Abutilon Watercolor 2

© Ellen Blonder

Starting to layer color on color.

Abutilon Watercolor 1

© Ellen Blonder

I'm working from a photo I took when this abutilon plant was full of flowers. Here's the first day's outlines, barely filled in with watercolor underpainting.

Abutilon 1

© Ellen Blonder

Some dear friends brought a gift of an abutilon plant when they visited earlier this month. I sketched the flowers in my sketchbook, trying to capture the tangerine shades and rich green leaves with colored pencil, and with more than a little frustration. I'll try watercolors next, before I find the perfect place to plant it in the garden.

Silly Break

Love potatoes? This one is the first I've seen that loves you back. I know, silly, but I've never seen one like this before.

Italian Pastries

© Ellen Blonder

I was going through my Italy trip notebook from 2004, and came across this page of sketches of pastries we ate in Rome, Sorrento and Capri. Ah, to have any of those now. Just in case you can't read my scribbles, they include eclairs, a pine nut tart, chocolate cruller, big sugar doughnut, buttery anise rings, chocolate biscotti, cornetto, light custart cruller, ricotta tartlet, cherry tart, dense fruit and nut cookie, budin di riso (rice pudding in a tart shell), apricot tart, dark chocolate with hazelnuts, (more) eclairs (chocolate, strawberry, pistachio, caffe), light coffee eclair, lemon cake, chocolate eclair, pine nut tart (again), brutti-buoni (ugly-good), strawberry mousse tart, and sfogliatelle (a multi-layered, custard-filled bit of heaven).

Yes, we ate them all.

Chinese Almond Cookies

© Ellen Blonder, illustration from 

Every Grain of Rice: A Taste of Our Chinese Childhood in America

I spoke at the Mill Valley Public Library last night about my cookbook Every Grain of Rice, and followed up with a pile of almond cookies from a recipe in the book. The recipe, from my father's sister, was originally made with lard, which few people used anymore. For the book, we listed vegetable shortening--Crisco, really. I was thinking about how recipes evolve. This batch was made with organic, non-hydrogenated shortening from Whole Foods Market, which certainly was not available way back when.

 

Here's the recipe. Please attribute it to the book if you copy it. Enjoy!:

 

ALMOND COOKIES

(from Every Grain of Rice: A Taste of Our Chinese Childhood in America, © 1998)

 

1 cup vegetable shortening (or lard)

1 1/4 cups sugar

1 large egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon almond extract

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

36 blanched almonds

 

Preheat the oven to 375°F.

 

With an electric beater, cream together the shortening and sugar until fluffy. Crack the egg into a small bowl, beat it well with a fork, and reserve 1 tablespoonful. Beat the rest of the egg and the vanilla and almond extracts into the sugar mixture until well combined.

 

Sift together the flour, baking powder and baking soda onta a piece of wax paper. Add to the creamed mixture and stur until just blended. The dough will be crumbly but should hold together when squeezed in a ball.

 

Form the dough into 32 to 36 balls, each about 1 inch in diameter. Place them 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Press a blanched almond into the center of each ball. The edges of thedough will crack slightly. With your fingertips or a small pastry brush, brush the tops of the cookies lightly with the reserved beaten egg.

 

Bake 12 to 15 minutes, until the cookies are golden brown. With a spatula, remove the cookies to a rack to cool. Store in an airtight container.

 

Spider Lily-Finally Done

© Ellen Blonder

I've made the background tone brighter, added the center details to the flowers, and can finally say I'm done. This painting took way longer than I anticipated because of other things going on.

Spider Lily-Back to Work

© Ellen Blonder

 After a long break, I'm finally getting back to painting. It's hard to get back the feeling for this, but it does feel good to be painting again. Changes are subtle, but I've been refining the leaves and flowers.

Spider Lily-Day 13

© Ellen Blonder

The background has been darkened. Now I can get back to working on details in the flowers and do a bit more to the leaves.

Everything Cookies

Sometimes a girl just needs a cookie. I can't always decide what kind, and sometimes I  want everything. I call these my "Everything Cookies"

For the love of the combination of ginger, coconut, chocolate and macadamia nuts in a chewy cookie, I experimented with this several times here on Kauai. I found some intriguing coconut oil (Dr. Bronner's) and coconut flour (Bob's Red Mill), and wanted to use them together. 

This recipe results in a somewhat cakey cookie unless the eggs are very large, so I may try it next with a tablespoon or two of ginger juice squeezed from microplane-grated fresh ginger. I might also increase the coconut oil by one to two tablespoons.

GINGER COCONUT MACADAMIA NUT CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES
a.k.a. EVERYTHING COOKIES

Yield: 3 ½ dozen cookies

½ cup coconut oil, room temperature

¼ cup canola oil

¾ cup brown sugar, firmly packed

¼ cup granulated sugar

2 eggs

¾ cup flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

¼ cup oatmeal

½ cup coconut flour

½ cup flaked coconut

1 cup unsalted macadamia nuts, lightly roasted and coarsely chopped

1 cup crystallized ginger, chopped

2/3 cup chocolate chips, preferably mini-chips

Preheat the oven to 375° F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.

In a large bowl, combine the coconut oil, canola oil and sugars. Add the eggs and mix until well blended.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, oatmeal and coconut flour. Add to the oil mixture. Stir in the remaining ingredients and mix until well blended.

Drop by rounded tablespoons one inch apart on baking sheets. Lightly press on each mound with your fingers to flatten it slightly.

Bake on a center rack of the oven for 10 to 12 minutes. When slightly cooled, remove from parchment and cool completely on a rack.

Spider Lily-Day 12

© Ellen Blonder

After weeks of dark skies and stormy weather, daylight is finally good enough to work at shading more of the whites in the flowers and untangle some of the petals. Now I wonder if the background will need to go darker again.

Spider Lily-Day 11

© Ellen Blonder

I've slowly been working on the white flowers catch as catch can. Busy week, hard to focus. I'll probably have to go darker to make the whitest whites pop. This still looks way too flat.

Spider Lily-Days 9 and 10

© Ellen Blonder

I'm toning down the whites to create some depth in the flowers. The leaves need more details, but I want to hold off until the flowers are more finished.

Spider Lily-Day 8

© Ellen Blonder

The leaves just weren't right, so I studied the spider lily's growth patterns on the plant downstairs and also looked at some photos I took last year. It isn't often that I have to paint out and rearrange things this far into the painting, but I do feel better about this. I shouldn't have been so hasty, beginning painting before this was worked out.

Spider Lily-Day 7

© Ellen Blonder

The background color was too much in the middle range; I spent most of the day darkening it. Now the white flowers stand out more and the leaves feel more grounded. There's still much work to do.

Spider Lily-Days 5 and 6

© Ellen Blonder

It's harder to paint large areas than small ones with graduated shades. This doesn't look like much for two day's effort.