Dreary Daffodils Blog

I should say failed attempt. Nothing is really striking or whatever but I need to remind myself that this was a test roll and I should be happy I even loaded the damn camera properly. Bleh. I wish I was a more confident and able photographer with film. I just feel blind folded. God forbid I actually know what I am doing. Digital cameras are definitely a crutch if you are first learning about photography, well at least for me. Ok I am rambling. meh. le sigh.

So these are my unedited 12 exposures using fujicolor pro 400H 120 film

As you can see by my title where I’m at chronologically tonight or rather this morning, in the kitchen, making tomato soup. I’ve been ill since the past week, around the 19th is when it started I think. Earl and I went out to see innerpartysystem and Pendulum live at The Venue in downtown Salt Lake City. We were right up front and the crowd got pretty crazy, kinda half mosh pit, half bouncy jump dancing. It was fun to go out and feel like I am still here, regardless of the tattoo on my arm to remind me otherwise, its nice to get out and mingle. Although I suspect my mingling via swapping bodily fluids with everyone around us due to the profuse sweating of our wired up bodies, is what got me sick. It was well worth it though, one of the best live performances I’ve ever experienced.

So I’ve been deathly ill for about a week and it’ll probably be another week before this curse subsides. I have a really crappy immune system, my parents blame it on all my surgeries, I blame it on my good fortune. I’ve just now started feeling well enough to crawl out of bed and upstairs to cook some proper soup so I don’t have to eat canned shit anymore. It’s a new recipe, a bit more veggies involved than my usual fare but I am hoping it turns out. I’ll post the recipe here right now but not sure if I’ll feel up to taking photos, we’ll see. Also in another post I’ll write up my favorite tomato soup recipe and see how they compare. A battle of the soupy tomatoes if you will.

Sorry for the crap photo

2am Tomato Soup

The recipe is adapted from Tomato Soup found on www.allrecipes.com

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 2-3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 cup chopped carrot
• 1/4 cup chopped celery
• 2 (28 ounce) cans crushed tomatoes
• 3 1/2 cups chicken or vegetable broth (I had chicken on hand so thats what I used)
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme (use fresh if you have it)
• 1/2 teaspoon dried basil (use fresh if you have it)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 4 drops hot pepper sauce (I used Sriracha)

Directions

1. Heat oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Saute onion until tender.
2. Add garlic cook for about 10 seconds then add carrot and celery; cook 7 to 9 minutes until tender, stirring frequently. Stir in tomatoes, broth, Worcestershire sauce, salt, thyme, pepper and hot pepper sauce. Reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer 20 minutes, stirring frequently.
3. Now at this point you can eat it as is if you like a chunkier soup or you can use an immersion blender and carefully blend till the desired consistency.

Note: You could also throw in a splash of cream at the end to make it nice and creamy albeit a tad unhealthy if you are watching your fat intake and what not, I didn’t do it this time because of my cold, dairy just makes the breathing part harder. Also I did put a sprinkle of Parmesan Reggiano in my first bowl but on the second, wanting to avoid too much cheese, I drizzled in some high quality olive oil instead. TASTY!!!

Well after my last post, I crawled from my deep dark lair of a basement and this is what I came up with. lol. Its the view from my peephole in the front door. It kinda fit though, my mood. Like me anxiously peering into the world I disappeared from.

It’s 6 am and I still haven’t slept. I don’t really want to write or update this stupid blog but at this point I feel like I gotta do something.

I’ve hit so many walls throughout my life and each one seems to be get bigger and stronger. I slam right into them, and as I lay there trying to recover from such an impact they tower over me, so menacing and intimidating. At this point I am practically cowering, which is pathetic really. What would my 8 year old self say to this weakness, this loss of strength? I don’t really want to know but she’d be disappointed. She would look at me and tell me not to be a baby, think of all the crap she had to deal with and still managed to laugh a little and play with her stuffed animals and climb trees. Between the surgeries, the abuse, the fights and the end of everyday having to absorb it all in her 8 year old mind and still wake up the next day perfectly ready to deal with it. For her to have survived all that intact, then to let the past destroy me now is well, ridiculous.

So this wall. WTF do I do with it? Other than just senselessly bang my head against it. This entry wasn’t really meant to answer anything, just to remind me that I have a lot of work and very little energy to do it, yay me! And luckily no one reads this so I wont feel the need to ask for actual advise. I need to create things again, anything and everything, whether its crap or not. That really feels like the right direction that this point, so off I go then. To charge my camera battery, sharpen my pencils and dust off my notebooks. I will keep you updated audience of none, and let myself and my crappy creations be swallowed into your vast sea of everything.

I think I may look forward to this. maybe…

Mandy

btw

“art is why I get up in the morning
but my definition ends there
and it doesn’t seem fair
that I’m living for something I can’t even define”

touche Ani, but it works for me. or at least i hope so.

Yeah I have major commitment issues. There, I said it. So how could a woman whose been with her boyfriend for 7 years have commitment issues? Ha. Really it thankfully doesn’t apply to my lovely Earl. Only everything else in my life, be it setting up to cook a meal or sit down to read a book. My post is about the latter. Once again I will vow, like I have a million times before to a million simply goals that I will accomplish what I set out to do. At this point my aspirations are not very high, I learned to not get carried away in these matters.

