Monday, May 27, 2013

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Walls.





I keep trying to paint walls.
Perspective needs work...seems as if the wall was going along okay then ...the DOOR.


Thursday, May 23, 2013

Mother's Day Painting

Park View
The best gift? A morning of painting outside...



Tuesday, May 21, 2013

2 Years



I watched the Paper
Lanterns rise into the night
sky and thought of you.

Yesterday marked two years since my brother, David, died. I thought of him all day. Sunday I made pizza and thought of him--he was the best bread baker I've ever known.
I continue to miss him.

Monday, May 13, 2013

Indian Food

Sooo. A few of us have decided to get together now and then and make interesting things we might not otherwise be making.

Last week we made Indian food. One of my favorite things is papri chaat, which I liken to Indian nachos (heresy, I know, but it suits!!)...this is party food at its finest, and everyone has their own preference. In the past, I've made it with chick pea "chips" (I love those chips), but couldn't find them, so I think I made it the more acceptable way, with plain papadams (not the small ones, although I did just find those in the store)...topped with a potato mix, yogurt, chutney...MMmm.

I also made samosas...They don't look quite right (in the shape arena), but boy were they good. I do think I should try a baked version, if for no other reason than to ...well, to not eat fried food.

Dough was simple--flour, water, oil. I made the filling from yellow potatoes (Yukon Gold-LIKE, just not Yukon Golds)..spices (mustard seed, cumin seed, curry powder (I didn't have turmeric), peas, onion, carrots (not traditional, I just learned), cilantro.

We also ate homemade naan, lentils, yogurt sauce and rice pudding. Mmm..It was a feast!


Friday, May 10, 2013

Watercolors: Art Friday. Steak.

I did a big story on specialty meats for a magazine, finishing up in early April. I decided I wanted to send thank you notes to my sources. THEN I decided I wanted to do a little, simple watercolor steak on each card, no bigger than an thumbnail...

Well, the only watercolor paper cards I came with were pretty big. A teeny little thumbnail would have been lost...so I watercolored the front of each card with a large steak in watercolor. Each one a little pen and paint masterpiece. I was so pleased with them. I was eager to hear what my sources thought, but not-a-one has replied with praise of my work! So instead, I share the art here...(I love a hand-written thank-you note...I super love hand-painted and hand-written--as silly as it might have been to spend so much time on these, I got lost in the work and really loved doing them...)

Aren't my sources so lucky??



Monday, May 6, 2013

Epic Fail: Almond Macaroons.

So a place I know serves these light, slightly sticky-chewy almond macaroons...Not French "macarons", but bigger, a bit denser...not sandwiched with anything, but covered with sliced, blanched almonds.

All I know about them is that there is honey and rice flour in them. Unable to find any recipe, I've been playing around. And boy did I find a fail. I made some little, dense (yet tasty) cookies, but they weren't right, so I cracked open Martha Stewart's cookie book...They looked kind of close and the description sounded right.

I doubled the recipe, tweaked it a bit to use some honey and rice flour and got...almond macaroon pancakes. TASTY almond macaroon pancakes, but pancakes nonetheless.

Knowing I'm not a baker, I though I must have done something so very wrong. So rather than tweak the recipe, I decided to make a second, single batch of the original recipe.

Here's a photo of the book illustration.



Here's a photo of the result I got using the original recipe. Right, the difference is mine aren't sprinkled with powdered sugar...

But I am nothing if not determined. Luckily these tasted great and my family is not hung up on looks alone!

I post this in case someone out there thinks I don't have fails in the kitchen. Boy do I EVER have fails!!

Friday, May 3, 2013

Watercolors..Art Friday...

Today's work is me trying to copy a painting by Charles Reid, an artist whose watercolors I love--the fluidity, the colors, the complex simplicity/simple complexity...I really aspire to that style...
Click here for images by Charles Reid himself...