Posts (page 2)

Five weeks are gone out of my ten week quarter. DAAP doesn't really have "mid-terms", per se. We do, but they happen around the eighth week of the ten week quarter. No, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me either.

Through much deliberation and mental anguish, as well as being an annoyance to everyone around me, I have a capstone topic. I'll be creating a motion piece based on the idea of women and numbers. Vague? Oh, maybe. It makes a little bit of sense in my head, and I have three more weeks to work it out before I get thrown under the bus in front of a panel of professors. I'm not terribly worried. Just a little worried.

It's my experience, in my clearly so-many-years-as-an-adult life, that women tend to define themselves by numbers. Even smart, successful, amazing women have that occasional voice in the back of their head reminding them how old they are, how much they weigh, what size that skirt was that they couldn't fit into yesterday, how many calories were wasted on lunch, how long they'll have to spend on the elliptical to overcompensate. We create websites based on giving a woman a numerical rating, as if someone can be defined by one picture of themselves uploaded to the internet. Sure, some people think it's all in good fun, and I won't pretend I haven't looked through them with friends and had a good laugh or two, but what does that honestly do to our view of ourselves and one another?

If anything comes to mind for you when "women and numbers" is mentioned, feel free to drop me a line. Comments here will be seen by everyone, of course, but you can feel free to email me at rizzo.jen @ gmail.com if you'd like to share your thoughts with just me. I'm compiling information from everyone who's willing to give it to me. Your thoughts will contribute to the final project, but your identity won't be used in any way.

Other than that project, nothing terribly notable has been going on. Work has been a little slow, teaching has been great as always, and I'm working on a diabolical plan to book three vacations in the near future. (Kansas City in April, Sarasota in June, Kansas City again at the very end of June for the graduation party spectacular.) It has left me complaining to anyone who will listen about the price of gas, hotels, airline tickets and renting a car when you're under the age of 25.

I'm also cooking up a plan for dinner on Valentine's Day. (Pun entirely intended.) We're a little strapped for cash thanks to one of us finishing up our education and dropping to less-than-part-time hours, so rather than going out for a pricey meal, we've decided to do a nice, quiet evening at home. I have no idea what I'm going to come up with, but I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of seafood was involved.

Hello all,

I've been flipping back and forth for a week now. Do I write, do I work on homework, do I go to sleep early and thank God I can still get some rest during the quarter? (The latter has clearly won, most of the time.) I know I've been absent here lately, but I'm coming out of hiding to promote a very good cause.

I don't think I mentioned it at the time, but my good friend Michelle lost her sister to an undiagnosed heart defect in October. 2007 wasn't a great year for her family. I didn't mention it because I felt it best to let Michelle grieve in her own way. I never had the pleasure of meeting her sister Krystal, but based on what I've heard from Michelle and the outpouring of love displayed on the memorial facebook page, I know she was an incredible young woman, loved by many and simply taken too early.

Michelle lives here in Cincinnati. Her sister was a student at Thomas More College. Michelle has set an amazing goal of raising $25,000 over the next three years to start a scholarship in her name. That's a lot of money, but if anyone can rally people toward a cause, it's got to be her. She can't do it alone, though, and that's why I appeal to all of you.

You can find all the information at the KLP scholarship website. Their first benefit is on March 7th at 7 p.m. It's at Briarwood in Hebron, KY, and tickets are only $20. Dinner! Dancing! Helping a good cause! Who couldn't use more of that in their lives?

I know I don't have a ton of readers here, but I would love it if any of you Cincinnati locals could spread the word. Michelle is also seeking donations for a silent auction, so if you, or anyone you know of, has something to contribute - feel free to contact her through the website. Michelle has done a lot for Cincinnati by running her successful (and iPhone-winning!) blog. Let's see if we can't give a little back to her.

It's been awhile since I've written about anything, and my only excuse is that I'm busy. And, of course, who isn't? Here are the best excuses I have to offer, though, and I can only hope everyone will let me slide for a little while.

Capstone. For those of you unfamiliar with UC or the capstone process, a capstone is similar to a senior thesis. Ours can be completed in small groups (2-3 people) or individually. I'm not much of a team player sometimes, and I'm confident I can't stand working with one person for six months straight, so I'll be doing mine on my own.

Capstone is funny. For four years, our schedule is dictated for us. We have classes all the time, we have daily homework assignments that result in very large, very difficult projects, we have little time to ourselves. Then your senior year hits. We have one fifteen minute meeting once a week with the head of our department to discuss our progress. The other 167.75 hours per week are up to us. (Not entirely true - we have one multi-disciplinary studio on Monday and Wednesday, and we have a discussion class on Friday mornings. As far as our biggest project of our educational careers go, though, that's it.)

It requires a lot of self-motivation. I'm doing the best I can, and I think I'm pretty far ahead of most of the people in my class so far. Still, I feel like I'm doing nothing for the class. "Researching" and "gaining knowledge" are big things, but they're things I honestly do every day. I don't feel like I'm working when I'm googling, or reading books. It's just what I like to do. So while I'm sure I'm doing lots of things, it feels like I'm completely unproductive. I hope I get over this soon.

Work. I kept my job at FRCH, for a lot of reasons. Number one, the digital department is no longer teaching Cinema 4D, and FRCH really needs someone to step in on day one and know how to do everything they do. This isn't conducive to hiring another co-op. They need me, even with my limited availability, and I need them, because they pay my credit card bill. I'm also keeping my fingers crossed that there will be a full-time position in my future with them, but we'll see what everyone's needs are at that time.

Work was a little frustrating for awhile, because I was just showing up and checking my email and didn't have any actual work to do. This week was nice - there were some design changes made to our plan for Hampton, so I was able to help out on some of the visualization for that. Now I'm back with nothing to do, hoping that a project will come up and they'll need me to step in and do some things. My boss has been nice enough to pass off some of the 3D work that comes our way to me so that he can work on some different things, and I'm hoping that system continues. I know there's enough work for everyone, we're just trying to find a healthy balance.

Teaching. I've been a teaching assistant for the freshman digital classes for the past three years now. This is my fourth and final year to be a TA for them. This usually means that I show up on Monday evenings and watch the big lecture that their professor gives them, and on Fridays they hang out in smaller groups with a bunch of us. They work on their projects and we're around to give them help if they have any questions.

The system is a little different this year. Instead of having 25 people in a room with three random TA's, there are 25 people in a room, and 8 of them are assigned to one of the three TA's. We're able to develop more of a one-on-one relationship with them as a result. I'm not sure how I feel about the system just yet. My first afternoon with them was last Friday, so I don't have a lot of experience with it. We'll see how it all works out. They're also much quieter than any classes I've had in the past, which makes me a little uneasy. It was a slightly boring three hours.

I've also been offered the opportunity to lecture to the whole group, and I'm really excited about it. I think it'll just be for a few minutes per lecture when they're learning 3D, but it's a really fabulous opportunity. I won't know more about it for a few weeks, but I'm looking forward to it.

Graduating. I'll be graduating in a little less than five months. It turns out that's a pretty big deal. My friend Ian and I will be the digital representatives coordinating our final show (DAAPWorks). We applied for graduation this week. My mother is throwing the graduation party to end all graduation parties. Me? I'm just trying to keep it all together. It's a lot to handle.

And quite frankly, I'd be handling everything a little better if my bedroom wasn't 62 degrees. I do not handle the cold very well. Even the cat is curled up under a blanket, glaring at me like this is my fault. We have four total rooms in this house - bedroom, kitchen, living room, bathroom. The living room, where the only thermostat in the house is, is currently 70 degrees. The bedroom, a mere 15 feet away with the door completely open, is 62. I don't think I get to win at air circulation.

So, stay warm, everyone. I miss you all dearly. I think I'll be taking an unofficial break from the online world for awhile, because I just don't have the time to fit anything else in to my life. You can always catch updates from me at twitter in the meantime.

I spend a lot of time in bed. These are the hours before I go to sleep, those precious hours I keep my eyes closed but have no intention of sleeping at that very moment. They are the moments I cherish when my life is much busier, because they don't happen as frequently. When you have a job like mine that often gets to actually end at 5:30, these moments are much easier to come by.

These are the hours where I plan my life. I think about where I've been and where I'm going. I think about what I want to do to my house. I think about what I'm going to write next. The 2007 wrap-up post got lost somewhere between my pillow and my desk, which are separated in real life by less than seven feet. I'm not sure where it went exactly, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I didn't do one because I'm so busy looking at the future and don't want to dwell on the past, even though it was a pretty great year for me. (It was not such a great year for many of my friends, and that may be another part of why I don't want to spend too much time thinking about it.)

Of course, I don't do resolutions. There will be no new year's anything like that for me, because I have never successfully completed one. (Also, the first person to tell me that maybe 2008 is a good year to start completing resolutions is probably going to get killed.) I just don't believe in them. I believe in them exactly as much as I believe my husband when he tells me he's going to go back to the gym. You haven't been to a gym since I moved to New York in March of 2006, despite the fact that there is one literally inside your office. Don't talk to me about it. Just go to the gym. Don't tell me that 2008 is the year you're going to write a novel. It's not the year that you're finally going to lose weight. Just stop.

Unless, of course, these things actually work as motivators for you. I can't do time-based motivation. I think the very idea of it is what makes me fail. I find that I do things much faster if I just think I'll do them "someday". We were going to repaint the bathroom and hang a new mirror "someday". Had I said "by the end of 2007", it wouldn't have happened. But lo and behold, our bathroom was repainted and I had the mirror up at 4:30 on Monday afternoon. Mission accomplished.

Still, we talk about these things because it is new year's day and there is nothing else to talk about. You can talk about how much wine you polished off the night before, but then your headache will feel worse. You can talk about how you have to go back to work tomorrow after a ten day break, but then you will want to quit your job, no matter how much fun it is. So, you talk about 2008.

For us, new year's day was a day where we overused the phrase "2008 is the year of...", followed by something that it was obviously not going to be the year of. (2008 is apparently the year to end your sentences with prepositions.) At about 1:15 in the morning, clutching my glass of Asti, I proclaimed that this was the year I graduate. I'm relatively certain I shared this information with a few people's voicemail boxes as well. At 11:30 in the morning, I declared 2008 to be the year of the nap. At about 11:35, I tried to convince my friend Jen that it was the year of getting a second cat, but no one else in the room seemed to agree with me. 

Then, of course, we got on tangents about "things". You have inevitably heard people talk about these "things". When you have enough years behind you that you can fondly recount a lot of them (I really don't), you can have them. 2006 was the year I got married. That was my thing. 2007 was the year of the house. 2005... well, 2005 was the year I didn't have a thing.

I use the word "thing" because it is what we were stuck on three days ago. My friend Jen proclaims that she doesn't have a "thing". (She did not take well to me further insisting that her "thing" could be getting a second cat.) And John doesn't either. My "thing" will be graduating, but then that's it. I've already done married, house and car. I am running out of firsts, and firsts are the things you celebrate when you view those years in review. I don't think I'll have a "thing" in 2009, but I am not yet prepared to talk about that because that is after I graduate, in the land that doesn't make any sense.

The land that doesn't make any sense comes to me in 161 days. (I used a countdown calculator; I don't seriously have the free time to count the days myself.) In that time period, there's a lot to accomplish. At least I know where I'll be on June 14th, 2008. I just have to figure out how to get there first.

Happy 2008, everyone. If you're the resolution type, I hope you haven't broken them yet. If you're not the resolution type, I hope you're not wasting your time figuring out a "thing". Whatever your preferences, here's to a new year.

