A Design Experience in the Heart of Vienna

Source: alice.RICHES.snow sketchbook

A little while ago I was able to thrust myself - after a decently long plane ride - into the heart of Vienna, Austria.  Since then, I have found that I inspect design differently.  I usually attribute this to the immensity of lovely in Vienna, but it probably had more to do with the naked exposure I had while I was there - it sounds the same in theory, but not in perspective.  Mainly the act of looking at the streets, storefronts, exhibitions and designers alone with my own thoughts (and sketchbook) to interpret as I saw fit. I was disconnected electronically and forced to head out the front door on foot...it was hot as the hinges of you-know-where but I loved every minute of it. Mind you, I wasn't completely alone, I went with a jmu-umbau professor and equally adventurous inde+ minions. However, I wasn't there with a significant other, parental influences or (before I left) my close circle of friends.  It was a new experience on a new continent. 

Source: walking-chair.com

Since coming home and rejoining the electronic world at full swing I managed to keep tabs on some of the designers we visited with while in Vienna. One in particular stuck out, Walking Chair (brace yourself and get thru the intro) "from the heart of vienna we make things and song." That's it, they make things. They create, without fear. The things we saw in their office and the conversations we had with the two creators, Fidel & Karl, were so infecting we all walked out in awe of their vision. The matter-of-fact, yea, this is how we do things attitude was inspiring. 
Basically, with this post, I am looking to remember the things that inspired me to create in my sketchbook. In Vienna, I learned how to sketch without conflict. For me, it came at the end of the trip, when I took a walk to Stephansplatz ready to sketch. Before then, I was concerned about what the final product would look like, I was so critical of my own work, in my own sketchbook that I didn't go forward into art with abandon. As a reminder, I keep one of the pins we got while visiting on my strap of my camera. Create. Inspire. Do.

Source: alice.RICHES.snow sketchbook

Bacon Wrapped Pork Loin

Source: realsimple.com
Photo by: Johnny Valiant

We had a late start to our dinner tonight due to various errands but no matter, the main course was absolutely scrumptious. To date, one of the best things I have ever made. As soon as we got home I preheated the oven and prepped the pork loin with salt and pepper (as opposed to allspice the recipe calls for). Next I made the cherry mixture (helpful hint #1: place the 1/2 cup of cherries in a durable bowl and use your kitchen shears to break up the pieces, it will save you a lot of time). Next, I wrapped the loin with bacon and waited for the oven light to go off! Make sure you position the loin in the middle of the oven to create just enough heat under and over your roast.

Meanwhile, we enjoyed a mixed green salad with shaved carrot, sliced cucumber, dried cherries, rosemary, olive oil goat cheese with homemade lemon-mustard vinaigrette (the goat cheese was plain until I added the olive oil, rosemary and other secret spices!). Good thing because the pork loin roasts for 45 minutes before you baste with a glaze and then continue to cook until the inside reaches 160 deg.! To pass the time we played with the dog, some checkers and a few rounds of our favorite card game "Nertz" - more on that some other time - and it was nice not to sit and stare at the TV while waiting for dinner.

In keeping with my trusty kitchen gadget blogging I will be sure to highlight the ones I use in cooking....so! I was sure to use my extremely helpful digital thermometer (I'd love to send you here for my local readers, but their site is under construction) for this recipe. It is so much easier to use when there aren't any bones to worry about hitting with the probe.
Keep an eye on the bacon once you add the currants & red wine vinegar, it'll be more likely to burn with the added sugar. We covered the roast loosely with some tin foil and it actually helped the roast get to 160deg. a little faster - rightly so.
It was, as I said before, scrumptious. Really delicious, moist and juicy. I highly recommend it!

Source: Personal library

Source: Personal library

Creamy Risotto

Source: realsimple.com
Photo by: Anna Williams

Well, I've never had risotto or made it so why not?! I have always seen it on menus but considering the serious amount of carb and dairy always went with the filet of something or other.  It was little labor intensive but considering the yummy noises from the sweet husband, I'd say it was worth it. 

Source: realsimple.com
Photo by: Anna Williams

On the recipe in the  Real Simple September 2006 issue, they listed variations to liven up the risotto. Last night, we went with Risotto with Prosciutto and Peas: Remove from heat and stir in the Parmesan, 1 cup peas, 4 oz prosciutto*, 1 teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper. Spoon into individual bowls.
*Cut the prosciutto using your kitchen shears to prevent the meat from tearing and getting stringy. 
Here's another tip, only add the extra ingredients, in this case the prosciutto and peas, to each serving. If you plan to have the risotto as a left over, reheat the rice and then stir in the extra ingredients. You don't want the prosciutto to get chewy! Also, consider splashing the risotto with a little water or milk to keep it from drying out - I doubt you have access to a double-boiler at work! Enjoy!

