Alizarine

Treasure

I can sum up February in two words: antibiotics and Treasure.

Antibiotics: Bun is urinary infection-free after we struggled to find antibiotics that didn't make her sick. The first was a brutal regime of 56 pills that made her sick every time we successfully got them in her. We switched to a second type--28 doses of a pink liquid in a rather hilarious cherry flavor (because everyone knows cats love stuff that is cherry flavored). This delightful concoction caused Bun to drool and foam uncontrollably for ten to fifteen minutes after Jeff squirted some down her throat, during which time I followed her around with a billowing handful of paper towels, sopping up the drool as she hustled from one room to another. Thanks to all who donated to Bun's medical fund and even sent her valentines. Jeff and I were blown away by your kindness and generosity.

Between my drool cleanup sessions, I painted and painted. This was the main reason why I haven't updated the blog in a while. I became obsessed with my unusual and challenging still life. It's another cluster of jewelry along with other items including an old photo of me as a baby. My mom put it in my birthday card back in late Janurary. I whimsically added the photo to my still life setup and loved the idea of painting a tiny girl surrounded by objects she would eventually own. I spent the first couple of days painting my baby self. My head is about the size of a nickel. I'm in my parents' dining room holding one of Dad's college books. I had trouble sleeping during this first week of painting--I found myself repeatedly waking up at 4:00 aching to get back to work on it.

Next I added most of my turquoise bracelet (I wore it everyday during my early teaching years), some coral beads, and an antique dragon that might be made of ivory, but I'm not sure. I like how the orange-red beads resemble fire shooting from its mouth. In real life the dragon is about an inch and a half tall. The painted version is about five times larger in this 20"x26" watercolor.

During one productive week, I finished the dragon and a lot of fussy jewelry in the lower left corner, including an antique orange bead necklace that was nothing but trouble! On our first Christmas together, Jeff gave me the swirly silver charm on the right.

I selected the jewelry pieces mainly because I liked the way they looked together, and the setup came together shockingly quickly. Some of the stories behind the jewelry are meaningful, and some are not. For example, one morning I was on my way to school when I noticed the beginnings of a wardrobe malfunction and needed something to pin myself together. I popped into a drugstore and bought the above purple pin for $4.95. It may have been cheap, but it took an entire day to complete. The orange beads run through the bottom half of the painting. They had many diamond-shaped facets and were difficult but fascinating to paint. I loved producing every bead in this painting, but the many connecty things here were a chore.

Not wishing to annoy my Facebook friends with daily in-progress photos where I had covered maybe a couple of square inches, I limited myself to Friday-only updates. The above photo shows some new objects: a sparkly gold charm that is the focal point of a statement necklace, most of a turquoise ring that is too heavy to wear while painting, and a perfume compact of a leaf with a dragonfly on it. Because the gold charm was so impossible, I couldn't make myself work on it all day, so during the afternoons I painted fun stuff. The dragonfly/leaf and the circular gold compact in the lower-left corner were gifts from my friend David, who is a makeup artist at Estee Lauder in Bergdorff Goodman, NYC. I bought the ring in Santa Fe, and the gold necklace is from some catalog or other.

The next week I finished the turquoise ring and dragonfly/leaf compact (that took a lot longer than I thought it would). Then I worked on the space above those two things. I referred to this area as "the little garbage."

Finally I painted the silver Eddington necklace, which I thought acted as a kind of fun signature, a pearl, and some more beads. Note the tiny chain draped over that red bead. Why didn't I think to hide it when I put this still life together? Those links were so impossibly small, even on a large-ish painting.

Last week I took care of the little items in the lower right corner, including a raspberry-shaped earring composed of small garnets. Most of the items here are resting on foil, except for those on the right side. You can see where the foil ends and the table begins. (If you click on the picture above, you can see the details more easily.)

I adore Venice and was happy to find the above matchbox at a local antique store. It shows the Ca' d'Oro ("Golden House") and was painted in a jazzy style that I had fun mimicking. The lettering and skinny black lines made me so nervous that I kissed my right hand after I finished them. I devoted the last day of painting to the turquoise chunks in the top right corner and tightening up the gold floral piece in the center.

For a while the working title of this painting was Treasure Chest, awesomely suggested by Jeff. A couple of weeks ago we decided to shorten it to Treasure. I liked that idea because it can be a noun and a verb. I'm so happy with the painting and think this could be a great new way for me to create portraits--a photograph of the subject surrounded by beloved objects--and I want to do more.

Prints of this brand new painting can be found here!

And I've put Treasure on tons of merchandise...

...and you can find it here!

Apple Pie Cake

This centerpiece has occupied our dining room table since probably Thanksgiving. Last week Jeff put our omnipresent plastic deer (deers?) on its two highest peaks for no real reason, but they reminded me of that scene in The Lord of the Rings when representatives of every--I don't know, I barely paid attention--every type of creature?--climbed to the top of mountains and lit things to signal each other that--what? A war or maybe something awesome was going to happen?  This scene:

 

Again, LotR is not my bag and I don't care enough to investigate this further. Please don't bother to tell me what's happening, but I'd like to think that maybe those are signals of celebration. And that's what our plastic deer (deers?) are doing up there: they are lighting their party beacons because holy Moses look at that cake!