Let me paint a picture for you, one that you may well understand if you feel the same way about food that I do. So it's Tuesday, and you start to plan out the food you're going to make on Thursday. It's not like there's a special occasion or anything, it's just what you do. You get a fabulous pot roast recipe from a good friend. The new issue of Cook's Illustrated re-visits the no-knead bread phenomenon from a year ago that you always wanted to jump on but didn't have a dutch oven when it first came out and when you finally got one, everyone was already over it. One of your favorite co-workers is turning 31 and needs birthday treats. Your company is closing down for a week and a half and you want to bring in something tasty to remind them all that they're going to miss you.

The stars are in line for you to do some serious cooking. You go to the grocery store and you find the bread flour that they never seem to have in stock when you need it. You find the difficult-to-locate ingredients for your famous cornbread. You remember a brownie recipe from months ago and you already have everything you need for them. Then you get the feeling that something's about to go awry.

And, sure enough, it does. And when it does, despite the fact that you've made the best loaf of bread ever and that your friend's pot roast was a success, when your muffins get a little overcooked and your brownies are ruined by some act of God, you decide you're a failure. It destroys your other successes and makes you forget that you FINALLY perfected a loaf of bread after a year of awful bread experiences. So, you mope in your recliner and curl up with the amazing book that a special friend got you for Christmas and you get more fussy because you're reading about all the good food in the world that you will never be able to cook because you have lost the gift of cooking.

Perhaps this little story only makes sense if you're me, or if you were one of the two people that had to be in the house with me when I discovered that I had somehow ruined the brownies despite following the recipe to the letter. In the holiday spirit, though, I have decided to move on and not dwell on the failures. The successes deserve much, much better than that.

First of all, the pot roast. I have said before that I really, really like pot roasts. I've also mentioned that though I don't use it so often, I really like my crock pot. So when I mentioned on twitter that I was interested in good crock pot recipes, imagine my delight when I received this message from michelle:

I have a crock pot standard. Pot roast, veggies, rosemary, 1/4 c H20, and a bottle of beer. Simple. Tasty. It's the beer that adds.

She was right. The meat turned out perfect. Cook's Illustrated has an article this month about using inferior cuts of meat for roasts if you cook them properly, and this was a great example. I used a sort of crappy roast, seared it before putting it in the crock pot for some extra flavor, and left it for the whole day with just some beer, rosemary, potatoes and carrots. I won't even attempt to tell you about how the house smelled when I got home, because it was just too amazing.

And then, there's the bread. Do you remember the no-knead bread phenomenon from last year? A combination of Mark Bittman and Jim Lahey of the Sullivan Street Bakery produced a recipe that involves no kneading, and can be done in your home in a dutch oven. The internet blew up. Every food blogger was posting about it. I didn't jump on the trend then, but I am surely on it now. Cook's Illustrated revisited it, and I used their variation. I'll post the recipe when I get home tonight (thanks, downtime at work!), but for now, I leave you with pictures.

You should be making this bread. Seriously. The new version requires just a little bit of kneading - a task my husband was kind enough to do since I was stuck at the job that pays for the five different types of flour I keep in my kitchen. (All purpose, semolina, pastry, bread, Italian 00 - if you were curious.) The secret is a very, very long rise. I made my dough on Wednesday night around 1 a.m. and put it in the oven around 6 the next evening. Delicious, hassle-free, and so easy!

I alluded to them earlier in the week, so as promised, here we go.

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that our office was having a cupcake competition. I work in what you might describe as an obnoxiously creative office. I knew I had to go for taste, as even though I'm a designer, I'm just awful at decorating food. I cook it, and I can plate things well, but when it comes to icing, there's just no winning for me. So, my co-workers banded together and tried to help me come up with ridiculously strange cupcake ideas. Someone suggested "meat cupcake", someone else suggested "breakfast cupcake", and then it came to me. I would have to put bacon in a cupcake.

