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Vanity and the Bluestocking

Vanity and the Bluestocking

Monthly Archives: May 2012

Who says only nannys knit?

31 Thursday May 2012

Posted by Beth McNally in à la mode, Craft

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

cabled bolero, crafts, fashion, Knitted shrug, knitting, vogue knitting

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I thought I’d share my latest creation – this sweet little cabled shrug I’ve been knitting. It was made to this pattern in Vogue Knitting out of cream Debbie Bliss cashmerino. It was a lovely pattern to work up – complicated enough to keep me interested, but not the kind of nightmare pattern where I keep making mistakes! Only one warning If you’re tempted to try it – the pattern comes up really big. I made the XS, and took the needles down to 4.5mm, and the wool down to dk weight, and it is still pretty generously sized. if I was making it again, I’d go for 4mm needles and dk to get more textural cables. I also made the buttonhole a little bigger, to accomodate the old wooden button that I pilfered from a rather shabby cushion!
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Curds of Prey

29 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by Beth McNally in Recipes

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curd cheese recipe, Home-made cheese

I woke up last week and realised that I had a gaping hole in my life – cheese is one of my favourite foods, but I had never made cheese before! So this weekend I set about rectifying the problem. A simple curd cheese turned out to be surprisingly easy…
Put 2 litres of whole milk in a big saucepan and bring to a gentle simmer, stirring constantly to avoid any sticking or burning.

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Take it off the heat, and add the juice of two lemons

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Give it a gentle stir, and it should start to split into curds and whey. If it remains obstinately whole, add a little more lemon juice or heat the milk a little more. Leave it alone for ten minutes (off the heat) to split completely – afterwards it should look something like this:

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Pour the mixture through cheese cloth to separate the solid curds from the whey (reserve the whey for baking…), tie the cheesecloth up and leave to drain. The longer you let it drain, the firmer the resulting cheese. I find hanging the cheese from the taps makes life easier…

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And you’re done! Use it in cheesecakes, or mix with salt and pepper and chopped wild garlic to make your own version of Boursin, flavour with rose water and sugar and eat with strawberries… Have fun!

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As for the whey, well that’s another story…

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A potager of dreams

14 Monday May 2012

Posted by Beth McNally in Mansion and Potager

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The Renaissance Man and I are looking at moving house, and one of the things we are looking for (along with an exquisite eighteenth century mansion with room for a stable of horses… *wistful sigh*) is somewhere with a bigger garden. Les Petites want a bigger trampoline, but I have started dreaming of planting a potager, that fabulously crackers eighteenth century amalgam of vegetable plot and formal garden. So far, I have only one firm requirement – it must be a potager with box hedging, not the kind of potager with wooden edging. Wooden edging reminds me of my grandfather’s vegetable patch which – while full of yummy things – does not convey eighteenth century elegance at all. But disappointingly box is not very tasty, so I was wondering whether my hedging had to be box, or whether it could be something more edible like neatly clipped blueberry bushes? Would love to hear from anyone who’s tried creating blueberry topiary – or any other edible alternatives…

In my potager-related meanderings, I came across this blog where I stumbled on the wonderful idea that every gardener should have a signature plant – rather like a signature perfume or lipstick, something that encapsulates what makes you garden, something you love, that makes a garden yours. I haven’t decided what mine is yet – the only plant I can think of that I’ve always grown is sage! I’ll have to give the matter more thought…

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

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Glorious bacon

13 Sunday May 2012

Posted by Beth McNally in Recipes

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bacon recipe, charcuterie, Curing

Bacon is, I think, one of the staple foods of mankind. Is there anyone in the world who can resist the smell of sizzling bacon? I know people who are vegetarian… Except for bacon. People who gave up being vegetarian… For bacon. An alien from outer space might wonder why – in the era of freezers and food flown to us in airplanes – we would possibly resort to the ancient preservatives of salt and sugar, but surely one bite and they would understand?

This makes it more surprising that I’ve never tried to make it myself. But, when a friend handed me a pot of sodium nitrite and said I wouldn’t look back, I decided to give it a go. I’ve had a large slab of pork belly curing in my fridge for the last week, and we unwrapped it and had some for breakfast this morning. I can honestly say it was the best bacon I’d ever eaten – better by far than the stuff from the local butcher or the farmers market, never mind the pallid, slimy wafer thin slivers that the supermarket calls bacon. It was so good that I ate every bit and completely forgot to take any post-cooking photos! So, to make up for it, I hot smoked a good chunk of it to be sliced into lardons and eaten in a salad, of which I do have some pictures. It was a real hardship….

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My Love is like… A Green Green Cabbage?

07 Monday May 2012

Posted by Beth McNally in Food

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Tags

recipe, Spring greens

Last Sunday we had a big family meal at the Methuen Arms in Corsham, and it was hands down the best roast dinner I’ve had in….well….a very long time! All of the food was lovely, but the dish that really stood out was – of all things – the cabbage! They’d somehow managed to create cabbage that was meltingly tender, really full flavoured and savoury (without even a whisper of the dreaded sulphurous tang of overcooked cabbage) and deep deep green. It had hints of garlic, and had obviously been tossed in butter before it was served….. Even the Renaissance Man liked it!

Ever since, I’ve been trying to work out how they got the cabbage so tender without overcooking. Here is my first attempt…. Continue reading →

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