Eating & Drawing

Thanksgiving, For Better Or Worse.

2011-11-27T20:42:00.000-05:00

The Turkey, Jackson, NH, November 2010.

Everything seems like a lot right now, but Thanksgiving did still happen.
One more drawing from last year. Blah blah blah holidays are very weird when you recently lose someone.
Not sure what I can personally handle for Christmas this year, but I feel good about decorating, I think. I guess you just do what feels right in these moments, i.e. I want to hang lights all over the house & have a giant tree & cover everything in glitter & but I honestly can't see opening presents without Gramma.
Doesn't make sense, I know. But all the decorating crap seems peaceful, but I kind of want to skip out on the actual day this year.

Getting In The Thanksgiving Spirit, aka Cranberry Sauce & Stuffing & Gravy.

2011-11-22T18:57:00.000-05:00

Well, it will be Thanksgiving the day after tomorrow. After some (hopefully brief) hours in Grocery Hell, I get to pack up my husband & my dog in the car (sorry DustyRose but you are not a good traveler), & drive to Cape Cod to see my family & eat good things.

Thanksgiving 2010: The Sides, Part Two.

The (homemade by mum, always) cranberry sauce, the stuffing, & the garlicky green beans.

I lied. These sides are important too.

Anyway, I whine & moan a lot, but I'm grateful. Very very grateful, & looking forward to home tomorrow. Happy Thanksgiving almost.

Thanksgivings Past & Future.

2011-11-21T20:31:00.002-05:00

Apparently I am about a year behind in current events on this blog, as I never finished my drawings from last Thanksgiving.
Well, never say never-I just finished one. I drew this last November, in Jackson, NH, the same house where we spent our honeymoon.

Thanksgiving 2010: The Sides, Part One.

aka the MOST important Thanksgiving sides, mashed potatoes & creamed onions. More important than turkey or stuffing (although stuffing is pretty damn important).

Last year was an atypical Thanksgiving, in that Owen & I joined my moms in New Hampshire in a borrowed house in a beautiful place.

This year is different in that we Diamonds lost a terribly important family member in September & one week later Owen & got married.

It's a rather emotional holiday, I think for all of us. I can barely even write this, really, so no details.

This year Thanksgiving will be at home, in Brewster, on Cape Cod, with new family but with a huge absence, too.

All I meant to say here was, cheers to Thanksgiving (the sacred holiday of EnD), & all it brings.

& Gramma, I'm missing you a lot, everyday, even if I'm not so good at talking about it. But neither were you, really.

Snowy October Driveway Breakfast Sandwiches.

2011-11-21T18:12:00.001-05:00

I mentioned the Great New England Halloween Weekend Snowstorm/Power Outage. Where we cooked lentil soup outside & ate it in the dark? Well, here's breakfast, i.e., another chance for me to mention the overwhelming life importance of a good breakfast sandwich.

10.30.2011: Weather Related Outdoor Breakfast.

I can't say we suffered anything truly unpleasant at all, but it was the longest time I have been without power in my adult life (two days, I know, boo hoo) & I have lived through hurricanes in New Orleans. We never lose power in our current apartment for more than a few minutes, so when the lights went out of Saturday night it seemed so very temporary.
By Sunday morning, after having got ready for work at 6am by candle light, walked to downtown to get the car from the stupid snow emergency lot (curse this town & the asinine snow parking regulations-don't get me started) called my boss at home & work several times to see if we were open, driven to work when I got no response, then found out we were closed, then got back to a cold apartment with no stove...well Owen figuring out to to fry eggs & toast bagels over a propane burner in the driveway was pretty freaking cheering.
A good hot breakfast goes a long way. It certainly helped me appreciated the day off work (& the day post-storm was a gorgeous, gorgeous day) & not really care that we didn't have light (or heat, but hey, I dug out the wool blankets & wore several of Owen's flannel shirts at once).
& the dog enjoyed eating the snow after Owen rinsed out the frying pan. Good times were, as you can see, had by all.
Breakfast sandwiches. They rule. You know, several were eaten during the purchase of my car, present in the driveway during this escapade.
Now that's the circle of life, right there.

Butternut Squash #2: With Homemade Sausage In A Lasagna Thing.

2011-11-21T17:41:00.000-05:00

As promised, the skipped #2.

10.27.2011: Butternut Squash Week #2:

A sort of lasagna, with alternating layers of thinly sliced butternut squash, homemade spicy pork sausage, crushed red chilis, red sauce, garlic, onions, & boursin, burrata (cream filled mozzarella), & parmesan. Served over pasta.

I just made this up. I like making up lasagna type things, or so I call them, they are usually only lasagnas in the sense that they involve layers (remember bacon as noodles?)

But truly, who doesn't prefer meat noodles to past noodles?

Basically, it is fun to throw a bunch of different meats & veggies into a cast iron dutch oven & bake them & cover the whole mess with cheese. I made a lovely lasagna last fall with butternut squash & homemade green tomato sauce we had canned from the abundance of green tomatoes we produced in our garden in 2010. My favorite vegetarian main course is a pesto & mashed potato lasagna.

On this particular night, we had butternut squash, of course, & we had the same homemade pork sausage that went into this meal.

No recipe. Just layers layers layers. Use what you have-this a great way to get rid of random grocery items in the fridge in a delicious fashion.

One of the first things I ever learned to cook & still one of my top three comfort foods (eggplant parm, curry, tuna casserole) was my mom's eggplant parmesan & maybe that's why I like layers of vegetables & meat & cheese & sauce so much.

Thus concludes the The Great Butternut Squash Food Challenge Of 2011.

I think. I know we never had recipe #7, but once we had power & you could buy groceries again, we moved on. Blame it on the power outage. We do still have squash, so maybe I'll do one more, but no promises, since that week is long over.

Six out of seven ain't bad, though, right?

Butternut Squash #6: Risotto.

2011-11-19T18:17:00.000-05:00

11.1.2011: Butternut Squash Week #6:

Risotto, with butternut squash, homemade chicken stock, white wine, garlic, butter, herbs de provence& all that good stuff.

The first night that we were kitchen back to normal after the snow storm/power outage. We still hadn't really shopped, because while we had power, a lot of people didn't, & stores didn't really have food back yet & we were avoiding mayhem. & it was still The Great Butternut Squash Food Challenge Of 2011. !!!

We had a mason jar of risotto, homemade chicken stock that we had actually canned in the pressure cooker so didn't lose due to lack of refrigeration, butter that was already in the freezer, & white wine, so, a truly whatever the heck do we make for dinner night turned into a gorgeous meal.

There you go. Use what you have. It's like painting with random materials as a broke art student, only you get to eat, too.

Butternut Squash #4/5: With Red Lentils In Soup (In The Dark).

2011-11-19T17:43:00.003-05:00

10.29.2011: Butternut Squash Week #4/5:

Butternut squash & red lentil soup, with homemade chicken stock, cumin, ginger paste, crushed chilis & curry powder, & onions, garlic, & yukon gold potatoes, served with Boursin, eaten in the dark two nights in a row during the Great October New England Snowstorm/Power outage.

It was a few days before Halloween in Massachusetts, on a Saturday. A potential couple of feet of snow is bizarrely predicted. We get the dog walked & head back to the house, snow starts falling around 2pm, & I decide to make soup, just in case the power goes out later & we lose a lot of food & our ability to cook (electric stove). Good call. Power went out around six that night & didn't return for two days. We ate the soup Saturday night by candle light, & Sunday night by candle light once more after reheating it in the snowy driveway over the propane burner for our turkey fryer.
Thank god my husband is a redneck, with a blow torch (to make coffee) & a propane burner to reheat soup & cook eggs in the driveway. & for a huge pot of delicious soup. & for Cheezits which accompanied Sunday nights dinner & are one of my biggest guilty pleasures. When in difficult times, go to Cheezits. These are the things you are thankful for when you have no light, heat, or stove & your work doesn't tell you work is cancelled so you have to drive there to find out. Blah. Did I mention I love Cheezits?

The soup is itself, pretty basic: onions & garlic simmered in butter/small amount of bacon, add ginger paste, cumin, & curry powder, crushed chili peppers, salt & pepper, then add chicken stock, red lentils, & potatoes, bring to a boil, add cubed butternut squash, simmer for the rest of the afternoon while it snows, conveniently in a cast iron enamel pot that can also work on a outside propane flame.

My classic red lentil ginger soup, really, but with butternut squash! Because it was still The Great Butternut Squash Food Challenge Of 2011. (Theme: classic recipes of mine, with butternut squash). Also, we eat lentil soup during natural disasters in this family!

It's just that during some of them, the power actually goes out.

It was dark, but we managed to eat well, & the hound dog & tiger kitten kept us warm. Whiskey helped too.

Butternut Squash #3: In Thai Green Curry With Chicken.

2011-11-17T19:42:00.000-05:00

More with the foods, & the making of them, & the continuation of The Great Butternut Squash Food Challenge Of 2011.

10.28.2011: Butternut Squash Week #3:

Thai Green Curry with coconut milk, butternut squash, chicken & our garden thai chilis & lemongrass, over basmati rice.

(Note: I did not skip Butternut Squash #2, I just didn't finish the illustrations in order. Not how I roll, numerical order).

So, another classic recipe of mine, continuing the theme. Curries, all curries, are very high up there for me when it comes to comfort food. I cook a curry at least three night a week, & I do it differently every time. I've never added winter squash, but it worked well added to a basic version of my Thai Green Curry.

To start, make rice, to be authentic use jasmine, but we tend to buy rice in 20lb bags so usually just have white basmati & some brown short grain on hand. Roasted a split butternut squash in the oven. In a heavy duty sauce pan, start cooking onions, garlic, & chopped chilis (lucky we grew some beautiful thai chilis in the garden this year) in coconut oil. Add some green thai curry paste (I use this one), some curry powder, chopped lemongrass (which we also grew in the garden & currently still have growing in a pot in our kitchen), fresh chopped ginger root, shrimp paste, sriracha & fish oil. I used about a half of a habanero from our garden too, but adjust the spiciness to taste, obviously. I prefer crazy spicy. Throw in chicken pieces & potatoes, make sure they get thoroughly coated with the coconut oil seasoning mixture. Add two cans of coconut milk, then added chopped pre-roasted butternut squash. Cook until squash pretty much dissolves into the coconut milk, serve over rice, & eat. Perfect.

Note: many of the ingredients in this curry, & also the basic ingredients of my life, are purchased here, at the International Market in Hadley.

I have been shopping there for about ten years & even though they still feel they need to warn us about food white people won't like, too fishy, too spicy, (yet we do), I love it there.

The true genius of curries is that they are so flexible. I made a decent one with chicken thighs, broccoli, 1/2 & 1/2, various spices, chili peppers & potatoes in a cast iron wok the other night exhausted after a long work day & without grocery shopping & I'd rather eat that than most restaurant food & it took very little time or effort, in fact, it really cheered me up.

There in is the beauty of food.

This particular curry was delicious, by the way, I definitely recommend the squash addition.

Butternut Squash #1: Stuffed, With (Homemade) Sausage & Wild Rice.

2011-11-17T18:38:00.003-05:00

& now, back to the cooking! Sorry about all that whining the other day. I've pulled it together, i.e. the house isn't so bad, I did some laundry, I paid the bills, I had a lovely night of wine & food with a lovely friend, & I've actually done quite a bit of watercoloring at the kitchen table.
We bought a bushel of butternut squash for our wedding-you know, you are trying to feed a lot of people cheaply & you live in New England & it's fall, you end up with winter squash. Of course, because we have very helpful & food oriented families, we ended up with way too much food & didn't use the squash.
Forward to about a month after the wedding-we are kind of broke & Owen & I have been driving around with both our cars full of butternut squash for weeks. The only solution was The Great Butternut Squash Food Challenge Of 2011, where we made a new meal out of those pesky car squashes every night for roughly a week instead of buying new ingredients.

10.26.2011: Butternut Squash Week #1:

Stuffed with our homemade spicy pork sausage, wild rice cooked in homemade duck stock, garden shallots, garlic, & rosemary, lots of butter, & raw milk Parmesan cheese.

This is one of my all-time classic recipes. That was another theme of The Butternut Squash Challenge, classic well loved recipes. Winter squash is really versatile, & lends itself to whatever you feel like cooking already. I invented this for a date, once upon a time ago, I made it at my birthday dinner party two years ago, & I made it for the lovely Melissa last night, because we STILL have stray squashes rolling around in our cars.

Obviously, this works with any squash, & I rather prefer acorns, delicata, or dumplings, but hey, the whole bushels of butternuts was cheaper & it's really pretty much the same.

Split squashes, roast with olive oil. Cook a basic wild rice blend, I like the Lundenberg Organic blend but a mix of short grain brown rice & wild works too, preferably in a poultry basic stock (I like duck stock). Meanwhile saute shallots, garlic, rosemary & herbs de provence in butter & white wine. Add sausage (for this we had some of our first ever batch of homemade sausage). Add rice & more stock. Simmer. Add to squash, cover with cheese, whatever you like, but I like parm or gruyere or swiss. Back in the oven, then eat! Fun times.

Yeah by the way, we have been making our own sausages, thanks to our wedding present Kitchen Aid stand mixer & wedding present meat grinding & sausage stuffing attachments. Just week Owen boned an entire turkey (turkeys are real cheap at Stop & Shop right now) & it became variously flavored turkey sausage. Being poor ain't so bad.

AS long as you use what you have-i.e. turning cheap meat in awesome sausage & making stock from the bones.

There you have it-Stuffed Squash, liz style.

11.4.2011: dog & cat.

Oh, & that's just a picture of my dog & cat.
For good measure.

These (Mildly) Difficult Modern Times.

2011-11-15T19:38:00.002-05:00

It's been a rather exhausting couple of weeks here at EnD headquarters, i.e. a messy apartment in Northampton. Tons o' work stress, money stress, car stress etc. Blah. I've actually found myself absolutely too tired & cranky to even feel like cooking recently (very unlike me). I miss the garden. I hate when it gets dark at five. I'm sick of every single expense, like toilet paper & toothpaste, for crying out loud, being a huge deal. I'm sick of not being allowed to get sick or miss any work for any reason because I earn our only income. I'm sick of doing all the cleaning because no one else cares. I don't want to get up at 6am while everyone is sleeping & still come home in the almost dark.
Whine whine whine. Not real problems, I know.
Still, sometimes I feel like maybe it would be cool to not be the one responsible for everyone's survival. I want to call out of work & go to the mall & buy fancy eyeshadow at Sephora & 20 cute dresses at Forever 21.
Sigh. Poor me, I know, I'm stupid. I have no real problems, &
I do have this.

11.4.2011: Dog Cat Husband.

So I guess that although we are pretty broke, my job is pushing me to the limit of reasonable tolerance right now, & the house is really dirty, I get to have this sweet family. & last night I made a really basic chicken & potato curry & felt a little more like myself. Cooking heals many wounds. Note to self: when depressed, purchase some inexpensive but still luxury cooking item (in this case, short grain brown rice & chicken thighs). Then cook dinner. Possibly listen to the Mountain Goats even though my husband hates them. Repeat.
I look forward to Thanksgiving. & I've seen some mad crazy gorgeous sunsets en route to work lately, so I guess that's also something.

Bacon Honeymoon (or bacon makes a good thing even better).

2011-11-04T18:17:00.003-04:00

You know. It's always all about bacon around here. Even on my honeymoon, apparently.
We received, at least for us, a very fitting wedding present, which was the use of a beautiful house in a breathtaking setting in which we could spend a week with just us & our sweet hound dog. We have never lived together without at least two & sometimes four roommates. Alone time is very valuable to us. We love to cook, we love hiking & mountains, & therefore being out in the woods with a fabulous kitchen at our disposal & a fireplace & a mountain in the backyard was pretty much perfect (thanks deb & cate!).

September 2011: The Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich + Gift Lasagna.

