I can haz purl stitch!

I've started teaching myself to knit a good two years ago, in which time I've made... hmm... three scarves.

Even less impressive is that I never managed to get my head around the purl stitch... Until recently that is...

I Hereby Proudly Present My First Successful Attempt at Purl Stitch:

The idea behind this was to make a scarf that wouldn't "grow" too much, as my first scarf (that I still wear all the time) is now a good bit longer than it was originally (I could wrap it twice around my neck, now after 3 times it's still a bit loose). My mum said it's normal with garter stitch...

It's long enough to almost touch the floor when hung from a bar stool!

The thing is, stockinette stitch has another problem: it curls up on itself!

So I still ended up frogging (= unraveling) it and starting again in garter stitch. Ah well...

At some point I'll master more stitches;)

Hello Again!!

So, yes, I'm back. I was in winter sleep, kind of...
Winter sleep + work stress + getting sick quite a bit + back problems + apartment trouble (the boiler -yes the thing that controls both heating and hot water- decided to malfunction on us at the end of January. 3 pretty glacial days ensued).

Things are starting to get better now, and we are actually having a few rays of sunshine again and days are becoming less ridiculously short, so I might start to emerge from winter sleep:-)

I might even post a few recipes or sewing projects;-)

Roast Beef Sandwich with Green Tea Extract!?

I just had a roast beef sandwich from the store, and had a look at the ingredients...

This says: "béarnaise dressing (rapeseed oil, vinegar, mustard (water, mustard seeds, vinegar, salt, turmeric), sugar, water, tarragon, egg yolk, natural extracts, herbs, food colouring E160a, salt, onion powder, green tea extract, antioxidant E392, preservative E202, thickener E415, acidifying agent E330)".

So, erm... Why do they need green tea extract in béarnaise sauce? I mean, it's probably better for you than all the Es, but so is chocolate, and I hope that wasn't on the shortlist of ingredients!

Maybe the recipe was optimised by a computer...

Red mullet with fennel, couscous and black olives

Kristof made this for me yesterday:) I had shown him out to make something like that once or twice before, and he did a great job!

Plus, this was not long after being able to eat only soup and yoghurt for 3 days due to gastro-enteritis, so it was really appreciated!

Basically what you need to do:

1. Chop and steam the fennel, for example in a bamboo steaming basket like this one (available from your local Asian supermarket):

This will take the longest, about 20 min of steaming (stab a thick piece of fennel to check if it's done).

2. Unpit the olives and cook the couscous (usually levelling it in a shallow dish and pouring some boiling water for it absorb is enough - Kristof used the steaming water from the fennel for more flavour).

3. Pan fry the red mullets in a little olive oil. Assemble all on a plate and drizzle some more olive oil (we used lemon flavoured olive oil which worked very well with this). Enjoy with a glass of white wine:)