Velvet Kerfuffle Kitchen and Garden

Why my luggage is never stolen, or, London Food Haul 2011

admin — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 06:01:18 +0000

A continuation of the gallery from yesterday, in a way. This is all the stuff that I could carry in my checked-in luggage from that same trip back in 2011. Besides being deterred by my gaudily bright-pink-patterned suitcase set, I'm pretty sure that any would-be thief who peeked inside said suitcases and saw the cumbersome [...]

The one with the dumplings.

admin — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 06:11:10 +0000

Wow, look what I found lurking in my old to-post folder! The last batch of photos from my London work trip back in spring of 2011. Yeah, the one where it became my mission in life to order steamed dumplings from every place within delivery range that made them. Seriously, I've got the pictures [...]

Flowers from that one holiday last week.

admin — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 06:05:59 +0000

Took pictures because they never last as long as I would like. Pink roses and lavender lilacs, both of which smelled lovely. I was considering pressing some of them, but they were starting to go limp already so didn't make the best specimens for preservation. Maybe I'll start with leaves…

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Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

admin — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 07:16:22 +0000

Remember this post about pumpkin puree where I mentioned always saving the seeds from pumpkins to use for another recipe? This would be one of those recipes. Super simple and gives you loads of snacky stuff to have in a bowl for entertaining guests or to keep in your purse for when [...]

2012 Summer Garden Review: Flower Edition

admin — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 06:34:47 +0000

And here's the other half of my summer garden pictures, dealing with various flowers encountered during our first summer in the new house. The previous owner was an avid gardener, so there were plenty of flower beds already established and filled with random little surprises. Also, a few wildflowers that I'm hoping my ever-knowledgeable [...]

2012 Summer Garden Review: Fruit & Veg Edition

admin — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 06:16:06 +0000

Right around now, when your eyes are inundated with the glare of white snow as far as you can see, it's nice to think about the equally blinding green that will take over a few months later. Seriously, I'm looking at these pictures and squinting from green overload. I don't remember it being quite [...]

Baked Green Tomatoes… muffins, that is.

admin — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 06:27:56 +0000

Yep, these were made with green tomatoes. I tried growing some tomato plants my first year out here, only the weather never picked up enough for the fruit to ripen, so I ended up with a bag of green tomatoes at the end of the growing season. They were cherry tomatoes, so they [...]

Dreaming of spring flowers.

admin — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 06:00:33 +0000

One of the things I love most about spring in the north is the bonanza of flowering bulbs that burst out nonstop the minute the snows recede. I spent several years back in Cali trying to coax reluctant daffodils and hyacinths into bloom through rigorous refrigerator chilling regimens before finally giving in to the fact [...]

Homemade blackcurrant juice and a shiny new steam juicer.

admin — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 06:22:37 +0000

So back in Cali, the main thing I knew about blackcurrants were that they were a strongly-scented European fruit that was used to make booze and Ribena. The main thing I knew about Ribena syrup was that it was really handy to use when mixing up blood substitute for film and TV productions. Never [...]

Fun Finnish Foods, a pictorial.

admin — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 06:10:39 +0000

Apologies to anybody who was having issues with using the comments system these past few days — there was a glitch involving a naughty plug-in that I just got around to figuring out last night. Everything should work just fine now.

Yeah, I take pictures of random food-related things when the mood strikes me. These [...]

Last harvest post until this summer, I promise.

admin — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 06:20:02 +0000

This post has so much pink in it that I suppose it would have been more suitably put up on Valentine’s Day. It owes much to the fact that I was taking photos of stuff in a bright pink berry-picking bucket, though. The giant yellow squash at the beginning kinda dilutes the sickly sweet feeling, [...]

Naked Quiche

admin — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 06:16:01 +0000

Hey look, it’s another recipe! Been a while since I’ve posted one of these, eh? Mostly because I haven’t had as much time to experiment in the kitchen as I did in the past, sadly. When your main goal most evenings is just to slap together something that’s edible for tomorrow’s lunch, new recipes aren’t [...]

