast it was!

These were made from scraps of Tintagel Farms yarn, which I love. It is only sold at fiber festivals–if you ever see the booth grab some quick! It’s so soft and the colors are wonderful.

This weekend we finally made a trip to Mitsuwa, a big Japanese grocery store in the suburbs. Rodney asked for a Japanese dinner for his birthday this year (which is this Tuesday–but we had to make it today since our schedules don’t match these days). Conveniently enough, he had given me a Japanese cookbook for Christmas!*

Here’s the stuff we got at Mitsuwa. Two items I forgot to buy while we were there: goma tofu and “real” tofu in general, and loose tea in all the many wonderful varieties. And things I couldn’t find include shio-ame (salt candy), these puffed vegetable snacks that kind of look like cheetos but green (not the ones made of dried peas), and bottled soba cha (buckwheat iced tea). We looked for Suntory whiskey in the liquor section, but no luck. We just got some plum wine for Rodney to try, and some cooking sake.

These are my favorite things: a type of pickle, and Bulldog sauce. Japanese pickles come in a zillion varieties. My favorite has always been the cabbage, cucumber and little bits of carrot kind. All they had was the pictured variety, which is flavored with shiso and plenty good, but my favorite is just like this except with red pepper flakes or something similar as a seasoning. I would pay big money for a recipe for this kind of pickle!

As for the Bulldog sauce, it is kind of like A-1.

My other favorite, which you can see at the front left of the picture of everything, is kinoko-no-yama and its twin takenoko-no-sato, little cookies coated in chocoate made to look like little mushrooms and bamboo shoots. I have missed these so much since 1998 when I came back from Japan! And now, I’m pretty glad they weren’t labeled in English when I lived there because I have discovered that one package has 63% of your daily saturated fat!! Yow.

For Rodney’s dinner, I made two small side dishes, hijiki seaweed with sweet potatoes, and spinach with sesame dressing. The main dish was chicken simmered with vegetables. We had one small bottle of genmai cha (iced tea made with puffed/toasted rice) to share. I have no idea if Japanese people would consider this a square meal, or whether these dishes even go together, I just made them because the ingredients were easiest to obtain, and I could figure out all three dishes to be ready at the same time.

Getting all dishes in a meal to be ready at the same time, by the way, is something I think of as a very important cooking skill. There is nothing worse than having one thing go cold while the other dishes finish. It takes careful planning sometimes.

Anyway, I remember now why I don’t do a lot of Japanese cooking: I totally trashed the kitchen making these things! Every pan we own was dirty, because almost every ingredient had to be cooked separately. I so admire the people of that country who make such awesome, beautiful meals every day. Oh, I miss it, and the fresh things you could get all the time… natsukashiii….

***

In knitting news, the ribbing of the second Banff sleeve is almost done. That means another 40 or so hours, and then I can put the pieces together! Maybe…maybe by this Thursday it will be done. But we’ve got the future in-laws in town this next weekend, so I have to clean the house! And make a birthday cake! (I’m making this one by the way–and I’m so excited to be doing red velvet from scratch!!)

*We are both kind of bad–he gave me that cookbook in the hopes of getting more Japanese meals, and I gave him a big framed map of the Mediterranean circa the 1600s, because we had one empty wall that really needed something!