Daily Photo Inspiration

Homestead.

vintage studio portrait of a cowboy by freeparking

Daily Photo Inspiration

Shout out to a friend having a hard day...

Tomatoes and Bananas! by bethboya

Salad Rolls

Okay, so we had some pretty nice, hot, sunny days last week and I had this whole plan to make salad rolls on one of these eves for dinner because they are pretty much the best thing on a hot summer night. Then it got all crappy and rainy again and hot delicious stir fry has sounded much better than cold salad rolls. I am only telling you this because I was gonna take some nice pictures of them and share them here, but then I remembered I drew some illustrations of the process for another project so I will just share those and put some pics of salad rolls up when the sun comes back out. So here we go!

What you will need:

Rice paper
VEGGIES! I usually use:

• lettuce and/or cabbage (roll the leaf up and chop so you have lettuce strips, this makes it much easier to roll in the end)
• carrots (julienned)
• cucumber (skinned, use spoon to scrape out seeds and cut into long thin strips)
• basil and/or cilantro and/or mint
• those tiny rice noodles
• tofu or cooked chicken/shrimp (totally not necessary, but if it will be your whole meal a little protein makes it more filling
• avocado, red bell pepper, pear and other such things cut up in the same manner are good too
• Or pretty much anything that sounds good or you have lying around

1. So to start cook your meat and noodles and cut everything up so it is in strips no wider than 1/4" thick and 4-5ish" long. Cool your meat and noodles.

2. This is how I set things up:

I know, this might seem a bit excessive, but there is method to my madness. This just makes things into more of an assembly line and makes it waaaaay easier to crank out a ton of these puppies in a jiffy.

3. Now you can start assembly. Soak a rice sheet in your water pan until it is soft and lay flat on the cutting board. Make a pile of veggies/protein starting with lettuce/cabbage.

Then roll 'em up like this:

Use the empty plate to stack finished rolls! You can cut them in 1/2 when you are done or just serve theme whole.

I think they are best served with peanut sauce (my favorite is San-J Thai Peanut, one of the few condiments I can bring myself to buy), but you could totally dip em in anything that sounds good. I have been meaning to make a dessert version made with fruit and dipped in chocolate or something...

I like to take veggie ones to pot-lucks 'cause they are a favorite of both veggies and meaties. But on those hot summer nights when you don't want to turn on the stove they make a great meal (and make leftovers for lunch the next day!)

Daily Photo Inspiration

The sun is being such a tease these days in Portland...

One step off the sun - A un passo dal sole by Robyn Hooz

Farmers Market

So I did make it to the farmers market on Saturday. It was the perfect day for it, sunny and beautiful. So, um, now I'm gonna do a bit of the soap box thing now so bear with me for a moment...

I believe it is very important to buy local-organic-sustainable, blah, blah, blah... But this does not mean buying a package of organic baby carrots (processed!) from Walmart. I know some of you are like "duh!", but same goes for that "organic" product you are buying from Whole Foods (plus processed foods are real crappy for you anyway and breakfast cereal is basically the devil).

On that note you don't have to hold organic as the holiest of holies either. WHEN YOU SHOP AT THE FARMERS MARKET YOU CAN SPEAK DIRECTLY (most times) TO THE PERSON RESPONSIBLE FOR GROWING YOUR FOOD and find out what exactly goes in and on the food you are eating. This is good because:

1. Organic certification is expensive, some smaller farms that use sustainable practices simply can't afford certification. If something does not have organic signage just ask the farmer about his/her practices.
2. Local cuts down on transit pollution, good for local economy, and gives you fresher food, i.e. good for everyone, not just you the eater.
3. Fresh, local, sustainable food TASTES FRIGGIN AWESOME.

So all I'm saying is you don't have to get so hung up on the organic thing (I used to work for this organic produce company and we accidentally got a shipment of a non-organic item and accidentally sent it out and a woman noticed after she had fed some of this item to her child and actually called to ask if she should take the child to the ER!). Organic is GOOD! But so are local small farms that can use your support to get that certification! *stepping off soap box*, for now...

