a GiRl anD hEr BlOg

Shrimp Primivera

2011-08-24T00:02:00.000-07:00

Our friend Paul (who will be officiating our wedding) came to visit awhile ago and I brought out an old favourite recipe that I found here on fatsecret.com. http://www.fatsecret.com/recipes/shrimp-primavera/Default.aspx

It's called Shrimp Primavera and it's simple but so delicious. We had purchased a delicious hefenweizen cheddar bread. It had a crispy crust that reminded me of a croissant and a heavier, very flavourful bread inside. I want some right now actually, but it didn't last that long in this apartment. Paul brought a lovely, fruity white wine that went quite nicely with it. This was the first time that I had used my new Moleskine Recipe Journal too. I <3 it :)

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Ingredients

The recipe says this serves 5. I had 3 over and Changed a few things. I used regular ground up parmesan because it was a lot cheaper and easier to find and i had some left over from last time. I also used 4 carrots and 24 spears small asparagus as that's all the supermarket had. Might have added a bit more sauce too ^_^. Ooh I also added mushrooms as well! About 5 chopped up. I add them when I add the other veggies.

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Instructions

1. Cook whole grain spaghetti as package directs; drain.

2. Trim and cut Asparagus into 1" pieces, Peel and chop carrots into slices about 1/4 inch thick. Measure 3 cups of precooked Salad Shrimp (frozen) and set to side.

3. Spray large skillet/wok with non-stick spray, add extra lean olive oil, bring to high heat, add carrots.

4. Grate garlic cloves into skillet/wok. Add asparagus and cook for 5 minutes.

5. Add frozen precooked shrimp to skillet/wok until shrimp is heated through.

6. Add pasta sauce and heat until warm.

7. Add reduced fat parmesan cheese, salt and pepper to taste.

8. Place pasta in bowl and top with shrimp mixture.

I hope you try this and that you love it! Let me know if you do in the comments :)

Fascinators

2011-08-21T18:32:00.000-07:00

I've finished all of the bridemaids fascinators! This means I can get on to making my veil and reception hat, two things that i have been avoiding because I'm afraid to mess them up! Anywho I think that these 4 were a good warm up anyway :)

Summertime

2011-08-13T14:33:00.000-07:00

Playing with the Macro setting on the way home from dog walking

Admiring the moon from my balcony

I might do these individually as you can see much more detail upcloe

Car shells

Typical Daisy view :)

Flags of of the russian Sailing Ship Pallada

A seagull shows a float plane how flying is done

Love the colour of this flower

I'm a sucker for sunsets

Everyone loves the symphony splash

Pickle boats at the inner harbour

I have also updated my SPCA photo blog as well. You can check that out here:

Shoes

2011-07-29T22:29:00.000-07:00

So, the shoes that I wanted for my wedding (red sequin hightops) proved impossible to find even with the internet to help me, so I decided to go dressy and the shoes i ended up deciding on came in the mail today:

They're even nicer than i thought they would be and even the box they came in was lovely. I love them!
In other news I went for a second opinion about getting contacts for the day of the wedding and even though my eyes are too bad to get an exact match it looks like i might have a decent pair for the day of. Hizaaa!!!

Ooh I also got my assorted 10 embellishment buttons to use on my bridesmaids fascinators. Now to wait for the feathers to give them the final touch. I feel like such a 'do it yourself' wannabe! Good times. Almost two months to go. Geez!

My first "how to" video

2011-07-15T15:56:00.001-07:00

I decided to make fascinators for my bridesmaids to wear. I decided to make a video to document it for any other people who are craft challenged like me. I still need to find some sort of shiny embellishment (i'll look on etsy) but other than that i'm pleased with how they came out!

Here is the video, let me know what you think!

http://youtu.be/FyXOlYhRTBc

Next on my list is the birdcage veil!

**It now says that it is copyright infringement because of the use of the song but it should be viewable in Canada and the US. Go fig.

Also, in non wedding related news....

2011-07-11T22:21:00.000-07:00

I made spaghetti and meatball cupcakes for trevors last day!

Nothing says "I'll miss you! Don't forget me!" like sending your friend to their new home with diabetes.

