This is one of these things where I'm talking about what I like in sewing, but hey, it can apply to other people. I'm going to show some vintage patterns/ older patterns and then say how they might be "hard" to sew, the reccommended fabrics etc.
So let's start with "economy" or war era sewing. Sears did a pattern line called "Economy Design" from the 30's to the 50's as best I can tell. A lot of these shirts use various ways to use less fabric. This can actually be a negative. If you have no way to let out a shirt or no way to handle wear other than patching the fabric, you have a shirt that fits you well right now. While you can add fabric to let things out, it can also change how the shirt fits.
Here's a shirt made from a 50's era design. Here's another sewist doing another earlier shirt from the same line.
You want something more unisex / with more room? You can easily get a million versions of a basic shirt. On average, the change over the years is some subtle fashion trends (so you may get long 70's collars or big shoulder pads in the 80's and the 70's occasionally run a little narrow in women's arms.)
Here's a random 90's era pattern. Here's a random 70's pattern with a classic 70's collar. Here's an 80's set of shirts with probably shoulderpads supporting those shoulders.
What would I be looking for?
I hate facings. Cheap fabric tends to be a pain to prepare for facings. I would sooner do a folded / sewn on buttonband and avoid a facing. You can add this to a shirt, but often this will mean needing to do some work on the neck area. There's a lot of instructions out there for doing collar stands (to cover raw edges that the facing would cover.)
I have wide shoulders and a yoke tends to fit the shape of them better than a lack of a yoke. I can add a yoke to a shirt semi easily (widen the back a hair to make a pleat into the yoke, take a part of the top of the back and add seam allowance at the bottom.)
Batwing style sleeves do not play well with all body shapes. My mother has narrow shoulders. That means raglan / batwing sleeves tend to play poorly with her. It doesn't hurt to try on some shirt shapes in a fabric similar to what you like and see if it looks good.
I tend to hate super drapey fabrics and super heavy fabrics. If the pattern has soft folding drapes / tiny ruffles / super crisp big pleats (think canvas workwear), it probably won't look great in my preferred fabrics.
I usually never button the first three inches of a shirt, but I prefer to have the option to button things as high as is comfortable. Deep V shapes rarely sit well on my body shape.
Many basic unisex shirts from the 80's till now have overly large sleeves. I do not mind some gathering in a sleeve (bearing in mind that my big shoulders make me look a bit 80's linebacker if I'm not careful,) but that's definitely an issue for some people. You can "walk" the seam and see what size of sleeve fits your size of shirt body.
Let's say your true desire is a soft rayon ruffled blouse with a facing. The bottom three blouses here look like they'd match that.
If you used this pattern, it would probably not give the results you're picturing.
Here's some basic ideas for hot weather cooking. I can't do wheat, but obviously you could change this up. I'm mostly suggesting stuff that's versions of what you might already do or things my family has done a lot in hot weather. I grew up in an area where you could regularly go above 37C / 100F in the summer for about 3 months, so I can argue I have an idea what I'm doing.
You'll notice a few of these call for "roasting" / baking. If the weather's deeply unpleasant, just putting a toaster oven outside can give you the option of roasting food. Similarly, you could do stirfries / pressure cooker meals via using options you could move outside. This won't change the fact it's too hot, but it does mean you can set, for example, some garlic bread to toast while you're inside. Assuming you're not using open flames, you could even have a little fan pointed at where your outdoor kitchen is working.
Cold dinners. When I was a kid, this was often something like tinned salmon with lemon juice with potato chips and sometimes some iceberg lettuce. You could vary this up by doing assorted cheeses, pickles, and bread / crackers. I did a "psuedo bar meal" before with tonic water and lime (or your vice of choice,) cold poached shrimp or chopped roasted / grilled chicken thighs, and popcorn / potato wedges. You could also mix a grilled meat / other options with a massive salad.
Bread and me don't play nice, but croutons / garlic bread or BLTs / other sandwiches exist. My family's recipe for croutons was a Steakhouse based one, I think. You heat the cubed bread in a pan if it's not very stale, and then add butter and the other seasonings as it begins to brown. Bread, Italian seasoning, butter and garlic, and a sprinkle of Worcestershire sauce at the very end. With gluten free bread, it can be about 2 TB of butter per 3 - 4 slices of cubed bread, but it's surprisingly tasty and will keep for a day or so in dry weather.
Breakfast for dinner if you're reheating already made waffles / pancakes or baking a quiche / bread pudding outside can be made quickly, but I don't crave it in hot weather.
Grilled meals are also very easy to do. Skewered meat + veggies, grilled burgers / sausages / etc all exist all over the world. My favorite discoveries are a trick for making your kebabs more dependable. Take your standard veggies and microwave or steam them until they are partially cooked. This makes your meat and your veggies often cook in the same amount of time. A little bit of par cooked bacon mixed in can help a lean meat taste more exciting. A fun spice mix to try dipping your meat in is a variant of Mongolian grilling. At it's simplest, it's cumin / chilli powder, but I've seen variants with salt / sugar / Szechuan peppercorn mixed in.
Cold noodles. Obviously, there's pasta salads, but there's other options. Hiyashi chuka, for example, is a Japanese dish that, at the simplest, is cold noodles with ham / veggies / some sort of dipping sauce / mustard. Zaru Soba is soba noodles and a cold dipping sauce. Mul-naengmyeon is a Korean cold noodle dish. Unsurprisingly, you can find cold noodles in China as well.
You also get variants like idli and side dishes. This is again typically something cooling or a little sour and a starch. One warning for a lot of Indian breads / flatbreads that use rice / lentils is that they will destroy a blender if you're not lucky.
You can also run into "it's hot out, so have something spicy." One stirfry I associate with this is Yunnan three chop pork. Tomatoes / peppers are at their best in summer, so it's an easy thing to put together, and a fast recipe to cook. I've made this with garden veggies and some dubious pork loin and it was still delicious.
Similarly, here's a list of a bunch of Mexican recipes which could be not involving cooking / cooked in advance / could be semi-easy to move the cooking outside.
Looking around can give you mountains of options to try.
I've got someone in the house who needs low sugar and I can't do wheat without miserable allergic reactions. So - I often end up digging around for recipes that'd work within those guidelines.
When I started cooking, the worst you'd run into was the rare "In 1967, I thought about politics, and then cooked an apple" or dubious sponsored cooking from recipes doing oddly greedy substitutions "replace all milk and eggs with our mayo" sort of things. So it doesn't hurt to check if an older recipe still pops up in a person's cooking if you've got years of various meals posted.
For example, Cook's Illustrated swore that brining your corn prior to grilling it improved it. Years later, they admitted the sole value was a little extra browning from the sugar in the brine sticking to the corn. They also regularly swear you cannot cook something with vanilla or with the "wrong" potato. I've often found that to be silly in my opinion.
Often, you can use a yellow all purpose potato replacing a brown baking potato, or replace a dark molasses for a lighter one with minimal changes. A tamari soy is darker and usually more salty, but a splash replacing another soy isn't going to destroy the world if you're careful of salt levels. Similarly, salted and unsalted butter, depending on brand, often do not change the end result.
However, you can still do some vague "do I trust this" on recipes.
Does the recipe match what you know of the ingredients / proportions / believable results?
Does the "simplicity" of the recipe sound like it could be slightly tweaked for better results or for improved flavor?
Does the result even match what you want the dish to be?
Does the recipe sound like it's giving you the best chance of it working with what you have?
Let's say you're looking at a cake. They swear it lasts forever, slices well, and is beautiful. It has no eggs and uses a lot of Splenda.
Fake sugars tend to change how the food tastes and bakes, but Splenda can make a pretty "normal" looking result. Without gluten, no eggs will often make a fragile cake. Without fat and protein making up for the lack of eggs, you will probably have a cake that dries up fast, crumbles or is delicate, and will likely need some kind of substitution. Vegan cakes often use apple sauce, for example. If you can eat eggs, I find them far more dependable than egg replacements in gluten free recipes, but that is a personal taste thing.
Let's say you've got a brownie. It's photographed at midnight, next to a bonfire, in winter. The best you can tell is that it's got chocolate, and it looks a little greasy. The recipe is literally chocolate, coconut oil, egg, sugar, and almond flour.
Considering there's no starchy flours in there, you will be highly unlikely to get a firm chewy brownie. The amount of oil (from the oil, the eggs, and the almond flour) could easily make something too greasy to be pleasant. You may also have some gritty texture due to the almond flour being the only flour.
By "simplicity," I'm talking about things where the author clearly wants the shortest possible ingredient list. Most gluten free recipes, for example, tend to use a "sticky" starch like corn starch, and a dry starch like rice flour. To understand what I mean, take some of each in some water, and heat in the microwave or a pan. If your noodle recipe seems "fragile" and prone to tearing, and it has no gelling starches like corn starch, you can often improve things with adding some. If it seems like you're eating noodles made of eggy jello - you've likely got too much gelling starches.
If you've got a recipe that's clearly pared down to five ingredients or less, and you know that other versions are more complex, you might want to compare them. Sometimes, things are just complex because they're complex. A fish soup with one fish will often be as edible as one with three and some shellfish. A particularly good example of "it'd work, but -" is those recipes for banana pancakes. Often you can get a better pancake with more ingredients, and the results aren't necessarily worth the speed in mixing them up if you're frying each one as small as possible.
By the "results you want" thing, look back at the greasy brownie issue. I like a chewy brownie, so I tend to favor recipes that will give me that. I do not like a pale soft sugar cookie, or a pale shortbread cookie. Recipes that want that will not give me what I want.
Another thing to look out for is the author's personal issues. If someone bakes everything at 350 degrees, I'd feel suspicious that perhaps it'd work at another temperature. A keto author did everything from pizza to biscuits at 350 degrees at wild baking times, and magically using standard temperatures and baking times worked well. Cook's Illustrated occasional fixations on the "true flavor of an ingredient" often means that I'm adding vanilla or garlic because my allergies do not care about the true flavor that the tree pollen hides.
By "does the recipe sound like it'll work well with what you have" thing is situations where you may not have key ingredients or the techniques sound overly complex. There's a blogger who loves a certain type of modified tapioca starch. I found their recipes to not work with mine, so if she calls for it, I just don't even try to see if it'd work. On the other hand, another one swore by organic gelatin and organic beef tallow. I found my gelatin and my lard to work exactly fine for my purposes.
By techniques, I'm talking about my personal energy. I've got a few cakes that work well. One involves melting butter, and dumpling almond flour, a bit of starch, eggs, and sugar in it. It takes almost 45 minutes to bake, but it's very lazy. Another one involves some beating to mix sugar and eggs and heating up some milk. It takes about 30 minutes to bake, but about twice the time to mix together. It also uses 3/4ths the amount of sugar due to having more ingredients.
The final cake is a chiffon style thing with beaten egg whites and sifted flour. It bakes in a flash because it's intended for layered or rolled cakes. It's tedious to mix up, overbakes at times, but it's lovely if that's what you need.
If I'm looking at a recipe, and it calls for wild precise timing or strange substitutions, I might try it. I wouldn't make a massive batch. The best example of that I found was someone making lava cakes. She had a recipe for high altitude that called for under a cup of flour for about 5 cakes, and a very low amount of sugar. She also said the secret was to make the batter (which sounded like a standard batter in standard proportions) and then chill it until fully firm.
This made sense to me. High altitude baking often has things dry out too fast due to humidity and temperature issues. A lava cake requires you to pull it out at the magic time. She called for baking it, and then letting it sit for two minutes before you served.
If you're in a hurry and your veggies are raw, you can microwave / steam them until they're a little soft.
This was based off of various Indian Bhindi recipes. Here's a sample one. Here's another one. Unfortunately, we get about 6 okra per plant where I live, and raw okra are about 14$ a lb.
Frozen okra is much cheaper. The cauliflower / zucchini are the same principles applied to another veggie. Here's a recipe very similar to the first one I saw for cauliflower from someone selling fancy olive oil.
Cut okra, or splitting whole okra in half will make a faster cooking option. Quartering the okra tends to make a very crispy mess that sticks together and tends to burn. You need to be careful as they start to brown because they can burn quickly, especially if your oven is hot.
My usual recipe is something like this.
1 bag of okra, prepped in the way you desire (remove stems, maybe tiny ends. Throw out any that are bug bitten or yellow if they seem suspicious or any that seem tough to your knife. You don't need to fully thaw them to work on them. Cheap okra sometimes have unusually tough massive ones thrown in the bag.)
1/4 - 1/3 cup of corn starch, potato starch, fine cornmeal, rice flour. Corn starch tends to be more crispy, potato starch tends to be crispy but less crisp than the corn starch. Cornmeal sometimes falls off the okra, but adds a lovely crunch. Rice flour is closer to the starch than the cornmeal, but I find it can both fall off and feel dry. Wheat flour / bread crumbs add zero value in my experience, but I can't eat them and I haven't experimented much with them.
Seasoning. Curry powder, Old Bays or other Chicken seasoning blend, any other spice mixes that seem interesting, salt and pepper.
If you want to gild the lily, add parmesan cheese (or similar dry cheese like Asiago / Romano / etc.) in the last few minutes of cooking or a squeeze of lemon as it comes out (roasting the lemon makes it sweeter.)
Cauliflower is best when well browned, and reheats well. It comes out very sweet and nutty. I often skip the starch / flour on it, since it's a firmer veggie. Large zucchini can be soft and floppy, but they do taste well cooked this way. Sliced zucchini sometimes never crisps up, but it does taste nice scooped onto rice.
You want a fair amount of oil - enough to slick the entire pan. Roast at about 360 - 400 degrees, and pay attention once it starts to brown. Average time is about 20 - 30 minutes at about 375 ish, and closer to 20 at 400. Leftovers are good on gumbo / curry / rice / soup, or snacking on them like potato chips.
I'm waffling on trying to make a puffy pair of hiking pants / bike bloomers / knickerbockers / plus fours. While there are patterns in my size (short, curvy,) I'd likely have to do modifications. The average "hits your calves" skirt, for example, hits my ankles if I'm not lucky. It's almost easier to draft to my actual shape.