So, whilst at the farmers market I was taking a picture of this:

Because they were the most beautiful color of pink ever! And the guy gave me one! And now it looks like a huge pink pom-pom (like 8" across!!!):

And thanks for reading my rant! Comments and discussion ALWAYS appreciated.

Daily Photo Inspiration

Perfect running weather in Portland this morning. Dry and nice cool air. Although, I would not mind running on a nice beach with a nice dog...

The Runner by acampm1

Daily Photo Inspiration

Oh my goodness! I ate the best strawberry today! And I plan to go to the farmers market tomorrow!



Strawberries Too - DSM Farmers Market by Don3rdSE

Mango Tree

So most people know how to grow an avocado tree from an avocado pit. Big whup, avocado trees are soooo 4th grade. I don't know if many people do this (I guess I could just check the internets, but whatever!), but at one point I wanted to see if I could grow a mango tree from a mango pit, AND IT WORKED! So I thought it would be a cool and easy tutorial and mangos are like the most friggin delicious fruit ever! So here ya go.

Here are the tools you will need:

mango

knife

cutting board

scissors

small glass

window that gets some sun

pot

potting soil

I have tried and succeeded with both the big greenish mangos and the little yellow mangos. I think the little yellow ones are tastier, but both are pretty delish.

Start by cutting up the mango. The easiest way to do this is by finding the little nob where the mango was attached to the tree and cutting along each side of the big flat pit in the middle of the fruit. This will give you two meaty pieces and one piece that is mostly pit.

Feel free to just dig in and gobble up that juicy goodness, but if you want to share or have nice uniform pieces hold each half steady on the cutting board and cut diagonal in one direction and then the other to make a grid. This will allow you to pop it inside out and cut off little cubes of mango (plus it just looks cool).

For the pit part you can peel off the skin and either try to cut off all the meat or just gnaw on it a bit until it is clean of mango. Now scrape off the remaining bits under running water, this will leave you with a hairy, slimy, little stone.

This part gets a little tricky because the bit you actually want is inside this. The casing around the seed is kinda like that annoying plastic packaging around electronics, a bitch to get into and even a little dangerous. So be VERY CAREFUL when doing this next part, children should have ADULT SUPERVISION or just adult help for this part. Feel free to let the pit sit overnight and dry out so it is not so slimy and hard to hang onto. Pinch the smaller end of the pit and it should feel hollow up to a point, snip this part off.

Being careful not to damage the bean inside make a slice with the knife or snip with scissors and you should be able to tear the casing up the edge and carefully take out the little bean.

Now the hard part is over! Put this little guy in some room temp water (just a little, don't submerge completely) in a little glass and set on a window sill.

Mine took FOREVER to start growing so don't get discouraged. It can take a month or two before you see some roots forming. If the water starts to get a little slimy rinse it out and add some more water (NOT COLD! see basil post). Some pink roots will shoot out and then finally a little pink hand (literally! It totally looks like a little alien hand reaching out the top with leaves for fingers!) will reach up and then you can plant it in potting soil with leaves up, roots down (duh). Keep the soil pretty wet, mangos like lot's of water.

Good luck! Mangos are waaaay cooler than avocados.

-Anna

Daily Photo Inspiration

I am really looking forward to summer and this:



"Tomatoes From the Garden Ripen in the Window After the First Frost" by pictoscribe

Sink or swim

After some rough times with my pseudo-employers I am finally going to see if I can do it on my own. *eek!* A few years ago I managed to pull myself out of the service industry and have been working for art based entrepreneurs since. This has had its ups and downs, but I am finally ready (with a little push) to jump off and try to do it for myself. I have a little crafty business (shameless self promotion) and mostly sell at craft and street fairs, but want to put more focus on my etsy shop (I think I have had all of 5 sales, woot!) and getting my stuff out there. Because entrepreneurship is very much a self-sufficiency/DIY based venture I will do my best to document my struggles here. But if things don't work out I might have to live on eggs for the next 6 months:



So that being said, welcome to daily updates! I hope!

-Anna