Sunday Funday

Wishing you all a relaxing Sunday afternoon...

First day on the job.

Contrary to popular belief, I will not be a professional student for the rest of my life. Today, Monday August 23rd, 2010, I start my first job with a salary. I hope you were sitting down for that. I'll wait a second while you process.

I received the job offer on Friday morning and Chris and I did a celebration dance around the dining room the second I hung up the phone. I'm thrilled - the work environment is casual, the people are interesting and fun, and I get to work downtown!

There was only one problem - what would I wear on my first day at work?! I thought of it like school shopping for the beginning of fall semester, only this time it was for the beginning of work. That makes sense, right?

I continued to reason with myself, attempting to justify the urge to go shopping that afternoon. On the one hand, I desperately wanted to treat myself for scoring such a great first job. On the other, one reason I sought a stable job was because I wanted to be more financially responsible. To me, this new financial maturity meant that I shouldn't spend money before I have it.

As you probably guessed from the images, shopping trumped staying at home on my last sunny, Friday afternoon off work for a long while. I bought this shirt, which was not a splurge. At the end of the day, it was a win-win; Financial responsibility meets a little treat.

This little top is by Left of Center from Anthropologie. I normally wouldn't buy such a long, loose, flowing top without putting a belt around my waist. However, because the side panels are a lighter, pale fabric, the shirt is surprisingly slimming.

I love how the batik-esque pattern is graphic without being stiff.

Paired with dark, skinny jeans, a pair of matching pointy heels and a cardigan or jacket and I'm out the door.

Happy Monday!

the monster under the bed

When I decided to launch Lavender Honey, my goal was to publish a cohesive, developed post once a week. I chose Monday because that was the day that made the most sense to me. However, I noticed that I have a lot more photographs I'd like to share than would make sense for one post, once a week. The remedy, I believe, would be that I could post additional times each week if I had the photographs and inspiration to share, while relieving myself of the "cohesive and developed" aspect of Mondays at LH.

This weekend was a perfect example. The weather was incredible. Whoever said that Seattle has terrible weather must be from San Diego because, although it does rains here, the summer has been beyond pleasant - mild, sunny, and refreshing for a girl from the hot, sticky midwest.

Check out our first backyard Sungold tomato harvest! (Chris took these tomato pics :)) A couple summers back I worked as a farm intern with an urban, organic farm called Urban Roots in Austin. I didn't think I liked tomatoes before I started farming, especially not raw. However, after I sampled a few of theses little guys while harvesting, I was sold. I eat them like candy these days, straight off of the vine.

On Saturday I started organizing the shed.

Let's tour, shall we?

Above is a view from the entry. When Chris and I combined our personal belongings, we found that we had an absurd number of Ikea tables. I plan on raising the two on the left to make a cutting table for fabric. My sewing machine will go on the next table, where the desk lamp is now.

This view from the opposite side of the shed, looking out, shows the mess! I must say, having water and electricity in the shed is glorious.

This is where I plan to draw and draft patterns. My landlord just installed a heater for us! Yes.

I positioned the table so that I can see out the windows while I draw. Having a place like this to work feels like a dream...

...speaking of dreams, I found the neat little post-it below while I was cleaning the shed. For the past few years I have been keeping a pen and paper on my nightstand because I wake up in the middle of the night with ideas or images from my dreams that I want to remember later. Hazily written in the dark, these little notes or drawings often make absolutely no sense to me by the afternoon, but every once in a while I will find one in the pile that intrigues me.

Chris thinks this monster must have been our cat.

Conference of Creative Entrepeneurs was a hit!

If you are a creative business owner in the Seattle area, or an aspiring one like myself, it is likely that you attended the Conference of Creative Entrepreneurs (CCE) over the weekend. CCE was held, aside from a short stint at the Century Ballroom on Friday, at the Richard Hugo House (a literary arts center) in Capital Hill. Forgive me for being at a loss for words - all I can seem to muster in my exhausted, brain-fried state (this is how I am when my mind is bursting with ideas) is that CCE was a hit.

I signed up for CCE within the first couple weeks of moving to Seattle and noticing the conference dates creep up my calendar made me feel like I was beginning to put down some roots in this new city. I spent weeks preparing: I launched this blog, snapped photographs, designed a logo, and printed materials to take along (recall Humpday Highlight). On the day before CCE, my bookmarks and photo cards arrived from the lab and I was thoroughly pleased with how they turned out. This, of course, meant that I felt confident walking up to other creatives, giving them my information and showing them a bit of my work on a handy bookmark they may actually use. Besides, we were at the Hugo House for crying out loud - the bookmarks made sense! Come to think of it, perhaps I ought to have left a few there today for fellow bookworms...

White House Custom Color printed both the bookmarks (left) and the photo cards (right).

CCE proved to not only be worth my time and money, but tasty too. Chris took over the cooking and kitchen while I recharged. This is a white pizza he whipped together with a fennel from our CSA and potatoes from our giving neighbors, Linda and Liesha:

The dough was made using the CDR pizza dough recipe from Pizza, Pizza.

For toppings, Chris sliced the potatoes to 1/16 inch with a mandolin and braised the fennel by adapting a recipe from Serious Eats. He used only aged mozzarella because that's all we had in the fridge. On the very top of the pizza, he added the grated Romano cheese left over from the meat week stuffed red peppers. According to him, the Romano made the pizza brown exceptionally well. Also, he saved a few of the leaves (or are they feathers? Chris just informed me that they are fronds) as a garnish and a bit of freshness.

Did I mention that my brain is fried from the weekend?!?! This is a good thing as my head and tummy are both full and happy. I'm going to sip a glass of wine and allow thoughts to marinate in my head until I drift off to sleep. Cheers!

Meat Week

"You will be buried in meat."
Big Buck Hunter Safari

Chris traveled to the East Coast last week, leaving the cat
and me to fend for ourselves here in Seattle. The first day he was gone, I was
the definition of pathetic. For breakfast, I feasted on Starbursts. Lunch came
and went and by midafternoon, I was picking at leftover green beans. Finally,
at 5pm, I got around to getting dressed and made a box of mac-n-cheese for
dinner. The only time I left the house that day was for red wine and PBC
(Peanut Butter Crunch) at 10pm.

“I have to be
better today…eat something,” I told
myself the following morning.

This is how meat week was born.

Chris is a vegetarian (8 years running) and I’m not. This
dietary difference has never been an issue for us; I have a mini Weber grill exclusively
for meat and my own shelf in one of the cupboards for my meat utensils, such as
a cutting board, knife, and a spatula. I even wrote a column explaining our dietary differences back at the Daily Nebraskan last year (see “Interdietary dating is kosher” for
more on that).

While I may have the opportunity to make meat-centric meals,
I simply don’t. Chris and I are always cooking up something and I don’t miss
meat that often. This week, though, I decided that I would eat all the flesh I could handle.

“You be careful now,” my mother warned when I boastfully
explained the concept of meat week to her over the phone. “Your body isn’t used
to that anymore.”

“Oh, I’ll be fine,” I scoffed. Sadly, that's not exactly how things went.

Here is how meat week started:

Day 1: Broiled salmon marinated in lemon juice, olive
oil, and soy sauce with a bit of sriracha dissolved in it.  

Day 2: Smoked salmon from my gracious neighbor, Dan, who spent
13 hours smoking what he had caught on a trip to Alaska.

Day 3: Red peppers stuffed with ground turkey.

The week started out well, but by day four I admittedly
couldn’t handle any more meat.

My mother was right (ugh). I failed my mission and ate a slice of squash
tart instead. It was good too!

Sure, I thought I was tougher than that. I recalled when I flew to Boston once a
month to visit Chris in college. I typically had a layover in Chicago and the
very first thing I would do when I got to ORD (or MDW) was find somewhere to
order a cheeseburger! A large, sweaty man in a stained, white t-shirt would ask
me, “Whadoya waaant?” with his harsh Chicaaaaago accent.

I would smile and, with conviction, state, "Cheeseburger, please!" 

Those
were the good-ole-days.

In my defense, check out some the produce I had from our
Growing Washington CSA! 

 

 
Beautiful fruits and veggies 

Even if I failed at meat week, my more faithful carnivore friends won't have any trouble. I chose two recipes to share: the stuffed red peppers and the squash tart. Enjoy!

Stuffed Red Peppers
Adapted from Giada De Laurentiis, Everyday Italian
This recipe is a hit each time I serve it (and it's EASY!). The original recipe calls for a large zucchini and three different kinds of bell peppers. While the variety of colored peppers is pleasing to the eye, my friends have unanimously agreed that the red peppers are the tastiest of all. I concur and have since cut out the other veggies altogether. 

As a side note, one should take caution when grating an onion. It's slippery and easy for your hand to slip off of the onion and onto the cheese grater. Unfortunately, I've learned this lesson the hard way and sport a perfectly round, cheese grater shaped scar below my thumb, on the meaty part of my right hand. It hurt. Badly. 

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, grated
1/4 cup chopped fresh Italian parsley leaves
1 large egg
3 tablespoons ketchup
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/3 cup grated Pecorino Romano
1/4 cup dried plain bread crumbs
1 pound ground turkey, preferably dark meat
4 short red bell pepper, halved and seeded
1 1/2 cups marinara sauce

Method:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Lightly drizzle the olive oil into a 13 by 9 by 2-inch baking dish. Whisk the onion, parsley, egg, ketchup, garlic, salt, and pepper in a large bowl to blend. Stir in the cheese and bread crumbs. Mix in the turkey. Cover and refrigerate the turkey mixture.

Half the red peppers and remove the seeds. Fill the red pepper halves with the turkey mixture, dividing equally and mounding slightly. Arrange the stuffed peppers in the baking dish and pour the marinara sauce over the peppers.

Bake uncovered until the peppers are tender and beginning to brown and a thermometer inserted into the filling registers 165 degrees F, about 45 minutes. Transfer the stuffed peppers to a platter, garnish with any remaining parsley and serve.

I love peppers, don't you?

Stuffed red peppers

Ready to eat!

Gold Rush Squash Tart

Adapted from Best International Recipe, by Cooks Illustrated.
This recipe originally calls for a large zucchini, but I had squash so I substituted those. I have also made this recipe with patty pan squash and it turned out extremely well! Use what you have, experiment!! 

Ingredients:

Crust
1 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (6 1/4 ounces)
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon table salt
6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons ice water
1 ounce grated Parmesan cheese (about 1/2 cup)

Filling
1 large Gold Rush Squash, sliced into 1/4 inch thick rounds
Salt
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil plus 1 additional teaspoon
1 medium garlic clove , minced or pressed through a garlic press (about 1 teaspoon)
1/2 cup part-skim ricotta cheese
1 ounce grated Parmesan cheese (about 1/2 cup)
1 ounce mozzarella cheese , shredded (about 1/4 cup)
Pepper
2 tablespoons shredded fresh basil leaves

Method:

For the crust: Spray a 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom with vegetable oil spray; set aside. Pulse the flour, sugar, and salt together in a food processor until combined, about 4 pulses. Drizzle the oil over the flour mixture and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse sand, about 12 pulses. Add 2 tablespoons of the ice water and continue to process until some of the dough begins to clump into large pieces and no powdery bits remain, about 5 seconds. If powdery bits of flour remain, add the remaining tablespoon water and pulse to incorporate, about 4 pulses. 

Dump all but 1/3 cup of the dough crumbs into the prepared tart pan and, using your hands, press the crumbs into an even layer over the tart pan bottom. Sprinkle the remaining 1/3 cup crumbs around the edge of the tart pan and press into a tidy crust edge, about 3/4 inch up the sides of the pan (the dough will be very malleable and feel a little greasy). Lay plastic wrap over the dough and smooth out any bumps or shallow areas using your palm. Place the tart pan on a large plate and freeze the dough until firm, about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 375 degrees. 

Place the frozen tart shell (still in the tart pan) on a baking sheet. Gently press a piece of extra-wide heavy-duty aluminum foil that has been sprayed with vegetable oil spray against the dough and over the edges of the tart pan. Fill the shell with pie weights and bake until the top edge of the dough just starts to color and the surface of the dough under the foil no longer looks wet, about 30 minutes. 

Remove the tart shell from the oven and carefully remove the foil and weights. Sprinkle the Parmesan evenly over the bottom of the tart shell, then return to the oven and continue to bake until the cheese is golden brown, 5 to 10 minutes. Set the baking sheet with the tart shell on a wire rack to cool slightly, about 10 minutes. (At this point the cooled shell can be wrapped tightly in plastic wrap and held at room temperature for up to 1 day.) Increase the oven temperature to 425 degrees.

For the filling: Meanwhile, spread the zucchini out over several layers of paper towels. Sprinkle with 1/2 teaspoon salt and let drain for 30 minutes; gently blot the tops of the zucchini dry with paper towels before using. In a small bowl, whisk 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and the garlic together; set aside. In a separate bowl, mix the ricotta, Parmesan, mozzarella, and remaining 1 teaspoon olive oil together and season with salt and pepper to taste. 

Spread the ricotta mixture evenly over the bottom of the cooled tart shell. Shingle the zucchini attractively on top of the ricotta in concentric circles, starting at the outside edge. Drizzle the garlic and olive oil mixture evenly over the zucchini. Bake the tart until the cheese is bubbling and the zucchini is slightly wilted, 20 to 25 minutes. 

Let the tart cool slightly on a wire rack for 5 minutes, then sprinkle with the basil. Remove the tart from the tart pan and transfer to a serving platter or cutting board. Cut into wedges and serve. (The finished tart can also be held at room temperature for up to 1 hour before serving.)

 
Gold Rush Squash from our CSA.

Squash drying prior to placement on tart.

 
Squash after 30 minutes - can you believe how much water the salt extracted from the slices? 

The tart is ready for the final baking stage.