Drafting manuals often assume you know what you're making and are more or less taking a "dish" you know how to make and are adding economy or fashionable features to it.
Imagine, say, that you have made a million biscuits in your life. If I told you "add ranch powder and cheese to a drop biscuit made with butter" you could probably make this without any more information. If you've never made one in your life, and I gave you a pound cake recipe instead of a biscuit recipe as your base, you'd be lost.
There's also the problem of local assumptions. If you want to swing with biscuits, let's say I assume you're using a biscuit mix or self raising flour. You don't assume the same thing. The biscuits will fail. I'm talking clothes though. A shirt made of lawn for a skinny person who wants to seem very round and plump will have a totally different fabric amount compared to an economy work shirt made out of wool flannel. A 1940's skirt and a House of Worth skirt could be the difference between 1 yard of fabric and 5 yards of fabric + interlinings.
So, you found your drafting manual.
I do like to first try to see if I can pick out the shape from the picture. Even better, I'd love to see an idealized "what this looks like on a body." If you work better with shapes, try cutting out the paper pieces and taping them into the shape of the garment. Check if your seams match the seams on the picture if that helps you.
Buttons! Cuff buttons might assume cuff links, or tiny buttons. This mostly only matters for your taste and making sure you've got an overlap to handle your preferred closure method.
Check if this is a garment made for a specific shape of person. A kid's coat, for example, might assume you are shaped like a cylinder and might have openings aimed at clumsy fingers. A loose flowing dress in knits will likely be more forgiving for some shapes than a non-stretch pair of men's breeches. Compare some of your bigger numbers versus the garment. You can, for example, check the width of a top garment right under the armhole for chest measurements. On average, 5 - 6 inches down from the waist is the widest point for a hip. I found one pair of bloomers that wanted 6 times your hip in that area, and one shirt that only wanted 4 times your bust measurement.
Bear in mind the fashion of the era. If you know you like your waist on your waist, but you're doing an era where that's not true, the drafting likely won't match that. If your pattern assumes hand finishing or buttons, and you want a zipper and modern edge finishes, you'll likely have to adjust. If your fabric is modern, compare it to how the vintage fabric might behave.
Figure out your ease. Take something you like how it fits that is as close as you can get to your drafted garment. For example, I tend to aim for 2 inches of wiggle room on my waist, and 4 inches of wiggle room on my bottom. I like about a yard minimum on the hem of a skirt to match my typical stride when I'm hurrying around.
Think about fabric. If you are doing a tailored wool garment, bear in mind that some patterns assume you will literally shrink the wool to fit into a perfect arm opening. If you have multiple bias pieces of fabric, the fabric will be clingy, and will need to rest after sewing or after cutting to stretch and relax. If you're short on fabric, be careful to try to get your grain lines straight even if you have to modify the garment, or cut some things on the cross grain.
So your numbers look okay, and you can tell what pieces go where, and how many there are in the finished garment. Now we look for mistakes. A common mistake is something like "draw the waist of your vest at 1/2 the hip + 2" of ease. Then put a dart at 1/2 the hip." Obviously, this will look weird having a dart 2" from either side of your vest. What they mean is that you're working on 1/2 the vest, and in the center of that, you put in a dart to cinch it to your waist.
Another common weirdness in drafting manuals is weirdness about fractions. You may get things like "use a proportioning ruler" or "our special gauge" for some manuals. If you do the math, it often amounts to "add 1/2 inch seam allowance" or "for all collar pieces, add 7/8ths of an inch of ease for the turn of cloth over the fold of the collar." I understand why you don't want to write out "make it 3 3/4th inches wide + 7/8ths of an inch" but at the same time, if you're using a set measurement + a set amount of ease, why not do the math for me?
So, I had two characters that were more written as a "give folks an interesting problem to chew on" versus fitting in a specific world / setting. I decided to write a story with them, and wanted to give them a world to be interesting within.
So one thing that pops up a lot in world building is the problem of "the forest planet." Logically, most large continents and planets do not have a steady climate from pole to pole. This does not mean you need to set your world in totally not Europe and use modern climate statistics for your world.
Let's face it, a "cool and pleasant" day in Texas probably would include "a pleasant" day in Oslo. However, the "time to put on a bikini and sunbathe" weather in Fargo is not the same as Orlando. You can even get strong differences due to the wet side of a mountain, an ocean, or random weather patterns. Add in technology / magic, and you can totally have Not-Egypt next to Not-Venice.
Adding an element for flavor in your setting, however, can come with issues. Let's say you decide all women wear floor length dresses, and all men wear pants. Ah, you say, that means women can't do hard labor or fight.
Historically, women, even when required to wear dresses, have done hard labor and fought.
So, let's take an example that doesn't come with major red flags. I'd established, and liked the image that one character wasn't really known as to his appearance. His gimmick was that he was known as "the Vanisher." He could, it was claimed, make people slip into roles for whatever you needed them to do, or give someone a new identity. Other claims were that he could make a skeevy person, for a while, seem almost decent.
