Warning: Undefined variable $show_stats in /home/jdqespth/public_html/wp-content/plugins/stats/stats.php on line 1384

1 week tunic

I’m the chatelaine for my local SCA group, so I’ve got custody of the bags of loaner clothes for people who haven’t yet put together their own outfits to wear to events.

We’ve been trying to refresh our options and have donated some of our garb to a newly opened college branch and also had a large chunk of our male garb destroyed by a student’s landlord. So we’ve been replacing some things. Because of the demographics of our group, we’ve mostly been focusing on replacing with larger sized outfits.

But then I had a thinner person looking for garb! For an event at the end of the week. And I was pretty sure we wouldn’t have anything to loan. (But I also didn’t want to promise to have made something because I have never tried to sew with this short a deadline. So I also didn’t ask for measurements)

Step 1 – ‘planning’: I fucked up my math  I knew this person was a size small and had a 31″ waist. So I looked up other standard measurements for a men’s small and decided to go with a 34″ chest. So I took my fabric and measured out 34″, added a bit of extra for comfort, and figured the tunic length would be selvedge to selvedge (~52″) folded in half. And went ahead and cut there.

… And then I realized I had measured out a whole circumference and not the half a circumference I would need. But then I decided to see if I could make the entire piece from this already cut fabric.

Very rough cutting diagram with poorly remembered measurements

Cutting the pieces: So I then divided in half? Well, no. I figured I should make it just a touch wider just in case and just sort of eyeballed how wide the torso would be. This cutting diagram has measurements, but I didn’t actually put a ruler to that part.

Then I measured from my shoulder to over the palm and where my fingers start. And the number 26″ is what I think I got, but I didn’t write it down. It was more than half of the tunic, which does seem very long (or a short tunic) but it was fine.

And I double checked that the narrower part divided in half would make sleeves wide enough. According to the size chart I found, I was aiming for an 15″ upper arm. And these were narrower. BUT once you cut off the taper for the wrist and flip them around to be underarm gussets it would just make that number. Honestly, until it was tried on I still want sure whether this gusset would be big enough. For the wrist diameter, I measured the widest circumference of my hand (because hand sizes have little relationship with waist sizes) and went with a little less than 10″. I centered that on the sleeves and cut the corners off up to the halfway/elbow part.

Honestly, I’m not sure how/why it was still working. But also I figured that I didn’t actually know this person’s size, so we’re winging it!

And then the remaining square I split in half lengthwise and then cut into right triangles for gores.

Sewing it together: first I got the gussets seen to the wide part of the arms.

Then I got the arms sewn to the midpoint on the torso – being careful to keep track of the inside and outside of the pieces. I love flat felling when sewing linen, but sometimes the inside and outside are too similar and I’ll flip pieces. But this time – since it was for someone else, I was very sure to keep track.

Sewing the gusset to the arm with a flat felled stitch that is two parallel running stitches

Once the arms were on, I added the gores. Again, I’m not swearing to the measurements in the diagram. My gores only came up to about 3″ below the arm, and that was with sewing on the hypotenuse (which you want to do so that the bias edge is stabilized by the on grain edge), so that’s why I was free to do that after the sleeves sewing.

Then while I was still flat, and easy to access both the inside and outside, I went to making the neck hole and adding a facing. I decided to turn the facing to the inside, instead of making a contrasting decorative panel, because that’s more appropriate to a wider range of cultures and time periods. But I’d used up all of my square of fabric! Instead of cutting a new piece from the remaining cloth, I went to my scrap stash and looked for a piece the right size (in a lighter color because it would be on the inside and showing through the handkerchief weight fabric a little). There was a white piece that was just perfect.

I feel like I should be able to pin the facing in place and just cut the neckline for both pieces at the same time, but I figured I’d be safe and cut the neckline (narrower than you actually want – because seam allowance – and a keyhole slit for ease of putting it on) on the primary fabric first. Then just a rough (slightly smaller) hole on the facing. Pin all of the sides flat and even. Then sew around the neckline.

After you’ve gotten it sewn, then trim the inside of the circle to the right shape and amount of steam allowance you want. And clip the seam allowance at the curves and corners. Then I flipped it to the inside and did another line of stitching around the neckline pulling the facing in slightly so that the yellow fabric would cover all the way over the turn.

Then I spread the facing fabric as smoothly as I could and pinned it in place. A more diligent person would have paused to iron here. And I whip stitched the edges of the facing down.

Now! I could finally sew up the long side seams.

Three flat felled seams coming together neatly is just so very satisfying

I’ve found that when I’m flat felling, I do have to cut in a little deeper in the seam allowance when I’m going around the points of the gores so that I have room to tuck all of the raw edges into the seam.

Finished garment!

For the side seams, I started at the wrist because that’s the part that most visible needs to line up. Then a running stitch down to the hem. And then on the way back, fold everything over and flat, and then another running stitch holding the folks down on the way up. It’s surprisingly fast and much more stable than I ever thought running stitches would be.

When I came to the end of each wrist with a finished seam, I went ahead and folded the fabric on twice and hemmed the wrist opening.

At the end, all that was left was a quick hem of the bottom of the skirts.

If I had more time (or if it returns to gold key) I would like to add some simple embroidery to the area over the facing to keep the material folded inside flat when it gets washed. But that is an experiment for the future.

Meanwhile, I did finish in time, AND the tunic fit the recipient perfectly.

Breakfast Kale with an Egg on Top

Close up of the finished dish with a nest of cooked shredded kale and a soft poached/steamed egg in the middle of that nest

I’ve already written up this recipe a couple of times, but I wanted to update it. Here’s the post where I cite the original Roman recipes that inspired this meal.

Diced purple onions in a skillet

Start with finely chopping up a few slices of purple onion and sauteing them in a little olive oil.

A pile of shredded kale with a bottle of sweet red wine and a bottle of Red Boat fish sauce in the background

Let’s talk about ingredients

Kale – I like growing Red Russian Kale because it has a flatter leaf that is easier than most varieties to check for bugs as it is growing, but also a softer texture that cooks up nicely when harvested. This recipe will work with any variety of kale.

Wine – This should be a red wine, and I prefer a sweeter variety. Honestly, I love the kosher Manischewitz concord grape or blackberry flavors both for drinking and cooking with. But I also keep a bottle in my refrigerator of boiled down and concentrated red wine from any time I have a leftover partial bottle, and that would also work well here. Whatever you’ve got.

Fish sauce – I am pretty sure the ancient Romans used at least two different kinds of fish sauce. There’s the garum, which is very light colored and quite polite. That’s the table fish sauce for adjusting flavor after cooking. And then there’s the liquamen, which is almost ubiquitous in these recipes and seems to function for adding salt. So I look for the funkiest and saltiest fish sauces available. I’ve had good luck with the Squid Brand and Red Boat. Use the salty one with kale!

[if you want to avoid fish sauce, then you can switch to a powdered bouillon (maybe half a cube or less), soup base, or Maggi cube]

Skillet with some onions and kale

Okay, so your onions are getting caramelized around the edges and a little brown. Your patience will be rewarded. Now you can fill your pan with shredded kale (this is about 5 or 6 large leaves) and you can throw in other green herbs (parsley, cilantro, dandelion greens, scallion greens, dill, mint, random foraged edible things) if you want, but I usually just go with kale because if I’m growing it in my garden, then I already have too much of it to get through.

Cook the kale until it just brightens. If you want, you can add a teaspoon or two of water to help it move around, but it should be pretty dry right now. Because as soon as it’s a little cooked, v you’re going to add a teaspoon of fish sauce and a teaspoon of red wine and that with sizzle and steam everything up.

Mix everything together well and then tuck everything toward the middle of the pan with a little divot in the middle to make a nice nest.

Then crack an egg into the middle of the nest, grind some black pepper on top, and cover the pan and let the egg poach in that steam to cook.

A skillet with a silly hat of an aluminum takeout container as a lid.

I’m just a few minutes (it’s okay to peek) the egg will set. The yolk will turn from yellow to a pinkish color and the white might jiggle but it will all be white. If you want the white harder, you can go a little longer, but you risk your yolk solidifying and not being as runny. It’s your egg, so make it the way you like.

The finished dish!

I like to eat this with a bagel and cream cheese. And with a spoon. Enjoy!

Refrigerator Clean Out Salad

So I’ve been self soothing by stocking up on groceries, but then I ended up with too many types of vegetables that require intensive prep in order to turn into food and not enough easy meals.

There’s still three quarters of a kabocha squash, two ears of corn, and some tomatillos to reckon with. But those are for another day.

Today I was gardening and it was very hot and I didn’t really want to cook much. Then I remembered I had lettuce! So this salad is based on one head of romaine lettuce, cleaned and cut up.

Ginormous bowl of the complete salad with even an egg on top

Then I had bought new carrots, but I still had three old carrots. So I pulled those out and sliced them up for pickling (quick pickle with a dried chili and seasoned rice wine vinegar) and the slices that weren’t pretty for cut a little more finely and added to the salad.

Then I pulled out the package of small Persian cucumbers. I really do like them more than other cucumbers and they’ve been pretty cheap recently, but they barely last a week in the refrigerator. So I washed all the ones I haven’t eaten (4) and sliced them. I also got out a red onion and thinly sliced half of one. Most of the slices I pickled separately with red wine vinegar, but I added some to the cucumbers for extra flavor. And then all the parts of the cucumber that were a little soft but still good went into the salad.

I cleaned and finely sliced one scallion and added it to the salad.

I grabbed the third ear of corn and cleaned it. The husks compost better if you slice them across the grain a few times. Then I sliced off about half of the kernels and put them into the salad raw. But that was enough raw corn, and I wasn’t sure how to save half an ear of corn like that. So I took a pat of butter and thinly sliced some of the remaining purple onion and put that to cook while I sliced off the rest of the kernels. My mother would have also taken the back of her knife and scraped it all of the corn milk, too, but I just gnawed on the corn cob while I was working.  Anyway, the remaining corn kernels then went into the butter and onion and was cooked until just soft and hot before being added to the salad.

