Long, hard day,
but a fairly successful one. I’ve finished wee Hamish’s vest, except for a
final, hopeful pass with a steam iron, and I’m made my kimchi. I didn’t go for
a walk. It was bright but cold. I felt fairly feeble, but I can’t go on
treating myself as an invalid forever on the grounds of that colonography.
I finished the
vest-tidying fairly briskly this morning. I read somewhere in the last couple
of days that the Chinese regard it as singularly bad luck to use scissors on
New Year’s Day – which is tomorrow. One mustn’t, of course, knuckle under to
superstition, but I feel one might as well avoid stepping on the cracks where
feasible. And there was no way that vest could be finished without snipping off
ends.
And then the
kimchi, a titanic effort in my current feeble state.
Kimchi consists of
four elements:
1)
Chinese
leaves (=Napa cabbage), salted and left to wilt and produce some brine
2)
A
paste made of onion and lots of garlic and various other things, including
Korean gochugaru chilli powder
3)
Some
additional vegetables, cut small: carrots, spring onion (=scallions), radishes,
chives, etc
4)
A
porridge made of rice flour, with brown sugar
So I spent quite a
while preparing those things, until I came to the point where it was time to
add the gochugaru chilli powder to the paste. I couldn’t find it. Big search. No
luck. Sister Helen and daughter Helen both say that I’ve got too much stuff. I
fear they’re right. There are some elements in the list above which can be
fudged. I had forgotten to order chives, for instance, so I put in more
scallions. But there’s no way of proceeding without gochugaru chilli powder.
Finally I ordered some more from Amazon, to be delivered tomorrow, and faced
the prospect of explaining to Daniela tomorrow why the kitchen was filled with
bowls of various things. Then I went
back to the kitchen and resumed the search, and found the chilli powder.
But then the food
processor couldn’t cope with the paste – 2), above. It was too dry and heavy. The
Nutribullet? I couldn’t get it open. So I divided the paste into three portions
and added 1/3rd of the porridge ( 4), above) to each, and then the
food processor grudgingly agreed to process the result.
When all that is
ready, you mix and mix everything together by hand and pack it into jars for
fermenting. It’s an active fermentation, which is always satisfying.
So now I am left
with no decision made about what to knit next, or what to do about cider now
that Dry January is over.