Ready. Set. Publish!

A business of mine has been growing since 2009...I didn't start pushing my ideas forward until I was consistently asked to provide my artistic services for various events, moments and publishing.  Well, not to mention the overwhelming need to fund one's own future once temporary jobs come and go.  You have to love what you do. You just have to. If you wake up every morning and can't stand going to your current job, just do something about it. So I did. I've been researching Master degrees in everything from Interior Design to Psychology - all the while continuing to look for art classes to feed the need to create. I am still on the hunt for a Metals and Jewelry class (despite the terrible smell of a pickle pot). I think I've narrowed down the best approach for my current working life and have armed myself with the world's most delicious cupcakes, a stellar new camera that is still surprising me with functions and the overwhelming need to create. There is something so beautiful about creating things that are indeed pretty. Ever since my plunge into Art History this has been my favorite quote:

“For me, a picture should be a pleasant thing, joyful and pretty! There are quite enough unpleasant things in life without need for us to manufacture more." Renoir

There is my goal...pleasant things in my work. Of course, as a former art student, I can appreciate the gritty, emotional and messy part about art. For me, it's all about the joyful and pretty.

Source: alicerichessnow.com 

Favorite Kitchen Gadgets, Vol. I

Source: realsimple.com
Photo by: Miki Duisterhof

“Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.”

― Harriet Van Horne

Real Simple's Daily Though landed in my inbox this past Wednesday and of course had to share with all of you! I saved the content below from a few weeks back as a series of blogs for my cooking friends. It's my Favorite Kitchen Gadget series (soon to come: Favorite Foods, Favorite Photography gadgets, Favorite Home Improvement Gadgets and in general: My Favorite Things). In each entry I will have a photo of the gadget, where I purchased it/if it was a gift I will do my best to find it for you, the price and how to use! I am sure some of you will scoff at the little trinkets claiming that your hands, fingers and a simple spoon can do the same thing, well my doubtful friends, I suggest you try some of these, they have made my cooking experiences so much better! My mother-in-law is quite the cook herself and I was exposed to several of the gadgets we'll look at through both of her kitchens (yes both) and had several "ah-ha!" moments. So, without any further ado, here is Volume I:

Source: Personal library

Garlic press: Oh my friend the garlic press. This has made a difference in my kitchen because of the shear amount of garlic we use in our food - and our undying love for garlic bread.  Simply remove the outer flaky skin of the garlic so the "meat" is exposed, cut a small sliver of either end (if you desire), place in press and crush over your next batch of homemade marinara. The press will help you evenly distribute your garlic and keep you from being a walking vampire repeller - good tip here for Edward Cullen fans (I had to Google that). It is a cinch to clean, simply use a toothpick to remove the garlic fragments from the teeth of the press, rinse with soapy water and air dry - do not put this in your dishwasher, be nice to your favorites. This was a gift but I imagine you can find it here (d0n't forget your coupon!). Super affordable and really a necessity.

Source: Personal library

Citrus peeler: This is a new kitchen gadget for me and so far so good! I recently attended a Pampered Chef party hosted by a dear friend with Barb Maurais. I helped with some of the food prep and was able to get a goodie! Considering the large amount of lemon/lime/orange consumed in this house all in the name of recipes (and gin) I thought it a wise choice. It really works! When I looked it up for you lovely folks, I was so happy to see that it is only $1! If you need zest from your citrus before you need juice, don't score until you've grated the rind. I wouldn't call it a necessity, but it's a neat addition.

Source: Personal library

Kitchen scissors: Oh my kitchen scissors/shears. I never thought of using anything other than a knife to cut-up ingredients for whatever recipe required me to chop-chop-chop! We received an entire knife set with block and sharpener as a wedding present from the Sweet Husband's cousins and I was delighted to finally have some sharp scissors at my disposal. Granted for a while I used them to open containers and in a pinch I may have used them to open mail (eek!) but now I have a little more respect for them once I used them on salad ingredients and my least favorite thing to deal with, raw chicken! I know you might have a hard time wrapping your head around spending $20 on a pair of scissors but I promise, it's worth it. I've been know to cut up carrots with these babies when the counter is full and I left the salad prep for last. 

Source: Personal library

Pastry blender: Considering that I bake a lot more than I used to - and you have to be nice to dough of all kinds if you want the right results - I figured it was time to get myself a pastry blender. The recipes constantly called for one and I always figured I could do without. Wrong. The blender will properly combine your butter with flour without warming the butter and distributes all the ingredients evenly. This has made a huge difference with my scones (of all kinds). Honestly, look at a scone recipe/ingredients the wrong way and voila, flavorless, hard ick.  Really anything that requires you to make a sticky or crumbly dough in the begining of your baking process, reach for a pastry blender. 

Source: Personal library

A fork(s): I'm not going to tell you where to find a fork, if you don't have a stainless steel or non-plastic equivalent in your house, we have much more important things to talk about. A small salad fork is the size I use most often when holding down chicken breasts I'm avoiding to touch. Mostly, I use a fork to squeeze the maximum amount of juice out of a lemon/lime/orange. After cutting the citrus in half, I hold it over a mini-strainer to catch the seeds and extra pulp, and squeeze. Wiggle the fork around, watch the rind so you don't pierce your hand and simply squeeze away. Here's another small tip - save the hallowed out rind if you plan to not purchase the garlic press, it's a good way to alleviate some of the stench on your fingers. Do you have a compost holder in your kitchen or a garbage dispotal? A little lemon goes a long way. It's my favorite kitchen clean scent!


I hope you enjoyed Volume I, there's a lot more where these came from! 

Will you bee my Valentine?

Happy Valentines Day to my faithful blog followers! We had a long and jam packed weekend but it was absolutely wonderful. Although, I woke up with a terrible sore throat and then opted for hot chocolate this morning instead of tea...but now it's time to rip into one of the many herbals I have in the pantry. Peppermint cocoa just wasn't cutting it, time to bring in the honey bee.

Source: Personal library

Thankfully, I have an army of sick-day movies for some background as I tirelessly work on the blog, twitter, print materials and dogging the delinquent photo releases (as you may or may not know, this pertains to the start of the new business regarding design, photography and organization, when the website goes viral I will bee sure to blog it). 


We'll see if we get lobster and crab cakes on the table tonight, I'm thinking it'll be leftover, famous lasagna. In a house that prefers St. Patrick to St. Valentine, I think it'll be just fine. *splutter, splutter, cough, cough* Enjoy your day!

Spiced Mini Burgers with Couscous Salad

Source: realsimple.com
Photo by: James Merrell

Burgers again, but this time with lamb! Everything was delicious - common theme around here :) I will say that next time I will cook the lamb in the skillet, the foreman dried out the burgers a little. I did find a solution here: greek yogurt, dill and red wine vinegar. Yum! However, I think next time we'll try adding a little egg and Worcestershire sauce to bump up the moist factor. For the couscous we decided to go with a Parmesan flavor to make sure we weren't gypped in that category. All in all, it was a well rounded meal.
We chose to serve it in bowls and aside from the couscous, we didn't have a main carb (pita bread, roll, etc.). You don't need it! The flavors with the lamb and cucumber are just enough! 
The recipe suggests using hummus but we left it out entirely, use your discretion!

Pete Eckert

Beautiful.

Turkey [Chicken] Burgers with Zucchini and Carrot

Again, don't be afraid to remove the beef and use something else - or remove the turkey and use chicken! These were sooo easy and, you guessed it, delicious! The sweet husband prepared this meal and I cooked it, it was a nice way to break up (the sometimes chore feeling) act of making dinner. Well, I love to cook, but after a long day this was just the recipe to put in an equal amount of preparation and enjoyment. 

Source: realsimple.com
Photo by: Quentin Bacon

When preparing the carrot and zucchini go ahead and use a paper towel to soak up some of the extra juices from grating (we didn't do this but after molding the burgers we were concerned at the amount of water in the mix, next time we'll give it a go). Then again, the burgers were FULL of flavor and the zucchini and carrot (with garlic of course) added a lovely aroma with the chicken. 
I did make the lemon mayo, but added some garlic powder (not raw pressed garlic because the mayo is really meant to crisp the flavor, not drown it out). Open face on our leftover parisian bread with lettuce (ketchup if your my husband *cringe*) mayo and a warm chicken burger.

Oh! Extra tip here: Our burgers took 5 minutes per side but with an additional 1-2 minutes on low, covered (the steaming effect is the same as cooking on a flat griddle surface and covering with a steel bowl - if you watch cooking shows, you see this all the time, it's a great technique).
Enjoy!

Excerpt from: The Long and Short of it All

Run, Don't Walk, To Your Nearest Target for Dachshund Valentines!: "Show your love with incredible Dachshund style this year by picking up these awesome Dachshund Valentines at your nearest Target."
^I had to post this from one of the blogs I follow! We aren't big Valentines Day fans here - it's just a sign that it's time to put up the St. Patrick's Day deco - but these are too cute! 

Source: http://dachshundlove.blogspot.com/

Although, I will say that we plan to have a nice dinner on Monday, a little preview: Steamed Lobster and crab cakes with some sort of seasonal veggie and a large cocktail! At least the meal will be seasonal in color! 

