Farewell, London Olympics: Union Jack and British crafts

Tonight sees the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics (at 11pm here, unfortunately), and in celebration of the Olympics being held in my favorite city, I spent some time over the last two weeks knitting a mini Union Jack from Debbie Bliss' book, The Knitter's Year. It was my first experiment with intarsia, which is when every separate block of color in a knitting project gets its own string of yarn -- it wasn't hard, but it was definitely messy.

But before embarking on this craft, I'd searched the interwebs for my options on Union Jack crafts. Surprisingly, there's a relative dearth when compared, to say, amigurumi anything, though on the plus side, a lot of the cute patterns I saw online are free.

Clockwise, from left: Double Fat Jack, free tutorial; Union Jack cushion, free tutorial; Mini Stamp PDF chart for cross-stitch, £5; Rowan Union Jack cushion, free pattern. In fact, all of the websites (except for the second one) have other patterns that are just as nice.

I have plans to make my own Union Jack wall hanging, like the one to the left -- I thought it could be a good introduction to quilt-making, which I have been wanting to try. I already have the fabrics -- I stuck with the traditional blue, white and red, though I picked some patterns -- but at the moment, I don't have a sewing machine. Alas.

But this isn't my first go-around with the Union Jack. Last summer, I made a Union Jack clutch using a plastic canvas "frame" from Darice, though I still need to put in a lining. All in all, it was pretty easy. I ended up creating my own pattern -- I counted out the number of squares both vertically and horizontally on both the back and the front, and created a graph (30x37 squares) from one of those online sites (just google graph paper). I also found a picture of a Union Jack online, and I overlaid the graph on top of the Union Jack in the paint application, which gave me a basic pattern to follow.

Adventures in Cooking: Birthday oreos

I'm not a huge fan of Turkish desserts, so I decided that I would make myself birthday cookies this year instead of trying to buy something. Why cookies, as opposed to a cake? I have no idea.

I'd stumbled across a recipe for homemade Oreo cookies on Shine about a month ago, and the recipe (and ingredients list) seemed pretty simple, so I decided to give them a try. The recipe comes from One Girl Cookies: Recipes for Cakes, Cupcakes, Whoopie Pies, and Cookies from Brooklyn's Beloved Bakery by Dawn Casale and David Crofton.

I was generally pretty pleased with the recipe. I had expected the cookie shell to be moist and chewy, as they look in the Shine photo, but the cookies were pretty hard. Which wasn't bad, just surprising. I ended up keeping the cookies in the refrigerator because it's been so hot here and it was messing with the filling, and I found that this improved the cookie taste...and also that they tasted better after a day in the refrigerator.

My only comment about the recipe is that it makes WAY too much cream filling. You can't put a lot of cream filling between the wafers because it comes shooting out the side, and so when I was done putting the cookies together, I had more than half of the cream filling left. In my opinion, you could safely halve that portion of the recipe.

In other Adventures in Cooking news, I decided after the birthday baking that I would make wedding macarons (which is to say, macarons for our wedding), which I would delightfully and gracefully present to our small group of guests. Unfortunately, the macarons didn't cooperate with my fantasy. I suppose trying to make one of the world's most difficult desserts in a countertop mini-oven was probably not the best idea. :)

Adventures in Cooking: Grilled Thai peanut pizza

It's been awhile since I've posted any of my cooking adventures, though I have been periodically trying out new recipes. One of my more recent experiments was a grilled Thai peanut pizza recipe that I found on atasteofthai.com. I'd brought back some of their peanut sauce mix from my last trip home, but I wasn't sure what to do with it -- and when I saw this recipe, I thought to myself, "I love this peanut sauce and I love pizza. What could go wrong?"

Unfortunately, plenty. The recipe calls for a couple of ingredients that I didn't have, like a red onion (yellow only) and basil leaves. I also don't have the infrastructure to grill anything, so I cooked it in our desktop oven. I suppose I could blame the very odd taste of this pizza on my tweaks, but I now realize that pizza and peanut sauce do not, in fact, go together.

Oh well. From now, I will just stick to using the peanut sauce in my much-tastier throw-what-you've-got-into-the-pan stirfry.

On turning 36...

I've had a couple of days to think about it, and in the immortal words of Sex and the City's Charlotte York:

[There's a video, which doesn't show up in Google reader, and perhaps other places.]

Charlotte goes on to explain that since she doesn't look 36 and she doesn't feel 36, she's just not going to turn 36. She adds that men have much more interest in meeting 35-year-olds, which does in fact have some historical precedent. The Savoy hospital in London, which was in operation from 1505 until 1702, only hired nurses who were unmarried and over the age of 36 -- because they were thought to be past the age when they might seduce the patients, according to The Writer's Guide to Everyday in Renaissance England. Ouch.

