a magritte christmas

magritte
Originally uploaded by itslynzee.

the holidays is usually a flurry of activity in and around the actual christmas day. our holiday festivities are currently ongoing so blogging will be sort of limited until we’ve ushered in the new year.

my yearly baking frenzy was designated for christmas eve eve and i commandeered a friend to help me ease through the day. on tap were 101cookbook’s gingerbread men, bake or break’s irish cream brownies, kraft food’s cranberry biscotti, and by suggestion of my helper, domestic goddess’s peppermint bark. the day before i also attempted to make my super ripe persimmon into jelly candy but due to not having the right kind of pectin (and possibly user error) i ended up with persimmon jelly instead of jelly candy. but i digress. the recipes were all fairly easy but the gingerbread ended up being the most time consuming of them all. not used to making roll out cookies i was pooped about halfway through the batch. i had intended to frost them all but by the time i finished baking them i was completely over the idea of frosting. at my helpers insistence however, i made up a small batch of frosting and SHE proceeded to frost a couple of the cookies (literally a couple, TWO!) before she announced that she two was over the idea of frosting.

the lesson learned last year was to use smaller dishes when presenting holiday treats so all of my dishes were of manageable sizes. the lesson for this year is that when making roll out cookies, leave at least two days for completion of this project. one day to bake and one day to frost! hope you all have a very happy holiday season.

almond cupcake

almond cupcake
Originally uploaded by itslynzee.

awhile back i opened a can of marzipan to decorate some minicakes that i had made. since that episode, the rest of the lump has been languishing in the back of my fridge until i decided what to do with it. i had heard somewhere that marzipan has a long shelf life so i decided that (hopefully) it would still be edible. ;-)

i settled on altering a david lebovitz recipe for almond cake into cupcakes. the first batch came out sad and laden with butter... so much butter in fact that large pools of butter formed on the pan that i used to bake the cupcakes on! yikes! pools of butter wouldn’t usually be a bad thing. actually in most occasions it actually sounds pretty tasty. except on this particular occasion when it has oozed out of the cupcake batter AND the paper cup in which you are trying to cook cupcakes in! i attempted a second batch and decreased the butter to 7 ounces instead of 10. pools of butter again! although luckily this time they were not as large. so i ate them. yum. moist and almond-y. the recipe below decreases the amount of butter to 5 ounces. i think that would be just about right.

unfortunately the frosting was a whole different calamity. i don’t feel much like writing about it but it was sort of lumpy and clayish in consistency and had to be applied with my fingers rather than in the regular manner. ugh. so i’m not posting the recipe because it was basically a waste of time and ingredients. but i didn’t have any more time so i just used it. sometimes things are just much more difficult than you imagine in your head!

Almond cupcakes
1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
3/4 cup marzipan
5 ounces unsalted butter, at room temperature
6 large eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees and position the rack to the center of the oven.
2. Cut the sugar and marzipan together in the food processor until the pieces are the size of sand grains. (the sugar crystals helps break the paste into pieces-so don't add the butter yet!)
3. Now add the butter and sugar/marzipan mixture and beat with an mixer for a few minutes until light and fluffy. In a separate bowl, or a measuring cup with a spout, stir together the eggs with a fork then dribble it into the batter as you beat. Add the vanilla.

holiday projects

Around this time of the year, crafty folks end up making a bunch of stuff to give away as gifts. This can lead to a sort of blogging dilemma, wherein they are making more stuff than usual, but have less things to write about because the created objects are supposed to be some sort of a secret.


Here is where having friends and family who lack internet access becomes a huge asset. Over the summer, I stayed with my grandma while taking classes at a summer institute. She was somewhat intrigued by my decrepit laptop, since she has never used a computer before.

This is her unblocked Christmas gift with ends not yet woven in. She, like other members of our family, never turns on the heater in her very cold house. This shawl seems pretty warm.