And then, we were buried in apples.

admin — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 06:27:13 +0000

Hey, WordPress has an integrated push-to-Twitter feature now! One less plugin to worry about, pretty cool. For all I know, this could have happened last year, but it’s new to me :-)

So yeah. We have a few mature apple trees. We knew this meant we would be getting some fruit in the fall, but [...]

Autumn Harvest Post (of the non-apple variety)

admin — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 07:39:07 +0000

This past autumn ended up being very messy and hurried, the result of having been away for a last-minute Taiwan trip followed by an early cold snap with snow. I only managed to harvest one apple tree (two others were left to the wildlife) and the small pear trees. The three grape vines were a [...]

Mission Statement of Sorts

admin — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 10:52:58 +0000

I have an “about” page up on this blog (it’s that little tab in the upper left corner there, next to “home” and “links”). Given, none of those pages have really been updated for a couple years so I should probably think about that at some point. Anyway. What I didn’t realize was that it [...]

Weekly Harvest Post

admin — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 19:07:06 +0000

We went away for a couple of weeks on holiday during the prime growing season, so it’s no surprise that the garden turned into a jungle in the meantime. Now I’m scrabbling to harvest and clean up as much as I can before the temperatures drop. It’s all a bit daunting, but I’m sure we’ll [...]

General garden pictorial update.

admin — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 19:23:26 +0000

I’ve been mentioning the food items coming out the garden recently, but haven’t really done any posts on the general state of things. So this is a post to remedy that. Finnish summers are all about a surplus of daylight and moisture, so things get ridiculously lush in short order. Our current look is somewhere [...]

Weekly Harvest Post, for reals this time.

admin — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 15:01:38 +0000

Because it’s July and suddenly I can’t keep up with all the stuff there is to do out there! With prime berry picking season just around the corner, it’s about to get really crazy here at Casa Kerfuffle.

The actual numbers:

07/02 210g chickweed Stellaria media (frozen) 160g spinach Spinacia oleracea “Campania F1″(frozen)

07/03 400g [...]

OK, so it’s more of a fortnightly harvest post…

admin — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 16:42:41 +0000

It was a bit too soggy to go out in the garden most of last week. Things started to clear up at the end of this past week, though, so here is what came out of the garden recently!

06/18 – 145g lettuce & greens. 06/27 – 220g lettuce & greens. Two different [...]

Rhubarb Rhubarb

admin — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 20:47:59 +0000

This post is mostly for my parents, who were curious about the odd fruit I’d posted a picture of on Facebook the other day :-) Funny thing is, rhubarb originated in Asia and the root has been used for medicinal purposes in China for thousands of years. I guess they never got around to trying [...]

Weekly Harvest Post!

admin — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 16:33:34 +0000

For the past several years, I’ve sighed wistfully upon seeing various gardening blogs put up their weekly harvest tallies. I’d sadly poke at the few pots next to the kitchen window and make mental lists of all the things I’d grow if I actually had a decent piece of land. Well, guess what? This is [...]

Weekly Garden Update!

admin — Thu, 10 May 2012 18:28:13 +0000

Un-matzo Ball Soup

admin — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:38:17 +0000

Having been a resident of LA’s Westside for a good portion of my life, you could say I was influenced by a healthy dose of Jewish culture. No, really, it was awesome because you could totally walk down the street and think “Hmmm, gefilte or sushi for lunch today?” And stop at places that did [...]

Spring garden rush has begun.

admin — Tue, 01 May 2012 17:35:42 +0000

The evenings are still just a couple degrees above 0C, but daytime temps are now between 10-20C and very sunny, so it’s definitely spring. Everything is budding, flowers are starting to appear and butterflies are everywhere. I’ve started cleaning up the garden and grounds best as I can, though I’m sure it will take at [...]