Yesterday I wanted to plunge myself into a major baking project. Jeff's been feeling just sick enough to not want to do anything, Bun's on the mend (thank you for asking) but a little wiped out by antibiotics, I've been alllll about painting lately and harboring some low-level feelings of dread regarding an upcoming medical checkup. My parents' crotchety but beloved and ancient cat Robert died on Friday. This winter has been a complete washout as far as snow is concerned, and I'm jealous of the east coast's blizzard. I just really needed to do some next-level baking. This recipe from Christina Tosi's Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook had been haunting me for months. The fact that Valentine's Day is coming up was reason enough to make a cake that tastes like apple pie.

Here are the cake's six components: a "barely brown" butter sheet cake, pie crust crumbs, apple pie filling, an apple cider soak, pie crust frosting, and something called liquid cheesecake. Special equipment is involved. Don't bother making this if you don't have a stand mixer. Christina Tosi is a culinary genius and an entertaining writer, and I felt like she was coaching me through the entire process. She's the kind of coach who is not going to put up with your bullshit shortcuts, though, and I was on my best baking behavior all afternoon. I didn't want to let her down!

The end result (which Jeff and I tried after the prescribed 12+ hours of freezing and 3 hours of thawing) was as good as any non-chocolate, fruit-based dessert gets. We shared one of the cake's six triple-decker megaslices and were stunned by its complexity. The recipe is below, along with my notes in italics, just to give you some idea of what you'd be dealing with should you decide to take on this lunacy. Please buy the book if this kind of thing appeals to you. The entire book is that way, and the photos will make you cry.

Dude. I think I just heard a robin.

Barely Brown Butter Cake
Makes 1 quarter sheet (9x13) pan

2 tablespoons or 40g brown butter, see recipe for instructions
4 tablespoons or 55g butter
1.25 cups or 250g sugar
1/4 cup tightly packed or 60g light brown sugar
3 eggs
1/2 cup or 110g buttermilk
1/3 cup or 65g grapeseed oil  <-- unavailable here; I used vegetable oil instead
1/2 teaspoon or 2g vanilla extract
1.5 cups or 185g cake flour
1 teaspoon or 4g baking powder
1 teaspoon or 4g salt

1. Preheat the oven to 350F/175C. To make the brown butter, microwave the 2 Tbs of butter in a microwave safe bowl covered with a microwave safe plate, for 3. The butter will pop while browning, so don’t worry if it sounds like your microwave is going to explode. If not browned enough after three minutes, continue to microwave at 1 minute increments. Be very careful when removing the bowl and plate from the microwave – it will be very very hot. While brown butter is cooling, stir occasionally to melt the caramelized bits of butter. Cool completely in the refrigerator. There is something decidedly weird-ass about brown butter. I've yet to put my finger on it.
2. Combine the butters and sugars and beat on medium-high for 2-3 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl. Add the eggs and continue to beat for 2-3 minutes. Reduce the speed to low and gradually add the buttermilk, oil and vanilla. Return the speed to medium-high and beat for at least 5-6 minutes, until the mixture is very light and has doubled in size.
3. If the mixture hasn’t reached this stage by 6 minutes, continue to beat it.
4. Reduce the speed to very low and add the cake flour, baking powder and salt. Continue to mix on very low for a minute or two until all the batter is smooth and free of lumps.
5. Pam-spray and line your quarter sheet pan with parchment. Bake for 30 minutes, until the cake holds its shape when poked and the center is no longer jiggly.
6. Cool the cakes on a wire rack and store for up to 5 days, well wrapped in plastic wrap, in the fridge.
7. Note: this cake baked perfectly flat (no doming) tastes almost exactly like Twinkies. The batter alone is delicious and lets you know that you're making something special.

 

Liquid Cheesecake
Makes one 6” square baking dish

8 ounces or 227 g cream cheese, room temperature
3/4 cup or 150 g sugar
1 tablespoon or 15 g cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon or 2 g kosher salt
2 tablespoon or 25 g milk
1 egg

1. Preheat the oven to 300F/150C.
2. Beat the cream cheese on medium for a couple of minutes, scraping the bowl once or twice. Add the sugar and continue to beat for 2 minutes, until completely incorporated.
3. Mix together the cornstarch and salt, then gradually whisk in milk, then egg, until the well combined.
4. Whisk the cream cheese on medium-low and slowly add the egg/milk mixture, until the batter is smooth. 
5. The recipe says to use plastic wrap to line your baking pan, so that's what I did, and it was kind of strange and melty around the edges when I took it out of the oven. I've read other takes on this recipe where parchment paper is used instead, and I will do that next time. Also, who has a 6x6 pan? I used a standard loaf pan and it was perfect.
6. Pour the cheesecake into your lined dish and bake for 15 minutes, or until the edges are set but the center is still jiggly. Remember, this is supposed to be a spreadable liquid cheesecake, so you don’t want to over cook it, but if the edges aren’t set, continue to bake for up to 25 minutes, checking every 5 minutes. Do not allow it to brown at all. Mine took 15 minutes.
7. Cool completely in the pan, then store for up to a week in the fridge.