I got the instructions off of this website:

http://www.kitchendaily.com/creative-cupcaking/

Invites finished

2011-07-11T22:09:00.000-07:00

With 3 months left to the wedding (oy-vey) we have finally finished the invites for the most part and sent the majority of them out. We've gotten some great feedback already which makes me really happy :)

On the inside of the card we have a R.S.V.P postcard that i designed and corner punched. On the back next to the guests names we have two options for guests to choose from:

-will be at the wedding, possibly dancing the robot on oct 1st.

-is not able to attend in which case this postcard will self destruct in 10,9,8,7,6....

I adhered the postcard to the card with one little square sticky so that it's easy to remove. Then i hand wrote in white pen surrounding it "I am a R.S.V.P postcard. Fill me out and mail me back please".

The bottom of the card is just the information for where to come for the wedding with an additional "Fancy hats are encouraged". I LOVE hats. And it seems to be a good compromise for me and André since i wanted it to be a costume party for the guests and he wasn't into the idea lol.

We also included a ghetto photocopied map as our ceremony location is a little random. I used the sticker that i showed in a previous post on the address labels. All in all i'm really happy with the invites and André is as well :)

Other than that I bought some feathers to make my bridesmaids their fascinators and some for my veil as well although i don't know exactly what i want to do yet. Ooh i also got my birdcage veil supply from etsy today! It was really cheap and came super fast! now i just need to work some crafty magic. I hope that it turns out okay!

Stickers!

2011-04-26T23:43:00.001-07:00

So i got the stickers that will seal the wedding invitation envelopes. They're not as red as i was hoping they would be but i think that they are quite nice!

The Wish Tree

2011-04-12T01:02:00.000-07:00

Instead of doing a guest book we're doing a wish tree. I think that it is a tradition that was popular and may have started in Japan.

André is trying to get the metal workers at his job to make us a tree. If that doesn't work i'm just as happy spray painting some willow branches to be honest.

I once again checked out Etsy to find what i needed for the individual tags. Guests will write down their well wishes for us on the tags provided and then hang them on the tree for us to enjoy. The shop that I got the cut outs and bakers twine is called Ready2QuiltShop.

Gifts for my attendants

2011-04-12T00:43:00.000-07:00

I got my maid of honour an engraved gold clover charm because she wears the same golden necklace every day and i wanted something that she would end up wearing more than once. I got myself a star. I found the rest of my attendants gifts on etsy! The shop is called Mykonos.

Everything came well packaged and it was a very friendly shop to deal with! I'm not sure which girl will get which necklace but I really like the leaves for a fall theme! They were super cheap too :D Cuz I'm classy like that.

From the same store I also bought the 4 of them each a brooch that has a vintage look to go on either their dresses or their shrugs if we get them.

So that's the bridesmaids mostly taken care of. The bridesmaids dresses are black and i'm pretty much letting them pick them out themselves. We have two so far which are fantastic and we got for a steal as well!

We'll probably do red shoes as well although i don't think i'll hold anyone to that as reds are so hard to match. I'm definitely getting red for me though :D

André doesn't have any ideas as to what he wants to get for his side of the wedding party but he'll come up with something.

The Invitation

2011-04-11T23:56:00.000-07:00

So I finally got down to making the main part of the wedding invitation. The concept changed a bit over the few months but it came down to this main design. It took me two tries to get the silk screen for this right (it's the only way that i could do the white on red image) and even then it's far from perfect but i decided to count my losses and pull the prints for the invitations anyway.

This was the concept design

A close up of the finished product. I actually have purchased a corner rounding cut out since then but i'm not sure if i will end up using it on the main thing as i didn't successfully manage to get them all centred but I will probably end up using it on the RSVP postcard that i still need to finish designing or the wedding info sheet or both.

I did around 100 cards. There are definitely about 10 that I did before i had hinges to use with the screen (that made it a million times nicer and easier to do) that are really poor but once we finalize the guest list if we still need those 10 invites i will just touch them out by hand.

The cards used are by cardblanks. About $32 for 10 not including envelopes. As red is my favourite colour I was pretty picky about these lol. The white ink is actually a silkscreening fabric ink from speedball. I did these using the photo emulsion method.

Found a deal on envelopes at michaels. 50 white envelopes and cards for $5! Amazing! I decided to cheap out on the envelopes because they're just going to get ripped open anyway. André decides to use the cards for the RSVP postcards or the Thankyou notes so we'll see! In the end I'm just glad I finally did it. I hope that people like them!

