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.

Love this new camera

I bought this Nixon Coolpix L18 for my daughter yesterday. Got it on sale at Freddie's for $99.99. I have a Nikon Coolpix too but I bought mine several years ago and technology has changed. LeeAnn's has some neat-o features that mine doesn't, like the ability to take and stitch together panoramic shoots. Plus it seems faster than mine and I love the big screen. Color quality is wow! Both of ours has the b & w option but hers has so many more auto features than mine does. And both take movies with sound. So far, I'm impressed. And LeeAnn played with the camera all day yesterday and was extremely happy. So, if you are looking for an inexpensive camera--one to take on car trips or even just around town, this may be the camera for you.

a blog I like

http://ruthie822.blogspot.com/

Crazy 'bout Crafts

This is the largest mosaic I've completed thus far. I finished it at the end of summer. My inspiration was taken from the magazine photo on top. I more or less had a design in mind but made things up as I went along too. It seems that that's the way I do mosaics. Maybe when I'm more experienced I'll be able to follow plans. But, who cares! I love the "play" aspect of creation and if you can't make it up as you go along then it's not fun anymore. Anyway, the photo at the bottom is without grout. I have since applied a charcoal gray grout and it looks a lot like stained glass in my window.

HAPPY SNOW DAY

End of Year Hopes

I hope we all have enough to eat.
I hope we can resolve our differences with words rather than with wars.
I hope we can be our authentic selves, that we can be courageous to act as who we really are without much fear.
I hope the children in this world are loved and well cared for.
I hope we seek to understand other people rather than shutting out those who opinions are different than their own.
I hope we all work toward making the planet less polluted.
I hope we preserve old growth forests around the world.
I hope we love our pets and honor the other animals who share this planet.
I hope the economy becomes stronger around the world and that Americans learn to save for purchases rather than going into debt via credit cards (and I hope the govt. better regulates credit card companies).
I hope we can love each other.
I hope that after all is said and done that we can all still have hope!

Going Batty in December

Merry Christmas All!

This photo collage represents my two favorite vacations of last year--one to Baja, Mexico, the other to the Redwoods. LeeAnn and I also went to Seattle, which was fun too. Anyway, the Mexico vacation took place in January and is represented in the three photos to right third row down and one photo at far left in the fourth row. Loved seeing the whales so close and visiting the desert. Also met so many nice people and found the best restaurant in all of Baja--it's in Todos Santos. Donna, LeeAnn, and I went on the redwoods vacation during spring break in March. We stayed at the Redwoods AYH (hostel). On the days it was sunny we went to the beach. Other days--rainy ones--we walked in the redwood forests.

Let it Snow!

More snow today. Back to riding the bus again. You'd think people would be in good moods today (Friday!) but I think the bus riders are tired of the weather as they weren't nearly as animated today. It's been a long week for those who have long commutes. In Spokane, my brother got 2 feet of snow in 24 hours yesterday. In Bellingham, my family has a couple more inches than Eugene, last I heard. Where ever you are, stay safe and don't drive unless the road conditions are pretty good. If I had a pair of X-country skis I'd be strapping those on tomorrow to make my way around town. Yee-ha!

A Warm and Balmy Day

The rain came down hard last night and this morning, which melted our snow and ice. It's now about 40 degrees whereas it had been in the teens. I now feel comfortable driving my car so didn't have to leave so early to go to work this morning.

This week has seemed extra long. I am so ready for the weekend. Have to finish getting ready for Christmas. I haven't even gone to the Holiday Market yet this year...that's rare for me. Well, I am trying to save money and I always find things I want to buy there so maybe it's for the best.

What's your favorite place to shop for Christmas or Hannakah gifts?

If you make gifts, what are some of the things you like to make?

What's your favorite dish on the holiday dinner table?

Some of my first mosaics

These are some of the first mosaics I completed in 2007. I took a class at MECCA in Eugene and made all but the one on the far left in my class. Since then I've done a fairly large faux stained glass, a jewelry box, picture frames, and more. I like to think I've been improving my skills. At least I take more time to get things right now. Mosaics is a very time consuming process--from planning a design to gathering materials, and then cutting glass and adhering the tiles/glass and grouting.

I like mosaics for many reasons: they look great outside with the sun reflecting on them -- or in windows (like stained glass); there are so many things you can mosiac; you don't have to be good at drawing (I'm not!); I can get a lot of materials cheaply at MECCA and Art of Glass ((buying their scraps); and my kiddo likes to do them too so it's a mom/daughter thing we can do together.

Sorry about the poor quality photos.

Old Man Winter

Woke up at 5:00 to get the school closure/road reports. LeeAnn had no school for the second day in a row. I had to go to work, however. Left the house at 7:00 to walk three blocks down to the nearest bus stop. Took a bus downtown, caught my connecting bus (yay!) and made it to work just five minutes past 8:00! Now I'm stuck here until my boss gives the go-ahead to leave, but it's been a pretty slow day. I'm afraid of what I will find when I get home: one arts & craft making daughter who doesn't like to clean up after herself + a no-school day equals one big mess. And who said I wasn't good at math?!

Here are a couple of images from a trip to the mountains last year.

LeeAnn in the snow

In honor of it being December and it freezing last night, here's a photo of my daughter LeeAnn (foreground) with her friend Erika. Taken last year on a wonderfully fun snowshoe trip in the Cascades.