The Minneapolis Greenway and Nicolet Island

This weekend I biked around Minneapolis in preparation for my eventual move to the Twin Cities and to escape Saint Closet for a bit. Thursday and Friday I stayed at Redwing's and rode up and down the Greenway.
The Greenway is possibly the most useful bike trail I have ever used. It runs E/W from Uptown to Seward across Minneapolis on an old railway line that has dozens of bridges going across it. You access the path by ramps.
Along the 3 or 4 mile stretch are numerous little parks and gardens.
On Saturday I wandered of to Ben and Peat's house and ended up going out with them for a friends birthday to a goth club. Goth people make me smile. During the day Saturday I took a few pictures of Nicolet Island, the magical little neighborhood that is in the middle of the Mississippi. There are a few bridges that connect the island to either side of the river.
I would love to live there while I'm student teaching (found out I'll be doing it in Saint Paul) but there are seriously maybe 20 houses on the entire island so I don't see that happening. I'm goign to try for NE because the bus line down university will deposit me in St. Paul with relative speed. Here are some of the houses on the island.
Every house has an adorable garden in a haphazard Victorian style.
It's a magical place and I love spending time there with the cats, chickens, bridges, and adorable men.

~Eikon

An Escape From St. Closet

Albeit a brief escape. I'll be going to Minneapolis Thursday evening to Sunday afternoon. Flopper has decided to make his own escape to Iowa and I was going to hang around for a weekend alone.
So my bike and I are going to be wandering about the cities. I'm even thinking about taking a bus over to St Paul as I've never been there before and love exploring new places on my bike. Plus there is a men's knitting group that meets at the Yarnery in St. Paul. I'm going to get hold of
WoolGatherer and see if he's going. I'll take the camera and be sure to post many pictures.


~Eikon

Squished Chicken

I did the 12 to 6am shift on Friday and Saturday so needless to say I was asleep until noon today. This afternoon I decided it was time to try some culinary experimentation I've been roasting a chicken every Sunday or so for the last month and vaguely remembered a segment of the Splendid Table about cooking a chicken on the range with a weight. Fortunately the website is amazingly well designed and I found the recipe with relative ease.

Crisp, Brick-Fried Chicken with Rosemary and Whole Garlic Cloves

From The Improvisational Cook by Sally Schneider. To be published October 2006 by HarperCollins Publishers.

Serves 3 or 4

My favorite easy chicken dish is a whole bird, butterflied and fried in a skillet with a weight on top, Italian style. The result is succulent chicken—both white meat and dark—with a delectable crisp skin, and with much more flavor than the ubiquitous boneless breast; loss of bones always means loss of flavor. The dish takes about 5 minutes of actual work, and about 25 minutes unattended cooking time, during which you can have a cocktail and put the rest of your simple meal together, as your home fills with a lovely fragrance.

• One 3-pound chicken, preferably organic
• 1 tablespoons kosher salt
• 4 large sprigs fresh rosemary or thyme
• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
• 8 unpeeled garlic cloves, lightly smashed
• 1/4 cup dry white wine or balsamic vinegar (optional)
• Pinch sugar (optional)/li>
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 

1. Rinse the chicken and pat dry with paper toweling. Place the chicken breast-side-down on a work surface. With kitchen shears, cut through the bones along both sides of the backbone and remove it. Trim off any excess neck skin. Spread the bird open, skin-side-up, on the counter and press down firmly against the breastbone with the palms of your hands to break and flatten it. Tuck the wings back and under themselves so they lie flat against the breast. Or, cut off the wing tips and discard.

2. If possible, season the bird at least an hour (unrefrigerated) or up to 24 hours (refrigerated) before cooking. Sprinkle the bird on both sides with kosher salt and pepper. Press herbs against both sides. Bring the bird to room temperature one hour before cooking.

3. Heat a large nonstick skillet, over medium heat: add the oil and swirl to coat. Blot the bird dry with paper towels and place skin-side-up in the pan. Place a heavy skillet, about 2 inches smaller in diameter, directly on top of the chicken. If you don't have a heavy enough pan - 4 to 5 pounds - use another smooth-bottomed item, such as saucepan. Balance it on the bird and add heavy objects to weight the pan down such as a can or two or a meat pounder (I've even used a rock). Cook the chicken until the underside is brown, about 10 minutes. Remove the weight and turn the chicken over with a pair of tongs. Replace the weight. Nestle the garlic cloves around the chicken and continue cooking until the skin is crisp and brown, 12 minutes longer.

