domakesaydrink

2010

2011-01-01T20:24:00.031-05:00

2010 began on a real low. The death of my brother during Thanksgiving of 2009 was followed quickly by a number of crises that I handled the best I knew how, with a lot of mistakes along the way. I rang in 2010 in a furniture-less condo lent to us by a family member, and I was sure the year would be forever cemented in my mind as the worst in my life. And it will be. But as it happens, it was also one of the best. A recap:

I left Brooklyn (and some dear friends along with it), got my master's degree, published a zine and took our show on the road, moved back to Indiana, went to New Zealand for a seal sojourn, became closer with my family than I've ever been, finished two quilts, got married, and published a book. I'd call this a watershed year.

As for 2011, the only thing to do is look forward and expect it to be a great year. I don't have any real resolutions, but spending more time with my friends, coming up with a fun new project for Michael and I to work on, and finding more time to read all top my list of things to work on in the new year.

My Yearly Quilt

2010-12-27T21:29:00.000-05:00

For the crafty among us, it seems there is no more meaningful way to say thank you than to spend dozens of hours hunched over a craft table, cursing those resourceful pioneers who hand-stitched their love of quilts right onto our popular imagination. Quilts are nothing if not a labor of love, complete with the requisite blood and tears, and possibly sweat, depending on the season.

I made this quilt for my sister, who has been there and back for me this past year. I gave it to her as a thank you gift, as a token of sisterly love, and in the hopes that it will become an heirloom and a reminder of our delightfully modern and complicated blended family.

When I saw this pattern on the Purl Bee blog (a totally adorable blog that you should only read if you can resist buying the insanely amazing and overpriced craft supplies at Purl Soho), I knew I wanted to make it for her, in part because it's called a Wedding Quilt. I got married in October, and since I spent most of that week freaking out, Rachel basically made our wedding happen.

The original pattern was made in a gorgeous spectrum of orange, pink, and yellow, but Rachel's favorite color is blue, so I emailed Purl Soho and asked them to make me a spectrum bundle with blues and greens, and they did it the same day. Pretty awesome.

The finished quilt:

Pattern courtesy of the Purl Bee.

As the title of this post suggests, I don't think I can make more than one quilt per year. Quilting is pretty tedious, and is really one of those things I primarily enjoy in retrospect, although playing with all of these bright colors does help chase the winter blues away. Quilting also allows me to indulge the more reclusive side of my personality, which isn't always a good thing. However, much like any slow work, it is completely engaging--once I start, there is no way I'm going to quit before it's finished. I can't say that about many of the other sewing projects sitting around my house, although I claim to enjoy those projects more. I loved it, then I hated it, and I loved it again when I watched my sister open it and spread it out for everyone to see. (Then I hated it again when everyone started asking for one. Eek!)

Out and About: Haunted Train at Baker's Junction

2010-10-31T19:24:00.001-04:00

Halloween weekend, a few friends and I went to the Haunted Train at Baker's Junction. It's only slightly south of Bloomington, but I'd never been before, even though almost everyone I know seems to have been to Baker's Junction at some point or another. For those not in the know, Baker's Junction is a haphazard complex of historic trains, the equally historic and worse-for-wear Monon Rail Station, and a few trailers, located about twenty minutes south of Bloomington, Indiana in Smithville. The Bakers live there year round, and operate a Train Museum and the Haunted Train out of the trains they don't live in. Everything in the Haunted Train is made from found materials--inside the we found a lightbox filled with Transformers toys, a blacklight room with day-glo styrofoam planets hanging from a net on the ceiling (which you could move to make the planets dance), and a game played by shooting wine corks out of an air gun to knock down plastic frogs. Instead of a chainsaw the scary sound they use at the Haunted Train is a hair dryer, which they would rev up with perfect timing to distract us from the real scare. And it was plenty scary, especially at the end when they creep-chased us through a maze of chain-link fences and tarps. All in all, it was a great time. Although I wish that the bonfire the family members had going was open to the public. I would really have loved to sit around and spin a yarn with these folks. Maybe next time.

You might notice that the above sign says "Friendly People Welcome, Commie Planning & Zoning Pinheads Keep Out." Other than the Haunted Train, Baker's Junction is famous for two things: their fight with planning and zoning over the sprawling complex of train cars, and the dismembered tip of his own finger Mr. Baker keeps displayed prominently in the Haunted Train (their website has a 4 Sale ad for the finger). In fact, if you click the link on their website to learn about the Train Museum, it's all about the un-American planning and zoning jerks from Bloomington. I plan to return to the museum, so I'll talk about the finger and their fight with their township more in another post. For now, enjoy some photos. Please excuse the poor quality, our camera sucks and/or I am a bad photographer.

Horseman of the Apocaplypse made with found materials in front of the Haunted Train

Michael playing the frog knock-down game with the air gun and corks

Cauldron of body parts. They also had a glass deli case stocked with even more body parts, including a heart shrink-wrapped on a styrofoam tray like ground chuck at the grocery

Painting My Lisa Frank Bicycle

2010-05-09T19:25:00.000-04:00

When I decided to repaint my bike, the original intention was not to make it look like a Lisa Frank trapper-keeper. That was just a pleasant side effect. After just a couple coats of paint, I am now the proud rider of a day-glo orange bike with pink tiger stripes. Not only is it exactly what I wanted, it's also safer because it's so bright! And if I ever ride through a rave, the spray paint can assured me that my bike will glow under blacklight. But I'm not writing this post just to brag about my haute new ride. I'm here to tell you that painting your bike is fun and easy! Bike nerds are constantly making things harder than they need to be. They say, You gotta powder coat that shit! But no, no you don't. Painting your bike yourself won't look professional, and it might even be kind of sloppy (like mine). But it will be all yours, and cheap to boot. Plus it might look less attractive to bike thieves. Here are some pictures of my process. I didn't take "before" pictures, but it was a burnt reddish color.

As you can see above, I put on a pink base coat. I sanded the bike lightly beforehand so the paint would have more surfaces to stick to. After putting on the base coat, I used painter's tape to create stripes. This way, the stripes will be pink and the rest of the bike orange. You can also see that I covered all of the silver pieces with newspaper. Handlebars, gears, chain, pedals, and brakes all got covered so they wouldn't get painted.

Outside ready to get painted.

Above: my orange bike with the blue tape still on it. I don't have pictures of this, but after I took the tape off I put on a clear topcoat, mostly because the pink I used turned out to be "marking paint" made for concrete, so it was rubbing off on everything. Terrible! The clear topcoat took care of the problem, but it's a good reminder that painting your own bike can have its problems, especially if you're like me and don't know anything about spray paint. Just go for it!

The pink turned out to be much more subtle than I originally thought, especially considering how bright it was originally! The stripes didn't show up to much in the picture, but in the sun the pink is pretty glorious. I also replaced my riser bars with cruiser/mustache bars that a friend of mine gave to me.