Ahhh, how I understand Charlotte's dilemma. While I decided last year upon turning 35 that I would stick at 28, I just can't bring myself to actually tell anyone that I'm 28, at least not with a straight face. Alas.

Istanbul's Hippodrome

Before the concert at Aya Irini, Eva and I met up at the Hippodrome. Despite the fact that every time I go there some tout will try to chat me up, I just love it. I think it's because of the history of the place and that you can almost visualize what it used to be. And despite the random guys hanging around, it's also really quiet when compared to the touristy part of Sultanahmet.

According to Wikipedia, Emperor Septimius Severus built the hippodrome here in the year 203, no doubt to give the citizens of Byzantium some entertainment. (A hippodrome was a long oval-shaped arena where chariot races and other events were held.) Constantine enlarged it in the fourth century, and it became the center of the city's social life; its stands were capable of holding 10,000 spectators.

The emperors would place columns in the middle of the Hippodrome to adorn it, and three still remain (along with two bases, which are in the Archaeology Museum nearby). The one you can see clearly in the photos is the Obelisk of Thutmose III, which was taken from Luxor in the fourth century by Emperor Theodosius I. The emperor is depicted on the base, handing out a laurel wreath.

Inside Aya Irini

At the end of June, the 40th Istanbul Music Festival was on, and my friend Eva suggested that we go to a concert, primarily because some of them would be held in the nearly-impossible-to-get-into Aya Irini (also spelled Hagia Eirene), which she wanted to see.

Aya Irini was the first church built in Constantinople, in the fourth century; that version burned down though during the Nike revolt, and the current building dates from the sixth century. It's not open to the casual visitor, though apparently you can go as part of a group of at least 10 if you arrange permission, and of course, it's been opened for events. (Having said that, Cagatay and I were at Topkapi Palace one day, and the doors to Aya Irini were wide open to the public, seemingly because there was an exhibit on. So we got to go inside, easy-peasy.) But as a result of the limited entry, I feel like there's a lot of hype around it because it's so difficult to get into -- but I'm not sure it's deserved. There's almost nothing to see inside. It's completely devoid of ornamentation, except for a simple mosaic of an outlined black cross on a gold background, dating from the Iconclast era, when figurative art was forbidden (and destroyed).

Eva and I ended up choosing a concert featuring Milos, a young Montenegran musician who's made a splash in the last couple of years playing the Spanish guitar, as the program included one of my favorite musical pieces, Joaquin Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez. The concert also featured the Milli Reasurans Chamber Orchestra, who started the night with Rodion Shchedrin's phenomenal arrangement of Bizet's Carmen suite and ended it with Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin.

I was concerned that Eva would be disappointed in the experience after she'd specifically wanted to go to see the venue, but the music paired with the setting was AMAZING. I will never say another bad thing about Aya Irini again -- sitting in there under that huge dome, I was just overwhelmed by the history of the building, and the music was so beautiful, and so clear with the acoustics. (There's a video that comes next; I've noticed that it doesn't show up on Google reader.)

I've heard recently, though, that they are no longer allowing Aya Irini to be used for events, though I don't know if this is a permanent decision. If it's to protect the building, it's probably a good thing, though the concert was so magical that I wish everyone could enjoy the experience. :) [Update, 9/26: It appears that my trusty source was wrong; Aya Irini is listed as the venue for the kickoff concert for the 2012-2013 State Opera and Ballet season this Saturday.]

London Olympics: Best Souvenirs

It's Friday afternoon here, and I am more than excited for this weekend -- not only is it my birthday tomorrow and Cagatay's and my two-year anniversary on Sunday, but tonight also sees the official opening of the Summer Olympics ceremonies, in my favorite city, no less. Break out the biscuits and bunting, it is time to celebrate!

I had so much fun compiling the best souvenirs for the Queen's Jubilee (which should have included the sporty Regal Egg Cups that martasantos mentioned in the comments) that I decided to do the same for the Olympics, which, admittedly, is really just an excuse to compile the best British souvenirs I could find. The Olympics souvenirs are -- hmm, how do I say this tactfully? -- oh yes, tacky. The truth hurts. I've gotten several up-close looks at Heathrow in the past six months, and I just couldn't bring myself to buy anything -- and I loooove British souvenirs. But you don't have to feel bad for them -- the New York Times reported yesterday that the London Olympics souvenirs are going to bring in an estimated $1.5 billion.

But I digress... With price as no object, the best souvenirs to bring home from the London Olympics:

1. Typographic map of London, free download  2. Queen Duck, £12  3. Double-decker bus, £7  4. Olympic Henrietta flats, $230  5. Jubilee Union Jack toast stamp, £4  6. Ben Sherman Union Jack design Flight Bag,£35  7. Queen's head jelly mold, £10  8. Alexander McQueen clutch, $1,695 9. Muji's London in a Box, £8  10. Grunge UK flag iPhone case, $45