All images / descriptions of him was a skinny man in a fancy suit (insert equivalent clothing of setting here) with a fairly fancy blank mask. His boss was awful.
Okay, what does masks imply? Well, masks are totally used, to this day. You've got your cliche bank robber, or your Carnivale masks, or a fancy dress ball. They're also common in cultural practices across the world. There's modern political reasons that masks / face coverings have people with opinions about them.
Are they a class symbol or a role symbol? Would only servants wear masks, or only people in an organization? Would you wear a mask when you're on the job, like putting a vest on a service dog or grabbing your lanyard before you head in to work?
Are they fashionable? Do you buy masks for a party or for your friends? Do you wear them during a season? If you are going to a party where masks might be expected, would you have one of your own or be assigned one? Is there social rules about how that works? Would you gossip about someone who always insists on cheap ill fitting masks, or places that require you to be clean shaven (or a shaved head, depending on the shape of things)?
Is it, for example, common for someone who wears masks a lot to keep their hair short and not a problem? Do you typically wear masks when you're working, so a very young person in one or a very old one would be noticed?
Is there gender / status specific implications in how your mask looks / is decorated? Can you bend the rules? This is venturing into real world issues, but knowing that you're stepping into an issue is as important as not being a creep about it.
Is there cultural expectations that come with a type of mask? If you're from an area that wears full face masks, and you are wearing a city's domino mask, is there implications about that? Would a college, for example, assign masks to student workers for a party to imply you're working for the school as a group?
Would you have something tactile like a freshly cleaned mask stinging and cold from alcohol as you put one on?
Is putting on your mask akin to getting your superhero getup on or more like tying a tie / putting on your heels sort of vibes? Is it simply like grabbing your hat before you go out?
Would a music performer wear a mask to focus things on their playing / singing? Would you unmask at the end of a concert / performance?
Obviously a simple story just playing with one guy quitting his job won't hit most of those topics. On the other hand, you can have "the mask" sitting in the pocket of a coat as someone heads into something, like Chekov's gun. It can be really fun to sort of gnaw at the edges of what could be done with something.
I do lowish sugar gluten free stuff, and it's sticky out. Here's what I've done lately.
Someone uploaded a lot of Jamie at Home on Youtube. Jamie Oliver has his own issues, but I do find some of the recipes really work well for getting a "mild" thing to have more flavor. His quick chicken pot pie (trick was mostly using some mustard in the gravy) was surprisingly lovely with some GF biscuits.
This set of episodes had some on potatoes, and a potato salad I really enjoyed. Summing it up, boil red / new potatoes until fully tender. While hot, toss on a standard 1 part oil, 1 part vinegar, dash of mustard. The variant I tried (since I found about 6 variations of the same recipe,) used some crisped up bacon and onions and some capers along with a mix of oregano and dill. Excellent still warm, quite nice cold. Found I needed to add a dash more vinegar if it tasted too "mild."
A bit wedged between toast / on a rye cracker with some thin slices of ham was a surprisingly nice Norwegian style open sandwich.
I do a fair amount of stirfries in the summer since you can reheat cold rice to get another meal, and the cooking time is mostly setting up your sauces.
Aaron and Claire use too much sugar (authentically, mind you,) for my taste. On average, if the recipe says a tablespoon, I use a half teaspoon if I think it really needs the sugar for balance.
Beef and onions comes out very close to a version of Mongolian beef a local restaurant made. You can replace some of the corn starch with xanthum gum (usually 1/4th the amount works well.) Half the onion and whatever vegetables you have handy will still taste quite nice if onions are a bit sweet for your taste. I've done this recipe with lamb and it works quite nice. Sometimes it needs a pinch of cumin to balance the flavor of the meat.
Beijing Beef comes out very close to a version of General Tso's that a local place made. I did not add the sambal because the peppers from our garden had more than enough kick.
Both of these recipes could be done with soy sauce, sherry, garlic / ginger, and a bit of ketchup for the Beijing Beef. Have some meat and some green onions for flavor / color, and you basically don't need to shop for your dinner.
(I totally freeze my ginger. It doesn't lose that much kick, keeps a long time, and does not mold / shrivel / or rot. You can microwave small pieces back to being soft, or carefully grate from frozen.)
Real Icelandic Rye tends to be pretty sweet and very slow cooked. That's great if you have the time, but I do not.
I found this recipe that had a more tolerable cooking time, and the photos looked like what I expected.
Putting it in my own words -
540 grams rye flour (if you want to use sunflower seeds / other seeds, most recipes suggest you soak them for a while.)
For a pleasant color - 1 tb cocoa
1/2 tsp anise seeds, 1/2 tsp caraway (this makes it taste "right" to me, but they're not traditional.)