Cupcakes for the man child inside all of us

2011-02-26T10:51:00.000-08:00

This isn't really a recipe. It's super simple and there are many variations but i thought i would post it regardless incase someone hadn't tried this idea yet. You never know right?
I made cupcakes to bring to work for valentines day (and a few days later for my manchilds birthday) and decided I wanted a little more than just the usual solid cake cupcake. Here is my solution that is stupidly simple but was very delicious and popular.

First, make some cupcakes. I like to take the ghetto lazy approach and use a boxed mix, and to make it extra ghetto, whatever one is cheapest.

Next choose a filling. I decided since this was an experiment to just play it safe so I bought some jello chocolate pudding. It ended up being delicious but i feel like if i had really wanted to make it pop i would have put something different in it like whipped cream with custard and strawberry or something. As long as it fits through a cake decorating tip of whatever you use to fill these than it will do.

To fill the cupcake i filled up a icing bag with the pudding but i feel like if you didn't have one of these you could just use a ziplock bag and cut off one of the corners. I used to do that all the time when i was icing things.

I used a regular icing tip. I chose the one with the largest opening since i wanted to make sure that the pudding could get through. In retrospect i think i may have let the pudding set too much and it made filling the cupcakes a tiny bit more difficult than it had to be. But seeing as this is so easy that didn't really make for hard times :D

The rest is super fast you just stick your icing tip into the top middle of each cupcake and fill it up with pudding. I liked how you could feel the cupcake inflate. You just have to be careful not to overdue it because i found that it was harder to cover them in icing later when there was pudding on the top.

And then of course you finish them off by decorating as lazily and us uninspired as you can because you left making your valentines (or birthday whichever is the case) cupcakes far too long and you have stayed up too late making them.

I made my manchild a special lunch for his birthday and as is tradition drew on the lunch bag for him. If you are a fan of adam hughes then you might recognize this horrible butchering of one of his beautiful drawings. Is was late okay?

Ridiculously delicious Moroccan style soup

2010-12-22T19:24:00.000-08:00

With a wedding dress to look good in next October I've really started to think about mixing it up in the kitchen. I need to get out of the habit of eating out or just eating a boxed meal. For me this means trying new flavours! I have wanted to try Saffron for awhile but the cost has kind of dissuaded me. While perusing the web the other day however I came across a soup recipe that was right up my alley! I'm glad I did because the results were remarkable!

Now I should mention that the first website that I found this recipe on was missing both an ingredient and a step but it turned out well despite the fact. For example I didn't know to add zucchini and i also didn't know the step of sautéing the onions but it all came together in the end. Soup is pretty easy this way. As a little addition I took a left over soft taco shell and baked it in the oven at around 400F and added it as a delicious garnish. Very easy to do :)

Here is the proper recipe as i found in Cook’s Illustrated The Best 30-Minute Recipe book.

3 cups low-sodium chicken broth
2 (15.5 oz.) cans chickpeas, drained
1 (14.5 oz.) can diced tomatoes
¼ teaspoon saffron threads, crumbled
Salt and ground black pepper
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 onion, minced
4 garlic cloves, minced
½ teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon ground cumin
2 zucchini, cut into ½-inch pieces
2 tablespoons minced fresh cilantro
2 lemons, quartered (for serving)

1. HEAT BROTH MIXTURE: Bring broth, chickpeas, tomatoes, saffron, and ½ teaspoon salt to boil, covered, in large saucepan and set aside.
2. SAUTE ONION: Meanwhile, melt butter in large saucepan over medium-high heat. Stir in onion and ¼ teaspoon salt and cook until softened and slightly browned, 3 to 5 minutes.
3. SAUTE AROMATICS: ADD BROTH MIXTURE AND ZUCCHINI: Stir garlic, ginger, and cumin into pan and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in broth mixture and zucchini, scraping up any browned bits. Bring to a simmer and cook until zucchini is tender, about 10 minutes.
4. SEASON: Stir in cilantro. Off heat, season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve with lemon wedges.

I really recommend this. My pictures don't do it justice but it is so good! It also makes about 4 servings so it's good to take to work a few days of the week. Good times. Try it out and let me know what you think!

Well the weather outside is frightful...

