Adventures in raw cooking, and a raw lemon-lavender cheesecake

My yoga journey has taken me to another yoga retreat, this time a day retreat (does it really count?) by the lovely Natasha Kerry.

What intrigued me about this one is that it included a raw food lunch followed by a raw food demonstration. When I booked this, I had no idea what raw food meant (other than the obvious of course) and had not dabbled in it at all, unless you count salads and other raw assemblies. I realised later that the healthy chocolate treats I made are actually a raw food and a variation of a raw brownie.

I now know that raw food involves not heating food above around 115 F (around 40 degrees C) so it doesn't have to be cold food. This however means that you can't have any pasta, rice or quinoa (yes, really, no pasta! This is never really going to work!). Although you can use a dehydrator (or apparently attempt this with an oven) to make crackers and other crispy things like kale chips to add a bit more texture. And weirdly, it involves a lot of soaking of nuts that are then blended to make cream fillings or cheese. 

Our lunch was actually surprisingly delicious and filling:

Warmish smoky red pepper soup with kale chips

Salad of rocket and figs stuffed with macadamia nut cheese

Carrot 'pasta' with asparagus and macadamia nut 'blue' cheese

Cheesecake with mango chutney

Although I do not see myself replacing my beloved pasta with carrot ribbons or courgette spirals, I can see the benefit of introducing a few things from the raw diet into mine, in particular the deserts and possibly the cheese (I have just ordered a cloth, let's see if I ever use it now!).

So, in the spirit of raw, I decided to attempt a raw and vegan (I think, apparently honey is not vegan though!) cheesecake that I found on this lovely website. This is a lavender cheesecake with lemon and honey, and thus a great opportunity to use up the 'cooking' lavender that I was gifted over Christmas.

The idea is to use creamed cashews instead of cream cheese and a nut/date mixture for the base instead of the crushed biscuits. I was a bit dubious about the cashews serving as an adequate substitute for cream cheese, but actually, after soaking in warm water for an hour (does that still count as raw?  I don't know!) they could be blitzed to a lovely creamy consistency.

Its not a looker, I agree, but still tasty! Need to get better with the parchment paper placement

The verdict: I think cashew cream flavoured with your chosen cheesecake topping can serve as an excellent substitute for cream cheese and has a really nice consistency. In this particular case, I thought that the lemon was overpowering and I could barely taste the lavender. Now, I will admit that this may be partly my fault, as I got confused with the cup measurements (why can't everyone just use grams??) and just ended up adding what I thought was correct - I should have just done it to taste instead.

The other issue I had is that the base didn't really stick together. I thought that perhaps more dates were necessary to hold the mixture together, and might try and experiment with that next time. It might also again be partially my fault, as I used a mixture of hazelnuts, pecans and ground almonds, and perhaps the ground almonds were a little too fine to hold together.

You can see here where I tried to cut a slice and the base crumbled off

Anyway, this was an interesting experiment, and I am looking forward to trying out more raw/vegan cakes!

I have been cheating (with weaving)

It was almost a year ago that the weavers in Peru fascinated me with their fabulous yarns (all dyed naturally) and their intricate weaving techniques that I really could not get my head around. Using fairly basic, and rather unwieldy, instruments, they were able to produce fabulous fabrics and ultimately bags, wall hangings and other lovely things.

And so I cheated on knitting for two weekends while I learned to weave at the Handweavers studio and gallery on Sevens Sisters road in North London, by expert weaver Melanie Venes. And I felt bad while I thought that weaving is so much easier than knitting and could be used with much finer yarns, ones that I would never ever use to knit because they would probably reduce me to tears (see previous post on Damson shawl). In fact, all it seems to involve is passing yarn over other yarn and repeating.

Of course I am over-simplifying, and the set-up is much much more complicated than picking up your needles and casting on. You can have a four-shaft loom that can make complicated patterns,  an eight-shaft loom that can make even more complicated patterns or a floor loom with ridiculous numbers of shafts to make super creative textiles. You can set up your loom in specific ways so that you can get specific patterns when weaving by lifting different combinations of shafts, and use different colour threads to generate interesting combinations. The possibilities are truly endless, and we were shown a spectacular array of fabrics that can be made, and experimented on different looms with different pattern combinations (which is why all the samples below look a bit crazy, but the idea was to try out everything!).

My first attempt on the Ashford eight-shaft loom

After I got a bit more confident, I started experimenting by making patterns up

Using eight shafts to make a sort of quilted fabric with a different pattern in each square

And finishing with something pretty that I would wear in scarf format, mostly experimenting with different yarns

And then we get to the yarns - there is an unbelievable array of yarns available, from the regular wool and cotton that we are all familiar with as knitters, to the smooth and soft rayon, tencel and silk, to fuzzy novelty yarns and to crazy things like paper, latex, stainless steel and banana! I could have spent hours in the shop feeling the different yarns (in you can really call them that) and wondering what you could make with them.

Lots of yarn!

But you have to be careful with novelty yarn, it can lead to hideous results!

So I am going to have a proper affair with weaving? Well, as much as it all sounded fabulous when presented by an expert weaver, I don't think this will be a sudden career change for me, nor do I envision making my own clothes from scratch and my own curtains or rugs, and so I am reluctant to fork out over £500 for a fancy loom.

