Marisa's Journal

New semester!

marisa.renaud@gmail.com — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 01:15:41 GMT

My courses are pretty intimidating this semester, in a good, go-get-em' girl, kind of way. I have a digital sculpture class, a sustainable design class, and a sculpture mechanics class. I also have a "second skin and softwear" design class but it was canceled this week so I don't find out about that until later. I had to add the sculpture mechanics class so that I could be a full-time student despite already feeling like the first two classes could fill up my time if I involved myself the way I have been this school year. The design classes are probably going to be bittersweet because while they are things I am interested in, they are mostly review of content I've already been exposed to. The task seems to be to get over knowing most of what is being lectured on, and put it into practice in a way more advanced than I have before. Also to ignore the bullshit. It is a dull but worthwhile task.

I feel like I take studio arts courses to keep the design courses from destroying my soul. I really don't find how awesome Helvetica is relevant to my design or art practice. This semester is optimistic; it would seem my design profs are fairly top notch (also, both REALLY into sewing.) Also, learning how to better walk the sustainable walk has always been a top priority and will get lots of attention this year. It's been nice to have school progressively become what I am doing with my hands and brain, putting theory into practice, and less with "essays" on subjects I don't care to exhaust. My ten page reports aren't expanding the boundaries of any academic field.

HaHAH, I am ignoring mentioning the co-prof for my sustainability class who is a big poop and I will probably spend the entire semester ignoring him anyway. Unless he says something awesome and enlightening which he will not because he is a poop.

Zaphod loves this shovel that we have at the front of the house, he lays right beside it and is always sniffing it. He tries to get under it, he is so weird.

It is Karisa's birthday TODAY and, holy crap, it will be kneaded_human's on Sunday.

I fangirl my own life.

marisa.renaud@gmail.com — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 02:57:07 GMT

Pictured: our awesome summer. Not pictured: our awesome fromthemill, but someone had to document.

No daylights!

marisa.renaud@gmail.com — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:36:17 GMT

Sorry for the crap photo, by the time I got home today the daylight was fleeting. This month I made pumpkin and saffron macarons (inspired by Tartelette), as well as lime macarons with Valrhona ganache. This was my second time making macarons and while I have improved a good deal, I still feel I have a ways to go. Not counting the kitchen equipment that is missing. I think they are tasty though, and the colours turn out how I wanted them to. It is such a treat to bake with Valrhona, and my bulk store even carries 72% pastilles!

Macarons deserve a much cuter photoshoot. Maybe tomorrow.

Not much else to say this time. I'm kind of tired, actually. Double weekend excitement. Pat was down last weekend and it was a straight up good time. This weekend is our big Halloweekend and we still have a lot to prepare. Excitement!

Rocktober

marisa.renaud@gmail.com — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:43:15 GMT

flossyflotsam took some pictures for us while we were preparing dinner. Our friends acid_rant and Chris visited us from Toronto for the weekend so we had a full house for Thanksgiving.

We couldn't fit everything on the table. I'm very happy with the recipes we decided on, there are definitely many things I'll be repeating. Our menu (for posterity) was:

Hors d'oeuvres:
- Candied pecans (p 154 of the Fall '09 Food and Drink) Definitely make again.
- Caramelized onion phyllo tarts (p 76 Summer '09 Food and Drink) I think I like my other caramelized onion recipe better.
- Spiced pumpkin seeds Alex made these from a recipe I didn't see and loved them, I'm not a fan of pumpkin seeds to begin with.

Cocktail:
- Falling Leaves (smc_cocktails.livejournal.com) Pretty good. It's a rum based drink with cranberry juice, orange juice, and Perrier.

Entrees:
- Molasses-brined turkey with prosciutto hazelnut crust (Combination of this and this from Epicurious) This was pretty damn delicious.
- Roasted stuffed onions (Epicurious) The stuffing recipe is really enjoyable but I'm not sure many enjoyed the onion shells.
- Baked potatoes in olive oil with coarse salt crust Always yummy.
- Sesame sauteed multi-coloured carrots (p 167 Fall '09 Food and Drink) Surprisingly crunchy.
- Glazed squash (Martha Stewart) So good, we've made it again already and are making it again this week.
- Butter pecan sweet potatoes (Martha Stewart) Also damn delicious, I love sweet potatoes.
- Cranberries with Port and tangerine (Epicurious) I did not like these, I found them too tart, especially compared to our other recipe using Port and cinnamon, which I love.