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 1/3 cups buttermilk (I used homemade yogurt. It worked fine.)
1/3 cup honey
2 TB molasses
Mix until you have a clay like dough. If it seems dry, a bit of coffee will add flavor + acid to help leaven the dough. Put in a small pullman pan or a pan covered with parchment + foil + a string. A covered casserole dish would probably work just fine. Grease or oil the pan quite well.
Bake 90 minutes at 325F. You're looking for a little browning on the top, barely any rise.
Quite often, this kind of thing is served sliced thin with a generous layer of butter. I usually make a half batch and we can eat it in about 2 - 3 days if it's a dinner bread + breakfast sort of affair. It will not keep more than a week due to the risk of mold / drying out.
It's pleasantly sweet, strong enough to slice, and probably would make nice open face sandwiches. Rye flour isn't automatically gluten free, but you can obtain gluten free versions. A buckwheat or oat flour may substitute if rye doesn't like you, but part of the appeal for me is the rye flavor.
If you're looking for sandwich ideas, things like these here would probably be easy to edit to your taste.
average cannon gay dude/relationship in media is always some bs like: "i-i can't like a boy >_<!! I am one!!!" meanwhile queerbating media is always some shit like: "I'd happily give you every inch of my skin,bones,organs, and soul without any hesitation, all of me belongs to you and it'll stay that way till the last star in the universe withers away... I'm not gay though I've got a wife and two kids."
Since both of these are pretty savory, you could totally use meat replacements. Tofu (plain / baked / fried / rolled in potato starch and fried) or TVP would probably be fine, but I had some dubious round steak that needed to go. This is gluten free as long as you have a gluten free protein, gluten free oyster sauce, and gluten free soy sauce.
You'll notice these two are pretty similar. One is copying a Bangor MI restaurant called Ann Lee. I used a reduced sugar version of an Aaron and Claire recipe. The other is a generic spicy stirfry with a Mongolian / Sichuan vibe. I'm giving what I used with notes about how you could modify it to taste.
For both stirfries, start with a marinade:
1 lb thinly sliced beef
1 TB sherry
1 TB soy sauce
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 TB corn starch (or potato starch)
Baking soda will give you about an extra two minutes in your frying time before the beef gets tough. It helps hold in more water via a pH change. Done meat has bubbling and browning if your pan's hot enough.
Sauce for the asparagus beef:
3 TB soy sauce
1 TB oyster sauce
(Traditionally you would use some dark soy. I've found no amount small enough to not overpower the results, so I don't.)
1 1/2 tsp sugar (original recipe wanted a total of 2 TB of half sugar and half honey, but I cook with a much lower sugar amount.)
1 tsp corn starch
1 TB water if needed to help form a glossy sauce as it cooks
Veggies for Asparagus Beef:
1/4 onion, thinly sliced
Asparagus (one average bunch, or 1/2 bunch + some 2 inch pieces of green onion tossed in with the onions) , prep as you might usually prep it, and give it about 2 minutes in the microwave with water or in a pan with water to par cook it. This helps work around variable thicknesses of asparagus.
3/4 tsp cumin (recipe wanted 1 1/2 tsp, but this is the minimum amount with still adding flavor)
A fistful of finely chopped peppers (you want thin skinned peppers. I used about four from the freezer from last summer, which were about the size of Italian snacking peppers from a grocery store. Mine were two Habanadas, a Corbaci, and an Aleppo, so not as mild.)
You could totally use a tomato in here if you wanted to make something closer to Three Chop Pork. Aim for about the same volume as the peppers, chop well, and add it as if it was the asparagus since it's "damp."
Finely chopped green onion (3 - 5 green onions?)
1 tsp chile flake
ginger / garlic as above
Cooking method -
Heat oil in a large pan as hot as you can. Add veggies (save back the drained asparagus until they are hot and sizzling,) heat until fragrant and the green onions start to brown. Stir rarely to encourage browning. Remove from pan. This flavors your pan + oil residue, and makes your meat taste better. It also means you're pretty sure the pan is hot when the meat goes in. Heat the pan again.
Add as much meat as you can lightly sprinkle across the bottom of your oiled pan. Do not mess with it until you see liquid forming on the top and then stir. You should see browning. Repeat until you see no red. A small amount of pink with beef is fine, since you will cook this again. Do a second batch of meat if you need to. A 14 inch pan on high heat may be able to do one batch of meat on the average stove.
Add sauce if using + veggies, and heat together. The cumin beef may need a dash of soy and water to clean up the bottom of the pan. A dash of sesame oil is nice (a 1/2 tsp if you're leery of it being too intense.) Serve.
This is not an "exact" recipe, and therefore it occasionally is crabby. I can give some trouble shooting tips though.
1/3rd cup milk (Milk replacements work, but you may need some additional fat to avoid a crackery result.)