2010-11-26T22:11:00.000-08:00

Even the smallest amount of snowfall seems to shut down the city that i live in. I am usually torn between loving the snow and hating it. I've come to the decision that as long as i am inside somewhere warm where i can see the snow in comfort that it's not so bad after all. It also gives me the excuse to live off of soup.
My friend Izzy recently served this at a Wino Lino night that she had. It isn't a complicated recipe at all and yet is very tasty. It's pretty cheap too if you already have the spices.

*Izzy's Lentil Soup*

1 Tbsp. oil (It doesn't specify which but I used a extra virgin olive oil)

1 med onion, chopped

1 tsp. tumeric

1tsp. ground cumin

3/4 tsp. salt

1 cup dry red lentils

5 cups water

2 big handfuls greens (kale, spinach or whatever you like)

1 Tbsp. grated ginger

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* Heat oil over medium heat
* Toss in onions, spices and salt. Let this mixture sweat/cook a few minutes (Tossing)
* Add ginger, lentils and water
* Bring to a boil - reduce heat to med-low
* Once lentils are soft, toss in greens and stir gently
* Season with salt and pepper to taste

BRaaaaaaiiiIIINnnnnnnssss!!!!

2010-11-11T23:26:00.000-08:00

I think that when you haven't updated your blog in a long time and halloween has long been over the most sensible thing to do is post pictures from a zombie walk.

The making of Astras Birthday Sketch

2010-09-30T22:39:00.000-07:00

I finally bit the bullet and bought a new camera. It's a canon powershot sx20. It's a point and shoot with manual functions and HD video capability. I love it. I definitely have a lot to learn as my manual pictures are pretty lacking but I'm having a good time learning! Lucky for me I have a lot of really talented, very patient friends who are willing to share their knowledge of photogaphy with me. Anyway, the first thing I have done with the video feature is to make a time lapse video of a drawing that I made for my friend Astras belated birthday. I hope that you enjoy it!

Astras Birthday Sketch

Also, I have a ghetto flickr account now. Check It out!

That's pretty much all for me. Hope everyone is doing well!

Data Moleskine and Milano

2010-06-26T21:34:00.000-07:00

Here is the third moleskine journal that I completed. I'm on a real STNG kick with my gentleman lately so it's no surprise that this next journal would feature one of my favourite characters.

Once again it doesn't really look too much like data but you get the general impression :)

I should also mention that I bought an accordion recently and have been taking lessons! I'm only on my second lesson so I feel bad for my neighbours who have to endure my constant practising but hopefully they will here some improvement! I love my little instrument but i don't think it will be too long before i have to do an upgrade.

Bad Celebrity Impersonators

2010-06-02T23:14:00.000-07:00

So I have been working this week on a small project. After being inspired by some beautiful paintings by one of my favourite artists on Deviant Art, Lily-Fox. Hers of course are a million times more wonderful than anything i have been able to do yet but it was fun to try.

This journal is supposed to be of bettie page, whom I love. I'm making it for a sister of mine who actually looks a lot like bettie page herself! Lucky! Anyway as you can see it doesn't really look like either of them XD unfortunately. I think if I had just been trying to do a picture of a girl from the 50's then i could be pretty happy with it but i kind of missed the mark on this one. Still, it's better than the plain old cover right?

I'm probably going to finish this with a light varnish but i want to try it out on something else first so that it doesn't get ruined.

The next one is supposed to be mr. Presley himself and once again I find that it looks more like a bad celebrity impersonator than the King himself. Actually at first it was looking like my Elvis was starting to look like *shudders* someone out of a twilight movie. I restrained myself from burning it and decided to just try my best to fill the rest with enough references that people would know who he was. I gotta say I love that red acrylic ink. It's magic. I love that true red colour. It's just so applealing to my eyes.

I have one left to finish and i'll post it when i'm finished.