4. To test for doneness, insert an instant read thermometer into the inside of the thigh; it should read 170°. Alternatively, poke the thigh with a paring knife; if the juices are clear, not pink, it is done. Transfer the chicken to a cutting board and let rest 5 minutes.

~~~~~~~

I scrapped the seasoning and used sumac, white pepper, and oregano When it was done I made this lovely chicken salad after offering the obligatory tithe to Eli.
~Eikon

Radishes

Radishes are an often overlooked vegetable. Except by the French. It seems that if it is edible the French will not overlook. In fact even if there is the possiblity of the food being edible the French have not overlooked it.

One of my Favourite books is my "Preserving Food w/o Freezing or Canning" by the kind people of Centre Terre Vivante. Lurking in the pages of this wonderful volume is the following recipe.

I'm not really certain how many pounds of radish I used and was certainly more liberal with the salt than the recipe called for In any Case here is my mound of radishes cleaned up.
Chopped. I seem to do a lot of choppin vegetables maybe I should get a cleaver?
Then finally squished into jars; I like to use my pestle for this though in a crock a wine bottle does the job quite admirably.

Many of the recipes in this book call for fermenting inside jars. This one is interesting in that the brine is added hot after a few days rather than immediatly. I suspect it has to do with the toughnesss of the Radishes. they need to soften. I added some local jalapeno peppers for heat. the recipe claims the brine can be used in lieu of vinegar and drunk watered down. it takes a very special person to enjoy drinking radish brine but fortunately I know a number of very special people.


~Eikon

Denim Tire Messenger Bag

I finally finished my tire messenger bag after a few false starts over the last year. I borrowed this idea from the inestimable Stephen over at Hizknits and made a few alterations. The biggest being my bag is half the side of his I wanted a new man purse but really enjoyed the overall design and so made it more loose and hippy oriented. Second I didn't want to foray into felting and so played around with other fibers and as a result had to stitch the tube to the bag (I hid the stitching under the tire straps.

As far as fiber goes the Body is made of Rowan Tweed .The rim of the bag flush with the tire and the straps of the bag are Rowan Denim in the Nashville shade. Finally the flap is the Rowan denim double stranded with a black Louisa Harding Yarn called Kashmere Aran.

The Rim came first with me slipping a stitch (like a sock heel) at every turn. I picked up a third of the stitches and knit up consuming a stitch by p2tog or K2 tog at the end of each row. Basically a U made up by the rim and consumed one stitch at a time working from the bottom of the bag to the top. I did the front first finishing off with a few rows of Denim in seed stitch to make the the curling a bit less prominent. Same process up the back except I left the stitches live to make the flap later

There are five straps coming off the rim that are single stranded ( the rim is double stranded) that I made by picking up stitches length wise and then kitchener stitching into the opposite side of the rim. I Started with the centered strap in the bottom to try to maintain a bit of equilibrium
and then moved up either side.
The flap was a bit of whimsy on my part because it has a stripe of fair isle patterning near the top. Apparently the Rowan Denim fades like jeans and so the denim parts of the bag will become more contrasted.

Elias was very interested in Flopper modeling my the new messenger bag before they headed out on their daily run.

Now I'm going to take a nap before I make my feremented radishes.

~Eikon

Guerilla Gleaning and Apple Mead

Yesterday at the Coop I came across one of the guys in my banal Education class and we started talking fermentation. He mentioned that he and his roommates had collected 500lbs of apples in the last month around town and told me where to find some trees that had a lot left on them even after they had filled a few bags yesterday.

So after scouting the spot, finding three very fruitful apple tree and jumping over a fence with my trusty Guthrie Center State Bank duffel bag I was the happy bearer of 50 lbs of free apples.
Which needed to be washed and the tub was the only thing I had that was large enough for them all.

Definitely not eating apples but still rather lovely.

What to do with 50 lbs of apples? I wanted to make hard cider but I don't have access to a press and I had promised PeatMoss and Ben a case of mead for their wedding. The awnser to my abundance of apples was melomel; or a mead that uses fruit juice in lieu of water.
So I chopped and boiled; and chopped some more.
The process is the same as making jelly toss the pulp into a bag and squeeze out the juice.

After burning myself the first time trying to pour into the 5 gallon crock I realized that bag fit nicely around the 2 gallon.
We had knitting tonight and so my playing was interrupted but it gave me an excuse to go get a new fermentation toy.

Behold the "Ale Pail". Not nearly as pretty as a five gallon glass demijohn but a 1/4 the cost and much more movable.

It's best to siphon rather than attempting to pour a five gallon stoneware crock.

The recipe for melomel goes as follows.

1 lb of sugar (brown preferably)
1 lb of honey (16 ounces = 2lb to a quart)
1 gallon of juice

Toss in a packet of yeast (you can let it ferment wildly but I'm not taking any chances with such a big batch). Champagne yeast produces a harder mead and this is for a wedding celebration after all.
All told I got bout 3 1/2 gallons of apple juice and made up the rest of the five gallons with water, the sugars, and honey.
The major cost for this project will be the bottles and the honey as I had 70 dollars worth of apples for free. I expect to get 4 bottles to the gallon; so 20 altogether, sixteen of which will go to the blushing grooms in May and four of which will be Christmas presents for a few people.

A cheese cloth goes over the ale pail until the mixture starts bubbling and then it gets sealed up until the fermentation slows. Probably 5 weeks given the size of this batch.

Today I'm going to ferment some radishes but I need to throw together a Multiple Intelligences project for class.

And look the mead is already bubbling happily!

~Eikon

Kawashaway!

So I'll be headed up to Kawashaway this weekend ostensibly to clan up the dump but my sneaking suspicion is the amount of rain that is forecasted will keep us indoors. It will give me plenty of time to work on my new man bag. I expect It will be finished when I get back. I just have to survive my Economics test tomorrow and then off to the Northwoods.

~Eikon