3/4 cup flour (1 part potato starch or corn starch, 1 part oat flour or rice flour, 1 part whey protein flour (replace with oat or rice if you wish))
2 eggs
pinch of salt
dash of nutmeg, vanilla, maybe 1 TB sugar? I use no sugar for a lower carb option. For a savory one, I'd still use the nutmeg, since a lot of savory crepe fillings like nutmeg.
If you're making these in advance, add a bit of yeast to help build flavor in the batter. You're looking for something akin to cream for texture. You can beat this as much as you like, since there's zero gluten to build up, and no thickeners like xanthum gum to weaken.
This makes about 6 crepes in a 10 inch pan.
Heat a pan on medium high, oil and wipe out the oil with a paper towel. Pour in the batter (about 1/4th of a cup?), swirl to cover the bottom of the pan, and pour out the excess. Let it sit until the edges peel away from the pan. Carefully flip to cook the other side for 10 seconds or so. These take longer than wheat crepes.
Plop out your crepe on some foil or similar and then stack them as they cool.
Problems:
Immediately peels off the pan and rolls around like a mess instead of coating the pan. Too hot, too much oil.
Immediately sets as a thick cardboard pancake. Too thick batter, might need more potato starch or corn starch to make it "gel" a little more, too hot pan.
Forms a network of tiny bubbles, fragile. Might need a bit more potato starch and corn starch, might need to roll the batter a little longer in the pan to fill the bubbles, might be too hot of a pan.
Bubbles and lifts off the pan like a balloon. Might be too thick, might be too much oil, might be just bad luck.
Too pale, but rubbery. Cook longer, try a little sugar in the batter (gluten free flours tend to cook up more pale in general.)
Cracks when you try to lift it. Might need to loosen an edge with a butter knife and then lift with your fingers. Might be a "weak" batter, so it might need potato starch / corn starch to make it stretch.
Crackery / fragile. Try increasing your protein with whey protein flour, adding strength with potato starch, cooking on a lower heat. Sometimes a dab of melted butter fixes it, sometimes it causes other issues.
Translucent, rubbery, tasteless. Too much potato starch / corn starch. This is a pain in the neck to fix, since adding rice / oat / other non gelling flours makes your milk / egg ratios all messed up.
ShannonMakes did some neat videos about using English Paper Piecing as a way to have an ultra portable project. I remember, many moons ago when I was in college, all the talk about EPP was that you needed perfection in cutting the paper, glue or freezer paper methods, mountains of thread and almost 8 yards of fabric for a twin / single quilt ( 55" by 83" on average.)
Obviously the fabric usage hasn't changed.
Due to laser cutter and other automatic cutter prices, you can buy about 300 bits of stiff cardstock for about 15$. The average 1.5" by 3" wide hexagon needs about 700 ish hexagons for a basic twin sized quilt. (Go here for a calculator. While it doesn't account for odd shapes, you can still use estimation for other shapes.) You can reuse cardstock.
A lot of people on the internet talk about using various automatic cutters for fabric, but I'd sooner play around with a craft with minimal supplies before I buy things to make it faster. The internet swears on seam allowances from 1/4" up to under 5/8". Other people use charm squares / circles, since your main accuracy is from your paper shape.
I'm using a quilt as a random "use case" option, but obviously you could do curtains for sun blocking / warmth or use the finished fabric for bags / cushions / fabric.
Why is it portable? Imagine a pile of paper shapes, a needle, a thimble because you love the skin of your hand, a spool of thread, your pre-cut fabric, and some sort of thread snips. That could fit in a bag the size of a generous paperback. Since each hexagon can be paused mid sewing, you've got something where you can drop everything if needed. Once you've run through all your hexagons, you can then start sewing them together. This means you get two "activities" out of one batch of supplies.
With hexagons around a central hexagon, you can remove the paper, and continue as you wish. (From a second hand aspect, Shannon recommended interfacing dubious fabrics or packing a lining fabric and cutting thick fabrics to a larger seam allowance. She also said the basting step could totally use rotten / weak thread if you have thrifted some shady thread.)
Why does this interest me? I have issues thrifting fabric in the area, since our local stores rarely have good options, but Swanson's Fabric has charming people running it and adorable themed bundles.
So, I picked up some fabrics I loved, intending on using them for garments, looked at Shannon's video, and decided to try a new craft.
Just for accountability, cost outlay was 50$ for the fabric, 5$ for some sewing clips which I wanted to pick up anyways, and 15$ for the paper pieces. I've got an old sheet that could be backing fabric, or I could spend another 50$ to do the back side of the quilt. On average, actual quilt backing fabric tends to be about 40$ for the "right" sized panel. The average price for twin sized quilt batting seems to be about 30$ for higher end stuff, but I haven't checked local stores.
