Mushroom Soup

• homemade chicken stock (inspired by River Cottage)
• dried wild mushroom mix from Neudorf Mushrooms (purchased and the Neudorf festival held on the weekend)
• Slightly old “fresh” mushrooms”
• Riverside cream skimmed from the top of raw milk (just down the road from our place)
• fresh parsley from my garden (the parsley “bushes” are wild and lovely now)
• chunk of butter from Wangapeka Downs (another local dairy)
• black pepper and salt to taste (I LOVE loads of pepper in this dish)

Served with Soda Bread ala River Cottage I did not think this was going to work out in the end. I had no buttermilk and only a smidgen of yogurt left so I performed the old vinegar to milk trick (1 tsp vin to 1 cup milk) and added what I had of the yogurt then accidentally added it all to the bread flour and ending up with a slightly wetter bread mix. Added to this little stuff up I had the dedicated help of a 2.5 year old who wanted to poor in everything he could reach, stir and stir and stir and then throw in handfuls of flour. So between juggling him on a chair up to his elbows in flour, the visit from a friend and her daughter who had dropped Pip off and not quite getting my measurements, I ended up throwing a fairly wet pile of ahhh, slop, onto the baking tray (there was no way I could cut a cross in the top as the knife just stuck it was so moist) and closing the oven door and ignored it for 40 minutes while I whipped up the soup.

The result was an absolutely delicious and filling dinner of hot bread and hot soup – and I don’t even like mushrooms!

Oh and I almost forgot to mention the cold glass of Elderflower cordial we made a few weekends ago (along with Elderflower Champagne that should b ready in a few weeks).

As you can see from these photo, things are progressing, the pattern is developing (although not quite how I expected from the software rendition), and I’m enjoying using only white and natural.

I have several patterns to tryout so each of these tea towels will be in a different pattern. I also have a bunch of 22/2 cottolin colours I want to try so I’m sure I’ll be mixing up the white and natural with the rust, green, blue and brown. I also have a small quantity of Thai cotton that I’d like to incorporate (but then I might use them in a different warp).

After searching the net for various homemade temple ideas, I have to say that this one I’ve chosen to try is working pretty well, although the better and the bulldog clips do clash if they get too close (I would like them closer then they like to be).

(bulldog clip tied to a 100gm bag of rice)

Update – these seem to be getting less sticky the further into the weaving I’m getting and the further from the heddles I am. Although there are still a few that stick every other treadle change. This has also caused 2 threads to be skipped over in an entire 1″ of white strip *grrrr* as per this photo:

Warping onto a sectional warp beam on an AVL 16 shaft dobby loom

Once you’ve created your chains it’s time to take them to the back of your loom

Hook the lease sticks over the raddle to support it and keep both your hands free for tying on to the lead cords.Makes sure you’ve put your lease sticks, one on each side of the cross.

Secure sections by tying a knot in the end of the section and then make a loop with your lead yarn (from the sectional warp beam) and hook it around your knot and pull tight. A great example of this can be found here.

Apply even tension as you wind the sectional warp beam and start rolling it on. This is where a second person comes in really really handy, while one of you turns the sectional warp beam, the other one applies tension to the warp threads and ensures everything stays snag free.

Once most of the yarn has been wound onto the sectional warp beam, tie the two chains into a loose knots leaving enough yarn to thread your heddles and tie on to the front beam

Remove lease sticks from raddle and pass through rollers

Pull towards front of loom and place two extra lease sticks under the lease sticks holding the threading cross to support it at the back of the shafts.

I placed a smidgen on blue-tac under each spare leas stick onto the loom frame, providing supporting so everything held steady and didn’t slip off

Support sticks seen from the front resting on front apron rod

Now it’s time to thread the heddles!

I thread from left to right, dividing the heddles in half, one set on each side of the shaft and then I count out from the left the required number of heddles to be used, in total, for that shaft, then do the same for the other 15 shafts. I then find my first 4 warp ends, note that this is of course where your cross comes in handy because each thread is in order and you can clearly see which is the first thread and the next etc. Put one thread between your fingers and using your threading hook, pull the first thread through the eye of the first heddle and follow in using your threading plan.

