C is for CityScape

Wow I really didn’t anticipate taking an entire month of from blogging! Planning for vacation and Renegade took up most of my spare time, but now I’m back and prepared to flesh out all of the posts that are living inside my head. I’ll start with the next edition of Alphabet Etsy – cityscapes.

prismpop’s DIY NYC

blockpartypress’s Urban Jungle Necklace

theraveniron’s CITYWIDE

beta’s Night Shade Women’s Tshirt

reVisionDesign’s Recycled Shopping Bag Coasters

Weekly Finds 8.16.09

While I organize my blog posts for the upcoming week, I’ll leave with my finds from this past week. Like these make-at-home paper owls from Mibo (available for  download for only about $1.65).

• New Blogs: Both of the blogs I found this week have amazingly awesome names, in my opinion. Pancakes & French Fries, Big Gay Ice Cream Truck
• Music Downloaded: Dan Auerbach/Keep it Hid, Peter Bjorn and John/Living Thing, Ratatat/LP3, Does It Offend You, Yeah?/You Have No Idea What You’re Getting Yourself Into
• Ideas/Inspirations: Umbrella skirt, Recycled Wine Bottle Torch, Momiji Couture Contest

B is for Bonsai

This week’s been a busy week, but I’m anxious to get some more blogging done this weekend! My second Alphabet Etsy installment is dedicated to another current obsession – bonsai.

DecorDesign’s Bonsai Tree Wall Decal

Intres’s Bonsai Felt Tree

laurageorge’s Bonsai Party

Ahpeele’s Sakura Rain in the pine trees Burnout Tunic

ValerieTyler’s Tranquility Bonsai

Weekly Finds 8.9.09

Every week I hope to share the various new and interesting things I’ve discovered over the past 7 days. I’m sure the content will vary from week to week, but I hope you might enjoy some of my finds too. Like the Animal Index book organizers by Hiroshi Sasagawa featured above. If only the library’s budget could support something like this…

• New blogs: Reading & Reviewing, the style files
• Music downloaded: The Ting Tings/We Started Nothing, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix/Phoenix, Bon Iver/For Emma, Forever Ago, Bishop Allen/The Broken Strings
• Ideas/Inspirations: Colorful freehand embroidery, Crafternoons at New York Public Library

A is for Airplane

One the many reasons I wanted to start a blog was so that I could feature all of the amazing sellers that are on Etsy. And because I thrive on coming up with (cheesy) themes for just about everything, I’m going to start an “Alphabet Etsy” weekly feature. Thus without further ado I will begin my first installment “A is for Airplane”. Because I love all things having to do with travel, airplanes/airports especially.

ZoeChen’s Never Say Goodbye to Paper Airplane grey dress

shehitpausestudios’s angelic 8×10 polaroid transfer of girl with toy airplane

blackbirdletterpress’s flying letterpress cards

roundrabbit’s Its a Plane Retro Porcelain Necklace

collettes1pillbox’s  Airplanes bag

Rich Chocolate Cupcakes

I like to bake. I wish I could do it more often. So any time I have a legitimate excuse to bake, I take advantage of it. This week we had both a departmental meeting at the library (which I usually try to make something for) and a birthday within the department. This warranted special baking, namely cupcakes. Normally I plan my recipes each week, but this was more of a last minute birthday cupcake so I had to work with what I had in the house, which did not include brown sugar, cocoa powder or an abundance of confectioner’s sugar.

Still I knew I wanted to make a chocolate cupcake and so I consulted my favorite cupcake cookbook, Crazy About Cupcakes by Krystina Castella. This cookbook is awesome for a couple reasons: 1.) every recipe I’ve tried has been good to absolutely amazing 2.) it provides very detailed information about decorating 3.) it also includes several indexes suggesting which icing recipes go best with which cupcake recipes or which cupcake recipes you can mix to make a marbleized cupcake. Despite the fact that I LOVE making cupcakes (who likes to bake and doesn’t like making cupcakes?), this is the only cupcake cookbook I actually own. I don’t need any others.

Here is the recipe for Rich Chocolate Cupcakes. I made 18 large cupcakes and 9 small ones with this recipe. I found the chocolate flavor to be less pronounced than in other recipes, but the texture of these cupcakes is spot on, super moist perfection.

• 1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
• 3 oz. unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped
• 1 cup boiling water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 large egg whites, at room temperature

1. Preheat oven to 325. Insert liners into mini and/or medium cupcake pans.
2. Place the butter and chocolate in a large bowl. Pour the boiling water over them, and let stand until melted. Stir to combine. Stir in vanilla and sugar.
3. Add the sour cream and mix on medium speed until fully integrated.
4. In a separate bowl combine the flour, baking powder, and baking soda.
5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the batter, mixing at medium speed until smooth.
6. In another bowl with clean beaters, whip the egg whites until stiff. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.
7. Fill the cupcake liners three-quarters full. Bake mini cupcakes 10-15 minutes and medium cupcakes 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cupcake comes out clean. Cool cupcakes in the pan.

Normally I try to avoid making buttercream frostings because I have a habit of letting the butter get too warm. Then when I go to mix my sugar in the frosting just gets really soupy. It doesn’t taste bad, it is just really hard to decorate with, especially if I add food coloring because then it gets all granular looking. But I didn’t have any cream cheese (which I prefer and almost always opt for), so I cautiously attempted to adapt Castella’s Vanilla Frosting to an Almond Frosting by substituting the vanilla extract with almond extract. And it worked! While I thought it came out too sugary sweet, everyone else was raving about it.

• 3 cups confectioner’s sugar
• 1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 2 teaspoons almond extract
• 2 tablespoons milk

1. Gradually add the sugar to the softened butter and cream together with an electric mixer.
2. Stir in the almond and milk. Beat until smooth and of spreading consistency. Add a little bit more sugar or milk as needed.

I chose to top mine off with some espresso beans because it was simple and added another flavor element. A couple people told me the beans made the cupcake.

Food, Photography and Me

At the beginning of 2009 I set out to photograph everything I cooked or ate at a restaurant. Because I am a true foodie I figured I could have some fun and maybe share my experiences with others. Then shortly after the new year started my mom surprised me by sending me my grandmother’s entire recipe file. After talking it over with some friends I decided to commit to only making grandma’s recipes. It seemed like the perfect union – a photo journal of my grandmother’s recipes.

Unfortunately I found it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. First I realized that without an outlet like a blog, there wasn’t any truly good way to share. I posted on Flickr for a while, including lengthy notes about the pictures, but I knew few people really look to Flickr for food advice. And soon I became irritated with the quality of the photos I was taking. Because like many working folks I cook most of my food after the sun goes down, thus I was left with very little natural light to work with. Photographing food is challenging enough during the day, but without a fancy camera or equipment my pictures just made the food look rather unappetizing. Plus much of what I was making wasn’t that attractive to begin with, as grandma’s recipe box was packed full of casseroles and other “one pot” concoctions. Believe me its really hard to make recipes involving creamed soups, canned vegetables and chow mein noodles/crunchy onions/peanuts look delicious. Because…well usually they’re not. (Needless to say, my commitment to grandma’s recipes was a short lived two months.)

And then I dropped my trustworthy Canon Powershot in the ocean while on vacation in Key West. I returned home thoroughly aggravated, but still continued to attempt the photo food diary with my boyfriend’s even nicer Fuju FinePix. It actually proved much better with low light situations, but even the slightest movement resulted in a blurry picture. At this point I was looking at more and more food blogs and becoming more and more envious of their beautiful photos. So I contacted several of my favorite bloggers about their camera choices and the majority of those who responded all used the same Canon Rebel SLR. So I knew what I had to do…

Now I have had a brand new Canon Rebel SLR just waiting to start recording my every action for two months…and yet I’ve been mooching my boyfriend’s Fuji. Part of the problem is that SLRs are not pocket size. I can’t just throw my Rebel in my purse and be done with it. It requires a nice camera case, which I finally purchased today. It also requires some learning on my part. Despite the fact that I did begin my undergraduate studies as a Photo Illustration major, I don’t really remember anything about manual photography. And even if I did, I’m sure its much different now than it was in 1996. So this weekend I shall begin learning my way around an SLR. Hopefully a year from now I will be taking SmittenKitchen (see below) quality photographs. Hey I can dream!

