Playing Catch Up

My computer became seriously ill a while back and I finally took it to the hospital to see if it could be restored.  My genius computer friend worked miracles but warned that next time it does that... will likely be the last time. 

Did you know you shouldn't really watch DVD movies on a laptop?  It tends to overheat and fry bits on the inside.   Well, especially if you have a Yorkie worth of dog hair trapped inside.  I no longer live with my two border collies, so I shouldn't have that problem anymore. 

I've been in the studio making things, sometimes not really even taking the time for photos.  So I hope to catch up here when I get the chance and show you some of the things coming out of Studio Nine these days.

It doesn't seem right to create a post with no photographs, so here's one.  Chocolate chip cookie covered OREO!  Yeah, I had ONE of those for dinner one evening this week.  Mercy, that was delicious!  I had the other one for lunch the following day, thank goodness I only made 2!  Yummm!

Happy Creating,

Carmen Rose

Scramble

Scrambled eggs with fresh veggies.

Some assembly required.

Happy yum,

-Carmen Rose

Delicious Creating

Sorry to say I have badly neglected my blog...so it is time to play catch up!

Breakfast Burritos - some assembly required.

Scrambled goodies

Ready to be wrapped and frozen.

10 minutes in the toaster oven yields the perfect easy breakfast!

Delicious Creating,
And healthy new beginnings,

-Carmen Rose

Flying and Feasting

After enjoying the Zip Line Canopy Tour, I went back with Mary and her family to their timeshare at the Resort.  I've seen these places and wondered what they were like inside.  They've got an amazing view and lots of wildlife.

I had fun taking photos from the balconies and enjoying the wild life.

The sun was starting to go down.

The sky turned more beautiful than usual.

They are all lined up like soldiers, very orderly.

It was dusk, the sun was setting.

Such a pretty sky.  So we jumped in the car to go up to the top of the ridge.

I grew up in a house with a view of Massanutten Peak, it was the landmark of my youth.  Whenever I got lost, all I had to do was look to the Peak and then I would know exactly where I was.  Now I'm looking out at my "home land" from the very mountain that I looked to.

The sun had set, we were hungry, it was time to make some dinner.

We played with the groundhog, who didn't mind eating right from our hands.

Fat ol fella.  That peanut butter cracker seemed to slow him up a bit.

Later on the night shift came out to gather up whatever the groundhog had left behind.

Jody did steaks on the grill.

I fried up some green tomatoes until they were nice and crispy.

Now THAT'S a feast!  I don't think I've ever eaten such a big steak!  And there were hot fresh biscuits also.  And yes, I ate it all.  And it was good!

A lovely time around the table with friends from a distant time in my life.  It was so fun to enjoy their time together, it was a place of warmth and lots of laughter and stories of practical jokes.  I nearly laughed myself off my chair with the tale of the imaginary bear.  Mercy, it was good!

Some moments in life are so sweet, often made more so when in contrast to the darker things.  This was one of those and I'm so grateful.  I have the best friends in the whole wide world!

Flying and Feasting to you,
-Carmen Rose

I love to cook

Here are some of the things I've made, or cooked with.  I was wading through some of my ba-zillion photos on my computer and started to realize that I take lots of photos of food, but don't manage to write bog posts about all the food I photograph.  So this post is designed to catch me up.  One day I'll be a foodie, but for now I'll just enjoy eating!  LOL!

Savor the flavors
-Carmen Rose

Quail Eggs with Alton Brown & Benedict (perfect for the Hollandaise!)

Hmmm... I have two dozen quail eggs from my CSA... what to do? What to do! As a child I hated eggs and realized later that I had been allergic to them. I would eat them when I had to, then be nauseous for most of the morning. In recent years have I tried them again and realized that they didn't make me sick anymore, plus - I kinda liked them. I'm not a fan of yellow goo oozing from a fried egg. I don't like the texture of whites or yolks in a hard boiled egg. I do, however, LOVE a good scramble or omelet. So with all that in mind... I am going to try to make something wonderful with quail eggs.

It seems to me that the first step in doing something wonderful with quail eggs must include... Bacon! I cook bacon in the oven, it's so ultra easy and nobody has to hover over the range while a fine spray of grease coats everything nearby. Just line a pan with foil, spread out the bacon and cover it with foil (to keep that fine spay of bacon grease off of the inside of your oven) and bake at 400 until it's the crispness you prefer (between 20 - 30 mins.) I like it crispy, DH likes it chewy. (So I make it crisphewy.) While I was at it, I tried making some little cup like shapes out of bacon, just to see if it would work.  I curled up some bacon in some foil cupcake cups and covered that with foil.

