Today’s effort is lame, but I’m tired, sleepy, and my hands are cold. Flower-shaped things from an Illustrator tutorial on Bittbox. I could use Illustrator tutorials anyway, and I did learn something new here, as simple as it was.

Also, I forgot to take a picture of the pie I made last night. Rest assured, however, that it was delicious.

Here’s my one resolution this year: I’m going to design something every day. Since I’m starting late, I’ll end on Jan. 2, 2011 instead of  Dec. 31. (Edit: I’m going to count a couple of things I made just before I found out about the challenge. Thumbnails below.) So here’s day 1 3/365 — my new blog header (linked here so it’ll still be accessible when I change it).

day 1: mandarin practice flyer

day 2: business card

In other news, I just made smitten kitchen’s chocolate pudding pie for an office party tomorrow, and the pudding is delicious. So delicious and easy, I’ll never need to buy pre-made pudding again. Ok, so I cheated a little and bought a pre-made pie crust, but I made the filling from scratch… It’s chilling in the fridge now, but I’ll post pictures tomorrow before it gets eaten!

I finished reading Farm City earlier this week. There are enough details to figure out that the farm is (or was, at least) on the corner of 28th and MLK, which means Painted Tongue is right around the corner from the farm. I’ve been driving by it for weeks. I drove by after leaving the studio today, and sure enough, there’s a fenced lot that, from the looks of it, may still have a garden in it. Pretty neat.

The book itself was an engaging read. I read it during my BART commute, and I think it’s only by sheer luck that I managed not to miss my stop even once. I have a yard now, so I’ve been dreaming of my own garden full of tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, garlic, basil…now, I’ve never successfully grown any kind of plant in my life, so it’s both an exciting and daunting prospect. Because of that, Farm City is inspiring: if Novella Carpenter can run a farm—a real farm, with animals—on a formerly-neglected West Oakland lot, surely I can tend a little garden in my yard, right?

It’s also making me want to raise ducks, rabbits, and chickens. And if it weren’t for the cost, the nightly Dumpster diving, and the sheer size of the animals, I’d be daydreaming about raising pigs too. But that’s okay. I can still salivate over the thought of tasty salted pig parts. (Disclaimer: I am in no way being compensated by Boccalone.)

Hello, blog. It’s been awhile.

I see that I last posted in March. It’s been a crazy summer: apartment hunting, getting married, moving, freelance web design projects, starting an apprenticeship at Painted Tongue Studios on the first of October. Life is pretty good, except for my day job, but let’s not discuss that right now.

The apprenticeship has been going swimmingly. I spend all of Thursday in Painted Tongue’s West Oakland studio, then attend a two-hour staff meeting on Sunday afternoons, during which we all recount our activity from the previous week—both at the studio and on our personal art projects.

Let’s see, what have I done in the studio so far?

• Watched a card being set up on the Vandercook on my first day. The entire morning was spent trying to get the positioning right!
• Printed invoices and packed card orders.
• Scored and cut cards.
• Watched a more experienced apprentice make the polymer plates for a cared. Next time it’ll be my turn to make the plates.
• Tweaked a personal stationery, holiday card, and envelope design.

I’m also working on a garlic linocut that will definitely be posted here when I’m done. And there’s more excitement coming down the pike! Fun!

1. You see this sushi rice recipe? Don’t use it unless you like vinegary rice. I would probably use a third of the vinegar the recipe calls for, and maybe even less. Maybe I should know better than to follow a recipe from about.com?
2. Fajita tips: when you don’t have a grill and resort to “grilling” the veggies in a pan, don’t use oil. Not even a little. It’s really obvious in retrospect, but hey, we didn’t follow a recipe.
3. I made seared lemon dill tuna with Trader Joe’s frozen ahi steaks, and they were awesome. And by awesome, I mean Bryce pronounced them “miraculous.” This is a direct quote. Sadly, I have no pictures, but I do have more tuna in the freezer…

I’d been planning to make chili tonight, but then I read this article in the SF Chronicle this morning. It reminded me of the bag of bulgur I bought for tabbouleh months ago. I never got around to making the tabbouleh, and the bag has since been constantly buried beneath packets of pasta…which makes me even less motivated to use it. The pasta is more accessible.

The recipes sounded good, though, and I decided I had to use the bulgur in something.

The article claims that this recipe will serve 3, but my increased portions served the two of us with no leftovers. But that’s probably because we’re ravenous beasts.

2 tablespoons butter
2 1/2 cups broth or water (add 1/2 teaspoon salt, if using water)
1 1/2 cups bulgur wheat
0.5 cups spaghetti, broken into ~1-inch pieces
1/2 bell pepper, diced (I used a quarter each of a red and green pepper)
1/2 medium red onion, diced
1 tablespoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
1/4 teaspoon garlic salt

Instructions: Dry fry the onion and peppers over medium-high heat until onions are translucent. Remove from heat and set aside. Melt the butter over medium heat. Add the spaghetti and stir until browned. Add the bulgur and cook, stirring constantly, for 1 minute. Add the vegetables, spices, and broth. Simmer for 10 minutes, covered.

[Adapted from the SF Chronicle, "Ancient Grain for Modern Times", January 14, 2009.]

So…I was hungry yesterday. And upon finding few things in the fridge that would go together all that well, I tossed this together. Do the ingredients work together? Uh, sort of. In retrospect, I would use firm tofu, but I was working with existing ingredients here.

Ingredients:
- 12oz box of soft tofu
- 1/2″ slice of red onion
- 2 tbsp. sesame oil
- furikake
- pepper

Directions:
Heat sesame oil in a small saucepan. Dice onion slice and sauté for 1-2 minutes. Slice or cube tofu and add to saucepan. Contemplate, for a moment, the tendency of soft tofu to crumble the second you so much as think about touching it.

Add furikake. Cover and simmer on medium heat for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and devour, not bothering to put it on a plate or anything because you’ll be done in less than 15 minutes anyway, and it’ll just be another thing to wash.

Coffee beans. In a colander. No, I haven’t been roasting my own beans or anything fun like that, although I would like to try someday. I was going about my daily coffee ritual as usual yesterday. Boil water, dump coffee into french press, fill press with hot water, brew for ~5 minutes. But in a classic morning-stupidity maneuver, I forgot one crucial step: grinding the beans.

I grind and press coffee every morning. You’d think I would have the process down by now.

This was just a simple snack I put together in about 7 minutes with some leftovers.

The ingredients:
- pita bread
- cherry tomatoes
- leftover breakfast sausage
- salsa (Mrs. Renfro’s Habanero Salsa)
- sour cream
- green onions
- grated sharp cheddar

Conclusion:
Delicious. Would make this sandwich again, but with different meat (or none at all)–the sausage was a bit too salty.