Yarn: Frog Tree Hill fingering weight alpaca, Pattern: diagonal garter stitch square

holiday dinner party

ravioli cutter
Originally uploaded by itslynzee.

i hosted a small family dinner earlier this week. i wish i could have the whole family over at once, but unfortunately there are limitations on how many people you can fit comfortably into a 600 square foot condo. =p the consensus is that six is the maximum occupancy of my space. perhaps i should make up one of those maximum occpancy signs that you see in restaurants? would that be kitschy? or tacky? hahaha...

one of my aunts was in from out of town so it seemed to be a perfect opportunity to have her and some other family over for dinner to inaugurate my new dining room table. (thanks dad for helping me carry it up to my place!) i had settled on a menu awhile back but i ended up tweaking it a little bit due to some last minute inspiration (and a lack of sleep).

the final menu:

smoked salmon appetizers - smoked salmon courtesy of my friend j and her bf. =) everyone commented on how good the smoked salmon was! smoked salmon is tasty!

baked chicken thighs stuffed with mashed potatoes and sausage - the stuffing was a last minute inspiration. i was actually going to make mashed potatoes but then i decided that it would be better to jam the mashed potatoes INSIDE the chicken rather than serve it on the side.

butternut squash ravioli with brown butter and sage - just in case the chicken thighs weren't enough.

oven roasted veggies and potatoes - the obligatory vegetable mix. we have to be well rounded don't we?

creme brulee - it was my first time using the torch. it pretty easy but my finger was kind of sore from pressing it down the button for so long. the need to come up with a more ergonomic torch. i also forgot to torch it an hour before we ate it so i wasn't able to chill it before we ate it. kind of soupy.

i didn't take pictures of everything because i was sort of in a frenzy towards the middle of everything. there are some additional pictures on my flickr page if you are curious.


smoked salmon appetizers
Originally uploaded by itslynzee.

plants!!

unexpected sighting

lf sees birds on her commute to work. I usually see rabbits and some crows on my way home. Over by the garden, there are these cute little chartreuse-colored birds that hang out on the butterfly bush and are practically camouflaged. Holding a bag full of kitchen scraps, I was walking through the lawn and headed towards this muddy incline that I walk up to get to my garden plot, when I noticed this car that was slowed down and seemed to be looking in my direction. I was vaguely annoyed until I noticed, a couple of yards ahead, this gigantic bird.

Ok, so crows are large birds. Some of them could be about the size of a chicken, but this was a large bird, that later internet research revealed to be a great blue heron. It was about three feet tall, if not more, and was just hanging out in grass. It was like walking in the university library stacks that you thought were deserted and unexpectedly running into an elementary school kid. Running into a bird is not normally a big deal, but when that bird has taken on unusual proportions where it's ten times the size of birds that you regularly see, then it becomes a big deal, like it would be if you usually shop for one person and then accidentally find yourself in a Costco warehouse among restaurant-sized vats of mayonnaise.

All excited, I ran back to my apartment to get my camera. When I got back to the grassy area, the heron was still there. I started to inch closer to it, but the grass was covered with fallen leaves and the plastic bag of kitchen scraps started making rustling noises. The heron looked at me warily. I tried being quieter, but still wanted to get closer. Then a car drove by and the heron flew away. All I got was this blurry picture.



Once the bird-sighting adrenaline wore off, I started to wonder who would win if we were to get into a fight. On the one hand, I'm taller by maybe a foot or more and it has a small neck. On the other hand, it has a really long beak and large wings. Good thing it's afraid of me.

no knead bread

first rise
Originally uploaded by itslynzee.

the food blogging world has been buzzing with talk about the no knead bread recipe by jim lahey. I’m sure you’ve read about the recipe. and even if you haven’t I don’t really need to tell you what it’s all about because you can read it yourself! I love the idea because it’s a method of cooking that I fully embrace… passive cooking (i.e. crockpot cooking… long cooking times very with very little action involved).

second rise
Originally uploaded by itslynzee.


when I first read the recipe I immediately added it to my todo list. a month or so later I finally was able to try it out! the follow up article by mark bittman suggests the addition of a little more salt and that wheat flour can be substituted in at a maximum of 50 percent. it’s very easy. and very passive. hopefully making my own bread will become habit.


