Month: August 2011

You gawkin’ at me?

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If your favorite cookbooks are the ones with great food photographs, you will love Foodgawker. It’s a photo food gallery from food bloggers in all parts of the world.

Like what you see? Simply click on it and bam, whoosh, you’ll end up on the originating blog. Once there, you’ll find the recipe and maybe, discover a site to add to your favorites. You can view the gallery by latest additions or by most popular.

If you register, you can save favorites, make notes and share stuff.

Foodgawker regularly adds new photos to keep things rolling. Submission guidelines are included in case you want to send in something you’ve seen or something from your own foodie blog.

After you’ve spent a couple of hours looking at food, you can switch over to Craftgawker and check out their photo gallery of handmade arts/crafts or go to Dwellinggawker, photos from design and architecture bloggers with ideas for your home.

By then, it’s probably time to go to bed.

Twist and Shout

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Matt Dehaemers is a thoughtful artist whose work invites you to connect the dots between art and action.  A common theme emerges from his growing body of work, a gentle but persistent vision of a future dramatically different from a past.

Just lately, he rallied artists for Project Reclamation, a benefit for the artists and their families who lost homes and studios in the tornado in Joplin this year.  Area artists were invited to take storm debris and re-fashion it into art for a Twist and Shout auction with all proceeds going to the recovering arts community.  The Leedy-Voulkos gallery in KC and the Spiva Arts Center in Joplin were key players.

Over 100 KC artists stepped up. (Yah – good for ‘em!)IMG_7933_small

The chair at the right is Matt’s work. He started with a child’s damaged chair; its new limbs are twisted, but graceful and sturdy — up to the task of supporting the new growth that has already begun its stretch to the sky.

Unfortunately, someone snatched this up before the live auction had even started. Fortunately, there were plenty of other thoughtful, beautifully wrought expressions of how art can help put a little piece of the world back in order.

Janis Joplin blogjanis joplin head

I was excited to bring this home. Chari Roberts Peak, the artist, is from Parkville, Mo and has a reputation for turning discarded objects into new forms.

She calls this, “The Good Rises Up.” She scavenged the globe, the painted pieces of a table and the twigs that form the arms from the debris pile.

As I left, I met the people who belonged to the globe – it was a fixture on their desk beginning at the time they became a couple clear through 3 kids.  I told them, “I love the globe.” They seemed genuinely glad about that. Soon they hurried away to take advantage of an over-due adult night out.

The Good Rises Up is hanging in the bedroom; I’m calling her Janis Joplin.

Guess Who?

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Philadelphia 017The Iowa straw poll for early contenders to the White House, the place we willingly let our presidents re-do, attracted a motley crew this year. Donald Kaul, a veteran observer of the comings and goings, summed up a wannabe in an op-ed, You Can’t Milk a Butter Cow.

She’s good at saying outrageous things with the utmost sincerity, but at the end of the day she seems about a ham sandwich short of a picnic.

You can read the complete column at Other Words. While you are there, check out Jim Hightower, a Texan whose world view matches that of the late, great Molly Ivins — who was never shy about telling the emperor that he had no clothes.

Dog Days

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Early Greeks and Romans came up with the idea of the dog days of summer. When summer turned hot and sultry in late August, they looked up at the sky and noticed that the biggest and brightest star in the sky, Sirius, seemed to rise and set with the sun.

They decided amongst themselves that this meant that during the summer, Sirius was adding its heat to the sun and hiking up the thermometer. Sirius which meant scorching, is in Canis Major (Big Dog) — so it was nicknamed the Dog Star and the last days of summer became known as the Dog Days.

The ancients believed the heat spike made men sluggish and wine sour and caused animals to go mad. Some leading citizens went so far, for crying out loud, to sacrifice a dog at the beginning of the season to try to distract the demon Sirius.

Though all the foolishness about appeasing the gods died down through time, the term, Dog Days of Summer, persists. Goes to show you can’t beat a good slogan. Nowadays we have more civilized ways of coping. Say, a Sunday afternoon on the porch with a tumbler full of ice, malt liquor and lime. And our dogs, well — you be the judge.

Image by Greg Mankiss

Dalton M Ghetti

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Wondering what to do with all of those pencil stubs that collect in the top desk drawer and sometimes lay one on top of the other so the drawer won’t even open? I thought so. Here is a little inspiration.

Dalton Ghetti, a professional carpenter and artist who lives in Connecticut, took 2 and 1/2 years to complete this set. In an interview on Lifesyleasia he says a teacher friend had given him a bag of about 100 pencil stubs she had collected from her  students. He likes that along with dents there are bite marks on the pencils from the kids.

Ghetti has been a carver since he was child; he gravitated to pencil sculptures when he decided to carve the smallest object that could be seen with the naked eye. His tools are simple: a razor blade, sewing needle, and good light.

A consummate recycler, he keeps pieces that have broken while being made in his cemetery collection, glued to pins and stuck upright in a  foam graveyard.

Ghetti does not sell his originals. He considers his art more of a hobby — “from the heart” and believes his creativity, not to mention his steady hand, would falter if he worked for a commission. There is a limited selection of postcards and prints for sale. (A print of the alphabet series is $10.00; a signed limited edition is $160.)

Signed with a pencil, by the way.

Food fight

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So here we have it, in one corner southern-belle-I’m-every-woman, Paula Deen. In the other corner the too-cool-for-school-formerly-known-as-Tony, Anthony Bourdain. And welcome to a Titan food fight.

Bourdain lobs the first fistful, “Paula” … “is dangerous for her artery clogging cooking.” Deen fires back, lambasting him for a high falutin’ attitude and a penchant for chronic irritability.

Bourdain fancies himself a gourmand, Deen relishes being a cook.

Here come the food critics out of the bushes. In smart prose, they skewer the two and find way greater meaning in their discourse than ever was supposed. Access and finances prevent people from eating right. Convenience and ease trump healthy choices. It’s a holy war for the supper tables of America.

With all due respect to the Food Network, I really don’t believe I can put my food choices, healthy or not, at your feet. I have long ago understood that I am what I eat. Sometimes I want a creamy home-made mac and cheese and sometimes I want a sautéed sliver of tenderloin with a wine reduction.

What I need is someone to make this stuff and actually put it on my table cause I’m busy doing something else very important. When you’re ready to step up, let me know.

What’s in a Name?

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When I have less to think about than usual I have entertained myself by making a list of names that I think would look good on a business card. The only rule I give myself is that the names have to be real people, not made-up names like Sandy Beach or Blue Skye. Here is one of my current top ten.

Chaka Khan
Eudora Welty
Blaise Pascal
Bella Lugosi
Ayn Rand
Zelda Fitzgerald
Isadora Duncan
Maya Angelou
Salvador Dali
Coco Chanel

My choices are all a little off-beat. But I think each looks striking in print and pleasantly rolls off of the tongue when said out loud. In my opinion, there are some names — for instance, Newt Gingrich, Zazu Pitts, Ray Kroc, Clyde Barrow or Wallace Beery that have no business on a business card.

Which is likely to be the reason texting and tweeting has gathered such steam.

Cooking Mojo

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I’m going along day by day, battling the heat, daydreaming about remodeling, watering the elephant ears, going to the health club and so on. All of a sudden, it occurs to me that I have plain flat forgotten how to cook.

When I make salmon the other night, it turns out dry and tasteless, a perfect match for the slightly mushy and pale pan-roasted potatoes. Sunday, I broil pork chops spread with a chili powder based spice rub I had made from scratch. They taste a little like chili in search of ground beef and keep their distance from the pitiful Moroccan couscous from a box.

Image from Artichokes and Garlic

Chicken piccata, my go-to dish, even disappoints. The chicken breasts are too thick and burn rather than saute, not even the fresh loaf of french bread comforts them. I want to eat all my meals at Taco Bell (crunchy tacos) or Panera’s (the Pick 2 Special with my choice of a half sand and soup or salad).

I guess this is what the elders mean as a dry spell.

I haul out Joy of Cooking and flip through it reading tips and techniques.  I avoid recipes that tell me to dice, peel or marinate. I do not want to mince, grind or shave. I want to be in and out.

I make French Scrambled Eggs, 4 eggs cooked with butter, salt and pepper in a double boiler for 12 minutes. I add small squares of cream cheese at the end. The double boiler protects the eggs from drying out and getting tough. I add bacon and toast with fig jam.  I’m on the road to recovery.

If I’m lying, I’m dying

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Image from Neon Bar Signs

A neighborhood bar is where men make bar friends.

A man will stand at the bar along side of a stranger and make small talk as they wait to order. The next time one of them comes in when the other is there — they nod in recognition and say, “Howyadoin?” If they start dropping in for happy hour on the same evenings, they may become bar friends.

When Sig discovers a place with a prime rib sandwich special and reasonable drinks, he finds a new bar friend. His name is Harry. For a couple of weeks, they run into each other, stand around and talk about the day’s headlines.

One night, Harry’s wife comes in.  That’s when Sig finds out that Harry thinks his name is Serge, since that’s how he introduces him.  Sig decides on the spot not to correct the mistake because he doesn’t think it matters.

Harry and Serge/Sig both like Kansas road trips and one night get excited talking about going to a rodeo, one of the oldest in the state.

Sig is in a quandary, he thinks he should let Harry know his real name but he can’t quite figure out how to do it after so much time has passed. I suggest that he just come right out with it, “Harry, I’ve got something to tell you. My name is Sig, not Serge.”

Then I imagine Harry’s reply, “Whaaat? Not Serge? What kind of name is Cig? Short for cigarette? ”

Sig does not take my advice. Shortly after, I finally go with Serge/Sig to meet his newly minted friends. We spend a good couple of hours together talking and joking like you do.  As we leave, they yell, “Let’s plan that rodeo trip, Serge. Nice meeting you, Phoebe.”

Are you serious? We barely get out of the bar before we collapse against the building laughing too hard to walk. But that’s the true story of how Serge and Phoebe spent an entire weekend in Strong City, Kansas with a couple of bar friends.

Speechless

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Have you noticed the increase in ads on the internet? AOL streams a sequence of light-hearted news headlines every morning. But before you can get to the You Tube video of the poodle-mix playing the piano and singing, you have to watch an ad.

Okay, I don’t fault a little ad revenue for AOL to offset the operating costs they amass finding the poodle piano player in the first place, but here is the thing. Lately, they have run the same ad before every little video snippet.

It’s an exchange between a mother bear and her son; they are both good-sized red animated characters. The mother has on pearls and the son, a bow tie and a jacket. The little bear is walking out the door when his mother stops him to brush off scraps of toilet paper on his backside. The little bear beams when his mother tells him how well he cleans up.

A voice-over says, “We all go, why don’t we enjoy it a little more with Charmin?”