**The small journals that I have used are by Moleskine and have cardboard covers. The come in packs of 3 which is perfect for what I have in mind. They are 3.5 X 5.5. I used a mix of pigma waterproof markers for the black outline. The white area is Acryla Gouache and it's the one of the first times I have used it. It's not as opaque as I would have liked and I had to use a lot of it to get good coverage but i love how mat and chalky it looks. I used FW acrylic inks for the black, red and blue bits. I'm not usually an acrylics person but I LOVE the inks. I love how they flow and the coverage is awesome. One thing that I wish I had known before using them on the cardboard cover is that they tend to bleed out a bit. I prefer a crisp edge. It's hard to see but there is gold acrylic in this as well on the stars, crown and accents. It's a crappy old craft acrylic heavy body paint that's been kicking around my art drawer forever and still manages to come out every now and then. I might consider doing gold leaf in the future. Ooh and some of the shading-there isn't much as it didn't work too well-was done with water soluble graphite.**

Self Portrait

2010-03-12T11:21:00.000-08:00

The art store I work for asks it's staff to do a self portrait for the store after they have been working their for a year. I got asked to do mine about a week or two ago? I've gotta say I have been planning my portrait for awhile now and was very eager to carry it out.

Next to the wall of portraits at the art store there is a wall of miscellaneous art that most likely comes from the different companies that sell to us. One of these pieces of art has fascinated me since my first day working there. It's a simple sketch of Elvis Presley but the weird thing is that he kind of looks like Mr. Darcy of Jane Austen fame.

The day I worked on it was really sunny so it was the perfect opportunity to use my window as a giant tracing surface. After taping the image up on my sliding doors I went about taking pictures of myself to use for my self portrait. This was the only part of the process that i didn't enjoy. Eventually though i weeded something decent out of the group of shots and proceeded to trace the main part of the face and hair on a new layer in photoshop.

I also rotated the original image so that it would line up with the original elvis portrait. I was originally going to try to do this without tracing (because I kind of have the looming feeling that I cheated) but I really wanted to get all of the proportions right. And in the end I feel like it turned out really nicely this way. Anywho, the magical thing about drawing your own portrait is that things like double chins and blemishes can just magically disappear whenever you want them to! If only you could do this in real life.

Next few photos are just to give you an idea of how easy this project was.

I did this portrait on stonehenge warm white. It's a great paper for sketching on. It's a bit hard to go back to anything else really. It even takes wet effects quite well too. For this portrait my original plan was to try to replicate the sketchy rough style of the original but that quickly turned to bunk because i like smooth lines so much and the sketch just didn't look quite right. I kept a reference of both faces for shading and things like that. In the left hand picture you can kind of see that i have placed the outline of my face on top of the photocopy of the suit and tie and am tracing over that to bring the two together. I should also add that the majority of this was drawn in a pencil that I had never used before but that i am now in love with. It's the Generals Sketch and Wash pencil which is as I'm sure you can imagine water soluble and awesome :D It made the shading quite painless. For elvis's suit i used a large water soluble graphite crayon that I can't remember the name of -_- Anyways all in all a good experience and I am really happy with how it all turned out in the end.

Now I'm off to see if the mats and frame for it are in! Hopefully so :) I will post a photo of the complete package when it is all put together.

Valentines Day Roast Beast Recipe

2010-02-15T22:11:00.000-08:00

So there I was feeling delightfully greased up on a fat girls meal of Macdonalds and probably making the folks at People of Walmart proud in an ill fitting pair of jogging pants when low and behold an Angel of the ~~Lord~~Walmart shined down on me in the form of an amazing deal! There before me on a gleaming metallic shelf was a wall of slow cookers for only $15! Even though I have never actually cooked anything in a slow cooker before or actually looked at a slow cooker with the intention to buy one and thus had no authority as to whether or not $15 was actually an amazing deal something about it caught my attention. I was mesmerized. If I had this device I could now cook things...slowly!?!

I bought the slow cooker and went about day dreaming about what delicious things I would make with it but I really didn't have a very good idea of what I could really do. A quick search around google made my decision for me. I would make roast beef for my man child for Valentines day. I might not be the Man child specialist that I sometimes like to think that I am but there is one thing that I know for sure. My man child loves manly meals. Give him meat and potatoes and he's satisfied. After a quick search on allrecipes.com and I found a delicious sounding recipe which sounded easy to make. Roast Beast is so wonderful that I have kind of been nervous up until now to make it because I imagined it would be complicated. I couldn't have been more wrong. And the great thing about having the slow cooker is that it was all ready for me when I got home after work!

Awesome Slow Cooker Pot Roast

The pot roast that I bought was about 2 pounds pounds which was enough in the end to be two meals, one night with an extra person so it fed 5 people with some left over. I've changed the recipe in some barely noticeable ways so feel free to check out the recipe that I started with on the link in the start of this blog entry.

