Alizarine

Late Spring Update

This spring has been crazy. International travel, one-person show, looming medical test, backbreaking commission, exciting deck project--no wonder I've neglected my blog! So in an attempt to catch up and maybe not have to write a hundred thousand words in doing so, here's a little photo essay. While you read and look at the photos, I urge you to listen to Steal Away by Robbie Dupree, a song that has been on a constant loop in my head for two weeks, no foolin'.

 

(I can't get on board with the illustration here. I just can't. I don't like the way nearly all Japanese manga illustrators draw faces.)

Anyway, that song's been driving me up the wall, and I'm sorry if it's in your head too, now. There's no getting it out, like those Star Trek bugs.

 

GAH I CAN'T EVEN WATCH THAT!

Off to a bad start, sorry. Here's my update. Bun will make it better.

Last month, completely out of nowhere, a tornado warning hit while Jeff was taking a nap and I was reading. Jeff has a new app on his phone that alerts us to severe weather with a variety of sounds, a different one for every type of warning. The phone was making some noise, but sleeping Jeff and I ignored it because honestly Jeff has about 15 other phone alarms that indicate who-knows-what every afternoon (various calendar reminders and work stuff).

We eventually decided to see what was going on--the weather gave us no indication of impending doom, just some clouds, but indeed a tornado warning had been issued. Jeff scooped up Bun, I grabbed Pache and Q, and we headed to the bathroom. During the scooping process, my phone rang, and it was Melissa calling to tell us about the storm. She was in Champaign, some ten miles west of our house, and apparently actual funnel clouds were happening and headed our way. Here's one of the many photos I saw on Facebook almost immediately, most of them taken by former students who probably should not have been out chasing storms.

We rode out the brief storm with our big-eyed cats. It didn't last long and, as usual, seemed to skip right over us.

I keep meaning to write about my show in Jacksonville! I displayed my wares at the David Strawn Art Gallery during the month of April. This involved three long, 266-mile round trips in the Mazda: one to deliver the paintings, one for the opening, and one to take the paintings home. On the day of my opening, Jeff and I were up before sunrise and drove to the gallery. I gave a 6-hour workshop (watercolor still life) in the Strawn's basement classroom. I changed and put on my makeup in a gas station bathroom, and then we had an early supper with Mom, Dad, Poof, and Tyler before my two-hour opening. After it was over, we drove all the way back home, so that made for a very long but ultimately enjoyable Saturday. I've never had so many people attend one of my art shows and even managed to sell a fair number of paintings. Who knew that Jacksonville was such an artsy town?

Thanks to all of my friends and family who came to see the show. I was thrilled to see Kendra, Rob, Melinda, Kate, Mabel, Lars, Michelle, Grace, Jay & TA, and even Karen Icenogle, my high school art teacher! I hadn't seen her in a very long time, and she looked at me and said, "I love you." It was all I could do to keep from bursting into tears.

In other art news, I've finally begun work on a commissioned painting that's going to take a couple of months to complete at least. It's a wedding present from a top secret groom to his top secret bride. The wedding is in September, so I won't be able to show it to you until then, which is a shame because this painting is, in a word, bonkers. I can tell you that it includes eleven people and eleven statues, and it takes place in a gold and red art deco theater lobby. The painting is huge at nearly three feet by three feet. That was too big for my studio table, so I've moved my whole production downstairs to our bedroom where we have a large desk. I blurred the reference image on my computer there, but I think I can show you a five-inch chunk that is in fact .8 percent of the final picture.

So it's mostly that kind of thing.

Bun loves the new setup because while I work she gets to sleep on the bed and do cute things like this.

Glass Gems 3 is currently on display in Dixon, IL, at The Next Picture Show gallery as part of the Illinois Watercolor Society's national exhibition.

I've been in IWS's last three national shows. That means I'm a signature member of the Illinois Watercolor Society and can now add "IWS" to my signature on future paintings!

Jeff, who appears to be throwing down a gang sign, and my parents came to the show with me and made the day very special.

Artist and judge Donna Jill Witty presented a terrific and dramatic watercolor demonstration during the show. I am the giant black shape on the left that seems to be absorbing all light in the room--I am almost as dark as those aliens from Attack the Block.

That was such a good movie.

In case you've never seen our house, here's what it looks like. It's a American Craftsman house with big boxes added to each end and is delighfully weird. The steps in the center lead to a massive, 760 square-foot deck that we never use and is a bit warped and dated. You can see a corner of it here.

About a month and a half ago, we began taking the deck out. Parts of it were so rotten and poorly constructed that it was almost a simply-lift-with-hands-to-remove kind of situation. Soon it was gone, and now we're dealing with the fun part: figuring out what to do with all of that new space.

We're going to have a table and chairs sitting atop flagstones on the right, a fire pit on the left, dark rock filling in, and a line of lighter rock dividing the space horizontally.

Here's a shot of the Adirondack chairs and fire pit (which I spotted at Menard's, majorly on sale). We put a ring of bricks around the pit and love the way it looks.

Below that will be a rock garden that mimics a dry stream with a bird bath.

Jeff arranged a lot of that on Sunday afternoon as I was taking a shower, and when I looked at it from the living room it instantly reminded me of a brain, which was unintentionally awesome.

We'll have some black mulch and new plants down there, including a rose-of-sharon and a dwarf burning bush, along with vines, grasses, and other flowers.

Here's what it looks like so far (sorry about the bleached-out lighting situation). You can kind of see the flagstones under the table.

Jeff and I often find ourselves staring out the window at this scene multiple times per day, contemplating our next move.

I'm nuts about moss roses and have been planting lots of them. Hopefully no woodland creatures plan to eat them, such as...

Two years ago, we hosted a family of woodchucks. Last year we had foxes. This year our house has become a chipmunk sanctuary. I like to put seeds out for them, and as many as four chipmunks are eating seeds at any given time. The cats enjoy watching these little guys, especially Quixote, who gets incredibly worked up.

We also have some adorable juvie Canadian geese in the neighborhood!

On the food front, I've been trying various experiments in low-cal food that are pretty good but not great enough to merit blogging, such as:

and

And oh, my colposcopy? I'll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. To amuse myself during the procedure, which is essentially a super-pap, I altered Paul Simon's Kodachrome and sang it to myself with altered lyrics as Kolposcope.

 

Kolposco-o-ope! It gives us those nice bright colors, it gives us the--

You get the idea.

It was essentially no big thing and took maybe five minutes. My area of concern was miniscule, and my doctor told me everything that was happening as I looked up at the ceiling, silently humming my tune. I didn't even faint, and evidently they get a lot of fainters. The doctor told me that based on what she saw, I had nothing to worry about. Unfortunately I was instructed to have zero marital fun with Jeff for ten days afterward so I could heal properly, so that was was a complete drag.

After a few tense days, I called for my results and it turns out I'm basically in the clear. But anyone who gets any kind of abnormal pap test and has a colposcopy/biopsy at my hospital is sentenced to three additional paps during the next year, so I've got that to look forward to. But I have been assured that my test results look very good. The paps are just a precaution, and the hospital presumably has lots of big shiny equipment and snazzy waiting room furniture they need to pay for.

Let's end this on a cute note. Here's Hypatia, one of three cats who piled up on me after the colposcopy. I was recovering under the "wookiee blanket," and Pache showed a certain amount of bravery in climbing aboard, as she is afraid of the wookiee blanket.

Croissant Bread Pudding

Well of course croissant bread pudding isn't particularly good for you, but sometimes you need comfort food. You meaning Jeff and me. (Go down to the end of this post for a message from Jeff.) I've got a fun-sounding medical test coming up next week called a colposcopy, which is something you can look up on the internet. It's stressed me out to the point where I've made a playlist called CalmTheHellDown and crowdsourced a handful of my favorite women on Facebook for their advice. They have lovingly talked me down from the ledge, but still. Comfort food is definitely the order of the day (or rather, it's defiantly the order of the day, to use a common Facebook misspelling of "definitely" that never fails to bring a sneer to my face when I see it).

So you'll forgive me if I want to make a dessert that is loaded with ingredients many people try to avoid: dairy, sugar, eggs, croissants. But it's so heartbreakingly beautiful and easy. I hadn't made it in years, but last week our refrigerator contained all of the necessary ingredients, including some big frozen croissants that had been in there for months, probably, and egg yolks leftover from some mini-pavlovas I had made.

The recipe is by big bad Ina Garten, from her first Barefoot Contessa cookbook, and as is usually the case with her, it could easily feed a dozen people. But I only had four croissants, not six, so I scaled the amounts back to what you see here. I also used a smaller, 2-quart casserole instead of the usual 9"x13" baking dish. If you want to make that Ina-sized version, I've put those amounts at the bottom of the post. To make an even smaller version than mine, I'm guessing you could cut Ina's giant recipe in half and put it in an 8"x8" baking dish.

Ina's recipe includes a sprinkling of raisins throughout the center of the bread pudding, but I don't like baked raisins. I'm sure you could think of other things you could do to jazz up this recipe such as adding chocolate or cinnamon, but try it the simple way first. The bread pudding is incredibly comforting to eat while it's warm, but it's just as good if not better when served cold and kind of reminds me of vanilla ice cream.

Please know that you're going to need to put your baking dish inside of another, bigger dish or roasting pan, and you'll need to add water to the outer pan and make a big foil tent over the entire operation. Then you will need to be able to transfer that to the oven without tipping and sloshing. You will hate me, and I'm sorry. But can a single woman (who has always been secretly scared of the oven) handle this by herself? Yes. You can do it. Be brave.

Few things are as gorgeous and impressive as this is coming out of the oven. It's big and puffy--the puffiness will deflate as it cools--and if you want to take a photo of it at it's biggest, you'll need to do so immediately. (Sorry about the blurriness and cropping of this picture: I wanted to capture the bread pudding the second it came out of the oven, and I didn't have time to get fussy.)

INGREDIENTS

• 2 whole eggs
• 5 egg yolks
• 3 1/3 cups half & half
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 4 big croissants, preferably stale (or enough smaller croissants to crowd into your 2 quart dish with significant overlap)
• 2/3 cup raisins <--optional; I say they're gross

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. You may want to adjust your racks--you'll need about 8 inches of clearance for this dish. I set mine in the lower third of my oven.

In a large bowl, whisk together the whole eggs, yolks, half & half, sugar, and vanilla. Set the custard mixture aside.

Slice the croissants in half, horizontally. In your 2-quart baking dish (oval or otherwise), distribute the bottoms of the sliced croissants. I put in as many intact bottoms as I could, and then I tore the remaining bottoms into smaller pieces that I placed in the gaps.

Sprinkle the raisins (or anything else you'd like to experiment with) over the croissant bottoms. Then arrange the tops of the croissants (brown side up) on top of this. Feel free to overlap them a little. The baking process will meld them together. If you're using raisins, make sure that none are peeking out between the croissant tops or they will burn while baking.

Give the custard another quick whisk and pour it over the croissants and allow to soak for 10 minutes, pressing down gently. At first it will seem like you have way too much custard for the dish, and the croissants will try float like islands. But as you press down gently, you will notice that the croissants will absorb the liquid like delicious sponges, and after ten minutes of just letting the croissants sit and do their thing, you'll find that the flood has been reduced significantly. During the 10 minute soaking period, you can get going on the foil tent.

Place the pan in a larger one filled with an inch of hot water. Cover the larger pan with aluminum foil, tenting the foil so it doesn't touch the pudding. Cut a few holes in the foil to allow steam to escape. Tip: fold two big pieces of foil together along their long sides. Then drape that over the pudding and wrap it around the edges of your big pan. Tent the foil on top and poke your holes.

Bake for 45 minutes. Uncover and bake for 40-45 minutes more or until the pudding puffs up and the custard is set. Remove from the oven/water bath and cool slightly.

Top with a dusting of powdered sugar, fresh berries, etc., and enjoy!

INGREDIENTS FOR BIG 9"x13" VERSION

• 3 whole eggs
• 8 egg yolks
• 5 cups half & half
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• 6 croissants, preferably stale
• 1 cup raisins

Above: Bun defends her territory from a fierce neighborhood kitty. Oh the yowling!

Thank you for all of the great comments you've made on my Paris posts, especially those of you who crawled out of the woodwork and commented for the first time! I just asked Jeff if he ever plans to write his follow-up post about how he planned the trip, but he got all pouty and shruggy and has this idea that nobody cares. If you do indeed care and would like to know how he did it, please leave a comment for him here. Otherwise he'll think--he'll know!--that nobody wants to hear from him. And come on people, you know you do. Look at how cute he is!

Paris Part 4

Monday morning was still Easter as far as Paris was concerned, and that meant no museums for us. Instead Jeff and I journeyed over to Sacre Coeur and Montmartre. The weather was cool, breezy and overcast--a huge improvement over the weather I had experienced when I was there, which was shade-free and stagnant with a 100 percent chance of skin-sizzling sky-lasers. (Jeff took the above photo during his November visit.) Sacre Coeur sits, cherry-like, atop the hot fudge sundae that is Paris. Over a decade ago I climbed three-fourths of the way up its many, many stairs in the merciless noonday sun before concluding that I preferred not dying of heat stroke to putting a check in the box for Famous Church #104,939.

Jeff showed me that life didn't have to be that way, and for a few euros we rode the funicular, a.k.a. Wuss Train, up to the top. My feet were really starting to hate me by then, after days of walking for miles and miles, and because of possible rain I wore my leather boots. They're knee-length, and I wear them with socks inside of tights. Their footpad is...acceptable. That day one sock decided that it didn't want to stay up, and it bunched itself into a little ball beneath my instep, enraging me.

Anyway, Sacre Coeur, i.e. Sacred Heart. Here's the view, once again from Jeff. The interior wasn't nearly as interesting as the exterior, especially its strangely elongated domes, which reminded me of my favorite pharaoh Akhenaten's daughters' heads. I've thought about Akhenaten at least once a week for the past twenty years and will mention him at the drop of a hat. Please do not question this.

Here's the thing about Sacre Coeur that I missed the last time I was in Paris: everything going on behind Sacre Coeur. One would assume that on the other side of this church you'd see a whole bunch of steps headed back down the hill. Totally wrong! On the other side is the bohemian area of Montmartre I'd come to romanticize while studying 19th-20th century art history. Let me just throw some green underlined names at you: Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, André Derain, Suzanne Valadon, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Maurice Utrillo, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and African-American expatriates such as Langston Hughes worked in Montmartre and drew some of their inspiration from the area. And it was bizarre and to see their actual homes and studios, as if they were at one time real people in human bodies moving around and making things.

And how about their hangouts, such as La Maison Rose, which from a distance looked like a child's mural of a pink restaurant?

Or the Lapin Agile (the nimble bunny!), too adorable to be believed, where I sat on a bench, took off my boot, and pulled up that lousy sock of mine?

Too much.

Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, and other impoverished artists lived and worked in a commune, a building called Le Bateau-Lavoir, during the years 1904–1909. According to Picasso biographer John Richardson, this studio complex sounds completely horrible:

"The place was so jerry-built that the walls oozed moisture--'glacial in

winter, and a Turkish bath in summer'--hence a prevailing smell of

mildew, as well as cat piss and drains....On a basement landing was

the one and only toilet, a dark and filthy hole with an unlockable door

that banged in the wind, and, next to it, the one and only tap...

There was no gas or electricity."

And yet, and yet, and yet...in that yellow-ish building (well, the original was destroyed by fire; this is a recreation), Picasso had his blue, rose, and early cubist periods. Les Demoiselles D'Avignon was created here. Modern art was born here. Ground zero.

It took my breath away, and eight days later I'm still reeling and near tears just thinking about this place and the dark, leafy trees nearby. No one else was around when we were there, and a small display in a window confirmed that yes, this was it. I was on holy ground, and for me this was the highlight of our trip. I will never forget it.

Wow. How about some candy? Please watch this video about A l'Etoile d'Or.

 

 

Denise Acabo, the sweetest woman in Paris, welcomed us into her tiny candy store and, since we couldn't understand the French descriptions of her many chocolates, we asked her to please select some for us, whatever she liked. We were the only customers at the time and received her complete, doting attention as she spoke to us in charming, broken English. We were touched by her kindness and her obvious love of her wares--she became visibly excited as she described each one to us. We left the store with a bag of candy and the feeling that Paris had just given us a hug and a kiss, and we ate the chocolates in bed that night.

Art history and sweets out of the way, Jeff was a man on a mission to eat the best baguette in Paris, and I'm going to let him take over for a couple of paragraphs.

On my last visit to Paris, I became obsessed with baguettes a la ancienne. I purchased a book by Peter Reinhart called The Bread-Baker's Apprentice and baked many a loaf attempting to get the flavor, texture, crust, and crumb right, with some decent success. So, on this trip, I wanted to try baguettes from a few of the places Reinhart, and others on Chowhound, had mentioned: Gosselin, Eric Kayser, and Julian, plus also Au Levain d’Antan, the winner of the 2011 Best Baguette in the city award-- in Paris, the size, shape, and ingredients of a baguettes de tradition are regulated, so it's easier to compare.

On our trips around Paris, we hit each of these boulangeries. I expected Gosselin to be my favorite, since it was the one touted by Reinhart, but while I found it good, the inside was too yeasty for me. The Kayser and Julian baguettes were similar--very good, large crumbs, a sweet inside from the longer fermentation process, and better than anything I could get in Illinois. But, in the end, I agreed with the judges. The Au Levain d’Antan baguette was amazing. The outside crust was hard, but crumbly, with strong flavor. The inside was all holes and sweet, moist bread that was delightfully chewy. We ate half of the baguette walking down the street to the metro, and the rest almost as soon as we arrived home. Just one more thing to haunt me now that I've returned home.

