cosmicpluto knits!

summertime eats

Well, I’m knitting lots, but it isn’t very exciting to look at – mostly working on my cabled scarf (so close to the end!) and I’ve restarted that little shrug too. Really I’m just itching to cast on for some new fall sweater projects, but I really need to get a few things done first!

So today I have a little bit of food to share, instead.

I brought home rather a LOT of pickling cucumbers from the produce stores near my work yesterday, and today set about making some refrigerator pickles. No water processing required, no fear of bad canning, and they stay so very crispy, which I love!

I made one huge vat of cucumber garlic dills – it’s 1.8L/2qt! The slightly smaller jar in the back is beans, done up with basically the same spices and brine. They were yellow, green, and purple to start with, but unfortunately now they’re all kind of greeny grey. Oh well, they’ll still taste awesome.

Super Easy Garlic Dills

Veggies:
Whatever you like. I did sliced kirby cucumbers and trimmed green beans, I’m sure this would be great with carrots, cauliflower, radishes, whatever! I’m not sure how many cucumbers I used – probably about 10 small ones for the 1.8L jar.

Brine:
4 cups / 1L water
4 cups / 1L white vinegar
6tbsp pickling salt

Seasonings:
garlic, peeled
dill seed
red pepper flakes
black peppercorns
celery seed
fresh dill

Mix together water, vinegar and salt in a largeish pot and heat on the stove to a simmer. While it’s heating, prep your veggies and add seasonings to your jars.

For the 1.8L jar of cucumbers, I used: 4 cloves garlic, 4 tsp dill seed, a dash each of celery seed and red pepper flakes, 3 stalks fresh dill and a few whole black peppercorns.

Pack the veggies tightly into the jars leaving some room at the top (1/2″-1″, not as important as when processing because we’re just sticking these in the fridge). Slowly add brine to cover. Let the jars cool on the counter, then stick them in the fridge. That’s it! They’ll begin to taste pickled after just a few hours, but it’s best to wait at least a few days.

Wow, that’s a giant jar of pickles!

I also managed to find Ontario strawberries at the big chain supermarket, which I was pretty surprised by – I picked up three containers and made jam with half (I might get more tomorrow or soon and make more or ice cream!). I prefer freezer jam because it uses much less sugar, and has that just-picked-fruit taste that you just don’t get with cooked jam.

I just followed the recipe on the gelling agent packet and it came out perfectly. I’ll definitely have to make at least 1 more batch of freezer jam soon, maybe wild blueberry!

What are you doing with this summer’s awesome produce?

the post-christmas feeling

Ultimate Caramel Cornwas made and eaten. I used peanuts and a few hazelnuts, and white and semisweet chocolate. This was the first time I popped corn on the stove in oil and I’ll definitely do it again! Satisfying and crazy. And yummy.

My sister’s Harry Potter scarf (Prisoner of Azkaban style) was finished on time, which was Wednesday night – I washed it around midnight that night, and it was dry the morning of Christmas Eve. I put the fringe on then packed it right up to take to my parents’ house!

I used Cascade Venezia Worsted, a great blend of merino and silk, 3 skeins plus the fringe’s worth from a fourth skein. The gold stripes are Misti Alpaca Worsted. It isn’t accurate or anything, but I think it went over well.

I hope your holidays were wonderful!

we interrupt…

…your regularly scheduled Rhinebeck yarn post for an important announcement.

Soft Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Make them NOW. Go to the store for ingredients if you must – they are orange and black after all, perfect for that Hallowe’en party later this week (if they make it to then).

My very slight mods to the recipe: I used 1/2 brown, 1/2 white sugar, upped the chocolate chips a touch (to use up the rest of the bag), mixed by hand, and used heaping tablespoons rather than 1/4 cup portions for each cookie. I got 30 cookies…but there aren’t that many now!

A sneak peek at the yarn? Sure.

Clearly I’m in a purple period!

