45 minutes to go...

and i'll be heading to the aeroport and getting on a plane to Madrid!
HOLY CRAP!
mauricio's sister tells us it's snowing there, here's some proof:



hopefully i'll find time to write about our adventures, stay tuned.

last macaron post for a while.

funny thing- after everyone's excitement about the silly little cookies, there was a write-up in the Globe yesterday about the cookbook! such a funny coincidence.
(click for a larger version)

catching up on mags

i had a stack THIS " " big on my desk, so today i finally made it through. this page will be my spring wardrobe inspiration. i love black and white, and clear jewelry, and polka dots! and blazers, and stripes! yes yes and yes!
(click to view a larger version)

macarons, take trois et quatre

my best batch yet-
i made them for our holiday party tonight.
chocolate and pistachio, although the chocolate came out absolutely perfect. and the pistachio, maybe a 6 out of 10?

macarons, take deux!

try two was a success! my meringue was a little bit thicker, my patience was a little bit, well, present? does that count?

i started out with just plain vanilla, i want to master the technique and then move on to fancy flavors and colors and fillings. these will be filled with caramel. right now, the un-paired cookies are waiting for their mates in a tin on my kitchen counter. hopefully no sneaky fingers have made their way into the tin yet...

the beautiful, puffy, glistening meringue:


almond flour mixed with egg whites:


cookies piped out into perfect circles, resting and drying before baking:


the little guys, beautifully baked and brown and cooling:


caramel filling bubbling on the stove:

spinach chickpea shitake soup

i made it again. it's a once-a-month tradition once the cold weather hits. main ingredients include: veggie broth, brown rice, Shitakes, fresh baby spinach, chickpeas, onion, garlic.

saute finely chopped onion in olive oil until soft, about 5 minutes. add sliced shitakes and minced garlic. cook until mushroom is wilty. add 4 cups broth and 2 cups water, cook to boil. add can of drained and rinsed chickpeas. add 1 cup cooked brown rice. add 1 bag spinach, broken up. cook until spinach wilts. add 1/2 tsp rosemary and salt and pepper to taste. serve with fresh parmesan on top. eat! yum.

freelance

I did a freelance project this month. A favorite co-worker of mine moved away a while back, off to Texas to support her husband while he went to grad school. She works at a fair trade company and thought of me when the owners decided they needed to hire a design consultant to help them with their handbag assortment.

The project was fun- I basically dug through a big box of fair trade bags, gave my opinion on them, did a bunch of trend and color research online, and put it all in a cool bound presentation book to send off to them. I only worked on it for about 2 weekends- 8.5 hours total. Not too long, but long enough to remember why I'm not self employed anymore! Plus, finding the motivation to work AFTER work is hard work! work work work!

I had the most fun putting the book together. I didn't want to just staple a bunch of printouts together (I needed to look legit, yo!), so I made a cool cover, used recycled cardboard (actually, file folders that I cut up and resized), made cool tabs dividing the different sections, used rub-on letters and vinyl stick-on letters instead of writing by hand, and made a custom cd-holder on the back cover to hold a cd of all the files of images. I had it bound at Office Max for less than $2.50!

the cover:


the tabs:


the text:




rub on letters for titles:




fold out trend pages: