Instead, we’ve moved on to lime pickle: the weirdest and most delicious Indian condiment ever. So wrong it’s right.

We had a few false starts—the first recipe was a dud, and I had to redo the first step of the new recipe once or twice after getting distracted during the multi-day process.

Lime Pickle (blatantly stolen from The Chilli King):

2 litres water
1 tsp turmeric
10 limes
10 tsp salt

5 chili peppers
5 garlic cloves

1/2 cup + 1 Tbs vegetable oil
2 tsp mustard seeds
5 Tbs chili powder

1. Bring water to boil, add (whole) limes and turmeric. Continue cooking for 3–5 minutes, remove from heat, allow to cool.

2. Cut limes into bite-size pieces. Put in a large lidded jar with the salt (shake around to get everything all nice and coated) and leave at room temperature for 24 hours.

3. When the 24 hours are up, slice up the chilies and garlic.

4. Heat 1 Tbs of oil in a pan over medium heat. Add the mustard seeds and cook until they start popping. Add the lime mixture, chilies, garlic, and chili powder and stir well. Increase the heat a bit and cook off some of the moisture for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

5. Put the mixture into a jar and add the remaining 1/2 cup of oil. Seal the lid securely (important!), and shake or stir it all up. Keep refrigerated. Eat with stuff.

Notes:

a. The original recipe calls for green chilies, but you can use what you want. Either way, I would recommend handling the peppers as little as possible and/or wearing gloves when slicing them up. Particularly if you are a contact lens wearer. For reals.

b. The first time I used this recipe, I failed to cut the limes small enough, so when we actually wanted to eat it, I had to painstakingly cut all of the limes up when they were already covered with pickle. Annoying. Just cut them correctly the first time (I cut each lime into 8 wedges, then cut each wedge into 10 wee pieces). The second time, I forgot to add the turmeric to the boiling water, so I mixed it with the salt before adding it to the cooked limes—worked just fine.

c. You could probably do something like officially sealing the jar in some fancy way and keeping it in your pantry forever, but I don’t know how to do that so that can be your own  special problem.

d. I also don’t know how long it lasts in the refrigerator because we eat it too fast. It does seem to taste even more awesome the longer it’s been around, but at some point the bell curve must start going the other way.

(Not really.)

(But they’re that good.)

They also sell them at UK Starbucks, which is great except a) they’re expensive and b) we don’t have a Starbucks nearby.

We have so many trials. Including, but not limited to, trying to find an appropriate waffle iron so I can make them at home. The best I can come up with is a waffle cone maker, but I sadly did not win the eBay auction for the only one I could find for sale in the entire country.

My trial recipes are ready to go (and thankfully don’t look too difficult); now I just need the iron.

AKA stroopwafelijzer. Did you know I speak Dutch now?

Chipotle-style rice

Rinse 1 cup of Basmati rice thoroughly and drain. Heat 1 Tbsp of butter over medium heat in a saucepan. When butter is melted, add rice and 2 tsp lime juice. Cook and stir 2 minutes.

Add 1.5 cups of water and 3/8 tsp of salt. Cover. Reduce heat and simmer on low until rice is tender and water is absorbed (13 minutes on my stovetop, which is impossible to turn down as low as I’d like).

Remove from heat, let sit for 5 minutes. Add 2 tsp of fresh, chopped cilantro, and fluff with fork.

Granted, I don’t actually have access to real Cilantro rice to compare, but this does all right. You would probably be okay with 1/2 tsp of salt just to make things easier.

Now on to stroopwafels!

Vegan Frosting

Use a regular frosting recipe. Replace the milk with Rice Dream. Replace the butter with a stick margarine with the highest percentage of fat you can find (it still won’t be as high as butter!).

You could probably replace the milk with soy or almond milk instead, but I don’t really like the flavor of either, and then there’s the business of having to finish up the carton minus the small amount required for the frosting. And Rice Dream comes in tiny little juiceboxes anyway, so a) it doesn’t have to be refrigerated, b) you don’t have much to finish after you make the frosting, and c) its taste is less offensive.

Everyone wins! But mostly me.

Rice Variables
amount of butter
eventual switch to margarine
amount of lime juice
lime juice in the bottle vs. lime juice in the lime
amount of cilantro
water to rice ratio
amount of salt
to rinse or not to rinse
to soak or not to soak
how long to soak

Frosting Variables
type of butter substitute
type of milk substitute

The frosting needs one more large-batch test to make sure you can’t actually tell I made it with Rice Dream, and that one’s finished.

And since I make the rules, I’m giving the remainder of vegan frosting’s 40 days to Chipotle rice.

That’s how I roll.

So far, the foods include (in no particular order):

1. Chipotle-style cilantro rice
2. Vegan frosting (good tasting)
3. Vegan cheesecake (good tasting)
4. Tiger bread
5. Stroopwaffels
6. Staffordshire oatcakes
7. Lime pickle
8. Yellow curry

Foods Nos. 9 and 10 have yet to be decided, but I have plenty of others to keep me occupied.

Poor little blog.

No one tells you anything.

Unfortunately, every time Stephan puts it on, he immediately wants to take it off because it’s itchy. I did actually think of this, and got the softest wool/acrylic blend I could find, but the prospects are not looking good. Of course he can always wear a T-shirt under it but why, oh, WHY did I not just make it out of cotton?

Sometimes I wish real life came with a swatch and pattern palette.

Based on preliminary estimates (that the Back, Front, Sleeves, and Putting It All Together each taking approximately the same amount of time), that’s a quarter of the work done, so I’m well ahead of schedule.

It helps that there have so far been zero tricky bits, beyond keeping track of what row I’m on.

Knitting a Sweater for Stephan

There is an urban legend that one should never knit a sweater for one’s boyfriend because it is only those to whom you dedicate hours of tedious precision work who will eventually break up with you.

Obviously I don’t have this problem to worry about anymore, so I agreed to knit Stephan a sweater. A few years ago, actually, but we decided that he would only need it in time for our trip to Iceland.

Is it my fault that we’ve postponed the trip until our 5th wedding anniversary (2011)?

Nevertheless, I still get plenty of  sweater-related grief from him and some other people who really shouldn’t care as much as they do, so I’ve decided to tuck in and get it done.

In the next 40 days.