Feb 22-26: Jaipur (and back to Delhi)

The train to Jaipur was overnight again, significantly shorter – 8 hours instead of 12, and we were in 2AC class this time. The sheets and pillows were useful, although the blanket got used as more pillow instead! Unfortunately it was actually not that comfortable a night even though the digs were better – it was kind of hot and stuffy (despite the “AC”) and even though it was nice and dark it was really difficult to get a good sleep. Also, since this time we weren’t getting off at the end of the line, we had to just set and alarm (5:45 am) and hope we got off at the right station!

This time our assigned berths were stupid, I think they were one upper berth and one lower side berth? Didn’t make much sense. We ended up just looking at the passenger list and camping out in some that weren’t assigned – when the ticket checker came along we seem to have convinced him that it would be okay, so we ended up upper berths again. It’s lower and much easier to get into in 2AC because it’s only 2 tier.

We actually arrived in Jaipur more on less on time at 6am, and were picked up by a nice auto driver hired again by the hotel, Madhuban – they let us check in early too, which was awesome. Another nap and shower – and this place actually had a shower space, with a lip a couple inches high at the bottom and a shower curtain! In case you’re wondering, “what does that mean about the other places?”, there were shower heads in the other hotels we stayed in, but they were just in the side of the bathroom wall – no actually shower space, the water just got all over the place and it was a pain. Anyway, Madhuban was really nice! Great bed.

After a rest we had a great breakfast in the garden, then got an auto (who turned out to be the previous guy’s dad!) to the City Palace. I’m pretty sure every town has one!

This one wasn’t as big or impressive as the one in Udaipur, but it was worth a look – they had some really great textile exhibits, although photography wasn’t allowed (sadly).

We walked down to the wall that surrounds the old city to go to a restaurant recommended in the guidebook called Ganesh – it’s actually on the top of the wall, and super tiny, but good food! And you can watch the cooks do their thing, too. Mmm, naan.

Then it was back up to the City Palace again to see Jantar Mantar, the more famous and touristy one.

This observatory was super similar to the one we visited in Delhi (obviously!) but with lots more instruments, and more upkeep.

Last stop of the day was Hawa Mahal, which is actually an extension of the City Palace (but you have to pay separately to go in). Fun to climb up inside, because it’s all ramps and not stairs! We got there pretty close to closing time, but the security guard was nice enough to let the people inside stay until about 5 (it closes at 4:30).

With no photographic evidence of the following, we got an auto driver to take us to a hotel with a recommended restaurant to check it out (the rooftop restaurant at Hotel Pearl Palace), and decided to take a walk to Anokhi, which was fairly close by, but it was kind of a crazy walk and in the dark! They had super cute clothing, and in the limited amount of time I had there (they were closing in like 20 minutes) I managed to pick up a nice skirt and top. They do a lot of handprinting, so I picked up a few of their books on printing as well! We walked back to the restaurant, which was really busy by then, and ended up eating our meals in rocking chairs – service was a little slow, but the food was good and really inexpensive! On the auto ride home I wasn’t paying enough attention and managed to conk my head pretty massively on a rod in the top of the auto when we went over a bump. Ow.

The next day we hired the dad-auto-driver to take us around a bit – to Amber Fort, which is a few clicks outside Jaipur, as well as a tomb that he told us wasn’t in the guidebooks. I’m not sure what it’s called, but it was lovely! And very peaceful – we were the only ones there.

All white marble, tons of really intricate carvings.

Then it was on to Amber Fort.

It’s a bit of a climb to get up – you can take an elephant ride but I wouldn’t want to. It’s slower than walking, and I feel really bad that the elephants aren’t treated very well despite efforts to improve their living conditions. Somehow we ended up going into the fort from some back entrance (we still had to buy a ticket though) and walked through opposite to the usual route! It was really fun, because there were few people at the end (where we came in) and there were all sorts of hallways and little rooms and things to explore.

The sections near the normal entrance are much grander and more fully restored!

