Thing-a-day.com

Just to prove that I have not been completely slacking on Thing-a-Day, here is what I’ve got so far of the baby blanket that started here. More than 60 percent completed! (It’ll be 7 x 7 squares.) Of course, there’s that small matter of the blue square that needs to be ripped and reknit in the correct blue, and then there’s the hours and hours of seaming, but I have to finish all this soon, because the wretched beastie is due sometime in March.

Anyway, I have not been idle. I’ve also been toiling at another public domain clip-art set, which I haven’t yet posted on Flickr.

And on 2/28 I made another pretty good dinner for my mom, a combination of these two recipes—Pork Chops with Mustard Sauce and Pork Chops with Mustard-Cornichon Sauce—but with the addition of mushrooms, and with capers in place of cornichons and white wine in place of chicken stock. Spinach salad and rice on the side.

I also made a couple of decent illustrations for work: on 2/12, I made a sort of homebrew tritone; on 2/18, I tried out a new technique for turning a flat shot into something that looks more lively; and on 2/28 I made the collage that appears on this page, which wasn’t that much Photoshop work in the end, but which did require a surprising amount of image research.

Was this flimsy output what I wanted to achieve during Thing-a-Day 2008? No, but I did make a few things that I would not otherwise have made, and I did discover several other people whose work I really liked, thefabricator and Jason Das, in particular.

It’s been fun. I’ll see you next year.

I’m not sure if anyone has already tried this flavor combo.  I had two big oranges dying to be picked up and I was in the mood for some refreshing citrus flavor.  Thus the orange pancakes were born.  The batter was very easy to make.  Half all-purpose flour and half oat flour.  Maple syrup as the sweetener, with the help of some vanilla extract and plain soy milk.  Freshly squeezed orange juice added the fresh garden smell and taste.  I loved these mild and subtle orange-y pancakes.  Next time I will use orange zest to strengthen the orange flavor a bit.  Overall, it was a great experiment.

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I’d promised to make the family fried rice for many many visits now, and finally I got round to it. It’s a good thing that I don’t tend to go out when I visit. Fried rice traditionally is a way of using up leftovers so there’s a lot of flexibility about what goes into it.

cook the rice the day before or in the morning and let cool
dice chicken, cook and set aside
in a hot frying pan or wok, sauté mange tout beans until just tender
add beaten eggs and lightly scramble
add rice, add a splash of water if too dry
return chicken to pan and heat through
season with soy sauce, salt and a touch of sugar

First time attempting this. I took a bunch of recipes I found online and mixed them together and tweaked them to my liking.  It was way too much for me so I shared it with my nephew ^.^ It was okay for my first time (especially a newb cook like me lol) Thing a day rawks cause this month I’ve cooked more than I have in all my 21 years of living

I have been doing things, but I’ve just been lazy in posting them, so here goes:

Day #24: Fried Rice with Bok Choy and Scallions

Day #25: Hummus and Pita Chips

Day #26: Steamed Kale with Miso-Tahini Dressing

Day #27: Commonplace Notebook

(Traditionally, a commonplace book is a notebook where people copy reading quotations as they come across them. This, however, is a book where I’m hand-writing my favorite poems, and perhaps some prose quotes, so I can carry them around with me.)

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I really ran out of steam this past week. Lol. But I’m still trying to post despite my sleeping ridiculous amounts of time lately. I think my body is trying to tell me I should be hibernating through winter.

As far as my website goes, its still a work in progress. I feel as though it’s missing a little something. My process lately has been *open file/stare/change something/stare/close/unsatisfied sigh* But admittedly, previous website designs  of mine have been a little elaborate, so recently I’ve been trying to simplify. I believe I will be able to launch it at the end of February though, so that makes me happy. Hopefully with my new blog and some business cards to boot.

Yesterday I made more curry–this time with lamb. I added in potatos, carrots, peas and corn–all served on top of Nishiki sushi style rice because its the best! And this time I remembered to take a picture before it disappeared.

My next goal is to make curry not from a box, hopefully something like this coconut chicken curry.

And speaking of cooking… my boyfriend made these the other day:

Poor little gummy bears trapped in cookies. What a delicious way to go, though.

I’m very glad that I went back to cooking finally.  The udon noodles and bread were very good but I needed something more substantial and special.  I felt pretty bad for my busy husband too, though he would gladly eat pasta with broccoli and peas/beans every day.  A broccoli tofu sandwish would make a good snack for him.  After I made the first comeback soup - potato quinoa chowder, he commented, “now that’s something that smells really homemade.”  I was very happy to hear that.  I got the recipe from Laura Jesser’s “Eden in the Kitchen”.  Do check out Laura’s blog which is full of wonderful photos and great recipes.
The only thing I did differently is to use bok choy instead of cooked kale and I didn’t puree half of the soup at all.  I love the soft little chunks of potatoes in the chowder.

Thanks to a great recipe from Martha Stewart, I made a batch of old-fashioned sugar cookies on some new baking boards I purchased. Her recipe calls for lemon juice and lemon zest, but I removed those two ingredients since I’m not always the biggest lemon fan. Added some St. Patrick’s Day candies on top for fun. Not too bad!

On Saturday some friends came over and we made Mediterranean food, I made the stuffed grape leaves, inspired by this FFV recipe, but I also made some with ground beef.  The beef grape leaves stuck together better and reheated better.  I think this might be because I used brown rice.  Next time I’m going to try it with white rice and see if it’s not a little stickier.  Overall a very delicious dinner!

Sunday, my  friend Dione came over and we taught each other some crafts.  I showed her how to knit (cast-on and knit stitch only, we’ll save purl stitch and cast-off for next time) and she showed me how to do the chain stitch and single crochet.  It’s interesting how different the two seem to me.  I assumed that since I’ve been knitting for a while, crocheting would be sort of intuitive.  But it doesn’t seem that way at all.

I’m learning to crochet so I can crochet some models of the hyperbolic plane; as I first read of in Cabinet.  I also feel that crochet lends itself to creating cute and ornamental things more than knitting, which seems more suited toward the practical.

 

I helped Gram make breaded pork chops. She uses regular pork chops, nothing fancy. I did all the prep work — dip in flour, then egg then what she calls crackermeal which turns out to be crackers that have been ground finely. The chops are then shallow fried. I don’t know what seasoning she puts in but they’re very yummy and never ever dry. It’s an art.

Today I copied this recipe. I only had 1 package of cream cheese so reduced the rest of the ingredients to fit.

• 2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 1 (4 ounce) can chopped green chilies, drained
• 2 ounces canned diced jalapeno peppers, drained
• 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Copied from allrecipes.com

I toasted french bread to have with it Very tasty!

I forgot to post yesterday, so I have a combined post today.

Yesterday, I grabbed some yarn and started in on this eyeglasses holder that I’ve been meaning to start. Though the author of the pattern says you can use the basic head pattern to create any number of characters you can imagine, I loved her Ernie so much that I’m copying hers. After the work I did on it yesterday, all I have left are the eyes and hair.

Today I tried my hand for the first time at making sugar cookies. I increased the almond extract a bit and added about a tbsp. of honey to the recipe on the back of the flour bag, and they came out pretty tasty.

Here’s a pictures of Day 23 and 24 projects hangin’ out together:

P.S. - The cool thing about starting this on the first day of the month, is that you always know what day in the process it is.

Well, at least THIS Sunday was for baking. Crazy busy here today, with grocery shopping, laundry, and baking. I don’t normally do much baking but I’ve realized that I really DO need to keep these energy bars on hand. And I would love to make at least most of the bread we use instead of buying it, keeping the ingredients a little more simple and natural. And I had bananas that were going bad, so the only remedy for that is banana bread, right?

Well the energy bars were a no brainer since I’ve made them so many times, but I’m on my 3rd try with the bread. Today’s recipe was a bit better than the other one I’ve been using but I had to trade out some whole wheat flour for white. Oh well. I’ll keep working on it. The banana bread came out super tasty. I actually didn’t have enough bananas, the Daddy ate one this morning (he’ll eat anything!) so I chopped up a peeled apple, cooked it to soften and mushed up the chunks a bit and threw them in. Best banana bread every. Banana-apple-walnut bread. Even the First Grader decided to try it, and then asked for seconds.

I haven’t made pancakes much in the past few weeks.  I’m usually a huge pancake fan.  I mean I can eat pancakes for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  I haven’t been cooking lately but making a stack of pancakes doesn’t feel like work at all.  So this is my new pancake mix: coconut-banana-cranberry flavor.  The sweet and rich combination of coconut and bananas is highlighted and contrasted by the tangy cranberries.  I highly recommend eating these pancakes with vegan margarine.

Coconut-Banana-Cranberry Pancakes
(makes 6-7 large pancakes)

1 cup self-rising flour (or all-purpose flour plus 1/2 tsp. baking powder and 1/4 tsp. salt)
1 cup oat flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
3/4 cup coconut cream
3/4 cup unsweetened vanilla soy milk
1 over-ripe banana, mashed
1/2 tsp. olive oil
2 tsp. vanilla extract
4 to 4 1/2 Tbsp. pure maple syrup
1/2 + 1 Tbsp. dried cranberries

1. Sift the flour and oat flour with baking soda in a large mixing bowl.
2. In another bowl, mash the banana, and add coconut cream, soy milk, olive oil, vanilla extract and maple syrup.  Mix well.
3. Add the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients gradually.  Mix the batter well.  The batter should be runny but not too thin.
4. Use a paper towel to lightly grease the pan and then put it on medium heat.  When the pan is hot, cook your pancakes away.

tonight i made brazilian cheese rolls:

i used a yoki mix but you can also find recipes online to make them from scratch. here are the directions (the instructions are in portuguese): add 1/2 cup water, 2 eggs to the mix; bake for 40 min at 350 degrees. i normally add an additional 1/4 cup of shredded cheese mix (mozzarella, romano, asiago, parmesan work well) but didn ‘t have any tonight—i have to say, they taste much better with the extra cheese… also, i usually bake for less time—somewhere between 20-30 min so they are chewier and less dry.

So as usual instead of taking pictures and posting things as I do them, I am just posting in one big grouping all the daily things I’ve been doing.

I decided it would be cool to make some things on photoshop with positive messages on them, my idea being to eventually print them out and frame them or something and post them around my apartment to encourage positivitiy or whatever.

So here are 3 of them, there was one more but my fucking computer appparently hates me and decicded to just lose the jpeg version of it -_-
And it already took me for fucking ever to upload those onto here because my computer is being so fucking slow and annoying.

These are some quotes I found online on some website.

Made banana bread And some earrings I made, not a good picture of them, but yeah…..

And my spelling is probablyu completely horrible right now because as usual my computer won’t recognize typing any quicker than 1 wpm and I type at an average speed of 60 wpm and if I slow down for the computer right now I am going to lose what little patients I have for this peive of shit and break it….. and that would not be good because I NEED a computer for school even if it is fucking shitty.

February 21st
0:-)

I made angel hair pasta with herb sauce. Yum. Unfortunately, no picture, because I had come home from babysitting at 9pm without dinner, and therefore, vociferously ate what I created right after. Plus, um, this wasn’t a planned thing-a-day. I woke up the next day (accidentally fell asleep. whoops. apparently two nights of under five hours sleep will catch up with you.) and went DLKAFJSDLKFJALDSJKF I DIDN’T MAKE ANYTHING. WHAT DID I DO YESTERDAY. Waitttttt, waittt. I made angel hair pasta. Phew. Saved.

Well, the First Grader doesn’t sleep in anymore. He was up before The Baby made me drag my half-awake groggy self out of bed. So when The Baby went down for his 8am nap, I grabbed the First Grader to help me make one of his favorite breakfast foods. He loves to cook with me but we haven’t done much of it lately as I try to do most of it when he’s in school. Thus today, with Daddy and The Baby tucked safely out of our way in lala land dreaming of pancakes, we actually made them

He learned how to flip them today and is quite proud of himself. Watching to see if enough bubbles have formed on top, but a little early out the gate most times (and my controlling self just couldn’t let go enough so I reined him in and made him wait to flip until it was actually time) he did a very impressive job of controlling the placement. No flying pancakes today! He’ll probably wait until I’m not around some day and convince Daddy to let him try that trick.

Starting out gently…

Getting the hang of this!

Last one…

For anyone interested, the pancakes are half Buttermilk Pancake recipe from the Southern Living cookbook, and half Organic Buckwheat mix. The full strength buckwheat was just too thick and hard and not so tasty. Everyone likes them like this

Mushrooms, Cheese and Pepperoni Yummy!