cooking – Ink, Yarn & Beer

What Lies Ahead for 2024?

This past year I have focused a lot on painting and various media for art work. Watercolors, acrylics, portraiture in pencil, oil pastels, gouache, and probably a few others. I started my “Not Taken Vacation” series, which still needs to be completed, with pen and ink. Rewarding as this has been, and the gains I know I have made, I have also missed adventures in other areas. In 2024, I want to continue working on art work, as it is my first love, but other areas for creativity and exploration, have fallen to the wayside, and I miss them.

If I were to just list some of the things I missed doing and want to continue to do, I think I would begin to feel overwhelmed . . . but let’s see what a list will produce.

Sewing?

Knitting?

Gardening?

Photography?

Hiking?

Travel?

Reading?

Cooking and baking?

Exploring?

If I look at what I have been playing with to date, I am knitting, taking a few photos, and sewing. Most of my “reading” is really using an audiobook and listening to it while I knit. I have a number of sewing projects on hold because I have been lacking in time to focus, but that is really silly as I have everything in place and ready to go at the sewing table. I have a tabletop ironing board I can put on a countertop, so why not?

Being a Libra, indecisiveness is the norm. This? That? (Yes, laugh if you like at astrology, but sometimes it is too true!) Experience shows me that just starting something is usually all I need to get out of my slump, whatever form it may be taking and just

Keep It Simple!

I have been so focused on buttonholes that I am getting a bit nutso. Painting is a totally different experience, and was a welcome break yesterday and this morning from the analytics of buttonholes! If I do anything with sewing today, it will be later on. In a bit, we are headed out to collect our supplies for Thanksgiving dinner, and that will certainly be another pleasant break. I don’t know about you, but too much of any one thing becomes almost an obsession with me – analyzing and studying whatever. Painting does require a bit of analysis, but it also has an element of sheer doing that makes it very different. It’s very relaxing, and because it just has a life of its own, watercolor is a challenge and a tease as well as a very creative experience.

Anyone who does watercolor or painting or drawing is well aware of the need to simplify details, especially in masses of color. Every leaf does not need to be painted. When we look, we see these details, and the effort to simplify them into areas of light and dark and midtones can be – and often is – very challenging. Good artists make it look so easy!

The other day I was napping on the patio (I live in a warm part of the world). When I woke up, I looked at the podocarpus trees along the back wall, and suddenly got the idea. I saw the details of the leaves – each leaf – but I also saw the light and the dark areas. That is when I realized I could do it – but it had never been in the front of my mind before.

I went to work. No outlines by pencil, just some reference photos labeled “foliage” in a search. Varied pictures showed up, and here are my studies of simplified details.

These first three are thumbnails, about 3×4 inches in the order I painted them.

I did the above paintings yesterday. This morning, applying the same tactic of no lines drawn, I used a 9×12 inch sheet of paper and painted out to the edges. Again, the focus is on simplification of details into masses of color.

Success? I don’t think any of the paintings are particularly good, but I do think I am getting that element of simplification I find so elusive in my own painting.

Saturday Morning Sides

I’ve been on a Mediterranean food kick of late.

This morning I was in the mood to put together some foods to have on hand over the next few days. Since I am off work, it makes sense to do something – particularly when I want to do something! So, I put together a couple of sides, one which we like to have on hand, and another we had in a restaurant the other night.

First side was to make some tzatziki. This is so easy it’s ridiculous, and really worth the bit of time to make it from scratch, because scratch is always better.

Tzatziki

2 c. Greek yogurt (I used homemade!)
1 large English cucumber
5-7 cloves garlic
1 T. fresh dill
juice of 2 lemons
salt
pepper
olive oil

Grate the cucumber. Place in strainer, mix with about a tsp. of salt. Place where the liquid from the cucumber can drain while you do the rest of the prep. Let the cucumbers sit for about 30 minutes.

Finely mince the garlic – we use a microplane. Juice the lemons. Chop the dill. Stir in the yogurt.

Rinse the cucumbers. Squeeze out as much liquid as you can. If you like, put the cucumbers onto a towel, or paper toweling, and squeeze and press out as much liquid as you can. Turn into yogurt-lemon-garlic-dill mixture. Pour in a tablespoon or two of olive oil. Mix well. Taste. Add salt as you wish, and pepper.

