the quarterly mixtape project

i know, i know, i haven't posted in WEEKS. this is due in part to being uninspired, and just a tiny bit to the fact that my camera broke in the eleventh hour of mardi gras. the camera snafu is being taken care of, and i have something to write about, so i'm back!



last week my friend mike asked me, as one of his 'bloggy friends' to do a post for a blog that his brother has started. found at http://mixtapergy.blogspot.com, mixtapergy aims to periodically post mix tapes "because it's better than sending a postcard". i might disagree just a little bit with that statement, but am flattered nonetheless that mike asked me to participate. i don't know when my mix will be posted, but check it out anyways.

mardi gras!!!

nicole and i leave tomorrow morning at the terribly unreasonable hour of 6 am for new orleans. in preparation for our week of costumed debauchery we took a field trip to the JoAnn craft SUPERSTORE in southeast and made out with nearly 20 yards of tulle, assorted fake flowers, and a bag of colored feathers among other things. this is what we came up with:


our flower-fairy look will no doubt be complementary to matt's bearsuit.

a wocket to the moon

this is my friend mark:
he likes working with kids, the state of vermont, and pabst blue ribbon. he and i spend a lot of time together drinking coffee, doing crosswords, and using public transportation to explore portland. he is not an anti-semite. mark turned the big two-five in december and i made plans with myself to make him a present. a month and a half later i got down to it and silk-screened a shirt for him, the first i've done in a long time. it felt good.

the picture that i turned into a stencil is one of mark and nicole from this summer. we were mucking around southeast one day this past summer shortly after mark moved to portland and found this sweet turquoise wall; a photo shoot ensued. i love the photo's composition, as well as the fact that it is of two of my favorite people. i added some inside-joke text for the final stencil.

below is the original image, as well as a photo of my exacto-ing process at john and my's new desk:

here is mark's finished shirt:

i'm really happy with how it turned out, and mark is equally enthused. my favorite part is how the screened feet actually look just like their real feet.

flog: quinoa with pesto and roasted tomatoes

here's a little something new i'm introducing to four ten: the food blog, or flog.

cooking is something i've embraced since nicole and i first moved to bellingham and had our own kitchen. growing up, my mom cooked amazing dinners every night, but i always felt that the kitchen was her territory and was scared away from cooking after the one time i added the cheese powder to my macaroni before draining out the water. gross.

nicole and i made a pretty terrific team in the kitchen, knowing what the other needed without asking and moving from one end of our awkwardly arranged kitchen to the other as if in a choreographed dance. we loved having friends over for food, beers, and a couple episodes of lost.

while living with carrie for a brief, but glorious, six months our schedules were so opposite that we were able to collaborate only occasionally for dinner and would end up at casa more often than not.

now that i'm making my living as a cook i thought i'd get burnt out and find the idea of being in the kitchen on my days off appaling, but quite the opposite is true. making dinner on monday or tuesday nights is some of the rare time i get to spend with john, and what we make is entirely different from what i'm turning out at work. making a recipe that feeds four also allows for leftovers that we're both able to take for lunch.

i have a small cookbook collection that i occasionaly cook from, but being part of the 'blogosphere' has introduced me to so many amazing blogs brimming with recipes and reviews that it's hard to pull myself away from the screen. an added benefit of finding recipes in blogs is that their authors will offer up ingredient substitutions, suggest how they would do it differently next time, and i like to think that anything that makes it into a post is bound to be good, or else why would they bother? also, most of the time i'm drawn to a recipe by a colorful picture, something that many of my cookbooks lack.

my first flog recipe was found via 101 cookbooks and is actually called heather's quinoa. here we go!

for the roasted tomatoes:
1 small container cherry tomatoes big splash olive oil 1 T. brown sugar pinch salt

- pre-heat the oven to 350. mix the olive oil, brown sugar, and salt in a small bowl. cut the cherry tomatoes in half and throw into the bowl, tossing to coat evenly with the olive oil mixture. dump the tomatoes into an oven safe dish, cut side facing up, and put in the oven for 30 minutes or until they're kind of shrunken looking and soft.