Renegade Here We Come!

Well its official – Eric and I will be selling our wares at the 2009 Chicago Renegade Craft Fair! This is a juried fair with tons of applicants, so I’m both honored and, honestly, slightly scared to have been accepted. There is LOTS of preparation and work ahead of us to make this a successful endeavor, but I’m looking forward to the challenge. If you’re in the area please come visit Moxiedoll and Old Scratch the weekend of September 12-13 – even if just to say hello!

Weekend Wrap Up

After a thoroughly stressful July, this weekend was an absolute dream. I can only hope that the rest of August is just as enjoyable. Some of the highlights include:

If you have not seen any of the films that Studio Ghibli has produced, then you need to promptly add this to your “To Do” list. After finding nothing we wanted to watch on TV (why do I pay extra for On Demand again?), Eric pulled out this collection and we began our weekend tour of awesome Japanese animation. I am now obsessed with all things Totoro, as are most Japanese children under the age of 10, apparently. (Any of you out there reading who may not know me personally, will come to find “Child at Heart” to be a central theme to many posts – I get this from my mother who is the biggest little girl I know.) We ended the tour with an old favorite, Spirited Away, and Eric is now contemplating a No Face Halloween costume.

photo by (SHOCHU) Blackbox Studios, Inc.

On Saturday morning we ate breakfast at Big Jones in Andersonville. I have been diligently working my way through the restaurants in the a la card Chicago 2009 deck and Big Jones is one of the only cards left in the deck that serves breakfast. I love the a la card deck, as it has saved me money while getting me to try restaurants I wouldn’t normally drive 45 minutes to dine at first thing on a Saturday morning. But as soon as our waitress landed a plate of complimentary sugary beignets on the table, I knew we were in good hands. While my bacon and cheddar omelette was simply okay, the fried green tomatoes, Niman Ranch applewood smoked ham and cheese grits were all definitely above par. The service was excellent too, although I think it helped that there were less than a dozen customers in the place. And even though we were both absolutely stuffed by the time we left, I still insisted we pick up some deliciously good treats from the Swedish Bakery to bring to the cookout we went to that afternoon. I’m just sad I didn’t choose to bring any home for us.

Thanks to to Time Out Chicago for suggesting that readers bike 16 miles to the Chicago Botanic Garden, or else Eric and I may never have come to experience this beautiful place. We spent close to four hours exploring the 26 different gardens, and I am now planning on becoming a member. Not only can I picture myself taking virtually any visitor that comes to Chicago to see these gardens, I also want to go back every month simply to spend the day reading or embroidering in one of the numerous peaceful areas, like the one pictured above.  The only thing that disappointed me was their Japanese Garden, as both San Francisco and Seattle have much, much more beautiful and seemingly authentic ones. So I guess I’ll just have to spend my days in one of the 25 other gardens – darn!

Lots more good stuff happened and some not-so-good stuff (like failing my car emissions test), but all in all it was the best weekend I have had in a very long time. The challenge will now be to continue this pattern of actually relaxing and enjoying the weekend. I think I can do it.

In the Beginning

vinyl wall decal by TastySuite

Hello blogging world! I am so excited to officially compose my very first post. After spending years enjoying others’ blogs, I felt it was time I start my own. I intend to essentially blog my life, and see where that takes me. I have lots of ideas for what I want to blog about, but I’m going to allow Show Some Moxie the chance to evolve without expectations at this point. I just hope you have as much fun reading it as will inevitably have writing it!