Chicken with Fresh Apricot Sauce

Improvising dinner isn't all that hard, if you have a base recipe in mind and accidentally happen to have a great combination of ingredients on hand. Tonight proved that to me, again.

I had errands to do on the way home from work, that usually tire me out, but I really didn't want to resort to takeout or delivery again. So I picked up a package of bone-in/skin-on chicken thighs, figuring I'd make my favorite and very reliable Chicken in Mustard Sauce, based on a recipe from one of Jacques Pepin's books that I've been making for years and years. It's utterly foolproof. Also really best made with dark chicken, but that's a personal preference.

I happened to also buy a dozen lovely ripe apricots at the same supermarket, and by the time I got to the stove the recipe was evolved in my mind into a fruity sweet/sour sauce. Last year I discovered the pleasure of adding halved fresh apricots to the pan when roasting a chicken. Well, same difference!

So, recipe for 4 chicken thighs: begin sauteing the chicken in olive oil, seasoned with just salt and pepper, in a just-large-enough nonstick pan over medium heat. Add 1 small chopped onion to pan, and a good sprinkle of thyme. Turn chicken pieces and place over the onion bits.

When onion begins to brown, add a splash (that is, about a tablespoon) of decent sherry (NOT  nasty supermarket cooking sherry). Stir, let bubble, and cover the pan and lower the heat a bit.

After about ten minutes, add 4 or 5 small apricots -- halved, pitted, each half cut into 3-4 pieces. (Use fewer apricots if you've got big ones.) Stir. Add 1 teaspoon Palm Sugar Jaggery -- this stuff is like wet brown sugar, and is great to cook with. Stir. Turn chicken. The pan should have accumulated some juices.

Cover again, let cook another 5-10 minutes until chicken is pretty much done. Add about 1 teaspoon good balsamic vinegar, stir juices and now-dissolving apricots. Turn chicken again. Simmer a couple of minutes uncovered. Turn off heat. Let sit 5 minutes to let chicken juices settle.

I served this with sauteed potatoes and asparagus. Anything that soaks up the sauce is allowable. The fruity, tangy, tart-sweet sauce went really well with dry, fruity, non-oaky Fetzer Chardonnay.

I can hardly wait until I make this again! Like next week. Apricots will be in season awhile!

Angraecum didieri

Mini Angraecums are a peculiar addiction that has affected all too many of my friends. Surely such small plants could hardly be a problem...and then you have twenty of them, all of costly, several needing Special Conditions or at the very least a bit of coddling. In return, you may or may not get lovely fragrant white flowers in varying quantities, for varying periods of time. Sounds fair to me!

My personal forays into the Angraecoids were mostly limited to Aerangises, which have performed poorly for me. Or I let them down. Either way, I decided to give up. But lo! Last year Cal-Orchid released a large selection of Angraecum didieri, multiple growths, in spike or just blooming size. I had to have one.

I flowered it, and then nearly killed it. What the hell! Yellowed and then browned leaves, bottom to top. The crowns barely hung on. I suspected thrips and washed the plant. I doused with cinnamon. I watered, spritzed, shifted to another spot. It sulked. It did nothing at all but remain alive. I suspected I'd overwatered and cut back a bit. The mix seemed OK, so I didn't mess with that.

So naturally I got another one this spring, when opportunity arose. And...

Well, it sort of sat there for a month, which wasn't surprising, really. Tentatively, it made a leaf from one of the two growths. Extended a few root tips. Sat there some more. The two tantalizing spikes did nothing. It got watered with everything else, with both plain water and MSU fertilizer (at irregular intervals). Then I decided to finally open the bottle of MegaThrive I got late last year, and spray it all over everything, twice a week.

Buds and flowers on EVERYTHING. Well, not everything. But the newer Ang. didieri burst into bloom literally within ten days of being sprayed. One of the tantalizing spikes evolved nearly overnight. One more tantalizing spike remains...

The older plant, meanwhile, remains alive. It now clearly needs repotting, along with a couple dozen other plants, so hope springs eternal.

Knitting up VK Live 2013: Dragonfly Fibers Super Traveller

I obviously did not have enough yarn stash, so I went to Vogue Knitting Live in January 2013 to remedy that situation. Seriously, only a few months after Rhinebeck 2012, I realized my stash lacked certain things. Big bouncy fluffy yarn for warm hats, for example. I bought 2 skeins of that sort of thing at Rhinebeck -- but otherwise my stash was now almost entirely lighter weight yarns, especially the nice hand-dyed stuff.

Normally, this has never been an actual problem. Knitting with 2 strands of yarn works very well. I've done it any number of times, when a bulkier yarn was wanted for a scarf or hat. Combining 2 different yarns this way isn't exactly rocket surgery. I just didn't feel like it, this time around. My last attempt, combining 3 yarns, was very pretty but not actually successful: a bit too bulky, too stiff. Discouraging.

Insanity aside, I did manage to find a couple of skeins of lovely bulky wool. Dragonfly Fibers satisfied my urge for beret material: Super Traveler. Amazing smooshy squooshy 100% merino wonderfulness. AND THE COLORS. Bad Moon Rising (pictured above) was impossible to resist. So was Admiral Benbow:

You see my problem, right?

So, hats. The Bad Moon Beret has become my favorite warm woolly winter hat. It's just a tad too big at the headband, so it slips a bit if I move my head fast or bend down for a few moments, but I can live with that.

The Benbow Hat is a bit too snug, but again, I can live with that. Warm and toasty rules.

Spring Beets & Beer Stew

Spring is taking its sweet time this year. But the New York City Greenmarkets are finally showcasing something other than potatoes and ten-month-old apples! Asparagus, beets, broccoli rabe, lettuce, scallions and herbs overflow the tables. All is well.

What to do with a gorgeous bunch of tender young beets with lovely velvety leaves?

Prep your favorite big cooking pot. Combine several meaty country-style pork ribs with chopped onions and plentiful salt, pepper, rosemary & thyme in sizzling olive oil. Add 1 bottle of beer (I had Sam Adams handy). Cover and simmer 1/2 hour. Add raw beets, peeled and cut into pleasing chunks. Cover & simmer 1 hour. Add cleaned & sliced beet greens and/or chard greens (and stalks), mix well, cover & simmer 1/2 hour. Add partially thawed frozen green fava beans (mine are imported from France, yours might come from an Asian market), simmer 15 more minutes.

Serve however you like: potatoes, rice, bulgur, bread, couscous, polenta.

If it happens that you devour all or most of the meat but have plenty of cooked greens & beets leftover, be sure to reheat them with thawed frozen or canned black-eyed peas. Seriously. Really good.

Lamb shoulder or shanks would be equally good here, too. Lamb and beets are a truly magical combination. I'll make that next.

Knitting up Rhinebeck 2009: Kid Hollow Cowl #2

Having happily solved one Boucle problem by creating a fluffy warm cowl/scarf with one skein of luscious hand-painted Kid Hollow Farm mohair/silk/merino blend, I was happy to solve the second Boucle problem the same way! The skein of "Brilliant Jewels" became another fluffy warm cowl/scarf, this one a gift for a friend. Small amount left over -- I miscalculated the amount needed for bind-off -- became a hat. (The other yarn there is a leftover amount of Dream In Color Classy.)

Where have all the orchids gone...?

So like all orchid collections, mine has an ebb/flow thing that goes on. New plants come in. Old plants go bye-bye. Sad but true. What comes home from the orchid show in big bags quietly leaves the apartment in small bags...*sigh.*

With every new plant comes that settling-in period...and I've had my share of good surprises. I was astonished when I first began flowering certain mini-catt hybrids, having thought the 48" fluorescent tubes I use were inadequate. I was happy to get so many flowers from Cochleanthes Amazing before I rotted the poor thing by overwatering it -- and, to be fair, I just couldn't keep up with the root system.