And into the oven it went:

And then I started on the Hollandaise sauce.  I used the Alton Brown recipe that calls for butter chunks rather than clarified butter.  It sounded easier to me, plus Alton Brown is a genius.  If he says it will work... it will work!  There are three organic chick egg yolks in here (I get 1 doz free range, organic, yadda yadda eggs in my CSA box each two weeks.)  STIR!

Add a few chunks of butter at a time and keep stirring, make sure it doesn't get too hot.  Don't want to make scrambled eggs!

OO00oooo... pretty!  Add the lemon juice, salt and cayenne.  I added those, then added more for a little additional flavor.  I ended up using the juice of half a lemon, nice bit of tang!

The bacon came out of the oven looking all lovely and filling the kitchen with "ode to cooked PIG!"  (yum)

I don't have photos of the next steps cause it all pretty much happens all at once.  The English muffins went in the toaster oven and I broke four little quail eggs into a round ring in my egg skillet and began frying them.  Eggs Benedict call for poached eggs, but that's an adventure for another day when I want to work with chicken eggs.  This whole adventure started with Quail eggs... so I fried them a bit, pried them off the cookie cutter round and flipped them.  They were SO cute in there cooking away, but quail eggs are really hard to crack.  The shells are very soft and the membranes are pretty strong.  But they are O SO CUTE!  (I had to go after a piece of shell with  my tweezers, that's why there are tweezers in my kitchen.)

Get the English muffins from the toaster oven, add the bacon, top with the four fried quail eggs...

Hurry now, eggs are never good cold!

Top with the Hollandaise and run to the herb garden for some fresh chives and sprinkle those on top.  I called the man and he sat down to eat his... I looked up and it was gone while I was still working on mine.  He eyed my plate while I finished mine, then he licked his plate clean.  Yes, literally.  He kept eying mine until I gave him the last bite.  Not bad, not bad at all.

What a lovely breakfast!  (DH's second breakfast, my first)  Hmmm... I still had those little rounds of bacon, so the next experiment involved getting quail eggs into the little bacon rounds.  As you can see from the photo, it really only worked about 3 out of 12 cases.  What a silly MESS!

I decided that if they already looked that bad, flipping them wasn't going to hurt them.  So... over they went - as one solid mass.  Then I picked them back apart...  I put some Hollandaise on the plate, tucked three little quail eggs in bacon baskets into the sauce.  I sprinkled this with the rest of the chives.  Now they aren't exactly pretty, they didn't turn out looking at all like I imagined... HOWEVER!  When one pops one of these little buggas into one's mouth... it does elicit an involentary creamy-smokey-bacon-and-egg YUMMMMMMmmmmm!

Ok, so not entirely pretty food... but a pretty big YUM! 

I love my CSA!  (Community Supported Agriculture) 

I would never have tried quail eggs without them!

Savoring the Flavors,

-Carmen Rose

Such a Sushi Scenerio (A Beautiful Yum)

Tell me, is this not a beautiful yum?!

I've been wanting to try making sushi ever since I saw this amazing work of art by Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto.  To me this looks like an edible quilt and I think it's truly amazing!  I don't even want to show my own work in the same blog post, but hey... I'm a completely unapologetic novice!

My first try:  Oh, they do look a little awkward and embarrassed don't they?!  However, the rice stuck together.  Booooy, did the rice stick together!!  lolz

The second batch tastes the same but looks much better:

I'm always up for a culinary adventure. I grew up with such a limited range of foods, exploring new flavors has been a real treat over the years.  I remember the first time I had sushi.  I was with Charles, my photographer friend.  We were enjoying a concert in the park and some sushi from Martins and I was really taken by the flavors, and the way the food looked.  I got to watch a co-worker make it when I was a cake designer a few years back, it looked simple enough.  Then I saw the episode of "Good Eats" where Alton Brown dedicated a whole show to sushi.  Then I knew I had to try it.

I'm doing makeup and hair for the cast of "Lunch Hour."  It is the first production this season at Oak Grove Theater and we got rained out one evening of the run which left me with a free evening.  I wandered around town for a while, not ready to go home.  I kind of landed at the grocery in the sushi section and ended up with a lovely little collection of sushi paraphernalia.  And I didn't have time to try it until today.

As Alton would say: "Good Eats!"

As Paula Dean would say: "Best Dishes!"

& Happy Creating... 

(no matter what artistic media)
-Carmen Rose