Herbal

 

 

 

I just ordered these books. I did it because I found lavender, rosemary and sage still growing happily in the front yard. 

La Dolce Vita

Gift: given

Gift: received

Birthday cake for my special Sagittarius

Screen print: completed

Happy holidaze

In 2012 I am going to screen print more, our band will release our 3rd record and I am going to plant more wildflowers in the front yard. Also, I have a lot of mixing to do with our new stand mixer in lovely tangerine (see photo); I have a lot of fresh pasta to make with our new pasta roller, and I have several new cookbooks to read. Happy New Year to you and yours.

Pump King

Turkish psyche will make your loaves rise better, it's a fact.

The other day I bought some sugar pumpkins and roasted them in order to make this pie (it was f-ing delicious by the way). The seeds were reserved for brining and roasting. Alas, we lost the seeds (tragically) to mold durng the brining process (boo) but the two pumpkins gave up so much flesh that I had a ton left over. I wanted to make pumpkin soup but the recipes I found were all just so BLAH and SAME OLD, SAME OLD. Then I stumbled upon this recipe for Black Bean Pumpkin Soup over on Smitten Kitchen. This recipe gets a hundred Magic Child thumbs up. SRSLY. It's soooooo goooooood.

But let's face it: if you're going to make soup, you might as well just spend a Sunday making bread to go with it. It is a true fact that homemade soup tastes precisely 900 times better with homemade bread. If you've never made bread before, do this: get the Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown and then follow the directions. Yes, you'll be letting the bread rise 4 times. So what of it? You want your bread to be fluffy, right? I'm guessing that you do. But to forewarn you, the whole process will take about 4 hours, so like, invite a friend over or get a book to read or something. Recommendations for books to read while making bread: Up and Down with the Rolling Stones, by Tony Sanchez; In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan; anything by Flannery O'Connor.

Swirling Sphere

Meatyard

I can't believe I never heard of Ralph Eugene Meatyard until I saw an article in Smithsonian magazine yesterday.





Dinners and Nightmares #3

Dinner:

I saw a recipe for yellow split pea potstickers that I wanted to make, but at the store, I couldn't find pre-made potsticker wrappers and didn't feel like making them from scratch. So I just bought an assortment of things to put on crackers, as well as two kinds of frozen pierogies (because of my yen for dumplings) and a bottle of wine. (I also bought a 5# bag of yellow split peas, for your information) We ate the crackers and cracker accessories and drank the wine while the pierogies were defrosting. As the sun went down, the sky was pink and I didn't want to turn the lights on, so we just lit this candle which is also pink.

Nightmare:

A bunch of neighborhood friends all lived on the same street and we had decided to have a holiday party at a Chinese restaurant that was behind our houses across a snow-filled park. It was night, and we had decorated a room at the restaurant with streamers earlier in the day. The restaurant was called "Golden Fountain" and had a neon light in the shape of a golden fountain on the front, which we could see from our house. A neighborhood friend stopped at our house to make sure we weren't going to be late to the party. The nightmare part of this is that I then woke up and realized I was late for work; when I tried to text my co-worker to tell her I had over-slept, my hands didn't work because I had been laying on them and they were asleep. Well, my thumbs worked but not the rest of my fingers. When I looked in the bathroom mirror, I saw a a perfect red hand print on my chest from my own hand.

Born in a Prison

▲▲▲Magic Child Movie Club #1▲▲▲

Magic Child's movie recommendation for September:

 

 

 

 

 

Pick-Up. 1975. Directed by Bernard Hirschenson. "Sexy hippie chicks Carol and Maureen get more than they bargained for when they hitch a ride with groovy hippie dude Chuck in his nifty mobile bus home. The trio get lost in the Florida Everglades following a fierce rain storm and embark on a startling spiritual journey of self-discovery"- IMDb. This movie gets 4 Magic Child thumbs up. That's right, 4! It's giving Rosemary's Baby (my personal favorite) a real run for it's money. Date idea: watch this movie with your date and then read each other's tarot.

Do Right Woman

Artificial Flower Plant Plant

On Saturday I made a zillion empanadas for a party for my sister. I got a late start but had them all finished by 11:30pm, just in time to enjoy a High Life with a little OJ (have you tried this? It's the ultimate refresher - any bottled lighter beer will do, just drink a little out of the bottle and pour a splash of orange juice in the bottle. Careful though, it likes to overflow).

Now the paper flower factory has opened. I have a zillion of these to make too, and I'm well on my way.

On gravity, and bread.

So we are all sort of trapped, by gravity, which keeps us standing and walking, sitting and lying on the earth. You can try to jump into the sky, but you will find yourself back on the sidewalk. With this in mind: farming, living off the land. I live in the city on a busy street where the traffic never stops and you have to wait 5 minutes to cross. It's funny how just a 100 feet or so away from the road the cars whizzing past become silent. Then you see an old man sitting on a lawn chair on his front porch in the dusk light, one leg crossed over the other, his foot tapping the air to an invisible beat.
So I can't make the cars stop driving past, or push the houses on either side of mine farther away, so instead I pledge to bake more loaves of bread. Gravity have to give a little and let the dough rise just enough.

I've got demons #2

Bake Bread, Not War

"Completing school is often simply a certification that you will put up with a basically boring situation, be moderately productive and not sabotage the system. Young people are asked to be thankful for the opportunity to be exploited in low-paying, essentially meaningless jobs. After all, if you do not want one, we can always put you in prison. Even though prisons cost $50,000 to $80,000 a year per person, we'd rather spend the money that way than actually invest in changing the system and creating real jobs, real opportunities. I guess that is what is called capitalism.
Yet the real joy of work is in providing for yourself and your family, in working to benefit your community. We could be baking and cooking for one another. I'd like to see a bakery every few blocks. Skip the trucks. No one out of walking distance of fresh bread and pastries. Sure it's hard work, but it is also loving what you do, in companionship with flour and water, sugar and butter; loving what you do, which nourishes your spirit and others' stomachs, and provides convivial space for neighbors to get together."
-Edward Espe Brown, The Tassajara Bread Book

▲▲▲Magic Child Book Club #2▲▲▲

 

I can't read. I mean, I can read, but I can't seem to sit down and read a book, all the way through. I have 5 books in a pile that I have started reading. This pile never goes away.

Sometimes I start reading something on a whim though, and can't stop. This is one of those. To Your Scattered Bodies Go is the first book in the "Riverworld" trilogy, which is actually a quintology (is that right? There are 5 books total). What can I say, it's historical fiction/sci-fi/fantasy, there's a river, a world, and so on...Philip Jose Farmer is my new hero.

Drink Gold

Of the various rainbow-colored energies that are playing in the cosmos, concentrate on the golden ones, for they have a positive effect. Perhaps you could manifest the philosophers' stone or attain spiritual enlightenment.

In many contexts, this card applies to money matters.

In any case, your productive activities can help many beings.

Cause & Effect #1

Dinners & Nightmares #1

Inspired by one of my favorite books by Diane Di Prima, I will now periodically begin listing dinners I eat and nightmares I have, or, in case of no nightmares, then just regular dreams. But before I get in to all of that: at the request of a friend of Magic Child, I would like to take a moment to introduce the internets to the newest addition to my household. Black as sin and impossible to see in the dark! And now, here he is! Meet Willy!

Here, Willy can be seen engaging in one of his favorite activities: napping in the grass on a sunny afternoon while everyone else has to do yard work. Okay, moving right along.

Dinner: wonderful delicacies from Royal India, a special treat after a particularly grueling week. Although they look the same, one was mutter paneer and one was shahi paneer. Hey, we both really like paneer, you know? Not pictured: 2 ice-cold bottles of Maharaja. Quotable quotes from dinner: "In India we have many lakes. Sometimes the level of the lake gets low, but it always comes back up." Indeed.

Nightmare: Actually not a nightmare; just a dream, but anyway. Tom and I were visiting our friends Kris and Becca down South. For breakfast one morning, Kris made some eggs and toasted some bagels. Becca's addition to the meal was to take a handful of cocktail parasols, cut off the sharp toothpick end, split them down the middle lengthwise, then fry them in some butter and sprinkle them with sugar. I was skeptical at first but they actually turned out to be pretty good, despite the mild paper aftertaste.

Thanks for playing and see you next time on Dinners & Nightmares!

First Quarter

Screenprinting

Prints will be available coming soon

Granola

Lovely seed packets from here

Nico the mup-mup

Her 14th birthday is coming up!

Delicious stuffed mushrooms

Valentine soft shape from Mandy

Sprouts. Phase I, complete. Phase II: Spring.

Bees

Old Friend

Today I made a fresh pot of coffee and headed up to my studio to attempt to learn to use this fancy sewing machine I recently acquired. I even have the manual. Little E.T. wanted to help.

I wanted to try to make this skirt with this beautiful fabric, the most beautiful fabric ever:

After several failed attempts to get this fancy machine to produce a simple straight stitch or a simple zig zag, I threw the manual across the room and dug out my old friend, a gift from my mom when I turned 21.

Sorry fancy sewing machine, you just don't have that old  je ne sais quois.

▲▲▲Magic Child Book Club▲▲▲

Saturnday

In the library

working on new things for the shop