Saturday, September 4, 2010

Pickled purslane, and some good friends' blogs

© 2010 Joshua Stark

Blessed with a bag of purslane from Dave and Abby of This Old Blog, and inspired by the Joy of Pickling by Linda Ziedrich, I decided to pickle a pint.  In about two weeks, I'll pop that jar and see what we have.

I didn't really stray from the recipe, except I had to use sharper regular distilled vinegar, rather than the wine vinegar for which it calls... thus, I'll let it mellow a bit longer.  It also reminded me that I need to start infusing some vinegars for the winter.  Last year, I did a blackberry vinegar that is just getting better with age, and this year I'd like to do some herb-infused numbers for Christmas gifts and for trying with marinades and pickles.

When trying to get a picture of the jar, I kept having trouble with my camera's focus.  So, I decided to take a couple of other pictures with the 'super macro' setting, which usually gives me good pictures.  They turned out fine, so I'll have to re-fiddle to get a good shot of the jar.

In the meantime, here are the couple of pictures I took.  The first one is a shot of my attempt at a wedding present to a good friend of mine.  I'm designing pretty salmon flies, because the newly-wedded couple are fly fisherfolk.  This is a snipe-and-teal:


The next picture also caused me to do a quick google search, and I'm glad I did.  This, here, is a picture of a sash woven by a friend of mine, Annie MacHale:

An Annie MacHale original that I use on my picking basket
When I decided to post the picture, I thought I'd quickly google her name to see if she was up to anything online.  Sure enough, she has a great blog of her own, ASpinnerWeaver.  Annie spins and weaves, and often makes great period pieces for mountain men, as well as other beautiful works.  If you are interested in weaving, or in art at all, I highly recommend stopping by her site.

6 comments:

Annie MacHale said...

Hi, Josh! Great to have you turn up here in blogland. Boy, you have been busy writing! I'll have to catch up on what you have been up to.
Thanks for your kind words about my work and for recommending my blog.
~Annie

Josh said...

It's my pleasure, Annie! I'll also be catching up on your blog.

abby normal said...

can't wait to hear how the pickled purslane turns out!

Josh said...

Abby normal, you will be the first to know how it goes. Thanks for the goodies!

Also, welcome to my blog; feel free to stop in anytime.

Mr. Fashion House said...

Also looking forward to hearing about that pickled purslane. We did not get the 10 gallons of last year, but we still have a couple of jars worth if it turns out well...

Josh said...

Next week I'll pop it open and let you know. I really should have used apple cider vinegar, but I can get the gist of it with what I've done, and if it's good, I'll probably encourage you to do the same, only with cider or rice vinegar... we shall see.