Madame Manners says, if you eat a baguette on the street, break off pieces small enough to place in your mouth; don't tear into it with your teeth.

[I'm back.--Kelly] After a walking past dozens of sex shops lining a street called Place Pigalle, which I had never heard of but Jeff seemed to very much know about, we let Montmartre in search of lunch in the form of Le Bistro Paul Bert. But--ack!--it was closed.

So we began a long walk in the general direction of our apartment. A few days earlier we had spotted a restaurant that served mussels, dubiously called Academie de la Biere, or Beer University (not to be confused with Bovine University). We walked at least a mile into the increasingly brisk and damp wind, craving protein and the absence of the increasingly brisk and damp wind. We hoped that Beer University would be open, and it was! We sat at a communal table--next to us was a group of about eight people leisurely finishing a big meal--and ordered what ended up being a mother lode of mussels. Restaurants vary wildly when you order mussels, we've found, and we were awestruck by the huge bowls of mussels and fries set before us here. We could have easily shared one order, but here were two.

(The fries, of course, did not meet Jeff's exacting Belgian standards. Sigh.)

But the mussels were great--a ridiculous 75+ per serving, we estimated. Mine came in a wine-cream sauce, and Jeff had curry. It took us a while to mostly-finish them, and we tore off pieces of our prize-winning baguette and dipped them into the sauce. Jeff ordered a Belgian framboise beer that he liked, but our waitress winced when he pointed to it. She pointed to a different framboise called Grisetta, quietly insisting that he order it instead, which Jeff did.

And now Jeff has a new favorite beer.

Warm, happy, and stuffed to the gills, we walked back to the apartment. With the aid of Dropbox and his computer at home, Jeff managed to stream the previous night's episode of Mad Men on his iPad. He hung it from the light fixture over the bed using his belt. Such is our love of and dedication to Mad Men.

Another lovely day. That night I wrote:

I feel so closely bonded to Jeff when we are in a foreign country. We kind of exist inside our own bubble anyway, but when our surroundings change, we don't know a soul, and we don't speak the language, a second bubble envelops us. And this place is so beautiful, romantic, and the food is simply incredible. I adore my husband.

In case you missed them, here are the other installments. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 5, Part 6.

Paris Part 1

For those of you who have been on pins and needles over the past two weeks, wondering how my Jacksonville show went, it was terrific. My best show so far! I wanted to post about it right after it happened, but I had a cartoon to make followed by a week in Paris, and I didn't have time to add blogging into the mix. But it will happen after this Paris series is over.

So! Paris! How about that?

Jeff and I (mostly Jeff) planned this trip for almost a year. He used his internet-fu to find a modern, inexpensive apartment and credit card frequent flyer mileage-fu to ensure that our flights were free. A former project manager, Jeff figured out a daily plan of action designed to pair places we wanted to visit with nearby, incredible food. I was happy to let him take over because (a) he does it so well, and (b) preparing for two one-person shows in nine months was kind of overwhelming for me. Jeff has helpful travel advice that he will either dispense throughout my posts or write as a stand-alone guest blog. He was sick during the last third of our trip, and he still is, and right now he wants to curl up on the couch and watch Lonesome Dove, and who can blame him?

Both of us had visited Paris before with other people. Jeff was in the process of breaking up with his person, and I had broken up with my person many months before the trip, but tickets had already been purchased, and how often does one get the opportunity to see Paris, anyway? Jeff spent a cold, drizzly week in November walking around by himself during a Metro strike, and I endured blasts of record June heat sandwiched between dutiful visits to every art museum in the city, plus the most important churches and a side-trip to Chartres. All that slogging around meant nonstop McDonald's haute cuisine eaten on the run for me, so I left with no real idea of what French food could truly be, and Jeff's person...let's just say she was a lot more disciplined than some bloggers you might know.

Oh hi.

This time Jeff and I employed a two-pronged plan of attack for Paris. Prong one: romance. Prong two: pleasure. Notice how neither prong involves crying, sweating, angst, boredom, fast food, forced marches, shivering, ennui, disgust, or resentment--I'm telling you, it's hard to have a good vacation with any of those in the mix.

So this time if it was mind-crushingly educational and we had already seen it, we usually skipped it. If someplace fun was a drag years ago, we aimed to right that wrong. Our rose-colored glasses were still firmly on, thank you very much, and we were set to have some damned fun in Paris for a change.

My parents, Melissa, and Jeff's folks kindly offered to watch Bun, Pache, and Q while we were away. Mom and Dad did most of the heavy lifting in that regard as they fed, watered, and medicated the cats (as per my ridiculous three page document's instructions) for five days. I'm so thankful for everyone's help--I don't think I could have boarded Bun at the vet's with a clear conscience. The cats were happy to see us when we returned home last night, and as I type this, Bun is sleeping at my side. We missed them every day we were gone.

Here we are, all smiles and energy at the very beginning of our trip. We flew out of the Champaign airport to O'Hare at around noon last Friday, and from there we traveled to Paris, arriving on Saturday morning.

We packed lightly: Jeff had a backpack and I had a smallish wheeled carry-on and a medium-ish purse. In fact, we packed so lightly that airport officials gave us looks of disbelief on two separate occasions. A Frenchman called us James Bond and Mata Hari--that's right, we pack like spies. I managed to cram four black dresses, extra shoes, and a second coat in my carry on, and I pruned my toiletries down to the bare essentials (tampons had to be included because of course they did).

The eight-hour flight to Paris was tough for me. Jeff fell asleep almost immediately after our kinda-supper. He chose the chicken, and I chose the pasta, but I should have chosen the chicken. A couple of hours later I started to get some low-level "what if it's food poisoning?" feelings. You know the ones. They're sweaty and you feel trapped in your window seat because your darling husband is sound asleep beside you and you can't concentrate on your book and your Kindle's little video game (Bubble Buster, five stars) is making you seasick and you start to think about the best way to throw up in an airplane bathroom and how horrifying that would be and the plane is dark now except for the movie and ugh if it's food poisoning that means you'll be violently ill four or five times before it's all over...what's your only option?

Mind control. Meditation. Go to your happy place and breathe and count. Failing that, watch what's playing on the entertainment screen way over there to your left and try to understand the plot without the aid of your headphones. The movie is a Pixar-wannabe animated feature called Rio and it seems to be about a blue parrot, and there's all kinds of rapid-cut flying sequences involving thousands of birds spiraling down into jungle vortexes and singing a lot...

 

...and best not to watch that anymore so let's meditate. Or maybe watch the moon move across the sky. Spend a couple of hours doing that before you feel like maybe you are out of the food poisoning woods.

We arrived without incident in Paris not too long after sunrise. Charles de Gaulle Airport was alive with a writhing mass of people hell-bent on spending Easter somewhere other than Paris. The intimidatingly long lines gave us no hope for an easy departure a week later, and is it just me or has CDG changed from the futuristic, roomy playground made famous by U2's Beautiful Day video (total dick move at 1:14)...

 

...to a baggage-ridden, concrete hellscape from which there is no escape?

Luckily, we found the right train that would speed us toward our apartment in the 5th arrondissement, a.k.a. the Latin Quarter. I was wearing the coat I wore in Spain--based on weather forecasts (highs in the 50s, lows in the 40s), light wool seemed like my best bet. Except it was red, and every "what to wear in Paris" website suggested that dark neutrals were the way to go. A couple seemed to think that red was borderline acceptable, but one should be prepared to stand out (indeed, this was the case). A few days before we left, I floated the idea of going rogue/rouge on Facebook and received 48 "likes," but by then my mind was already made up. I was wearing red.

Exact shade: effyou red.

We emerged from the appropriate Metro station and boom, we were in Paris, Luxembourg Gardens area. We grabbed an Eric Kayser baguette, rolled our spy luggage down long streets and through a medium-sized open market where some Italian guys applauded my coat, going, "Bella, red!" Ahh, affirmation.

Our apartment was at the top of a building that housed a library on its ground floor. After huffing and puffing our way up 100 spiral steps--Jeff counted--we arrived on time to meet Isabelle, our landlady. Hip, friendly, and speaking impeccable English, she showed us around the tiny but modern and cleverly designed studio apartment (approximately 16 square meters). It included a living area with a pull-out bed, a wee kitchenette, and a bathroom. New appliances. The apartment was spotless and just what we were looking for. A link to it is here. If any of you are interested in renting this space, let me know, and I will pass your info on to Isabelle. You can rent it directly from her if you like.

Everything had a function, and there was no wasted space. Free wi-fi! The ceiling slanted sharply down near the windows, which were flung open to reveal this view to the left...

...and this view to the right.

We were happy, exhausted, and ready to explore Paris.

To be continued!

In case you missed them, here are the other installments. Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.

Studio Assistant

Finished just in time to be included in my Jacksonville show, here's Studio Assistant. This is a 13.5"x10.5" watercolor that I thought I might finish in just a few days, but it actually took about twice that long. Jeff and I kept getting interrupted with errands, voting, family responsibilities, home improvement projects, etc. Also, there's a lot more to this painting than I had originally thought. Little containers filled with paintbrushes take some time! Bun was in fact the easiest part of this painting--I think this is the sixth time I've painted her. Example:

Bun has always enjoyed watching me paint. Back when she was very young, she liked to bat at the end of my paintbrush or pen...

Sometimes she'd even lounge on in-progress paintings.

Since then she has taken on a more supervisory role...

...and is now my toughest critic and harsh taskmaster.

(Apologies for posting that photo yet again. I'm just crazy about it.)

One day last fall Bun hopped up on my painting table, and she seemed to be posing for me. I took a few photos before she moved on to more pressing matters.

This photo captured Bun's seriousness and illustrated how surprisingly small she is. In certain situations, sometimes her head can appear to be too big for her body, and that is adorable.

The photo was great, but the lamp was in the way. So I edited and moved a few things to create a vertical composition.

Clockwise from the top left corner:

• Some (fake) poppies in a vase made by a grad school acquaintance--he gave it to me in exchange for a ceramic mask I had made.
• Metal sign with a giant letter R (used to advertise a Robert Rauschenberg exhibition). In my Match.com profile, I mentioned that R is the most attractive letter because it has it all: curve, straight line, diagonal. And that's probably the top reason why Jeff decided to contact me.
• Beloved Achewood comic strip discussing the awfulness of the Comic Sans font. Contains bad language.
• Bun
• The panel behind her seems to mimic her tabby pattern.
• My water container. The lid says "Fido" and claims to be made in Italy.
• Plastic ruler I can't seem to find at the moment.
• Raku turquoise dish holding paint tubes. I wish they were arranged more attractively.
• One of the first ceramic containers I've ever made--a blue string of pearls loops around it.
• My graphic design professor made the larger container, and he gave it to my watercolor professor, and he gave it to me. Inside: pencils, an old brush, a couple of screwdrivers, and a Ralph Wiggum thing you can put on your car's antenna.

Prints of this painting are now available here on Imagekind. But before you go, let's enjoy some Ralph quotes.

 

Aggressive Spring

After an unprecedented week with temperatures in the 80s every day, flowers around our house are blooming earlier and faster than ever before. I stroll around the yard several times a day and see major new developments each time. This winter was shockingly snow-free, and I think if I had to come up with one word to describe spring so far, it's aggressive.

I'm not sure what these umbrella-like plants are, but a lot of them sprang up two days ago near the area where my Mushrooms painting took place. (Edit: Laura tells me they're may apples. Thank you!)

The person who built and lived in this house before us was a master gardener. She was apparently hog wild for daffodils, planting every variety imaginable, including these all-white ones. I took all of these photos between thunderstorms this afternoon, hoping that the muted light would help me capture details I wouldn't be able to see under direct sun. I was pleasantly surprised with results.