Some people would take their wedding cash & go out to eat, but we didn't. We were really excited about being alone in our own (temporary) house for once. Our own house is our biggest dream right now. so, yeah, cooking by ourselves! ! ! That said, we hate to waste food, so we didn't go crazy grocery shopping. Basically, we started with wedding leftovers (onions, potatoes, butternut squash, crackers, cheese, eggs, & butter) & we locally purchased really good bacon, a steak, broccoli, & bagels.
Two themes immediate emerged: the need for a serious breakfast if you begin every day hiking up a mountain with your dog, & lasagna, which a very sweet wedding guest (thanks jim!) brought us for "the cabin." (it really wasn't a cabin, it was a gorgeous six bedroom redone farmhouse that even Martha would be jealous of.)
So we, discovered bacon, parmesan, & onions on a bagels is a seriously kickass breakfast sandwich.
I consider a good breakfast sandwich a life staple. Eggs & meat & cheese on a bagel please me.
& although we didn't actually want to bring the lasagna with us (all we wanted to do was cook) there was definitely a night (after a long adventure in New Hampshire auto mechanics & pouring rain) that we were very content to curl up by the fire & reheat that thing. Obviously, we were unable to resist making it a lot better with additional cheese, broccoli, ample garlic, & of course bacon. I really can't totally not cook.
So, yeah, our honeymoon, bacon, mountains, dogs. That happened.
Oh, did you hear we in Western Massachusetts had a serious snowstorm before Halloween & the power went out everywhere for days & days? Next: EnD cooks breakfast sandwiches on a propane burner in the snowy driveway. True story.

Honeymoon: Wine & Cheese & Love & Gorgeousness.

2011-10-21T19:13:00.001-04:00

Greetings, y'all. Happy Fall, officially the favorite season here at EnD. Fall is the season of cooking, so hopefully, as promised, I will get back on the drawing horse & show you some of mine. Starting with this quick glimpse from my fall.

9.26.2011: Jackson, New Hampshire, First Night Of Our Honeymoon.

Oh yeah, we got married.
Turns out planning & having a wedding is a lot of work, if you are into making everything by hand like us, & Hurricane Sunday was the last time I picked up my sketchbook until it was all over. Our wedding was like something beyond our wildest dreams, & maybe someday I'll process it enough to make some art about it.
But for now, a moment from the first night of our honeymoon in Jackson, New Hampshire, sitting outside in the last sunlight of a perfect late September New England afternoon, listening to the brook running behind the incredible house where we were staying & the wind rustling the leaves in the trees.
We drove all day from Cape Cod to the White Mountains, unpacked the car & went straight to the terrace where we enjoyed some of our fine wedding presents: a really good bottle of New Zealand Marlbourgh Sauvingon Blanc (actually that was a birthday present-my birthday was the day before our wedding) & an assortment of cheese from Murrry's (A cooler of cheese! what a wedding present!)& leftover crackers from the reception.
We both got out of the car & said at the same time: "Let's sit outside with drinks & snacks!" We have a terrible yard here in Noho. Up there on our list for a future idea house is a nice place to sit outside in the evening & talk & have a glass of wine & read & or draw or whatever. My favorite Cape Cod meals all take place on the deck over looking the lake & I want that for myself someday.
I guess that's why I keep holding on to this blog, even though I terribly neglect it mostly & the general idea of drawing my meals, even though I really have no time & I feel guilty about doing this with it sometimes: it preserves beautiful moments like that one: Wine & cheese, an amazingly breathaking place, a brand new husband, & a hound dog tied to a bench going crazy with the joy of all the new wild New Hampshire smells.
Well, I'll try to spend more time on this blog. At least finish the wedding story. There was an abundance of my favorite things: good food, family, friends, wine, beaches, & of course dogs. Thanksgiving is coming up & obviously that is the sacred holiday of EnD. In fact, last year we spent Thanksgiving in the same house where we spent our honeymoon, & I just found those unfinished drawings this morning.
But right now my husband (amazing!) is cooking me a chicken pot pie in our kitchen, & I'm gonna go draw him do it.

A Spring Cape Cod Breakfast: Hangar B, Chatham.

2011-08-28T18:04:00.000-04:00

More from the (sort of, maybe) hurricane. Being home all afternoon is rare for me, so I've been taking advantage of the weather, cleaning off my desk & paging through my sketchbooks. Apparently I have some catching up to do.
Here's one moment I found: a breakfast, on Cape Cod, early June, rainy Saturday, at the surprisingly (why surprisingly? Because we are both really good cooks & live in Massachusetts & have developed low restaurant expectations in general I guess) excellent Hangar B.

6.11.2011: Breakfast in Chatham.

I had a smoked salmon, goat's cheese & arugula omelet, with avocado slices & fried potatoes & toast & Owen had the famous Red Flannel Hash (Beets, Yukon Gold Patoes, Sweet Potatoes, Bacon), with toast & poached egggs & horseradish creme fraiche.
Mine was brilliant anyway, but the avocado slices but it over the top. Owen's was the best use of beets I have ever tasted. The toast was homemade & wonderful & there was housemade jam too. Good potatoes (which is both very important in a breakfast & not as common as you'd think).
I'm very into going out to breakfast as a thing & this meal made it into my Top Three Restaurant Breakfast List. It didn't quite beat out the amazing breakfast sandwich at the Sunny Point Cafe in Asheville, NC but comes in second before brunch at the The Green Bean & I do love the Green Bean,
Despite the rain, it was a lovely Cape Cod Saturday. After breakfast, we drove to the beach & collected seaweed & shells for our garden in a torrential downpour.
Standing on a beach on the bay on Cape Cod in red boots & a dress in pouring rain with someone you love & a hound dog, holding a bucket of ocean matter, after a really good breakfast is the kind of moment that makes for a satisfying life, I believe.
Here, in Northampton, in the present, the sun just came out.

Hurricane Soup. Or Tropical Depression Soup?

2011-08-28T16:42:00.000-04:00

See, I promised I'd be back with some actual food! & what better occasion than Hurricane Irene Sunday, here on the East Coast. After days of Hurricane Drama, by yesterday around here it seemed like just about time to give in, purchase provisions (i.e. wine & beer, food & novels), & get ready to stay home. Last night we got prepared by making a giant lentil soup, the purpose of which was to cook as many things in the fridge as possible in case we lost power today (which we didn't, by the way).

8.28.2011: Hurricane (Lentil & Sausage) Soup.

Into the trusty giant white cast iron enamel pot went chicken apple sausage, lentils, onions, garlic, potatoes, ginger, leftover chicken, chicken stock from the same chicken, the last of our garden atomic red & purple haze carrots, & lots of cumin. Since this took a while to cook, while waiting we also consumed the last of the amazing Stop & Shop frozen appetizers we purchased on a recent late night trip, the silly kind where one might by tempted by such items as mac n' cheese triangles & jalapeno poppers. Then we went dancing in the rain.
All in all it's been a pretty good hurricane. My work was delightfully cancelled, & nothing bad happened other than it was kind of anticlimatic I guess.
But it's very cozy here at home, & Owen is brewing beer in the kitchen while I get reacquainted with my blog & listen to Amanda Palmer in our room. We walked the dog over to check out the rather dramatically high Mill River, we addressed the last of our wedding invitations, & we thought it a perfect occasion to drink wine in the afternoon. Even thought the part of my soul that loves storms was secretly looking for a little action, I learned in New Orleans to not play around with hurricanes, so I'm really very happy with how today turned out. Always marry the guy you can spend a perfect hurricane with, that's what I say.

We Now Return After Our Summer Hiatus.

2011-08-28T15:42:00.002-04:00

I suppose that I should just accept it, since this happens every year on this blog. All winter long I paint soups & meat & then spring comes & I get excited about painting vegetables all summer, & summer comes & I subsequently spend all my time outside & lose interest in indoor projects entirely. I am always so innocent, in May, planning all the gorgeous tomatoes I'm gonna paint, & instead I just eat the tomatoes & go swim with the hound dog in the river.
I guess in the future, let's make a deal-we will agree to take the summer off for garden time here at EnD, & meet up again in the fall in time to cook the first of the autumn squash harvest. Done.
Oh, & I guess there is another reason on top of gardening & swimming & enjoying summer that the blog has not crossed my mind in about four months.

Invite: Liz & Owen 2011.

Yup, Owen & I are getting married, in about four weeks. Hence, lots of time spent gluing glitter to things, & less spent on watercolors & collages & blogs. Apparently when one decides to get married, a bulk glitter & glue purchase at Michael's is required.
As befits us, being us, we & our families are providing all the food ourselves, so if I get any breaks from covering tiny fake birds with spray adhesive & glitter, I'll try to draw some of it (no promises). If I were you, I'll expect my wedding posts to show up on this blog sometime next January when I suddenly find myself with a lot of snow related free time on my hands.
But all that aside, we are having a semi-hurricane in Massachusetts, I have an expected day off, & fall & fall cooking is just around the corner. So I'd say EnD is back. I mean, right now I should be working on our bridal registry & instead I'm doing this, that's a good sign, right?

Memorial Day Weekend Meat Fest.

2011-05-30T17:54:00.001-04:00

Look, I finally managed a timely holiday post! EnD, live from Memorial Day Weekend 2011!
I don't generally get three day weekends off, & I didn't this one either, but still I like to be festive. It was 90 degrees almost all weekend & I have definitely been ready & waiting to celebrate a weekend truly summer style, with, obviously, lots o' meat products.

Bacon Many Ways: Memorial Day Weekend 2011.

Friday night we got old fashioned & grilled burgers in the driveway behind my 1989 Toyota Cressida (homemade bacon sausage cheddar jalapeno burgers using leftover ground bacon sausage we conveniently had lying around). Sitting on the hood of an old car at dusk drinking PBR & cooking meat. Sigh. Good times.
Then Sunday night dinner with Izaac rolled around, & that always means something special. A bacon weave wrapped around ground steak & then deep fried, bacon & collards, & garlic roasted marrow bones & toast, in this case. & the champagne of beers, since it was a holiday, after all.
Besides eating bacon, I cleaned off the front porch & hauled a table & chairs out there, & that's where I did this drawing just now, mojito in hand. The dog & I swam in the river, I planted dragon beans & repotted lots of tomatoes, & I spent as much time as possible in the sun. It's currently Monday afternoon, the dog is passed out exhausted from all the fun (he enjoyed a lot of marrow bone activity last night) & I am going to take advantage of more good porch time.
The drawing happens to complete this particular sketchbook, begun last November with these drawings.
Here's to opening my new sketchbook & another season of eating & drawing.

Tabloid Portraits #1: Bret, LiLo & A Shout Out To Magazines.

2011-05-24T20:50:00.001-04:00

This post has nothing to do with food. Zero. If you are a dedicated food reader only, go to the archives, or come back later.
I repeat, nothing about cooking here, except in the rather roundabout way where last night I had dinner simmering on the stove & was waiting for Owen to come home from work at the restaurant.
Note: our kitchen table is currently (frequently) covered in trashy celebrity magazines, thanks both to my lovely co-worker who donates me hers & to my own personal difficulty in resisting the lure of the magazine rack at the 7-11. Also present on the EnD table: ample food magazines & piles of New Yorkers (family lifelong subscription). If you are old fashioned & still enjoy print media, please come on over to our house.
I was having a pleasant time listening to the Silver Jews & drinking wine & messing around in my sketchbook.
As I do, I got to drawing. Normally, I do this with my magazines, but sometimes I like to mix things up.

"I'm Glad To Be Here/Living In Fear"

"Wasted Again"

Maybe painting a portrait of Bret Michaels indicates that I have too much time on my hands. IDK. I did grow up in the 80's. I though Poison was pretty great when I was ten.The reality show/stardom thing does confuse me a bit though.
I have been known to fixate on celebrities, if they are the good ones. (I think I summed up what I mean by that here). But my great love of magazines & a print media isn't about that, really. I've always been an old school magazine reading kind of girl. Take that internet! I wish this blog was a zine (yup, I did attend high school in the early 90's.)
Magazines: you can cut them up, you can hang the pictures up on the wall, I find them way easier to draw from than the internet, you can read them in the bath or on the beach or on a boat or any other place you wouldn't bring a laptop, you can write in the margins, you can draw mustaches on people, you can photocopy them & use them for silkscreens, you can make wallpaper... What the hell can you do with an internet page, exactly.
Celebrity news means nothing to me if I can't involve scissors & glue somehow.
That's the collage artist in me, but that's also the reader. Of books with pages. & the general object-loving thrift storing hoarder that I am.
Here's to thanking Christ that we don't live in a completely virtual world yet.
I like it tangible & messy.
(Oh & thanks Amy for the Stars).

Remember DnD?

2011-05-23T20:44:00.000-04:00

I know y’all do. Home of so much past brilliance.
So... last Friday night Jed of Drinking & Drawing fame made a special appearance back in Noho at the EnD kitchen. & Owen, in Jed's honor, made an insane meat concoction. How insane? Well, he started with sausages & bacon in a cast iron skillet, poured the grease into the deep fryer, ground the meat in our trusty meat grinder (a free pile find), battered them in cornmeal, & deep fried them in our trusty deep fryer (a $2 Hospice Shop find).

5.13.2011: Friday the 13th with Jed & Pabst.

All accompanied by ample PBR, aka the official beer of DnD. (although we do enjoy others). There was dancing, there was the Deuce, there was an after-party, there were the bizarre snacks Jed brought us back from his recent trip to Korea, consumed at 4am. Sounds like DnD.
Since Owen & I have become tame, early rising, stay at home, dog owning people, this night was much needed & appreciated but required some recovery the next day.

5.14.2011: Rainy Saturday Night Dinner.

Otherwise known as "Recovery Dinner." When you, well ok, I, am rather hungover from a 4am+ kind of night, & then get caught in the rain on a walk with my hound dog, I like to turn to my comfort foods. This time, mashed potatoes were on my mind. Post-rain storm & soaking wet, I mostly wanted to cuddle on the couch with Walty & read trashy novels all night, so I felt like throwing something delicious into my beloved red Le Creuset baking dish & leaving it in the oven for a while. Third source of inspiration? Being in dire need of a vegetable after last night's fried meat fest, also in need of a touch of flavor complexity.
Hence, Miso Chili Ginger Baked Tofu, Cheesy Garlic Mashed Potatoes, & Kale Sauted with Garlic & Cumin Seed.
It was pretty good. EnD, your source for hangover tips. Three cheers to the whole weekend. Jed, come visit again soon.
& Hey everyone, in case you were wondering, it is still raining here...

Asparagus City. Population: Lentil Soup.

2011-05-17T21:11:00.003-04:00

What? Ok, I am taking liberties with my titles. The asparagus has nothing to do with lentil soup. Nothing at all. Except for being part of my early morning random train of thought when I was first writing this post.
Maybe I have mentioned-I am ready to eat fresh food. I can really get into the whole winter thing-big heavy meat dishes roasted in the oven, ducks & lamb, pot roasts & whole chickens , curries, the "coming in from the cold Sunday dinner" food that one doesn’t even think about in August. Last year we were a lot better at preserving our garden food than ever before, so all winter there were also little bursts of summer goodness-canned salsa & tomato sauce, green tomato pickles, pickled jalapenos, homemade chili paste & habanero hot sauce.

But now it’s May & I want to taste different things. We are having a rainy spring week, so last night it was back to soup (curried red lentil) & coziness but even my taste in soup is changed as spring progresses- a little less meat (although by no means none! hells no!), more flavor, more brightness. I topped the lentil soup with fried ginger root, herbed goat chevre & arugula pesto, & daydreamed about my future thai basil patch in the garden & when that will be my garnish.

5.16.2011: Red Lentil Soup.

A few notes regarding this soup (as this is a food blog after all): Adding the arugula pesto was kind of a crazy idea, but we had some leftover from this meal. We keep ample homemade chicken stock on hand in the freezer (when I roast a chicken I always make stock-chicken fat is a terrible thing to waste), & I personally find that in lentil soup, a good chicken stock is essential. & the fried ginger root-well, I learned a few things from my more than ten years of subscribing to Martha Stewart Living & that lentil soup garnish was one of them. That & the fact that an immersion blender is nice to have on hand when making soup. Thank you, Martha.

So the "food grown in the ground outside relatively near where I live" season is only just beginning. What do we have? Well, here in the Pioneer Valley we do have local Hadley asparagus for a very brief, delightful season, & I realize that forgetting to give it a nod would be a terrible error.

Fresh asparagus is best super simple, so this is more of a celebration than a recipe. Olive oil, garlic, salt & pepper. That is all you need, well a good cast iron skillet helps too.
We had it over pappardelle noodles with cheese. We had it with a fried egg on top. We had it with pumpkin seeds thrown into the mix. We had it with grilled eggplant in a burrito made up from the burrito topping leftovers.

May 2011: Hadley Asparagus Season.

What else? The leftover lentil soup made a very good lunch. It is well after 9pm & I have yet to eat my own dinner tonight, so I should think about that. Walt prefers that we NOT eat vegetables, but we do anyway. I like spring rain & am not sick of it yet; I am however sick of people complaining about the rain. IT ALWAYS RAINS A LOT IN MAY HERE. Let it ago. At least the temperature is remaining steadily above 50. This date on various years marks the day of both my parents' birth & of my grandparents wedding anniversary. So May 17th is a pretty cool day.
Some miscellaneous thoughts from EnD. Hey, why have a blog if I can't share this stuff sometimes? Eat your asparagus.

A Summer Preview: Burrito Night.

2011-05-16T20:15:00.000-04:00

We have lately been having these great summer-eqse days, bright hot sun, perfect for afternoons in the garden, getting sunburned & tricking oneself into believing that it is July. But of course, it isn't, it is May in Massachusetts. Right now it is 50 & raining & will apparently stay this way for the next five days.

There is a while to go before pleasures such as swimming & sunbathing & eating garden tomatoes, for example. I love this rainy May weather too, but I'm just saying, one can get addicted to 70+ afternoons gardening in the sunshine. (With a hound dog napping on your napa cabbages). The problem is, after one of those afternoons, a girl wants actual GARDEN FOOD. & no luck yet, most things are just tiny baby seedlings.

We have got some radishes, spinach, garlic greens, but we are a while from tomato basil city.

What to eat then, leaving the garden muddy & delightfully hot & looking for satisfaction? On this particular Saturday, BURRITOS.

First, I will admit upfront that I am a burrito snob. I am a Californian goddammit & you just don't get food like George's Drive-In here. You don't. Ali? Are I not right? That shit was off the hook.

Every time I give in & try a burrito place here on this coast that's supposed to be "just so great, so authentic" I am deeply disappointed. Not naming names, but really, sorry Noho. Massachusetts does not equal burritos. Taqueria Cancun, Pancho Villa oh where are you? Oh right, still in San Francisco where you belong. I'm the impulsive idiot who moved back to New England & left all that food bounty behind.

5.7.11: Pre Summer Burrito Night.

I seem to have a lot complaints here. I'm not intending to. Describing what led to the creation of a meal gets complicated sometimes (food shapes our lives).

To simplify: it was unseasonably hot, we built raised beds out of mulberry lumber all day, & I wanted a good burrito. (Because I am a burito snob & never get one unless I make it myself).

So, we broke the "no food out of season, especially tomatoes" rule & went to Stop & Shop & bought tomatoes & cilantro & avocados. Oh well. At least everything we needed cost next to nothing by some reduced produce miracle. Cause you know we are CHEAP.

I think both my summer produce longing & my burrito angst both come down to salsa, truly. Good salsa. Homemade salsa. Why why buy salsa? & Why is the salsa at any random hole in the wall place in Cali so divine & the salsa anyplace here tomato water? Why?

So yeah, I was reasonably tan for the first time in a year & I broke down & bought crap grocery out of season tomatoes & made my own salsa, to eat on a giant burrito (I make great salsa, FYI). Whatever. It still was delicious, helped along greatly by a jar of pickled jalapenos from last year's garden that I recently found in the back of the fridge. Ah, the magical joys of food preservation. Better than unicorns.

They were steak burritos, with pinto beans & onions, grilled red peppers, homemade guacamole & salsa, chopped lettuce, fresh cilantro, sour cream, cheese, & of course, tortilla chips & Mexican beer (Dos Equis).

Tons of leftovers, so I ate one wrapped in aluminum foil at work for lunch the next day & also felt like I was back in SF, heading out for lunch in the Mission (Sigh. ALMOST).

This is the food one wants to eat when sunburned & pleasantly exhausted & starving from gardening.

Things are just gonna get better. Our tomato plants are in the ground, people (one each of every heirloom variety we could order on the internet, & lots of the regular ones too). Our basil & peppers seedlings are started. We are actually beginning to enjoy the delicious, incomparable pleasure of eating food we grew.

Bring it on, Summer!

Radishes Have Arrived. & Been Eaten.

2011-05-15T22:00:00.000-04:00

Now this is what I am talking about. A rainy Sunday afternoon in May, a trip to the garden to plant turnip seeds in a light drizzle, & acquire a fresh bunch of gorgeous, gorgeous radishes, Easter egg, French Breakfast, all bright red & purple & so beautiful against the damp green day.

To take it up a notch, when we got home it turned out that Owen had been growing arugula quite successfully behind our bookcase (don’t ask) so dinner was suddenly a quite delightful proposition.

We have been on a kale kick lately-I think because I am in terrible need of green food & kale is cheap. Also, after a lifetime of considering it one of my least favorite leafy greens, Owen won me over.

Grilled steak, sauted kale, chopped fresh radishes, topped with a arugula pesto sauce (one of my favorite things).

5.15.2011: Arugula & Radish Rainy Dinner.

Garlicy, sharp, a little spicy, texture flavor color-for a random unplanned dinner, this meal really rocked. Go us.
& Then on to Karaoke at Bishop's Lounge in a downpour with the fabulous Matt D. & Melissa.

Easter Wings (A Cape Cod Spring Holiday).

2011-04-25T21:04:00.001-04:00

Happy Easter/Passover/Spring.

I am very fond of the Easter holiday, it is very aesthetically pleasing to me. Bunnies, Jesus, pastels, eggs, all very good. That said, this year I didn't really get it together to do anything about all that. No egg dying, I didn't wear a cute pink dress, & I haven't cooked rabbit since November.

But we did have family, dogs, sticky wings, lots of good bread & butter, & a Cape Cod beach storm, aka an early Diamond family Easter.

4.23.2011: An Early Cape Cod Family Easter Dinner (With Dogs).

I had to work on Easter itself, & didn't really mind, since I very much appreciate all the ceremony & trappings of holidays, but also know that they don't really matter, in the sense that I can work all day on Easter in a pink dress then go & dig in the garden & enjoy that as holiday festivities (what I did last Easter). Plus I hate ham (is it the half-Jewish part of me?) Ham is great thinly sliced on a sandwich with the correct condiments, but an whole ham? One of the only, perhaps actually the only, meat to which I say, yuck.

So the Diamond/Williams family (minus DR, who was missed but prefers not to travel, being a cat) packed up the car & drove to the family home on Cape Cod, stayed Friday night through Saturday night, & enjoyed the following pleasures: an early Easter dinner of Mum's sticky wings, roasted brussels sprouts, herbed mashed potatoes & French bread, an early Easter breakfast of cinnamon raisin bread & hard boiled eggs, both with the excellent bread from the French bakery in Wellfleet, collecting seaweed & shells on the beach in Harwich the pouring rain, Griswold cast-iron pan acquiring thrifting, Barb's Neiman Marcus chocolate chip cookies, & most importantly (or maybe most adorably?) a meeting of the dogs, Walty our hound meets Mum & Barb's Jack Russell terrier/beagle/dauschound? mix (we don't know what she is, just like Walt, but she looks like a tiny yellow lab pretty much-just imagine a full-gown high energy 14 lb lab with a terrier brain & a tendency for snuggling & here's Sophie), an awesome recent addition to the family. Walt & Sophie ran on the beach, rough housed, chewed on each others toys, leap off furniture, begged for food, cuddled on couches, lay by the fire, & overall had a stunningly good time. Yay dogs!

We drove back to Noho late Saturday night.

On actual Easter, I worked, & then in a light warm rain, Owen, Walt & I foraged for fiddleheads by the river in the early evening, came home, I talked to my grandparents on the phone, ate steak & mustard greens, appreciated being alive & all the good thing I have, watched tv in bed & fell asleep. Where was the Easter bunny? I do not know.

A Snapshot In Leftovers (The Bento Post, Sort Of).

2011-04-12T20:51:00.000-04:00

A couple of thoughts-lately I have been on a campaign to improve my life in small ways. One way of actualizing this has been my work lunches. One of my core beliefs has to do with avoiding convenience food, well really unnecessary convenience itself-why not do things yourself & do them well rather than buy a cheap, quicker, lesser version (blah blah blah yes I hate fast food & most restaurants really, I am a do-it-yourself-kind of gal). & of course I am generally pretty broke. I work in a grocery store, where it is easy to spend money on food everyday, but I have been successfully strict for a while now about bringing my lunch always, the problem is frequently I am lazy before bed & my lunch is therefore lame, lots of random crap from the fridge thrown into tupperware with no style or taste logic.

I spend a lot of time in life doing things that take work because I value the outcome, i.e. cooking a decent dinner every night & growing as much food as I can & canning & preserving as much of that as possible. So why not bring this level of value of life to my work lunches? Exactly.

I have been reading the Adventures in Bentomaking blog for years, & have always been inspired by it, but never acted on it. I've owned this adorable lunch box with cute compartments for years too (free sample from a previous job) but never use it.

So this week! Adorable Bento-Style lunches!

The thing is, I draw these imagines & sit down to paint them, & while I am watercoloring, sometimes my mind wanders. So this post to me now is more about leftovers & grocery shopping creatively on a budget, less about my own adventures in Bentos. Still a great blog, though.

First, Four Recent Bento-esque Lunches.

What these lunches make me think about is how telling they are of our recent life in food. The great thing about the boxes is that they are tiny, & perfect for small amounts of weird former meals in the fridge that you don't want to throw away but aren't enough for a meal. Seriously, I am really cheap & I hate to throw out food. Why haven't I always been doing this?
So these lunches are a product of the last week of dinners in our lives (& dinners are the emotional heart of this home of course). They create a picture, & this is what it looks like: a cheap giant bag of broccoli from Price Rite, New England Chinese Night based on a super sale at Stop & Shop last week on crab meat & pork, the Stop & Shop sale last month on lamb stew meat that led to lots of lamb in the freezer, a recent trip to the Asian Market for affordable peppers, ginger, lemongrass, & cilantro, last Saturday's family journey to New Bedford where we picked up good Fall River Linguica on the cheap at Friendly Fruit, & those jars of green tomato pickles in the fridge.
The Grocery Store really tells you everything you need to know about a person. Equally their leftovers. So here are mine. Judge me as you will.

Blogging With The Windows Open, & Green Times Three.

2011-04-11T21:10:00.002-04:00

We had our first 75+ day here in Western Massachusetts, & it was pretty sweet. There's is just something about being actually hot...outside in the early evening walking a hound dog beside a river with a breeze promising warm rain, wearing a t-shirt & a skirt, bare legs, bare arms (but cowboy boots of course). The water expectant with future swimming, the air carrying smells of grilled meat & green things growing. I can't help it, I love hot weather. Living in New Orleans totally ruined me, I like sweating.

Having the windows open after all these months of winter is a joyful experience. I slept in bliss last night because there was a constant breeze through the open window. & tonight, sitting in the kitchen after having fed the animals, drawing at the kitchen table with a glass of chilled white wine, hearing the random music from the Community Music Center next door, various conversations on the street, smells, & the feel on my skin of that warm, soft breeze. I love air. The worst part of winter is all that time inside.

Oh & the lack of fresh food possibly grown or gathered by oneself! Hey fresh food, you are almost here! Ramps, lettuces, fiddleheads, morels, oh yes!

& now it has begun to rain. Perfect. One of life's great pleasures=the sound & smell of warm rain with the windows open.

In a spring mood, although the garden is just beginning & the farmers markets haven't started & fiddleheads will be a while yet, I give you three green moments of early spring anticipation.

Green #1. Spring Sunday Dinner (we love Spring Dinners & Sunday Dinners!)(& dogs & cats):

4.3.11: Cilantro/Almond Pesto with Hot Italian Sausage & Peperoncini over Pappardelle.

I really love Cilantro Pesto. Very spring tasting, even if it's too early to grow it yet. So what, at least the bundle I used cost a dollar at the Asian Market. But Cilantro Pesto, check it out, made just like any Pesto, use any nuts, any cheese, olive oil, garlic, salt & pepper, a bunch of cilantro, you're there. & like Arugula Pesto, this is a good one to make spicy & add peppers or hot sauce. I wouldn't make it for my Grampa though.

Green #2: Recently buried in the back of the fridge I found several large Mason Jars of Spicy Green Tomato Pickles we pickled last fall at the end of our huge garden tomato crop. I guess they got forgotten back there in the fridge, but wow I just found them the other night & they are delicious.

We just mostly pickled them like they were cucumbers: sliced green (unripe green, not green heirloom) Mason Jar, allspice, mustard seed, garlic, coriander, cumin, whatever, salt, pepper & vinegar, & added some habaneros we also had in excess from the garden. These guys are really pretty great, also coming in handy for my new project, Bento Box Lunches For Work, inspired by this fabulous blog. (stay tuned).

September 2010-April 2011: Spicy Green Tomato Pickles From Last Year's Garden.

& finally, Green #3:

April 2011: A Sketch of Our Future 2011 Garden.

We have an additional plot there this year, so if all goes well, twice the food (If only we could somehow fit in chickens & a goat, maybe a sheep, maybe a cow, we could realize our dream of not buying food). We have tiny radishes, beets, & cabbages growing there. Chard & carrot seeds are planted (Bright Lights for the chard & Purple Haze & Atomic Red for the carrots). A gentle spring rain is falling on them right now.

We will be eating radish & lettuce salads from the garden before we know it. & drawing them, & swimming. & sleeping with the windows open all the time.

One For The Dog People: Introducing Walt. Plus Lentils & Cumin.

2011-04-04T20:43:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned, a little more than a month or so, we added a new family member to the EnD household:

Walt the Hound, February 2011.

Walt's feline sister, the country singing grey tiger cat DustyRose, has always been an important presence on this blog, as she is in my art, & my life. Walt is turning out to be an equally unique & fabulous animal, clearly the world's best dog to go with the world's best cat (or maybe I'm slightly biased? IDK, they are both seriously goodlooking & complete sweethearts).
Like DR, Walt turns out to be an excellent drawing companion,

Walt sleeping while I paint, 2.21.11

& Walty, A Sleepy Hound With A Tennis Ball, 3.29.11

There is something about a pile of sleeping animals in sight while working that has because a required studio element for me, like my preferred sketchbook, Pilot V-5 pens, the right music (usually the Mountain Goats), & a glass of cheap white wine. To get real work done, I need my pets. They give good solid feedback. Or they love me unconditionally & are cute. Whichever.
In a nod to remembering that this is supposed to be a food/art blog (whatever that means) & not a "my pets are cute" blog, a drawing of what the humans ate on Walty's first night as a resident of South Street (Walt ate dog food & bacon & Tator Tots, of course).

2.18.11: Lentils, Onions, & Broccoli, Over Potatoes Roasted in Olive Oil & Cumin (Walt's First Night).

So yeah, we have a dog now, it's pretty great. We also have twice, maybe eventually three times the garden space as last year. & we just actually cleaned the apartment. Other than the generally wretched weather, Spring 2011 is shaped up pretty positive so far.
Yes, we love cats. But we also love dogs. Wait for the drawings from the dog park. & Walt sleeping at our garden plot, also good. We also also recently acquired four Koi, so maybe I'll draw the fish too. & the baby plants! The world is my drawing oyster. & hopefully soon we are on Cape Cod eating actual oysters!
Or maybe I'll actually cook something & draw that. You never know. Eating & Drawing & Gardening & Pets?

Hot Dogs & Hound Dogs.

2011-03-29T21:49:00.000-04:00

Happy Spring!

A few random images, thoughts, meals, opinions, what have you.

First, we fairly recently acquired a spectacularly great hound dog, Walt, a red-brown & white spotted coonhound/pointer mix. On Walt's first night here on South Street, we brillantly left a plate of Tator Tots & bacon on the counter, leftover from our nervous "are we getting a dog today?!" breakfast (we had him on hold over night at Dakin to decide. Of course we were getting him.) This moment will always be special to me, because he hadn't shown much post-shelter-experience personality yet, so Walty on his hind legs at the kitchen counter eating bacon & Tator Tots off a plate with huge enthusiasm & a giant grin, was kind of wonderful. A Limoges china plate, no less. Ah dogs. He's a food hound. Remind me to draw him with his face in a 5lb bag of sugar on the couch after being left alone for three minutes.

2.19.11: Walt's First Night.

They were Price Rite generic Tator Tots, a brief new weakness of ours. But although the Tator Tots were trash food, Price Rite actually rules. Holier than thou co-op shoppers should really check out their produce section. Happily, we are getting really close to the season where we can grow all our own produce again, but the Chicopee Price Rite & their gorgeous & low priced jalapenos & ginger & chard has really helped me through this winter.

On that note, I have a confession. I really am kind of a food snob, in my own way. Let me explain. Although I have my weaknesses (you know, Price Rite generic Tator Tots or Cheeseburger flavored Doritos), I really am against processed food. It's not an indulgence or diet thing, not at all, because I cook everything in bacon grease or chicken fat, but I guess I just like to know my own indulgences, i. e. that chicken fat from the chicken I roasted the other night, not mystery ingredients. If I am going to eat a ton of fat, why not eat straight good slab bacon, not a McDonald's thing? I annoy the hell out of my dear partner, but I really don't like to eat fast food. I like to save money, but a fast food sandwich still costs more than the bacon scraps we sell at work, so whatever.

However, one night last March, in the grips of New England March depression (when will the snow truly stop! Snow forecasted for this weekend!), like what's happening now, pretty much, my dear boyfriend did convince me to buy a package of hot dogs & we ate this for dinner.

3.11.2010: Hot Dogs, Mac N' Cheese, & Broccoli.

At that point, we were still using up a case of free expired stupidly organic mac n' cheese any way we could (don't worry, we threw out the cheese packet, & made our own cream sauce. That's essential). But it was a glum March day & we were walking by the Mill River, & Owen said "Hot Dogs & Mac & Cheese for dinner!!!" & I agreed. That's love.

I won on the broccoli though. Broccoli in a cream sauce. Always good. As good as hot dogs seemed to me when I was five?

Ask Walt.

Piles Of Noodles, PIles Of Opinions.

2011-03-01T20:05:00.003-05:00

Welcome to my controversial world of noodles. Linguine, fettuccine, elbow macaroni, whatvever, noodles have also been one of my favorite things to draw. Long long long before I had a food blog I was painting piles of noodles everywhere. For example, this classic painting of mine:

"219", Acrylic on canvas, 2005

So, visually, I am all about the noodles. Gastronomically, they are actually not my first go to comfort food, or at the least not the classic Italian style pasta variety. I am a chickpea curry girl all the way, or spicy beef & soba. Milkshakes & onion rings, I'm all over that. I believe I have mentioned my opinion on the general American trend of paying way too much money for a large plate of crappy pasta, & eating it in a mall, probably. Why not eat cheap food with some complexity & flavor, a bowl of pho or steamed pork bun? & We all know my Grampa Diamond's strong opinions on red sauce. I guess it's a family thing.

That said, there is more to do with a box of fettuccine than dump some jar of sauce from the grocery store over it .

2.10.10: Homemade Red Sauce, With Bacon, Chicken, & Veggies.

3.2.10: Angel Hair, In White Wine & Butter, With Summer Squash, Thyme & Mushrooms.

I guess behind my ranting & raving ala Anthony Bourdain about the Olive Garden (we actually saw him do this that night) is that both these meals weren't particularly creative, didn't cost much money, hardly took any real time or effort & were delicious. Learn to cook your own food, rather than throwing away money on crappy American chain restaurants, please. Seriously, learn to cook, y'all, at least enough to cook some veggies in butter & olive oil, chop some garlic & onions, & boil water.
This is the lesson in the noodles.
(It is still very much winter, although it is March, I am therefore apparently still cranky).

Tegan & Sara, & Noodles & Cake & Friends.

2011-02-28T18:23:00.006-05:00

A little more than a year ago, two out of the ordinary events occurred on one winter night in Northampton: Tegan & Sara played at the Calvin Theatre, & someone besides Owen made me dinner.

Yes, last February, Melissa, Ashley, & I had tickets to see Tegan & Sara, & Melissa made Ashley & I dinner (Penne, Red Sauce), I brought the wine (of course) & Ashley brought a chocolatey thing from Woodstar.

The first Tegan & Sara album I owned, The Con, I bought on itunes immediately after my hand surgery in late November 2008, & I have very vivid memories of listening to it in an intense sort of way, tucked in bed with the laptop, vaguely pleasantly high on oxycodone & watching the snow out the window. Staying in bed after surgery gives one plenty of alone time to think, & all the details of those memories are really clear. Made for an interesting show, I guess.

2.12.10: Noodles, Wine & Cake at Melissa's, Tegan & Sara at the Calvin.

This blog did use to be a lot more about rock music, I guess I used to go out more. Back when it was just me & the cat, before we decided (mutually) to add a boyfriend & a dog into the family. It's still about rock music in the sense that it is very difficult for me to paint or write without music, but maybe I should see go see more shows.

Owen & I saw the Corin Tucker Band at the Iron Horse back in the fall, if I can remember what we ate first I'll try to draw that one, because that show was amazing. Sleater-Kinney! Rules!

(Ashley is from Oregon, so somehow this train of thought makes sense?)

Don't worry though, Owen, Ali, Katie & I have tickets for Loretta Lynn this Saturday, & that's sure to be an art piece. Hopefully that show begins with a lovely meal with lovely people like this one did.

Winter 2010, In Random Dinners.

2011-02-26T19:51:00.009-05:00

I'm still in a similar mental place to my last post, still feeling archivey, still hiding out in our room, still digging around in the old sketchbooks & rediscovering memories through drawings. Winter is still totally kicking my ass, so my motivation for complicated projects & exciting new recipes is low.

What has been keeping me going throughout these last (hopefully) weeks of horrible snowy icy slushy winter (spring! gardens! soon!) has been just the appreciation of our everyday life here, that we make time to cook & eat dinner together even when it's complicated, even when we hate each other, that we collect objects we like & live in a space that however cluttered & messy looks like us, that we have sweet sweet animals, good kitchen stuff & a cozy home.

Last winter was our first few months of really living together, so these pages of my sketchbook are especially sweet to me.

It is really feeling right now that Winter 2011 is never ever going to end, so to give us hope, some moments from Winter 2010, which did end eventually, becoming this.

1.11.10: Black Bean Chicken Chili.

1.13.2010: Scallops & Noodles.
1.19.10: Sausages & Peppers & Spinach & Whiskey Shots.
1.12.2010: Thyme & Shallot Salmon Fillet, With Broccoli & Cheese.
3.7.10: Weird Curry Stir-Fry.
Sometimes I just want to leave the pictures here by themselves, because to me, the specific details alone mean so much.

We ate this on this date, & it looked like this. That comforts me, when life seems bizarre & overwhelming, I guess just like actually cooking food does.

Would anyone care about that? Does anyone care anyway? When I was in art school I kept a very specific food I ate journal in my sketchbook, maybe I should just start posting those.

But I love those pages, when I look back, even as I laugh at how pretentious I was. Sometimes I can feel the specific moment, smell it, taste it, just from reading those lists.

Damn this blog is getting verbal!

I'll try to dig myself out of this hole soon, the potential of this sort of meal will help, but I have a few more of these style posts planned for the next month or so, then it's garden time.

Steak & Broccoli, With Cheese Or Noodles, Old School Or Spicy.

2011-02-21T18:59:00.007-05:00

We are adrift in classics over here lately. Sometimes I want this to be a cooking blog where I tell you all about fancy menus, sometimes I just get into the charm of the details of everyday life, i.e. what did I eat for dinner back on that particular day in January? Along these lines, I notice certain themes, such as steak & broccoli, for example. What better to follow up the poetry of chicken?
A thing we do here is to purchase large cheap cuts of steak, chop them up (Owen loves his meat cleaver), & keep them in the freezer. Frequently this meat is crappy, 'cause, y'know, we are bargain shoppers, so sometimes we really have to get creative with it. Which brings us to cheap steak's good grocery store cousin broccoli, my good old friend: an excellent winter vegetable, it keeps forever in the fridge, can be really inexpensive if you forgo the organic (which guess what, we do), is pretty high up there in the nutrient department, is a nice, substantial satisfying thing to eat for a vegetable, & is delicious. & it looks like little trees! Yay broccoli, you really save my life in winter when we can't grow our own vegetables & most of the stuff in the grocery store is overpriced & tasteless.

1.10.10: A Big Ol' Sunday Night Steak, Drenched in Cheese Sauce, Covered In Broccoli. 2.20.11: Noodly Steak & Broccoli With Ginger, Lemongrass, Lime & Chilis.

Two meals, about one year apart, same kitchen, same people & cat (Only now we have a dog-stay tuned for details!). Basic cheese & meat Americana, or improvised Vietnamese-eqsue with lots of flavor & spice. Both just ordinary nights at home, no special ingredients, nothing special really except for being good meals eaten at home with love.I guess this takes me back to the beginning. Sometimes I think the pages of my sketchbook where I just drew some random unremarkable dinner we had are so pointless, & yet sometimes I look back through them & I remember.
Ah, the beauty of the details.

A Nod To The Humble Chicken.

2011-02-16T21:09:00.009-05:00

It's not all duck & lamb on this blog. I have a great fondness for that humble protein, the chicken. A grocery store classic, a childhood memory, an ionic kitchen image, a barnyard pet, what's not to like? It's cheap, it's always on sale Buy 1 Get 2 Free at the Big Y, it's versatile, & if our future goes according to our long term plan, we'll be able to eat our own someday & really see where our meat comes from. Visually pleasing yard creatures who bring us eggs, have crazy feathers, & can become stew? Wow.
As we are still enjoying archive month here, I present some chicken meals we ate about a year ago, just random things we through together creatively on work nights, mostly.

1.2.10: With Hot Sauce & Blue Cheese, & Collards & Bacon.

2.24.10: Snow Day, Roasted With Rutabagas & Thyme.

2.26.10: Leftover Stir-Fry With Broccoli & Brussels Sprouts, Over Rice Or Udon Noodles.

3.10.10: With Apple Sage Stuffed Delicata Squash & Melted Gorgonzola & Olives.

3.9.10: Buffalo Style & Blue Cheese Dipping Sauce.

As Owen as says, we are well on our way to being a ceramic chicken museum at our house, well well on our way. As I type this, I can see a truly impressive selection of chicken imagery. I guess I like those delicious birds.
So thank you, chickens, the more exotic proteins are lovely, but as one of our major themes here is living well yet cheaply, we appreciate you. You bring us many dinners, & warm dinners are truly a miracle during a Massachusetts winter. The garden veggies can't start soon enough...

Tarts, Or How To Be A Broke Food Diva.

2011-02-10T19:28:00.010-05:00

More from the fabulous, fabulous EnD archives, this one from just about a year ago. An excellent no-groceries-ordinary-night dinner secret is the TART, filled with whatever random items you can find. Leftovers, frozen veggies, odd possibly expired cheap canned goods from Ocean State or Deals & Steals, whatever. Once you have mastered a decent pie crust from scratch, which is easier than you think, whip one up, clean out the weird crap from the freezer, & you have something worthy of Martha herself (I think it's the word "tart". Sounds fancy). Just keep flour & butter in the house, & enjoy the innuendos.

Carmelized Onion, Pinenut, Spinach & Goat Cheese Tart, February 2010.

So sounds impressive, right? well, Martha wouldn't be Martha if she didn't know how to work it. As I may have mentioned I get a lot of free & random groceries from work, & other than that am underpaid & broke, which certainly leads us to not grocery shop & work with what we have.
A Classic EnD theme.
Another tip along these lines are caramelized onions which only require butter & a bag of cheap onions & yet taste way more delicious than that implies. So yeah, the free pinenuts & goat's cheese are totally a work perk for me, but if it wasn't, this would have tasted awesome with cheap swiss cheese from Stop & Shop & just the onions & frozen spinach. Garlic is cool, also cheap bulk spices from the Asian Market. Thinly slice a cheap russet potato, drizzle it in olive oil (don't tell anyone but if you can't afford olive, just use whatever you can get your hands on) & throw it on there. It's all about what you can do with the simplest, cheapest, most basic things.
If you can't cook well with expensive ingredients, lord help you. If you cook well with only expensive ingredients, you are an amateur. Cook something right on while dead broke with whatever you can find that still makes your boyfriend happy & you're there, way more impressive than any Iron Chef challenge.

A Trip Down Memory Lane & More: Cape Cod, January 2010.

2011-02-09T20:10:00.005-05:00

Late winter on this blog is traditionally when I dig back through my archives from the past year or so, aka all those unfinished drawings of things I ate & cooked, just sitting in my sketchbook waiting for me. So expect very little time continuity in posting whatsoever for the next month or so. Here comes random food moments from 2010.
Tonight I bring you a little story from last January, in fact the first trip Owen took with me to my Mom's house in Brewster, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. First of oh so many. He already knew my dear sister quite well at this point, & had met my Mom & stepmom Barb briefly over Christmas, & then of course this magical trip to New Bedford, my original hometown. It turned out New Bedford was not the only place we had in common, & that Owen's family is from very close on the Cape to mine, & essentially we grew up with the same childhood summer. This trip was full of firsts: Owen sleeping in my teenaged bedroom, Owen & I on the Cape together, & me bringing someone home who knew where they were.
I believe I had previously mentioned that my mother is an excellent cook...

Dinner With Mum: Roast Pork With Pears, Red Onions, Gorgonzola & Rosemary Still Growing In The Winter Garden, Over Rice, A Green Salad, & Apple Pecan Muffins.

The next day, a sandwiches at the beach, a Cape Cod ritual, these particular sandwiches an Italian (ham, salami & peppers) for Owen & a chicken salad with cranberries & walnuts for me, from Nauset Market, with Utz Salt n' Vinegar potato chips, eaten on a bench overlooking Marconi Beach in Wellfleet. (Owen's sandwich choice was better than mine. Somehow a year later I still remember that clearly, shows where my priorities lie, I guess). But Utz chips freaking rule & so does eating a sandwich by the ocean on Cape Cod with someone you love in January.

Sandwiches & Chips At Marconi In January.

& before we left for home back in Northampton, pizza with the family, the current favorite (circa January 2010 of course) of Spinners Pizza's Chicken BLT ranch from Ring Bros. Market in Dennis, with the constant sides on Seamans Lane, Brewster, wine & a green salad.

BLT Ranch Pizza, Salad, Wine.

So there you go, a homecoming & meeting the family & road trip (&eating) story all in one. Welcome to Archive Month. Just paging through all these sketchbooks opens up so memories, whoah, I GUESS THAT'S WHY I DRAW. Go figure.

The Moussaka Story: 2009-2011 aka Lamb Part Four.

2011-02-08T18:35:00.000-05:00

I promised Moussaka (many many times) & so Moussaka you shall have. This recipe came from the original Saveur Lamb special issue that prompted the Lamb Week 2009 in the first place. This was intended to be the signature dish of the entire series, but hey late is better than never, that's our slogan on this blog, so here we are, February 2011, & I present: Moussaka.
A Moussaka is basically a Greek version of eggplant parmesan, more spicy, with lamb. You begin with a ground lamb based spiced red sauce, by sauting lamb, onions, & peppers in olive oil, adding nutmeg, ginger, & cayenne, then simmering with tomatoes. Meanwhile, fry thin slices of potato & eggplant, & create a bechamel sauce. Layer the fried potato & eggplant slices, cover in each layer in red sauce, then cover the whole thing in the bechamel sauce, bake for about an hour, then serve, anyway you like, as you will see below, Moussaka is extremely versatile (& delicious).

12.9.09. The making of a Moussaka.

I made this first as part of my lamb series back in 2009, & more recently, early January of this year, my Mum was coming to visit & as she is a fantastic cook & usually cooks totally fantastic meals for us every second when we are on the Cape, I wanted to make her something special. During a pre-visit phone call with Mum discussing Lebanese food, breads, spices, etc. (as phone calls tend to run in my family), my brain started traveling through various food & taste channels, & I remembered this recipe, rather time & labor intensive for a week night dinner, perfect for an evening of relaxed talking & cooking time with your family in your kitchen.

MOUSSAKA 2009 & 2011

(2011 featuring Mum's white huge Danish cast iron enamel pan we just inherited).

Back in 2009, I actually did make this on a whim on a weeknight, & it turned out Owen had to work super late, then like a sensible man went out for a drink after, maybe I didn't mention to him that I was making something that takes several hours for dinner? Nope, I sure didn't. Pretty good 1am post bar snack though, served over Israeli couscous, because I was into Israeli couscous & lamb back then.

Late Night Dinners: Owen Eats Moussaka At 1am.

Moussaka was good over Israeli couscous that night (I did eat myself, obviously, but it was much earlier, because who could seriously resist those smells, so I got to draw Owen eating). But it's also mindblowing over lots of things, because it's is a spicy, meaty, creamy, saucy thing, & hence the leftovers are excellent, so the next night we ate them over a green salad with avocado slices (I love love love super heavy things with salad + avocados with warm food).

Leftovers: Moussaka & Salad.

Which brings us back to the present, Moussaka 2011 version (because contrary to the above drawing, that was not the conclusion to Lamb Week, not even close. It's gonna be a really long week). Created in our kitchen in Northampton with Mum & Ali & DustyRose, eaten at our kitchen table with homemade parathas (our new thing, to be covered in it's own post), then the all important leftovers enjoyed by Mum & Ali in Turner's Falls in Ali's apartment the next day & simultaneously enjoyed by Jed & I at the kitchen table here on South Street on a snowy night, over linguine, with grated cheese & a bottle of wine.

2011 Moussaka: With Mum & Parathas, With Jed & Noodles.

There you have it, the story of one humble Moussaka. Just look at the cast of characters who eventually showed up in this simple food story, all those memories now attached to every future bite.
& We are not in fact done with lamb, I just realized that I have made a lamb curry about once a week this winter (how else to survive horrible constant snow & ice winter 2011?) & yet not drawn one. Fortunately one was served at Owen's 26th Birthday Dinner Party just the other night, so I will get right on that (in like a year or two, you know, something like that).
Stay warm & ice free & eat some lamb! xoxo Eating & Drawing

Happy Birthday, Owen (With Lamb).

2011-02-05T20:38:00.006-05:00

One year ago tonight, February 5th 2010, I was marinating a leg of lamb for Owen's 25th birthday dinner party the next day, February 6th 2010. My how time flies. It sure has been a long time since Lamb Week began, almost a year & a half now, so much lamb so many memories. This post from more recent times inspired me to go digging in the sketchbooks, & wow SO MUCH UNPOSTED LAMB. (Note to self: Get on that. Hint: Moussaka, finally).

Owen's Birthday Eve 2010 & A Leg Of Lamb Marinating Overnight In All The Good Stuff: Red Wine, Garlic, Balsamic Vinegar, Fresh Thyme & Olive Oil.

February 6, 2010: Owen Turns 25, over Lamb, Potatoes & Shallots, Brussels Sprouts, & Lamb Gravy, With Ali, Katie, & Melissa.

Happy Birthday Eve 2011 Baby. 26 tomorrow & more delicious food. It's my Gramma's 76th birthday today, so Happy Birthday Gramma also. Much love to you both.

More Cape Cod Summer, Now With Red Sauce.

2011-02-05T18:36:00.010-05:00

On another night of disgusting winter weather (waahh! Ice storm!) EnD brings you another Cape Cod Summer Vacation Memory.

I believe that I have mentioned my Grampa's strong opinions on food. Never challenge him on burgers, & never, ever dispute the glory of his homemade red sauce & stuffed shells. Apparently he had an Italian friend growing up in Brockton, Massachusetts, aka The City Of Champions, in the 1930's, & his mother taught my Grampa all her red sauce secrets. Yeah, so he doesn't believe that fresh herbs from the garden could possibly work as well as a jar of dried "Italian seasoning." There's no arguing with the man: his stuffed shells & homemade red sauce are the best dish known to the food community wordwide, no exceptions. Take that, Thomas Keller. You would so lose in a throwndown with Bob Diamond.
During our family vacations, Grampa waits around with anticipation for a rainy day. Why? STUFFED SHELLS. He gets up first thing after his 7am donut & coffee on the beach & starts the sauce, & fiddles with it all day. I believe he wakes up happy that first rainy day of vacation, just thinking sauce.

Rainy Day Italian Diamond Family Dinner: Grampa's Stuffed Shells, Pesto From Mum's Back Porch Basil, Garden Salad, Tomato Basil Bread from the Underground, Extra Cheese, Extra Sauce.
& Since Ali made it down from Turner's in time for dinner, the whole family: Mum & Barb, Gramma & Grampa, Ali & Katie, Liz & Owen, & Stella & Roxie (RIP sweet dog).

Guess what else we love in this family & on this blog of course? LEFTOVERS. What does it all mean? PIZZA PARTY because you can bet Grampa made way too much red sauce. Owen whipped up a bunch of pizza crust, Mum brought out the pesto & some chicken, & there you go.

Pizzas: Red With Cheese, Pesto With Chicken & Goat's Cheese, Pesto With Carmelized Onions & Cheese, A Calzone From All The Extra Ingredients.
& Blueberry Pie, Because It Was A Cape Cod Summer.

Surprise, surprise, Grampa Diamond wouldn't go anywhere near either Pesto based pizza. & the next day, the Brockton Pizza, specifically the pizza from the Cape Cod Cafe (confusingly located in Brockton, which for those not versed in Massachusetts locations, is not on the Cape at all) vs. All Other Pizza On Earth Wars began when my Aunt Jean innocently drove down with about a million Cape Cod Cafe pizzas. Don't ever talk down very thin crust around members of the Diamond side of my family, in fact, don't say any pizza not produced in Brockton is good at all. Really. Just don't.
Any way, it was a gorgeous July day on Cape Cod, our small family had enough pizzas for an army, & we brought it to the beach & ate it inches from the shoreline. Imagine that, back when the earth wasn't buried under ice, sleet, slush, & snow.
I love my Grampa Diamond, he won't eat green food or let me cook but I love him anyway. By some standards my red sauce kicks his red sauce's ass, but really, he wins.

Sunday Night One Pot Dinners: Lamb Stew.

2011-02-05T13:06:00.003-05:00

Winter Survival Strategy #1: Warm cozy Sunday Night dinners, rich meaty things that can be cooked in one pot, & take hours so that the house fills up with warmth & good smells. This has definitely become a tradition around here this winter, & some of our favorite choices involved LAMB. Lamb has a long, yummy history on this blog, & on this particular dark & gloomy night,

Lamb Stew, with jed & owen, january 2011.

Lamb stew meat, a purple turnips, a carrot, a rutabaga, some potatoes, onions, & garlic, all simmered in lots of red wine & meat stock (we used duck stock this time because there was still some left in the freezer from this meal). Jed unexpectedly showed up on our doorstep with a magnum of Rex Goliath right before the stew was ready. Perfect Winter Sunday Night. Friends & food & wine & conversation around the table in winter, a classic New England winter survival tactic.

Cali Part Four: George's Drive-In aka The Conclusion.

2011-02-01T21:51:00.004-05:00

Here we are, at the end of our journey, begun just a bit more than a week previous. Pretty much losing our minds with good reason at this point. But we are DIAMONDS, goddamn-it, & so we rallied.

I promised you a good, brilliant, unarguably totally & completely awesome meal, & so I present to you:

George's Drive In, Magnolia Ave, Riverside, California.

& Ali,

with our delicious food, aka A Giant Coke, Two Carne Asada Burritos, Fried Zucchini, & Hot Sauce & Magic Dipping Sauce, Eaten By Two Girls In A Parking Lot In Old California.
& Then Those Girls Flew Home, After Eating the Leftovers Waiting In LAX.
Behind the burritos, the day we thought we couldn't take anymore & then found George's (because the sign said "Homemade Fried Zucchini" & we said "Why Not?", & a Goodwill bringing us cowboy boots for Ali & a rainbow Wrangler shirt for Owen & Ali put our dipping sauce into the ice left in our massive Coke in the trunk of our Grampa-borrowed Mustang Convertible so we could eat it later with the leftovers (& yes we did).

It took me way too long to finish telling this story, but it took me way too long to get around to living it also.

So there you have it, the Liz & Ali California saga 2010, dedicated to my very dearest sister Ali, of course, without whom none of the good bits would have been possible. xoxo

A Snowy Night In January, Remembering Chanukah.

2011-02-01T17:48:00.003-05:00

We are having some sort of ridiculous blizzard in Western Massachusetts, & can be considered officially snowed in here on South Street. Welcome to horrible Winter 2011, where it snows every minute. Snowed in with a glass of wine, I find myself examining my sketchbook, which has been tragically neglected lately. There I found this:

First Night Of Chanukah 2010, Liver & Latkes.

Back on the first of December, it was also a shitty night, weather-wise, although back then we didn't realize quite what we were in for. But it was rainy & chilly & blustery, & Owen unexpectedly had the night off, & it was Chanukah. You can't have a holiday without a special meal, right? (At least I can't). We were kind of broke per usual & I hadn't planned anything, so leaving work that afternoon I channeled my Gramma Bess & bought some liver, onions, & potatoes, & we stopped off on the way home for a big bottle of Manischewitz. Hence, a 133 South Chanukah celebration of homemade chopped liver, latkes, & terrible kosher wine, eaten around the kitchen table after lighting the first candle. Liver reminds me of my Gramma, although her chopped liver came from Sol's Deli in new Bedford & her latkes came from a box & she would have made a brisket, too. There is a balance to recreating a tradition, keeping some things the same as you remember but making your own memories too. I think the Liz, Owen , & DustyRose family is off to a good start, we have certainly made homemade latkes & special Chanukah meals a memorable occasion. So enjoy the snowstorm, everyone, & remember being snowed in for days = much eating & drawing.

Cape Cod Summer.

2010-12-07T20:33:00.005-05:00

That last post got me thinking, & going back through my summer sketchbook, back to this past summer's family visit, to Cape Cod. & about my family. Yes this did indeed happen on this blog last year. I am apparently quite the creature of habit. So my family, we gather in a little house by a lake in the woods in Brewster, Massachusetts during the summer months, & we spend a great deal of time in the water & in the sun, & being us, we eat things.

Meals on the deck (this happens frequently):

Mum's Famous Panko Fried Cod, Purple Beans & Snap Peas & Basil from our garden, sauted with olive oil & garlic, a broccoli cheese casserole (cause hey, you can't leave your fridge in Noho full of those things while relaxing on the Cape for a week, can you?) & "yummy crusty bread" from the Underground. Good way to arrive anyplace, right? Mum never disappoints with the fried fish thing.

Owen reading with Stella on a summer evening.
No visit would be complete without a visit to Clancy's & drinking white wine with Gramma at the bar. Here it is in all it's glory, the Fisherman's platter. Yes, Owen & I both ate one. Yes we did. & A Fried Oyster appetizer, too.

HELLS YEAH FRIED SEAFOOD!!!

Owen, Grilling On the Deck.
& Owen & Mum, On The Porch, With Wine & Cigarettes. Oh Summer.
Now that Ali & I have been to Cali & back, & now that it's SO FREAKING cold & time for roasting ducks & not grilling on decks, I like to remember these warmer times. Here's to surviving another winter, & getting back out there on the lake in about six months.

Cali Part Three: Family Drinking & Mall Culture

2010-12-04T20:57:00.008-05:00

& We're back.

At this point in our trip, I can say truthfully that we were losing our minds.

Here's what that looks like, Cali-style:

A Pair Of Chicken Dinners:

Part A: Old School Chicken, Carrots, Potatoes & Peas with Gramma, Grampa & Cousin Amy (following pinto grigio at 5 pm in the hot tub as went our Corona custom)

& Part B: Chicken, Onion, & Green Pepper Sandwiches at Uncle Bob's House, aka The Diamond Family Bar. With Top Gun (Ali, was it Top Gun? Now I'm blocking out the details?!) & copious amounts of scotch. Yup, weird night. Thank Christ it included the adorable puppy Bailey!

What could follow up a night of drinking at your family's own personal bar better then a truly old fashioned day of SO-CAL MALL CULTURE. Oh yes, the Diamond sisters meet a GIANT MALL. In the desert.

In short, our visit caused us to become addicted to Jamba Juice & Ross Dress for Less (actually, these are both re-addictions for me, I acquired them living in San Francisco & have been coping with the withdrawal ever since).

When Liz & Ali drove a red Ford Mustang convertible through the Hills:

to drink smoothies in flavors such as Green Tea Matcha & Pumpkin Pie & purchase discount Marc Jacobs scarves, gigantic Le Sportsac totes & sequined dresses of no brand name whatsoever but still beautiful,

(thank you Ali, I stll remember that is one of my Christmas presents)

So I mentioned Romano's Macaroni Grill? Same mall as the smoothies & shopping, 4:45pm on the dot, Diamond Cousin Reunion.

This type of crap food still makes me angry, but on the other hand I haven't had dinner with all four Diamond grandchildren in about ten years, so maybe I'll let this one go (Cousin Erin seems to have become a grown-up now, who knew?).

However, I must mention the following: that the waiter drew on the table with a crayon, offered the house Chianti as his wine selection, took his half hour break during our dinner, & served me a glass of wine I had ordered approximately 45 minutes before after the check came. Did I mention the food was crap? & Really quite expensive? How do places like this shithole get away with these shenanigans? Are we really that stupid as a food culture? (yes yes I know I know) (I guess I haven't let it go but REALLY?! In ten minutes with $3 I could have made better food for four with ten dollars I could have had better wine too) But anyway,

Seafood Linguine & Loster Ravioli, aka Mediocre Food & An Excellent Family,

(love&thanks Ali, Gramma, Grampa, Amy & Erin)

We did have one truly great meal, Ali & I, & eventually, I'll end this saga on that note.

Hint: Deep Fried Zucchini & Carne Asada. & That meal carried us through LAX & home again.

Bunny & Root Vegetables.

2010-12-03T20:30:00.005-05:00

Question: What do you eat as a side along with Roast Duck & 40's of Olde English 800?

(Yup, more from our pre-Thanksgiving/Harvest Moon dinner. )

Answer: The Bunny & Veggie Course, obviously.

Quartered Rabbit roasted in butter & garlic with Butternut Squash, Scarlet Turnips, & Yellow Onions (all Western Massachusetts locally grown, if you care about that sort of thing), Wilted Broccoli Rabe in olive oil, & Owen's homemade Last Minute Dinner Rolls.

Helpful tip from EnD: Several times during the course of the day in which we made this meal, it was pointed out to us that rabbit is not a complete food. Very deficient in amino acids or something, damn you vegan animals that aren't cows. Who knew everyone knew this fact? So, if on a wilderness adventure, I urge you, cook a duck, too.

Roast Duck & A Triad of 40's.

2010-11-27T20:35:00.006-05:00

A little pre-Thanksgiving get together at our house with the always fabulous Izaac

(Yup, the infamous gentleman who inspired the Bacon Lasagna, always an EnD Classic).

Roast Duck & three 40's of Olde English 800

(thank you Izaac),

Under a Theatrical Harvest Moon.

Roast Duck = Marinated in Soy Sauce, Cheap Red Wine (thank you, Carlo), Olive Oil, Sesame Oil, Fresh Rosemary, & Chopped Garlic, Roasted with Stuffing of Bread, Onions, Garlic, Pumpkin Seeds, Slab Bacon, & Duck Liver.

& we cooked other cute little animals in the course of this meal, also (sorry bunnies).

Yay chilly dramatic November weather & Meat n' Beer fests with friends.

Cali Part Two: Grilled Cheeses at Old Spanish Missions, Burger Arguments, & BACON.

2010-11-09T19:20:00.006-05:00

So Diamond Daughters in the great state of California, continued.

In which Gramma drives us to Riverside, & we get lost & end up at the city limits with the auto parts stores, & we eventually arrive at the Mission Inn, see some parrots, & eat grilled cheeses in Mum's (allegedly, Gramma tells these stories sometimes) favorite lunch spot, Simple Simon's.

Grilled Cheeses In Old Spanish California, After Being Lost In The Urban California Desert.

At some later point, we had this burger conflict. First, Grampa Diamond is self-admittedly terrible at grilling. Only burgers he is good at. This makes him a burger crazy person. I, as an adult, have formed my own burger preferences, & mine include Hellman's mayonnaise as a must & Sriracha as yes yes please & crazy additions as hells yeah what have you got? As you can see here. Sooooooo...I wanted my mayonnaise, some chopped jalapenos, & a sliced perfect avocado & whoah was I shot down. Oh families. PEOPLE FROM BROCKTON, MA DO NOT PUT FING AVOCADOS ON MEAT. END OF STORY. I forget this.

(Note, Ali, a burger girl is anyone is, did agree with him, so I give his taste buds the benefit of the doubt).

Anyway, I present,

Grampa's "Perfect" Burger.

To comfort us from all this terrible family burger conflict, Saturday morning breakfast. The most essential one, the Platonic ideal of breakfast, why bacon smells good like nothing else to me, & why I can never be a vegetarian.

Breakfast with Bob

(Fried Eggs, Bacon, Thomas' English Muffins, Always & Forever).

Coming up: We find our perfect Liz & Ali restaurant after almost dying of depression in a giant California mall, we purchase sparkly discounted things while drinking smoothies, have a more odd than even usual for us family evening, & a moving & memorable in emotional terms but so upsettingly bad foodwise Anthony Bourdain would cry Macaroni Grill experience. Seafood Linguine. Shudder. All coming up next. Stay Tuned.

Cali Part One: 3000 Miles From Cheezits to Red Snapper

2010-11-08T19:27:00.006-05:00

Some things have happened since my last long ago post, mostly spring & summer & hence gardening & nightswimming & long evenings outside & much less internet. Also some family happenings, & what says family history memory the most?

Yup, food (which shapes our lives, etc.).

My dear sister & I flew on a plane to California in October.

Being us, we ate things. Lots of things.

Through the Sky to Dallas & LA.

Airports, airplanes, drive-thrus, & our Gramparents' House: Cheezits in the air, Starbucks' Iced Caramel Macchiatos, a Blimpie's BLT sub in Dallas, "El Potato Burrito" @ Miguel's Jr, Grampa's Famous Stuffed Shells back on Eureka Street.

So we knew we were home, in that sense of being at home in one's own past,

Grampa's Roast Beef & Sides, AKA The Taste Of My ChildHood.

The meal that I thought of first when we planned the journey. The smell that still means "FOOD" to me. Roast beef covered in pepper & onions, whipped mashed potatoes with tons of butter, canned peas, steamed carrots.

I think this meal is why I like to eat, why I learned to cook. So I could produce this feeling myself. I still can't cook this right though. Better maybe, but not right.

A classic shopping adventure with Gramma, to a (at least to me) fabulously insane California mall restaurant, The Elephant Bar.

The Elephant Bar, where two girls from Massachusetts meet Americana + Sushi.

Seriously. We split a tempura shrimp roll, & then I had ahi tuna over brown rice with seaweed salad & smoked tofu, & Ali enjoyed mac n' cheese & coconut shrimp. All presented in a completely over the top fashion with oddly low lighting as befits a fancy/trashy mall restaurant. According to Gramma, the bar was also an excellent place to meet men. We unfortunately did not get a chance to check this out theory.

Although the Elephant Bar was a tough act to follow & Although I am 32 & Ali is 27 we will always be "the kids" to our grandparents, one night they actually let us cook dinner. This was a very difficult trip in many ways while it was also perfectly wonderful in others, & in one of our worst early moments we found a grocery store we liked, the delightful Henry's, & it saved everything. Shows what food, & the option to purchase the food you want, will do to save a situation. We took many, many a trip to Henry's to enjoy the lovely cashiers who did not look at us & our outfits like we were crazy freaks like pretty much everyone else in Corona, & buy very cheap but delicious California white wines to drink in the jacuzzi & avocados & tomatillos & chilis & lemons & grapefruits & other amazing California things. What can I say? We like to eat in our family. Those first bags of groceries we brought home from Henry's were a turning point.

On this particular night: Red Snapper, with Asparagus roasted with garlic & olive oil, Baked Potatoes, & Salad with excellent California tomatoes & bermuda onions.

I will admit I caved under pressure so this is my mom's classic recipe for baked fish with butter & bread crumbs (my Grampa's favorite, always), usually as we are from Cape Cod done with cod. & I never make baked potatoes & had to actually ask Ali how to do it. But Oh well I wanted Grampa to like it. At least I snuck in the asparagus, kind of controversial in that house as not a pea or a carrot.

Us two transplanted Massachusetts girls spent ten days in our second childhood home, & as you have noticed, it was complicated. Stayed tuned for the rest, Family & Food & Feeling, here we go.

& Red Convertibles! & Shopping! & Pumpkin Smoothies!

I Tried To Make A Pretty Food Drawing, & This Is What Happened.

2010-06-08T21:15:00.007-04:00

I made a truly beautiful, garden greens based dinner last night, & tonight attempted to draw it, in the usual fashion employed on this blog. Somehow, something went wrong. I've been trying to confine my collage side to this sort of thing, but I don't know, maybe forced separation never works. I started drawing *seriously* again because I felt like at DnD I wasn't taken seriously because I just glued shit together, so I started this drawing blog/collage blog nonsense. Of course, in my life as an artist, this is maybe the 300th time I quit collage, tried to draw like a *real* artist, got bored with that, collaged more, decided my collages were stupid, started trying to look like a RISD graduate again. Oh but wait, RISD painters hate the illustrators anyway, so what the fuck am I trying to do? Trying to figure out the conflict between people thinking my drawings of plants are pretty & only being happy gluing scraps of paper together in the midst of a big mess. Why do I care what people think? Because I have a very expensive prestigious art degree & yet work in a grocery check out aisle for crap money? Naturally low self esteem? You tell me.

Is this an art blog, or a food blog anyway? Collage or drawing or watercolour? Or just mine? I really do love to cook, but I was never able to apply myself fully to truly practical tasks, I was born a fine artist.

That's a lot of talk for one picture. So here's how it is.

The Meal: Napa Cabbage Egg Rolls with a sesame chili dipping sauce, Saag Paneer with white basmati rice, served on a bed of green leaf lettuce (spinach, napa cabbage, lettuce all from yesterday's first major garden harvest at our garden).

The Drawing:

"I need freezer space for party/CRACK." 6.8.2010.

I guess my true colours just came out.

Napa Cabbage.

2010-06-01T22:10:00.003-04:00

Our kitchen table, May 2010:

One half a gigantic Napa Cabbage from our garden, next to its other half, soaking in salt for kimchi.

A 2nd Vegan Spring Dinner Party (Grills & Gardens).

2010-05-30T21:31:00.005-04:00

A 2nd chapter in the Liz & Rin Have A Dinner Party With Our Cute Boyfriends saga.

The rules, as always, go as follows: 1. no pre-planning of the menu. 2. spend little to nothing on ingredients. 3. Be wildly decadent & excessively creative anyway.

The themes for this occasion? The grill Owen & I had bought the night before & hadn't had the chance to try out yet & the beginnings of our garden produce & a delightfully hot, midsummeresque late May evening.

The menu: 1. Mesculin Salad with Radishes & Silvered Almonds, & a Fresh Herb Vinegrette.

2. Garden Greens & Pickled Radishes: Spinach & Napa Cabbage sauted in kimchi juice with picked radishes & a vidalia onion.

3. Shit On The Grill: Vegan Sausages (only for Rin will I consume a vegan sausage), & zucchini, corn, & green peppers.

4. Beer, Wine & the Latest Issue of Cosmo.

Finally, this meal was almost entirely fregan, composed mainly of free things from my work or things we grew or made.

Spinach, napa cabbage, radishes, dill, cilantro, & Mesculin mix = garden produce.

Zucchini, green peppers, corn, oranges, olive oil, silvered almonds= free from work.

Onion, garlic, sausages, shallot, & white wine vinegar, plus condiments = purchased (mostly from the asian market or Deals & Steals).

Kimchi & salad dressing=homemade.

Cost of meal= maybe $2 or $3 a person. Not a bad way to live.

Garden Food Begins: Lettuce & Radishes.

2010-05-27T21:27:00.006-04:00

Within the last few weeks, our garden plot has suddenly started to produce real food. Weird. Seeds are rather magical that way. You put some very tiny things in the ground in early April, & suddenly so much gorgeous food is free.

We start with lettuce, oh so much, we are actually swimming in lettuce right now, Salad City, this is from our Mesculin patch, begun from some seeds acquired from the Lost & Found at work, planted in a small plastic pot in the living room way too early when I had garden spring fever & forgotten, they mysteriously turned out very well & now are a whole glorious row in the garden...& then there is the green leaf, the red leaf, the butter crunch, the red boston...yup, we got lettuce.

& radishes, here shown being pickled in the liquid from some previously homemade kimchi. Soon we will have black radishes, too.
& the garden is really starting to step up the pace...spinach, huge insane napa cabbages (more kimchi in progress right now in the kitchen), dill, cilantro, basil, the broccoli just started flowering, the first strawberry turned red, the red chard doubles in size every day...you get the picture. WAY more local then your produce, no matter where you buy it (co-op in-joke). & yesterday we bought a tiny grill for our downtown Noho backyard. Meat is being grilled as I type this. YAY summer.

Impromptu Stuffed Mushrooms.

2010-04-18T00:22:00.006-04:00

A typical night 'round here of, lots of random crap in the kitchen, what do we do with it? i.e. we live off of free crap from work & buy very limited groceries, etc. This particular night: we had packages of semi-damaged white mushrooms in excess. I was given the challenge of making them Stuffed Mushrooms. I searched the kitchen for possibilities.

Therefore, into a mixed bowl, & then into the Cusinart (oh you, my favorite appliance!) went sweet red peppers, a yellow onion, fresh thyme, garlic, almonds, the mushroom stems, gruyere, parm & chive stale croutons, & olive oil. Plus, salt, pepper, & a splash of white wine.

So that was my side. Owen also made his famous fried chicken, this time buffalo style. Good meal. Those mushrooms were damn good cold leftover the next day, also, breakfast, lunch, snacks, etc.

I realize in the writing, the base sense of this recipe comes from Fedde, cooking in the kitchen back on Barnes Street, Providence, circa the end of the 90's. So cheers, lady, & god damn, taste memories are strong ones, 'cause now I'm back in that kitchen, 20 years old, eating those mushrooms.

First Glimpse At The Garden.

2010-04-17T22:30:00.003-04:00

Welcome to April in Massachusetts, when the seedlings of leafy greens first start emerging in the soil. Our community garden plot, as of right now.

All of these were planted from seeds during a brief dry gap in a very rainy afternoon a few weeks ago. I'm in love with the moment when the baby plants first get their adult leaves, i.e. when they go from being generic sprouty green things to suddenly having leaves completely recognizable as red russian kale, or spinach or whatever.

Vegan Spring Dinner. (Ramps & Fava Beans).

2010-04-16T20:51:00.006-04:00

Ramps! Fresh Fava Beans! Omg! Spring!

Rin & Dan came to dinner recently, bringing with them ramps (baby leeks), fresh fava beans, & purple garlic. Yes, another Liz/Rin Iron Chef challenge, i.e. other than those ingredients we only used what I had in a relatively bare pantry, which helpfully did include sunchokes (Jerusalem artichokes) & pinenuts.

Rin made a ramp/potato/sunchoke/garlic mash (it was amazing). I simmered some summer squash, fava beans, pinenuts, a yellow onion, & garlic in olive oil & pinot grigio, & we ate this on the side. (Rin won this challenge). Throw in two bottles of cheap pinot grigio & the new issue of Cosmo (50 Things To Do With Your Breasts!), & it was a good time.

Sorry for the long hiatus here. Taxes, baby plants growing, work, life, etc. Spring is not a time of year when I like to spend a lot of time on the computer. However, I'll be back soon for fiddleheads! & dry aged beef & kimchi & some of our recent projects.

Saint Patrick's Day, Corned Beef, Cabbage, Beer, & All That Stuff That One Does.

2010-03-17T20:15:00.005-04:00

Happy Saint Patrick's Day from EnD. Whatever that means. On one hand, I hate fake bullshit forced holiday crap (mostly as experience at work, i.e.last Mardi Gras) but on the other hand, I love love love bullshit holiday crap too, traditions, decorations, colours & most of all foods. What can I say? I love being festive. Whatever the random holiday, I can get down with it.

& Most importantly, Stop & Shop had a really good sale on corned beef, & I scored some free cabbage & potatoes from work. CORNED BEEF & CABBAGE=SOLD. I had none of the traditional seasonings on hand, so when boiling the corned beef added to the water some dijon mustard, some wasabi paste, peppercorns, garlic, red wine & an onion. Later came the cabbage & potatoes. Worked out pretty excellent.

3.14.2010: Corned Beef & Cabbage (not St. Patrick's Day but it was a rainy Sunday & what the hell do we care). The potatoes (yellow) sat in a nest of cabbage leaves with tons of butter (Irish butter!). It was lovely.

3.15.2010. The next day happened to be my day off. Hence thinly sliced corned beef & cabbage sandwiches, with Hellman's (the only mayonnaise as far as I'm concerned) & good whole grain dijon mustard. Condiments! I love them! It rained again (hello March in Massachusetts), so a hearty sandwich in the kitchen was cozy & awesome.
still 3.15.2010. The broth created from random refrigerator contents turned out to be so good we wanted to save it. As another chilly rainy March day progressed (I love these raw New England spring days really, but they do make me want warm food) it seemed clearly soup was next. The C & B stock plus dry white beans were combined & then we searched the pantry & fridge & came up with sweet potatoes, a package of frozen mixed veggies, garlic, an onion, & white rice. To which was added more corned beef & cabbage. EXCELLENT white bean stew, some of which is now still living in the freezer. YAY LETFOVERS.
3.16.2010. One more night of leftover corned beef, in a tandoori curry sauce with a free scavenged from work red bell pepper & an eggplant, over white rice. I thought this meal was a good knod to the current U.K., myself.
What is the moral of this tale? LEFTOVERS. I am nearly one half Irish, & I can tell you being Irish is about getting drunk & making really good use of leftovers. So for St. Patrick's day, I ate a $4 cut of corned beef for four days, & ate well. oh & I think I mentioned beer in the title of this post? We did recently purchase a 30 rack of PBR, so that was indeed drunk during the creation of these meals. I'm actually too white trash Mass Irish to afford actual Guiness, you know. I work in a godamn grocery store, people (like a good Irish giorl from downtown New Bedford).

What have we learned?

Less than week until spring. I bought more seeds today...green zebra tomatoes, basil, purple beans. What do I love more than cooking & drawing food? Cooking & drawing food that I grew...look forward to Eating & Drawing & Planting in the future.

Steak. Need I Say More?

2010-03-15T23:36:00.007-04:00

Yup, still working my way through the winter drawings. oh, spring, one more week until you're here. Did I tell you I started my first seeds today? Arugula, lettuces, red russian kale, spinach, mint, just the begining. But that's what's to come.

From the winter archives today? Steak. Always a classic here at EnD.

12.27.2009: Steak seared in a frying pan, green beans, mashed potatoes. I think this may have been our first real meal following the swine flu incident of 2009.

12.28.2009: the leftovers, on toast, in a cream sauce.

(we heart heart leftovers).
3.1.2010: & on the first day of March, full circle from early winter, more seared steak & garlic cheesy mashed potatoes after a hike up mt. tom.
We actually ate steak for the rest of the week, 'cause the Big Y had a REALLY good deal on it, but I can't draw everything, can I?

Peace. I love rainy March days. They hold so much possibility.

Ode To Brussel Sprouts.

2010-03-12T20:24:00.003-05:00

On several occasions this past winter, such as here & here, we bought one of those huge stalks of brussel sprouts (because they are so beautiful! remember my first one of the year last fall? plus are a way better deal then loose brussel sprouts generally) & hence had brussel sprouts for dinner over a series of nights, because a) brussel sprouts are freaking delicious & b) we like to make really good use of all available food & spend as little money as possible.

12.17.2009: Brussel sprouts & bacon. We ate them out of the pan just like this.

12.18.2009: the next night we did the same thing (because it was so fing tasty the first time) & added it to a box of mac n' cheese, & some additional blue cheese.
12.30.2009: the last of them, with a couple of chicken breasts & some dried lemongrass, served over coconut rice (i.e. coconut milk powder added to basmati rice in the rice cooker).

In conclusion: brussel sprouts totally rule. Sometimes they get a bad rep, but trust me. Yum. In fact, those brussel sprout stalks are so awesome, they are definitely going in our garden plot this season. oh yeah, I forgot, YEAH SPRING YOU'RE ALMOST HERE!!!!

Dinners at 133 #2: Spicy Sauce & Sausage.

2010-03-10T22:21:00.003-05:00

The next installment of the winter dinners series.

11.30.2009: Spicy Spaghetti Sauce with Sausage, Over Cappellini.

The last day of November, a day I did not work, it was a classically damp chilly November day, & I walked a lot in the mist, & as a remedy for the crap weather, on my way home I went to Deals & Steals & Serio's Market & State Street & acquired cans of tomato paste & cappellini noodles & fresh italian sausage & garlic & shallots & jalapenos & red wine & made this & Owen came home earlier than expected & we actually got to eat dinner at a normal hour. & I used my Christmas napkins for the first time, in honor of the arrival of December.

Dinners at 133 #1: Tuna Steak, Curried Sweet Potatoes, Couscous.

2010-03-09T21:02:00.006-05:00

As I mentioned, I'm cleaning up my winter sketchbook archives, & in the process of doing so, I found a lot of sadly ignored drawings, just everyday dinners, no grand plan but usually delicious, & always with a story behind, so here you go, what we ate here at 133 this winter, on the nonholiday, nonspecial occasion work nights, Part One:

12.5.2009: Tuna Steak with Curried Sweet Potatoes & Couscous.

This was a snowy night last December, the first of the winter I believe, & Owen drove me home from work on his break because it was snowing so hard & then went back to close, & I started cooking while enjoying the indescrible coziness of cooking dinner for someone you love while it's snowing. Some frozen tuna steaks, seared in a pan with garlic, & sweet potatoes simmered in a can of coconut milk with a jar of Thai curry paste, over couscous. Some smoked mozzarella grated on top. owen returned from closing at work. We ate while the snow fell. SNOW DAY. (doesn't winter seem so much better now that it's nearly over?)

Southern Style: Black Eyed Peas Two Times.

2010-03-09T19:57:00.007-05:00

In light of the coming of SPRING (oh spring! hooray!) & the potential of future drawings of gardens & flowers & fresh beautiful vegetables, I'm attempting to work through my winter sketchbook archives, so I can enjoy spring as a fresh start unburdened by images of cold weather food.

It's been nagging me that my recent New Orleans post contained no southern food. Oh yes, there will be southern food in the coming months, oh oh oh fried green tomatoes & fresh okra & summer squash casserole & tomato/vidalia onion sandwiches oh YES,

but in fall & winter, there were spicy blacked eyed peas.

12.7.2009: with andouille sausage, (frozen) okra, jalapenos, & collard greens, with a side of garlic cheese grits. I usually use frozen peas, because one cannot apparently get fresh black eyed peas north of Virginia & I prefer frozen to canned. Throw everything in a big pot with a chopped onion & garlic, simmer, add a lot of bourbon. Cheese grits = cooked grits mixed with chopped garlic, grated cheese, & an egg, & baked covered for about 45 minutes. Yum.

& then last September, on one of the first chilly September nights, over rice with bacon, okra & sriracha hot sauce this time. Same basic concept, same generous amounts of whiskey. I usually choose sausage, but wow, with bacon, wicked good.
Being formerly married to a Mississippi girl has some perks. Growing up in Massachusetts has others, like comfortably employing 'wicked' as an adverb. But right now I'm daydreaming about garden plots & soil & tiny baby plants & mint juleps in the sun on my front porch...

Origin Recipes, Part One: Tuna Casserole.

2010-03-03T20:58:00.009-05:00

The cover of this month's Bon Appetit advertises tuna casserole, eggplant parmesan, & chicken curry, which happen to be the first three important things that I learned to cook, & that taught me to love to cook. Looking at the cover, I started thinking, y'know, in the vein of food memories...& why Bon Appetit knows me so well, & what it all means...

To start, we go way back, way way back, to like me at ten or eleven, playing with the kitchen, with...Tuna Casserole...

Begin with a classic roux, butter & flour, then add 1/2 & 1/2 & white wine for a cream sauce. I also add chopped garlic at this stage.

(yes, you made already have noticed this is definitely a different version then the white trash classic, but's that why this is so good, do with it what you like).

To the sauce, add grated emmenthaler swiss cheese (my preference), frozen peas, chopped roma tomatoes, & a can of solid white tuna. Do that cool thing with melted butter & some crushed saltines or ritz crackers (the best way to go). Drain noodles (I generally choice elbows or shells but this time it was pappardelle).

NOTE: like any great recipe, this one lends itself perfectly to variations. Add whatever the hell cheese, veggies, crackers...etc, that you like. Don't even add tuna. See if I care. But be warned, my mom once added chopped canned clams instead of tuna, & at least to an eight year old, that shit is GROSS.
This is a messy fun kind of dinner. Pour yourself a glass of that cheap white wine you were cooking with & let your cat enjoy what's left in the can of tuna.
Combine sauce with noodles, cover with crushed cracker mixture, & more grated chesse, & baked for about an hour, uncovered for the last ten minutes so you get a nice crunchy top.
BEST LEFTOVERS EVER, especially with sriracha in your room late night with your kitten after dancing.
this is memory food,

Mum cooking this in our apartment on Orchard Street in New Bedford when I was little, me starting cooking as a teenager on Seamans Lane in Brewster, cooking this for myself in my first apartment on Medway Street in Providence at seventeen, Burns cooking me the Mississipi version with chips & sour cream on the night George W. Bush was (sort of) elected the first time in 1999, cooking this on Burns' last night in San Francisco on Cabrillo Street at twenty-two, & then eating the leftovers cold myself & wondering how I was gonna survive alone, at twenty-three on Burgundy Street in New Orleans that first winter when it finally got sort of chilly, at twenty-seven in the Prospect Street apartment in Noho when I started eating meat/fish again, & most recently for Owen in our house on South Street, at thirty-one, 11.23.2009.

Oh Yeah, this meal is a deal breaker with me. You are a vegetarian or think canned tuna is gross, I probably won't fall in love with you. Just sayin'.

Next Up: Eggplant Parmesan.

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

2010-02-24T20:52:00.008-05:00

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.

2010-02-17T23:43:00.004-05:00

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.

2010-02-15T23:20:00.006-05:00

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.

2010-02-15T22:48:00.006-05:00

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.

2010-02-04T21:03:00.006-05:00

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.

2010-02-01T23:36:00.007-05:00

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.

2010-02-01T22:24:00.003-05:00

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.

Improv: Quiche.

2010-01-31T20:22:00.002-05:00

A quiche made entirely from random free expired & semi-damaged shit acquired at work: Avocados (I am a huge fan of the cooked avocado), tomatoes, spinach, snow pea sprouts, raw milk cheese, in a homemade whole wheat pastry crust (by Owen, not me), with a baby arugula salad & Annie's organic buttermilk dressing. An exercise in the "work with what you have" model that we like to use around here, i.e. the Iron Chef Challenge Dinners invented by Rin & I.

1.30.2010: Free Dinner.

Eaten in bed drinking a 40 of King Cobra ('cause we classy like that) & watching Xenia the Warrior Princess on the laptop. Yes, really. Makes for an excellent Saturday night when it's January in Massachusetts & the weather is subzero. When will spring be here? End is pretty much ready for Farmers Markets & gardening.

I'm not dead.

2010-01-29T12:05:00.002-05:00

I do want to share some food with you that I have painted (in the company of Liz for some of them) that I was lazy to post. :(

After extracting these guys from the garden this summer I had to take a picture. And then, of course, I painted them.

This is the way I wish breakfast happened to me sometimes. Emerald will have to work on that pancake flip though.

Eat more kale.

xo
Rin

Bacon Lasagna, Circa December 2009.

2010-01-27T20:18:00.005-05:00

If y'all have been keeping up with my archives over here, you'll recall that the breathtaking Bacon Lasagna was invented one hot July night at Hugo's as a last minute inspirational dish for Izaac's bacon party (yes Izaac is only mentioned on this blog in connection to bacon). Then I made it for Melissa sometime in September & it again ruled. So for Melissa's welcome back to Noho from Europe dinner, I made it for the third time. It's always different. This time it had avocado, for some reason, & free fancy cheese from work.

Anatomy of A Bacon Lasagna (drawing inspired by this classic DnD post):

These were the layers: Vermont applewood smoked bacon, summer squash, roma tomatoes, gloucester onion & chive cheddar, raw sheep's milk pecorino, avocado, & shallots & garlic previously sautéed in melted butter & white wine. Then all baked together in delicious greasy melting layers of unspeakable delight. OMG!

While baking: a very classy cheese platter made of entirely free cheese & crackers from work. Go, work. Served on our reasonably new very stylish cheese platter from the Westfield Salvation Army.
& the main course served over noodles = a fabulous dinner party with Melissa, Nate & Owen, 12.12.2009, during which we also enjoyed the astonishing raver crafter supplies found in my attic that night, glow in the dark beads & sequined ribbons, anyone? Plus, as free glue glun!
& then we all obviously went dancing at the Basement, the end. (of that night).

And Life As We Know It Will Never Be The Same.

2010-01-24T20:30:00.002-05:00

1.18.2010: The Great Chocolate Bacon Blue Cheese Burger Experiment.

Yup. That kind of says it all, doesn't it? Long story short, a drive home from work on a January night, past Burger King, OMG BURGERS, impulse trip to Stop & Shop for ground beef, come home to realize that the fridge happens to be full of free blue cheese from work & the fabulous Izaac's chocolate bacon (delivered to my register at work along with the OMFG chocolate parmesan). & in the freezer, some crappy frozen steak fries that I had recently bought on a whim. So....what did we do? Why, this.

Truly a life changing experience. Chocolate, bacon, cheese, red meat, combined in one bite. I'm gonna just leave you to contemplate that one.

Boys, Kittens, Sisters.

2010-01-23T23:34:00.002-05:00

Also known as my favorite things. More portraits. Of PEOPLE! NOT FOOD. OMFG. I don't know what's up, I've been visually more into faces than dishes lately, maybe I need some cooking inspiration. Or maybe I just like the people (&cats) in my life a lot.

1.22.2010. Owen & Ali, over sandwiches at the Black Sheep.

1.23.2010. Owen & DR enjoying facebook together, in our bed.
12.19.2009. DR in a nest of blankets watching me paint (most likely something for this website).
I think I have the mid-winter blues, sort of. You know what I need to do? I need to roast a duck. Oh yes, that IS what I need to do.

Better With Company.

2010-01-22T03:37:00.003-05:00

What's better than eating & drawing, or drinking, for that matter? Your Peeps, of course.

Some recent portraits, better than the last round, in my humble opinion.

12.15.2009. Owen & Melissa, 133 South, pre-gaming for Tuesday Basement Dancing.

12.30.2009. Our kitchen, Owen cooking, DR watching (something). Chicken, lemongrass, & brussel sprouts.
1.19.2010. Owen wearing his new hat, from the Palmer Goodwill, at the dinner table.
1.20.2010. Owen, DR, & a bottle of Jameson (really good price on this at the Big Y, FYI, y'all). Yes, yet again, before Tuesday dancing at the Basement.
Yeah, these are mostly Owen & DR. but they are my family, so makes sense, & of course, the always lovely Melissa rules & is an excellent dancing & dining partner, so all good.

Want to be drawn & eat delicious food? Show up here for dinner, be immortalized on this blog. I PROMISE.

Tuesday, Tuesday...You Know, What Happens Before Dancing At The Basement...

2010-01-13T23:27:00.003-05:00

Part One: Noodles, Curry, Pie.

So here in Northampton, Massachusetts, as I'm sure you well know, we do this thing where we like to dance a lot on Tuesday nights, at the Basement. With Purity Supreme. Been going on for a long time, kind of a tradition in some (awesome) circles. Usually, we pre-game. If you're pre-gaming with me, you're eating dinner too, because my favourite way to spend time with my friends is to cook for them.

12.1.2009: Some zucchini, udon noodles, tons of red wine, & then Liz & Owen go dancing, wearing vintage fur coats.

12.15.2009: Curry made from still more leftovers of this chicken....& still more red wine...
...& later the same night, vodka & Natalie's Orchid Island fresh squeezed grapefruit juice cocktails, & this key lime pie...
...& then, dancing to hip-hop. & later more food, more drinks, more dancing.

On that note, Eating & Drawing says: go to Amazing Love tonight at the 11's because I CANNOT tonight, sadly, but YOU should. SERIOUSLY.

Rabbits Cure Swine Flu? A December Story.

2010-01-11T22:15:00.005-05:00

Or Homemade Hot & Sour Soup does?

As I mentioned in my Christmas post, Owen & I spent most of mid-December through New Year's sick sick sick SICK. With Swine Flu! So topical of us! We like to definitely live in tune with all major news stories.

This was a December day right at the beginning of our bout with the plague (before we were reduced to surviving on instant miso soup packets mixed with sriracha, chili oil & sesame oil eaten in bed due to utter lack of strength), a gray chilly day involving walks with dogs & a trip (my first!) to Yankee Candle (don't ask). Possibly we can blame Yankee Candle for the severity of our illness, or at least their Drift Away scented candle. Yes really, wtf? Where in god's name are we drifting to? Where, Yankee Candle? & Why is your fake snow so fucking lame?

So, I had a day off from work, attempted to not get really sick, went to Yankee Candle, came home in desperate need of soup, SUPER SPICY SOUP which is how I knew the flu potential was bad, & made some hot & sour soup with the stock from this chicken.

& ate it with Annie's Bunnies crackers. & lots of Yamamotoyama green tea, & still got REALLY SICK. I still blame Yankee Candle. Maybe it was the Evening Air candle that did it. Cause the soup was actually pretty fucking good. & soup, good hot sauce, & green tea usually save me from getting sick.

We really were not doing well already at this point, so this recipe was kind of random, stay tuned for the non-delirious version. This one was just homemade chicken stock, leftover chicken, sriracha, chili oil, sesame oil, white wine vinegar, cornstarch, whatever random veggies we could find, garlic, jalapenos.

The moral: Unicorns come from Yankee Candle (want to know what that means? feel free to comment & I'll tell you, promise promise).

Non-Traditional Holiday Foods (Soup & Eggs).

2010-01-10T21:28:00.003-05:00

Yeah, I know, I've been very late with the holiday posts, but let's just pretend that it's not yet January 10th, ok? I mean, the Christmas tree IS still up around here & all...so, um, yeah, Christmas did happen, I believe around a couple of weeks ago or some shit like that, & undeniably the holidays are ALL ABOUT FOOD but we don't usually do it up normal food-wise in the assorted Diamond households. (thankfully for this website, DR & I did it up all traditional for Thanksgiving). Crap Chinese food in New Bedford or Dennis is really how we like to roll on Christmas day, but this year we did this...

Creamy Parsnip Soup, made with great success by Ali & Barb from The Martha Stewart Everyday Food Cookbook, eaten by the Christmas tree in bowls on our laps with bread & cheese, in a funeral home in Turners Falls. Actually, one of the six Christmas trees, all suitably gorgeous. Oh & we used Ali's new Christmas immersion blender, that was a good time.

& the next morning, our sit down holiday meal took place over breakfast at Sylvester's before shopping for all our favourite things like boots & yarn. (yes, I have those boots from The Mountain Goat & shawl yarn was purchased from Northampton Wools, & of course small red birds for everyone from The Artisan Gallery. Thanks, Mum.)
My breakfast: the Community Garden Eggs Benedict, essentially eggs, hollandaise, tomatoes, spinach, broccoli. My only complaint, that I had to borrow bacon from Mum, because all the breakfasts were EITHER meat or veggie, none both. VEGETABLES TASTE GOOD WITH MEAT PEOPLE. COME ON.
Note: Owen & I had swine flu over Christmas which did affect our ability to be festive. But no fear, we drank a lot of JohnnieWalker in bed while watching around Shaft collection DVD set we purchased Christmas Eve from Big Lots. New Christmas tradition? Dustyrose thinks so.

2010.

2010-01-04T23:07:00.004-05:00

So this is the first New Years for EnD, & therefore, Mississippi Black-Eyed Peas!

Black-eyed Peas are pretty traditional for New Year's (although I just tonight leaned from Wikipedia that they are the "mulatto gelato" omg!), but I was once married to a southern lady (yes, really but only in Massachusetts)) & my recipe ever since came from her dad's secretary in his law firm in Jackson, Mississippi. So this is pretty seriously Southern shit. Been a long time since I've seen that lady, but I stick to that recipe.

This year, served New Year's morning (or 1pm New Year's Day) with bacon & eggs before taking a walk in the woods in the snow, buying a flat iron at Marshall's with my xmas gift card from mum & letting my boyfriend cut all my hair off & give me bangs.

oh yeah, the recipe: sometime New Year's Eve Day, in a large sturdy tupperware container, marinate 2 cans black-eyed peas, one can Rotel tomatoes (essential ingredient), several whole garlic cloves, peppercorns, & red wine vinegar & olive oil until it covers everything, & leave

until the next morning , when you are hungover & ready to start the new year right, with this, & of course bacon.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, love & kisses EnD xo.

Book Swap & Stir-Fry.

2010-01-04T21:29:00.002-05:00

1.3.2010. As well as being legendary old school DnDer Jed's birthday (happy birthday jed, xo EnD) last Sunday was the first of hopefully regular Book Swaps/Tea Parties at 133 South. There were homemade crumpets! & blueberry scones! (all made by Abigail, & I didn't even draw them, shame on me!). Fuck, there was homemade BUTTER, for Christ sake. We live it up, we do, at 133.