end product
Originally uploaded by itslynzee.

goldfish

goldfish
Originally uploaded by itslynzee.

i must admit that i spied this stuffed creature on flickr before he even showed up in my mailbox! diana kelley created a whole menagerie of stuffed ornaments and oddly enough the goldfish was my favorite! lucky me! i actually ended up with him. =)

nest

nest
Originally uploaded by itslynzee.

there's a bit of excitement when i open my mailbox lately. =)

ornaments from the swap have started to make their way to me! i've received a few so far and will post them up as time allows.

this little guy by suzanna scala is a nest occupied by a hand sewn birdie and glitter eggs. beautiful!

thesis cooking

I'm currently giving my thesis from last year a major overhaul, complete with a new argument. While a lot of the paper is just getting shuffled around and this is far from revising a dissertation, I still wouldn't mind if someone decided to make me chirashi for dinner.

Just saying.

my first pizza (dough)

my first pizza (dough)
Originally uploaded by itslynzee.

what do you do when the holiday projects, decorating, and wrapping are all piling up in the corner crying out to be completed? well, make pizza of course!

i’ve been wanting to make my own pizza dough for ages but i just haven’t gotten up enough gumption to actually make it. lots and lots of premade trader joe’s pizza dough has made it’s way onto my pizza stone but when it comes to homemade i’ve always been a pizza dough flake. the main problem? time. you see when i come home from work i want to eat dinner and i want to eat it two hours ago. my stomach is on a very strict timetable and nothing will stand in it’s way. if dinner is not ready instantly then often i end up eating a box of crackers in lieu of dinner. just because it’s THERE. sad but true.

the other day i actually got it in my head that i would make the pizza dough AHEAD of time! so armed with chubby hubby’s recipe for napoletana pizza dough from his super sunday truffle pizzas post, i set to work. after the first round of mixing and rising i was mighty suspicious. this misshapen lump is going to turn out to be pizza dough? it hardly rose! it’s just sitting in the bowl there looking gray and lifeless! the next morning when i peeked into the fridge however, it was looking a little puffier and full of yeasty goodness.

i invited a friend for dinner and had included the warning that this was my first attempt at homemade pizza dough. luckily this friend of mine never cooks and therefore appreciates anything made in a home kitchen. i separated the dough into balls and contemplated toppings... i had halved the recipe so there were three dough balls to work with.

Ball One: faux margarita pizza (since i had no mozzarella) which included red sauce, fresh basil, parmesan, and pine nuts.

Ball Two: acorn squash puree, feta, caramelized onions, and slivered almonds

Ball Three: red sauce, pepperoni, and corn. both the pepperoni and corn were recovered from the depths of my freezer. hey i was running out of toppings to work with ok?

the oven heated to 550F (setting off the fire alarm on two occasions due to the amount of crusty things on the bottom of my oven) and i baked two of the pizzas on the stone. since there wasn’t any room left on the stone i put the remaining pizza on a silpat and threw it in at the same time as the others. seven minutes later the taste testing began. the crust was thin but at the same time a bit chewy. yum. definitely a recipe for the file.

meathead

I participated in the meathead-a-long. I'm not sure exactly what drew me towards it. Maybe it was a secret desire to own a pointy hat. Maybe it was because the word "meat" was in the name of the pattern. This managed to confuse people who had read my previous post about how the yarn I dyed looked like ground beef. It's not the same yarn.

