Trees in January, Oakland

Dog Park, in Anthony Chabot Park

Redwood trunk, in the dog park

Redwood trunk base, in the dog park

Tree stand down by the creek in the dog park

Continuing in the dog park

Underside of a manzanita

Outside of a manzanita

Olive trees, I think, still at the dog park

Peeling eucalyptus at Chabot Space and Science Center

Tree in the rain, through a window at Chabot Space and Science Center

More rainy trees, through a blue window at Chabot Space and Science Center

Finding Green

Walls inside an elementary school

Stone wall with moss

Tree with moss

Woods floor, with moss and ferns

Wooden fence with moss/lichen

Found in the kitchen

Avocados

Avocado cut open

Window frame inside Chabot Space and Science Center

Painted gourd from Mexico (with dust!)

Finding Orange

Mariscos Sinaloa on E 12th St at Fruitvale, Oakland California

Pebble Beach on the San Mateo coast at sunset

Cloud above Pebble Beach on the San Mateo coast at sunset

Orange things in my kitchen

Local winter fruit

Wall inside an elementary school

My bag in the sun

California poppy in January

Mole Rojo Day 2

This is how I spent Wednesday.  It was a long, productive, satisfying day in the kitchen, and it only happens quite like this once a year.   Photos Ahoy! yes, I played with the photos again.

The frying starts. See the shiny fried dried chiles!

Chiles and seeds and nuts and raisins and tortillas and bread fried. Onions and garlic and tomatoes and tomatillos still to go.

Red, green, and white – good Mexican colors.

Chiles soaked and drained, ready to grind and strain. All the rest with chicken broth ready to grind and strain.

Grinding. I do not use the traditional molcajete to grind everything, nor do I use the current traditional blender. I need less liquid with the food processor than with our old blender. And I use the food mill instead of a mesh colander and rubber spatula to strain and press everything. The mess is very traditional. The photo does not adequately capture the mess.

Colando chile. Looks like chocolate, doesn’t it? Just chiles guajillos and pasillas/anchos, fried, soaked, and ground.

El chile ya colado. That was three or four batches through the food mill. Ow. Still looks like chocolate, maybe a rich dark chocolate frosting. Smells and tastes fruity and a little sharp, mostly raw.

Colando everything else. Colando los chiles gets rid of the little bits of skin that stick between your teeth and are impossible to grind down to nothing, despite my husband’s hopes in the past that more soaking would do the trick. Nope, must colar. Colando the ground nuts, seeds, fruit/vegetables, spices, bread, tortillas is more like making a very flavorful peanut butter or hummus. Sort of. So I put it all through the food mill, then dumped the stuff that didn’t go through back in the food processor, and back through the food mill again to get as much as possible. I bet if I used a molcajete, it would be smooth to start with. Probably five batches through the food mill. Ow. Ow. Ow.

Molido y colado. Tastes raw, the flavors diluted after adding the bread, tortillas, and broth.

More mess.

The ground chile fried. Now it’s an even more luscious color and texture. If a roux isn’t cooked enough, the flour tastes raw. Bleagh. If the chile isn’t fried, the flavor is raw and sharp, even a little weak. Boring, bleagh.

The ground nuts etc mixing into the chile.

So happy together… Starting to simmer.

The chocolate! Finally!

It’s grainy chocolate, not like the smooth stuff we’re used to here. Full of sugar and a bit of cinnamon. I love gnawing on it, but it’s too sweet as hot chocolate for my taste. Not too sweet for the Kid’s taste.

Look! Chocolate in the mole! (and I was so excited, I blurred the photo!)

The last simmer.

Simmered, salt and sugar to taste, and we have mole rojo! Nearly 5 quarts, enough to freeze for Xmas.

Can I rest now?

No. I made a double batch of dough for dinner rolls.

Now?

No. Twenty tiny pies.

I know there aren’t 20 here. I think only 17 made it to the morning.

Now?

Yes, now.

So Much Work, but worth every minute of it. That’s some good mole.

Mole Rojo Day 1

Thanksgiving in my house means mole rojo.  If I spread it out over a few days, it’s not quite so overwhelming.  Chiles are seeded, ready to fry.  Pan y tortillas dried, ready to fry.  Sesame seeds and chile seeds and avocado leaves toasted and ground with bay leaves and cinnamon and cloves and peppercorns and thyme and marjoram, and avocado pit grated over it all.  Ya huele a mole, says my husband.  Also, it smells like the tortas de papa his mother makes.

(Please note the avocado tree growing in the pit.)

Tomorrow I fry.  Chiles and tortillas and bread and tomatoes and tomatillos and peanuts and almonds and pepitas and raisins and garlic and onion.  Oh My!

This week is the Kid’s birthday week – he is 9 on Sunday next.  Tomorrow (besides frying), I’m taking the Kid and his friend to Crissy Field to fly kites.  And find lunch somewhere.

(Today I played with photo effects.  Why not?  They’re not great photos on the iphone with poor light.  Now they’re fun photos!)

Pan de Muerto

It’s delicious, even if the bones the Kid carefully shaped didn’t stick around through the baking. And we still have a little left, after the cousins came over yesterday and searched the house for pan.  My sister-in-law told me that when they stayed overnight housesitting for us this spring, the youngest asked her to make pan.  Because my kitchen always has pan of one sort or another, and nothing to do with the cook!  We made shortbread.  Delicious and simple and easy to write down in Spanish.  Galletas pa’ chaparros, which works because we’re all short.  Ha!

