Cooking to-do list

For the past month and a half of having a puppy and happily obliging him in his need for constant love and affection, cooking has totally fallen by the wayside. I'm fed up with Arroy Thai (even though I love you) and pizza (not the homemade variety, but the frozen and ordered, even though I love you). So aside from making actual meals, which who am I kidding, will probably just be something stew-like in the slow cooker, I've been wanting to make the following for quite some time:

First up: Vafler for Saturday Breakfast

photo via Food in the City

These aren't going to be true vafler as our waffler is for much thicker, American waffles. What's important here is the cardamom and the sour cream. Recipe from Sons of Norway which will have to be adapted so it's not so runny for our maker. I'll serve with jam and we thankfully have some Gjetost cheese that I've been meaning to devour.

I knew you'd come in handy

Savory Apple & Cheddar Galette for Sunday Brunch

via fresh 365

We have a whopping three friends running the Chicago marathon this weekend. That's a crazy amount of friends doing a crazy amount of running. To celebrate, we're going to a brunch while they run :) I've been wanting to make this galette for some time and I think this is the perfect excuse.

Happy weekend!

Masterpieces

Masterpiece Theatre is really channeling the bleak lately. Gone are the days of yet another (but still welcomed) Jane Austen adaptation. This season ended with "The Diary of Anne Frank" and "Small Island." Both were really, really well done, but they ended with the same really, really pathetic scene: me choking on my sobs, clutching an open jar of peanut butter, questioning the goodness of humanity from my couch.

Eating this solves problems

And it feels wrong to be distracted by one of the dresses in the wardrobe of "Anne Frank," and I promise I felt guilty, but the palette is too awesome to go unnoticed. Love the desaturated green and peach paired with the orange-red belt.

Ellie Kendrick as Anne Frank from BBC One

In fact, the entire wardrobe was beautiful.

The Spritzer

Martha did not fail me this weekend and the two recipes I tried for the bike trek/picnic were tasty. And the carrot cake-wiches from Sprouted Kitchen -- amazing. Gabby made a Pomegranate Spritzer, which was really good and made me consider how good it would be if it combined super powers with either gin, vodka, or dare I say white wine...

***

I've always had a certain disdain for the nefarious breed of woman who will order 'a White Zin with an ice cube' in a superior tone. Working in a wine bar during college, I saw much of this specimen. She warranted inclusion into our employee training where we were taught to respond, 'I'm sorry ma'am, but we don't serve White Zinfandel. May I suggest a Gewürztraminer or Reisling' to which the typical reaction was an annoyed facial expression that damned me a Philistine.

The specimen's back-up order was more than likely a White Wine Spritzer, which I came to also disdain by association and because it's just a lame drink order.

***

But I find myself sitting on a picnic blanket enjoying a close relative and wanting more. Although vanity prevents me from ever ordering a White Wine Spritzer in public, I will certainly buy a magnum of Beringer and mix my own at home.

Stigma be damned, the spritzer is good

Weekend Sovereignty

Rob is gone on his bachelor weekend to Northern Michigan, which means the apartment is my dominion and I have unconditional Krista-time.

The royal to-do list for the weekend:
1. Go for a bike ride/picnic with Gabby
What's exercise without the promise of food? I'm in charge of the picnic eats, so I'm thinking of making these two things that Martha says I should and this recipe I've been dying to try from Sprouted Kitchen.

Chicken Salad and Havarti Cheese Wrap (Martha)

Chickpea, Cherry Tomato, and Feta Salad (Martha)

Carrot Cake-wiches with Greek Yogurt (Sprouted Kitchen -- her photography is amazing)

2. End my summer sewing hiatus. Bridesmaid gift spoiler alert.
I'm making clutches as part of their gifts for being attendants. I just found some awesome fabric from JoAnn's (quelle surprise?!). Here's hoping they turn out...

3. Watch all of Mad Men Season II while drinking scotch
Rob likes to watch TV series in moderation, whereas I prefer to wait for the DVDs and watch the series all in one sitting. There's something wonderful about getting caught up in the story, not noticing that the sun went down, and later realizing that it's already 3am and, dammmit, you don't care.

Product placement works. Mad Men puts me in the mood to drink scotch and I plan to do just that. We only have Dewar's at the moment, but that will nobly fill the bill.

4. Get coffee from Julius Meinl and hit up the bookstore
I love Julius Meinl for the following reasons in descending order of importance: a) the founder is Bohemian, b) they have great packaging, and c) I like the taste of their coffee.



5. Sleep diagonally

Weekly Weird: cake babies and balls of clay

You might say that my Weekly Weird could probably be more accurately described as monthly. No matter, I'll soldier on.

* * *

Rob and I were in San Francisco a couple weeks ago for a way-too-short weekend. Rob's sister, Deet Dee (ejddiamond*) of I Dream of Cake fame was graduating from San Francisco Art Institute with her MFA in 'New Genres' -- a concentration that sounds very avant-garde and way over my head.