For possibly only the second time in my personal knitting history, I used the yarn specified in the pattern, in a mulberry, not a ground beef color. With the size #15 needles, I felt like I was knitting with broom handles or something. It was sort of jarring after using needles that look like toothpicks. The hat was a pretty quick knit, so soon all I had to deal with was figuring out what to use to embellish it. I tried a bunch of things, including a crochet shamrock and some crochet musical notes. The musical notes came out kind of cute, but they didn't show up against the background of the hat. The clover doesn't really either, but at least it's more three-dimensional so it doesn't get completely lost. It's still missing something, I think, and will need more tinkering. Suggestions are welcome.

craft magazine

today i added a button for craft magazine on the sidebar because:

1) it's a cute button,
2) it's true (sometimes. well mostly true for sandia), and
3) it's a cool magazine!

the end.

pomegranate

pomegranate
Originally uploaded by itslynzee.

if i didn't have the grocery outlet nearby i might seriously be eating myself into debt! they have a great selection of organic and all natural products for bargain basement prices (just make sure to check the expiration dates! hahahaha).

a bottle of pomegranate juice for $1.30.
ingredients listed on the back of the bottle... pomegranate juice!

ornament swap 2006

ornament pyramid
Originally uploaded by itslynzee.

last friday was the deadline for the ornament swap 2006! so, true to lf form... i was up late on thursday night and early on friday morning to finish up my ornaments. i had decided on an origami ornament in holiday colors. i was going to do them all in green with red foil but i ended up running out as each ornament is made out of 12 sheets of paper! i finished folding and assembling everything in the evening and in the morning i glued the stubborn pieces into place and made up some christmas tags to go along with them. i was running out of time to get to work so i had to package them up during my lunch hour and was able to ship them out right after work!

it was definitely a good motivator to kick off the holiday season. i can't wait to see what everyone else created! =)

(i took a couple of other pictures but didn't post them on the blog. take a look at my flickr page if you'd like to see more.)

migrating

living in the bay area and NOT working in the tech industry sometimes leads to jealousy on my part. i see the perks of the tech jobs, and think... why doesn’t my industry have things like that? free gourmet meals, gadget and tech prizes (plasmas and digi cams aplenty!), HUGE bonuses... these things all seem standard in the world of technology. but every once in awhile i am reminded why i do what i do.


lots o' birds 3
Originally uploaded by itslynzee.

on the way home from my day in the field i came across the most wonderful sight. the sky and rice paddies were FILLED with migrating birds beautifully illuminated by the sunset. crazy me swerved off to the side of the freeway and whipped out my ever handy digi cam. i scared off the birds closest to me with the freeway swerving but was able to catch a quick shot.

nature is beautiful. =)

silver bows

silver bows
Originally uploaded by itslynzee.

it's the holidays! it's hard for me to resist pretty bows. especially when they're at the dollar store!

progress

butternut squash ravioli
Originally uploaded by itslynzee.

i haven't been cooking much lately. well i guess i have, but i haven't been taking many pictures. i made another batch of butternut squash ravioli the other day just to throw in the freezer. they photograph pretty well raw but when they're cooked they just look like blobby messes.

most of my focus though has been on redecorating and cleaning out my space. it's amazing the amount of clutter i have been able to accumulate over the past year. the cleaning project i have embarked on is so extensive that i actually pulled out my label maker! whoa. i'll post up pictures of that when i'm done. to bad i never took a before pic! the plan is to have everything up and organized before my aunt comes to visit in two weeks. hmmmm... i've never been good with deadlines... and there's also the ornament swap deadline looming! ack!

seriously?

I like to read food blogs, but maybe not as much as I like to read knitting blogs. Tonight, I was doing a bit of browsing and found this post on Becks and Posh about photographing everything that you eat for a week. Check out that picture! I guess that post is a proposal, so maybe the pictures aren't representative of everything eaten within a given time span. It seems a little unreal.

I'm imagining a photo of the things that I've eaten in the past week, including a bizarre set of gummy fangs that I picked up in the department copy room/kitchen/storage room. I think I have an extra gummy pizza in my backpack somewhere. I mean, I guess that people are hardcore food bloggers for a reason, but can you imagine that collage being a set of your ingestions for the past week? I can't help but wonder if there are some dirty eating secrets... like the plastic wrapped fake-cheese single that I ate before I cooked dinner. I would throw the rest of them away, but I can't stand to throw away food!