Turkey and Roasted Red Pepper Meat Loaf

Delicious! We were so surprised at how good this was! It was a nice way to have some meat in a traditional recipe without missing the usual hamburger. The turkey was moist and the flavors just right. 
We paired it with a nice side salad and a piece of crusty bread - my aren't we healthy?! There isn't much to say other than Enjoy!

Source: realsimple.com
Photo by: Kana Okada

St. Patrick's Day Celtic Sojourn

St. Patrick's Day Celtic Sojourn

The sweet husband and I enjoyed the Celtic Christmas Sojourn this past season and we are definitely considering attending one for St. Patrick's Day. The Irish step-dancing was absolutely wonderful, not to mention the quality of music and completely laid-back atmosphere of the show. Well that and I could listen to someone talk with an Irish or British accent for hours.

If we don't attend, you can still enjoy some Irish flair with a post about Corned Beef and Cabbage around the same time!

Mmmm, Dinner

Last meal of the day...this time, Shredded Chicken Tacos! Since about noon I've had 3 large chicken breasts stewing away in our crock-pot on low in spices, 1 cup of water and 1 can of diced tomatoes. After about 4 hours the chicken will easily shred using two forks to pull the meat apart. Before serving I squeezed some fresh lemon juice over the meat and mixed. 

Two tacos were plenty! Small flour tortillas with salsa jack cheese, mango salsa, shredded chicken, rice, lettuce, corn, two small dollops of vegetarian refried beans and one dollop of lite sour cream. It was such a delicious dinner and stayed in our taco theme of the past two days! It'll be lite for dessert, I think my peppermint hot chocolate! 

Today's Lunch Special

Source: Realsimple.com
Photo by: Anna Williams

Last night we made Shrimp Tacos with Citrus Cabbage Slaw and I get to enjoy it for lunch today as well. There is just enough left to have one small tortilla filled with the shrimp and slaw. On the side I plan to have some wheat crackers and a large glass of water.

One of the best ways to keep flavor with shrimp - especially this time of year - is to buy frozen, raw, tail-on shrimp at your local grocery store. Slowly defrost the shrimp in a bowl, still in the bag, in cold water. Remember that even though the water out of your faucet is cold, it's not warmer than the frozen bag of shrimp! Change out the water once or twice, slowly raising the temperature each time. Only by a smidge! After about 20 minutes the shrimp are easy to handle and at this point you can submerge the shrimp in water without the bag. I found that too long in the water the tasty crustaceans actually became less than tasty.

Peeling and deveining shrimp is not the most fun but a $6.99 bag of shrimp is better than a $11.99 one - unless of course you really don't have the time. The upside here is that the slaw needs about 10 minutes to set so it's ample time to prepare 1lb of shrimp and cooking only takes 2-3 minutes. Be sure to follow this time frame and use your intuition, it doesn't take long for tasty crustacean to go from yummy to chewey.

Go for it with the jalapeno, without the seeds it's really quite manageable. We added some shredded salsa jack cheese to up the heat and a teenie-tiny spoonful of lite sour cream on top. So delicious!! They're messy so eat over your plate! I served the shrimp and slaw in a bowl, over a large plate with heated tortillas, plenty of room to get messy! It is a great meal if you're getting a little tired of soup and hearty meals this time of year; then again, dinner is cooking away in the crockpot, more to come later! Enjoy :)

The Perfect Breakfast

Good morning everyone! I just had yet another wonderful workout on this super snowy day and followed it up with an absolutely delicious breakfast. It's been difficult to get over the hump of working out for more than 2-3 days a week...honestly, I just don't want to work out. However, I need to workout. Either way, focus on the positive, I did it! As my sister-in-law would remind me, "you'll be happy you did." Look at that, she's right!

Source: Personal library

So, breakfast! English muffin, one egg (sunny-side-up) and a slice of plain goat cheese. Next in line is a teenie-tiny serving of a cereal/granola combination - we have that disease where it's impossible to finish an entire box of cereal without leaving about 1/4 cup at the bottom to just sit there... Therefore, our cereal/granola combination consists of: 70% store brand plain granola, 20% kashi heart to heart cereal,  5% honey bunches of oats and 5% plain corn flakes. It's actually quite delicious! I paired this with fresh sliced strawberries and 3 small spoonfuls of 99%FF yoplait strawberry yogurt. If your bananas are ripe, throw half or a whole in the mix, for me, I usually eat my banana before my workout or I'll pass out. One last thing: a small glass of orange juice. Good right? Just make better decisions and try not to focus on the scale. I haven't stepped on one in weeks but my pants fit better, that's motivation enough for me. I plan to keep myself honest today so see you all at lunch!