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Tag Archives: green

Build

24 Tuesday Apr 2012

Posted by createdforjoy in Make

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Tags

art, balsa wood, blue, build, collage, copper, finish, gears, green, hope, make, metal, multimedia, past, patina, rust, treasure, vintage, wire

build01

I got the very best birthday present this year: a passel of rusty old metal, courtesy of some dear friends and their 140-year old farm. There are nails and screws, washers and springs, hinges and handles, locks and keys: all lovingly hand-picked, colored by history in shades of deep orange and warm red. Who wants a pristine, shiny package when you can have a gift pulled from the clutches of spiders in the back of the barn? To some, all that rust may just seem like tetanus waiting to happen, but to me it is the sweetest kind of treasure.

Maybe I appreciate it all the more because I’m feeling a little bit vintage myself these days. I’m certainly showing some wear (I like to call it “patina”), but I still work hard and have some pretty good stories to tell. If there is beauty in being authentic, then all my creases and chipped edges make me positively radiant. :)

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It was that theme — the value in building a life with layers of wear and age — that inspired my most recent collage. I used my favorite hinge from my collection of vintage bits (yes, I have a favorite hinge) because its dusky blue reminded me of the sky in an old oil painting. I also picked out a few gears and some rusted nails to bundle in twine, then set to work assembling a multimedia landscape.

The background is a 5″x7″ watercolor illustration board painted to look like a piece of worn metal. This was the perfect opportunity to use Sophisticated Finishes, a liquid copper finish that can be custom-antiqued with a selection of blue and green patina solutions. It is little more than chemistry in action, but it gives me a thrill every time I watch a metallic surface fade and oxidize before my eyes.

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The paper pieces are from a 1952 travel magazine highlighting the charms of the midwestern United States, a great fit considering most of the vintage pieces I used hail from Kansas. I snipped and sanded a little balsa wood house, wallpapered with a page from an old hymnal, and set it against a fence made of sculpture wire. The final addition was a grove of stamped, embossed trees.

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There is such an obsession in our culture today with looking younger than we really are, smoothing out our wrinkles and blemishes until our faces have all the interest of a buffed wax floor. I am not sure how having the forehead of a 16-year-old became so important, but I think a society that values appearance above character has just hammered the perfect, shiny nails into its own coffin.

I value wisdom and experience, and that stuff usually comes with the price of aging. I would rather show and feel those years and know I really learned from them, than stay the unwrinkled, unknowing me I was a decade ago. I suppose that line of thinking also makes me sound increasingly vintage, but I don’t mind, because I’ve figured out how much promise that holds.

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Ottolenghi’s Green Pancakes with Lime Butter

15 Wednesday Feb 2012

Posted by createdforjoy in Cook, Read

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Tags

butter, cook, green, lime, Ottolenghi, pancakes, recipe, vegetarian

pancakes01

I have seldom posted a recipe that wasn’t my own on this blog, but I am making an exception. I feel comfortable doing so because A) this recipe already appeared in print in the London Times in 2008; and B) I am posting it entirely to encourage you to buy the author’s cookbook, Plenty. Plenty is the culinary brainchild of London restaurant owner Yotam Ottolenghi, and the considerable press buzz surrounding it is absolutely merited.

Mr. Ottolenghi is Israeli, and his dishes are Med-Rim in flavor, drawing from the culinary heritage of northern Africa, the Mediterranean Middle East, and southern Europe. The recipes are vibrant and modern, sometimes complex but never fussy. Plenty happens to be a vegetarian cookbook, although its author and his eponymous restaurant are not. But this is not the meager, stretched-thin sort of food that outsiders often associate with their herbivorous brethren; instead it is filling, tasty, and somehow indulgent. The recipes can be a meal themselves or co-exist happily alongside meat; Monday night, we sampled Sweet Potato Wedges with Lemongrass Creme Fraiche, and they made a brilliant partner to smoked turkey breast and peppery greens.

I served Plenty‘s Green Pancakes with Lime Butter as part of the spread at our Super Bowl bash, and they were delicious. The original recipe calls only for spinach, but I substituted Organic Girl’s Super Greens, a mix of baby greens that includes red and green chard, spinach, arugula, and tat soi. I also chose to use one large, milder Anaheim pepper instead of two smaller green chiles to control the heat, since I knew some of our guests were not fans of spicy food. Other than that, I stuck stolidly to the recipe and was completely satisfied with the results. These are easily made ahead and warmed just before serving, and the lime butter is equally brilliant over other veggies and fish or chicken. Make this recipe, love it, and then buy the cookbook. :)

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Ottolenghi’s Green Pancakes with Lime Butter
makes a dozen 3″-pancakes, serves 3-4

For pancakes:
8 oz. (about 8 cups) raw spinach or mixed greens, washed
3/4 c. self-rising flour (see Recipe Notes below to make your own)
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 egg
4 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted
1/2 tsp. kosher or coarse sea salt
1 tsp. ground cumin
2/3 c. milk
6 medium green onions, finely sliced
2 fresh green chiles, thinly sliced
1 egg white
olive oil for frying

For lime butter:
8 Tbsp. unsalted butter (one stick), at room temperature
grated zest of one lime
1 1/2 Tbsp. fresh lime juice (that was the juice of one lime in my case)
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. white pepper
1 Tbsp. chopped cilantro
1/2 clove garlic, finely chopped
1/4 tsp. chile flakes

To make the lime butter, beat butter in small mixing bowl with wooden spoon until soft and creamy. Add rest of butter ingredients and mix well. Tip on to a sheet of plastic wrap or parchment and roll into a sausage shape, then chill until firm.

Wilt the spinach in a saute pan with a splash of water over medium heat. (If using mixed greens, wilting will take a couple minutes more.) Drain in a sieve, and when cool, squeeze hard with your hands to remove as much moisture as possible. Roughly chop and set aside.

Put the flour, baking powder, whole egg, melted butter, salt, cumin, and milk in a large mixing bowl and whisk until smooth. Add the green onions, green chiles, and chopped spinach, and mix well with a fork. Whisk the egg white in a small bowl until it holds stiff peaks, then gently fold into the pancake batter with a silicone spatula.

Heat about a tablespoon of oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. For each pancake, ladle in two tablespoons of batter and press down gently. Cook for about two minutes on each side, until golden brown and green. Transfer to paper towels, and continue cooking until all batter is used; you should have about twelve 3″-wide pancakes. To serve, pile up three warm pancakes for each guest and top with a slice of lime butter to melt over the top.

Recipe Notes + Tips:

If you don’t have self-rising flour on hand, mix one cup all-purpose flour, 1-1/4 tsp. baking powder, and a pinch of salt. I place my ingredients straight into a zip-close bag so they are easily mixed and stored. This recipe requires only 3/4 cup of self-rising flour, so you’ll have a little left over for your next recipe.

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