For dinner, I made an absorption pasta dish inspired by Chocolate and Zucchini's version. I used bowties and threw in shrimp, chard and king oyster mushrooms. It turned out ok, except for the mushrooms, which tasted sort of bitter and didn't go with the other things at all. I thought they would be innocuous mushrooms, but I was wrong. They kind of reminded me of straw mushrooms, which are not my favorites. Otherwise, it was tasty. I grated some parmesan on top, which oddly made the dish smell like cheetos, which didn't exactly detract from its appeal.

I had also squeezed in the juice of half of a sweet lemon that I picked up at the local grocery store that carries a lot of Middle Eastern foods. Somehow, I couldn't exactly get my head around the idea of a sweet lemon. I still thought it would be tangy, but guess what? It's actually sweet. I could eat that thing like an orange. Weird, right?

thanksgiving

it's a day early but tomorrow should be action packed and i might not get to it! thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. family get togethers with lots of eating and without the stress about what present to get everyone. plus i love turkey. i didn't have a picture of a pumpkin but i figured persimmons are orange and festive so they fit the bill. hope you and yours have a wonderful thanksgiving.

paint by letter

cool! you can spell with flickr!

david blane

so i admit it. last nite i was watching the bachelor on tv. in my defense i was actually baking a cake at the same time. but i know that is not much of an excuse. anyway... one of the commercials during the bachelor was for some stunt that david blane is going to be doing in a week or two and i couldn't help thinking... why the hell is this guy famous?

does anyone else find him as annoying as i do?

garden update - photos from 11/12

From the top left, back row: snow peas, regular peas, mizuna; second row: mizuna, green onions, bright lights chard; third row: garlic, lettuce, nasturtium; fourth row: chrysanthemum and violas, radishes used to be there, radicchio.



From the top left, back row: rosemary, violas, green onions from cuttings, leeks from cuttings; second row: chyrsanthemum, dutch iris bulbs, daikon; third row: cilantro, carrots, stock (this plant was eaten without a remaining trace); fourth row: garlic, broccoli (also gone), baby bok choy (only one made it).



From the top left, clockwise: catnip, lavender, nasturtium, tiny zinnia, lemon verbena bush, freesia in pot, thyme, sage in the middle, more nasturtium, garlic.

sushi burrito

when we were little and would go on family trips, my mom would always bring along a cooler of food and snacks. sometimes, if we were good, the food would be sushi! my mom however, being very practical, knew that if she gave us a plate of sushi that rice would end up sticking to everything. so instead, she would wrap up a whole sushi roll in plastic wrap, uncut. so we would eat the sushi burrito style. if my (Japanese) grandma grandma ever found out about this she would be horrified since Japanese food is all about the presentation. but to me, it didn’t make it taste any different. yum!

thanks for the spam musubi mom!

mob mentality

I've never really signed up for a knit-a-long, but lately I've signed up for two. Baaa. The first is Larissa Brown's Meathead Knitalong. It's a fairly simple pointy-headed hat and each knitter is encouraged to add some sort of embellishment in place of the eartags that were used in her original installation. I wish I could figure out a way to make a mini meat thermometer. If anyone has some ideas, let me know.

The other is a test knit for a new design by Stefanie Japel over at Glampyre Knits. I cast on last night with some chenille yarn that I got along time ago to knit a skirt. The skirt never happened, but it seems like the resulting sweater is going to be pretty plush.

P.S. I just previewed the blog post and realized, duh, I signed up for Socktoberfest. Whoops. I guess maybe I'll backtrack and say that I have never before signed up for a knitalong with a specific pattern.

cork trivets

man! our dad was WAAAAAAAY ahead of his time! danny seo is just now catching onto the whole wine cork trivet thing and our dad was doing 5 maybe even 10 years ago.

if you don't know who danny seo is, i'm not quite sure either. every time i've heard a reference to him though it's that he's the "green" martha stewart. that makes him cool in my book!

bread

for a long time now baking bread has been a hobby that i've been wanting to take up. unfortunately bread requires you to be in one place for an extended period of time. i'm not so good with that so i've been holding off on the bread making. i did find something cool on the king arthur flour website though. free bread making classes that are touring the nation! there's even a couple stops in california! but for some reason they only go to southern california. what is up with that people? why is northern california being neglected? we need to learn how to make bread too!