A "better" quality half poly twin sized quilt (not ethical, or by a quilting artist, mind you,) runs about 130$ and fully cotton quilts (with the same warnings) tend to be 250$ from what I've seen. Knowing I could turn a project into a cozy, economical, and ethical quilt in exactly the colors I love is exciting, no?
I've copied two garments going straight from the garment to a pattern. I've also used a worn purse to copy the shape of the inside to sew a fresh lining. This didn't make the purse new, but it definitely made it more workable. This is sewing related, but you could apply the rules to knitting with some caveats.
Check the shape your source is in. A worn out and ragged pair of shorts could be ripped into pattern shapes and copied. A worn out sweater is likely larger / smaller than the original copy of the pattern. Anywhere with a lot of wear / holes might show that the pattern is a little small on the spot, and might distort the original pattern shape. If you are not tearing apart the garment, you can copy the shapes on to paper / using pins to mark the pattern shapes. The more fragile the garment, the harder it is to manhandle it into copying the shapes and the less accurate your copy will be.
Try the garment on, if you can. Note anything you don't like. If the shoulders are too long for your shoulder, note the approximate amount. Check if the sleeves are the right length for your arms. An accurate copy will not lose these problems, so knowing that you might want to tweak that is important. An inaccurate copy may make these problems worse.
Find some fabric that is similar to the original fabric. A slight amount of stretch will simply make the test garment "roomier" as it shifts around you. A major difference in drape / stretch will result in a different garment. If you want to demonstrate this, try on a knit garment and a stiff canvas / denim version of the same garment. If the shapes are the same, it will hang differently on you.
Walk the seams. Using a piece of paper or a measuring tape, go around the curves / edges of a garment. I prefer to do this prior to adding seam allowances, since you're talking about the finished garment shapes. Shoulder seams / side seams will often be different. A difference of 1/2" in a side seam can often get lost in the hem, and a bias seam may lose or gain the length as the fabric settles. A shoulder seam ideally should be a similar size, especially if you need to set a sleeve in it.
You are starting, I assume, with something that fits you. However, the copied pattern shapes aren't guaranteed to fit you. Take measurements of your body. For a top, I would do biceps, sleeve length, widest point of the hand (if not doing a cuff,) neck, shoulder, chest at armpits / bust point, chest at belly, hip if you're going to go down that far, armpit to hip / where you want the shirt to end. Double check the pattern will fit those numbers. It's easy on a shirt, for example, to lose width when you've got a 3D curved shape over the body, and you're trying to copy it flat. If your shirt just fits over a wide part of your body, you may want to add a bit more to your test one, since a fresh fabric will be less stretched in those areas.
Copying a collar stand is unpleasant. You can find people on the internet who talk through how to draft a collar / collar stand. On average, I'd make the collar stand a little long for my estimated curve, since you can trim it to be smaller.
Add seam allowances to the paper pattern and hem allowances if you wish. If you do not, carefully note that you did not add allowances for hems / seam allowances.
Sew the garment with as much care as you have the patience to use. If seam finishing will use more fabric, you should use it in your test. Ideally, try wearing the test copy for a while. Many fabrics change how they sit on you after they're warm and worn for a while (think of a pair of jeans fresh from the dryer or a pair after several wears.) Pay attention to irritation (do you need to bind a seam / serge a seam to have less seam allowance in an area?) or fit issues (do you need to add / remove fabric?) Is a seam under a lot of strain? Does that match the original garment or is it something in the drafting? If the result is so alien to confuse you, can you buy a pattern of a similar garment or watch someone sew a version of it to see the difference between your pattern shapes and the pattern?
Redraw the pattern, noting your changes, and try again. Repeat until you're happy, or you've got enough workable test garments to be done.
"this work is problematic because of how it handles [subject]": reasonable premise for media criticism
"this work is problematic because it depicts [subject]": do not pass go do not collect $200 this is, as a general rule, a functionally reactionary and conservative argument
"this work is problematic and you should be critical of the viewpoints it presents while engaging with it": reasonable premise for media criticism
"this work is problematic therefore everyone who engages with it is evil": do not pass go do not collect $200 this is, as a general rule, a functionally reactionary and conservative argument
"you should read this work critically" doesn't mean you should only read it with disapproval in order to criticize it
to read critically is to consider thoughtfully the means and motivations of the writers and how they came to inform the final piece of work you've been presented.
kids who slept through english class will demand that you be critical of a racist piece of work and what they mean is they want you to condemn it, not analyze why it was written like that and what it could mean and which other narratives it was in conversation with and how things might have changed over time.
trying to understand deeply and fully why a story has embedded biases isn't apologism for those biases. the point of critical analysis, and critical thinking, isn't to more thoroughly purge yourself of sinful thoughts or more quickly and articulately decry evil deeds.
it's to fully engage with the work of reading, writing, and communication, and to seek out a nuanced understanding of your fellow humans beings across time and space.