The weekend was a whirlwind with a thesis show opening at Fort Mason, graduation ceremony, party, taco stand.

* * *

The thesis show was really fun and chock-full of weird. Jail cell constructed out of soap -- weird and impressive; Man making ball after ball of clay with staring problem -- weird and creepy; ejddiamond's baby sculptures made entirely of cake -- weird and super awesome!

In their incubator-fridge

Actually cake!

Missed opportunity: Deet Dee could have totally trumped clay ball man in the weird-creepy performance-art genre if she actually ate these.

* * *

A couple things of note on art school graduations: it's not like a customary graduation. It becomes immediately apparent that no one is there to receive their B.S. or is German (logic: scientists and Germans need order). For starters, it took me a while to realize that the ceremony had started because people were kind of drifting in (and out) and only 10% of the graduates were in gowns. I wised up when someone started talking into the microphone and asked me for a donation.

Procession; Niemand hier spricht Deutsches

If you've never been, the SFAI is a really amazing building, full with Diego Rivera mural, pretty courtyard, and beautiful rooftop view of the city. I would normally think it was really awesome to hang out on their roof, but it happened to be 90-degrees that day and the roof happens to be made of clay. My species was not made for the sun and I think desperate thoughts when I start baking on clay tiles. I wanted to give Ed Ruscha a mouth kiss for giving only a 90-second speech to accept his honorary degree.

But the most significant note about art school graduations: you can apparently tack on a speech even if you're not in the ceremony program and it's 90-degrees outside (true story). So while the ceremony hijacker talked and talked, I thought about what I would say if I had the moxie to grab the mic away from her. I think it would begin with "I'll be your party master this afternoon. Hey-Ho! [blow horn]... A wise man once said, [insert Jesse Helms quote]" and then lead into a long retrospective of Anne Geddes.

Cool things to do on a roof overlooking San Francisco Part I

Cool things to do on a roof overlooking San Francisco Part II

* * *

More Deet Dee cake at the after party:

even tastier than bacon

* I'm in charge of setting up Deet Dee's portfolio site in exchange for what will be a really cool wedding cake. I need to fix some image issues, but then I'll post so you can see how cool her work is.

The Weekly Weird, introductory edition

In my apartment, I like to offset a room with something curious, such as the plastic dinosaur on our fireplace mantle, the alligator head on our bookshelf, or the line-up of dry wishbones on our kitchen sink window. I don't feel like my living space is complete if it's too normal, conventional.

I gravitate toward the weird and I realize that I come across a lot of weird in the course of a week. I revel in the strange details in life, so I'm creating "The Weekly Weird" as an excuse to document some of it.

---

So what's weird this week? This freakish twin egg, that's what.

free-range chickens are into some freaky shit

I still used the egg, but I got sort of suspicious when the next two eggs had two yolks as well (and annoyed during the separation process). Nevertheless, all three freak eggs went into the graham cracker cake I tried to make for Rob's mom.

Alas, the cake in its intended form was not to be as I forgot the baking powder. I passed it off as a tort instead and it was actually tastier than it had any right to be given its density.

freakishly dense cake-tort made with the freakish twin eggs

I was interested in the whole twin egg thing and wondered if it was common. A basic Google search confirms that it is somewhat weird and further tells me that I will either give birth to twins or have a morbid death in the family, depending on my choice old-wives tale. I'm hoping neither and that the ruined cake-tort will appease the gods.

I Dream of Cake

Having a really fancy and expensive wedding cake has never been on my nuptial wish list. I would rather plunk down money for a variety of desserts and candy. Rob and I talked about having a very small cake for the sake of tradition, but maybe in the shape of our Wii characters or sculptural busts of our heads -- something we would find funny.

Rob's sister, Elinor, made her own wedding cake last November, which was delicious and gone within a couple minutes of the cutting (otherwise I totally would have tried to nab seconds). She recently took a job as a baker/decorator at this San Francisco-based bakery that I have to admit has made me reassess my feelings on the wedding cake.

The bakery is I Dream of Cake, which has some really impressive and some really crazy designs. They're truly pieces of art. Below are a few of my favorites:

This has to be red velvet cake a la "Steel Magnolias"

Lusciousness

I like wine. I love good wine, but I also find sub-par wine worth consuming to the last drop. In other words, I know what I like but I don't practice wine snobbery or wastefulness. Once I've financially invested in a bottle, I will drink it. If it's free at an event, I will drink it.

Now that I've convinced you of my high standards...

I'm really into Alamos Malbec right now. I first had it at Montagues, a wine bar in my hometown of De Pere, Wisconsin. It was a fateful night that involved liberal amounts of Alamos, a snow storm, and having to dig my car out of the blinding snow the following morning.

Anyways, I found it at Binny's and the price is right at $10/bottle.

One can dream...

I like my job, but I might trade up for the life of a chocolatier.

The Mast Brothers Chocolate is a Brooklyn-based chocolate company run by two brothers with some pretty great packaging design and solid use of Futura.

Rick and Michael Mast

I found this via ~>O<~ who found it via Racked.