I finished my article and samples for that article yesterday. I still need to fill out some forms and wet-finish the samples, but basically all the work is done now. So I have cut the sample warp off my loom, and can move on to another project! which is, of course, the 37-yard warp in 60/2 silk. I have wound two bouts already, and plan to wind some more today. My goal is to get the warp ready for weaving this week, so I can sit down and start weaving next weekend.
But I am also taking a break for another fun project: fruitcake! I will be buying the last of the ingredients (a pound of dates) at the Mountain View farmer’s market today, and baking it this afternoon. It’s a great excuse to pull out all the exotic citrus varieties whose peel I candied earlier in the year, and open up container after container of sweet yumminess.
Here’s the list of “extras” (which are, as we all know, the most interesting part of fruitcake!):
- 8 oz Dried mango
- 16 oz Dried apricots
- 16 oz Dried (not glace) pineapple slices
- 12 oz Dried Calimyrna figs
- 16 oz home-candied sweet cherries
- 16 oz home-candied sour cherries
- 16 oz Crystallized ginger chunks
- 16 oz Pitted chopped dates
- 32 oz Golden raisins, seedless
- 16 oz candied bergamot peel
- 16 oz Candied diced citron peel
- 16 oz Candied diced Seville orange peel
- 16 oz Candied diced lemon peel
- 16 oz candied diced orange peel (lime peel, etc.)
- 1.5 14-oz packages (8 cups) Bakers Sweetened Angel Flake Coconut
- 32 oz Slivered blanched almonds
That’s a total of sixteen “extras”, seven of which are homemade by me. Seventeen pounds! of “extras” -enough to fill an oven with fruitcake! Last year I made 9 large and 9 small fruitcakes; I may do that again this year. Some will go to friends and family; the rest will go to feed Mike, who loves a good fruitcake.
And, to round out today’s projects, I bought nine or ten pounds of blood oranges yesterday, and will start candying the peel today. I realized that I had candied just about every available variety of citrus except the conventional orange, so I decided to try blood oranges this time. It should come out tasting fairly similar to the sweet orange, but I’m hoping some of that glorious color will survive the candying process. I think it’s unlikely it will survive, as the reds are probably an anthocyanin, which break down when heated, but it’s worth a try.
Finally, Mike and I are going to try putting the much-delayed Fireside rolling temple on the loom today. And, if I turn out to have more time than expected (ha!), I’m going to go back to pattern drafting. I’m currently working on drafting myself a sloper, both for the experience and so I can use it to draft more accurate patterns.
Off to play!
Ah, blood oranges! Here’s my blood orange story. About 12 or 15 years ago, my husband & I were in Italy. He was giving a paper at a conference, and I was along for the ride. Our first night in Rome, we went to a little bistro for dinner. As we were finishing, I looked at a couple at another table and said to David, “When you can turn around w/out being too obvious, look at the orange that woman is eating. It’s bright red.” Neither of us had ever seen blood oranges. We asked around to find out what it was called (in Italian–but of course I forget by now) and when we started traveling after the conference, we bought them for our picnic lunches every day. Now, happily, we can get them (under a different name; I guess Americans are too queasy to eat something called “blood”) at our local grocery store.
Let us know if the peel retains any of its red blush after the candying process.