Credit definitely goes to the Vanilla Garlic blog, because I never would have perfected these if I hadn't started from their fabulous recipe. I kept the recipe relatively similar, except I used more of the pan drippings and used a full teaspoon of baking powder with regular all-purpose flour instead of the self-rising. I didn't use their recipe for the frosting - I made a basic buttercream icing and added some maple syrup to it.

A few warnings about using maple syrup in a batter. It's pretty easy to add too much and break a batter. I definitely cut down the amount of syrup in the batter itself - I ended up tripling that recipe so I could make enough to send to my office and John's. That would have required 12 tablespoons of maple syrup, and I only used 8.

The recipe isn't too difficult. Step one is to fry up some bacon. Fry up as much as you'd like - for a triple batch, I used a pound. You'll be chopping this up later and folding it in to the batter, so fry it to whatever crispy point you want to have in your cupcakes. As I knew people would be a little weirded out by the idea of bacon in their cupcakes, I made mine pretty crispy - the type of thing you'd get in store-bought bacon bits as opposed to a little soft like I want to eat in strips. Pour out the pan drippings and put them in the refrigerator to cool. (Don't pour it directly from your pan into a Glad storage container, because it'll melt the bottom and you'll lose some of the drippings while you scream and look for another container. Trust me.)

When the bacon drippings have cooled and solidified, you're going to beat them with the butter until it's light and fluffy. Add in the brown sugar and maple syrup and beat until they're well combined, then add the egg. Then you'll mix in your dry ingredients that you've pre-sifted together - flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder. Alternate between adding some of the dry ingredients, then milk, ending with the dry. I have made these twice, and I used more milk in the first batch. It made the end product a little more moist. Probably should have done that for the second batch. End by folding in the bacon.

You'll note that I'm not giving quantities here, and that's mostly so you can defer to the Vanilla Garlic recipe. It's a great starter. Pay attention to the quantity of that recipe, though. It claims it makes six cupcakes, but if you use extra baking powder instead of the self rising flour, I think their version will get you closer to ten. This was an experimental recipe to start with, so most definitely experiment with it on your own if you're interested!

As for the taste? Well, I liked them. I thought they were great. They're incredibly rich, though. My less-syrupy version wasn't terribly sweet, but they're a lot of flavor. Also, mine rose a TON. I didn't expect that on the first batch, so I had some incredibly awful looking cupcakes. If you put syrup in your frosting, be aware that it's going to be very, very sweet. I think the sweet syrupy frosting in moderation is a good choice.

I didn't take the grand prize, because as I expected, they were mostly judging on look. I did, however, take one of the special prizes - most unexplained. I couldn't be prouder.

On Friday, I went to John's company Christmas party. It was at the Cincinnati Club, and it was a great event. I got to spend time with Michelle and Kevin, we took a very cute holiday picture, and I still managed to get in bed by 12:30, so I didn't feel awful about going out when I was still getting over an ear infection. This meant that I didn't get to check my email on Friday night. When I woke up Saturday morning, my inbox was full to an extreme that hasn't happened since I went to Kansas City two months ago and went on the four-day no-internet binge.

The explanation is that I made the Vox front page again thanks to the [this is good] feature. I'd like to pretend that I'm really funny, but I only deserve credit for having a decent memory and the good sense to marry a husband who doesn't know how funny he is. I gained a whole lot of new neighbors out of the deal, and I've been enjoying going back through many of your entries. I'm looking forward to getting to know all of you!

So, there's the welcome, and here's the promise - I've solved the problem of what I'll be making for the cupcake competition on Friday. I made a small batch tonight to make sure they were award-winning, and I wasn't disappointed. Here's your hints: Bacon. Nutmeg. Maple.

The full story will be here later this week, I promise. It'll come with pictures. I wouldn't disappoint you. Before I can get all that together, I've got to bake the final batch, finish my story for the next issue of Taste, finish an animation for the job that pays my Fresh Market tab AND make some decisions about my portfolio. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I can make all those things happen by Friday.

