Tabloid Portraits #1: Bret, LiLo & A Shout Out To Magazines.

This post has nothing to do with food. Zero. If you are a dedicated food reader only, go to the archives, or come back later.
I repeat, nothing about cooking here, except in the rather roundabout way where last night I had dinner simmering on the stove & was waiting for Owen to come home from work at the restaurant. 
Note: our kitchen table is currently (frequently) covered in trashy celebrity magazines, thanks both to my lovely co-worker who donates me hers & to my own personal difficulty in resisting the lure of the magazine rack at the 7-11. Also present on the EnD table: ample food magazines & piles of New Yorkers (family lifelong subscription). If you are old fashioned & still enjoy print media, please come on over to our house.
I was having a pleasant time listening to the Silver Jews & drinking wine & messing around in my sketchbook.
As I do, I got to drawing. Normally, I do this with my magazines, but sometimes I like to mix things up. 

"I'm Glad To Be Here/Living In Fear"

 "Wasted Again"

Maybe painting a portrait of Bret Michaels indicates that I have too much time on my hands. IDK. I did grow up in the 80's. I though Poison was pretty great when I was ten.The reality show/stardom thing does confuse me a bit though.
I have been known to fixate on celebrities, if they are the good ones. (I think I summed up what I mean by that here). But my great love of magazines & a print media isn't about that, really. I've always been an old school magazine reading kind of girl. Take that internet! I wish this blog was a zine (yup, I did attend high school in the early 90's.)
Magazines: you can cut them up, you can hang the pictures up on the wall, I find them way easier to draw from than the internet, you can read them in the bath or on the beach or on a boat or any other place you wouldn't bring a laptop, you can write in the margins, you can draw mustaches on people, you can photocopy them & use them for silkscreens, you can make wallpaper... What the hell can you do with an internet page, exactly.
Celebrity news means nothing to me if I can't involve scissors & glue somehow.
That's the collage artist in me, but that's also the reader. Of books with pages. & the general object-loving thrift storing hoarder that I am.
Here's to thanking Christ that we don't live in a completely virtual world yet.
I like it tangible & messy.
(Oh & thanks Amy for the Stars).

Cape Cod Summer.

That last post got me thinking, & going back through my summer sketchbook, back to this past summer's family visit, to Cape Cod. & about my family. Yes this did indeed happen on this blog last year. I am apparently quite the creature of habit. So my family, we gather in a little house by a lake in the woods in Brewster, Massachusetts during the summer months, & we spend a great deal of time in the water & in the sun, & being us, we eat things.

Meals on the deck (this happens frequently):

Mum's Famous Panko Fried Cod, Purple Beans & Snap Peas & Basil from our garden, sauted with olive oil & garlic, a broccoli cheese casserole (cause hey, you can't leave your fridge in Noho full of those things while relaxing on the Cape for a week, can you?) & "yummy crusty bread" from the Underground. Good way to arrive anyplace, right? Mum never disappoints with the fried fish thing.

Owen reading with Stella on a summer evening.

No visit would be complete without a visit to Clancy's & drinking white wine with Gramma at the bar. Here it is in all it's glory, the Fisherman's platter. Yes, Owen & I both ate one. Yes we did. & A Fried Oyster appetizer, too.

HELLS YEAH FRIED SEAFOOD!!!

Owen, Grilling On the Deck.

& Owen & Mum, On The Porch, With Wine & Cigarettes. Oh Summer.

Now that Ali & I have been to Cali & back, & now that it's SO FREAKING cold & time for roasting ducks & not grilling on decks, I like to remember these warmer times. Here's to surviving another winter, & getting back out there on the lake in about six months.

Boys, Kittens, Sisters.

Also known as my favorite things. More portraits. Of PEOPLE! NOT FOOD. OMFG. I don't know what's up, I've been visually more into faces than dishes lately, maybe I need some cooking inspiration. Or maybe I just like the people (&cats) in my life a lot.

1.22.2010. Owen & Ali, over sandwiches at the Black Sheep.

1.23.2010. Owen & DR enjoying facebook together, in our bed.

12.19.2009. DR in a nest of blankets watching me paint (most likely something for this website).

I think I have the mid-winter blues, sort of. You know what I need to do? I need to roast a duck. Oh yes, that IS what I need to do.

Better With Company.

What's better than eating & drawing, or drinking, for that matter? Your Peeps, of course.

Some recent portraits, better than the last round, in my humble opinion.

12.15.2009. Owen & Melissa, 133 South, pre-gaming for Tuesday Basement Dancing.

12.30.2009. Our kitchen, Owen cooking, DR watching (something). Chicken, lemongrass, & brussel sprouts.
1.19.2010. Owen wearing his new hat, from the Palmer Goodwill, at the dinner table.
1.20.2010. Owen, DR, & a bottle of Jameson (really good price on this at the Big Y, FYI, y'all). Yes, yet again, before Tuesday dancing at the Basement.
Yeah, these are mostly Owen & DR. but they are my family, so makes sense, & of course, the always lovely Melissa rules & is an excellent dancing & dining partner, so all good.

Want to be drawn & eat delicious food? Show up here for dinner, be immortalized on this blog. I PROMISE.

Meals That Aren't Dinner.

Because there are other meals besides my regular solitary elaborate 3am dinners.
& there are the good friends you share them with. & all the places to eat late lunches & early breakfasts & post-dancing snacks in the Pioneer Valley. Such as:
Crepes with strawberries & honey & whipped creme & the MOST perfect mochas with Melissa at Mosaic.

Wednesday morning after a Tuesday night of dancing at the Basement.

There are always the meals eaten in the parking lot at the grocery store.
Some shit I ate on recent breaks.

My classic hot sauce & cheese sandwiches & instant miso soup.

yup, that's what I eat at work.

(plus a note from Cait)

Lunch with Ali at The Black Sheep.

A good sandwich really takes you far in this life.

& then, there's the TALKING over sandwiches.

With your AWESOME SISTER.

In which Local Burger saves all our lives, by way of snacks after dancing.

All fried. & dipped in something else delicious.

Where do all these drawing come from?

My typical room at right around 3am.

post-dancing, post-facebook, post texting, just me, alone, eating & drawing.

& Rin's tofu sandwich, while we were drawing/painting.

At Woodstar last week.

I can't say it enough. Food shapes all our lives.

Root Vegetables & Mushrooms.

DnDnE Dinner with Beth, 10.7.09.

I was very broke on this on particular Wednesday, & was making this DnDnE dinner for the lovely Beth out of entirely free produce from work & what I happened to have in the pantry.

(this is a common situation for me). On this day, I had parsnips, garnet sweet potatoes, carrots, & an excess of crimini mushrooms. I consulted my colleague, Rin, & between the two of us, we came up with this,

(Oh wait! & Beth brought red russian kale & magic minty garlic from the Garlic Fest):

Mashed Roasted Root Vegetables, Pappardelle with a Mushroom Cream Sauce, Kale sauted with Olive Oil & Magic Garlic.

& here is Beth & Maggie, enjoying our dinner. Well, actually Magazine, being a cat, is sound asleep on a bag, & Beth is drawing, but whatever.

(you will, if you look very closely, notice a certain shimmeryness to this drawing.

thanks to the fabulous miss Beth, who gave me an iridescent watercolour set for my recent birthday. thanks honey. I thought it only fitting that I try them out on a portrait of you. ps I LIKE. thanks much xo. )

In further news, I really liked the mushroom sauce, & I invented it off the top of my head too. Onions & garlic sauted in white wine & butter, added to crimini mushrooms in the Cuisinart, with heavy cream.

Wait until my mushroom soup.Totally recreated from the one at Croissant D'Or in NOLA aka one of the best places on earth, when I first moved here.

& was really homesick. Really really good.

If only I actually could make my own croissants. Anyone wanna help me out with that?