Pie crumb 
Makes about 350g (2 ¾ cups)

1.5 cups or 240g flour
2 tablespoons or 18g sugar
2/4 teaspoon or 3g salt
8 tablespoons or 115g butter, melted 
1.5 tablespoons or 20g water

1. Preheat the oven to 350F/175C.
2. Combine the flour, sugar, and salt in the bowl and mix well, then add the butter and water and continue to mix until small clusters form. This can be done in a mixer with a paddle attachment on low speed, but it isn’t necessary. 
3. Spread the clusters on lined baking sheet, and bake for 25 minutes, breaking them up occasionally. When ready, the crumbs will be golden and a little moist--they will dry as they cool. Mine seemed too dark after 25 minutes. They still tasted good, but I'd check them at 20 minutes next time.
4. Cool the crumbs completely, then store in an airtight container for up to a week at room temperature or up to a month in the fridge/freezer.

Pie Crumb Frosting
Makes about 220 g (3/4 cup)--this is enough for one very generously frosted 6-inch cake (with plenty of leftovers--Christina Tosi recommends you snack on it with apples). Also, Christina's cakes typically have no frosting on the sides, just the tops, because she likes people to be able to see what's going on inside.

1/2 recipe Pie Crumb
1/2 cup or 110 g milk
1/2 teaspoon or 2 g kosher salt
3 tablespoons or 40 g butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup or 40 g confectioners’ sugar

1. Blend the pie crumbs, milk, and salt in a blender or food processor on medium-high until smooth, scraping down the bowl a few times. The mixture was shockingly thick and smooth!
2. Cream together the butter and confectioners’ sugar using a stand mixer on medium-high until pale and fluffy. Reduce the speed to low and add the crumb puree. After a minute, increase the speed to medium-high and blend for another couple of minutes, until very the frosting is a very pale light brown. 
3. The frosting can be stored for up to a week in the fridge.
4. Note: this frosting is like no other frosting I've ever tasted. Not too sweet, it's basically a spreadable pie crust. Bizarre and amazing.

Apple Pie Filling
Makes about 400 g (1 3/4 cups)

1 lemon
2 medium or 300 g Granny Smith apples
1 tablespoon or 14 g butter
2/3 cup tightly packed or 150 g light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon or 1 g cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon or 1 g kosher salt

1. Half fill a medium bowl with cold water, then add the lemon juice.
2. Wash and peel your apples, then quarter and core them. Cut each quarter into three sections, lenthwise. Then cut each of these skinny pieces into four small chunks. Store apple pieces in the lemon water.
3. Drain the lemon water from the apples, then put them in a medium saucepan and add the remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil, gently, over medium heat and stir the apples occasionally. Once they have begun to release their juices, simmer for 3-5 minutes, until soft but not mushy. Cool completely before cake assembly.
4. Store this filling for up to a week in an airtight container in the fridge, but do not freeze it.
5. Note: I had some very juicy apples, I guess, and the sauce never quite thickened for me. I used all of the apples in the cake but not the liquid. I strained that off and drizzled a bit over the apples when assembling the cake. Maybe if this happens next time I will add some corn starch while cooking.

Apple cider soak
Makes about 60g (1/4 cup)

1/4 cup or 55g apple cider
1 teaspoon tightly packed or 5g light brown sugar
pinch or 0.25g cinnamon

1. Whisk together all of the ingredients in a small bowl until the sugar has dissolved.

Assembly!

Invert the cooled cake onto a piece of parchment and cut out two x 6’’ circles of cake, using a 6’’ ring as a guide. Use the remaining scraps to form another layer of cake.

Lay a piece of parchment paper on a sheet pan or cake pan (I used an 8-inch round cake pan). Clean the 6" ring and place on top.

Line the 6” ring with a 20"x3" piece of acetate or another type of strong but flexible plastic sheeting. Place the cake scraps inside the ring and flatten them into an even layer. Brush half of the apple cider soak over this layer, then layer over half of the liquid cheesecake. Sprinkle over 1/3 of the apple pie crumbs, then half of the apple pie filling.

At this stage, you can use reinforce the walls with another layer of acetate, overlapping the bottom one slightly and tucking it between the first piece of acetate and the cake ring. This is delicate, awkward work.

Place another layer of brown butter cake over the apple pie filling (waaay easier said than done) and brush on the remaining apple cider soak. Cover with remaining cheesecake, then half of the remaining pie crumbs, and all of the leftover apple pie filling.

Top (awkwardly; that acetate is not easy to deal with) with the last sheet of cake, then add the pie crumb frosting. Decorate it as you will or smooth it flat. Use the remaining pie crumbs to make a border around the outside of the frosting.

Transfer the cake to the freezer and leave it there for at least 12 hours, or up to 2 weeks. 3-4 hours before you want to serve the cake, remove it from the freezer and slide off the metal cake ring. Peel off the acetate and stick the cake in the fridge, where it can stay for up to 5 days. Wrap it in plastic or cover it with a cake box if you are going to leave it for an extended period of time.

More Bun Drama

It's been a lousy few weeks for Bunny. The story is so convoluted and boring--I'll try not to ramble.

Bun takes a miracle drug twice a day to keep her regular. The University of Illinois' small animal clinic gets it from India, but the supply recently ran out (for good? conflicting stories!), and all animals on the drug needed to come in so their doctors could talk about alternatives. So Jeff and I brought Bun in.

During the exam, the doctor suspected that she had a urinary infection. She gets these about once a year, and after further tests, we learned that yes, that was the case. The antibiotics she had to take: 56 Clavamox pills over the next four weeks, which seems incredible. Bun hates pills, so this would be a twice-daily power struggle. I drew 56 erasable Bun faces on our kitchen chalkboard for motivational purposes. Fine.

Yesterday morning when we opened our bedroom door, Bun was not there to greet us and boss us around. This was highly irregular, so we started calling for her. She emerged from the living room and limped up to us. She didn't want to put much pressure on her back left foot, and as a result she was moving slightly sideways.The foot in question:

Jeff once had a little dog that had a stroke who moved the same way, so he immediately thought, stroke. Maybe it was a side-effect from the pills? He scooped her up in a towel and we both started crying and holding Bun like a baby. Our poor girl!

She seemed alert in every other way, though, and was not yowling in pain, but we knew we needed to get her to her local vet as soon as possible. Jeff held it together long enough to make the necessary call, we threw on some clothes, and we rushed her up to the vet just as it was opening.

Bun's kind of a big deal up there. Her file is one of the thickest they have, so everyone knows her little face. She is incredibly docile and sweet to all humans, and she also has this way of giving her doctors and other vet people homemade cookies "just 'cause." I took one look at the always-sympathetic C., working the desk as we blew in, and got hideously weepy as Jeff explained our situation. We were hustled into an exam room.

The first available doctor looked in Bun's eyes and did the usual exam, saying she wasn't showing any stroke symptoms. She suspected that Bun had injured her leg in some way and wanted to take some X-rays.

[fast forward through stressful waiting period where they kept Bun for a couple of hours]

The X-rays showed no signs of breakage. We were able to see that she was a bit constipated. ALL of Bun's doctors had looked at her and all concluded that she had not had a stroke. Consensus was that she had a soft tissue/tendon injury. They gave us something to treat her pain and we went home. I came up later with some cookies from Bun.

What could have caused the injury?

Theory A: Bun's kinda-pal Quixote likes to engage in grab-ass (see video below, and now I feel like such a jerk for chuckling)...

 

...and occasionally those two get into some knock-down, drag-outs during the wee hours.

Theory B: As Bun has aged, her ability to jump has declined. Last week I watched in horror as she attempted to jump from our dining room table to a window sill and missed, falling to the floor. Maybe something like that happened overnight.

But Bun has been frightened of Quixote since yesterday morning and actively hides from him now. So I'm leaning toward Theory A.

Attempts to give Bun her pain medication were met with a frothy, spitty, puking girl who was having none of it. She refused food for the rest of the day and hid in Jeff's office. Her eyes were dilated and I know she must have been in pain. We ended up sleeping on the floor beside her last night.

In the morning (5 a.m.) we all woke up. Happily, I was able to coax Bun into eating some of her dry food and drinking some water. She used her litter box a little--she had to have been almost totally dried out. Standing in the box seemed uncomfortable for her and I feel that's a top reason why she's avoiding it. Jeff managed to get her various meds in her. She's spent most of today in Jeff's office, eating and drinking a bit but not much. Jeff has become worried that she's not passing the stool we saw in her X-ray yesterday and, with the advice of her U of I doctor, he has upped her laxative dosage. We don't want this to turn into a repeat of two summers ago.

SO we are hoping that between now and 2 p.m. tomorrow, Bun will have had a successful litter box trip to Town #2. If not, she has another date with her U of I doctor. I really hope it doesn't come to that.

If you would like to donate some money toward Bun's hefty medical bills, I have a PayPal button on the right. Or please consider buying a print here, stuff here, or originals here. Thanks!

EDIT! It's late Friday morning, and I am pleased to announce that Bun gave birth (basically) to a bouncing baby boom-boom, as we call them. Actually, it was more like octuplet boom-booms. Crisis averted! Even though she's still got that sideways walk that will hopefully heal over time, Bun's feeling a lot perkier today. AND she gets to nap the afternoon away in her sunny basket, narrowly avoiding a scary, expensive trip to see her U of I doctors. GO BUN.

I mean, seriously, there was cheering going on in this house. People were dragged away from desks to gape at things in litter boxes.

And I would like to sincerely thank everyone who wished our cat well and donated some money to her cause. You almost completely paid her surprise expenses this week. Thank you very much for helping us. Bun loves you and wants to give you cookies, just 'cause. I was genuinely surprised that anyone had even bothered to read to the bottom of yesterday's post. I propose a toast to you, my dear readers. You made a little cat happy.

(I made it clear that Bun pooped today, right? She did not have a litter of kittens. I was trying to make a little joke and am saying this preemptively in case people didn't get it.)

Three Little Girls

Early this month I began working  on a 16"x20" commissioned portrait of three little girls. They're lying on their stomachs and looking in a mirror, so you can see their faces along with the backs of their heads. The painting will be an anniversary present for the girls' grandparents later this week, so if you know grandma and grandpa, please don't tell them and spoil the surprise!

As with any portrait, I began with the faces. Each one here is about 2-3 inches tall, and my 000 brush got a workout! Myra (left) appears to be charmed by her baby cousin Ruby. In the original photo, which was taken by the girls' grandfather, Ruby seemed to be gnawing on her hands...

...and this obscured most of her face. The girls' parents did not want to ask grandpa if other photos from this session existed because then he might have wondered if they were up to something. So I looked at a different photo of her for this portrait. Not easy, but I think I pulled it off.

I saved Octavia for last--she seemed easiest and indeed was. She and her sister Myra are intelligent, sweet girls with adorably geeky interests such as volcanoes, drawing, and superheroes. Octavia's pose was so thoughtful--you can see the little wheels turning in her head.

Dark blond, wavy, long, slightly messy hair is the absolute hardest hair to paint! Myra's took a couple of painting sessions to finish. Making things tougher: her striped shirt that you can see between the strands. I had to invent parts of Ruby's hands.

I worked on Octavia's clothes and began filling in the background: greyish carpeting, what I think are shoes, and somebody's knees. Then I moved downstairs and began the girls' striped shirts. It's fun to suggest wrinkles in fabric by changing the stripes' width. At least I think it's fun. I protected the perimeters of their hair with masking fluid, which shows up as yellow here.

And then, as usual, feeling like I was hitting the home stretch, I skipped taking photos for a couple of days. Myra's hair was once again really hard to deal with and seemed to be snaking around all over the place. It took two days to paint. Octavia's was a relative cakewalk, and Ruby's could not have been easier (paint a bald head, gingerly add the hair with a fuzzed-out brush). I was thankful that Ruby's parents dressed her in solid, light colors.

I saved the blanket for last because I really liked the idea of painting all those stars and moons. I painted the entire blanket and its reflection a light blue with blue-gray shadows before topping it with the stars and moons. I had to distort some so they would look right with the blanket's lumps and folds.

I scanned the painting yesterday and presented it to Myra and Octavia's thrilled father, and he has about a week to frame it. I'm eager to hear about the grandparents' reaction! In the meantime, I've popped it up on Imagekind as a print (click here)...

...and later this week I'll add it to some items on my online merchandise store.

If you'd like to read about projects like this as they happen, please go to my Facebook watercolor page and give it a *like.* Thanks!

Misc. Winter Things

The photo above is a shot of our side-yard one afternoon last week, back when we had a dusting and a half of snow. The light seems to be changing just a bit now that December is over, and spring is obviously just around the corner.

Not really.

I'm going to spend the next ten weeks enveloped in various fleeces and plan to amuse myself with new recipes, including two you'll see below. But first, I wanted to show you a couple of photos of Poof from Christmas at our parents' house.

She was sitting there looking so blissfully content that I had to ask her to freeze while I took a photo.

I like how her senior photo seems to be peeking at her happy future self. What a beauty. I love her so much.

And now, the recipes!

This is a Pinterest recipe I found and made almost immediately. It's from something called "jujugoodnews" and is a black bean salad with corn, red peppers, and avocado-lime vinaigrette, minus the avocado for now. It's shockingly tasty and healthy to boot! I've tweaked it a bit (see italics).

INGREDIENTS

• 2 15-ounce cans black beans, rinsed and drained
• 3 ears fresh cooked corn, kernels cut off the cob <-- I used a bag of thawed frozen white and yellow corn, something like 12-16 ounces, so yeah, I went *heavy on the corn.* I've adjusted the lime juice, onion, salt and olive oil amounts below to accommodate the extra corn.
• 2 red bell peppers, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• generous 2 teaspoons salt
• generous 2 tablespoons minced red onion
• generous 2 tablespoons sugar
• 10 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon lime zest (be sure to zest limes before juicing them) <-- I zested 2 small limes
• 7 or 8 tablespoons fresh lime juice
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro, plus more for garnish <-- I used Italian parsley because I have a problem with cilantro
• 2 Hass avocados, chopped

DIRECTIONS

Combine the corn, beans, and peppers in a large bowl and mix well.

Mince the garlic and mash it into the salt until it becomes a paste. Put it in a small bowl along with the lime juice, lime zest, olive oil, and onion. Whisk and pour over the corn mixture. Mix well.

Cover and chill for a few hours or overnight. Right before serving, add avocados and mix gently, being careful not to mash avocados.

Serve at room temperature.

Jeff and I decided to turn this salad into some tacos. He has a quick guacamole recipe that he likes to throw together (avocado, traces of lime juice--he had a bad experience with too much last month--a grated clove of garlic, a tablespoon of jarred salsa, and salt to taste). So: it's a smear of guac and a little pepper jack cheese on a blistered corn tortilla topped with the above salad.

This made a fun 1:30-ish kinda-lunch! Also there's no meat here, although this made us want to add some carnitas into the mix, but not enough to actually get in the car and drive 10 miles into town to our favorite carnitas provider.

