Sunday, February 28, 2010

a veritable feast

Last weekend, the very lovely Kit came to visit from Minnesota - she flew in for two days in London, and there was LSG hanging out and whathaveyou. And she brought me a big fuckoff box of reese's

Nomnomnomnomnomnom.

Like any normal person, when faced with a massive pile of pb cups, I immediately think "cheesecake!". Duh.

I used this recipe, with the following changes:
  • 200g gluten and wheat free chocolate chip cookies for the crust, with 50g dove farm gluten free flour, and 100g of butter.
  • 300g cream cheese (because fuck knows how big they make cheesecakes in Houston, but nobody needs a whole KILO of cream cheese in one cake)
  • 3 small eggs (could have used two, thinking about it)
  • 75g soft brown sugar and 75g caster sugar (because I forgot to buy more caster sugar)
  • 50ml whipping cream
  • best part of a jar of smooth peanut butter (roughly 200g)
  • 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract
  • 8 reese's peanut butter cups
The base, gluten free for Ellie, who has coeliac disease but likes cheesecake:


I fucking love my little kenwood. It's actually awesome.


The only problem with so many cheesecakes, is that they need to be baked. So I did. And then I stuck it in the fridge overnight to cool.

Gareth approved.


However, before consuming the glory that was cheesecake, we had sort-of enchiladas. Fuck knows what to call them. Anyway. Here:
  • 3 chicken breasts, cooked and cut into bits.
  • 50g cream cheese
  • a dollop of sour cream
  • 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
  • juice from half a lime - 1 tbsp
  • 2 finely chopped garlic cloves
  • about 1 tbps chopped coriander
  • 1/2 tsp ground cumin
  • good dollop of salsa verde (see below for my version, which isn't salsa verde at all)
  • 100g grated cheese - I used a mix of mature cheddar, mild cheese and mozzarella
Mix all together. Place double spoonful in centre of corn tortilla, and wrap to form a tube. Put seam-down in baking pan - repeat 7 times more; if you do two layers put a bit of cheese in between. Cover with more grated cheese, whack in oven for about 15 mins on med-high heat. Eat with sour cream and more salsa verde:
  • 2/3 of largish cucumber
  • 1 decent-sized green pepper
  • 1 smallish green chilli
  • 7 garlic cloves
  • 1 tsp minced garlic paste
  • 1 small red onion
  • 1/2 a lime
  • a bunch of coriander.
Chop cucumber, pepper, chilli, garlic, onion and coriander. Mix together. Put about half of the mix through a blender to chop it small - include garlic paste and lime in the blender, use a good few glugs of olive oil. Let it sit for a bit. The longer the better - a few hours is ideal.


Excuse the lo-res iphone pics. It's too much of a mither to go find my cantankerous camera every time I cook.

Saturday, February 06, 2010

Hook wielding (and dogs)

I finished my first laceweight project a couple of weeks ago and got around to taking photos. It's the Dragonfly Shawl from IC '08 (Ravelry link) using cashmere/silk lace from Nimu. Because of the colour of the yarn, it didn't show up the pattern so well, but I don't care because I fucking love it anyway.

The first picture doesn't show the colour so well, but it's how I wear it. It's gorgeously soft and warm.


I'm writing up the pattern for this hat:

I also sent a pattern for some mittens to p/hop, but they're obviously snowed under and haven't got back to me, so this will probably be my first pattern on rav.


Millie has finally stopped peeing on things, it seems that she's got a definite tendencies towards UTIs, and so she's on a month's worth of antibiotics. Shoving pills down her throat twice a day is super fun. She's asleep at my feet right now.



I love these pictures of Indigo playing - phone camera in one hand, Mr Rat in the other.