An actual conversation between John and I:

Jen: Is there an extra ice scraper that I can steal?
John: There's the one from your old car in the basement.
Jen: I don't go to the basement.
John: You do if you want your ice scraper.
Jen: There are BUGS in the basement.
John: There are no bugs in the basement. I killed all the bugs.

(Time passes as Jen goes down to the basement, opens the door and finds a bug directly in front of her feet, then calls John back...)

Jen: I thought you killed all the bugs.
John: I did kill all the bugs.
Jen: There is a bug right where I have to walk to get to the ice scraper!
John: It's dead.
Jen: I know it's dead... wait, how do you know there's a DEAD bug right when you enter the basement?
John: I left it there.
Jen: Why would you leave a dead bug right at the entrance to the basement?!
John: To send a message to the others.

(silence.)

Jen: To send a message.
John: Did you see any other bugs?
Jen: ...no.
John: Then I guess it worked.

I've been thinking about it for awhile, and now that the holidays are upon us, I think it's time. I get asked constantly about kitchen equipment - what you should buy, how much you should spend on it, what's the best brand for X, why is Y product so much more expensive than Z, etc.

For December, I'm going to work on writing some recommendations for the home kitchen. Considering the source, expect things to be fairly minimalist - I own a house that is 865 square feet, and while the kitchen is suitable for my needs, that's only because I refuse to fill it with unnecessary products.

If anyone has good suggestions on what I should write about, let me know in the comments - in the meantime, I'll be assembling my favorite products and gearing up to post the first version in the next couple of days.

(A short post today, because I've only got a few minutes before my black bottom cupcakes come out of the oven. I couldn't be any more excited!)  

So, I didn't really make NaBloPoMo. It happens. It's been a busy month in my life, and December is about to be much, much worse.

I'll leave you with an image of my favorite comfort food of 2007. Have you ever had spanakopita? I don't mean the spanakopita that's kind of dry and awful that you get at your local Greek takeout place. I mean spanakopita carefully crafted by a Greek grandmother that's been making it for decades. I am the closest to a Greek grandmother that most of my friends are going to get, so they deal with mine. I hesitate to share the recipe with you, because it's my go-to food when I need to impress someone in under ten minutes. We're all friends here, so I've decided to give it up.

Most spanakopita is sold in triangle shapes, but I'm sort of lazy. My version comes in a 9x13 casserole dish, and it's cut into squares. It's delicious, easy to make, and not terribly expensive.

I honestly think this is a recipe to experiment with, though many people will probably disagree with me. My basic recipe is a little adapted from my mother's: two bricks of frozen chopped spinach, a pound of crumbled feta cheese, eight ounces of cream cheese, two tablespoons of minced onion and three eggs. Mix it all together (defrost the spinach and drain it first), and put it between about 16 sheets of phyllo.

My basic phyllo technique requires defrosted phyllo. You can try to buy it and use it the same day, but that never works for me. You can find phyllo in your grocery store with all the frozen pie crusts. Throw it in your fridge and it'll last for months. (Three or four, to be exact.) Melt two sticks of butter, and get a pastry brush. Brush the inside of a casserole dish, then lay down two sheets of phyllo. Brush those with butter and lay down two more sheets. Repeat until you've got about eight sheets on the bottom, pour in the spinach and cheese mixture, and repeat with the sheets on top. Put as many sheets on there as you like, really. I do about eight, but with how delicious the buttery phyllo was last night, I'm about to upgrade it to twelve.

It takes ten minutes to throw this together. Bake it about 35 minutes at 350, or until the phyllo is golden and crispy. Reheat it, share it with your friends - it's a recipe for everyone.

Happy NaBloPoMo, everyone. It's been a pleasure seeing many of you succeed. We'll keep our fingers crossed for more success from me next year.