Weekly garden update.

admin — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 17:11:02 +0000

I’m going to start confining my gardening picturespam to once a week, since I know it can easily get out of hand otherwise. I am keeping more detailed almost-daily notes on Folia, for those who are interested.

As you’ll see below, all my seeds have sprouted with unprecedented speed, so I guess they are as [...]

Last of early seed starting.

admin — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 18:10:31 +0000

I did the last batch today, so now all my cucurbits/melons/squashes and tomatoes/eggplants/etc. are cozy in their little plastic incubators. I already can see a few germinated pumpkin seeds from the ones I planted Monday! I’ll wait until they actually sprout before proclaiming it a milestone, though :-) But still, pumpkins in Finland! I’m so [...]

Baby orchids and more seeds planted.

admin — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 16:54:07 +0000

Spring is here! Sort of.

admin — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 17:26:13 +0000

At least, the calendar says it is. The snow is also mostly gone and the ice is nearly melted off all the bodies of water. The leaves aren’t out on the trees yet, but we’re seeing all kinds of stuff starting to emerge. Like these pretty little snowdrops sprouting right next to our building.

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Renovation is in the air…

admin — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 06:42:16 +0000

All the wallpapering and painting happening in our new house has put me in the mood to spruce up other areas of my life as well. Including my blog network, which I’d been getting more dissatisfied with by the week, but never got around to doing anything about. That is, until a few page-crashing bugs [...]

Mmmm is for mämmi.

admin — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 06:05:10 +0000

This is mämmi. It’s traditionally served in Finland and Sweden during the Easter holiday, hence why I’m posting about it now. We had some this past weekend along with dessert – a big dollop served with cream and sugar. It isn’t the most attractive-looking holiday dish on its own, no. Taste-wise, it’s balanced between [...]

DIY: Pumpkin Puree -or- Squashing a Squash.

admin — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 17:46:44 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot about instructions and tutorials lately at work, and that must have made its way into my subconscious because I’m starting to feel guilty about not updating this blog very much. It’s not for lack of material, since I’ve got a whole folder of photos and notes saved from various projects [...]

Return of the berries of the sea.

admin — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 17:09:58 +0000

This post is dedicated to Keva, who hates eggs. She made a fuss about my previous post regarding fake (seaweed-based) caviar a while back, so I thought it was only fair that I share with her the real stuff :-) It showed up in my local grocer’s fish refrigerator last month and I had to [...]

Indoor Plants of 2011

admin — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 16:20:26 +0000

Just more chronicling of my gardening ventures, both indoors and out. The kitchen window has plants in it all year round, though they start looking a little peaky in deep winter. The sun’s back now, though, and I can’t wait to pop some fragrant narcissi and primroses into those hanging pots. Maybe as soon as [...]

Pierydys vs. The Big Bird.

admin — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 18:41:13 +0000

I promised I would post about my turkey months ago, but time has flown by with the holidays and work and stuff. So here we go — my turkey talk in a pictorial format!

The thing about planning a traditional Thanksgiving dinner when you’re not in the States is that you have to give your [...]

Birthday Flowers :-)

admin — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 07:12:20 +0000

Just an excuse to share pictures of flowers, really. You must understand, though, that I’d never received a real gift bouquet (because do graduation carnations count? I think not) until I met T five-ish years ago. Goes with the not-dating-much territory, I suppose. And I was far too cautious a child to ever end up [...]

2011 Summer Garden Review

admin — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 09:19:46 +0000

Balcony and Kitchen Garden Updates, July 2011.

admin — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 11:02:19 +0000

Did some much needed work on the plants in the apartment this past week. The two backyard gardens thrive on benign neglect, since they have access to plenty of sun and rain, but the ones here need a bit more attention to be at their best.