Ninja Crow

A murky photo, as Halloween pictures should be. I splurged on the amazing crow mask, that you can’t really see here, at the King’s Mountain Art Fair over the summer – handmade leather mask. I figure he’ll use it every year, and if he doesn’t I will.

I’m making dough for Pan de Muerto today, and I might even bake it tomorrow.  This batch is a new recipe for me, from My Sweet Mexico, and I hope it works.  I bought the cookbook this spring, before we went to Mexico to visit with the in-laws.  My attitude about going (they’re wonderful folks, but even so) turned around right into almost excited after paging through the book.  I may not have eaten all the dulces I was dreaming of, but oh, the bolillos they make in Los Reyes, Michoacan!  That is some good bread.  Husband mentioned in passing building a wood oven in the backyard…

I’m hungry now.

A Life in Stitches

I spent some time talking to Mom today about books.  You know how easy it is to complain about irritations in a book?  I find it much harder to explain why I like a book so much. I usually resort to pushing it on everybody I know.

A Life in Stitches: Knitting My Way Through Love, Loss, and Laughter by Rachael Herron is one of those good books.  All I can think to say sounds like gushing uncritical praise.  I think you should read it, and not just because I like Rachael for real, and I’ve been reading her blog for years.  Memoir essays.  Not memoir about her knitting, but with knitting.  I know a few stories from the blog, but in the book they are in finished form – smooth writing, strong voice, thoughtful and self-aware, substantial.

I think you should read this book.  If you don’t even know what the hell knitting is, you should read it.  All you need is an interest in people.  You might not like it, but it won’t be for the knitting.

I think you should read this book.  It’s really good.

The Fire Sweater Begins

Hoo Boy.  I’m doing it again.  The things that kid gets me to do!

I read it somewhere, so it must be true: Intarsia equals love, period.

The concept, as drawn by me to specs by the kid.  He wants fire, fake layers and hood, sleeves over the hands with thumbholes, and argyle diamonds (inspired in part by a Target arygyle cotton sweater and a hooded fake layered cotton shirt).

I recently knit a sweater in pieces and it took me a long time to finish the seaming, because my back was in bad shape for several weeks. (but I blame the seams?)  I think I’d prefer to fiddle while knitting rather than fiddle after knitting, so I knit a swatch with intarsia in the round.  Yarns: Koigu KPM and Lisa Souza Hardtwist Merino Petite (colour earthbirth).

Okay.  That was a pain in the butt.  I didn’t like the turn-around spots – too loose.  But I washed the swatch to see if it improved.  Not really.

And then I noticed the bias.  The damn swatch biased something awful.  Forget intarsia in the round – the results weren’t good enough for the hassle.  And now I’ve got biasing to fix.  Haven’t we all had one of those cheap t-shirts, that twists and twists and twists?  Surely I’m not the only one who gets itchy thinking about it?

So, swatching.  I swatched both yarns separately (flat, standard continental purling, nothing fancy), washed the swatches, and hung to dry on the clothes line.

The Koigu looks pretty straight.

The Lisa Souza hardtwist? It twists. (Should not have been a surprise, given the name.)

I whined on Ravelry and was advised.  (post stalk me, if you really want to read it.  I love my Friends of Abby’s Yarns) Despite my automatic dislike of advice (I can dish it out, but I sure have trouble taking it, even when I ask for it), I  steamed a skeinlet, let it dry, knit another swatch, and washed as before.  Better, but not good enough yet.

In the meantime, we went to Lambtown.  The poor kid worries that he will never get his fire sweater, and he’s tired of watching me fight with the yarn.  We did a quick sweep of the vendors for fingering weight fire yarn.  He decided these skeins were acceptable (peeking from the photo above), so I bought 2.  In any photos I have, they look great – nearly perfect fire yarn (not quite perfect only because the earthbirth is perfect).  In real life, one skein in particular is too pink and on the pastel side.  They read as citrus, not fire.  Lovely yarn, and I might make a couple baby things with them because the colours are so cheerful and bright and happy, but not right dang it.  Somewhere in here, the kid said if this didn’t work, he doesn’t want the sweater anymore.  I told him, “Too bad.  You’re stuck with it, because I’m not letting this sweater win.”   I started a swatch of the not quite fire yarn, but it’s just not quite.

I checked Lisa Souza’s website.  Yes, she has another fingering weight yarn that would probably work, and I could order more earthbirth.  And more yarn is good…  Except, really, I don’t need more yarn, and spending the extra bit of money seems stupid in the morning.

So I ran a bit of the hardtwist through the spinning wheel to unply it a little.  And washed the skeinlet.  And knit a swatch as before, washed, dried.  Oh.  This will work.  I have to work more, but I can do it.

Now I’m knitting another intarsia/stranded swatch.  Next: remove plying twist from the rest of the skein. Figure gauge and measurements for the actual sweater. Chart the front of the sweater so the diamonds line up right. Knit the sweater body in pieces. Figure out the layered hems. Figure out the neckline and hood.  Figure out the sleeves/shoulder shaping.

I’ll finish this by the Thanksgiving, right?

Garlic Soup

Simple, tasty, anti-viral.
And I’m nearly out of garlic. Unheard of!
So I will make a cup of garlic soup now and buy groceries tomorrow morning.