The Dango Experiment

I've been meaning to make dango since... oh October (although I seem to have lost the post where I said I was intending to make them so you probably didn't know that or think that I was as scatter brained as I am...) so I rolled up my sleeves with a bunch of rice flour to make the three coloured dango from The Manga Cookbook.


Slight disaster. First off the recipe is wrong. There is not nearly enough flour in it. The mixture as written is so wet you can drink it. I managed to salvage, just about, a quarter of it by adding more flour. The shaping was an issue but that's more to do with me so I'll let the recipe off that one. Then came the cooking. The recipe suggests boiling. That was useless, so I switched to steaming for the last two batches. Never mind. They are done now.

I'm exhausted.

The Samosa

I have spent the last few days snacking like mad. Snacking on just about anything I could get my hands on. Given my filo success of Christmas I thought I would try a samosa.

I know. Using filo isn't the traditional way. But as I don't own a deep fat fryer and Stephen considers deep flying an act of Satan anyway (or, at least, too big of a fire hazard to happen in our kitchen) I thought I'd go with filo and baking.


And they were delicious. Not quite as delicious as the traditional pastry but definitely brought back memories of one of my favourite food experiences: one girl bringing her Mother's samosas to celebrate the fictional holiday of Eidmas. Which, should you want to celebrate this at home is an arbitrary date between little Eid and Christmas (barely a month apart that year) that is mainly marked by bringing more snacks than usual into your religious studies class.

I do own several recipe books with samosa recipes in, even heretical ones recommending filo, so once again the choice is somewhat arbitrary. And India's Vegetarian Cooking won this one.

Planning

Today we were greeted at the door by packages. Beautiful promising packages. Seeds!

So the living room was briefly turned over to planning central. Again. Luckily this year we already have all the pots in place. A few new ones will need to come in but that is far less compost to carry than last year.


That also means that we're going to get blight again. I can pray about the weather and of course I'm going to get new pots and compost for our tomatoes but... I putting most of my hope in starting them early and hoping I can get a productive crop before I have to loose them.

Three varieties this year. The Beef Steak and the Gardener's Delight will make an appearance and we also have a yellow variety to join them.


I'm going a bit mad for climbers. We're going to see if we can make a proper effort with the beans and I have some French chaps and Asparagus Pea to clamber with them.

A new variety of beetroot is to be tried out and we have red varieties of carrots and spring onions.

But on the totally new side of things I'm going to be planting shallots and grown-up onions. The garlic is already in. I couldn't resist adding some tomatillos, one of the purple varieties. Stephen wants potatoes. I'm not getting between than man and his potatoes so that one is totally up to him.

As always our focus is on useful plants but some bulbs, already deep within the soil, will add a splash of colour. Poppy, pot marigold, nasturtiums for useful decoration. And a butterfly mix for the flutterbys.

I'm very overexcited.

Ready for the kill...

This post is probably the most icky thing I have ever written. It is not catching me at my most charitable moment or my most vegetarian.

I'm really quite ready to kill now.

All winter we have been dealing with fungus gnats. Which was all fine whatever when they where just hanging around the chilli (of chilli oil fame) that I was about to cut down. but when you attack my gorgeous, beautifully promising crocus bulbs it's time to get angry. And of course it doesn't help that they are in our bedroom now.

One of the most annoying qualities of these gnats is there lack of survival instincts. As in I'm boiling water for pasta and one flies in. Or a drink left on the side. Or mung beans sprouting. Which means a lot of waisted water, pulled faces and general shouts of 'ewwww'.

Summer numbers where kept low by a sticky sunflower on the window. In autumn I snapped and went mad with a can of fly spray. And as much as I love spreading poison around the house it's got to stop. And my current method of waiting till my skin is crawling and then snapping them out of the air is... well leaving me with messy hands.

Stephen has been making noises about carnivorous plants and I've seen this. I guess someone must find them yummy. And if they stay away from my seedlings well then...

Memories!

My vegetable delivery has been cancelled because of the snow. What a shame, I thought, I really need to cook for the blog soon because I haven't posted in ages. Oh wait! Christmas! I still haven't blogged about that!

On Boxing Day I said that I hadn't stopped cooking all December. Which is true although surprises and general Christmas messiness means I'm lacking evidence.



I made chocolate cookies and biscotti for our parents and siblings. But they immediately had to go into boxes, no pictures. And Stephen's parents got a bottle of Sloe Gin (with apologies to my parents but I didn't think it would be safe in the post)and some chilli oil for his brother that finished off the lasts of Stephens beloved organic Italian olive oil. Luckily I had a picture of that before it was decanted.

Christmas day itself we went round to Stephen's parents for the meal his brother was cooking. I brought a vegetarian main - a stuffed cabbage leaf which was, in the haste, steamed for far too long and didn't taste great - and two plates of nibbles. Some Feta parcels and Paneer munchies.


Then I uploaded the pictures and forgot about them for two weeks. Sorry about that.

AmnesTea Party

Our AmnesTea went well. We managed to raise £25 for Amnesty International and eat a lot of yummy food.

It had turned into a bit of a potluck and Stephen's colleagues impressed us by bringing plenty of good food as well as the much needed donations.

We contributed a big pot of chili (and after carrying that to his office my arms refused to work for the rest of the day!), the rolls, and chocolate cut out cookies from everyone's favourite new book Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. We went for a mix of Christmas shapes and apples for the Mac users. Our dishes were joined by yummy brownies, cheese straws and sausage rolls, lovingly hand made. Lovingly carried in were tonnes of snacks which I'm told kept the office fed for days.
(There was plenty of other stuff too, it was a real community effort, but I'm lovingly forgetful so please don't take offence if I've missed you out.)

On the cooling rack...

Pull apart rolls made from the usual recipe. A bit squished together but I think it worked. It's for tomorrow's AmnesTea. I'll also be providing chilli and cookies. It's turned into a bit of a pot luck but we should be able to raise some money and have some good food.