Friday, May 30, 2014

Zoodles Post #2

I posted previously about my zucchini noodles obsession, this is another version, which was also delicious, and is vegetarian if you're into that kind of thing.
 What you need:
-2 zucchinis worth of zoodles
-olive oil
-1 can garbanzo beans, rinsed well and drained
-2 chopped tomatoes (without the slimy guts)
-pesto
- 1/4c chopped basil

Put the beans and tomatoes in a large saute pan with a little olive oil. Cook them until the beans are hot and the tomatoes are cooked down a bit. Stir in a lot of pesto (like, a quarter cup), then add the zoodles. Stir everything around  until the zucchini is soft and everything is hot. If it's not flavorful enough add more pesto. Once it's all generally cooked stir in the basil. Top with Parmesan cheese and serve. Use basil for garnish.

 This was really good- warm and filling and homey tasting, but also a little different. I took it for lunch and it heated up well- the zoodles tend to make a bit of extra liquid when they sit, but in this case, it worked! Give it a try!

Monday, May 26, 2014

New Wall Art: Put a Bird (or three) on it!


This was a spontaneous weekend project. It happened after a similarly spontaneous living room rearrangement (I am convinced that rearranging the furniture periodically is good for your brain) that left a new piece of open wall.

I found this pinterest board, which was chock fill of ideas, and one of them was this bird art silhouette from over at Tater Tots and Jello, which was actually a guest post from the blogger at Crap I've Made. If I'm going to be perfectly honest, I am incredibly jealous of that blog name, since making crap and blogging about it is a favorite activity of mine.

I was really intrigued because it reminded me a bit of my previous venture into canvas wall art, in that it uses blocking off negative space as a substitute for an actual ability to paint anything that looks like anything (this my previous attempt, which has more than 1600 repins, making it possibly the most popular thing I've ever made in my life).

This one is a little different because the base layer isn't just white paint, this time it is a collage. So, first, you've got to cut up some stuff and make one. This takes a while. I would recommend paper scraps that don't include much white- you want it to contrast with the color of the paint you're using. All I had to cut up were my hoard of back issues of the New Yorker which I perpetually intend to get through. I was a little concerned about this plan since it is so text heavy, but actually there is really cool art in there, so it worked out pretty well. In related news, when you spend your evening cutting up back issues of the New Yorker to make a project you found on Pinterest after spending the afternoon potting herb plants in organic potting soil, you start to wonder what kind of a cliche you have become.

These are my supplies:

This is my collage (do you have any idea how many back episodes of True Blood it took to make this thing? Quite a few). You might see that down at the bottom the pieces are bigger. That is because at that point, I thought the only place that the underneath would show through was in the top third. I did want paper everywhere so the paint would look uniform.

Then you have to figure out what to put on this thing. The original post used pictures from sillohouttes.com, but they wouldn't print out big enough for what I wanted (I had spent enough time on the collage that I wanted to be able to see it!). So I drew and cut out some really basic birds and leaves. I actually had to cut them out a number of times to keep making them bigger (see the stray one at the bottom?)

Once you settle on a design, you have to outline it. What I did, was to hold it down, and lightly brush the paint outwards all the way around it, to make a slight outline of the birds.

Using that, I could then trace the outline with my brush (see, no real painting ability needed!).
I went through the whole area around the birds, and realized I was kind of sad because there were some parts of the collage I had gotten kind of attached to (although I had tried to capture some of them under the birds).

I decided to make it sort of purposely undone at the bottom, to allow some color to balance out the higher up birds, and I like how it looks. Unfortunately, since I had done a bad job on purpose at the bottom, I ended up having to redo it using my many leftover scraps.

Then just cover it over. As with the grey hallway art, this takes a ton of cheap acrylic paint. I made it so brush strokes sort of pulled down to almost over the bottom part, leaving about 1/5th of it still colored. In case you are wondering, this whole enterprise made an enormous mess:

Then it was time to hang it! I'm planning to spray it with an acrylic fixer, but want to give it a full day to be sure it is all dry underneath, since there a a few different layers of paint and modpodge going on.

