what's for dinner : grilled veggie sandwitch with miniature garlic potatos

Sorry posts have been super sparse around here, I have been..... transitioning. And haven't had access to both consistent internet and a consistent kitchen. I know I was trying to do more regular posts but that is on hold for a bit until, well I don't even know when till. I swear it should be soon and hopefully I can do some stuff with this new nomatic state I seem to be finding myself in here.
Anyway, to the dinner. SANDWICHES!!!!

I love them, with layers of grilled onions and peppers. And a good spicy mustard. And if there are teeny tiny potatoes, perfectly crisped around the edges and saturated with garlic-y goodness, yeah then I am totally sold on this meal. Even if it's not very elaborate, or fancy, or even very dinnery. Sometimes one just needs a sandwich. It's comforting in it's simplicity.

what's for dinner: honey roasted carrots and orange ginger chicken

Once again a fork snuck into my dinner picture. I think this may be because I will grab one and start eating before I realize, whoops, I should take a picture of this. Hold your horses, there will be dinner soon, we just got to document this first. Speaking of dinners, this weeks was a lovely take on carrots, roasted with honey and onions alongside my orange-saturated chicken. I also had some simple steamed broccoli (for color and because I could eat broccoli until the cows come home) and rice. Pretty basic but the carrots and chicken had so much flavor that I didn't want to get too complicated and add something else with lots going on. If only carrots really did improve your eyesight I'd be set. Particularly if they were cooked this way. Yum, was like eating candy.

this one has heart (pun intended)

So I feel terrible admitting this, but I didn't bake this pie yesterday. Didn't bake it this week or even the month. No in fact I baked this pie LAST YEAR. I know. I've been holding out. Back when I was doing a lot of baking around the holidays and focusing pretty fiercly on pies, I made this glorious speciman and then the post just sat here and I was busy and distracted and I just didn't post anything for a whole month and it gathered dust and sulked and got sad. But I have coerced it out of it's corner and dusted it off and shined it up and conviced it to show it's pretty face so here it is, with a thousand apolagies on the tardiness, the blackberry apple pie.

These apples were from a trip to Mendocino, from my very own tree. Small and sweet if a bit of a pain to cut up for pie, all that coring and all, but totally worth it for the balance they brought to some dark and juicy blackberries.

And as you can see, I decided to do the top crust in hearts, because the filling was turning such a lovely shade of fushia I figured hearts and the color pink would just be so great together.

And they were. Juicy is an understatement, this pie had to be scooped out with a spoon and it didn't make a very attractive slice on the plate but it sure tasted great! And really that's the most important thing.

Also, as a added bonus, cause I feel bad for hiding this away and not sharing this pie before, like maybe back when I made it, here's on of many photos taken on the IAMSTERDAM sculpture by the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. It was very fun to scramble about on and I bet there are a few hundred pictures we took that afternoon, so here's one with my friend Rachel. Now go make a pie. Seriously what's stopping you?

whats for dinner : Sweet Potato Curry

So curry, and really most middle eastern inspired dishes in general, are not the most lovely to photograph, nor do they always look that appetizing, but they are so often what I crave. This time I was also craving a baked sweet potato so I decided to throw that in with the other vegetables. It actually worked remarkably well, the sweet potato's really breaking down until they just became part of the sauce and mixed with the coconut milk and all the spices to make a much thicker sauce than I am usually want to produce. Super yummy and I always like an orange colored meal in the winter, reminds me that someday it will be a color other than gray outside. Wishful thinking.

Oh there are also green beans and chicken in this curry, and white rice cooked with coconut milk.

i make things

I've finally produced a piece of art! So exciting to finish something.
And what is this I've made you ask? I decided to join with the hundreds of other people and be a part of the Brooklyn Art Museum's sketchbook project, where you get a blank sketchbook and you do whatever you like with it as long as it can be closed down to the original size, and then you send it back to the Museum and they will first tour with it across the country to places like Dallas and San Francisco, where it can be 'checked out' and 'read' by visitors to the mobile library and then be in the permanent collection in Brooklyn. I really like the idea of artist books being part of a library, and thought it would be a good thing the be a part of. So I made one.

I decided to focus on the part of the directions that said 'as long as it closes up to the same size' and make a big accordion that would pull out of the cover. That also provided me with a fun platform to draw over the edges of the page and onto the next. I liked that it could be read page by page or as a whole. I've also always found accordion's appealing for how, hm I think what I am looking for is, sculptural quality. That it stands up on it's own and you can mold it into fun shapes.

Yes I like a good long book (pun intended).

And there it is. I made something. Finished a project, checked something off the 'ole list. Put it in the mail and shipped it off to Brooklyn (fingers crossed that it makes it there unharmed and in one piece. And now I have to wait until it comes through the Bay Area to see it again, though I can track it's progress, they send an email every time it gets checked out. Looking forward to that!