However, I did learn a lot in this course about how fabric is made (I do keep looking at people's clothes and guessing how they were made) and I am intrigued by the possibilities. So I am seriously considering taking a baby step towards weaving by purchasing a little rigid heddle loom, a type of loom that can't easily do fancy patterns but can still be used to make nice fabric with a bit of creativity and some interesting colour combinations or fancy yarns. Scarves for everyone next Christmas!

The tale of Damson, and other present stories

Oh blog, I am sorry I have abandoned you yet again. I had thought that the Christmas knitting would spur me into doing lots of knitting-related posts, but actually it threw me into a bit of panic in trying to finish everything off.

I did mostly pick easy, small, instant gratification patterns, as usual, to make my life easier. But some unknown force made me pick Damson as a gift for my mom. I wanted to make her something nice, and I had always fancied it as a project, plus I was very keen to make something with the super expensive Malabrigo sock yarn. And I swear there were comments on Ravelry saying that it was a fast knit. So what could possibly go wrong?

It all started out well, casting on just 3 stitches. Yes, 3 stitches! The yarn was soft and scrumptious, I whizzed through the first 10 rows of the garter edge. I was happy. But the garter edge involves increasing with yarn overs, so with every row, my progress was slowing down. By the end of week one, I had to force myself to knit 3 rows a day (66 rows of garter stitch in total!) to make sure that the shawl was done on time.

And then the scallop lace pattern began. A bit of counting, a bit of thinking, I was starting to get into it again. However, about 8 rows in I realise I have made a mistake. I continue, telling myself I can live with it. But I can't, so rip back to the end of the garter stitch and start again. At this point I am really starting to worry about whether this is going to be done on time. I give myself the goal of 5 rows a day. I make another few mistakes but I soldier on. The yarns overs means that the stitches are continuing to multiply like crazy. By the end, it takes me an hour to bind off, and I have skipped about 4 rows to make sure I have enough yarn.

Ok so I am a bit of a drama queen, and I am making this sound much worse than it actually was. And the end product is absolutely beautiful, and super soft with the beautiful yarn. Three weeks, however, is far too long for a gift, so unless you have loads and loads of time, I would strongly advise against it! I just really hope that my mom loves it as much as I do now that I have seen the finished product.

Full wing-span. Blocking not 100% successful as there is some curling, but perhaps some ironing will sort this out.

As a shawlette

As a scarf

In other news, I did do some more knitting, but it has been so long since I finished these that I can't even remember the details, so writing a whole blog post about them seems a little pointless.

The first is the Holland cowl, made using the last of the James C. Brett Chunky with merino. My bind-off was a little tight despite using a larger needle, so the fit is a little awkward, but pretty all the same.

And the second, not a Christmas present but a baby shower one, are the two-needle cable booties, which I have made many times before but never added on Ravelry. So this is more of a reminder for my for the next time I need to make booties.

Christmas knitathon continues - Growing leaves cowl; braided headband

My Christmas knitting progress has been slow, with family and friends visiting and an insane business trip during which I got maybe a total 12 hours sleep in 3 days (don't ask, I survived just about despite my old, I swear it was easier to go without sleep when I was a student). However, I have managed to knit two more gifts, hoorah! (Although, another four to go, and at this rate I predict another frantic December knitathon).


The first is the Growing leaves cowl, which I made for my 'mother-in-law'. I have never knitted anything for her before, and I am not entirely sure she even likes cowls, but I decided that it might be nice to make something for her, given how generous she was with my gift last year (the DK alpaca yarn and Domiknitrix pattern book), and my total failure to finish the jumper knitted with said gift (hence having no evidence that I enjoyed the gift).

I had the pattern saved in my Ravelry library (although I have no recollection of ever seeing it before), and I thought it looked pretty and cozy for when it gets even colder. It has everything I could ever ask for from a pattern: knit in the round, lace that is simple enough to remember but enough to make the knit more interesting than boring stockinette, and bulky yarn for a speedy knit. Also, no mods necessary, although I did make a teeny mistake towards the end, with the last leaf, but I don't think its noticeable.

For the time being, I have decided not to block it, as I think  it actually looks better with the '3D' leaves than it might look if the lace were flattened. The lack of blocking also means that it is cosier, perfect for those cold winter mornings.

Detailed view of the lace

Another bad selfie with minimal lighting

At least with a cowl I can hide!

The second gift is the Braided headband, which is supposed to be a rip-off of an Anthropologie headband (and incidentally I think the headband that the friend for whom I made the Vanessa headband wore all of last winter, maybe I need to re-think which one I give to each friend). I actually found a few patterns that aimed to emulate the Anthropologie headband, but this seemed to be the most straight-forward, as it is basically just a very wide cable knit over 16 stitches.

Once again, bulky yarn and fairly small project made for a speedy knit, and a very happy knitter (despite the need to do a bit of sewing; this is knitted flat rather than in the round). The only mod was to knit using 8mm needles rather than 9mm ones, which I don't have (and I keep forgetting to buy). I also did not block this one to avoid flattening out the cable and destroying the braided effect.

Here it is worn

And close-up

Both were knitted with James C. Brett chunky with merino (bought at the Knit and Stitch show), and one skein (100g) was enough with a tiny bit of leftovers (yay for no wastage!). Although for the cowl I think it would be worth using a more luxurious yarn.

Ravelry links: Leafy; Braided