Dec
20
Oh looky here. I have some vacation time on my hands and here I come crawling back to the oft-neglected blog. But, hey, I have time to cook!
Alex loves meatballs. I don’t know that he has met a meatball that he won’t eat. Considering that cooking is one of the primary ways that I show my love, and I am off work for a bit, I decided to make some meatballs. Oh no, son, when mama has the time, you don’t have to sit around wishing that we could go to Ikea so that you can have meatballs.
Now on the other side of things, I love to try new recipes. So, I set out to find a meatball recipe that I haven’t made yet. I remember seeing one not too long ago in Bon Appetit so I ventured on down to Epicurious (as if I jauntily strolled down the street) to look. That’s when I found the recipe.
Yes, when I can, I will procure three different types of ground meat to make meatballs for the Young Mister. I try not to wonder whether this is sick.
I though these were the best meatballs I ever tasted. Young Mister, however, didn’t appear to be convinced. He ate one of them. Then again, he can be a light eater. I’ll know the true verdict when the topic of leftovers come up. I guess that if the next time he has a hankering for meatballs he just says, “Mama, can we go to Ikea?” that would suffice as a verdict. If he doesn’t eat them, I think I know a person or two who will.
Nov
28
And now its a skirt.
A few months ago, I ventured into a thrift shop and bought a shirt because I loved the sheer wackiness of it. This used to be a man’s shirt. This man was not a small man. I imagine this man is named Mortimer. Mortimer I hope found good things after this shirt.
The skirt wasn’t too hard to make. I got my basic guidance here.
Though, due to those lumpy bits that seem like they should have their own specific name, I had to make adjustments.
The above is what this skirt would look like in real outfit form.
Nov
27
I love the holiday season. And even though it is totally weird to go into the store and find both Halloween costumes and Christmas lights on display withing aisles of each other, I don’t mind seeing it. I love walking through aisles of peppermint candy, snowman shaped baking pans and nutcrackers. I love that there is glitter everywhere during this time of the season.
I am ready to put my Harry Conick Jr. Christmas CD on repeat.
Yes, I have in my possession this season’s wrapping paper. I also know what i’m doing about gift tags. There are bows in the closet waiting to be adhered to packages. I just think this stuff is so pretty!
But what, I asked myself, could I do today? Then it came to me: make a garland!! Text cannot properly convey the excitement that feels like delicate bubbles raising through my torso in a frenzy. Yes, I’m going to make a garland! I saw the idea years ago here and have meant to do it ever since. I did one thing differently. Instead of gluing this, I fastened it with eyelets.
Carpe diem, yo.
Nov
26
I collect things. I don’t mean to do it, but I have all of these ideas and grand intentions. Those intentions need supplies, right?
I reorganized some things around the apartment and came across some fabric that I have owned for years. How many years? I have no idea. I know that I have moved the fabric more than once and that I always had such great intentions for it.
I also had on hand the Simplicity 3858 pattern. After looking at a bunch of people’s versions of this, (among other things) I decided that I was going to make my own. I had the time, the fabric, the pattern, the thread and (so I thought) the notions. I made a muslin yesterday, knowing that I always need to make adjustments. (I added to the bust, and hip and took it in at the waist.)
So, this morning I cut out 2 shirts and made them assembly line style. And now there are two new shirts in my closet! Gotta love a long weekend!
Nov
25
I read Design Sponge, and had been seeing the ad for months, when extreme thirst and a (correct) hunch that I had failed to lock my door woke me up in the middle of the night. I started poking around online and saw the ad. Again. And that the deadline had been extended. And signed up.
This makes me one of the 28727 folks from 94 countries doing this.
A few days ago, I got the sketchbook in the mail and have been thinking ever since of different ways to fill it. Each participant chooses a theme for his/her contribution. The theme I chose was “And then there were none.” My brain has been crackling with ideas ever since, which was sort of the point. I feel all askance and ungrounded when I’m not generating a bunch of ideas. Lately, I have been spending a lot of time learning to dance a bunch of dances which has taken a fair amount of the time I would have otherwise been exploring behind the craters and crannies in my brain.
I have had an on again, off again relationship with creating art. I always like it when I’m doing it, and miss it when I’m not. I have wanted to make this relationship more constant, but this can be a challenge to do and also have a sense of balance, which is very important to me. But maybe this project will jump start something. I hope it will.
Sep
06
About 2 weeks ago I completed one of my more ambitious birthday goals: try 100 new recipes!!
I learned a lot about the things that I like and the things that I don’t like. I also learned a lot about foisting things upon other people!
This is a Cardamom Crumb Cake from the latest Everyday Food. It seems right that I finished this project off with an ingredient that I explicitly bought for another recipe in the project.
The other thing I learned this year is that I love the idea of cake, but don’t really love cake so much. I like to bake them and make them pretty and take pictures of them and smell their wonderful cakey smells, but then I think, “Crap, what am I going to do with all of this cake.” The grapevine said that folks at the workplace were glad to get it.
Aug
21
I suppose I could have called this post Moghali-Style Chicken with Spinach, Almonds, and Raisins. I want to say so much about this dish, but I don’t think that I have the words to fully convey the delciousness. I got up and ate the remains of this for breakfast, cold right out of the fridge, out of the container. It was that good. The recipe came from 660 Curries by Raghavan Iyer.
Raghavan, I think I love you.
Jul
24
I always go on and on about how much I love Bon Appetit magazine. The quiet, unsung magazine in my collection, though is Cooking Light. These are tasty, yet reasonable recipes. You pretty much know when you peruse the pages that you won’t be in a situation where you feel like you want to slice open your stomach, scrape out the contents, and try again, this time being far less naughty.
Thank you, Cooking Light, for this recipe.
Jul
20
This post is for the writing group. According to this, I write like a man…and Stephanie Meyer. As people who have read my work, you’ll have to be the ones to tell me if it’s true.
This is for “Yoga”, “The Rite”, and “Cupid.”
This is for “Soul King.”
This is for “Clapper.”
This is for “Hypercolor.” Funny, someone in the group said this story was like Henry Miller on acid.
This is for Traffic and for Taste.
Jul
15
One of the things that happens when you’re always trying new recipes and you have a household of limited members is the accumulation of ingredients. Sometimes.
So there I was with a big chunk of red onion, and feta cheese. I tend to keep things like rye-berries on hand, and nuts in the freezer. Already, an idea was coming together. For some reason I can’t even remember, I had a half lemon in the fridge and I had (and still have some) snow peas and sugar snap peas from my CSA share. I also had a bunch of cilantro. Always there is olive oil and honey in the pantry. That and salt and pepper. So, I put all the parts together and got this great salad.
Hearty lunch for the hungry.
