Recipes Galore

I am home for Spring Break this week and am trying to pump out as many recipes as I can at home with the help of my mom and sister! So far we've done four in two days. 


Frikadeller: Danish Meatballs. My first time making meatballs from scratch and they actually turned out not only edible but good! We were surprised or I was surprised to discover they tasted like real meatballs. This recipe is from a boy and girl from Copenhagen, Denmark. The recipe calls for pork and veal, but I opted out of veal and just used pork. I've given up red meat in my life and decided baby cow did not sound all that appetizing. 

Crema de Fruita, Filipino Fruit Cake: A girl from the Philippines gave me a recipe for Mango fruit cake using graham crackers, fresh mangos, condensed milk and cream. Once you make the cake you put it in the freezer and chill it overnight. I made it yesterday and we had it for dessert tonight. It was amazing!! Such a simple recipe too. 

Japanese Curry: Tonight I made curry Japanese style with potatoes, carrots, onions and chicken. It called for pork but we had enough pork last night in our meatballs so we decided to switch it up with some chicken. We found curry roux at the Grocery store. It's the brown sauce, but we discovered that it comes in a solid block similar to that of a chocolate bar. You break it up just like chocolate as well and put it in the simmering veggies and meat. It then turns into liquid and voila you have flavored curry. To be on the safe side we chose mild curry roux and it turned out great. 

Chinese Pearl Balls: So I cheated a little bit on this one. Being one who doesn't necessarily love meat I was a little tired of making meaty recipes. These Pearl Balls are technically filled with pork but you really can't even see it once you cover the pork with rice. So we improvised cutting out the pork process and making solid rice balls. Since the project is focused on design and the process of gathering recipes rather than the cooking itself I feel justified in my improvisation. :)

 

I have about five more recipes to make during Spring break then the rest I'll make back at school. After this I'm sure both Mom and I will enjoying not making the trip to the Grocery Store daily...so far we've been to Costco, Trade Joe's, QFC, PCC & Safeway in two days! 

First Glazed Pieces

Some of my first ceramic pieces came out of the kiln from glazing. I took my camera home last weekend, so these photos are from my phone's camera, so I apologize for the poor quality. The first glazed pieces are definitely for learning. When you put the glaze on as a beginner you don't really know what to expect with your pieces. There's so many different factors, like how thick/thin you apply it and if you cross colors. I am mostly pleased with my first try. 


This flower vase was for my hardedge piece. I used two glazes, first clear and then I applied the raspberry color at the top to drip down and mix with the clear. 

Stove Spoon/Spatula Holder: The top color turned out awesome, but bottom color not as much. It's alright though, because now I've learned which colors not to blend.

Cookie Jar: I made this cookie jar by hand and glazed it a sienna color. It came out much browner than expected, but I still think it will be fun to for holding cookies!

Woven Fruit Bowl: While making this bowl it was difficult to get the pieces of clay to weave without breaking, but I did it!

My elephant is still being glazed, photo to come :)


Today I also visited my Pierce Transit buds. It was nice to stop by and catch up with everyone. They're always full of laughs. I think being a part of a graphic design team, wherever it may be is always special. Everyone's uniquely creative, humorous and fun to be around.  I am definitely excited for wherever I end up working once I graduate. 

First Day of Spring

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to take a class in Seattle on typography. Typography is as they say the single most important skill as a Graphic Designer. For those of you who don't speak design lingo, typography is how a designer works with the text. It's everything from what font you choose, to how you space it to how you lay it out. It's quite an art. After my class I headed home to Kirkland to spend some time walking the waterfront in the gorgeous weather. The first day of Spring treated us to sunny and 70's which is quite rare! I met up with a friend from high school who was on Spring break. 

Our highlight of the day was a cross between a couple walking their cat in a baby stroller down the main boulevard and a man driving his speedboat (see photo) wearing what appeared to be a helicopter headphones and speaker. Who he planned on chatting with I'm not sure since the other passengers didn't seem to want to don the same headset. Sadly I wasn't able to photograph the cat in the baby stroller.  After soaking up the sun,  I finished my day with a lovely home-cooked meal (thanks mom!), and said goodbye to my kitty Mylee. She's spending the week at my parents for some quality time before I come home for spring break. 

recipes, recipes, recipes

I was fortunate enough today to have Theresa the MBA Director at PLU email all the international graduate business students about my Design Project on Recipes from Around the World. I've come to discover that graduate students take their emails and deadlines quite seriously. Within an hour I already have Frikadeller (meatballs) from Denmark, Dronning Maud Pudding from Norway, Chicken Briyani, Raitha, Pawn Fry and Avocado Smoothie from India (that boy took it to the next level providing me a full course meal) and Spring Eggrolls from Vietnam. 

Also, my sister sent me a blog called 17 and Baking about this girl from Seattle who is amazing. She not only bakes up a storm but has beautiful photographs and writes well! It's sort of shocking what some high school students are capable of doing these days and how they articulate that all in a blog.  

First cups!

My first cups! I've been working this past week and weekend to make cups for my ceramics class. After getting more comfortable throwing on the wheel I finally was able to make some cups. Once the cups are hardened a little bit I put it back on the wheel upside down and trim off a foot to make the bottom of the cup pretty as well. (Apparently for some potters this is a bigger deal than the actual cup). Last but not least I make handles and secure them to the cups. Now they're ready to dry and be fired up! This week we're learning to glaze our first projects, like my elephant.

Lodgings, check!

It feels good to have all our accommodations in place for France. Well almost all our accommodations. We booked our apartment in Paris last month, and reserved our hotel in Cannes tonight! We'll be staying at a hotel right near the train station for easy access to traveling and just north of the beach. Now all that's left hotel-wise is our last night in Paris before we head back to Seattle! How exciting, right? Now awaits the big planning...itinerary, train/metro tickets, packing and more! I must say I'm a tad daunted to learn the metro system. More to come :)

Recipe #2: Chicken Cordon Bleu

I decided to try two recipes this weekend. This simple worded recipe way understates the difficulty of this dish. I started off by making my own bread crumbs which was fun and that part actually turned out! It was then easy enough to dip, bread and wrap the chicken. But once I put the chicken on the skillet, the bread part burns so quickly, but the chicken cooks so slowly. I'm not really sure how the pros do this, but they must have really skinny chicken breasts and like magic breading. In the end I decided to "brown" the breading and take it out before it burned to photograph. So if you look closely at the photo you will find that the chicken is in fact not even slightly cooked. I'm going to go back and photoshop it a bit to make it look more white. After photographing we (me and my helpful roommate Kristen) put it back on the skillet and made just normal chicken breasts to eat along with our "comfort college food" of quesadillas, apples and toast. Maybe the next recipe will be better.... :)

Diesel

This is Diesel our neighbor boy's pitbull. Diesel is quite a sweety compared with the bad reputation pitbulls have. He's become my new walking buddy :) This morning my friend Katie and I took him to Starbucks to get lattes. He's a pretty good walker, and gives off the impression that he means business. Needless to say we feel quite protected walking with him in Parkland!  (Also please take notice to the teeny tiny baby pink leash....were not sure what his owner was thinking....haha)

Recipe #1: Macaroni Pie

I started my "Recipes from Around the World" project today. I'll be making all of the recipes I gather from international students so I can photograph them for the web.  Today I started off easy with Macaroni Pie, which is basically just homemade macaroni. It has you add three eggs to the mixture...that part turned out slightly weird. It was like we were eating a macaroni quiche, with chunks of egg. It was a good first start though! 

purrffect :)

Just some photos of my kitty Mylee, now (at top) and when she was so little in the summer (bottom 2). It's amazing how much enjoyment an animal can bring to your life. I'm pretty much never "alone" since I always have her following me around, greeting me at the door and snuggling with me during bedtime.  Mylee sleeps in her little bed on my bed at night and then comes to cuddle around 6:30am or whenever my 5 minute snooze goes off. She's come to realize that wake up alarm=me awake as she bounces up to my pillow ready to snuggle in.  As you can imagine this makes getting out of bed even harder! 

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Oh also! I have changed my comment settings. If you can't figure out the whole follower thing you can comment as "anonymous." If you do, be sure to end the comment with your name or you truly will be anonymous. Thanks :)

Life as of lately...

In case you hadn't heard Kristen and I have officially booked our plane ticket abroad AND have reservations for an apartment in Paris. It seems to be coming together quite smoothly so far, thanks to various guide books and online forum posts. We have chose what sounds to be a nice old neighborhood in Le Marais section of Paris. Reviewers say it is well located (being 15 mins east of the Louvre) and is old town Paris. Our other option was staying in Rue Cler as Rick Steves (the guide book author) highly recommends. It is near the Eiffel Tower and a tad bit ritzier. After talking with people who have previously been to Paris we were told it has become over-populated with Rick Steve tourists and is a tad bit more expensive. Seeing as we'd like to feel less like tourists and more like Parisians we have chosen Le Marais. Our apartment is small, but comfortable looking. It's not like we'll be spending much time there anyways! It's made up of a big area with a bed, cute little 2 seater breakfast table and a small kitchen. The only "room" in the studio is the bathroom. I think it will work well for us to be able to bring food home and keep it in the refrigerator to cut down on cost.

Other than that we're still trucking through on our plans, finding hotels for the South of France and getting our International Student cards among many things. If you have any pre-departure tips, do tell before we leave at the end of May :)

In other news, Spring semester is off in full swing. I'm taking four classes: Graphic Design 396, Beginning Ceramics, Sustainable Marketing and Philosophy: Business Ethics. Of course my favorite classes are always my art classes but I try to find my other classes interesting as well.

Sustainable Marketing is all about marketing with the new trendy idea of being "green." It's a very new class, and thus means no textbook yet. We each are to chose our own popular sustainability book and present it to the class. I got very excited to read Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollon to be beat out by another girl in my class. I have decided to read "To buy or not to buy Organic." This is a topic I am very interested in reading as my roommates know me as sort of a food freak. If I could afford it I would buy everything organic.

My philosophy class has been interesting, it's definitely like learning another language when you read Plato and Aristotle but I'm learning to appreciate it.

For my Graphic Design class I am currently working on a cumulative semester project. I have chosen to create a flash (a fancy interactive program) website on Recipes from Around the World. I am collecting recipes from international students at PLU and students who have studied abroad for a good amount of time. In order to have photographs for each recipe, I will have to actually make the food. Therefore, I am focusing on quality and not quantity of recipes. I am hoping to split it up between making some at home with Heather (who is a much better cook than me, I prefer the photographing part) and making it for my roommates or Dustin. Hopefully the food turns out picture worthy or I may just be taking detail shots! I'll keep you all updated on how it turns out!

Lastly my ceramics class is a blast! I LOVE hands on projects so I've really enjoyed this class so far. For our first project I made a cookie jar, a spoon holder for by the stove, a fruit bowl, a vase and my favorite...an elephant teapot! I have an in progress photo I've posted at the top. We're learning how to glaze next and I'll post more pictures in a couple weeks that process is completed. Our next project is to make 8 functional cups and 1 artistic cup. It'll be fun to have cups/mugs in my house that I've made!

That's a wrap...I apologize for writing a novel. If you got this far then you deserve an A :) Hope everyone is doing well!

-Holly