1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup
3/8 package dry onion soup
1/2 cup water **someone recommended using a 1/2 cup of beef broth instead which sounds awesome but i was senile and it somehow didn't make it home with me**
2 pounds roast beef
3 carrots, chopped up and peeled
6 small yellow potatoes **i basically just did enough to fill up the extra room in the crock pot**
1/2 onion sliced. Save a few pieces to put on top of the roast
i clove garlic, minced
pinch of pepper

So i started this at about 7 in the morning since most slow cooker recipes for this particular meal say that if you are going to cook on the low setting that it should cook for about 8 to 9 hours.

Prepare your veggies and put them into the crock pot. You will want a small layer of veggies for the pot roast to sit on because it gives it extra flavour. Once that is done put the roast on the small layer of veggies and surround it with the remaining ones. Put a slice or two of onions on top of the roast and if you like a pinch of pepper as well.

In a separate bowl mix the mushroom soup, dry onion soup and water together until they are decently blended. Pour this mixture on top of the roast beef and veggie combo and you are ready to put the slow cooker on it's lowest setting and go about your day!

Results

The Roast Beast was cooked to perfection! It was so delicious and moist, it fell apart when you cut into it. SO juicy and good. The veggies were great as well and after thickening up the left over sauce with some cornstarch and flour it made an awesome gravy. Cook up some yorkshire puddings to go along with it and you are set! I would totally make this again and would like to see if substituting the 1/2 cup broth for the 1/2 cup water would make much a difference as this roast was pretty darned flavourful as is.

My manchild even gave it an unprecedented 6 out of 5 autobots! Wicked.

Much ado about stamping

2009-12-24T19:48:00.000-08:00

So i decided to take on the task of making personalized stamps for all of my 15 coworkers this christmas. It was definitely a bit more than I bargained for and I'm not actually sure of what they will actually be used for HOWEVER I did eventually get them done for the most part (except for suzi's which I will finish tonight) and in time for christmas and everything! Go me! People seemed pretty happy with them although my coworkers are all amazing and would seem thankful for whatever you gave them, with the exception of perhaps a kick to the head or a disease. They're odd like that.

Anyway I tell you all this because I hadn't posted to the blog for awhile and thought this the perfect opportunity to update.

In a perfect world in which I wasn't a procrastinator and had actually looked around to get the proper size stamper block (I wanted it to be bigger then the actual stamp itself) before it was down to the last minute then my project might have gone a bit smoother. Because this isn't a perfect world I had to pretty much do with what i could scrape together at micheals and hope for the best!

The hardest part of this project was thinking of what to do for each coworker. After that i carved each indiviual design onto the individual lino stamps which i then glued red felt to. In the meantime I covered small wooden blocks with identical red felt and attached them to the stamps. Bada-boom Bada-bing finito. It actually took me a really long time. Don't let the crappy quality of the stamps deceive you ;)

Here in no particular order is a few of the stamps that I ended up with.

So that is a small example for you! I love block printing. I really need to do more of it, just need to find the time. In other news (which is really news as old as time itself) shock of all shocks this years new years resolution is again to lose weight -_-. However this time i actually joined a gym! Watch out pants. You have slumbered in my dresser for too long! Hopefully one of these posts i will have news about excellent weight loss success! I guess we'll just have to see :D

Corn and Crab Chowder

2009-11-14T23:02:00.000-08:00

Since it's November and it's getting chilly out I'm starting to think about soups and stews! I tried an especially delicious recipe last night from the cook book "The complete best of bridges Cookbooks volume 1". I unfortunately forgot to buy the onion when i was making this and was really too lazy to go buy one after i had started the chowder so i imagine it would be even better with this addition but i have to say it was pretty darned good on it's own! Also since I seemed to be having a tough time getting the right ingredients I also managed to get garlic butter instead of the regular stuff. I love garlic though so I didn't mind :D