Welcome to Jazzland

2010-03-16T13:48:00.000-04:00

My friend and I infiltrated Jazzland! Jazzland was a Six Flags theme park in Eastern New Orleans. It caught my eye years ago, maybe even before I moved to New Orleans. Due to how flat the land is, the rollercoasters and other rides are clearly visible from I-10 as you drive through the east. The land out there is fairly underdeveloped- there are some neighborhoods, but mostly the land is this odd swampy, brambly fields. I'd never gone up close to the park before, but, while driving around in the area whil working on another photography project, my friend Darin and I decided to swing by and see if it was possible to get in easily. Due to the aforementioned swampy land, there wasn't really a fence around the perimeter, most likely because it would be nearly impossible to make it through the surrounding fields. One of the driveways was blocked with a fence, and we parked nearby and walked up to it and stood for a little bit debating the pros and cons of trying to get in. I had heard that there was private security on the site, and I was quite afraid of getting arrested for trespassing, because that would be kinda silly at my age. (I later found out that since Jazzland is now owned by the city of New Orleans, the chance that they would pay for security is laughable. But at the time, I thought it was still in private hands, so the worry was real.) We could see that there was a second entranceway, so we got back in my car and circled around. The second entrance was completely and utterly open- but the catch would be we would have to walk down a fairly large driveway, which seemed risky to me. The area isn't really well travelled, but there was enough traffic to make me nervous. We decided to go for it, and stashed my car in a nearby neighborhood, and tried to seem as nonchalant as possible while moseying up to the entrance. We hung out at a bus stop on the corner for a second, and, when no cars appeared to be approaching, took off running down the driveway, scampering behind the ticket booth while giggling maniacally. There's really nothing that makes you feel like a kid again than trespassing in the name of exploring. The park definitely seemed like some sort of weird movie set; it didn't seem like it was a real place. Being the only two people in a big theme park was definitely a creepy feeling- since I spend a big chunk of time exploring abandoned things, I'm always nervous of running into other people in these places. But Jazzland is fairly removed from the city, and most people would assume that it would be secured from break-ins, so, rather than my normal worry of other people, I guess the nervousness came from the utter sense that no one was anywhere near us. Especially since a theme park is designed to seem fun and inviting and family oriented- Jazzland was bombed out and pretty apocalyptic. A few months ago it was announced that it was going to be redeveloped into a Nickelodeon theme park, but that has since fallen apart. Sometimes it seems like city government here announced deals that will never come through just so it seems that the recovery is progressing on a daily basis, regardless of what actually comes through or does not come through. All I can say is that the amount of work that would have to go into making Jazzland functional again would be astounding, and with the current shape of the economy, I'm not so sure anyone's gonna take that risk anytime soon.

Pancakes! Pancakes! Pancakes! And Bacon!

2010-02-18T18:13:00.000-05:00

So. I have not posted anything in a long time, but I have spent the past few months embarking on quite a few ridiculous projects, and with the other (and better blogger) half of this here situation jet setting around the world at the moment, I figured I should step up my so far paltry contributions and bring it. Or something. For everyone unlucky enough to not live in New Orleans, you've probably had a pretty standard week. Work, school, ordinary schedule. I, however, spent all of Tuesday marauding around town wearing a silly costume and drinking on the street for several hours, because it was Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras! The most magical and exhausting time of the year! The first year I lived here I had no idea that people actually dressed up, and was sort of embarrassed to be out and about among so many people dressed to the nines while I was wearing my street clothes. For most ladies, the outfits tend to veer towards the glitter and feather realm, while men with bad senses of humor like to dress up as penises or whatnot. And there's a smattering of things in between- this year I saw a few people dressed as octopuses, giant skeletons, and animals of all sorts. A lot of people do large group costumes; I saw an entire collection of people who were elaborate playing cards like the Jack of Hearts and Queen of Spades. I, however, went as pancakes. Yes, pancakes! One of the best breakfast items of all time! I constructed the whole thing out of felt, and stuffed it with polystyrene filling. It has a hole in the middle, so I could just wear it around my waist, which produced a hilarious waddle that I was kinda self-conscious of. The butter pat is two boxes of tea with yellow fabric glued on top. And I also knit and felted my bacon scarf! Standing next to me is my breakfast companion of eggs, aka my friend Drew. His costume took 30 minutes to assemble and garnered far, far more complements than mine, the lazy bastard. I now feel fairly confident that I could make all sorts of 3D objects, which was not the case before this project. The mere idea of pillows scared me before. But not now! Now I can burst forth and seize the plush in life! Ridiculously cute stuffed animals, here I come! As a side note, I actually managed to stay upright and cognizant from 9am until 9pm, which was a feat indeed!

Quilt Top Finished

2010-02-02T12:16:00.000-05:00

I have finished my quilt top! Whenever I start a crafting project, I can't relax and do a little at a time, like some people. I make a schedule and try to finish as fast as possible. But to me, racing myself to finish is relaxing and (more importantly) satisfying. It doesn't matter how knotty my shoulders are from hunching over the sewing machine. I just like seeing my beautiful quilt top brightening up my bed pile (no bed, just a pile of blankets) in the middle of a gray winter.

My first quilt!