I also love all the droplets on the flowers' petals. Very pretty!

I've spent the past six months waiting for these parrot tulips to emerge. For the first time in my life, I planted bulbs last fall. I'm especially curious about the parrot tulips because the website I bought them from promised me that they'll eventually look like this.

Does it get any prettier? Does it bring out the old Dutch master in me? Ohhh I hope they're that pretty because I want to put them in a vase and do something like this.

No pressure, parrot tulips!

Still more daffodils. Last fall Jeff's dad tilled our front garden. It had become overrun by lemon balm and other weeds, and luckily those haven't shown up again this spring. Unfortunately, the tilling disturbed dozens of daffodil bulbs, which we picked out of the soil and I replanted. Amazing how resilient they are! The tilling also seemed to wake up some tulips I'd never seen before. Last year we had two. This year we have around twenty, including the red ones at the top of this post.

Elsewhere around the house, our red bud trees are going berserk with fluffy pinky-purpleness.

The apple trees are set to explode next week...

...along with some young dogwoods.

Jeff and I have been making daily improvements around our deck and yard. Yesterday Jeff moved the swing to a more picturesque spot next to the "mother" red bud that produced the others. I wonder how old this tree is and marvel at its uncomfortable-looking L-shape and its ability to hang in there year after year. In the background: the Salt Fork river and some wetlands.

This is what we see from our bedroom windows.

Please excuse the blurriness on the left side of the photo above; I'm guessing that's a raindrop.

We have a mirror outdoors--it hides an ugly area near the corner of the house. Thus ends my tour of the yard.

Thanks for all the get-better messages for our now-toothless cat Hypatia, seen here with a doting Jeff. Well, thanks to my mom and the two of you who tweeted at me. She's doing a lot better and is back to being her goofy, gorgeous self. Incredibly, she's eating dry food! And now, so the other kitties don't feel left out...

...it's the dashing and handsome Quixote, who always knows exactly where and how to pose for optimal glamour...

...and it's my newest painting starring young Bun titled Studio Assistant. I hope to have it finished this weekend, just in time for my Jacksonville show. I'm becoming increasingly nervous about it and find myself sitting in hazy lighting situations and staring into space.

Happy aggressive spring, everybody, and here's hoping it doesn't turn passive-aggressive. Because I don't know what that would even look like.

Please come to my show!

I'm excited to announce that my watercolors will soon be on display in a one-person show at the David Strawn Art Gallery, including this brand new painting called Planets and Foil. (Info about this painting is coming soon, and I know they're not planets.) The gallery is at 331 W. College Ave in Jacksonville, Illinois, which is a small-ish college town located between Springfield and St. Louis.

The show opens on Saturday, March 31 from 6-8 pm. Want to see me give a five-minute mini talk about my work? Be there at 6:30. See the woman on the far left (photo found via Google image search)? That'll be me, and I hope one of those other people will be you.

Apparently a friend of a friend passed my name along to the powers that be at the gallery, and they invited me to display my work. I've never been to the Strawn before, and I couldn't find many photos of the gallery's interior except for the one above, but I do know the building looks like this:

I'm already crazy about this place.

I'll be giving a (sold-out) watercolor workshop at the gallery most of Saturday--similar to the one described here--and the show opens that evening. It will be a long day for me, but hopefully it will also be a lot of fun.

I'm hoping the gallery's regulars will attend the opening, and I know my family and some area friends plan to show up, including such Alizarine superstars as Poof, Jeff, Mom, Dad, Tyler, Terry, Melinda (possibly Kate and Mabel too), along with other fabulous people possibly unbeknownst to you such as Kendra, Zinnia, Chris, Jenny, Rob, Melanie, my young penpal Grace, Jay, TA, Annie, and hopefully many more people to whom I sent postcards. Bun will not be there, but she does star in three paintings, one of which I am working on right now.

And I'd love to see you! Please, if you are in the area and are the least bit curious about my paintings, come to the show. It's free!

You'd better believe we'll have refreshments including unnamed mystery snacks provided by volunteers, soft drinks, and fancy fancy wine. Come for the art, but stay for the snacks and especially the harp music that will be rocking the gallery all night long.

If you can't attend the big opening, my work will still be at the gallery during the month of April (click here for hours).

One of my new paintings, Glass Gems 3, will be at the gallery for the opening, but after that I'll need to take it home. It's been accepted for the Illinois Watercolor Society's national exhibition, which is terrific, but unfortunately there's some overlap with the Strawn show. I will replace the original with a print that will look just like it, thanks to the wonderful printmakers at Imagekind. Please visit Imagekind if you would like to purchase a print of any of my paintings--see this post for details (scroll way down).

Thanks as always for reading my blog, and I hope you can come to my show! (Excuse the bossiness of this banner.)

Eddington's Peanut Butter Eggs

I'm obsessed with Reese's peanut butter eggs--everybody knows this. It is an established fact. People who love me are undoubtedly weary of my tiresome explanations of their appeal. I wrote about the RPBE's over two years ago and quoted my friend Melinda, who crystallized my thoughts perfectly:

Let's face it: the RPBE is sort of sloppy, really...There's something almost homemade about that aspect of the RPBE.

Homemade. YES. That is exactly it. They are lovingly crafted by someone who cares about them. They are the best thing in the Reese universe. I buy them (and their pumpkin and tree hybrids) all the time and mourn them during their Easter-to-Labor Day off season.

A couple of days ago I was looking around on Pinterest--apparently there's some kind of chicken and crescent roll casserole that's electrified this mighty nation. Yes, I'm on Pinterest because I am a girl and it's fun. You should totally check out my Greatness board and admire my exquisite taste in things that are great.

Somebody had pinned a recipe for homemade Reese's peanut butter eggs, I blacked out for a while, and the next thing I knew, I was making them and live-tweeting the process, a first for me. That picture up there is not an actual RPBE. I made it. It is an EPBE!

