Mardi Gras, Kind of Sort of. (My New Orleans Nostalgia Post).

Mardi Gras. It happened. Recently. At some point. It definitely happened in New Orleans. & oh yay the goddamn Saints won the motherfucking Superbowl. oh shit. But we here live in Massachusetts. Rural Western Massachusetts. I used to live in New Orleans. I still had mixed feelings about Mardi Gras, even when I lived there. Even more so here, obviously. But I do like to be festive. & hells yeah I like to party, hard. But even I have a problem with partying in the face of all logic, i.e. a lot of people died & everything was underwater, but god forbid we forget this party. Is that strength or weakness, I still don't know. But I do know is, people in New England playing at Mardi Gras in over-priced grocery stores for white people are losers. My current place of employment, therefore, rather ruined Mardi Gras for me this year. (NEWSFLASH: NOLA don't need a Co-op right now. Even one with a yoga space & a police station.) But it still means something to me. Last year Rin & Sarah K. & I made ridiculous cupcakes from discount post-Valentines Day cake accessories & drank Coconut Malibu Rum & read Michael Pollan's books for Mardi Gras. (besides the Wendy's King Cake Fex-Exed from NOLA party, which is entirely an other story).

This year I did this:

As I mentioned, for some reason my stupid work celebrated Mardi Gras. That didn't go well, so there was free king cake, several days later. One Thursday night, we gazed at it admiringly, next to a pitcher of rose petals (Valentine's Day was a failure at work also so we are making rose petal tinctures from the excess) & some shots of Jameson we had before, obviously, dancing. & again thanks to my work , we have beads, so semi-Mardi Gras. right?

This is what we ate on actual Mardi Gras. We are trying this new thing where we spend very little money on food yet eat very well, i.e. use what you have, so well yeah I wanted to do something classically southern, instead we made black bean chili from some free dry black beans & very cheap ground beef from the Big Y with these very odd (also free) Garden of Eatin' Ginger Tarmari tortilla chips.
& then, the work king cake, which taste-wise kind of sucked, turned into french toast with real local maple syrup, so y'know a perfect new england/new orleans compromise...
...& in conclusion, this drawing is a tribute to the New Orleans I remember & also a challenge for me. I've been getting more & more illustrative around here, & this is step back to sense/memory/feeling. New Orleans=clear blue red brown muddy green mustard yellow, & slopping streets, crumbling buildings, smell of the river, & all the weird beauty of the Bywater. The Bourbon Street purple green gold glitter mardi gras shit I could also take or leave. But the shotgun houses, proximity to the Mississippi River, riding my bike to race trains every morning, that abandoned church on St Ferdinand & Royal (I think) that shit haunts me.

Remember DnDnD2K09?

That barely scratched the surface.

Almond/Raisin/Sunflower Bread = February Solution.

Overcast Chilly Damp February Day. Yeh. So ....Make Bread?

2 Loaves, My Kitchen. (well, it is Ash Wednesday).

Owen/Adam/Dr/Homemade Bread/Cheese.

Yup. It worked. Sort of. Still playing Merriweather Postpavilion & hoping for spring.

A Valentine's Postscript & An Ode To Condiments.

As everyone knows, I truly, truly love holidays, & all the traditions & rituals & generally performative & decorative activities that go along with them, but there's also something to be said for the regular days, without all the pressure of a holiday attached.

So here's to coming home from work on an ordinary Monday & using the valentines leftovers to make something new with veggies & wild yam soba noodles & listening to music & watching Six Feet Under in bed & working on projects & doing laundry & petting kittens,

& to home. just home, & love.

& of course, to mirin, sriracha, shoyu, hot chili oil, vietnamese fish sauce, hoisin sauce, honey garlic sauce, sesame oil, & all the other lovely items that making reinvented leftovers so delicious.

Happy February 15th, y'all

(oh yeah, it's pretty much Mardi Gras too. ooohhhh shit. )

Happy Valentine's Day From EnD.

Feed the ones you love, & make it pretty.

The actual food: pot roast simmered in our new-from-the-noho-transfer station cast iron frying pan (one of two) (yaaay dump finds) in olive oil, a yellow onion, garlic, white mushrooms, fresh thyme, & wilted snowpea sprouts, with sides of heavily buttered russian banana fingerling potatoes & my always classic roasted garlic brussel sprouts.

NOTE: cost of this meal = $3.72 + there were leftovers. Us poor folk do know how to live.

Cooking food is, as always, a metaphor for love.
& so, love love love, Happy Valentine's Day
(one day late, because I was, um, enjoying my own valentine's day sans internets)
& good eating.
xo, liz.

Scrabble & Winter Vegetables & Art.