2010-01-16T23:35:00.001-05:00

I recently moved back to my hometown after a short period in Brooklyn. One of the things I lacked in New York was space, and now that I'm back in Kentucky, I have plenty of space for my sewing table and the giant pile of fabric I keep stashed away for unforeseen projects. To celebrate all of my new space, and my return home, I am making a quilt. My first quilt!

For the pattern, I wanted something classic and clean, but with a little personality; I looked for something more interesting than a paintbox quilt, and not too traditional--I don't want to feel like a squadron of calico prints is disapprovingly looking over my shoulder, wondering why I am sullying their precious eight point star. And I also wanted to be able to make the quilt with scraps of fabric, since quilting can get expensive. So, after hanging ten on the world wide web, I came across the fabulous blog Oh, Fransson! The writer creates beautiful quilts and also post tutorials on her website, including one for her "Map of the States" block. Behold:

These pictures aren't the best, but you might be able to tell that each column is slightly different from the rest, with varying block sizes and widths throughout. I have to make 48 blocks total, for a modestly sized quilt (approx 70"x90"). My goal is to make ten blocks per week, so in four weeks I will be ready to do the sashing and binding. The fun thing about making a scrappy quilt with color-themed blocks is that you get to use a lot of different fabrics. Here is some I bought today, on sale at my local corporate fabric store. Yeah.

Old News...

2009-12-04T13:21:00.000-05:00

Two old friends of mine got married back in early October, and, since the bride had just graduated from pastry school, I decided to make her a fun apron that she could either use professionally or in her new role of "wife". Since she, like me, is not much of a girly girl, I thought I'd try to find a way to make it somehow a little subversive- and I found the perfect fabric to make that happen! The front is a nice sunny yellow, but the back is all sorts of rad! I can't believe someone actually made this fabric- it looks like 1980's skateboarders designed it, and it's a little hard on the eyes, but I love it so much and it was just perfect for my friend. I bought a little extra so I can make myself something with it, but I don't know what I'm going to use it on yet, so it's gone in my ever growing pile of awesome fabric that hasn't been made into anything yet.

Work in Progress--Convertible Gloves/Mittens

2009-11-03T20:14:00.000-05:00

My boyfriend is one of those hearty northeastern folks who like to go the whole winter without a proper coat. Instead, he piles on layers of thermal shirts, button-ups and flannels and hopes for the best. A few years ago (before we were dating), I insisted on making him a hat. This winter, I decided he needs some gloves.

I combined two patterns to make fingerless gloves with a mitten flap. I used almost the entire pattern from the Flap-Top Mittens pattern from Melanie Falick's Handknit Holidays. The other pattern is a fingerless glove pattern from, I believe, Weekend Knitting, which is another Melanie Falick title. I have knitted both of these patterns before, so I felt comfortable combining them. The only real adjustment to the Flap-Top Mitten pattern I had to make was that after I knitted the flap, I had to increase 12 sts so I would have the right number of stitches for the fingers. I did this by doing an m1 k1 m1 increase at the beginning and middle of the row (corresponding to the sides of the hand), followed by a row of all Knit stitches, until I had increased 12 stitches. Easy! Then I just followed the pattern for the fingers.

I don't have a clever name for these yet. Fingerless mittens? Glittens?

Two views of the same mitten. I'm still working on the second!

Six months of my life....

2009-11-03T11:05:00.000-05:00

were dedicated to this baby blanket. My boss and his significant other are expecting their first child this October, and I, rather excitedly, decided to knit them a baby blanket. I figure that handmade baby items tend to carry more emotional weight; when I was a child, I was pretty attached to the crocheted blankets and hand-sewn quilts that my maternal Grandmother made me. I knew that it was going to be a big project, but I didn’t realize exactly how long it was going to take. I’m glad I chose the easiest type of blanket imaginable- it’s straight garter stitch, with no fancy borders, meaning I could basically zone out and watch the entire season 5 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer while only having to pay attention to the colorwork. I read somewhere that newborn’s eyes can only really tell light from dark, and that high contrast colors would help them train their eyes to focus. I didn’t want to make a black and white blanket, so I chose two colors that would contrast nicely- pale yellow and dark blue. These colors are also the colors of the Brazilian soccer team, and since the mama-to-be is Brazilian and the father-to-be is a soccer fanatic, that worked out nicely, even though I didn’t plan it that way. Anyhow, I made the stripes in an alternating shuffle, so one end starts out blue and then the blanket fades to yellow, and vice versa!