And what do you know: they're easy and fun to make. You probably have all the ingredients in your kitchen right now. I altered the recipe (from The Whimsical Princess) just a bit for greater RPBE accuracy and added a lot of my own italicized notes. What you see here is a half batch. It made 14 full-sized eggs for me, and unless you're having a party or something, you probably shouldn't be making 28 of these.

INGREDIENTS

• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 3/4 cups creamy peanut butter <--we had store brand, very so-what peanut butter
  
• 2 tablespoons butter, soft or melted
  
• 1/2 to 1 teaspoon salt <--original omitted the salt, but you've really got to have it because that is a huge part of the RPBE's appeal. Add it a little at a time to taste. You will know when you've added enough.
  
• 1 to 2 tablespoons milk <--depending on your powdered sugar dipping technique, you may need more
  
• 1 1/2 cups milk chocolate chips <--original called for semisweet, but I'm sorry, RPBEs are covered with milk chocolate
  
• 1/2 tablespoon shortening <--regular white Criso, not butter flavored, which I guess you could try in a pinch, but I didn't feel like screwing around with this.
  

DIRECTIONS

Mix together the powdered sugar, peanut butter, and butter. I used a stand mixer and was glad I did, but you could use a tough hand mixer, a spoon, or probably even your bare hands. Add the milk one tablespoon at a time until it becomes a nice workable dough. It will be just like Play-Doh, and it will be really easy to work with. Form the dough into egg shapes.

Some of your eggs might be a little on the dry, crumbly side. Those will create more accurate eggs, texture-wise (see note at the bottom of this post). But really, this dough should stick together and form eggs without a whole lot of effort on your part. I'd imagine that kids would totally get into this. Little surface cracks are okay (see photo below), but if the dough is falling apart as you work with it, you need to add more milk. I got 14 out of this batch and ate about a teaspoon of dough during the salt-tasting process.

Place in the freezer for about an hour. Do not skip that step.

Place the chocolate chips and shortening in a glass measuring cup.  Microwave 30 seconds at a time, stirring in between until completely melted, about 90 seconds total.  (You can also use a double boiler if you prefer.) Adding the shortening is weird, I know, but it's just a tiny bit, and it seemed to make the chocolate silkier and maybe a little glossier.

Dip each egg in the melted chocolate and place on waxed paper until set.

Use a skewer or similar thin pointy thing if you have them. Stick it into the fat end of the egg until it feels stable, then dip! This is where the hour-long freeze starts to make sense. It's like the chocolate wants to be on that egg. I spread it around with a spoon for a few seconds, sort of scraping off most of the excess that wanted to collect on the egg's underside.

Once the eggs are on the waxed paper, remove the skewer with a slight unscrewing motion and gentle assistance from another skewer. You can then smooth over the hole with the egg's existing, wet chocolate or add more. Or you can leave the hole as is because (a) who cares and (b) it reminds you of your cat's ass and that's hilarious.

I apologize, Bun, and also to you, the reader.

Once they are set you can trim any excess chocolate off that may pool at the base with a knife to make them look pretty.  You could also decorate them with royal icing and make a really special Easter treat.

I had no pooling issues, and as far as decorating them further goes, I yell BLASPHEMY.

You will not be able to resist cutting into one a few minutes after they've all been dipped. Just give in. The chocolate will be a little melty, like a RPBE on a hot spring day or a RPBE in a warm car. I advise you to make these in the evening, have your too-soon egg, put the rest in a plastic container and store them at room temperature. Go to bed and dream about them--I did--then have one for breakfast!

Re: taste accuracy. Jeff and I shared the too-soon egg and proclaimed it 90+ percent accurate. Somehow, that rating jumped to 95 percent overnight. Our only issues:

1. The texture of the peanut butter was a tiny bit too solid. RPBEs are slightly more granular and airy. This is unavoidable, as you are forming the eggs with your hands and thereby compressing the peanut butter. Your less-fooled-around-with eggs will be crumblier inside but harder to dip.
2. The chocolate, according to Jeff, was somehow better than Reese's. I thought it was dead-on.

SO YEAH. Just about perfect, you guys. 14 RPBEs will cost around $11 if you buy them separately. 14 homemade EPBEs will cost around $4, and if you already have most of the stuff on hand, they're basically free.

If you're still reading, I urge get on board with this. And once again, please buy my prints!

The Graduates

I'd like to introduce you to my club! Meet Annabelle and Emily, a couple of former students of mine. When I made the decision to end my teaching career and become a full-time artist last year, these two missed me and took the initiative to form an independent art club. I'm calling them co-presidents. Co-queens!

We meet at Cafe Kopi, a local coffee shop, four times a year (at the start of each new season). At our meetings, I give my former students new projects to work on just for fun, and then we sit around talking about our current artistic endeavors and anything else that comes to mind. We also enjoy coffee drinks and homemade snacks. Like most clubs, this one started out kind of big and has since reduced in size to its hardcore, founding members.This little club has touched my heart, and I've enjoyed mentoring Annabelle and Emily.

I have a one-person show coming up at the end of March, and I wanted to add a new, big portrait to my collection, and...I can't remember what made me decide to paint the girls, other than obviously I needed to paint them. They're so beautiful. Annabelle reminds me of Natalie Portman here, and Emily's more like Nicole Kidman coloring-wise, so that contrast was wonderful to play with.

But in the end, this painting is actually a tribute to my favorite movie about teenage alienation, Ghost World. If you don't know what Ghost World is, here you go.

 

Annabelle is Rebecca, Emily is Enid, and I guess that must make me Seymour.

But back to the painting.

This is the painting after two days. The girls are gazing out a window in the coffee shop. Annabelle has a sort of dreamy expression, and Emily seems a little skeptical, maybe.

A couple of days later, I had started to add their surroundings. Painting portraits can be a little stressful, so I worked on their faces in the morning when I had fresh eyes and the background in the afternoon as fatigue set in.