Next up: spicy brittled peanuts from that Smitten Kitchen cookbook I've been talking about lately. Oh man, these are incredible. That amount of cayenne down there is perfect, and it quietly buzzes around in the sweet-salty background. If you're not allergic to peanuts, you will find yourself saying lots of double-negative things like, "Life would not be worth living if I couldn't eat peanuts."

You're going to have to work for these way-better-than-CrackerJack peanuts, but not too much. It's mostly just a lot of stirring over a medium-hot pot, and some of that stirring is very interesting because science.

INGREDIENTS

• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon flaky sea salt
• 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 cups shelled raw or roasted unsalted peanuts, papery skins removed <-- I used blanched peanuts

DIRECTIONS

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicon mat. If you don't have either, coat your baking shee with a thinslick of vegetable oil.

In a small bowl, whisk together the baking soda, sea sat, and cayenne, and set aside.

In a large saucepan, the heaviest one you've got, heat the sugar, butter, and water over medium-high heat until it just begins to turn golden, about 7 to 10 minutes. Add the peanuts and start stirring, coating them with the sugar mixture.

After a minute or two, the sugar will sieze up a bit, making the peanuts look grainy and crusty, and it will be harder to stir them--you'll be convinced that it's gone irreversibly south, cursing me under your breath [This cookbook is so conversationally awesome and you need to go buy it--K], but fear not, keep stirring, and in about 3 minutes it will melt back into a golden caramel.

That part actually took more like 5 minutes. I'm sure this was because my idea of medium-high heat is a little low, as I am afraid of heat.

Keep stirring, breaking up any clumps with your spoon, until the nuts are evenly coated, then remove the pot from the heat. Stir in the baking-soda-spice mixture as fast and evenly as you can, then spill the caramelized nuts out onto your prepared sheet, spreading them in a single layer and breaking up any clumps that you can before they set. Cool completely.

Once they're cool, break the nut clusters into smaller pieces and put them in a serving dish. The nuts will keep in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks, but rarely do because they are habit-forming.

She's not kidding. These were gone in two and a half days.

In other food news, yesterday I tried one of David Leibovitz's recipes for a flourless chocolate cake that was great but, disappointingly, not awesome. I already make a couple of F.C.C.s that beat it handily taste-wise and are a lot prettier to boot. So we're off to a disappointing start on that cookbook, but I'm nowhere near giving up. You should see some of the photos in that thing.

Finally, Jeff and I spent last week watching Mad Men's directors' commentaries for season five, and I was amused to discover this not-at-all-Photoshopped! insert in the packaging. I love how ticked off Betty looks.

PS Jeff thinks that Jon Hamm has an enormous head, especially in the image above, and he asked me to tack on this video.

 

Chocolate Chip Brioche Pretzels

Oh boy did I get a lot of books for Christmas, especially graphic novels (Harvey Pekar's Cleveland, Drawn Together by Aline and R. Crumb, New York Drawings by Adrian Tomine, and, geek squee!, Building Stories by Chris Ware, which I haven't even opened yet because I fear its power and size--it's about as big as a Monopoly box). I also received a couple of cookbooks: Ready For Dessert by David Lebovitz and Deb Perelman's The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook.

Let's hear it for Amazon wish lists, everybody!

I tore into The Smitten Kitchen and was immediately inspired. This 300+ page wonder includes a surprising number of vegetarian recipes. Bacon gets mentioned once or twice during the breakfast chapter, but meat doesn't make a real appearance until after page 200. Which is great! I've been craving more vegetables, and Deb's broccoli slaw and black bean ragout are already big hits with me.

But yesterday I felt like trying something more indulgent, and the book's chocolate chip brioche pretzels seemed too good to be true. They are pretzels in shape only. Our favorite local bakery makes a similar item (a long, narrow brioche sandwich with melty chocolate chips inside), and it has been a favorite of Jeff's and mine for nearly as long as we've been together. He even ate two of them on the morning of our wedding. Could we create something like those ourselves?

Answer: yes. Just barely, but yes. The recipe put our KitchenAid stand mixer through its paces, that's for sure, to the point that we thought it might do some damage to the machine. And even though these pretzels are as good as our bakery's if not better, Jeff and I will not be making them as often as we would like to because we love our mixer and would hate to see anything bad happen to it.

The recipe, which is kind of long, is here. Please read it if you want to give these prezels a try. Otherwise, here are some photos of the pretzel-shaping process and comments.

Here's half of the dough after its 2-hour rise. Jeff cut it into eight equal portions. Dibs on that one on the left!

He rolled the dough into 18-inch ropes on a plastic cutting board, stretching the dough by spreading out his fingers as he worked. The dough was really easy to deal with and required no flour to keep it from sticking to the plastic.

Each rope was turned into this sort-of noose shape.

Total pretzelization.

Four per pan.

While Jeff formed the pretzels, I got the egg wash going. I used the coarsest sugar in my cookie decorating arsenal to beautify the tops. I wish I had the clumpier kind that mimics the salt traditionally found on pretzels, but this was a good-enough substitution.

 

The recipe said to bake them for 12 minutes "or until lightly bronzed." After 12 minutes, ours were still pale and squishy. Ditto after 14. At 16 minutes, we declared them done, although they weren't as brown as the cookbook's photo:

That, to me, is "bronzed." And I want that sugar.

Be that as it may, our pretzels were perfectly baked and bronzed on the bottom. Please note the gross-looking crust in the prezel's holes formed by the egg wash. Don't be as aggressive as I was with the egg wash, or just don't worry about it. You won't notice it when you're eating these. Also please note my stylish bracelet. I'm one of those women who wears a seemingly-permanent hair tie bracelet.

These brioche pretzels are outstandingly delicious. As I ate the first one, still warm from the oven, I informed Jeff three times that "these are SO GOOD," as if he didn't know. They were also fantastic this morning after 20 seconds in the microwave.

PS A whole stick of butter was involved in the making of these babies, along with a hefty amount of chopped dark and milk chocolate, and when you look at them they positively scream I AM MADE OF CARBS PLEASE JUST STICK ME DIRECTLY ONTO YOUR THIGHS RIGHT NOW OKAY?! Sorry everybody.

Website Upgrade

Bun, seen here all bein' a Rockette, wants you to go to my art website, kellyeddington.com, and check out its new, cleaner, prettier, easier-to-navigate design. I wanted to do a screen shot and add it to this blog, but Bun was like, Then they'd never go to the site.

This is true.

SO PLEASE CLICK THIS THING AND GO TAKE A LOOK!

The new design comes courtesy of Jeff, who noodled around with it on WordPress for about a month. And by "noodled" I mean "squinted at code, bashed his head against his desk, did fast and complicated cut-and-pastes, looked up answers on WP help sites, resized and inserted dozens of images, found widgets, and did many other things that I will never completely understand."

Thank you very much, Jeff!

And thanks also to Bun, who nailed the above photo in one shot today. She is easily the most photogenic cat ever. Observe.

CLICK THE THING.

Thank you! Please let me know if you run into any problems with the site.

Emily and Cupcake

Tomorrow is my sister Emily's birthday, and due to travel and scheduling issues, I had to give her this painting on Christmas. Emily (a.k.a. Poof) is used to this kind of thing, as is anyone born on or around December 25, but I felt bad about not being with her on her actual birthday. So to make up for it, I decided to give her something extra special.

I took the reference photo about a year and a half ago when Poof and I traveled to New York City together (she met Mally Roncal, one of her makeup heroes, and you can read all about that here, and there's even a video). In the photo, Poof is saying goodbye to Cupcake, her goofy and adorable little cat. When she's not asleep, Cupcake has that hyper-alert expression at all times. I thought about using the entire photo for the painting, but I loved my sister's face so much that I wanted it to be the focus.

Unfortunately for this blog, I accidentally deleted the three in-progress photos I took of the painting. I painted Poof's face, arms, and part of Cupcake's face on the first day, finished Cupcake on the second day, and completed Poof's hair and dress on the third. The painting is smallish at 11x14 inches, so I knew it would go quickly. I found a terrific half-price frame that I bought with an additional 40% discount--always great when something like that happens. Here's a photo of the framed painting (Poof quickly Instagrammed it).

Poof had no idea I was painting her, so when I presented her with the painting yesterday, she was surprised and quickly became teary-eyed. As usual, no one tops my sister when it comes to reacting to my paintings, or any gift, really. You want to have this kid at your Christmas party, bottom line. Here's a short video of part of her reaction--the first 15 seconds or so were cut off when Jeff realized he was shooting it vertically.

 

Happy birthday, Poof! <3

PS I turned this painting into some products on my CafePress store, including cups, bags, cards, and a 2013 one-page calendar print. You can find it along with my multi-page calendars, including the one with Mabel (above) here. Make sure you indicate that you want a 2013 calendar, not 2012. This new painting will be on my 2014 calendar.

And you can also buy art prints on paper or canvas (above) by going here. Thanks as always for your support this year!

Specul-YUMs!

Here is a 10-minute recipe that will rock your holiday party to its very foundations. It's a take on the popular teacher-gift that my former students called "puppy chow," a term that always made me wince as I ate the chocolatey stuff hand over fist.

Jeff found the recipe last week, and, similarly dissatisfied with its name ("sandy buddies"), he came up with the abomination you see above, Specul-YUMs!, so named because its key ingredient is Speculoos. Also known as Biscoff spread or simply cookie butter, Speculoos changed our lives when we were killing time in Los Angeles a few months ago. You may remember this photo:

We went through a phase where this was all we wanted to eat, but since then we've scaled back on our Speculoos consumption, conceding that when all is said and done, Nutella is our nutritionally-bankrupt spread of choice.

But then along came Specul-YUMs!. We have been enduring a brutal, three-day diet that ends later this afternoon, a diet so strict that our heads have become heavier than the rest of our bodies and this is happening:

 

Not really. We lost a few pounds but were hating life.

So when we made this recipe today and sampled a few weeee bites in the name of quality control, we lost our dang minds. This stuff not just some gimmicky snack. It is a savior that has delivered us from eating a cup of cottage cheese studded with five saltines and a hard-boiled egg and calling that some kind of lunch.

The recipe is from here. This is our doubled and slightly altered version (it's for a party).

INGREDIENTS

• 4 1/2 cups rice Chex cereal
• 4 tablespoons white chocolate chips
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 3/4 cup Biscoff Spread/Speculoos
• 4 tablespoons butter
• powdered sugar for coating, something like 1 cup

DIRECTIONS

Place cereal into a large bowl. In a separate small bowl, microwave chips, Biscoff spread, cinnamon and butter for 1 minute. Stir. Heat for 30 second intervals, stirring between each, until mixture is smooth. Spoon mixture into cereal and gently mix to combine all ingredients.

Place powdered sugar into a gallon resealable bag. Spoon in half of the cereal mixture and shake to coat. Then spread this on wax paper to cool. Repeat with the rest of the cereal mixture. Place in a festive bowl to serve!

Salad Dressing and Corn Chow-Chow

Here are a couple of easy ideas for those of you who think that Christmas just doesn't feel right without some homemade gifts. Both are recipes by Nigella "Queen of Christmas" Lawson, and their sunny color and zingy flavors will brighten up the dark, horrible days of January. Each takes around a half hour (or less!) to throw together. Let's do it!

But Kelly, why chow-chow? you might ask. Quite simply, it's because of this picture:

It's on page 243 of Nigella Christmas, and I've wondered about it for three years as I've made other recipes in this marvelous cookbook. Look at it, all pretty and bright and so cutely packaged. It looks like fun things are happening inside those jars, right?

I've seen chow-chow occasionally in grocery stores but have never tried it. Nigella says that it is a sugary, vinegary Pennsylvania Dutch/Southern U.S. condiment, but she has put her own British spin on it by cutting the sweetness with hot mustard. I'm not much of a mustard or pickle fan, but I love this. It's like eating sunshine. You can use it as you would any other relish--I'm thinking it would be fantastic on a hot dog--or just eat it as is.

Some of these measurements were in metric in the book, and I'm keeping them there with some notes.

CORN CHOW-CHOW

INGREDIENTS

• 900g frozen sweetcorn, thawed <--a big bag; just check the weight on the package
• 8 teaspoons hot English mustard, from a jar <--I used half English mustard and half Dijon
• 300g honey
• 500ml apple cider vinegar
• 3 teaspoons celery salt
• 50g sugar
• 8 scallions, sliced into 5mm rounds
• 3 red bell peppers, deseeded and cut into 1cm dice

DIRECTIONS

Sterilize your jars. Here's how. Nigella recommends simply washing the jars, lids, and rings in the dishwasher and filling the jars while they are still warm, taking care not to touch the rims or interiors. Treat the rings and lids with similar care. I've done this before and am happy to report that no one has died from eating my canned goods.

Take the sweetcorn out of the freezer and let it begin to thaw in a sieve over a bowl. If you need to speed the process, pour hot water over it.

Put the mustard, honey, vinegar, salt and sugar into a saucepan and place it on a low heat, stirring with a wooden spoon to help everything dissolve.

Stop stirring, and turn up the heat so that the mixture comes to a boil, the let it boil for 5 minutes. For me this was just a gentle, merrily bubbly boil.

Check that the corn is thawed and drained, tip it into a large bowl, and add the scallions and diced peppers.

Once your liquid has boiled for 5 minutes, take it off the heat and pour through a sieve (so you get a smooth syrup) onto the corn, scallion, and pepper mixture. Stir.

Ladle equal amounts of corn mixture and liquid into your warm, prepared jars. The syrup should cover the chow-chow; or rather, no corn should sit above the syrup but it doesn't matter if the syrup comes up over the corn a bit.

Seal the jars or screw on the lids, and store in the fridge. Once opened, use within one month.

Note: this produced 8 cups of chow-chow with enough liquid to cover it as specified above. I also had 2 cups of corn mixture left over with nowhere near enough liquid to cover it. So I am keeping that around for us to snack on. It's just as tasty as the rest of the batch, but I'm not sure if it will keep as long in the refrigerator with less liquid.

GOLDEN HONEY MUSTARD DRESSING

Jeff and I have been eating a lot of salads lately, and this is my favorite dressing to make. It's so delicious and easy that I refuse to buy salad dressing from the store again. This recipe makes around 1.75 cups, and I recommend that you try the recipe first and see if you like it before making vast quantities for your friends. For my gifts, I multipied all of these measurements by six and produced enough dressing to fill the four pint-and-a-half jars you see in the top photo (with a little left over).

INGREDIENTS

• 1/4 cup Dijon mustard
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1/3 cup lemon juice
• 1 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt (or 1/2 teaspoon table salt)

DIRECTIONS

Put all the ingredients into a jam jar, make sure the lid's on firmly, and shake like mad.

Or, if you're making a lot of this, put everything into a large bowl and whisk like mad.

Taste to check for salt and/or honey. I always use way more honey than is necessary, but I've got one hell of a sweet tooth. You might want to add a note to your dressing recipient telling them to shake it before using.

Nigella says, "I don't keep [the dressing] in the fridge, but no doubt the health and safety police would tell me I have to." But when you refrigerate this, the olive oil rises and solidifies into a disturbing cap atop the rest of the dressing, and if you want to use it you'll have to thaw it first, and this is annoying. Once again, I've had zero casualties by doing things Nigella's way.

Happy gift-giving, everybody!