with the bread making idea still festering in my mind i came across this article from not martha. a recipe for no-knead bread. hmmmm... maybe i CAN get into bread making.

pear cran cupcakes

turns out that i forgot my boss's birthday! =p

so last night i whipped up a small batch of vanilla garlic's pear cranberry cupcakes. he has some very cool and unique cupcake recipes up on his site. i'm dying to try the butternut squash cupcakes with sage. i'm even thinking that i might be inspired to create my own combinations! (maybe) i didn't have enough time to mess with melted chocolate this morning so i just whipped up the old standy cream cheese frosting and topped them with a frozen cranberry. the recipe uses dried sweetened cranberries but i thought the round frozen cranberries would look nice on top. they do look kind of cute, but MAN are they SOUR! if you ever do this as a garnish i suggest removing it before you eat the garnished item. mouth puckery!

fall goodness

this past weekend was a quick one. i worked two corporate parties and then it was monday again! one of the good things about working with food is that occasionally there are leftovers (that they might let you take home) and this weekend i got to take home food AND flowers. i actually had a handfull of fall colored flowers but i ended up just using my favorite for the picture above.

on sunday nite i went into a small kitchen flurry when i should have been cleaning. hahaa... i’ve been in like with 101 cookbooks for a long time. A lot of my favorite recipes were discovered in this blog. if you were around for my homemade thin mint girl scout cookies phase, this is where the recipe is from! yum.



i decided to try out 101 cookbook’s thai spiced pumpkin soup with the kabocha that i picked up for halloween. i’m probably the only girl on my block that had a green pumpkin for halloween! (well that is before the mold set in on everyone elses) this recipe was super easy and made a delicious soup. i thinned it out with water rather than broth because it was already so rich and used the masamam curry paste that has been lounging in my fridge for longer than i care to remember. that stuff keeps forever, right? right?! ack! i garnished the soup with a little extra chili powder and a dallop of yogurt to balance out the sweetness.



with the seeds i used the sweet and spicy pumpkin seeds recipe. while tasty, pumpkin seeds are a lot of work to eat. lazy me doesn’t want to shell them or chew through the shells. Oh well.

definitely try out the soup recipe. you won’t be sorry!

undecided

I've been trying to use up this leek for awhile and this recipe for curried pumpkin soup has been a contender, but I can't decide whether I think it sounds good or gross. Feedback?

so I got this yarn

I wanted to make this, but can't really afford the $160 suggested yarn. I got this yarn off of ebay since I wanted my version to still have the same sheen. It was pink. I didn't really want pink yarn, so I decided to try Koolaid dyeing to see if I could get it to be more of a peach color and I was then going to accent it with peach beads lined with gold-toned foil. Anyway, I dyed it with lemonade flavored powder and it ended up... a slightly darker pink. That was a bust.

Undeterred, but still wanting to use a non-toxic dye so I wouldn't have to poison something or get new dye-only pots, I headed out to Smart and Final and came back with a jumbo-sized bottle of red food coloring. Armed with food coloring and apple cider vinegar, I attacked the yarn again. I mixed the red with some green and blue, in an attempt to get the yarn to be a deep red or burgundy. It seemed to work out in the pot. When I went to rinse the yarn, the red washed out and out and out. I thought I would never stop rinsing. My hands and nails turned pink. What was that about wearing rubber gloves? My hands became pink raisins.

I rinsed. I added more vinegar.I boiled the yarn again in hopes that it would set the dye a little bit more. The yarn started to resemble ground beef. I thought about what it would be like to wear a ground beef-colored sweater. After all, I do have a crush on this crochet bacon wrap, but somehow the idea of a ground beef sweater is just gross. Then I rationalized that maybe it really looked like a sort of brick color. I kept rinsing the yarn, until finally it ended up looking like... a darker pink.

After having dried it, it just looks like bright pink. It's not quite coral.

Next up: acid dye in the washing machine.