Sunday, 7 December 2014
Wayne's World 2 - nostalgia
K- so Drew can't hold an accent here, but I love this clip dearly; mostly because I did the same school project on some country in grade 6 and also the Dick Van Dyke show reference. Sometimes, Myers was super spot on.
Saturday, 6 December 2014
Image Study
Every Saturday, from here on in- hopefully- I'm going to post five images from the MET online database that has recently made it's resources more available to the public. I don't plan on following a theme necessarily, though I may in future posts.
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| Landscape, Gulf Coast, Louisiana Walker Evans- 1935 Photo- Gelatin silver print |
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| Femme aux Cartes Florence Henri- 1930 Photo- Gelatin silver print |
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| Campden Hill, London Bill Brandt- April, 1949 Photo- Gelatin silver print |
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| Verduta d'alla Villa Medici od Academia di Francia Giacoma Caneva- 1852 Photo- Salted paper print from paper negative |
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| Melencolia I Albrecht Durer- 1514 Engraving |
Friday, 5 December 2014
A recipe post! HA!
So I've avoided blogging about food/ recipes largely because there's sooo much out there that is better than I could ever produce and in the wake of yet another mediocre muffin baking expedition, I am reminded that while I can turn in a few good baked delights, I have not achieved a status of expert baker by any stretch of the imagination. Basically, I've failed my mother.
Moving along, I thought that today's lunch cooking adventure was good fodder for a post, as it probably most correctly reflects my frenetic habits, some of my limited culinary skills and could perhaps be put to good use by the 2-5 people that read this blog :).
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Recipe notes
First: I created this dish primarily out of distress (it's 3pm, I'm real hungry-- what is in the fridge!?)
Second: Because I sit at a desk for close to 10 hours a day and generally feel sloth-like during most of the week, when I don't want greasy goodness, I crave healthy foods that don't contain a lot bread (I'm sure there's carbs hidden in there somewhere- I just don't like to know about it during these moments of first-world despair).
Third: How can I make a dish that has a lot of flavour? Generally, this means spicy, but also can include a sweet factor and if I can throw some kind of toasted nut and/or cheese, I'm pleased as punch.
The Recipe
To begin, I pan-fried a bit of shallots and garlic (I would nix the garlic if I could do it over again) in olive oil, with cumin, garam masala, chili powder, turmeric, salt and pepper. (note: I did not need all of these spices in there. S&P and maybe cumin are the real important ones). After these ingredients were sauteed a bit, I threw in roughly chopped kale (spinach or any other green works here) and chickpeas. Tossed those up a bit so that they were dressed in the oil/spice mixture and then made some space in the pan to fry an egg (notice: lazy strategies at play). While the egg cooked, I mixed in some ricotta and (previous toasted and chopped) hazelnuts with the kale and chickpeas (almonds, pecans or walnuts would also do-- so long as they're toasted!) Once the egg was done, I just threw it on top of the kale mix and voila! a pretty tasty meal that did not take too long to make (cause it couldn't!) and was healthy-ish to boot, I think. Here's a pic - mid-eaten!:
(pretty sure I'm gonna catch shit for posting this..oh well)
Moving along, I thought that today's lunch cooking adventure was good fodder for a post, as it probably most correctly reflects my frenetic habits, some of my limited culinary skills and could perhaps be put to good use by the 2-5 people that read this blog :).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Recipe notes
First: I created this dish primarily out of distress (it's 3pm, I'm real hungry-- what is in the fridge!?)
Second: Because I sit at a desk for close to 10 hours a day and generally feel sloth-like during most of the week, when I don't want greasy goodness, I crave healthy foods that don't contain a lot bread (I'm sure there's carbs hidden in there somewhere- I just don't like to know about it during these moments of first-world despair).
Third: How can I make a dish that has a lot of flavour? Generally, this means spicy, but also can include a sweet factor and if I can throw some kind of toasted nut and/or cheese, I'm pleased as punch.
The Recipe
To begin, I pan-fried a bit of shallots and garlic (I would nix the garlic if I could do it over again) in olive oil, with cumin, garam masala, chili powder, turmeric, salt and pepper. (note: I did not need all of these spices in there. S&P and maybe cumin are the real important ones). After these ingredients were sauteed a bit, I threw in roughly chopped kale (spinach or any other green works here) and chickpeas. Tossed those up a bit so that they were dressed in the oil/spice mixture and then made some space in the pan to fry an egg (notice: lazy strategies at play). While the egg cooked, I mixed in some ricotta and (previous toasted and chopped) hazelnuts with the kale and chickpeas (almonds, pecans or walnuts would also do-- so long as they're toasted!) Once the egg was done, I just threw it on top of the kale mix and voila! a pretty tasty meal that did not take too long to make (cause it couldn't!) and was healthy-ish to boot, I think. Here's a pic - mid-eaten!:
(pretty sure I'm gonna catch shit for posting this..oh well)
Thursday, 4 December 2014
Wednesday, 3 December 2014
Egon Schiele- intimacy in art
How does an artist convey an intimate image or experience or inspire the viewer to reflect personally about intimate understandings of themselves? I think about this often when looking at Egon Schiele's "Kneeling Girl in Orange Red Dress"...
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| Kneeling Girl in Orange Red Dress, 1910 |
...a picture that I view often, as it hangs in the 'intimate' space of my bathroom. This picture remains as one of the most powerful portraits that I've ever encountered. I don't know this person, nor am I driven to want to know them, but I can connect with this image intimately. While Schiele is reknowned for depicting women and men engaging in what many understand as intimate sexual acts and for depicting these acts and the bodies engaging (or not engaging) in them in a matter-of-fact way, unglamourous, limbs crudely truncated and bent, skin starkly coloured in shades of white and green and blue and most suggestively- red- while this artist was excised from the art world for decades after his death and reborn as a visionary of the sexually explicit and grotesque, I see his honesty and intimacy not in the positions of bodies or the exposure of genitals, but in the manner Schiele draws his viewer into the thoughts and emotions of his subjects. It is an execution of style that - frankly- I don't think I could explain in words. Please see below for more of what I've struggled to articulate (and to which I've admitted to being inept in doing):
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| Seated Woman with Bent Knee, 1917 |
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| Embrace- Lovers II, 1917 |
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| Kneeling Girl propped on her elbows, 1917 |
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| Nude Self Portrait, 1916 |
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