Head goes POW

Since I'm hard at work on my grad school application (no, really!), I've found I've exhausted my usual means of procrastination. Thankfully, there's AOL News photo galleries. I stumbled across a article about a recycled bicycle Christmas tree, and . . .
 

Artist Ralph Schmerberg's piece about climate change called "Power Eater."

Photographer Carl Warner is blowing my mind with this edible landscape.

Pillow-Tie. Yes, this is a real thing.

David Mach + Bottecelli is this fiber artist's dream. Although technically, I discovered him through his giant metal hanger sculpture of a gorilla . . .

Gianfranco Reni's gas masks - this season's must-have commentary on Mexico City's air quality. Or just post-apocalyptic glamor-ware?

Boo Ritson, your creepy real life action figures are making my mind boggle at the time involved (and my skin wonder how much it hurts to remove all that paint).

These lucky peeps are checking out a solar eclipse, and Noah Seelam got to document it. Jealous!

Yep, I had to share a bit of it with you. If you want to see the original gallery where all this cool stuff came from, along with a bunch of other cool stuff, go here, and click on the tree-cycling gallery link.

That's all for now -- I should probably go clean something.

The beginning of a beautiful friendship . . .

Mr. has discovered his inner artist, and I sense this is only the beginning of some amazing collaborations to come - watch out Christo and Jean-Claude, Kidney House Productions is just getting started!

We created this piece for the GLOW exhibition up in Oracle, AZ, using wire, blue LEDs, and Mr.'s extensive soldering knowledge (I don't work with hot stuff outside of the kitchen), and ended up displaying it twice in the last couple months. Hopefully, our website will be up and running soon, but in the meantime, here's a couple pictures of the piece, along with pictures of some of the other works displayed there.

Our piece

Some fun glow-in-the-dark Rorschach paintings, and one of the spinning shadow pieces.

I can't wait to try out the method of this mermaid painting! The octopus and giant puppet were both awesome uses of light in a sculpture -- so cool.

That lamp needs to be in my living room. The galaxy is my pick for best micro-macro piece, and the final image is a shot I took of the interior of a corrugated aluminum tube with lights inside. Pretty incredible how the simple can become sublime.

If you're interested in checking out more images from this show, or seeing some images from the second installation (hopefully I'll get some posted up here soon), go check out my artist page on Facebook.

Got in the kitchen, baked myself a pie!

My father makes the best pies on earth. No, really, he does -- which means I will never be willing to show one of my sad excuses for pie in public until I get a lot better at baking them.

That said, for a first attempt this didn't turn out all bad.

Yes, that is a pie -- a Joy of Cooking, 9th Edition, crust, filling, everything-from-scratch peach pie at that! And since I've made this, I've gained some vital knowledge:

• I need to get better at rolling pastry dough.
• End of the season peaches will not be as flavorful in pie as earlier ones.
• Must buy pastry brush for cream wash application on the crust!

That said, it was quite edible, and although next time I think I'll be using a more butter-based crust than a dominantly shortening-based crust, overall I give me an 8 for appearance, 6 for flavor -- and that's better than I was expecting, so overall I'm pleased.

Finally, one more picture, of the juicy crusty bits where the filling started to bubble out:

First Tasty Post - The food I've been waiting to show you.

At last, the blog is up and running - and what a fitting subject matter!

I rarely have time to cook, so when I do I like to go all out. Today's featured food is actually from a while ago, when I wanted to make a pizza but didn't have the time to wait for dough to rise. Turns out, those raw tortillas you can buy at the store work just as well for crust!

I started by sauteing some green bell peppers and cherry tomatoes, threw some ham in halfway through, and finally dropped my baby spinach leaves in the hot pan after I turned off the burner, so they wouldn't be too crispy. I poured that stuff out of the pan into a small bowl, then put my raw tortilla into the pan so it could soak up all the food flavors while it cooked. As soon as the bottom side was cooked, I flipped it over and sprinkled some mozzarella cheese on, then spread my toppings over that, then sprinkled more cheese to bring it all together. Then, I let it cook on medium low heat until the cheese was melted (but be careful with this part -- another time I made this I ended up burning the tortilla! Blackened tortilla pizza -- not so yummy), then gave it a minute or two to cool off before I ate it. The whole thing took twenty minutes max, and it was so much tastier than the Kraft mac and cheese I had been considering.

While the pizza was cooking, I made my salad: baby spinach leaves (I buy this stuff in bulk!), fresh sliced strawberries and blueberries, crumbled blue cheese, slivered almonds, and balsamic vanaigrette (I'm particularly fond of Paul Newman's version of this dressing -- it's good and sour and salty). Mr.'s comment regarding the overall taste: "I really like how there's the sweetness of the berries and then the balsamic comes and kicks you in the teeth." Yes, but it's a GOOD kind of kick.