I finished it with an hour to spare before I had to go to the baby shower! Frankly, after completing this task, I didn’t feel like knitting for a good long while, but unfortunately, with not a lot of disposable income lately, tons of yarn, and Christmas approaching, I have to get going on some presents for the family and the boyfriend. I find it pretty gratifying that, since finally learning how to knit two years ago (my aforementioned crafty Grandmother tried to teach me in vain when I was younger, but it never stuck), I’ve actually only made myself a scarf and a pair of gloves. Everything else has always been for other people! With that in mind, I did decide to sit down and make myself something new for the fall- a ribbed cowl. It’s already almost done, so I hope cooler weather will soon come to Louisiana so I can wear it out and about. Optimistically, fall will be here in about another month, but really, it most likely won’t be cool enough until November. Sigh.

Labor Day

2009-11-02T16:49:00.000-05:00

Peach Cobbler with Farmers' Market peaches, ginger and cinnamon.

We served it with blueberries and vanilla soy dream. My entire Labor Day weekend basically revolved around my craving for Peach cobbler.

Homemade Scones and having a well-stocked kitchen

2009-11-02T16:45:00.001-05:00

Even though they are almost exactly like muffins, which I make all the time, scones always seemed like the kind of thing I buy, not make. I have, until recently, felt this way about a whole slew of things that I now make, including pickles and barbeque sauce. This morning, the last friday before I start my last semester of grad school (woohoo!), I wanted to make breakfast. But because we crib most of our recipes off the internet and keep them in a stack of disorganized papers crammed in between copies of Veganomicon and the Joy of Cooking, I couldn't find our usual muffin recipe. So, scones. I scanned a few of our cookbooks, including Beard on Bread and the back-to-basics How it All Vegan. I found what I was looking for in the New Farm Vegetarian Cookbook--a classic scone recipe, dense and slightly sweet and easily adaptable to whatever fruit or chocolate goodness you want to put in there. I adapted the recipe slightly (more oil so they would be thicker) and used blueberries instead of raisins. 4 C unbleached flour 1/4 c sugar 3 1/2 tsp baking powder 1 tsp. salt 1 1/2 C soy milk 1/2 C oil 1 C blueberries (thawed in sink if frozen, you don't want them to release too much water and thin out the scone) Preheat over to 400 degrees. Sift dry ingredients together. Make a well in the middle and add in wet ingredients and blueberries. You may have to knead with your hands a little, because scones form more of a dough than a batter. You can just spoon them onto a cookie sheet if you're feeling casual, or if you want something a little more presentable, roll out the dough so it is 1/2" thick and cut into wedges. The original instructions said to bake them at 450 degrees for 10-15 minutes, but it seemed like my scones were going to burn on the outside before being completely cooked on the inside if I did that, so I lowered the temperature and ended up cooking them for about 20-25 minutes. They were perfectly cooked: dense on the inside and brown on the bottoms. Making these scones this morning also reminded me what a pleasure it is to have a well-stocked kitchen. I didn't have to run to the store for flour, sugar, or baking powder. We had blueberries in the freezer, ready for impromptu breakfasts. There was once a time when I would have bought flour and sugar in small quantities for very specific recipes, and each time it made cooking seem like a chore and it made it feel more expensive than going to the coffee shop and forking over $2.50 for a scone. Now, when I run out of flour, I buy more, and the same goes for sugar, vanilla, and a whole range of other ingredients for simple dinners, like beans, rice, pasta, canned tomatoes, coconut milk, etc. Being able to open your cabinets and throw something together makes cooking a pleasure, and saves me the cost of running down to the overpriced "organic" corner store to purchase $5 tempeh or $4 boxes of pasta.