I was lucky to go to the Deep Cut show in February 2012, and to the SEPOS/Longwood Gardens show in March 2012, and to various society meetings with vendors. My 2012 acquisitions are a mixed bag, per usual. Some were safe bets. Some were mere whims. Others are evidence of my deep stubborn streak. This list is by no means complete...

Angraecum dideri is breaking my heart again. I gave up ever trying to grow young ones after the one I got in 2011 decided to just shed all its leaves one day. My 2012 plant also started to shed leaves, but at least it had backup plans in place, in the form of 2 basal keikis. Cinnamon application and increased watering seem to have halted the crisis, for now, and new leaves are in evidence. I'll cheer louder when I also see new roots. Perhaps repotting is in order, the old mix looks kind of dire. I got a new one in January, also from Cal-Orchid, and so far this very robust one is extending its roots and showing signs of blooming from the two initiated spikes.

Oeceoclades roseovariegata hasn't done much, but it still looks really good. I'm slowly finding out more about this rather strange species. It's from Madagascar, and apparently prefers slighly arid conditions. I got it from Erich Michel, who advised high light and good drainage. I think it's mix is staying a bit too wet these days, so I am contemplating repotting it very soon.

Neofinetia falcata has grown so slowly I barely can notice the new leaves on each of the three growths. New roots? Not so much. Probably not good. Since then I've acquired two more Neofinetias -- one is a pink variety, the other a small but sturdy "common" variety -- and they seem happy enough. A few new roots are visible there.

I got Gomesa crispa  (pictured above) in October from Parkside, in bud; the small yellow flowers are not spectacular but cute. It seems to be doing well. That is to say, even the old growths on the plant seem to be expanding. Roots everywhere. New growths all over, two of them quite large. Not even very much leaf-pleating going on, so I count this as a personal triumph.  I suspect summer will be a problem, but I refuse to be pessimistic in advance.

Christensonia vietnamica has grown tall and sturdy, but wasn't really thriving until just a couple of weeks ago, when it suddenly sprouted two new roots. My friends helpfully tell me theirs are much shorter and have bloomed several times. THAT'S NICE. Well we shall see what happens.

Knitting up VK Live 2012: Sound of Waves

Well-made yarns cry out to be something, even if we don't always figure it out right away. That's why we pet yarns, and fondle them, and contemplate them...we need to take their full measure, and help them become what their destiny demands of them. Even if it's just a potholder. Or a hat. Or...

I seized this skein of Happy Fuzzy Yarn merino/tencel at Vogue Knitting Live in 2012. Not fuzzy at all! Silky. Soft. Luscious. How could I resist a colorway called Purple Kale? That's right. Just look at it!!

So...what to do with 400 yards of silky soft fingering weight yarn? Why, lace scarf, of course! One of my ongoing fancies is to create a whole armload of lightweight, lacy, chiefly decorative scarves in a vast array of colors and fibers. But which lace scarf pattern would do this elegant yarn justice...?

Kieran Foley to the rescue. His lace patterns make me crazy. I want to make all of them. His Sound of Waves wrap caught my eye a while ago on Ravelry, and seemed a perfect fit for what I wanted.

I bollocksed the pattern a bit -- I cast on an extra repeat, and ended up with a ridiculously long and quite narrow scarf. It took a looooooooooooooooong time to knit each row, and for a simple pattern it was surprisingly tricky to not screw up -- and on the rare occasions I dropped a stitch (as when knitting whilst riding in a car) OW it hurt a lot. Then I added insult to injury by blocking the finished product in my usual bizarre way: stretching out the wet thing over the shower rod. (I can't lay wet knitting projects out flat to block, I have a Manhattan apartment, and I have a cat.)

Despite all that, I likey! And I'll make another, in some other luscious lacey yarn. This time I'll make it shorter and wider, as Mr. Foley intended.