I might do a post with more details of threading heddles and tying onto the apron rod at another time, but that’s all I’ve got for now. I hope this is helpful to to others, it’s helped me with my cotton warp.

Regarding my cotton warp, I’ve decided two things – I want an AVL warping wheel! Cotton does not like to sit nicely once it’s been put under tension on the warping mill and then chained off. THe threads relax and twist around each other, the wool did that too but was a hell of a lot easier to separate. And secondly, I need some way to secure my sectional warp beam so that it doesn’t move when I pull the yarn been warped on. If I could do that I could probably warp on by myself.

Can you believe that, 65,534 possibilities! It actually starts to make my brain hurt just think about all those possibilities, seriously I’m still getting my head around 4 shaft patterns (oh my!).

Right now I want to get my head around how the dobby beg and chain system works. In a future post I’ll go step by step through the warping up of my “teething” warp and thus the various parts of the dobby loom from sectional warp beam to front apron, tie up and my sampler of various weaving structures (that will be a photo heavy post).

Ok, so dobby pegs and chains. The dobby box is made up of bars linked together with a few chain links, forming a long chain of bars. My loom has wooden bars and metal links and pegs, I’m not sure about other dobby looms though. Each bar has 16 holes, 1 hole for each shaft. A peg in a hole indicates that shaft is to be lifted for that rise of the shed, obviously if there is no peg then the shaft stays put. A single bar for plain weave might look like this (with a x indicating a peg): [xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo]. Incidentally, there are only two treadles for the dobby loom and they turn the gear to move the next bar into position and thus creating the next shed. To continue with a plain weave (or Tabby if your prefer) you would program the next bar to be: [oxoxoxoxoxoxoxox] (the opposite of the first one). The shortest chain you can make is 8, so you would continue to peg all your 8 bars with the alternating pegging:

[xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo]
[oxoxoxoxoxoxoxox]
[xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo]
[oxoxoxoxoxoxoxox]
[xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo]
[oxoxoxoxoxoxoxox]
[xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo]
[oxoxoxoxoxoxoxox]

The AVL manual recommends starting all your projects with this tabby weave for the first inch and or as a header to ensure you’ve got all your threading up error free.

Instead of using a tie-up and treadling plan like you use for other floor looms, with a dobby loom you create a “peg plan”. This is a graph showing the order in which pegs are placed into the dobby bars. Now, lets see if I can explain how to convert a tie-up & treadling plan, into a peg plan! (This is mostly for my own benefit, I could just cut and past the info from the AVL manual, see link below, but I believe I will start to understand the process better myself if I can write it out).

You can see in diagram “A”

that the harnesses are represented down the side of the tie-up, in a peg plan the harnesses are at the top. To convert the tie-up from “A” to the peg plan in “B” simply convert black squares down the left hand side of “A” into pegs going across the top (from right to left) on “B”.

So in “A” you have a black square in harness 2, treadle 1, in your peg plan you would move that square up the top to Harness 2, Dobby bar 1. Continue with 6, 7, 9, 11, 13 and 15. (see chart “C”),

continue to the next treadle and harness sequence (see chart “D”).

Now take a look at chart “E”, see how in dobby bar 30, harness 2 there is no peg? And that continues in a diagonal to form a “V” – compare that to the treadling plan in chart “A” and notice how there is an “x” in the same position, showing when the shed will be formed and thus creating your pattern.

Now, the one last bit that I’m trying to work out is how this all relates to the threading of heddles into shafts. If I was to just see that treadling plan without the words “treadling” I would have assumed it was the threading plan. I would have turned the chart onto it’s side like this:

I would have threaded the first warp thread into the 1st heddle on shaft 1, the second thread into the first heddle on shaft 2 and so on up to shaft 16, I would then thread the 17th warp thread into the second heddle on shaft 15 (so shaft 15 now has 2 threads) and so back down to shaft 1. In this case, shafts 1 and 16 would only have 1 thread each. Somehow this doesn’t seem quite correct to me…

Really useful tips from the manual:

“There are times you will find it helpful to use blank dobby bars to mark your place in your pattern. For instance, if you need to know where the beginning of a pattern is, leave a blank bar just before the dobby bar corresponding to the first shed of the pattern. When you are weaving and come to this blank bar, no harnesses will raise.”

“Keep in mind that the direction the chain moves can be reversed at any time. This feature can save pegging time and dobby chain. One example of its use is with a pattern where the second half is a mirror image of the first half… by reversing the dobby unit, the second half or mirror image is automatically produced. When using this technique, you may want to leave a blank bar as a signal at the point at which the dobby is to be reversed… This feature can also be used where long lengths of tabby are to be woven between pattern borders. Simply peg up part of the tabby and by repeatedly reversing, as much tabby can be woven as necessary. Here again, use blank bars between the tabby part of the chain and the pattern part.”

(Further reading of how this particular loom operates can be found here on the AVL USA website’s manual)

Mostly I (Tracey, your most frequent poster) will be doing a few more articles on weaving, including my exploits into the use of my new (old) 16 shaft AVL Dobby loom. This is not a computerised dobby, but a peg system (I’ll talk more about this later) and weaves a width of about 36″ happily (although it’s about 40″ wide full width). I’m really really loving this loom, loving it like I never have loved a loom before (and remember I now have a large Ashford Rigid Heddle and a 4 shaft countermarch). The Rigid heddle is back in use, currently it’s warped up to teach a friend of mine to weave, but I’m starting to get interested in weaving on it myself once again. However, I’m thinking that I might purchase a small folding loom around 12″ wide and leave the larger rigid heddle for friends to learn on.

The other wonderful treat that came along with my gorgeous new loom was the visiting instructor in the form of the equally wonderful Karuna. It has been invaluable to have Karuna come and visit with me on a few mornings, going through how to setup the loom, warp on a “teething” warp as she called it and weaving through half a dozen or so weave structures. I’ll go over this experiment in more detail in a later post too.

In other related exciting news, we are about to embark on a 10 week holiday to the USA, primarily New York and North Carolina. Craig will be attending a bunch of woodworking classes and also going along to the American Woodworkers Conference in Ohio (is it Kentucky?). I will be attending a week long class at the John C Campbell Folk School on 18th century household textiles which I’m really excited about. I could probably spend a good half of the year attending full-time classes at the folk school by the look of their class list. So hopefully this trip will also trigger some other amazing posts full of colour and interest

Until then, happy crafting.

Gouda is actually a pretty easy cheese to make, it took us 4 hours or so (most of that time is spent waiting around for the next stage). The cheese remained in the press overnight, then went into brine yesterday for about 24 hours. Tonight I’ll take it out of the brine, dry it off and set it out to start forming a crust. This takes a couple of days, then you start basting it with olive oil over a few more days before it finally just gets put away to mature.

Must rush, I have a massage appointment to keep

We’ve recenlty  started to get a regular weekly delivery of raw milk (unpasturised, full cream, fresh from the cow). It’s gorgeous stuff and causes a great deal of excitment around these parts. We are now in full swing making yogurt (I had to buy a second yogurt thermus to keep up with demand), skimming the cream (there just isn’t anything as good as fresh cream with jam on scones – even scones that resemble rocks) and then there is the cheese. We’ve been making some very quick and easy cheeses. Labna a middle eastern yogurt cheese and the the easiest one I’ve come across, and Paneer, an indian cheese. Both cheeses are made with out cultures or rennet.

First thing I do when the milk arrives is to put on the kettle to boil, then I scoop about 2 tablespoons (tbs) of yogurt from the current tub in the fridge (the first batch of our homemade yogurt was produced from a starter from a delicious organic, tub set cream we purchased at the supermarket). I mix this starter with the milk, pop the lid on, file the thermus with boiling water and pop in the container, put on the lid and leave over night. The next day we have fresh yogurt for breakfast on soaked mueslie with preserved fruit or it get’s turned into labna.

To make the labna, you poor the yogurt into a bowl, grind in some salt (to taste and helps to preserve the cheese a little – like butter), stir together until well combined and smooth. Line a sieve with cheese cloth (or fine mesh fabric), place over an empty bowl, poor in yogurt slowly, place in the fridge and let it slowly drain overnight. In the morning you have a delicious “cream cheese” that tastes wonderful on fruit toast (I need to “refil” the same piece of toast for William about 4 times before he finally eats the bread and not just the cheese). They whey (liquid that’s left over in the bowl) is given to my friends chickens. The cheese itself just peels off the cloth. 1ltr of yogurt does about 300gms of cheese.

Easy cheese number 2, or paneer, is simply made by heating the milk to around 80 °C. Remove from the heat and stire in 1 tbs for every ltr acid – lemon/lime juice or vinegar. Do this slowly, about 1 tsp at a time and stir the cheese. You will see it seperating as you go. Once you’ve put in all the acid leave the pot to cool down. While it cools line a sieve with cheese cloth and place it over a bowl. Once the liquid is cool, poor it into the cheese cloth. You will be left with only the curds (solids), gather up the sides of the cheese cloth and squeeze out more liquid. You can now either leave it to hang and drip, or place it in a mold (or if you don’t have anything, leave it in the cheese cloth tied up) and place a weight on top to force out the rest of the liquid. The more liquid you remove, the firmer the cheese. You can either have a sort of cream cheese or a firm cheese that can be used in place of meet or tofu in curries.

Out of the kitchen, we’ve managed to plant 100 tagasaste (Tree Lucern’s) on our block of land at Atamai. 

William even came along to help, mostly be behaving himself and having fun playing in his play-pen with the bamboo poles, tree guards and even on occassion his actual toys.

We also got a helping hand from Craig’s sister Fiona and her partner Nick who came to visit over Easter.

So things have been busy and fun

Last week we had tomatoes bubbling on the stove, roasting in the oven and cored and popped whole in the freezer. This week it will be peaches as bags arrive from my friends gardens. So far on the peach use wish list is peach pie filling (to freeze), peach cobbler (to eat warm with vanilla bean ice-cream) and preserved peaches in syrup (for breakfasts and quick desserts). Winter is starting to sound pretty tasty.

Gardening:
We need to start thinking about what to plant on our block while we await the rains. There will be trees, mostly Tree Lupins for now and also green manure crops, most likely in the form of broad beans and lupins. We aren’t sure if we will have the time to get an other vegetables planted, but we will see. Things that could still be planted include, lettuces and other leafy greens (spinach, silverbeat, chard, kale), broccoli, beetroot, cabbage, cauliflower, leeks, Pak Choi, Swedes, Turnips and Spring Onions. Hmmm, that list is making me realise even more how important that vegetable patch is at this time of year.

This was a really lovely way to start our summer mornings. We would get up at 7am, pack Will and ourselves into the car and pop over to Te Mara to milk Katie (and also feed the turkeys and chickens and collect the eggs). Each day I did a little better, getting a little more milk and in less time. Katie was a complete darling of a goat who was very patient with me and just so adorable. I only waisted one days milking when it fell out of the car all over the ground – and don’t you dare make the joke >( I was a very unhappy camper that morning (it didn’t help that my hot chocolate that I’d purchased on the way turned out to be a mocha! Really not what you want when your all worked up for the chocolate delight).

And these lovely lasses are yearlings and will be joining the milking seen in a little while, the decision is being made as to whether we get a milking machine or milk all 4 with people power.

We haven’t really had much of a garden at our current place, but we have had quite a lot of success with our tomatoes. We’ve had enough tomatoes for the past few weeks to have them fresh or oven roasted, in pastas and even enough to take as part of a pot-luck lunch with still loads leftover. Not really enough for bottling though.

I almost forgot to mention, Fiona and I turned the milk from Katie into fetta, some in oil and some in brine, sooo good! Last time I made fetta I wasn’t able to eat it (unpasturized and I was pregnant) but this time I fully enjoyed the experience.