2.3.2010. We have a Scrabble/Art/Soup/Roasted Stuffed Squashes & Other Root Vegetables Party here at 133.

It was sort of an organic collision of my inviting Rin & guest over for a double date dinner party with Owen & I, & Abigail throwing a Soup & Super Scrabble party, at exactly the same time. The food was delicious, the Scrabble game was fierce, Pandora pretended we were at the Basement for some reason, & Rin, Owen, & I (not being the Scrabble types) made some art on the living floor together (while the world's most hilarious books were being read aloud, yet again). Damn, the lessons we learned from the Book Swap are endless. Oh, David Deida, you've given us all so much.

Rin's drawing of Owen & I collaging together.

"Stuffed Squashes/An Inferiority Complex", by me.

"Self Portrait via Show Magazine", by me.

Rin's.

"Soup & Ass", by me.

& Owen's.

(He never glued anything down, but he cut out a lot, so I dumped all the cuttings on the scanner & here's what we have. Pretty freaking awesome. Thanks again, Show Magazine! )

That's the art. Oh, wait, what's this blog called? Oh right, EATING & Drawing. So what did we eat? Well, I was still playing the "work with what you have" game, so mostly this meal was shaped by free stuff from work, but it turned out rather well, in my humble opinion. (Note: this vegan dinner party). I made acorn squashes stuffed with a wild rice blend I made of some pre-mixed blend, wild rice, & short grain brown basmati, crimini mushrooms, spinach, thyme, tofu, onions, & garlic, with a side of rosemary/olive oil roasted sweet potatoes, yukon gold potatoes, & summer squash. Abigail made a soup of (from what I remember from watching) sweet potatoes, chickpeas, watermelon radishes, coconut milk, IDK, it was very good, yay food, we like it. A good combination of things, food creations, games, mixed media, watercolours, drawing, eating, drinking, over the top ridiculous sex/relationship books, trashy music, & friends. & of course, the world's best cat & dog, DustyRose & MelodyRose.

This post is dedicated to the works of David Deida & the ladies of Show Magazine for providing oh so much laughter & inspiration...heart heart heart.

A New Car & A Series Of Sandwiches.

Three sets of sandwiches, all relating to the recent purchase of my new (to me) car, the 1989 Toyota Cressida. The LUXERY model, oh yeah. This is the first car I have purchased, & therefore kind of a milestone, & being me, I documented the occasion in a series of sandwiches.

1.13.2010. A visit to a car in Leverett, & 2 sausage, egg, & cheese sandwiches from Go Nomad in the infamous town of South Deerfield.

1.17.2010. Fried egg, cheese, & Sriracha sandwiches at our kitchen table after we drove the Cressida home for the first time.
1.22.2010. Ali's first ride in the Cressida, when we picked her up at work for our classic lunch date of sandwiches at the Black Sheep (2 Nick's Picks, aka semi-Ruebens for me & Owen, 1 Southern Comfort for Ali). Note: the semi-ruebens had coleslaw & not sauerkraut, & so were not as good as real ruebens. The Southern Comfort I did not taste, but appeared to be all bacony & chickeny so, probably the better choice.
I know, I know, I'm odd as always, but I always remember things in life most clearly by what I ate that day. Taste/smell are my strongest sense memories, I guess. So even if it's just a fried egg on toast with hot sauce, if something happened that day, what I ate was important. On an even deeper note, what to egg sandwiches have to do with the 1989 Toyota Cressida? There just must be a connection. Discuss.

Homemade Kombucha.

One of the few Whole Foodsy/Co-opy (hippie) trends that I'm really into is kombucha. I would definitely be one of those people who drink it everyday, but I actually work at a Co-op & so I can't afford to. It being late January & bleak, we were in need of a project, so we decided to make our own.

We started a few weeks ago by leaving a half-empty bottle of the bulk kombucha purchased at work in a dark corner of the kitchen at room temperature & forgetting about it. It formed a pretty impressive blob thing on top. Yesterday morning, we made a huge batch of very sweet tea (a mixture of whatever extra green & black tea we had lying around that we don't love drinking on its own) seeped it until very strong, strained it so there was no stray tea matter, & let get to room temperature. Then this was poured into an empty Carlo Rossi bottle (which strangely we always have lying around in this household). Then, we added the kombucha from the bottle, blob & all (we saved some of the tea with some of the old kombucha added in the original bottle in hopes of growing another starter).

The faithful Carlo Rossi bottle is now sitting in kitchen in a dark cabinet, to remain there unbothered for a week or two. We don't really know what we are doing, so who knows what will happen? Stay tuned, I'll let you know in a few weeks.