Staying cool

Beach time!  Nik and I combatted the horrible heat wave last Thursday by packing up and heading out to  Far Rockaway, to the beach.  The weather was a million times more tolerable out there, and downright lovely, if I might say.  100 degrees F in the city that day, but it was a breezy day at the beach with the perfect water temperature and some killer waves.  We spent the day jumping in the waves, soaking up some Vitamin D, and eating ice cream and chips/guac from the boardwalk (Babycakes has a pop-up bakery there for the summer, with lots of ice cream, brownie ice cream sandwiches (!!), doughnuts, and cupcakes! Exciting!)  We're already plotting when we can go back...it's fun that we can both take off work during the week so we don't have to fight the crowds that flock to the beach on the weekends. 

It's the dog days of summer, am I right?  Stay cool!

Vegan Chocolate ice cream, from Babycakes! 

Chips and guacamole 

Waiting for the train to come

End of summer

Hello! Hope your weekends were lovely! I enjoy my days off, and FINALLY got one good beach day in as the summer comes to a close. Nik and I took the train out to Long Beach, Long Island on Saturday and spent the day basking in the sun and taunting waves in the ocean. Love it when a good wave kicks your butt! I packed us some tofu sammiches for a little picnic on the beach. Long Beach is awesome...clean white sand, not too crowded, and the weather was PERFECT. Farewell summer!




Some more Ripe from around Here testers, for Jae Steele.
Peach Pecan Muffins:

Stuffed Mushrooms:



Ohhhhh and I found some Dandies at Whole Foods last week! I ate half the bag as is, before I made myself stow them away so there would be SOME left to bake with later. I made some chocolate walnut dandies, kinda using the chocolate chocolate chip recipe from VCon. Amaazing!

Tofu Omelet brunch on Labor Day. Filled with Cheezley Bacon Chedder, cherry tomatoes, red onion, and sriracha.

Pizza! sausage-y seitan crumbles, Cheezley bacon chedder, pesto, carmelized red onions, and homemade red pepper tomato sauce.

Beach Fail. Bonus pizza and doughnuts!

Hey friends. I'm gonna be slow blogging in the next few weeks, as my 'lil sis is still here and I kinda forget about these things when I have visitors. We're having so much fun! We tried to go to the beach this past saturday, but that was kind of a major fail. In fact, it was so bad, it was downright comical. Original plans were to venture to Long Beach, in Long Island, but after reading up on the temperature of the ocean (48F!!!), we decided to keep it cheap and just stay on Brooklyn sand. Off we trekked to Coney Island, with the sun shining on us, only to arrive to clouds galore and really really harsh winds and coldness. Brr! We brought a lovely picnic and everything, but it was pretty frustrating to try to eat a sammich with sand flying at your face. Gross! Coney Island sand! There were a bunch of crazies swimming in the water, but we only cautiously dipped our feet in and ran shrieking away (wusses, I know). We did manage to bury Jenna up to her neck, and it was pretty funny watching her try to wiggle out of the piles of sand we heaped on her. Our train ride there was longer than the time we stayed there, ha! All three of us had a layer of sand covering us when we left, and I'm still finding it around the apartment. Should have went to the park!




I made some Isa Pizza, from Vegan with a Vengeance, last week, topped with the cashew ricotto, pesto, tomato sauce, zucchini, and fire-roasted red peppers. Um, yum!! I love this pizza and it is worth all the time it takes to make all the different toppings.


The other night, my sis and I made DOUGHNUTS. Heavenly, I tell ya. I used this recipe, which I have used once before, with great results. We rolled them in a powdered sugar/cinnamon mix and I even piped in some raspberry jam in a few (we just used a regular heart-shaped cookie cutter for the filled ones). I stuck a chopstick in and moved it around a bit, to create a little space and just piped it on in. Easy-peasy! Total sugar-coma!




There has been lots of healthy smoothies and salads also, but pizza and doughnuts are way funner to photograph!

I have been tidying up my Etsy shop, unlisting older things that I don't feel fit well anymore, and working on adding new listings. I took a bunch of photos this weekend of art cards, so I'm mostly listing those in the next few days. I want to re-photograph some of my originals also, but that will most likely have to wait until next weekend (please sun, cooperate). A recent new addition to my shop are these blank notecards, from my Love and Peace series. I had them at Renegade and they did really well, and I finally got my butt in gear to put together a listing online for them. Yay!


More to come soon!

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:

His goal in life was to be an echo

I have had an excess of yellow and red plums lately, so I made a Pflaumenkuchen. Unbelievably easy and delicious. It's got a great sweet/tart combo going on. I'm going to try this with other fruits!


Pancakes with yellow plum sauce. Mmmm.


Roasted veggie pizza with tofu basil ricotta and homemade golden cherry tomato sauce. Roasted veggies include: radish, onion, garlic, zucchini, banana peppers, and carrots. Crust from VWAV.


I have had a few not so good days lately, but I just got back from seeing Wilco and they made me feel WORLDS better. I love that. I'm hoping for smooth sailing the rest of the week.

Hopefully some new work soon. I'm working on two different paintings right now and a few random doodles.

I always say that I'm going to go to the beach next weekend, but then I never do. Maybe I'll go to the beach next weekend.

It's all gonna break

I forgot to post this earlier in the week, but I went to Dr. Sketchy's last saturday, for the first time in a few months (busy!). The theme this time was Absinthe, or The green Fairy. It was sponsored by Le Tourment Vert, an absinthe company. Anyways, it was a fun session. I won one of the contests (incorporate Moulin Rouge or the style of Toulouse Lautrec, into your drawing) and won a bottle of absinthe.


My little sister turns 16 this week! Gah! I got her some super-fun presents and sent them to her. I found this awesome pencil case at this japanese bookstore in midtown. So darn cute! Super-cute panda stickers, an origami booklet with pretty paper, and a poo/pee notepad were also found there. I also got her a necklace with sprinkles encased in resin from a fabulous Etsy artist, Stoopidgirl And finally, I painted her some falling raindrops on a blank sketchbook pad (I'm probably going to be making some more of these for my shop).











Yesterday was the Siren Music Festival at Coney Island. A friend and I got there in the late afternoon, with enough time to catch the last three songs of Parts and Labor. D'oh. I missed These are Powers also. We both weren't too interested in any of the other bands until later that evening, so we decided to just spend the day laying out on the beach. So great! We soaked ourselves under the palm tree sprinkler (my friend braved the ocean...) and then layed on a blanket and chatted the rest of the afternoon. It felt SO nice. It was a disgustingly hot day out, but we were cool the whole time, with the nice breeze coming off the ocean. We went and listened (couldn't really see) Islands in the evening and then made our way over to the main event, Broken Social Scene. It was impossible to find a good space in the crowd to see the band, so we decided to go over on the sidelines, where you could actually see the band. Security wasn't really into people standing on the sidelines and kept telling us we had to keep walking, so we ended up with a small cluster of other people on the side of the stage, where they let us stand. It was kinda like we were backstage, ha. Amazing show; lots of my favorite songs were played, and it was hilarious to watch families coming in from a day on the beach and rocking out, even if they didn't know who they were. The little kids were the funniest, dancing all over the place. The sun really drained me and I slept amazingly well last night.





And finally, it was a blueberry pancake breakfast kind of day today. Yum!