4 slices of bacon
1/4 cup butter
1 small onion, chopped
1/3 cup flour
3 cups milk
2 medium potatoes, peeled and diced and set in cold water
1 small green pepper, seeded and chopped
1 stalk celery, diced
1 bay leaf
1 cup half and half cream
10 oz crab meat
1 can whole kernel corn (12 0z/341 ml)
salt and pepper to taste
1tbsp chopped parsley

fry bacon until crisp, cool and crumble. Set aside. In a large saucepan, melt butter and saute onion until soft, Add flour, stir and cook gently for 1 minute. Gradually add milk, stirring constantly until thickened. Drain potatoes and add to sauce with green pepper, celery, bay leaf and cream. Simmer 35-40 minutes. Add crab, corn and bacon; heat through, season with salt and pepper. garnish each bowl with parsley. Serves 6

I also decided to try and make some small buns to go with this (creamy soup without bread just isn't the same for me) and in the end i just ended up using the pillsbury crescent rolls dough instead. It's easy and delicious but before you know it you realize that you have eaten four crescents worth of bread. Dangerous! I think that this is a great soup for a cold winters night and with the buns it's really filling! Try it out and let me know what you think!

2009-11-05T21:41:00.000-08:00

I originally had a different blog that was about healthy recipes for satisfying your manchild. I love to cook so I thought I might just incorporate recipes every now and again when I find one I like :)

Too Good Turkey Bacon Wrap

*I couldn't find the recipe online and I'm too lazy to write it all down from the cook book so you're going to get the watered down version*

Ingredients:

*1 slice of low fat American Cheddar Cheese for every wrap (I couldn't find this in my grocery store so i just went with marble)
*Lettuce (I say just bring a head of lettuce out of the fridge and let people take however much they want in their wrap)
*Boneless skinless turkey breast (For two people I had 2 regular sized ones of these)
*Whole wheat Tortilla wrap shells 2-4 depending on how much you want
*4 slices fat free turkey bacon (I know I know, it's no substitute for real bacon but trust me mixed with everything else it's fabulous)
*1/2 a cucumber sliced and diced
*1/2 a red pepper sliced and diced
*1 tablespoon of light mayo
*1 tablespoon sunflower oil
*1 clove of garlic, diced or put through one of those garlic presses
*5 mushrooms cut up into bite sized peices

Heat up a large wok/frying pan and put in the tablespoon of sunflower oil. Put close to full heat depending on your stove top. (I like to start on high because for one, I'm an impatient fat chick who wants her food NOW. I just make sure to keep an eye out to make sure i'm not burning anything)

While the pan is heating up chop up your boneless skinless turkey breast into small, bite sized pieces. When the sunflower oil is heated up put in your turkey and turn the heat to just above medium heat. This is a good time to get your red pepper chopped up and your garlic pressed. Once your turkey has begun turning white, add the veggies and garlic into the pan and cook for 5 minutes being careful to stir everything as you go to make sure that it all gets properly cooked.

When everything is cooked put it all into a large bowl. If you have a separate frying pan then feel free to cook the turkey bacon in that while you make your turkey and veggie mix in the other. If you don't have another pan just cook the turkey bacon in the same frying pan that you cooked the first ingredients in. When the turkey bacon has bacon has become crispy to your liking tear it into little pieces and add it to the bowl that has the skinless turkey/red pepper mix and mix them all together. This is the time to add the cucumber as well.

Once everything is in the bowl this is a good time to add that tablespoon of low fat mayo, mixing thoroughly. If you want, you can put the tortilla shells in the micro wave for 10 seconds to heat them up a bit. When they are ready put a few slices of lettuce on them and one slice of cheese* on each and then finish off with the turkey/veggie mixture. Wrap as you like and Voila! You are done and have a delicious, healthy, easy dinner!

*When I made this for the first time I made the mistake of shredding the cheese into little, hard to see pieces. Consequently my man child saw a tiny bit of cheese in my wrap and was jealous because he didn't see any in his. Cheese jealousy is the worst. The situation could have become rather out of hand if I hadn't gone to the kitchen and come back with his very own slice of cheese.

The Verdict

I really loved this dinner and thought it was very tasty. My manchild, although not quite as enthusiastic as me (even with the cheese! Sometimes manchildren are hard to please! I think I just inadvertently made a rap-no pun intended) seemed to enjoy it as well. In fact he gave it 4 out of 5 Autobots.

Anyway that's all for now. I definitely recommend trying this one out. It will make your manchild stroke his manly beard with happiness.