Since we took the route backwards we ended up going out the front entrance, which was kind of a mistake – probably should’ve just gone back the way we came in! Instead we exited on the total other side of the fort and had to walk all the way around through the town (which was interesting, but I was tired) to get back to the car park where the auto was. Since we spent so much time at the fort we didn’t have time to go to the last place he wanted to take us, the Monkey Temple – monkeys scare me a bit so I’m actually rather glad! Instead we went for some lunch at a really good and super cheap ($4 for two curries, rice, naan), then we went to a really nice textiles store.

It was pretty overwhelming (they also sold readymade home textiles and things) but I picked out some fabric that they handprint in the warehouse, before we headed back to the hotel to pick up our luggage, and to the train station, again. This time we were much closer to Delhi, so we were just taking a chair car for about five hours. They don’t rotate the seats or anything though…and we were travelling backwards Luckily it was dark outside so it was okay after a little while of getting used to it!

The next day in Delhi (Wednesday the 25th) was really the last day I had for sightseeing, since I was leaving on Friday morning and would need to pack on Thursday. We hopped on the metro and went walking on Chandni Chowk, a big market area. There’s all sorts of shops selling everything – spices, paneer, souvenir stuff, whatever you need.

And then there’s Jalabiwala!

Jalebis (juh-lay-bees) are one of India’s many sweet snacks – a sweet batter is extruded from a piping-type bag into hot oil in curlicues, is fried up and then given a dunking in a sugar syrup bath. They’re oily, sugary, and actually surprisingly light in texture! I wouldn’t fill up on it though. We just bought a few pieces.

Popped into the Red Fort briefly mainly just to say we went and looked at it – nothing really special and we were pretty palace-d/fort-ed out. On Thursday we hung around the house, me trying desperately to fit everything in my suitcase, and went to see Slumdog Millionaire at a big cinema in a mall nearby. It was a pretty cool experience to see it while in India, although the security to get into the cinema is crazy! It’s in a mall, so first you go through a metal detector with possible bag search and frisking to get into the mall, then again to get into the movie theatre! It’s a little overzealous really.

I did manage to get everything in and the bag closed, and under the weight limit at that – I wasn’t terribly excited to fly again, although I did like the idea of going somewhere else! I was also sad that I was going to be travelling on my own – Vig is still currently in India, and won’t be home until May (with a few other stops along the way). It’s no fun travelling by yourself! At least, not for me.

Luckily I had a good friend to stay with (mooch off of) on my next stop!

Feb 16-19: Delhi and Agra

We flew up to Delhi on the 16th by Jet Airways (pretty good – and cheap! at 1500 INR base fare per ticket, or about $25) and were really relieved about the weather. It was actually cool enough to put on a sweater in the evenings! We stayed with Vig’s aunts and uncle in Shalimar Bagh, a neighbourhood in north Delhi. Aunt J took us along to check out another night market, this one was pretty huge and took up an entire street! There were stalls selling clothing and housewares, souvenir-type stuff, and of course produce and food as well.

Andrea: the produce being a night market thing is definitely because of the heat during the day, but otherwise? I think people just like to do their shopping at night!

Upon hearing a ruckus outside…we found a groom’s wedding party in full force, taking up the left lane of traffic! The buses weren’t too happy about that, I tell ya.

After a day of complete rest at home quietly, we were picked up bright and early by a car to go to Agra – by leaving at 6am we managed to get there in about three hours (it’s 200km from Delhi) and avoided a lot of Delhi traffic. First stop was Akbar’s Tomb, and since it was about 9:30 in the morning it was pretty empty. The driver didn’t speak a lot of English, just kind of parked and indicated that we should go and check it out! It was worth a bit of a poke around.

The entrance to the tomb was pretty creepy.

Pretty creepy inside, too – a big empty room with a marble tomb in the middle.