I like how it turned out it's colorful, and also way different than anything else I've got going on.


You could pretty much make any pattern here, Just be sure the resolution of the cut up pieces for the collage are small enough so that whatever cut out you put on top allows you to see different swatches of color. Have fun with it!







Friday, May 23, 2014

Zucchini Noodles: Better Than You'd Think.

I have a new obsession, and they're called zoodles. Yes, zucchini noodles. My childhood self is watching this all unfold in horror.

Actually, my childhood self would have been pretty psyched to get to use my noodle maker:
It looks like a normal peeler but it has these little teeth. You scrape it across a vegetable (squash type veggies are the most successful, the sweet potato was a disaster), and it creates these awesome noodle shapes. Apparently there are a few different options for noodle makers, but this one was easy and cheap and does the job. See?
  
For my maiden zoodle-making voyage, I decided to go basic and just had them with a meat sauce that isn't very interesting in and of itself so I won't even go into it. Use whatever you like. You're going to want to warm up and soften up the zoodles. You do NOT need to boil them. I saute, either in a little water, or in a little oil, just for a few minutes until they are pliable.

Then, top and serve!
You will end up eating more zucchini than you'd expect, and remember that it is very light so you may want to err on the side of a more filling sauce with some protein if it'll be a main dish.

There is definitely more of this to come!

 

Monday, May 19, 2014

Dear East Coast,

Please, please, pretty please, make a donut like this.


It can't be that hard. In California you literally can't go a block without driving past a place that makes these things fresh. No, this is not even remotely close to some stale Dunkin Donuts donut from a store that doesn't even appear to have an oven. 

It's always the little things that you miss, so if you could get right on this, that would be great.

love, 
Me.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Two-minute Take-it-to-work Salad

I usually like to take my lunch to work. It saves money, and makes me avoid eating pizza or something that comes from a truck (a delicious delicious truck) every day. But, sometimes you are just not on top of it enough to have anything to bring, which usually means I run around the kitchen dumping random food items into little tupperwares and eat lunch feeling like a toddler. 


NO MORE! I have discovered the easiest, fastest, salad on earth.

I don't think this can even legitimately be called a recipe.
Yes, it's in a tupperware, on my desk. Part of being the easiest fastest salad on earth is that no work is involved other than dumping stuff in a container, shaking it up, and carrying it away with you.

The superstar of the dish is something I just noticed at Trader Joes: the frozen Melodious Blend, which has a couple kinds of lentils, green garbanzo beans, and some tomatoes.
 
Basically, here is what I did. Get a pencil, because it's pretty complicated.
Dump an amount of Melodious Blend that is slightly less than you think you'll want to eat into the tupperware (this is because this stuff will end up being way more filling than you predicted as you poured out frozen beans in the cold morning light). Cut up some bell pepper (or whatever you've got). Dump that on top. Squeeze half a lemon over the whole thing (you could also use vinegar, you just need some acid). Drizzle a little olive oil over the whole thing. Sprinkle some spices straight on there. I was going for easy, which means no thinking, so I used Mediterranean blend, salt, and pepper. Put the lid on it and give it a shake.

It's frozen, but since all the beans are little and separate, don't even worry. Just take it with you, and by lunch time it is a perfect chilled salad temp. If this thing isn't driving to work, and waiting for you to go to the gym, and then waiting for you to toil all morning before you eat it, you could probably microwave it and get a nice warm lentil salad, or do it ahead and leave it in the fridge. But really, the beauty here is in having a healthy option that involves no planning whatsoever.

The next day (today!) I made another version:
This one had a little bit of kale in there, and used creole seasoning (again, a mix, for pure easiness). Both were great! You can see my plating here is just as elegant as it was yesterday.

Anyhow, if you're looking for a backup plan that you can keep in the freezer that will make you feel all nourished and healthy and give the illusion of being totally on top of this whole lunch thing, this is for you!

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