Snow Day Nostaglia & General Laziness.

Slightly cheating black & white post (whatever I make the rules here). 

I have a lot of paintings in progress but they are all wet (damn watercolors) & I just felt like writing. 

It's a snowy evening here in Greenfield following a snowy afternoon, & I left work around noon (I am terrified of driving in snow) just in time to see my husband for exactly one minute before he headed for work (he's a better driver than me, & works about 25 miles closer to our house).

I've been at home with the animals all day. Started paging through the old sketchbook. 

I have been changing things around here & drawing less out of my sketchbook & more on paper & shit. Like a real artist. But you'll see little pieces of randomness from sketchbook here & there for old times sake.

So here are some unpainted drawings from a Mini-Vaca taken on an extremely rainy weekend last June.

6.9&8.11: Two Cape Cod Sandwiches.

A post-driving curried chicken salad sandwich & a next afternoon linguica & mustard sandwich, grilled & eaten on the deck overlooking the pond. Then some insane encounters with huge snapping turtles ensued. Damn those things are weird & prehistoric & creepy. Try swimming with one. & huge. Did I mention huge?

6.9.11: BBQ Pork During A Late Spring Thunderstorm.

Another one of Mum's great dinners. Plus the sort of thunderstorm I'm really looking forward to as we approach the end of winter. We had some thunder & heavy rain last week & it reminded me how good that sort of weather is.

 6.10.11: Egg Salad Sandwiches & Vintage Dresses.

Typical Cape Cod Mini-Vaca Sort Of Day. Ate some tasty sandwiches, some chips, purchased one of my now all time favorite dresses at a thrift shop in Yarmouth, & saw some swans on a pond. There were dogs.

 6.10.2011: Cookout!

All Cape Cod trips should include some sort of cookout.

The next morning we ate this meal, in the pouring rain we collected buckets of seaweed for the garden, & then we drove home. 

 I'm fearing we won't have much Cape Cod Summer this year.
We really like our new house. We can grill in the yard here. We can hang out outside here. I can sit on top of the hill & enjoy the view of cornfields & the neighboring dairy farm, & draw & read there. We aren't stuck in town in Noho anymore.  We are making the kind of farming-style commitments that make travel complicated. I think we all need to recover from losing a major part of those summers.
That's all. Apologies for the lack of color. It's still snowing. I'll probably be back with more tomorrow.

Memorial Day Weekend Meat Fest.

Look, I finally managed a timely holiday post! EnD, live from Memorial Day Weekend 2011!
I don't generally get three day weekends off, & I didn't this one either, but still I like to be festive. It was 90 degrees almost all weekend & I have definitely been ready & waiting to celebrate a weekend truly summer style, with, obviously, lots o' meat products.

Bacon Many Ways: Memorial Day Weekend 2011. 

Friday night we got old fashioned & grilled burgers in the driveway behind my 1989 Toyota Cressida (homemade bacon sausage cheddar jalapeno burgers using leftover ground bacon sausage we conveniently had lying around). Sitting on the hood of an old car at dusk drinking PBR & cooking meat. Sigh. Good times.
Then Sunday night dinner with Izaac rolled around, & that always means something special. A bacon weave wrapped around ground steak & then deep fried, bacon & collards, & garlic roasted marrow bones & toast, in this case. & the champagne of beers, since it was a holiday, after all.
Besides eating bacon, I cleaned off the front porch & hauled a table & chairs out there, & that's where I did this drawing just now, mojito in hand. The dog & I swam in the river, I planted dragon beans & repotted lots of tomatoes, & I spent as much time as possible in the sun. It's currently Monday afternoon, the dog is passed out exhausted from all the fun (he enjoyed a lot of marrow bone activity last night) & I am going to take advantage of more good porch time.
The drawing happens to complete this particular sketchbook, begun last November with these drawings.
Here's to opening my new sketchbook & another season of eating & drawing.

Cali Part Two: Grilled Cheeses at Old Spanish Missions, Burger Arguments, & BACON.

So Diamond Daughters in the great state of California, continued.

In which Gramma drives us to Riverside, & we get lost & end up at the city limits with the auto parts stores, & we eventually arrive at the Mission Inn, see some parrots, & eat grilled cheeses in Mum's (allegedly, Gramma tells these stories sometimes) favorite lunch spot, Simple Simon's.

Grilled Cheeses In Old Spanish California, After Being Lost In The Urban California Desert.

At some later point, we had this burger conflict. First, Grampa Diamond is self-admittedly terrible at grilling. Only burgers he is good at. This makes him a burger crazy person. I, as an adult, have formed my own burger preferences, & mine include Hellman's mayonnaise as a must & Sriracha as yes yes please & crazy additions as hells yeah what have you got? As you can see here. Sooooooo...I wanted my mayonnaise, some chopped jalapenos, & a sliced perfect avocado & whoah was I shot down. Oh families. PEOPLE FROM BROCKTON, MA DO NOT PUT FING AVOCADOS ON MEAT. END OF STORY. I forget this.

(Note, Ali, a burger girl is anyone is, did agree with him, so I give his taste buds the benefit of the doubt).

Anyway, I present,

Grampa's "Perfect" Burger.

To comfort us from all this terrible family burger conflict, Saturday morning breakfast. The most essential one, the Platonic ideal of breakfast, why bacon smells good like nothing else to me, & why I can never be a vegetarian.

Breakfast with Bob

(Fried Eggs, Bacon, Thomas' English Muffins, Always & Forever).

Coming up: We find our perfect Liz & Ali restaurant after almost dying of depression in a giant California mall, we purchase sparkly discounted things while drinking smoothies, have a more odd than even usual for us family evening, & a moving & memorable in emotional terms but so upsettingly bad foodwise Anthony Bourdain would cry Macaroni Grill experience. Seafood Linguine. Shudder. All coming up next. Stay Tuned.

And Life As We Know It Will Never Be The Same.

1.18.2010: The Great Chocolate Bacon Blue Cheese Burger Experiment.

Yup. That kind of says it all, doesn't it? Long story short, a drive home from work on a January night, past Burger King, OMG BURGERS, impulse trip to Stop & Shop for ground beef, come home to realize that the fridge happens to be full of free blue cheese from work & the fabulous Izaac's chocolate bacon (delivered to my register at work along with the OMFG chocolate parmesan). & in the freezer, some crappy frozen steak fries that I had recently bought on a whim. So....what did we do? Why, this.

Truly a life changing experience. Chocolate, bacon, cheese, red meat, combined in one bite. I'm gonna just leave you to contemplate that one.

From The Archives: Still More Onion Rings.

Onion Rings, an ongoing theme 'round here. This long lost, almost tragically forgotten meal came from this day. We were indeed a couple of sad hipsters, but at least we ate reasonably well (meaning the fries, bacon, & grease food groups were included). & like the last time we ate together at the Northampton Brewery, we were exhausted & hungry. Which I think is why this meal was so good. Plus we were sad. What cures sadness? Onion rings. At least on this blog, they do (Commandments of EnD).

I guess being a food thief has been a tradition here long before I swiped that mocha the other day.

Bacon Cheese Onion Rings: That Which Never Fails Us.

I used to hate ham, but cuban sandwiches won me over. Plus I am a sucker for the words 'spicy cajun' even though I've been back in New England long enough that I shouldn't be fooled anymore.

(& spelling? still fuck you).

I still really only love the Brewery for the mussels & beer sampler combination, most of the other food, while good bar food, isn't worth the money if you're poor, might as well go to Packard's for the jalapeno cheese stuffed deep fried burger. (hell I need to go eat that so I can draw it, very very soon, note to self & anyone who wants to come with me. Or hell, I once made it myself, that could also happen).

See, isn't revisiting the past fun? Yup, that could have been sarcasm (don't tell my work).

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.

Drinking & Deliciousness: some recent snacks we ate

why are we so awesome at Drinking & Drawing? obviously for more reasons than it's possible to list here, but here's one: 'cause not only do we adore our pbr, sometimes (often) we have drinking excursions involving delicious greasy food things.

kathy's diner once more, from my late night chocolate milkshake series. also we had onion rings & a bacon cheeseburger, (not pictured), sadly (too hungry). jed & I & ansel, around 1am, post-DnD thursday at hugos & ye olde, 7.16.2009. the first outdoor/food centered/early DnD, at Local Burger, 7.17.2009. A Bacon Cheeseburger & A Green Chili Cheeseburger, called the Westhampton & the Southwestern at Local Burger I believe, respectively. & sweet potatoes fries, & a six pack of pabst from Pop's. eaten sitting at the prime corner table in the window, pre-thunderstorm summer night. yeah that's right.

Drinking & Drawing = Delicious. Yum. Come Draw. We encourage ridiculous indulgences, beer, bacon, milkshakes, excessive watercolour, whatever YOU like, we support you.

kathy's diner, 1:36am

because Local Burger just isn't open until 3am on thursdays anymore...contrary to the belief of the one million people who drove up while we were sitting outside & had their dreams of late night burgers crushed. so we went to kathy's.

chocolate shake & unexplained country music.

bacon cheeseburger & pickles.

I pretty much ALWAYS need a bacon cheeseburger & a chocolate shake right smack in the middle of a night of drinking & drawing. I like to draw food way more than I like to draw people, so it makes me sad more bars in noho don't serve food. 6.25.09, post hugos/sierra/bishops.