So anywho, I am journeying south to Las Vegas to help my Mom, Becky Lanktree of the ever increasing and popular Art Under Glass to help with a large order from one of her whole sellers. And I shall bring with me the one book I have been giving guilty goo goo eyes at for the past 6 months, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It’s a wonderful story so far and surprisingly relevant given that fact the it was authored in the Russian literary journal, The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments during 1866. So my point, it’s certainly not a hard read, I’ve really no excuse for not having devoured it by now. This is disconcerting to me because reading books has always been my failsafe when I feel non creative or disconnected in a general sort of way. So like I said I wont finish it in the week or so I am down there but my goal is simply this: to at or around bedtime, read be it a few pages or blast through chapters of my book. Yep thats it. Thats all I want to do. It doesn’t seem like much for normally ambitious people but trust me, it’s a stretch for me. lol.

So I suppose thats it, wish me luck on my silly endevour and also send some love my Mom’s way on her neglected blog www.artunderglass.net/blog , she’s going to need it to complete this order on time.

With much love,
Mandy

Photo Journals, I’ve seen countless photographers do this and I figured the exercise would be useful to me as well. A couple of days ago it was incredibly foggy, more than I’ve ever seen in fact. Most fog I incounter is usually on the highways closer to the Great Salt Lake. But apprently today the lake creept past its usual territory into my Magna neighborhood and similar weather throughout Salt Lake County.

Well it’s been snowing all day in Las Vegas. It’s up to 8 inches in some parts of the valley! Although it’s not uncommon for vegas to get snow but it usually melts before it hits the ground.  Our part of town didn’t get hardly any at all but if you watch the news it’s pretty funny. The news has canceled all of its other reports and its only reporting on the chaos that it is reeking upon the valley. hehe Vegas are pussies in snow.

I left Utah to get away from shit weather, oh well. 

Is is snowing anywhere crazy where you guys are at?

Yes yes, it’s been one of those weeks, and it’s only Monday. *sigh* To get my mind off of the whirling chaos that is my life I decided some cookie baking was in order. To compliment my fall flavored cookie endeavor, I decided I am in desperate need of a few (like five) cranberry vodkas. I would like to say I took some great pictures to do these cookies justice but unfortunately I have failed you. To be frank I was much more concerned about eating them. I was so absorbed in pumpkin ecstasy that my feeble mind was overpowered with nothing else but the cookie. So pictures were just not possible on my part, I’m sure you’ll understand once you have tasted the fare.  Joy the Baker is of course responsible for the recipe because she is made up of only a ball of energy mass of genus and probably sugar. She also has more control over the cookie’s power and has some lovely photos at her blog. You can get the recipe here: Pumpkin Butterscotch Cookies

Ok I know this blog was supposed to be multipurpose and yes I really do have a life outside of cooking. So I’ll focus real hard to post some other topics as well. 

Goodnight and mahalo,

Mandy

Macaroni and Tuna Salad 

Ok so unfortunately there really are no macaroni pictures involved in this post. I know, I got your hopes up only to crush them into the ground, for this I apologize. 

Since out of context is my middle name, I decided to cook something that rebels against the common cold weather food and made a palpable summer dish.

Ok so about 3 weeks ago I’ve started to have Winder Farms deliver fresh and delicious milk and produce to my house. Well my Dad’s house since I live in squalor in his basement, but none the less a girl has got to have good produce, squalor be damned. Oh and p.s. store bought milk from Smiths can go screw itself. Winder is way better in the sack. 

 Bad humor aside….

 Winder not only delivers milk and produce, they pretty much will bring you any staple food that you can buy at the store with the exception of a few things. I was perusing through their list the other week and noticed fresh fettuccine in there. I bought it out of curiosity, I’ve only ever had the dried kind in the box. 

 So I get my pasta on Friday and have a look at it. As I held the small 10 0z. container in my hand I couldn’t help but think that it’s soft texture and mellow yellow color was just simply pretty. I was holding a package of pretty fettuccine. Weird I know. I set it back in the fridge and had no idea what to do with it. The pasta intimidated me to be honest. Albeit it did scare me, I knew that this pasta was not to be taken lightly, it was destined for greatness. So I headed toward the computer to find the perfect, somewhat easy, recipe that would determine my fettuccine’s fate.  

 Of course the first place I looked to was a lovely woman by the name of Elise over on her food blog SIMPLY RECIPES.

 I knew I could trust her with my fettuccine, her good taste in food has yet to fail me. So I decided on this recipe: Fettuccine with Creamy Tomato Italian Sausage Sauce Recipe

 It was perfect, the recipe had all my favorite things in the world. And it had fettuccine in the title so everything worked out.

 The first thing I noticed was the shallots, I love shallots and become warm and fuzzy when a recipe calls for them. Shallots are from the onion family but way cooler because they for 1 are much milder than an onion with a sweeter taste and 2 they kick ass because their form is similar to garlic and that’s just neat.

 So I got on to putting together my meal, which I discovered took about the same effort as making a box of Kraft Mac and Cheese. Everything was cooked in the same pan, except the pasta of course. But it was incredibly easy.

 The result? I am now a true believer in fresh pasta. The difference is unexplainable, I simply do not have the proper words at my disposal to describe the unbelievable yumminess of that god damn fettuccine. And the even more mind boggling thing is that homemade pasta is probably even better! The dish was if I may say so absolutely delicious. Earl and my Dad were freaking out, I was freaking out, pandemonium soon followed.

 The only thing I strayed from in the recipe was instead of using half sweet and half spicy sausage, I went forth and just did all spicy. It was fantastic. Although a word of caution to non likers of spicy food, do what the recipe calls for, there was a considerable amount of heat with the way I did it.  

So that night ended in full bellied happiness and I now have a new easy and tasty dish into my rotation.