But wait, there’s more!

I’d bought a little of the good mozzarella (good within the category of grocery store mass produced cheese), so I cubed that and added it on top.

And I had some soft boiled eggs, so I peeled one and put it in hot water to both wash off any tiny shell crumbs and to take the chill off.

But then I also decided to cook some leftover thinly sliced (hot pot style) fatty beef that I’d gotten from the Asian market. Instead of thawing and unrolling them, I just put them in the hot skillet as chunks – they still cooked through just fine.

And that was everything… except I had no plan for salad dressing. But I did have a pan with a couple Tablespoons of beef fat that had rendered off, so I thought about the Pennsylvania Dutch bacon fat dressing, and figured I might as well improvise. So I whacked a Tablespoon of Dijon mustard into the hot fat and stirred it around until it started to break down (not my plan, but that was what happened), and then I added some pickle sauce and stirred until it emulsified, and then poured it over the salad. And that worked really well! It had enough salt and brought everything together without feeling fatty.

Another view of the complete salad

Oh, and then I sliced the soft boiled eggs on top, which was really gilding the lily, but eggs don’t last forever.

Mushrooms and Radish in a soy butter glaze

These mushrooms have been 99 cents lately, and I’ve been buying them for mille feuille nabe but I haven’t felt like making that this week, and I wanted to make sure I used them before they went bad.

And I had half a diakon radish left in my refrigerator and had not bought more, but I signed up for a delivery of mystery vegetable seconds and there three (smaller) radishes in that package. So it was time to use this one up, too.

The Yummy Vegan had a dish that used both. I mean, it mostly seems to average out radishes by OkonomiKitchen and mushrooms from The Woks of Life and then makes it vegan. And more importantly uses only one pan for them both!

I liked the concept, but switched the order. So I started off cooking the seafood mushrooms in a little bit of real butter. And at the same time, I quartered and thickly sliced the rest of the radish and put it in a glass bowl (with a vented lid) with some sake and mushroom powder for two minutes. It still wasn’t quite soft at two minutes, so I stirred everything around and microwaved the radishes for another minute.

Meanwhile I cooked the mushrooms until they were very brown and then removed them to a plate. Then I melted another 2 Tablespoons of real butter and put the radishes in to shallow fry.

I made the sauce by using the amount of miso I had left in the jar, which was only about a tablespoon. And I also only added one teaspoon of soy sauce because adding salt to salt, especially since I use salted butter, sounded like a lot. So to get the liquid amount right. I used more like a quarter cup of mirin and no sugar. And the recipe said you might need to add water, but I had some clementines in the counter, so I added the juice of one. And then much careful stirring to fully dissolve the miso without splashing the liquids.

Once the radish was nicely and evenly browned, I added the mushrooms back in and poured the sauce over both of them together.

Finished with some sliced scallions on top.

The result was very good! And, yes, I ate it with a toasted philly muffin, with cream cheese and sliced cucumber, instead of rice. They went very well together.

Comforting Cabbage and Ground Beef … Casserole?

I mean, it has all the makings of a good casserole. It just needs some egg noodles and a casserole dish. But I guess making it for just me it’s more in the “skillet” category.

Plated final dish with a saucy mix of cabbage and minced beef

So I had roughly diced and boiled a head of cabbage, and I still had about a pint of leftovers from that.

I also had half a can of diced tomatoes left from making shakshuka. Ground beef was what I’d thawed. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned before, but when I the a pound of ground beef, I usually split it into quarters and use one loose for that day’s meal, and I make the other three quarters into hamburger patties and refreeze them.

So this was my starting point, and then I went to see what other people online were doing with these ingredients – and the results were almost universally soup. I was not feeling like soup. So this is winging it.

I started off browning the meat with some onions and diced serrano peppers, and then I minced and added three cloves of garlic.

There’s some “tagine spice” in my cabinet that a friend brought me back from France. It smells more like a sweet curry powder than a ras el hanout, so it feels weird using it in either context. But this seemed like a great reason to use up a tablespoon or so. And then I added about a tablespoon of flour and stirred everything well until all of the flour was sticking to the meat and had cooked a bit.

And then I added liquids – the leftover canned tomatoes, some nut milk, and I decided to count the cabbage as kinda liquid, too. After stirring everything thoroughly, I made sure everything came to a boil to cook the starches. And then I stirred it again and let it simmer until most of the water had evaporated and the sauce was very thick. I did have a moment of my ancestors (well, my mother) telling me that this dish needed a dash of Worcestershire sauce, but I don’t have any, so ancestral advice was ignored. But if you’re inspired by this, it probably wouldn’t hurt to add some.

Re: nut milk – I had impulse bought some pistachio milk (unsweetened!) because I’d never seen it before, and Even though it’s delicious and fancy, it’s always a struggle getting through that much of any kind of milk before it goes bad. So I was delighted I found an excuse to use it, too!

It was delicious! I was so full!