The cafe has red doorways that were delicious to paint. Cadmium red light is a miracle color. A blurry man who reminds me of Paul Gauguin sits outside at a table beneath an awning decorated with colored lights.

I told Annabelle and Emily to wear something that would be challenging for me to paint, and they did not disappoint! Plaid and floral patterns are no joke but are so worth the time. You can see the beginning stages of Annabelle's buffalo check shirt on her rolled-up sleeve. This was no ordinary watercolor plaid shirt. The colors were such that I had to paint each square individually instead of layering glazes. In other words, it was hard. Emily's shirt would have been easier to paint had the print been bigger. The tiny roses were tedious!

I saved the table for last because I knew it would go quickly. The reflections involved a lot of wet-into-wet sections, and the damp paper did a lot of the work for me.

During my last days of painting, I told Jeff that the background reminded me of "I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold" by Charles Demuth.

"You think in color," he said. I guess I do!

And I also have a big announcement.

In the past I've offered two of my paintings as giclee prints (Burano Glass and Poppies), which are exact digital copies of my paintings on watercolor paper. I'm excited to announce that I've branched out: now you can buy ALL of my paintings as prints.

All of them, including this one!

I've joined a site called Imagekind, as you can see on the sidebar to the right. I have an actual ad on here!

My galleries are at http://KellyEddington.imagekind.com .

Imagekind allows you the freedom to buy prints in a variety of sizes and formats. Maybe you want The Graduates to be iPad-sized. Maybe you want it to be a poster. Maybe you want it framed. Maybe you don't. Maybe you want it on expensive paper. Maybe you want something cheaper. Maybe you even want to see it on a canvas. You can do any of these things! A couple of my friends have purchased my prints from Imagekind, and they report that the process is fast and easy. Imagekind ships internationally, too!

Note: I'm not going to get rich off this venture, but every little bit helps. I'd like you to think of this ol' blog as your Watercolor 'n' Recipe NPR or your Watercolor 'n' Kitty PBS, and baby, this is my pledge drive! Have I given you a recipe that you use all the time now? Have I posted a painting you'd like to see on your wall if the original wasn't so freaking expensive? Would you like to help me buy Bun's high fiber food and expensive drugs that keep things moving along? Please consider buying one of my prints. You'll get something new you can hang on your wall and you can feed and drug my cat!

Double Note: If you buy a print for $20, please know that I will receive $10. I earn an additional 15% commission on any frames, so if a frame costs $100, I'll receive $15. It takes a while before I'll see the money (to give customers time for returns), and if you buy something I won't automatically know that you did it. So feel free to leave a comment here or talk to me on Twitter (@kellyeddington)!

Triple note: the settings that pop up automatically are the ones I'd personally suggest (Hahnemule Torchon paper is the most like watercolor paper, for example), but you can change them at will. Hate the frame I've selected? Want a different mat? Do what you like!

Quadruple note: the premise to the cartoon below is that the man was making cool donuts shaped like planes.

Please buy my doughplanes. Thanks in advance!

Cheap Cioppino a.k.a. Cheappino!

A couple of years ago I posted a recipe for cioppino, a tomato-based seafood stew that was easy to make but a little expensive. It is pronounced like this. My recipe called for a pound of shrimp and a pound of scallops, and if you buy those around here they'll cost about $15 plus they'll be frozen and sometimes even a tiny bit funky when defrosted. I'm lookin' at you, scallops. Unacceptable.

But we still want cioppino all the time (and so does Bun).

So Jeff came up with a compromise: ditch the shrimp and scallops entirely and load up on the much cheaper tinned mussels. He became obsessed with mussels after he took a business trip to Belgium a few years ago, by the way. That country ruined french fries (frites) for him, too. We try mussels at every restaurant we can, and they've even inspired a painting.

The tinned mussels that we buy are a far cry from that kind of thing, but the red oil they're packed in really makes this dish great, and we found we don't miss the shrimp and scallops. We bought the mussels at Meijer, a Midwestern superstore similar to Wal-mart. The package looks like this, and we bought two of them for around $1.80 each:

Jeff says, "These are by no means the best mussels you can eat. But for the price, they impart a lot of flavor and have a good mouth-feel." Here's what one looks like (sorry about the blur):

Yesterday afternoon Jeff and I threw the cheappino together, let it mellow out on the stove, and ate it that evening with a baguette (Artisan Take & Bake French baguette, which was terrific).

I suggest you pair the cheappino with some cheap pinot.

 

Or not! I don't know anything about wine.

REVISED! INGREDIENTS

• 2 T olive oil
• 2 C chopped onion <-- this was one huge Vidalia onion, but it's more like one or two regular ones
• 1/4 t crushed red pepper flakes
• 2 medium stalks celery, finely chopped
• 5 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 (28 oz.) can diced tomatoes, undrained
• 1 (8 oz.) bottle clam juice
• 1 (6 oz.) can tomato paste
• 1/2 C chicken broth
• 1 T red wine vinegar
• 2 1/2 t Italian seasoning
• 1 t Old Bay seasoning <-- optional, I just felt like tossing some in
• 1/4 t sugar
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 (10 oz or so) can baby clams, undrained
• 2 (small, sardine-like) tins of mussels in spicy red pepper oil
• 1/4 C chopped Italian parsley
• salt and pepper

DIRECTIONS

Heat oil in a large dutch oven or similar soup pot.  Add the onion, red pepper flakes, celery, garlic, and a little salt and pepper.  Saute until the vegetables are soft.

Add the diced tomatoes, clam juice, tomato paste, chicken broth, red wine vinegar, Italian seasoning, Old Bay seasoning, sugar, and bay leaf and heat through.  You can let it simmer for a while if you've got other things going on.  The sauce will thicken a bit.

Add the clams, mussels, and parsley.  Let everything heat up and adjust salt and pepper, if necessary. 

You can eat this immediately or you can let the flavors marry for as long as you like on the stove.

Even without the shrimp and scallops, your big-eyed cat will still totally want you to share this with her.