Refrigerate in container. Stir before using.

The next thing I did was throw together a sort of tapenade, mixed up from what I had on hand.

Sun-Dried Tomato, Anchovy, and Olive Tapenade

8 oz. / 1 c. sun-dried tomatoes in oil – use all of it
1 small can of anchovy fillets
2-3 T. capers
20 kalamata olives, pitted (if already pitted, slice them where the seeds might be – you don’t want them messing up your food processor!)
2-3 cloves garlic
1-2 finely chopped cayenne peppers (optional)
2 T. balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper to taste; olive oil to thin to your liking

In a mini-blender, put in tomatoes, anchovies, capers, garlic, olives, peppers, and vinegar. Whir together into a chunky paste. Taste. Add seasoning as you wish, and to thin, you may add some of the oil from the anchovies or a bit of olive oil on the side. Refrigerate for a few hours to meld flavors. Store in closed container for up to a week. Good on crackers or bread or straight out of the jar.

And there you have it – Saturday morning sides when you have nothing better to do!

The Childhood Spaghetti Trauma Drama

I grew up on the world’s most disgusting ideas of what spaghetti with meatballs was. What is was consisted of some ground hamburger fried up in a pan, and then a box of some kind of “spaghetti dinner” added. Fast and cheap, and I would burp it up for days. The other idea of spaghetti and meatballs came out of a can and was warmed up in a saucepan. That’s it.

To this day, I have refused to eat anything with the word spaghetti in it (and it was years before I would try any pasta, but still will not eat spaghetti noodles), nor meatballs. That is, until a friend of mine from work told me how she makes spaghetti and meatballs . . . since she is the child of Italian immigrants, she should know, right?

So, here is the recipe I used . . . and like any recipe, it can be modified to use what is on hand, as long as it doesn’t deviate too much (I guess for me, that means nothing out of a can or box?).

Meatballs

1 lb ground meat (a combo of beef, Italian sausage, and if you use pork, very little)
1/2 c. romano cheese
chopped Italian parsley
milk
bread crumbs (I used panko)
seasoning such as garlic, onion, thyme, pepper
1 egg

Squish this all together, make into balls about the size of a golf ball. The balls should be light in feel, not heavy. Roll a bit in flour, and then fry until brown. Set aside and serve with spaghetti sauce of choice (preferably homemade, without oregano, as she says, “Oregano is used in pizza sauce.”), in which you warm up the meatballs, and serve with spaghetti noodles. (We will have bowties, thank you.)

Biscotti & Broken Glass

With a few weeks off for the holiday season, the upcoming new year, it is time to get things done that have been put off for a woefully long time. One of them is cleaning the refrigerator very thoroughly, washing, rinsing, and sanitizing surfaces and nooks and crannies in all its dark recesses. And dropping a glass shelf, which shattered all over the place. Hence, the first part of the title for this post. Cleaned up, we move on to the best part – the biscotti!

Rum-Soaked Dried Fruit & Candied Peel

Holidays are about baking and cooking and eating and celebrating with friends and family and those you love, near and far. This year, Christmas day will be spent with family elsewhere, so the baking has begun. For a small contribution, we are bring praline bourbon cake to go with the annual gumbo, along with some biscotti, the recipe for which I found here at Foolproof Living, a cooking blog with a creative approach and lovely photography.

Adding the Fruit, Coconut, and Pecans to the Batter

The recipe is easy enough. I used leftover candied peel from King Arthur, and chopped up dried peaches, cranberries, and cherries, all finely diced. The coconut was slightly sweetened and I used pecans instead of walnuts or macadamias. I also used up a very generous amount of rum.

Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum!

Follow the recipe – it comes out quite nice. The batter may seem a bit dry, but when you add the macerated dried fruit, it moistens up quite a bit. Also, patting out the dough onto the parchment is really necessary as the dough is sticky. I found putting some water on my hands helped a bit. Also, our knives are very sharp, so I used a straight-bladed knife (my husband tests the sharpness of our knives by shaving a spot on his arm or cutting paper with the just-sharpened knife) to cut the biscotti.

Biscotti Ready to Bake

Check out Foolproof Living – it has become one of my favorite blogs just because it has such a wonderful variety of recipes and interesting posts.

Biscotti Ready to Eat

Happy Holidays!