We acquired Rin's delightful company later on that evening, which occasioned the creation of an impromptu stir-fry, of red cabbage & carrots & leeks from Abigail's farm share & tofu & brown basmati rice, with an avocado on top (yay winter grocery avocado sales!).

Another Liz & Rin sketchbook collaboration: "me & Owen & stir-fry" by Rin, "Rin & stir-fry" by me. All drawn over delicious things to eat, music, wine, & good conversation, &...

Oh & remember part about the Book Swap?! Well many awesome books were exchanged, & so was the one that brought us this quote, helpfully lettered by Rin, coloured by me. Isn't that inspirational? Contact EnD for postcards/bumper stickers. (& yes, that came from a real book, current location of that book = my kitchen table).
Sorry for the long absence 'round here. But I still love friends, food, & really hilarious moments, so here I am, once more. Hi.

Latkes & Christmas Trees (A Very Festive Sunday).

2009-12-19T20:27:00.003-05:00

12.13.2009, Sunday. A very fitting day to acquire a Christmas tree (my first adult purchase of a Christmas tree). The Christmas tree itself was quite an adventure, what with the seven chain stores (multiple Walmarts!) we had to visit in order to locate BLUE Christmas lights & the fact that the first snowflakes fell just as we were selecting the tree in Hadley & we then had the pleasure of driving home in a gorgeous early snow with the tree on the roof of the car. So all of that is a story in itself, & NOW we come to the food...

The epic search for Christmas lights in the essential colour of blue led us to not eat all day yet again so the first step when we returned home laden with BLUE lights & tinsel garlands was this...

A roast chicken, with garlic & rosemary, & stuffed with a dried cherry & shallot stuffing. We used one of the metal ties from the Walmart Christmas lights to sew the chicken together after we stuffed it (so resourceful!). Oh & lots of butter was everywhere.

& yes I am half Jewish & Hanukkah had just begun , so LATKES! (basic recipe: grated potatoes, yukon gold in this case, an onion, an egg). Which were fried in the chicken fat we collected as the chicken roasted (not kosher) (but still the reason we were roasted the chicken). This is non religious but very traditional holiday cooking here, traditional only in the sense of what feels like how you remember it. This feels right, for a half Jewish half Catholic girl raised with zero religion but a hell of a lot of respect for ritual. The other reason we roasted the chicken was that it could smell like Sunday dinner while we decorated the tree. Shit like that's important to me.
By the time we roasted an entire chicken in order to produce the chicken fat in which to fry the latkes, & still hadn't eaten anything, we were starving, & for people who had done a shit ton of cooking, we ate a very informal meal of a shared pile of latkes on the same plate (the chicken wasn't eaten at all that night, but stay tuned for what I did with the ample leftovers).
& then while decorating the tree we realized we had an excess of key limes in the pantry (long story) & well, KEY LIME PIE had to happen. This led to a mad excursion to Stop & Shop ten minutes before they closed in the midst of slush & ice & snow (dreaded "wintery mix" as The Weather Channel likes to say). But then we didn't make the pie. But we did the next night. & stay tuned for pie leftovers leading to dancing, also. Note on the Key Lime Pie: I am well aware Key Lime Pie is not traditionally topped with meringue but I like it to be. So we stayed up late hand beating egg white to make it happen. My key lime pie is really a lemon meringue/key lime hybrid & it's perfect, in my humble opinion.
So tonight, before it begins to snow in Massachusetts, Happy celebrating Hanukkah, Christmas, Solstice, Abigail's birthday, oncoming snowstorm, whatever you like, hopefully with glitter, the only way to truly celebrate at least according to Eating & Drawing.

An Old Classic Revisited, Part Two.

2009-12-18T21:23:00.003-05:00

A long overdue conclusion. Oh, let's see, where did we leave off? Oh yes, Dustyrose on the table with a baguette. While all that hilarity was ensuing, some cooking was actually also being accomplished.

Steak simmering in red wine, garlic, & shallots...new yellow potatoes boiling...this all smelled very good...

...which sets the scene for food as sex appeal....i.e. Eating & Drawing's
Classic New Boyfriend Dinner...
oh & the leftovers work great the next night alone in your room at approximately 2:30am after dancing at the basement. (perfect snack for updating your facebook status before going to bed)
I promised in Part One that Part Two was going to explain all, but instead I'm just gonna leave you with: it's good to cook for the people you love, whoever they are. I think the lights on the Christmas tree are making me sentimental or something.

Sometimes It's Nice To Be Cooked For.

2009-12-10T20:38:00.002-05:00

I love to cook, but sometimes it really is. I always insist that cooking is the most fun for me, & that I rather be the one doing it, & this is all absolutely true...but when last Sunday night Owen insisted that I sit at the kitchen table & get some shit done & drink a glass of wine & eat chips (Tostitos With A Hint Of Lime left behind by temporary housemate Dennis) & salsa (Green Mountain Gringo), & that he was cooking with no help from me so just shut up Liz, it was an amazing feeling. I think this is exaggerated by the fact that the absolute last time anyone cooked for me was Rin's fabulous margarita cupcakes on my birthday, & before that the last time I visited Mum in Brewster & ate delicious leftovers. & the fact that we didn't eat all day of course & I was all typically stressed out & starving.

I drew this on the phone. Owen cooking at 133.

what Owen made: shells, kidney beans, garlic, cheese, I didn't make it so I don't really know but it tasted good.
What I love most about cooking is feeding the people I love. It's nice to experience the other angle of that feeling too.

Above All, We Celebrate Cooking. Thanksgiving Part Four.

2009-12-04T21:57:00.007-05:00

That's what Thanksgiving means to me, the holiday of no other obligation than sharing a meal with people you love. It's the signature holiday of EnD. The day after Thanksgiving, DR was mad that I wasn't cooking. It was a pretty insane day for me, that day after Thanksgiving. I woke up surrounded by pans of turkey & stuffing & brussel sprouts. My beloved car died, & I spent six hours in the emergency room.

(mom cook something)

Returning home around 9pm, I ate french fries with mayonnaise & sriracha (these Alexia frozen ones because despite many facebook requests no one would bring me a bacon cheeseburger & onion rings) (& set the oven on fire) & shared a magnum of the Anchor Steam Christmas Ale, & then went dancing at the WWII with my favorite person. Pretty appropriate for the day after, I think, but don't worry, I cooked my ass off the following week.

Thus ends the 2009 Thanksgiving Live-Blogging (sort-of) Experiment.

What's gonna happen on Christmas?!

Here's Where We Get Back To The Gravy. Thanksgiving Part Three.

2009-12-04T21:25:00.005-05:00

Um, Yeah, the 2009 Eating & Drawing Thanksgiving Live-Blogging Experiment kinda fell apart around the time that it started to seem like a really good idea to actually EAT Thanksgiving Dinner, rather than draw it & starve. Don't worry though, y'all, eat thanksgiving dinner I most certainly did & I drew it too.

Sides (other than stuffing): my favorite sides for most meat courses

(extremely delicious with steak)

buttery mashed potatoes & brussel sprouts roasted with garlic.

& finally, FINALLY, food plated:

rosemary & sage turkey breast, gravy, yukon gold mashed potatoes, apple-pinenut stuffing, roasted brussel sprouts with garlic.

Yup, I like gravy. I do think the Shawmut Diner's was was more satisfying. But this was my first complete Thanksgiving dinner, & I don't think it turned out half-bad.

The leftovers were better, Sunday night, over a glitter n' glow puzzle.

Thanksgiving dessert also didn't happen the night of Thanksgiving, but it happened, via David Lebovitz and Chez Panisse. Yeah yeah yeah I drew it. What was it? SUSPENSE.

Obviously, There Is Stuffing. Thanksgiving Part Two.

2009-11-26T20:15:00.003-05:00

Still Semi-Live Blogging this meal. So....Stuffing, in my opinion the MOST IMPORTANT element of THANKSGIVING. When else do you really eat stuffing? Come on.

(Disclaimer: I really want all my stuffing to include sausage & this year I wanted it to be Oyster & Sausage, but the other theme of this year is "zero money = use what you have").

Which leads to shallots, some local heirloom apples, garlic, & pine-nuts simmered in a pan of butter & olive oil...

...which leads to my newly invented (aka tonight): Apple-Pinenut Stuffing.

Placed in the oven next to the turkey with more butter on top.

Currently I'm working on the mashed potatoes & brussel sprouts. Seriously. I may never actually eat. & when am I going to find time for PIE? I ask you.

So It Begins. Thanksgiving Part One.

2009-11-26T17:58:00.004-05:00

In which the turkey breast goes into the oven. & during its first hour in the oven, I've done this. Live Blogging Thanksgiving, only here on EnD.

Stuffed with rosemary & sage (brought home fresh from Mum's garden, Brewster, Cape Cod, & dried by me in my kitchen) & drenched in butter, olive oil & salt & pepper.

DR was offered a can of turkey wellness formula, & promptly turned that shit down. (good kitty).

You cannot believe how good my kitchen smells right now. Off to make the stuffing. See you soon, right here, with stuffing drawings.

My Archives Apparently Contain Bacon & Cheese.

2009-11-25T20:41:00.005-05:00

One more from the archives before the EnD Turkey Fest begins later today.

This Grilled Cheese was born & consumed on this historic night. Oh Kathy's, so many late night of summer 2009 were spent eating really greasy things in you.

8.14.09, 1:20am, Kathy's Diner, Northampton.

A Bacon Grilled Cheese, With Tomato (the best way.)

From The Archives: Still More Onion Rings.

2009-11-25T20:02:00.003-05:00

Onion Rings, an ongoing theme 'round here. This long lost, almost tragically forgotten meal came from this day. We were indeed a couple of sad hipsters, but at least we ate reasonably well (meaning the fries, bacon, & grease food groups were included). & like the last time we ate together at the Northampton Brewery, we were exhausted & hungry. Which I think is why this meal was so good. Plus we were sad. What cures sadness? Onion rings. At least on this blog, they do (Commandments of EnD).

I guess being a food thief has been a tradition here long before I swiped that mocha the other day.

Bacon Cheese Onion Rings: That Which Never Fails Us.
I used to hate ham, but cuban sandwiches won me over. Plus I am a sucker for the words 'spicy cajun' even though I've been back in New England long enough that I shouldn't be fooled anymore.
(& spelling? still fuck you).
I still really only love the Brewery for the mussels & beer sampler combination, most of the other food, while good bar food, isn't worth the money if you're poor, might as well go to Packard's for the jalapeno cheese stuffed deep fried burger. (hell I need to go eat that so I can draw it, very very soon, note to self & anyone who wants to come with me. Or hell, I once made it myself, that could also happen).

See, isn't revisiting the past fun? Yup, that could have been sarcasm (don't tell my work).

Tea & Mocha Related Crimes.

2009-11-23T19:49:00.007-05:00

In which my partner-in-crime Rin & I consume hot beverages on a rainy November afternoon at the lovely Esselon Cafe in Hadley. I really shouldn't be drawing right now due to the hand injury, but I did these very slowly & over lots of whipped creme (which everyone knows is a healing substance). As anyone who ever draws with me can attest, one & a half drawings over a couple of hours is a VERY slow pace for me.

& Rin helped me out with this one, by drawing his version of my mocha on the opposite page. & by accusing me of being a

MOCHA THIEF !

(fuck spelling on this blog too apparently)

But that's ok, because then Rin HID from our server, making his pot of tea extremely difficult to deliver. What a jerk! Hiding from your server wtf?!

We were on the porch under the heat lamps, so the lighting was really that red. The whole experience was rather like drinking coffee in a bordello. Which is not at all a bad thing, obviously. The delighfully fake plants & insanely ornate mirror we were seated next to contributed to the overall experience. I like Esselon, all the food near us looked & smelled delicious but we are poor & didn't order any.

Hint: TAKE RIN & I OUT TO LUNCH. WE ARE ADORABLE. WE PROMISE WE'LL KEEP THE BEVERAGE RELATED HI-JINKS TO A MINIMUM.

Oh wait, no we don't. YAY HI-JINKS!

XOXO.

Shawmut Diner, New Bedford, Part Two.

2009-11-22T21:31:00.006-05:00

& here we have the main courses. Remember, we left off with kale soup & onion rings? Well, this is where we get to the GRAVY.

Meatloaf.

Chopped Hamburger Steak.
(what is the difference between this & meatloaf, can anyone tell me? The onions? Just the shape?)
You need bread & butter when there's that much gravy.

I can eat fresh, local, gorgeous ingredients all day & night but sometimes there's just something satifisying about meat, potatoes, & gravy in a diner in New Bedford.

You can take a girl out of NB & move her to Noho but you can't keep her out of the Shawmut Diner forever.

Welcome To Crazyland.

2009-11-22T19:23:00.003-05:00

I recently hurt my drawing hand at stupid work, which is limiting how much actual current drawing I can do, but fortunately for all y'all, I have all my massive DnD & EnD archives to fall back on (i.e. the looming piles of hand.book sketchbooks on both my desk & my drawing table). Thank christ I was so fing productive all summer & early fall, I guess.

For a while this summer, I did these drawings where I documented every single thing I ate in a given day. OCD anyone? This relates to a food/art project that Rin & I were working on last March which we never finished, & which I do hope makes an appearance here someday. & some other posts very early on in the creation of this site.

So I love food, but I have a lot of weird issues with food (surprise, surprise) & these drawings are strangely comforting to create. Yes, Welcome To Crazyland. I never ever said sanity was gonna be the ruling force 'round here, y'all.

8.4.09: this one seems reasonable.

8.5.09: drinking with gramma, drinking with jed & melissa, lots of good food, dancing, also reasonable.
8.6.2009: this was a DnD Thursday. 'Nough said.
8.7.09: work & then a Friday night at the Deuce = soup & coffee, a shit ton of $3 rum & cokes, sam's pizza, & leftovers alone very late at night, i.e. terrible eating habits.
8.8.09: fucking soup.
8.9.09: more soup (thanks work), dinner with roommate.
8.10.09: pre-DnDnD2k09 preparation adventures, ending up at the Northampton Brewery, with excellent sandwiches & beer samplers.
8.14.09: crazy night with matt, including but not limited to free wine & snacks at Arts Night Out, grilled sausages (me) & veggies (matt) at a bbq birthday party for someone we didn't know, a bottle of wine drunk on the steet that almost got us arrested, too many long island iced teas at the WW2, kathy's very late.
good eating habits?
10.11.09: this is all about guilt, really,.
I haven't done this recently, but probably will fall back into it in the future, it's a fun thing to do in bars when you're bored. Or if you happen to be a 'lil bit crazy.

Plus who DOESN'T love Obsessive Documentation of Something No-one Cares About?

Welcome to EnD.

The Hidden Meaning Of Breakfasts.

2009-11-21T19:57:00.009-05:00

The thing I find most missing about not waking up next to someone mindblowingly awesome on a regular basis(well ok, obviously not the thing I miss the MOST, but still an important one)is BREAKFASTS!!!! (this is a food blog not a dating blog, yo)

There's just something about excessive quantities of butter & bacon & maple syrup that seems awkward when you do it alone, but when you wake up in the mood to show true affection through food, is just perfect. Cooking in pajamas & t-shirts in the morning sunlight, sleepily locating eggs & toast, that's a huge part of physical chemistry, for me anyway. (we all know of course that I'm weird) I've been waiting to keep bacon & eggs in the house on a regular basis for a while. So here's a few breakfasts from the past month or so.

First Breakfast = All the obvious things, i.e. bacon, eggs, toast.

Cause I'm me, the toast was from the Hello Kitty Toaster & the butter was served in a kitten rice bowl,

SO KITTY BREAKFAST.

The type of breakfast only eaten by two people who get a shit ton of odd food items for free from work, & are also running late for work.
& This is also work related: the Overly Local Breakfast,
consisting of Kickass French Toast made with Diemand Farms Eggs, Vermont Applewood Smoked Bacon, East Baking Company Maple Cinnamon Bread (i.e. the world's best bread for any kind of toast), Maple Syrup from the Northampton Farmers Market & Cabot Butter & Pierce Brothers Coffee.

Yeah we are kind of new breed of hipster yuppie I think.

I have a feeling that the Chocolate Chip Pancake chapter is next in this saga.

Also the wonderful world of SAUSAGE.