Next up was Agra Fort, where we did have a guide – it’s kind of a convoluted story but basically, the driver was hired through a pretty trusty travel agency. When we got to the fort, he said we should take this dude as our guide – he was hanging out with the travel agency’s bus so we figured he’d already been hired by them. The guide was pretty good, we definitely learned lots more stuff, but awhile later (after taking us to a ‘handicrafts shop’…note that this is a bad sign; and also accompanying us to a restaurant for lunch but not actually coming inside?!) wanted to get paid. Vig asked the driver if we were supposed to pay him, or if he’d been paid by the travel agency – the driver said we didn’t have to pay the guide. But the guide was pretty insistent, so rather than argue we just him paid the equivalent of $4 and sent him on his way. Whew.

Anyway, Agra Fort. Big place, lots of red sandstone and white marble, and a pretty awesome view of the Taj.

Apparently you can tell real white marble from painted stone because light will shine through marble! It was pretty neat.

There was also lots of beautiful inlay work – there was one room in particular that was really pretty. All the coloured bits are precious or semi-precious.

After some lunch at a restaurant called Only (which was pretty good, but with highly inflated tourist prices) we headed to the Taj Mahal!

We sat around, walked around and took tons of photos. It was getting to be the late afternoon and the light was really good – and it wasn’t very hot either, so it was really pleasant! The Taj is really beautiful, and nothing really captures being there!

The epilogue to our day in Agra? It took five hours to get back to Shalimar Bagh – we left Agra at 5:30 and for some reason the driver went to an auto shop on the side of the highway around 6 and had something done to a spare tire (it was in the trunk?). That took half an hour. Then it was pretty uneventful for awhile until we hit Delhi, then there was the traffic. That wasn’t too much of a big deal on its own (pretty expected really) but the driver was getting sort of increasingly agitated and crazy in his driving. It was scary, yo. Did I mention we got into a collision on the way to Agra? Not the driver’s fault, someone else cut in and our car demolished his driver’s side mirror. No tip for him!

Anyway. Back in Delhi we set out to explore a bit the next day and took the Metro to Connaught Place. The Delhi metro’s really quite impressive and clean, better than the TTC I’d say at least in terms of looks! They also have displays of when the next train will come, which is always nice. And I really do like elevated rail systems because of the light! Downside? Security’s really tight, even moreso than in Beijing – metal detector and bag search, every time. Actually, security’s really tight a lot of the time India, there’s metal detectors to get into the mall and bag searches and frisking all over the place!

Connaught Place is mainly a shopping centre, built by the British and consisting of a couple of concentric ring roads. We wandered around a bit, bought a Lonely Planet for our Rajasthan trip, and had a fantastic lunch at Veda. Definitely one of the best meals of the trip! They have a veggie tandoori platter that’s really just veggies, pineapple, and paneer, all roasted in the tandoor, as opposed to the usual super cooked, stewed-type curries we’d been eating. It was nice to bite into a recognizable pepper or mushroom!

A short walk south and we ended up at a place that was in the guidebook, but seemed pretty low-key – Jantar Mantar observatory. It’s an astronomical observatory that mostly looks like a bunch of crazy sculptures or something! It was really nice and quiet, few tourists, and pretty much a free for all – you could climb anything! We stayed there quite awhile taking fun photos and climbing up and down.

I thought it was very M.C. Escher!

We definitely had fun there.

Hang tight – just a few more posts left about my trip. A train adventure to Rajasthan, one last sightseeing day in Delhi, and my visit with Ysolda!

Feb 12-15: road trip and wedding

We decided to go on a bit of a road trip (with a hired driver and Vig’s Uncle K) while we were in Chennai – just go down the coast a bit to Mahabalipuram and Pondicherry and see what they were like. The first stop, just outside Chennai (once you get past the traffic!) was Dakshin Chitra. It’s a pretty contrived but still entertaining “living museum” of arts and crafts and such.

They have a bazaar, lots of demonstrations and hands-on stuff, and it was really quite fun. We got there pretty early so it was quiet and fairly cool as well. There were various traditionally furnished houses, displays on cookware and household items, and all kinds of stuff. And they had weaving!