Quick and Easy Hand Cream

2009-11-02T16:44:00.001-05:00

Oh, Burt's Bees, that ubiquitous "eco-friendly" all-natural company that creates type of product that used to trigger all of my must-buy-this-tube-of-expensive-lip-balm or lotion or whatever. I have never been a girly girl and I have never particularly wanted any certain cosmetic. But Burt's Bees was an exception- almost everything they produced, I wanted, price be damned. Six dollars for a tube of lip balm? Sure! Nine dollars for some soap? That is not at all ridiculous!

Except, of course, it is. It's embarrassing for me to realize that I was as hooked on the idea of that if a certain company made a product, then the product was inherently worth whatever the price they were asking. And then I read an article that the NYTimes ran back in January of 2008 that highlighted the fact that Burt's Bees is now owned by Clorox. Now, the jokes about this supposedly green company being bought for 300million dollars by Clorox can write themselves, so I won't harp on that. Frankly, though, I didn't want to continue to buy overpriced cosmetics where the profits would go into a large corporation. It no longer seemed like supporting a local economy, and it no longer felt like I was using a handmade product, or treating myself to a guilt-free indulgence.

So, once I ran out of my last treasured bottle of Burt's Bees Almond Milk Hand Cream, I figured I'd have to find a substitute. And after thinking on that for a minute, I decided that I wanted to make my own, because hey, if what I really liked about Burt's Bees' product was the illusion of using something homemade, than I probably should just go ahead and make my own.

And it was super easy.

Ingredients:

2 1/2 oz of blended oils (I used almond)

1 1/2 oz coconut oil

1/2 oz beeswax

4 oz purified water

30 drops grapefruit seed extract

1/4 tsp borax (to prevent separation of oils)

essential oils for scenting, if desired

I bought the majority of my ingredients from Whole Foods. I procured the beeswax from some beekeepers/honey vendors I met at a craft fair in Ely, Minnesota; they were selling it for five dollars a pound! I would imagine that any local beekeeper would be glad to sell their wax, so it shouldn't be hard to find some. Originally, I had the bright idea of trying to render my own beeswax from actual honeycomb that came with a jar of locally produced New Orleans' honey, but it was sort of a mess and took a long time and I only ended up with 1/8 of an ounce of purified, rendered beeswax so I don't really recommend going that route.

So! To make this quick project, you take the blended oil, the coconut oil, and the beeswax and put them in a stainless steel pot and let them melt together on very low heat, stirring only occaisionally. Once they've melted together, you remove it from the heat and add in the water and borax, and mix it all up with a hand blender. The mixture instantly creams up into a thick, smooth lotion! You then stir in the grapefruit seed extract and any oils you want to use to scent it. I actually didn't use any oils for this batch, though I had some rose extract on hand to use in case I didn't find the scent appealing enough. But I shouldn't've worried- the cream smells so sweetly of honey! I actually far, far prefer both the texture and the scent of this hand cream over Burt's Bees. And this one batch produced two rather large tins of cream! I put one in the fridge to store and have one on my nightstand right now, where I am trying to avoid using it every few hours.

Next up: Lip balm! Unless I get distracted by another idea.

Masala Tea Time!

2009-11-02T16:43:00.000-05:00

Masala tea is more commonly known as chai. Chai is the drink many youngsters discover freshman year in college, when their tongues prefer the spicy sweetness of chai over bitter black coffee, thus finding a drink to order with confidence at the local cool coffee shop before panicked study sessions to learn the transitive tense in French. I actually didn't go through that phase- I thought chai tasted kinda goofy, and I thought ordering it was even goofier. Much like the clove cigarette of the tobacco world, once you saw someone drinking chai, you knew they were a drama major.

Obviously my opinion of Masala tea (which is what I am going to refer to it as for the rest of the post, since what I'm about to discuss is pretty different from what you'd get at the average American coffee shop) has changed. I decided to do a study abroad for my last summer in college, and, since I studied East African political systems, went to Tanzania. Tanzania is (obviously) on the east coast of Africa, right underneath it's better known but less stable sister state of Kenya. There were many, many great things about Tanzania, but, for the sake of brevity and for relevance, I'm going to talk about Tea Time.

Tea Time was every afternoon. Everyone in the program, students, teachers, other people staying at the compound we were based at, all stopped whatever else they were doing and gathered in a large outdoor gazebo and drank ungodly amounts of wondrous spicy mystery tea and ate peanuts. It was excellent, a little ritual that afforded everyone a mutual break. So many people talk about how the US needs to institute siestas, but screw that noise. Tea time. Tea time is where it is at.

The fact is, I did not know that this delicious tea that we drank in Tanzania was "chai". It tasted much, much better- the spices were stronger and tasted more fresh, and it wasn't overwhelmingly sweet. And actually, I didn't figure out that it was chai until last week. Because obviously I am really smart.

Last week I found myself in Minneapolis for two days, just to hang out. I was told to stop by a place called the International Coffee House for coffee, which, after many attempts, I did. I mention this because this coffee house does not have hours posted and is not open before noon, at least, as I tried to get a drink there at about 9am on a Tuesday morning, and then again a little after noon, and then went back past 7pm to finally claim my prize. And prize it was, because, as the windows proclaimed, this coffee house was a Somali business, and it sold "African Chai".

And after drinking that amazing tea again, I decided I had to know how to make it. So I tracked down a recipe and made it tonight! First, the specs. You need:

2 inches of fresh ginger, sliced thin 7 cardamom pods 11 whole cloves 1 pod of star anise 2 sticks of cinnamon fresh ground pepper 4 cups water 6 black tea bags 3 cups milk 1/2 cup sugar 1 whole vanilla bean

Now, first off, cardamom isn't cheap but it's a good spice to invest in. It's great in curries, and a must for lentils. The only thing I had to go out and buy was the star anise, which smells like licorice. As far as the black pepper goes, I just did about 3 turns of my pepper grinder.

So what you do is you throw your first six ingredients into a pot and "bruise" them. I took a wooden spoon and mashed the spices about a bit- broke open some cardamom pods, broke up the star anise, the cloves, etc. Then you pour in the water and bring to a boil. At first I thought something was wrong because my kitchen started smelling awful, but I soon figured that it was something my roommate had spilled on the burner. The actual mixture started smelling pretty good really quick!

Once you've got a boil going, you take it off the heat and add the tea bags to steep. I used Constant Comment because I had a bit of a brain freeze in the grocery store aisle and couldn't really find a basic black tea due to all the crazy fancy teas they're marketing these days, so I just grabbed one that I knew was tasty and probably would be a good base. Plus, when I was a kid, I definitely thought Constant Comment was the best name ever, so I've been a fan ever since.

Once you steep your tea and it cools a bit, you add the milk, sugar, and vanilla bean and then bring it all back up to a simmer. Be sure to slice open your vanilla bean lengthwise so all the little beans are exposed to the liquid. I even waited for the tea to get pretty warm and then fished the vanilla bean out and scraped my wooden spoon along the pod to get all the goop out, and then mixed them in with the tea, just to make sure the vanilla flavor would come through well.

Then, you run it all through a strainer and you're done! You have really tasty, nice and spicy Masala tea. It's not exactly the same as the tea I got in the International Coffeehouse or in Tanzania, but it is delicious all the same! I think it would be pretty easy to veganize this recipe, and I'm definitely going to experiment some more with different spice ratios and combinations to see how close I can get it. I did take pictures of this process, but since I was doing this at night in my crappily lit kitchen, none of them are good.

And yeah, yeah, yeah, this is definitely a winter drink, but it was cold in Minneapolis!

Knitted Necklace

2009-11-01T11:58:00.001-05:00

I made this Seven Circle Necklace , which I found on Ravelry. Mine didn't turn out as clean as the other projects on Ravelry, probably because I used a thicker wool yarn that I had laying around. Surprise, it's mustard-colored. I should really introduce some variety into my accessories.

I'll have to wait until Fall to wear it, but for now it's sitting on my shelf looking pretty. Please excuse the circa-2001 makeoutclub pictures. The light was nice and there was no one else home to take my picture.