Dessert:
- Ice cider jelly (Weekend Cooking, by Ricardo) I'm going to make this again, and possibly adapt the recipe to other flavours.
- Pecan pumpkin pie (Same recipe as last year) It is good, but I think I am tired of this recipe. It's got a super simple crust though, which I enjoy making.

I've realized how much I love root vegetables and fruit in the fall. They are seasonal, simple to cook, and delicious. And it's a lot of fun to go to the Atwater market and buy lots of cheap squash while looking at all of the pumpkins and large pots of mums. I hope to return many times in the next couple of months to take advantage of this season's produce.

Hmm, what else... I'm playing hooky today, we built a coffin table for our going-to-be-epic Halloween party, I'm going to post again later this week because of Daring Bakers, I really love October, I discovered a new heater in our kitchen, I have a twitter account, kneaded_human keeps writing songs for our band like a motherfunker and never updates his lj, oh, and I bought this lamp in the shape of a teapot that Alex absolutely hates but it's going to be awesome, you'll see...

DB #6 Dobos Torte

marisa.renaud@gmail.com — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 17:01:28 GMT

This month's challenge was difficult but turned out well enough. I explained it this way to Alex and Evan: every step of the way I felt like, "Oh no oh no oh no, this is not going to work," and then, "...Oh," when it turned out I was doing it properly. It was weird to feel so uncertain the entire time.

I ended up making six ten-layer tortes which was one of the sources of my uncertainty. They seemed as though they'd be so fragile after I stacked and iced them but they ended up being completely stable.

I decided not to cover half of them in buttercream because I thought it might overwhelm the sponge cake but we ate the the iced ones already and it didn't seem overly much at all. I also don't like the look of big brown blobs.

Sponge cake is amazing, it feels so soft after you remove it from the oven. It feels like a more delicate calfskin. I often felt that I didn't have the tools I needed during this challenge. My small cookie sheets with lips and bulky silicone spatula seem far too crude to make nice even layers of spongecake. A small offset spatula and either a jelly roll pan or the lipless cookie sheets (I can't remember what they are called) would have been much easier. I used the double parchment paper method but even still they were not as even as I would have liked. I brushed each of the layers with some caramel Bailey's.

In addition to the caramelized sponge wedges, I experimented with some caramel decorations. I promptly burnt myself. Next time I will wear pants. (Also I will use a different caramel recipe. As noted by several of the other bakers, this one's practically inedible.)

Thanks to the hosts of this month's challenge for an interesting and difficult recipe!

What kind of shoes do you wear with that?

marisa.renaud@gmail.com — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:41:00 GMT

Whoa.

If you scroll down, the pictures get more awesome.

Edited to add:

"Lamb from the couple's flock was served at the reception by celebrity chef Rachel Green, and the beloved sheep were even pictured in the wedding album."

Alex is a marketing genius.

marisa.renaud@gmail.com — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 01:57:44 GMT

Helmut Newton for Lacoste!

marisa.renaud@gmail.com — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:49:35 GMT

Oh, and I think fromthemill is visiting this weekend. I could be wrong but maybe this post will compel him to. And treeofhappy just told me she is driving up tomorrow. Let's get crazy/stupid/inaccurate adjective of your choice!

Edited to add: It worked!

Daring Bakers #5 and I'm going to force myself to make posts inbetween now and the next DB.

marisa.renaud@gmail.com — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:38:22 GMT

Naaaahggh.

This month's challenge was pretty blah for me. I appreciate the recipe given to us and thank the hosts; the recipe was a good one and produced predictable results. I found that most of the challenge was summoning sheer determination to get it done (after my first disaster) and there was no actual learning of new skills or gaining of knowledge. Prepare cookies, make marshmallow, melt chocolate. I am assuming the majority of the DB followers are in the northern hemisphere and with that in mind, it seems sort of cruel to propose covering something in chocolate and expecting it to set in the middle of summer.

Part of my unhappiness comes from having to do this challenge twice. The first time I created my marshmallow as suggested in the forum, creating nice puff shapes in icing sugar to later attach to the cookies. I intended to make both a mint chocolate version and a coconut with raspberry jam version. They were pretty all nestled in the sugar.

The first problem with this method was that I didn't achieve a strong enough bond between cookie and mallow. Especially on the ones with a dab of jam. The second problem was that I wasn't paying attention to my chocolate and allowed it to get far too hot. Which meant after dipping my cookies, the mallow started to melt. Some of them turned out alright but it was mostly a large creepy mallow chocolate mess. Fortunately the other denizens of Supermodelcentral are not so choosy, and much like how my brother would eat whatever nasty crap spilled forth from my Easy Bake when we were younger, they made me feel better by eating them.

It is also apparently too humid for my icing sugar. When I lifted the marshmallows up out of it, they came out with large hilarious blocks of sugar attached to them. This has never happened before.

The second time went a good deal smoother. I had cookie dough left over from the previous attempt so I used that up and decided to make only the mint chocolate. I piped the marshmallow directly onto the cookies and managed to get the same nice puff shape.

The only hitch was that Alex accidentally bought unsweetened chocolate. I added some icing sugar and the result was a less cloyingly sweet cookie. They're good, but not really good enough for the double effort and the irritation of screwing up things that I've done many times before. Laaaaaaaaaaaaaame.

In awesomer news ("How awesome? Like a hot dog awesome? Like one hundred million hot dogs, Sir."), we're going to see Placebo in October! If you are going to be in Montreal and are the type of person who is cool, go buy tickets, they're only 30 bucks, and we will go and be merry but not too merry or else we will lose cred. We will be most apathetically merry. Like bouncing to the beat but also rolling our eyes because we're too cool to actually enjoy how awesome it is that we will be seeing Placebo. That doesn't really sound like fun at all so let's be over the top happy and into life instead.

Daring Bakers # ...4

marisa.renaud@gmail.com — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 01:47:33 GMT

I didn't post about last month's DB even though I did it. It was a combination of being unimpressed with the result and busy-ness (I was going to Toronto around that time.) I ended up making a blueberry strudel which Alex and Evan ate and enjoyed but I didn't particularly like it. Also, my pictures were taken at night and even those didn't turn out very well. The strudel was pretty, though.

I love the tart recipe. For the first tart, I only used cranberry and cointreau jam. The entire recipe is so simple and takes very little time.

Alex and I had a small tea party with delicious radish sandwiches and the tart. They were adorable and flavoured with ginger, onion, and sesame.

I actually made another tart last night and added a layer of dark chocolate on top of the same jam (though reduced) and I didn't get to take any pictures of it because we got baked after we baked and it disappeared. The great thing about this recipe is that without the chocolate, you can easily eat the cake in the afternoon without feeling like you ate cake in the afternoon. Once you add the chocolate chips it does a lot to sexy the cake up. I like it a great deal both ways.

Thanks so much to the hosts for the great recipe!

Captain's log... ...Supplemental.

marisa.renaud@gmail.com — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:57:54 GMT

Alex, Evan, and I have been watching Star Trek. We're going to be ancient by the time we make it through every series but the screencap I am about to show you makes it all worth it, no matter how many bad science plotholes are to follow.

("Captain's log" was Tina's first comment on it and is complete genius.)

I choose you, Daring Bakers #2!

marisa.renaud@gmail.com — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 22:04:12 GMT

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

Wow, my last post was also a DB challenge. Lame. But what's not lame is cake. Although, Alex doesn't like cheesecake so maybe it was a little lame for him.

This month the challenge was to build a cheesecake off of a base recipe. I wanted to make something Spring-like for Easter. Alex's mom recently gave me a bottle of rosewater and I love pistachios so I went in that direction. I added 2 or three tablespoons of rosewater as well as half a vanilla bean to the batter, and added about 1/2 cup crushed pistachios and a teaspoon of orange extract to the crust. The top is rose petal jelly and gelatin and I covered the rest of it with crushed pistachios.

It didn't crack on top when I baked it, which was awesome, and I actually had a lot of the batter leftover so a week later I made heart shaped cheesecake bites, covered in dark chocolate. Overall, I am happy with this challenge, I thought it was pretty yummy and gave me an excuse to make a cheesecake.

Easter was so good. It's my favourite of the holidays. I like eggs, sex (fertility, whatever), flowers, and bunnies. In that order. We had two dinners.

The first was for my parents on Sunday. We made mustard and pineapple glazed ham (which was good in a surprising way, since Alex and I both dislike ham), steamed artichokes with tarragon mayonnaise, and scallopped potatoes. All the recipes can actually be found on Martha Stewart's website, which is a now not secret obsession of mine. Also we made a big lemon cake with berries that you can sort of see in the back.

Dinner two on Monday was all sorts of yummy; we had green pea soup, chorizo on rosti, pear and brie crostini, and cheesecake. Alex made epic baguettes. We also experimented with making our own chocolate eggs with mocha ganache. They tasted good but the execution sort of failed. I made some homemade marshmallow peeps, too.

Our Easter tree:

And an Usagi cat:

Lasagne with happy sauce.

marisa.renaud@gmail.com — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 21:13:10 GMT

I joined The Daring Bakers last month and my first challenge was Lasagne Verdi al Forno.

Obligatory credits:

The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.

I made this on Friday since kneaded_human moved here and that is special. Overall, I enjoyed making the recipe, and the end result was good, but I'm not sure I will make my own lasagne noodles very often. It was a bit of an effort and I didn't really notice that much of a difference (this could, of course, be my own fault and practice might improve the end result drastically.) Alex said he found that there was a difference and he very much enjoyed the lasagne. Evan said it was "interesting". I think it was a nice "interesting", though.

The only change I made to the recipe was omitting the ragu and replacing it with roasted eggplant and red peppers. I got the idea from a recipe for lasagne in Weekend Cooking. I did this to make it vegetarian and because I'm fairly certain I could not afford the five different types of meat in the ragu. I am missing my large baking pan. I think it's outside, rusting. So I made it in a small one and now I have enough dough left over to make dinner later this week. Happiness.

I also made a hazelnut mousse cake for the occasion. I thought mine looked pretty, but compared to the sexy picture in the recipe, mine looks like a soccer mom (you can also tell how much I love that cake stand, the only cake stand I own.)

I made the following adjustments to the recipe:
- used a 9" springform
- doubled the shortbread base recipe and added a handful more hazelnuts
- doubled the mousse recipe except for the heavy cream
- replaced 3 tablespoons of water in the mousse for irish cream
- used 150g 60% dark chocolate, 1/2 cup of cream, and a tablespoon of irish cream for the ganache
- covered it with chopped hazelnuts

On Friday it was flossyflotsam's birthday and on Saturday it was fromthemill's birthday. And on June 2 I am going to see NIN and Jane's Addiction with kneaded_human. These are awesome things.

SOS

marisa.renaud@gmail.com — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 01:09:19 GMT

I need some help with an art project. It's sort of a typography/paper sculpture type thing. What I need YOU GUYS to do is to fill out a survey about me. I don't care if you don't know me well, in fact, if you don't know me well, it would be double awesome for you to fill it out (I still need you guys who do know me well to do it, too.) What I am going to do with the information is turn it into a narrative about myself.

If you don't know the answers to things, it's important to me that you don't leave them blank. Make something up using what you know of me or what you think you know of me or what you might think you think you know of me. Your answers can be however you want them to be, as detailed or not detailed as you feel they need to be. I'll screen the comments in case... you are... embarassed? I don't know, it seems like a good idea. Also, in the project it's all anonymous, there aren't any names attached. I like how this sounds like I am desperate to get you to fill in a meme.

Here are the questions:

I was born in_______
The world I grew up in was_______
Of course this had an effect. In my case, it made me________.
The time I feel most alive is when_______.
_____is a city where I imagine something wonderful could happen.
A perfect journey, away from present reality would be_____ (where, doing what, with who)
Right now, an artist who I think has their finger on the pulse of things (or at least mine) is____
His/her words, "_____ " just about sum up how I feel.
The first time I remember noticing design was______.
I wonder if being a designer can change_____.
I feel certain / uncertain (pick one) about choosing a vocation.
Since I am____ I would like to bring out a certain ______ through my work. I want to make people_____ As for the future,_______.

I hope this project works out. I am feeling kind of connected to it so far. I hope I continue to.

M-atcha!

marisa.renaud@gmail.com — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 01:30:15 GMT

I made some yummy matcha shortbread (recipe here.) I could have done with a sweeter taste but they're pretty perfect with tea. Alex liked them as they were. I think I am going to lay off the matcha til summer so I don't get tired of it.

On Friday Alex and I had breakfast at Au Pain Doré, which is a fairly popular (I think) bakery chain in Montreal. I'm usually kind of disappointed with things like muffins at bakeries but everything was hella good.

IIIIIIIIIIIIII want to go see the NIN|JA (Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction) show in Toronto in June. It would be sort of easy to go to since I will be there on the last weekend of May for the Textile Museum's yardage sale. A duo called StreetSweeper is playing with them as well, and what I have heard of them has been good. I didn't know who Boots Riley is (the other member is Tom Morello) so I looked him up and he's from a hiphop duo called The Coup. I downloaded the discography and I'm only about half-way through one of the albums and I love it. One of the songs samples a quote from the fucking Aristocats.

T-E-E-N T-I-T A-N-S, TEEN TITANS, LET'S GO!

marisa.renaud@gmail.com — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 01:31:08 GMT

I spent yesterday and today making Vivian a fairy costume because my parents stopped by this evening (to drop my brother and his girlfriend off at the airport, they are going to Cuba) so they can bring it back with them.

I probably should have made it with yellow flowers but I have metres and metres of pink organza left over from a wedding (nothing says elegance like draping everything in shiny pepto pink). I also made her some hair clips with some of the left over flowers and a bag from one of the petals and some flowers. I made too many flowers. Maybe I'll stick some backings on them and say they're pasties. Big flowery nipples.

I actually have no idea what four year olds like but I know she has some crappier fairy costumes at home. I think fairies are suppose to be slightly more badass than shimmery flowers and ivory tulle but she might not be old enough to appreciate that, or maybe she is, I really don't know. There will be plenty of time for sassy dirty fairies in the future, I'm sure.

Nuhhhhgh, I ate too much for dinner.

Omnomnomnomnomnom.

marisa.renaud@gmail.com — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 17:35:07 GMT

But how am I suppose to become a great baker if I don't try everything at least once?

Alex and I made larger and more subdued macarons than the small and bright little pops of colour we found in a bakery near us. The lighter ones are maple and marshmallow white chocolate ganache with cocoa nibs. The darker ones are matcha with matcha dark chocolate ganache. I have to eat more to tell you which I prefer. And I will eat more, we made so many! Thankfully they turned out delicious.

We still have a few things to work out though. We figured out the perfect time and temperature but I think we will need a food processor to grind the almonds finer and get a smoother surface.

marisa.renaud@gmail.com — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 22:46:31 GMT

Anne says: (5:35:14 PM)
dad says hi we are going to a musical trivia nite for the Jubilee Singers tonight

Anne says: (5:35:25 PM)
its at the Legion.

Marisa says: (5:35:39 PM)
That sounds cool. Want to see the poppies I am planting in my garden as soon as spring gets here?

Anne says: (5:36:55 PM)
okay. are you into opium?

Marisa says: (5:35:39 PM)
No.

Marisa says: (5:38:10 PM)
Are YOU into opium, mom?

Anne says: (5:38:11 PM)
dads getting dinner ready oh its onthe table

Anne says: (5:38:37 PM)
not lately! no doesnt do a thing for me.

Marisa says: (5:38:54 PM)
Well, good.

Marisa says: (5:39:01 PM)
That's settled, then. no opium.

Anne says: (5:39:11 PM)
no beer is okay

Anne says: (5:39:27 PM)
and so is odarbys, and sheridan.

Marisa says: (5:39:41 PM)
What do you think of the flowers, mom?

Cake-saster.

marisa.renaud@gmail.com — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 22:25:40 GMT

I wanted to make these because they look beautiful and are probably delicious. So I doubled the recipe in order to use a ten inch springform because I thought it would be cuter. I guess I made a really big error when I adjusted the time and temperature because the beautiful cake I put in (and it was beautiful, all shiny and glorious, it looked just like those pretty brownies) came out like this:

Which is pretty horrifying and I am filled with bake shame. I decided to use the rest of the matcha and lemon cream cheese to make a frosting and cover the scariness (which came out like a repeating pattern of brown testicles. There were no testicles on the way into the oven. Alex did not say, hey, there are testicles on this cake, lots of them.) It still looks ridicubad.

It's obvious from the pictures that the first thing I did was eat a piece and I wasn't all that happy. It's pretty fudgy but I think I would reduce the flour even further. And, you know, actually make something edible looking. I bet the cream cheese on the smaller cake portions in the brownie version would be perfect. On the bright side, the matcha cream cheese frosting is delicious.

I want to apologize to nevertommorow for using the beautiful cake stand she gave me (I have the most generous friends ever) in such a bad way. I promise to redeem myself!

FAIL.

marisa.renaud@gmail.com — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 21:13:53 GMT

I just made the most hilariously disastrous cake fail and I will post pictures later and you will probably be too embarassed to look me in the face ever again.

Apparently I only update every time I renew my LJ account.

marisa.renaud@gmail.com — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:11:26 GMT

From fromthemill's Flickr.

So much for updating regularly this year. I know I make journal posts in my mind, but then I get doing something and the need to write anything down sort of evaporates. The past couple of months have been busy in a good way, though. I finally feel like my social life is where I want it to be. I like being a hermit but it was getting to the point (in Toronto) where being alone stopped being enjoyable. Which is funny, because I just visited Toronto and realized that was ENTIRELY my own fault. I had such an awesome time in Toronto with my friends last week; I can't believe I spent two years blaming the city for my boredom.

But now I am in Montreal, and though I haven't really had a chance to explore (moving in, starting a new school, the weather, my ability to make up excuses knows no end), I am pretty positive I will love it. And I have this brand new web (structure? network? something tangible) of friends that I've never been used to having before. I have close friends who live minutes away from me. Or they are moving here soon. And the ones who aren't will become so consumed with the guilt of not being here, they will break (I won't name names, PaHeathechael.) I'm also super close to Ottawa and my family.

I was thinking about changing my LJ user name and, aside from not actually having the money to spend on something so ridiculous, I decided, fuck no! Raistlinette 4ever! I don't think I've ever mentioned it on here, but this name has been ridiculously life changing for me. The reason I have the greatest friends, the reason I listen to the music that I love, the reason I've lived in Toronto and Montreal. It seems so silly that something so small and weird has created my life. I thought it was good enough that it helped me create a set of online friends that I have grown up with (though we may not be as close now, I still love and think of all of you, and if you are ever in a bind, this trusty Canadian poptart will always bail you out) but it actually translated to all of the people I get to love in person, daily. Knowing I owe my life to something so dweeby is the best knowledge ever.

Holy Wow.

marisa.renaud@gmail.com — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 16:30:11 GMT

My hands are sore from crocheting.

marisa.renaud@gmail.com — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 14:36:59 GMT

...because we had a bit of a plan change before Christmas but I'm kind of glad I didn't because there was already so much of it ready for eating when we went to Ottawa. Alex's mom baked enough to feed everyone in the town they live in.

Our holidays so far have been great, and I'm glad we only spent a week in Ottawa and came home earlyish because it's nice to just hang out at home for a week before school starts, and it lets us catch up on all of the other things we want to do. Like play Pokemon Diamond and eat through the closet full of candy we've accumulated. And crochet! (I am fridge on Ravelry.com if any of you are on there, and if you aren't and you knit/crochet, I suggest joining.)

For Christmas I bought Alex a boat load of bento making supplies and a couple of bento boxes. I made him his (and my) first bento for lunch today. It wasn't very complicated because we had stirfry for dinner so the top is stirfry, some mozz, and clementines and the bottom level is rice.

And I also made him a little dessert bento with holiday baking and candy in it. The white truffle is dark chocolate and coconut covered in white chocolate that Alex's brother, Mackenzie, made. He gave us a box of them for Christmas. They are delicious (especially since they are so fresh.)

Pictures of bentos look pretty gross.

Holiday Eatings

marisa.renaud@gmail.com — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 01:08:27 GMT

I finally re-upgraded to a paid account so hopefully that will be incentive to update more often. Above are the Egg Nog and Gingerbread cupcakes I made for Rhonda and Carolina's Christmas pot luck (which was festive and delicious and fun.) I cut both recipes in half, used a whole egg for the gingerbread one, and replaced the powdered sugar on the egg nog ones with nutmeg. It's hard to see, but the ginger ones are covered in edible glitter (and candied ginger.)

I sort of forced my friends into a Saint Lucia Day tea party this morning. It was yesterday but Phil had to work and I really wanted to make lussekator.

Mine was a much deeper golden brown than Martha Stewart's, but I think I prefer the brown to the bright saffron-y yellow. It looks more edible and less food-styled that way.

I also made fig and brie strudels. It's funny how disproportionate the difficulty is to the awesome lookingness of phyllo. I will probably update with more festive food at the end of the week because Pat is coming down. This journal needs some serious revamping. I am up to the challenge!

Which I am finally using for maybe the first time.

marisa.renaud@gmail.com — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:40:12 GMT

Keep in mind, as you are planning your holiday extravaganzas, that I have a database tagged by ingredient for cocktails!