2009-06-12T23:33:00.000-07:00

On June 20th I am doing an Intro to Silk Screening Demo at work. I had never silkscreened before so this has been an experiment for me. After a few not so successful attempts I finally had success! I tried to take some photos as I went along so that it would be easier to follow. I found a lot of my information from some great websites so I will include the links to those at the end of this Tutorial.

The first style of Silk Screening that I will be blogging about is the Speedball drawing fluid and Screen fluid method.

Lets start with the tools used:

* Silk Screen (These days they aren't made of silk but this is what they are usually advertised as) Mine was 10 X 12 and a good size to make a regular sized tshirt print on. I only used about half of it so that I can use the second half to demo mask ease in my demo.

* Squeegee to push ink through screen onto design.

* Speedball Fabric Ink, black.

* 4 OPUS Capella Round brush. I found that this brush was the perfect size for more detailed lines without being too small to fill in the larger areas. At only a couple of bucks the price was right too!

* Masking Tape to cover the edges of the screen. This makes clean up quite a bit easier and helps to keep ink out of unwanted areas.

* Newspaper to keep your work area clean. Maybe it's just how i do things but I found this to be a messy process.

* A sturdy peice of cardboard or an old library card or something of this sort to scrape off the remaining ink as you go along. I think in the long run this will save you a bunch of ink.

* A tshirt! I hit up zellers and got your run of the mill, pink cotton tshirt because I couldn't find a pack of fruit of the loom ones. I think it's probably best to go with cotton. Wash it before printing on it.

I think that's about it :) Now on to the actual Process!

Since this can be a messy project it's always good to have some newspapers down underneath the screen and some paper towels at hand.

I started with a simple design that I had used before. I went into photoshop and sized it appropriately, setting it to black and white and making it lighter to save printer ink. I think by now you have probably come to realize that I am a penny pincher when it comes to art supplies. It's probably my Scottish background :)

Anyway once you have your design, trace it onto the flat side of your screen with a soft lead pencil. I used a 6B. Make sure that you have it the right way so that you don't end up printing your design backwards. I think it helps to tape the design that you are tracing to the screen so that it doesn't move around.

While tracing my design I kept in mind that since my brush wasn't super fine pointed. For example I made a the line of the tail thicker to achieve a nicer effect. Also I tried to put lines through the areas that I wanted completely covered in drawing fluid.

Basically the part of the design that you want to be printed onto your tshirt, you want to cover in drawing fluid.

Once finished tracing the design take away the drawing that you traced from and cover the area underneath the screen with newspaper. It is also a good idea to apply masking tape to the insides of the screen well (as seen one of the later pictures) as well as the areas that you won't be printing. This saves screen filler and makes for an easier clean up.

We are now ready to apply the drawing fluid! Make sure that the Drawing fluid is well mixed before applying. When you have done this you are ready to apply the drawing fluid to your screen.

I used a small round brush to apply drawing fluid to the areas that I wanted to be printed. For example, I want the whole of the squirrels body to be a solid part of the design and so i covered it in drawing fluid. You're pretty much just painting the design that you want printed on your tshirt with drawing fluid like is pictured above. Here is a clearer picture:

After you have painted on the drawing fluid, it's a good idea to hold it up against a light to see if you have missed any spots or if any bubbles have formed. Take this opportunity to touch up those areas with more drawing fluid.

Wait for the drawing fluid to dry before moving on to the screen filler. I say mine might have taken roughly 30 minutes to dry although it was a very hot day and I also used a regular house fan to speed up the process.

It's time to break out the squeegee. Pour a thick line of screen filler on the side of your screen next to your image. With the squeegee at about a 45 degree angle, pull it across the screen spreading a thin layer of screen flller across the screen and covering your image. Only swipe once so that the drawing fluid isn't washed out.

After the filler has dried, take the screen to a sink and wash away the drawing fluid with cold water.

Use a scrub brush (I bought a nail brush at the dollar store and did the trick!) to get any stubborn drawing fluid out. After you have done this to your satisfaction leave the screen to dry. Once again i used a house fan at it's highest level and it was dry quite quickly.

Your screen is now prepared for printing!

With silk screening you can print on many different kinds of papers and of course on fabric. In a future entry I will show the process of silk screening a tshirt. For now though I will leave you with a picture of the tshirt that I silk screened using the drawing fluid and screen filler method.

Hope you like it!

I wouldn't have been successful without the valuable tutorials and information on the following websites: