Sunday, September 28, 2008

Rainbow mountains

I went to Lake Pleasant this weekend and had a blast with some friends and nature. Good food, sights, friends, and laughs always makes for a nice get-away. We did a lot of hiking on saturday; Up to a waterfall and then across a river! Being in the woods, surrounded by the pretty moss and fungi and tiny plants and bendy roots is always inspiring and I got some good nature shots, I think.

Back to the grind tomorrow and I have a huuuuge "to-do" list to get done this week. Hopefully I can stick with it!

(click to enlarge)

















Friday, September 26, 2008

It's mountain time!

I'm heading off to a cabin in the mountains this weekend! Of course, it's super-rainy out and I have a long drive, but hopefully the peace and quiet and beauty will compensate for that. See you sunday!


(Cutiecake: part of a custom order I just finished up)

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Beanball-falafel, German b-day dinner, and CAKE.

Beanball dressed up like falafel: made with chickpeas and covered with a dill-yogurt sauce.

It was Nik's b-day today, so I made spätzle and currywurst! Pushing that dough through a colander is a MESS and not really recommended, but it turned out yummy! Currywurst is made from mini-seitan 'o greatness' with lots of spicy spices in it.

Lemon-Macadamia cupcakes from VCTOTW, turned into a cake. Super-yum!

Forest Party

If a bear has a party in the woods, does anybody hear? New print available in my shop!




Saturday, September 20, 2008

foooooood

Last week's sunday brunch was some scrumptious chocolate chip belgian waffles:
Edamame from my CSA!! SOOOO much better than the frozen kind. It came on a branch. I ate it on a salad.

Super-veggie Pot Pie:

Eggplant wings (WAAAAAY spicy) and some fruit salad to cool my mouth down:



What I'm eating right now. Tofu Scramble, potatoes, and leftover fruit salad:




Also! I'm going to try my best to blog about vegan food every day during the month of October for VeganMoFo! Hooray!! My RSS feeder is going to EXPLODE with everyone's awesomeness next month!

Thursday, September 18, 2008

2 more sneak peeks




I'm ALMMMMOOOOST ready to show what the project I'm working on actually is, but for now, here are two more sneak peeks. Obviously, it's holiday themed, which is maybe why I'm a bit reluctant to put it out there quite yet. In this day and age though, I'm probably behind the times in that thinking. There were holiday cards next to the halloween stuff at the paper store I went to today...

I'm going to see Mogwai tonight! yeeeah!

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Sometimes things don't work out the way you want

I wanted to share a recent failure I have had in translating my sketch into a finished painting. I know, I know, who wants to see failures? I can't decide whether it's hopeless and I should just give up on it, or if I should try and take it a little further. I was thinking about adding a digital layer (new tablet; I wanna play with it!) over it, adding more detail and interest. Right now it's pretty boring, if I must say, and I dig the original sketch waaay better. Ya live, ya learn.


Monday, September 15, 2008

Everything's a HOOT

New print in the shop!




Also, I have a SERIOUS case of the mondays today. I stayed up reallllly, really late on saturday night (being a night owl, painting owls...) and I probably would have done the same last night, save for the fact that I had to get up for work this morning.

wakka wakka.

Monday, September 8, 2008

Mega-post

So I just got a new laptop last week and I've basically just been playing around with it since and trying to accustom myself to it. I switched my from 7 year old desktop PC to a MacBook Pro, so it's, uh, a bit of a change. I'm still importing all my old stuff over and trying to "start with a clean slate" in terms of organization goes (or lack there of from my old PC). Love it so far! And it is a BAJILLION time faster than my old computer. Seriously, I can't believe how much time I'm saving already! New monitor and tablet (!!!) come this week, so I will, for once in my life, have a proper setup. So many plans!

Little sis came to visit a couple weeks ago and we had a great time. I took thursday/friday off of work, and had monday off for Labor Day, so it was a nice vacation for myself also.

We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and then watched "The Shining" under it (by those stupid installation "waterfalls" that are killing all the trees, you can kinda see them in the nighttime photo.) Of course, my sister's first night there, we had some drunk crazy dude come sit all cozy next to us in the already packed park for the movie. He was loud and obnoxious and totally in his own world...and then proceeded to take his pants off. Needless to say, he created a disturbance for most of the beginning of the movie. He eventually left and we could watch the movie happily (or as happily as you can watching The Shining...)




Friday night, we all went to see Fuerzaburta in Union Square. I've been wanting to check this out for quite a long time now and my sister's visit was a perfect opportunity. We really didn't know what to expect going in and I'm really glad about that. I'll just leave you with these pictures and tell you that a) this took us by surprise at every angle b)the props/stage were AMAZING c) we danced like maniacs and d) we left the show SOAKED. p.s. these pictures are in a pool ABOVE our heads and was lowered to within a few feet of our heads...




Sunday we went to Coney Island! It was her first (and last...Astroland closed down for good yesterday...) and she loved it! It was an absolutely perfect day out and we were beach bums for the whole day. Later on in the evening, we went to Foodswings and then chilled in a coffee shop, sketching.





Some Food from this past weekend! There were all these flood warnings in effect, so I didn't really leave the apartment the whole weekend. More cooking time!

Lentil Soup:

I had a TON of peaches (and still do) so I made two loaves of peach bread this past weekend. I veganized my mom's recipe:

Peach Bread (makes 2 loaves)

Ingredients:
5 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 TBS baking powder
2 tsp salt
6 TBS vegetable oil
2 1/2 cups soy milk
2 egg replacer (I used ener-g)
2 cups chopped peaches
2 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 F. Mix dry ingredients together in a (very)large bowl. Add remaining wet ingredients and mix gently. Bake in two greased loaf pans at 350 F for 1 hour (maybe a little longer; mine came out a tad undercooked in the center)

enjoy!



Chickpea Cutlets (from Vcon) with a concocted onion sauce. Steamed green and wax beans on the side.

Super-salad with curry-ranch dressing!


Abundance of tomatoes=tomato sauce from scratch time!! This is actually the second time that I have made a batch this week. The first time, I made a chunky tempeh "sausage" sauce with lots of garlic and roasted red peppers. It wasn't too pretty, but it was really, really damn good. Here's the plain tomato basil sauce I made tonight. I'm going to use it over some breaded and baked eggplant tomorrow for dinner: