Pffffffffffffffft.

Yesterday was Mr Gs birthday. Being mobility limited and a Monday meant we stayed in and watched telly. I'll try and spread nice treats out over the week for him.

I spent the day trying out the pressure cooker we bought in India. I use lots of pulses in my cooking but usually use tinned ones as it save the overnight soaking and endless cooking. When we took part in a cookery class in India the teacher extolled the virtues of pressure cookers, both for cooking pulses and making super fast curries so we bought a small one in Delhi.

My mum had a pressure cooker when I was a kid but it was all fancy with regulators and things I don't know about. The Indian one is a much simpler affair with a valve which releases steam when the pressure builds up.

Indian pressure cookers use the number of steam bursts to work out cooking times. And when it blows it really blows. It makes for quite tense cooking, hearing the pressure building up, waiting for the release of steam. I like it.

I made a very tasty Chick Pea Masala using some spice blends we also bought in Delhi. The chick peas came out beautifully soft with a delicious nutty flavour. MmmmmMasala.

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Lashing and lashings...

As well as talk of Clementine Cake on twitter there has been talk of brewing Ginger Beer. Ginger beer is my drink of choice and I'm always in search of a good one. I find many commercial ones too sweet. Once on holiday in Brasil I had a ginger beer made with freshly squeezed ginger which is the gold standard at the moment and a tough act to live up to. @eskimimi (who has a lovely blog ) linked to this River Cottage recipe last week . I had to hunt around for brewers yeast as the brewer's yeast you can buy in chemists and health food shops is deactivated so won't work for brewing, despite the name. (trade descriptions act anyone?). I ended up buying my yeast online after consulting my brewing guru Bioniclaura . As well as knitting Laura brews her own beer, which I got sample when I stayed with her and her lovely dog and husband in Dublin when I went over at the end of October. More on that later. I couldn't wait to get started but had to wait til we returned from Hasti

Ceilings

Over Easter we went to Istanbul. It's one of those cities that's been lurking in the corners of my mind, from tales of Roman Constantinople, to bordering Europe and Asia with its dreaming mosque minarets. So I booked a bargain of a city break two days before we left, chucked some clothes in a bag, picked up a guidebook and off we went. There are more blog posts and photos on the way, as we had an excellent time there, but as you can see I was quite taken with ceilings and spent most of our four days there looking up.

We have a winner...

Check out my pea seedling, how intact and un-nibbled it is. My mysterious object, as correctly guessed by Madmurdock and Montyknits, is a gastropod guard. It seems to be working. I'd heard that slugs and snails don't like slithering over hair. I tried using hair clippings a few years ago as a barrier. It worked for a few days, til I found chewed, leafless stems and on further inspection a guilty slug covered in ginger hair. Hopefully the fleecy barrier will stay in place and mean I get a good late crop of peas. Congratulations to the winners and thank you to everyone who took part.

Ginger Knits UK

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