Recipes of the Fall

http://www.food.com/recipe/chilean-butternut-squash-casserole-82191

Made this with my friend Linda and then again last Thanksgiving to take to a group dinner. Although people tried it and liked it, maybe it was too filling with all the other food options.

http://rouxbe.com/recipes/1053-scented-quinoa-pilaf-with-pine-nuts-and-raisins

I have a box of quinoa just waiting to go into this recipe.

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/recipes/2005/10/26/chicken-pilaf-raisins-pine-nuts-and-almonds/ a lot like the chicken with raisins and nuts that Linda and I made.

My favorite recipes are in these cookbooks (besides the ones that I used to use when I cooked in restaurants):

Sundays at Moosewood

The Greens Cookbook

All Around the World Cookbook

The Best of Lord Krishna Cuisine--Indian

The Meatless Gourmet

Art from the Heart

Here are some of my mosaics/tile work, atc's, and a pen and ink drawing. This is for you, Jill, since you said you want to see what I do. I got that cabinet door from MECCA and put Mexican tiles on it. The mosaic next to that is glass on glass. A lot of it scrap glass from Art of Glass, but some from MECCA. Same with the mirror. I'm going to be making a lot of these mirrors to sell in the next few months, I hope. The pen and ink I did a long time ago when I was doing abstract stuff, but I've always liked it. ATCs were from the last swap at MECCA--come again last Saturday of this month as I have a lot left!

Flowers and Insects: my new Crafty Cabinet

I made this using a Cabinet kit from Bi-Mart, some art paper, and some spray adhesive. Totally cost: $52. It has four shelves inside to keep my mosiac, fabric, and other art supplies. It's a little busy, but really brightens up my studio space. Still want to put on new handles--hoping to find either insect of flower handles.

I'm back!

After being away for months from my blog, I'm back with a emphasis on arts, crafts, sewing, books, and cooking.

First a poll:

what is your most recent creation? a cabinet I assembled and then papered. I will show you how on this website soon!
what is your proudest creation? I was really proud of the quilted bag I made in high school but more recently I was proud of a mosaic mirror
what kind of crafts do you most enjoy? mosaics, mixed media, collage, sewing, print making, assemblage
what crafts do you find most frustrating? pottery making, sewing
do you like to follow a plan or invent as you go? I make plans and follow them sometimes but other times as I'm creating the design morphs into something else
what do you like to cook or do you like to cook? I like to cook all-in-one dishes like stir fries and casseroles. used to enjoy making cakes but since I rarely eat cake anymore I've fallen out of the habit. Still like to make oatmeal coco-chip cookies.

Fun with Foreign Food

acorn squash stew
Chicken with almonds and spicesnaan

My amiga Linda and I have started a bi-monthly foreign foods cooking extravanga. On February 8th, we are making homemade pasta, a garlicy sauce, and homemade Vietnamese Pho. Sorta mixing things up this time. Our other forays have included Indian and Latin American.

For the Indian meal we made:

Glazed cauliflower with ginger
Cucumber & yogurt salad (w/tomato and chili pepper strips)
Chickpea flour bread--naan.
Chicken smothered in aromatic herbs & almonds .

Basmatic rice.

Beer from Thailand--couldn't find Indian beer!

So, here's how we did it. My daughter LeeAnn joined us. She organized the spices first off. Indian food requires a lot of different spices--which is probably why I love it so much! Then, LA peeled the cucumbers and chopped those and the tomatoes into bite-size pieces. She made a yogurt dressing and mixed it all together with a bit of chili pepper. In the meantime, I tore the chicken apart limb by limb--kinda fun!--while Linda started the dough for the naan. And I think she also made the ghee around this time. After sauteeing the chicken, adding all the necessary spices, nuts, vegies, we put it in the oven and headed to Fern Ridge for a quick walk. When we got back, I washed the rice--the trick to soft and fluffy basmati rice is about 4 washings--and then soaked it for 40 minutes before cooking. Because of the soaking, it seemed like it took just 10 minutes to cook. We also made the cauliflower dish at this time. By this time, we'd been either cooking or walking for about 4 hours. We were ready to chow down! So, Linda and LA did the final preparations on the naan and Linda checked spices and got the table set up while LeeAnn put the naan dough over a fire to cook. The naan's puff up tall and when you are hungry seeing them do that just makes ya drool. We brushed ghee over them after.

My favorite dishes were the chicken nut dish and the naan. Next time we make the salad we will use less yogurt or more cukes. The cauliflower was good too. All in all a great time and great food.

Our next adventure featured Latin American Cuisine.

We decided to make life a little easier on ourselves this time though and only cook two elaborate dishes:

Chilean Meat and Corn Pie

Peruvian Acorn Squash Stew.

Brown Rice.

Beer from Costa Rica.

We used buffalo instead of beef for the Chilean pie and it turned out so good--the sweetness of the corn mixed with the herbs and spices and the buffalo was very tasty. Both of these dishes were very casserole-y. Both were excellent with rice. The squash stew had feta cheese and peas in in, as well as oregano and chile peppers.

I loved, loved, loved both dishes. So much so that I made the Squash dish shortly thereafter to bring to a Thanksgiving potluck.

By the way, Linda and I work real well together in the kitchen. Linda, you can write a comment if you disagree with this. ha ha. But, that's real cool when you're cooking together that you know someone is doing their part in one part of the kitchen when you are doing yours and you both can look out for what's on the stove.

Recipes coming soon!

Also, next time we will take more photos of us cooking.

Have any foreign food suggestions or want to join in on the fun? Let us know!

Obama's Agenda

http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/

It's long and I just started to read it. I'm very impressed that he is able to make his agenda known to the public so soon. I guess he's been thinking about it for a while.

Hello, President Obama.

I am hopeful of you leading our country in such as a way to promote all kinds of community service, negotiations between parties and countries, more peace on this crazy planet, and taking responsiblity for what we've done wrong in the last several years along with intelligence to change our actions toward more sustainable outcomes. We can truly change our lives, our communities, our nation, our world, when we feel inspired and committed to working together toward common, positive, reacheable goals.

I love that you are so grassroots oriented. I've always believed that is the way toward a more egalitarian nation, with communities allowed to give their input and see the results afterward.

I am hopeful but also realistic. I know that the economy won't get much better anytime soon and that war-torn nations won't all of a sudden be saved by your leadership. All I can do is my part--help others when I can, spend reasonably, and stand up for what I believe in. And not live in fear. Our people have survived worse.

I think that you are the best darn looking president we've ever had plus quite a good dancer (saw you on the Ellen show)--it's good to have a president that knows how to boogie down.