diy

make your own pinhole camera!

this is DEFINITELY going on my list of things to do!

freeway reflection

freeway reflection
Originally uploaded by itslynzee.

last week was very rainy and it made me grumpy. but there were good moments as well... =)

asian art museum?

asian art museum?
Originally uploaded by itslynzee.

nope! it's my uncle's house. when he said that his house was extra chinese-y for chinese new years i wondered what that meant because this picture was taken BEFORE he decorated! hahahaha.

red envelopes

red envelopes
Originally uploaded by itslynzee.

happy year of the ox!
i guess red envelopes have branched out this year. after receiving a hello kitty version, i found these at the oakland chinatown chinese new years festival. not red. but certainly cute!

carpool

carpool
Originally uploaded by itslynzee.

i was NOT in the carpool lane but had to drive the company car across the bay bridge during rush hour traffic. no wonder i like taking bart to work!

p.s. i am working myself through a little Polaroid obsession.

jls

jls
Originally uploaded by itslynzee.

is it just me or is oakland looking more and more like southern california lately? maybe it's just the weather... ;-)

up all nite

up all nite
Originally uploaded by itslynzee.

i've been noticing a lot of street art in my neighborhood lately. this statement is CLEARLY not about me. ;-)

awesomeness

nevermind how cool of project this is.

i'm TOTALLY going to make yogurt in my crock pot!

halloween!

i'm not really big into the costumes and halloween-y type stuff. but these pumpkins are pretty cute!

no-knead bread revisited

i wasn't the only home chef totally obsessed with the no knead bread phenom. turns out that mark bittman has been thinking about this recipe for about two years now! i will definitely have to try out his whole wheat version!
Fast No-Knead Whole Wheat Bread

my first carrot

my first carrot
Originally uploaded by itslynzee.

with work and other random things (more work) consuming most of my free time, a lot of my projects seem to have fallen to the wayside. facebook and text twist now monopolize what little down time i have left.

back in the day however, (ahhhh... the olden days) i used to garden pretty regularly. my favorite part of this now browning garden was my carrot bucket. living in an urban environment with no yard sometimes presents a bit of problem in the gardening arena. so instead of planting carrots in the ground like most do... i purchased a 5 gallon bucket and filled it with soil and carrot seeds.

you know what? carrots like growing in buckets! they also like the intense heat that is created in the cement jungle that is my garden. fresh carrots are tasty in salad. do i see a career change to carrot farming in my future? hmmmm.... =)

childhood memories

japanese jello!
Originally uploaded by itslynzee.

i've been wanting to post this up for awhile but, well, i'm a blogging slacker. a little while back a friend and i were reminiscing about the the 'good ole days'. just sitting around talking about all the gatherings that we remembered and all of the good food that was at them. because, of course, every conversation comes back around to food!

one thing that we seemed to get stuck on was the layered jello that always seemed to pop up at the japanese potlucks. it went like this...

lo: remember that rainbow jello? with that white stuff in between? what the heck was that white stuff anyway?
lf: ohyea! with the layers! peel apart the layers and eat it one layer at a time. fun!
lo(shuddering): what IS that white stuff?! **
lf: we should totally make it! it'd be fun!
lo: EW...

i'm lucky enough to have an auntie that could provide me with a very detailed recipe for what i now call 'japanese jello'. her directions were SO good that i was able to put it all together in the first try! the only thing missing from my pantry was lemon jello, so that's why there are two layers of red.

JAPANESE JELLO

Ingredients
4 - 3 ounce jello boxes one of each flavor
(lime, lemon, orange, cherry)
6 - 0.25 ounce envelopes of unsweetened gelatin
1 - 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk
6 cups water (5 cups hot, 1 cup room temperature)

Equipment
9X13 inch pan
7 bowls
Nonstick cooking spray

Spray pan lightly with nonstick cooking spray. In four of the bowls, combine one package of flavored jello, one envelope of unsweetened gelatin and one cup hot water. In another bowl, combine one cup hot water, two envelopes gelatin, condensed milk and one cup tap water (if you combine the ingredients in that order it will be a little easier). Divide milk mixture evenly into three bowls. You will have about 1 to 1-1/4 cups of liquid in each bowl. Pour lime gelatin in pan and place in a level part of fridge for approximately 20 to 25 minutes. Alternate layers of milk and flavored jello mixtures, always letting each layer set for approximately 20 minutes before pouring the next layer. If the jello mixtures harden too much while you are waiting for your other layers to harden in the fridge, put the bowls in the microwave for 25 seconds and mix. After all of the layers have hardened, turn the pan upsidedown on top of a large cutting board and slice into squares.
VOILA!

**lo has a fear of white and creamy foods**

lychee sorbet

This recipe makes a soft sorbet, which is too soft for popsicles, but excellent for scooping.

In other news, I bought a mystery herb plant. I thought it smelled kind of like oregano and citrus. The checkout lady thought it was oregano, but it's definitely not Mediterranean oregano and doesn't look like the pictures of Mexican oregano, so at this point it's anyone's guess. Thyme??

words to live by

"nothing anyone does ever surprises me anymore." hk
ahhhhh... so wise...

hulu

hulu rocks!
they are now streaming DOOGIE HOWSER, M.D.!
woohoo!

a day in the life...

to set the scene:
lf and friends have been up all night working on a deadline. at an obscenely early hour and with about three hours of sleep lf stumbles out of the hotel to move her car from a metered spot to a garage suggested by hotel personnel. after following the sign in the garage that reads "please pull forward" lf pulls forward and into a spot behind a parked truck. she is wondering where the parking attendant is when suddenly the reverse lights on the truck in front of her light up and the truck starts backing up (seemingly in slow motion). lf tries frantically to hit her horn to alert the driver but motor skills are lacking at this early hour and AFTER the truck hits her car her hand finally makes contact with the horn. it sounds sort of like this.

