Favorite Cookbooks

Even though I use Pinterest for finding and saving a lot of recipes these days, I do own a few cookbooks that I still use regularly. I am pretty picky with cookbooks. My favorites are filled with recipes that use minimal ingredients yet are unexpected. Even though there are a ton of cookbooks out there that look sooo beautiful my eyes water, ultimately I know I'll be happy just getting them from the library. There are only a few cookbooks that I use so much it's worth it for me to buy them. As you can see I like to mark pages I want try or have tried and love.
Anyway, I thought I'd share my favorites here.

Pure Simple Cooking by Diana Henry: I've made a ton of recipes from this multiple times. I love this beccause it uses staples, so at most you might have to buy one special ingredient, usually the main one for a meat or fish dish. They are all simple and fast to throw together, and come out looking like something really special!

5 spices, 50 dishes by Ruta Kahate: The whole premise of the book is that all the recipes contain some of the five spices commonly used in Indian dishes and then just a few other simple ingredients. I've learned so much about how to cook and use spices from this book!

Paletas by Fany Gerson: I went though a real ice pop making phase you can learn so much about a whenever I have fruit I don't know what to do with. Paletas are simple to make with any fruit, and easy to customize.

Please To The Table by Anya Von Bremzen: This book is actually the exception to my cookbook buying rule, all the recipes are complicated and most involve buying special several ingredients. However I love this book for the head notes! I've read it cover to cover and it's a fascinating history lesson, I think my favorite way to learn about other countries is though food. Not all the recipes are complicated of course, I made a feta cheese spread from this book that was delicious simple and unlike anything I've had before.

Fox Family

My agent suggested I do a more drawings with these foxes to show I can carry characters though in different situations.

Recipe: Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie

I get into food ruts where I tend to make the same thing for weeks on end, because I just like it so much and because it makes shopping & cooking so easy! My latest food fixation is with shepard's pie, I realized it's so easy to make and so comforting and filling this dark time of year. Plus Aradan loves it. Plus I can make it on Monday night and it lasts for days.
I'm not a vegetarian but I prefer to save my meat eating for going out and special occasions, so I make my veggie.

I think this is the first time I'm writing out a recipe I've made up myself, so I'm sorry if you try it and amounts aren't quite correct, I usually just wing it and cook to my tastes!



Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie

For the topping:
2 pounds potatoes, pealed and diced
2 tablespoons Butter (or olive oil)
½ cup Milk (or milk substitute or choice)
Salt and pepper to taste

For the filling:
Olive oil
1 large yellow onion
4 garlic cloves
1 package seitan or meat substitute of choice, crumbled
4 carrots, diced
1 Package sliced crimini mushrooms (or one box whole ones that you slice)
1 – 1/2 cups frozen peas
1/2 teaspoon thyme
¼ teaspoon rosemary
1 can cream of mushroom soup
Salt and pepper to taste (personally I think a ton of pepper works well here)

Preheat the oven to 350°

Bring pot of water to a boil and cook potatoes until tender. Drain, return to the pot and mash, adding butter and salt & pepper. Add milk a little at a time until potatoes are creamy.

In a deep skillet or dutch oven heat the olive oil. Add the onion and cook until it starts to soften. Then add the garlic, seitan and carrot. Cook for a few minutes, until the carrot is just starting to be tender. Add the peas and mushrooms. When the mushrooms have cooked down slightly add the can of cream of mushroom soup and stir it up so it's well incorporated. Season with herbs and salt & pepper & give it a taste to make sure it's all to your liking.

Pour the filling in a 9×13 baking dish and spread out evenly. Then spoon your mashed potatoes over the filling and spread out so it even covers all the filling, right up to the edges of the pan. Then to rough up the potatoes, use a fork and rake it across the surface of the potatoes in a zig-zag pattern, this will make lots of nice ridges that will brown in the oven.

Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes until the top is nicely browned and the inside is bubbling (you may want to place a cookie sheet under the baking dish to catch any bubbling over). Remove and let cool for a few minutes before serving.

Serves 6-8 people or two people for 3-4 dinners.

Bright Flower Animals series

You can get prints of all of these guys over at my Society6 store.

January Book List

January was a pretty good reading month for me I guess. The fact that I read two long books was balanced by the fact that the others I read where very fast reads. If I had to pick a favorite I guess it would be Fingersmith by Sarah Waters. I've read three books by her now and all have been page turners and at the same time almost agonizingly slow. She's good at building tension, but I end up spending so much time with her characters I grow to hate them. Although this might be intensional, since none of her main characters are quite likable. That might make it sound like I don't like her books, but I do and I want to read more!

Here's what I read in January 2016:

•Avenue of Mysteries by John Irving
•Slade House by David Mitchell
•Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
•Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
•The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline (Enola Holmes Mysteries, #5) by Nancy Springer
•Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

Movies & TV Watched in January:
•Inside Out
•Amy (documentary)
•Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (various seasons)
•The Warriors
•Friends (part of season 2)
•Tangerine
•David Attenborough's Rise of the Animals
•The Venture Brothers (started re-watching from the beginning. Like Bob's Burgers or Archer I re-watch this pretty frequently)

Have you read or watched anything in January that you would recommend?

New Printable Invitations

I've been working on a few new invitations for various occasions and I've just added them to my shop!


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January Favorites

I'm going to try and make a list of things I'm into every month, loosely keeping to a few categories. We'll see how it goes, there are a lot of months where I'm just not into new things! I'm also going to post what books I've read every month, but in a separate post.

Beauty: Making diy face masks with honey and add ins like yogurt, turmeric or cinnamon

Food: I've been making and eating a lot of Veg Shepard’s pie. It's so comforting in cold weather & one batch can feed two people for days.

Reading: Deuce Cities Blog. Since buying a house I've gotten obsessed with a few home-fix-up type blogs. They are usually more down to earth and have a lot of DIYs. So many ideas!!

Watching: Shakespeare's Mother The Secret Life of a Tudor Woman

Music: Adele's song “send my love to your new lover”. There's just something about this song that is so fun and I love it.

Podcast: Gilmore Guys. It's pretty funny (though it can get annoying) and it's nice to go though the episodes without having to actually watch them (because I need to sit at my desk and draw, not because I don't want to watch them!)

Home: My new geode, pictured above. Soo sparkly.

What things have you been into this past month?

Tongue Tied

This is the piece I made for Antler Gallery's exhibition at the LA Art Show.
It feels geeky to say but I'm trying to get back to making work that I feel is more true to myself, while still exploring new things (such as more opaque color) and I think in that respect this piece is a success.