The Garden – July 2011

admin — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 07:08:30 +0000

Just finished updating my folia account with the latest happenings in my backyard gardens and thought I’d share the photos here as well since I like to look through these galleries during the cold months :-)

Berry season!

admin — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 13:17:31 +0000

Apologies for the silence this last month — have been in the midst of wedding planning madness. I took a brief pause yesterday afternoon, however, to wander the forests with a friend and take advantage of the bounteous harvest this year’s warm, wet summer has brought.

My first batch of hand-picked wild Finnish bilberries! [...]

The Garden: June in Finland

admin — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 07:30:44 +0000

Just a quick pictorial update of what’s been going on in the VK garden. June is the first month here when it’s warm enough to work outside daily and leave seedlings in the ground with no fear of frost. So, this past week and this coming week will pretty much be a gardening frenzy as [...]

Random Photos of Foodish Stuff — Savory Edition

admin — Sun, 22 May 2011 05:00:55 +0000

Continued from my last set of food diary pictures, a week ago.

Random Photos of Foodish Stuff — Sweet Edition

admin — Sun, 15 May 2011 05:00:54 +0000

Is it weird that I like taking random pictures of food? Because I totally do. Partly to share with T but also so I can remember whether nor not I should get something again at a later date. And sometimes just because it’s an item that makes me happy… or sad… or scared.

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Lobsteriffic!

admin — Wed, 11 May 2011 05:00:52 +0000

Anybody who has been around me for the past several months has probably heard me bemoan at some point or another the scarcity of shellfish in our vicinity. There’s nothing fresh and alive, most certainly — which has made it difficult to continue with my “Food That Moves” column for the foreseeable future. However, more [...]

Mystery Meat: Secret’s in the sås.

admin — Sun, 08 May 2011 05:00:09 +0000

Here is another canned delight from Sweden that brought I back from our trip this past December. Given, this one came straight from the grocery store’s prepared foods aisle and not from a gourmet food boutique. The first picture is slightly misleading, since I mixed a bowl of rice into the can o’ stuff. That [...]

The 2010 Ramen Review

admin — Wed, 04 May 2011 05:00:20 +0000

Like almost everybody else who has had to shop for their own groceries throughout their university years, I’m on very friendly terms with instant ramen noodles. Living in Southern California, however, we had a wider selection in this category than the rest of the country. The Japanese, Chinese, and Southeast Asian stores would all import [...]

The Garden: Fall/Winter 2010

admin — Sun, 01 May 2011 05:00:59 +0000

I did quite a bit of gardening last year, but didn’t get much of a crop by the end of the season because I’d started my seeds too late. Here’s a pictorial retrospective of last year’s various horticultural endeavors to hopefully encourage me to get some seeds started earlier this year.

Mystery Meat: Pâté of Ungulate

admin — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 05:00:04 +0000

Today’s Mystery Meat comes to us courtesy of the specialty foods store in Stockholm Arlanda airport.

Yeah, I know I won’t win any points for classy presentation with these photos, but these were just quick snacks that I snapped pictures of on the way to the table. Were I serving this for guests, [...]

Rauma’s September Baltic Herring Market

admin — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 05:00:20 +0000

In mid-September, Rauma really takes on the port city role and has a weekend seafood festival called the Baltic Herring Market. There are other tents selling local crafts and freshly canned produce, of course, but the main attractions are the several large fish booths set up smack in the middle of the event. We went [...]

Mystery Meat: Berries of the Sea

admin — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 05:00:02 +0000

Yes, Mystery Meat is back! Because I’m really too curious for my own good sometimes. Here’s something from this past winter:

It does look like caviar and cream on toast, doesn’t it? That’s probably why I decided to try this stuff out — one of the things I miss the most about SoCal is [...]

The Garden: Amaryllis Parade

admin — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 05:00:54 +0000

I actually only bought two amaryllis bulbs this past winter — one in October and one in November. Between them, I got 5 stalks of flowers over two months. The 1-stalk bulbs we were getting in Cali must have been serious runts. Sorted below in order of growth — the bigger bulb really put on [...]