This guy was weaving sari fabric – super thin threads, all silk, with a fancy pattern woven in as well. Awesome!

And since yarn is necessary…

So are swifts!

I also tried my hand at grinding rice – necessary for such yummies as dosa.

(Wearing my new Indian-acquired duds.)

Then it was onwards to Mahabalipuram. Its main claim to fame is numerous (and I mean numerous) carved rock temples and shrines. After checking into the guest house (Siva Guest House – highly recommended, they’re really friendly and the rooms are super clean and appropriately basic) we headed out to see the sights.

Krishna’s Butterball – I think it one might be naturally occurring rather than carved, but I could be wrong! It’s not held down by anything except gravity, and it is on a slope. I wouldn’t sit in front of it!

The Shore Temple – pretty at sunset! We got there just in time to get in a look before it closed up for the evening.

A bunch of the sights are all in a row, so you can walk from one end to the other pretty quickly and easily. We got dropped off at the butterball and walked to meet the driver, Xavier, at the lighthouse.

Lots and lots of carved rock. It is pretty interesting, but it started to get a little tedious after awhile. These are the Five Rathas – shrines that were buried until the British dug them up and put them on display.

At least there were some highly entertaining goats, climbing on a pretty sheer rock face! It was crazy, this was at least 20 feet off the ground.

Mahabalipuram is a tiny place, really just worth a day trip from Chennai, but we stayed overnight so we could drive on to Pondicherry the next day without having to double back. I found Mahabalipuram a little too touristy and kinda trashy – everything building’s either a souvenir shop or a guest house! The monuments were really not kept well, there was a lot of plastic trash everywhere and it was just disgraceful.

We had slightly higher hopes for Pondicherry (Puducherry), a former French colony a couple more hours south along the coast.

The signs and pretty buildings remain!

Unfortunately that was kind of it. Not a lot of French charm left, although maybe we just didn’t know where to find it! We walked around a little, just looking at the houses and things, poking in a few shops, being freakily followed by a stray dog (that was scary for a few minutes) and ended up at the beach – which is a rocky shore. It was pretty to look out though.

Random food notes, since it’s been a theme of my trip: we ended up eating both dinner and breakfast at the hotel, and they had pretty good North and South Indian food. For breakfast, yummy rawa dosa, which is made with wheat flour in addition (I think?) to the usual rice and lentil flours. Mmm. I do miss eating dosai for breakfast these days!

We stayed overnight in Pondicherry and headed back to Chennai in the morning, stopping to take a look at one of the big South Indian temples in town. Might be a little hard to see, but it’s all painted up. And it has to all be repainted every couple years!

The next day we got up bright and early to head out to a wedding that one of Vig’s other uncles had invited us to – why turn down an offer like that?! I’d wanted to wear a sari but didn’t have enough time to get a blouse made so I just wore a skirt, top and scarf instead. It worked out well because I think I would’ve been a little uncomfortable in a sari! That’s a lot of fabric to manage.

What surprised me the most about the wedding was how much people weren’t paying attention – stuff with the bride and groom goes on for so long, it’s not like people are all that interested in actually watching every little detail of the rituals. People just socialized, walked around, read the newspaper (!) and went and ate in the dining hall whenever.

There were long tables set up with banana leaf and pre-served with some of the cold stuff, then once you sit down the servers come along with pails of rice and rasam and curry and all sorts of stuff until you say stop – they cook it all fresh there at the hall and even change the menu throughout the day. We had dosa and idlis and things for breakfast when we got there, then rice and rasam and such for lunch a couple hours later!

After the wedding we got the auto to take us on a little bit of a shopping trip – I love the stainless steel store and bought quite a few tumblers and bowls. It was dirty work sorting out what I wanted though!

Of course, all the copper and stainless steel dishware I bought meant that my luggage was a) fuller and b) wayyy heavier. We spent the rest of the day doing laundry and packing up for a flight the next day to Delhi – and cooler weather!