vegetarian with a sweet tooth

Posted: July 7, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: food, over the weekend | 1 Comment

I’ve been a vegetarian for the past 6 months and have really had no qualms about my decision.  Sure, sometimes it can be a bit lonely when your friends roast a giant pig over a hand-built pit, but I don’t really mind.  I make this sort of stuff instead and everyone seems to be okay with it:

I’ve also realized that it’s not really meat I miss eating – it’s the sauces that accompany it.  I need to figure out some sort of dish that will be complimented well with some KC BBQ sauce.  I miss that stuff.  Dousing an ear of corn in some North Carolina sauce just isn’t quite the same.

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root beer bundt cake + sewing

Posted: February 19, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: an invisible sign of my own, food, in progress | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

Last night I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open.  It was 11:30pm.  I didn’t get nearly anything completed last night (art-wise), so I woke up at 6:30am this morning to try and be productive.  Here’s what I was sewing before I left for work:

Part of the reason I didn’t get all my sewing/blogging done was because of this cake:

That is a root beer chocolate bundt cake. Root beer fudge frosting to be added tonight.  I love to bake.

productive week(end)

Posted: February 15, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: art, food, over the weekend, willful creatures | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Happy Monday, yaaa’ll.  I hope that your Valentine’s Day was a nice one (mine included a pit-beef sandwich at a restaurant next to a strip club).

With the blizzard last week, I was given ample time to work on my pursuits and as a result was fairly productive.   Here is the (for now) finished version of the guy you had seen last week.  I have been really interested in embroidery and did a little line work on top of the paper cage for some added visual interest.

I also did this quick little piece for the Indypendant, a newspaper based in New York City.  There was a quick sketch/final turnaround time.  It’s always a different change of pace to work on something that you know will be printed on newsprint.  You have to bump up the contrast.  The piece I was illustration for was about a Palestinian poet named Mahmoud Darwish, mostly focusing on his poem Mural.  You should look up some excerpts from the poem.  It’s really very pretty.

Brown Paper Bag has launched!  I’m going to start posting TODAY!  Check it out for different artists and other works on paper, as well as good vibes.

beautiful teas

Posted: November 19, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: food | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment

Having never been a big tea drinker, I would always decline when my boyfriend offered me a cup of tea in the morning.   Having come from a family of avid tea drinkers, he’s been drinking it for most of his life.  Eventually he got the better of me and I broke down and tried a cup (after having been prepared correctly*).   Since then, I’ve been hooked on black teas.

During my lunch break today, I walked to one of the nearest cafes and bought a cup of tea.  I immediately noticed the beautiful design of the tea bags – from Harney and Sons.  The design is very elegant and visually stunning – clean, yet not boring.  I love patterns, and I think the packaging makes excellent use of a pattern to brand the tea, but not overwhelm the viewer.

Does nice design make something taste better than it already is?  I’d wager so.

* Black tea with a bit of (whole) milk and a few spoonfuls of sugar

a look into my reader

Posted: October 20, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: art, food, Tech | Tags: , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The proof is in the pudding, as they say.  If you want to know what I did last night,  look at the top of your screen.  I finished the graphic for the top of my page.

Google Reader is a big part of my weekdays.  I have been a bit better at reading a variety of blogs, but I thought I’d post some blogs that I really enjoy reading.  LINK TIME!

http://www.jonesing-for.com/ – Jonesing For… This is my friend Jessica’s (we went to high school together!) food blog.  She has some great food photography and recipes.  I make a lot of the recipes she posts.

http://seaofshoes.typepad.com/sea_of_shoes/ –  Sea of Shoes… I enjoy this blog because I find the girl, a 17-year-old named Jane, totally ridiculous in a very jealous way.  She wears fabulous clothes and gorgeous shoes.

http://luxirare.com/ – Luxirare… Her attention to detail with clothing and food is awe-inspiring.  And, if you want to laugh, read the comment section.  People WORSHIP her.

http://www.jilliantamaki.com/sketchbook/sketchbook.html – Jillian Tamaki is an illustrator based in New York.  She updates her blog pretty regularly and has some very lovely ink wash sketches, comics about her bad days, and shows her process between initial sketches and finished pieces.

http://grainedit.com/ – Grain Edit… Grain Edit is a blog/site that finds inspiration from vintage posters, books,etc from the 1950’s to the 1970’s.  I love looking at this site for inspiration.  The aesthetics of that time were heavy in to shapes, bold colors, and imagery you just don’t see as much anymore.  It’s updated very frequently as well.

http://www.designiskinky.net – Design is Kinky… A little bit of flavor from Australia.  Illustration and design.

http://www.idsgn.org/posts/ – idsgn… a design blog with a lot of design news and the big things that are going on in the design world.

http://friendsoftype.com/ – Friends of Type… if you like handrawn type, then you’ll probably really enjoy this site.  It’s updated frequently with hand drawn type – mostly phrases and not just the straight alphabet.  It’s a lot of fun.

http://mashable.com/ – Mashable… Mashable is a site dedicated to news about social media.  Up to the minute news about all things Twitter, Facebook, Apple, etc.

my hope for baltimore

Posted: September 8, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: baltimore, food | Leave a comment

A couple of weeks ago, I ventured to Brooklyn, NY to visit some friends.  I love Brooklyn, and the last few times I have visited I’ve gone to a new part of the borough.   Most recently, my travels brought me to Red Hook.  Most famously known for its IKEA, the neighborhood is a bit secluded.  I enjoyed this about it, and on Sunday my friends and I ventured over Red Hook Ball Fields to sit in the park and eat from the vendor trucks.

The food in from the trucks was amazing.  Cheap and incredible.  Apparently, I wasn’t the only one blown away. The park was crowded and the lines were long.  Repeat customers.  I had tacos on corn tortillas with chicken and a load of fresh ingredients.  I also had a limeade and tried the corn on a stick.  Corn on a stick?  It was great!  The corn was slathered in mayo and rolled in a variety of different spices.

I have been thinking about that meal for a while now.  When walking around Fells Point yesterday, I mused to my roommate, Audra that it would be great if Baltimore started to have vendor trucks like that.  There are ample parks around the city.  Patterson Park would be a perfect place for these trucks!  The park has soccer fields, softball fields, a pool.  There are also a lot of young people living in the area that would take advantage of the trucks when the weather is nice and their friends are in the park.

It would be great if this happens sooner rather than later.  While I like Holy Frijoles all good and fine, it doesn’t hold a candle to cheap, great-tasting, authentic tacos.