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

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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?

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.

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!!!!