*CRASH!*BEEP!*

guy in truck (gets out of truck and looks angrily at lf): shit!
lf: wtf! you hit MY car!
guy in truck: oh yea. well there's no visible damage. it's $45 to park your car for the day.

garden photography

I brought my camera out to the garden with the best of intentions. I was going to take pictures of my plants and then write interesting blog posts about them. When I got back and uploaded my photos, I realized the sad truth: my plants are not very photogenic. Instead, I had taken pictures mostly of other people's plants.

There are a couple of reasons why my garden is not very exciting to look at. The square foot gardening/intensive gardening method means that all my plants are rammed together, so it's hard to get a clean shot of one plant without trampling on another plant. I also don't have very many flowers, and those took up the bulk of my shots too. The final reason is probably that my plants are all still really small. The macro on my camera is not that great and I'm not sure how exciting it is to look at puny vine #2 and compare it to sprout #3. Whooo.

Anyhow, here is a volunteer tomato plant that grew in an untended planter box. I rescued it and it's now probably the largest tomato plant I have. The leaves are huge and the stem is thicker than a size 15 knitting needle. As you can see, though, the tomatoes are still rather small. Oh well.

low pressure sales

grandma: do you have a boyfriend now?
lf: no, not right now
grandma: maybe you can find a nice one... please?
lf: i'll try grandma
grandma: please try hard

something's eating my beans

The garden is going full force. I never know what to say when people ask me what I'm growing. It's sort of like when people ask me what kind of food I cook. I'm not sure they are really prepared for the answer. I could start listing plants and that might go on for a few minutes. I really like plants and am not sure that I want to hear the whole list. The other option is what I usually go with, which is to say, "Um... lots of stuff... herbs, flowers, tomatoes..." By this point, they usually lose interest.

I finally remembered to bring my camera out to the garden last week. Looking at this picture has confirmed that some sort of animal is eating my bean plants. Since that picture was taken, at least two green bean seedlings have fallen over and one is losing its first set of leaves. I'm not sure if it will survive, but it is looking kind of sad. Then again, one of my kohlrabi plants got mowed down to the point that there were no visible plant parts above the dirt, and it came back and looks like it will be productive.

Sometimes it's hard not to have garden envy. My tomato plants are doing ok, maybe even great if you consider that last year, none of the tomatoes that I started from seed made it to fruit or even flower. This year, I have enough tomato plants that I have started giving the extra seedlings away. I start to feeling pretty good about the state of my tomato plants, but then I glance over at my neighbor's plants, which look like towering behemoths in comparison. Their leaves are probably about the size of my hand and their stems look like sapling trunks. Are those plants on steroids?? Meanwhile, I'm trying to remember to fertilize on a regular basis. Oh well.

In other news, I planted some basil (spicy Greek and lemon) and asparagus peas a few days ago, I think on Sunday. They haven't sprouted yet and I'm starting to get impatient, so I just started some more spicy Greek basil and large leaf Italian basil. I think basil might be like black tank tops... you can never have too many. Hahaha.

grilled pineapple

About a week ago, I became obsessed with sorbet recipes. It was almost 100 degrees and I had to sit outside for over two hours. Fortunately, I was under an umbrella, but I think I had some mild form of heat stroke. Even after the temperatures had cooled down to about 70 and I took a shower, I still felt hot. The next day, I decided to look up about two thousand sorbet recipes on the internet, so I could make popsicles. Someone a little more goal-oriented might have gone to the store to buy actual popsicles instead of the supplies to make popsicles, but if that was me, we probably would not have this blog.

While I was browsing through recipes, I found one for grilled pineapple and some kind of sorbet. I got so excited about that one that I told a friend about this exciting recipe and took some time to calm back down, but for some reason, I ended up making a layered blackberry and honeydew popsicle. However, the idea of grilled pineapple stayed with me and when I was invited to a barbecue a couple of days later, I knew what I would bring.

Here is a sort of approximation of what I did:

1. Cut top and bottom off of pineapple. Cut off rind lengthwise, trying to get all the little spiny eye parts.
   
2. Cut pineapple in half lengthwise. Attempt to core each half, but only succeed with one half. Slice into half-moons or quarter-moons, as the case may be. Place in bowl.
3. Squeeze half a lime over the pineapple pieces and add about 1/4 cup of brown sugar. Mix with hands. Add a tiny bit of cinnamon, maybe 1/4 teaspoon.
4. Put bowl of seasoned pineapple on the table at the barbecue. Forget to tell people that it's for grilled and become slightly alarmed when it's your turn to grill and you discover that people have eaten about half the pineapple
5. Put pineapple pieces on a piece of foil on the grill. Sprinkle more brown sugar over the top. Eventually move the pineapple so that they are directly on the grill. This adds gridlines and seems to brown them a little faster. Cook for about 10 minutes, turning them to brown both sides.

The grilled pineapple was sweet, hot and carmelized, with only a hint of cinnamon for interest. I'm not sure the lime was noticeable, but it probably kept it from being too sweet.

I have another pineapple in the refrigerator. Additional flavors that I might try next time include: pepper, honey, rum and mint (not all at the same time). I think pineapple has made it onto my favorite fruits list.