2 cups quinoa (or brown rice)

-in a medium saucepan, heat the quinoa and four cups water until boiling. reduce the heat and simmer until all the water is absorbed, about fifteen minutes. meanwhile:

1 T. olive oil
2 cups extra firm tofu
1.5 cups spinach, kale or green of your choice

-in a large skillet, heat the olive oil. dice the tofu into about 1" cubes and add to the skillet, sauteing until lightly browned. while the tofu is browning, finely chop the greens and set aside. when the tofu has browned, set aside as well.

1/3 cup pumpkin seeds

-in the last couple minutes before the timer goes off for the tomatoes, spread the pumpkin seeds on a cookie tray and put in the oven. it will be literally no more than four minutes before they start popping to signal that they're done.

1 tsp. olive oil
1 shallot
1 cup corn (fresh or frozen)
1/3 cup pesto

-after you've removed the tofu from the skillet, add a smidge more olive oil, mince the shallot, and add it to the heated oil. sautee for a minute or two. your quinoa or rice should be done by now, so add it to the skillet, along with the corn. sautee until hot and sizzling. add in the greens and tofu that you have set aside. remove the skillet from heat and stir in the pesto and toasted pumpkin seeds.

-serve up healthy portions, topping with the roasted cherry tomatoes, salt and pepper.
seriously: so good. and good for you; no meat and the only dairy is the small bit of parmesan found in the pesto. TRY IT. COOKING IS FUN.

paper trail

this project was born out of necessity more than an artistic urge. we have yet to acquire a desk or dining table and so all writing, dining, and art projects center around our coffee table. i've taken over at least three-quarters of this limited space with my card-making, leaving the remaining quarter for our laptops and the errant waterbottle. when we get bills in the mail i like to keep them in view from day to day so i'm at least thinking about paying them, if not actually doing so, but they were beginning to clutter the already over-papered coffee table so i had to find a solution. this is what i came up with:
i used a fancy push pin to anchor a scrap piece of 2" satin ribbon to the dining room wall and then pinned each bill with it's respective envelope to the ribbon using straight pins from my sewing box.

hanging on this wall they are both entirely out of our way but always in view, i can see them from where i sit on the couch typing this post, as well as every time i enter the kitchen. this project also gave me an excuse to waste some more time and not write out the check for the damn internet bill. be an adult can be boring and expensive sometimes.

artistic accountability: etsy store!!!

i think i'm going to start an etsy shop. i've been plotting and planning for almost a month now, and thought i'd make it official and hold myself accountable to some sort of timeframe by writing about it here.

i've always loved making mixed-media cards for friends and figure that this will be the perfect creative outlet to fill my free time, with the potential to make a little money (to add to the $27 i have to last me the next week until payday), and learn a thing or two about running a small business (in preparation for the bar/ restaurant/ coffee shop/ boutique i will one day own. i can dream, right?).

i don't want to unveil my first card sets quite yet, so i'll leave you with photos of the thank-you notes i sent for my graduation presents:



i hope to launch my store by the end of january, check back here for updates and a url!

visual culture

last night, as john and i dined recession-style on happy hour pizza and snacks at basta’s down the street from our apartment, he wondered aloud what this depression was going to look like. to most people who have taken an american history class at one point in their academic careers, the word ‘depression’ inspires black and white images of people waiting solemn-faced in soup lines snaking around city blocks, or men with mustaches and top hats swinging sledgehammers to the tune of some WPA-sponsored project in the middle of nowhere. we may be in the thick of this thing we’re calling a depression, but because we’re living it it’s nearly impossible to tell what images will be brought to mind for future generations when it’s talked about in terms of ‘history’. we left basta’s and headed down burnside towards the matador, our new default for cheap pints. west burnside between about fifteenth and twenty-first is reminiscent of the mall’s food court; mcdonald’s, panda express, and taco bell are all at your fingertips in a matter of blocks. as we passed said taco bell i paused to point out the small army of fixed-gear bikes that were locked up outside. fixes are the norm in Portland, but outside of taco bell? on burnside? strange. john gave the ten-plus shiny, gearless bikes a once-over and said, “so that’s what this depression looks like: hipsters on fixed gears at taco bell.” I can just imagine, years from now, flipping through my kids’ history textbook and stopping at the image described above. history in the making.