I frequently rolled Halloween fun into birthday fun as a kid, with my November 2 birthday and the bonus of attending Catholic school, which meant always getting November 1 off. But even when I planned a non-Halloween party (like my 10th birthday at Arsenal Bowling Lanes b/c that’s how we rolled (!) in those days with our weekly bowling lessons), I always got the above pumpkin cookies, made by both my mom and dad. The teamwork cookies! They are a very butter-heavy spritz cookie, sandwiched together with chocolate frosting and topped off with a vanilla frosting stem. (Mom does the cookie and chocolate part, and my cake-decorating-expert dad does the green top). But all is not rosy when it comes to these cookies–because of the temperamental spritz gadget, they may have, more than once, ended up in some errr maternal cursing.

I have never made them in my life, never will, and had never even looked at the recipe until this year, but it has been an annual tradition since I can remember. Every time I look at the above picture, I think: it’s not possible to be happier. Not that one can’t be this happy again, but that the look on my face is 100% pure happiness. Oh to be four years old…

When I left Pittsburgh after high school, the cookies showed up at my college mailbox, and four years later, at whatever New York City apartment I was calling home. Like in the above photo! You know what, I think I look just as happy. Yes? Anyway, I always ate them in a disgusting small amount of time (and I just found out the cookie dough alone has 3 sticks of butter eeeeek!) and was looking forward this year to actually “documenting the process.” Don’t they remind you of the Warhol flowers when just the orange parts?

Some pics:

There’s no place like home.

One of the projects I did for Witch Craft was “Freaky Finger Food,” which you’ll have to buy the book (or search my Flickr) to learn more about. Well, I will tell you it has to do with dips! And vegetables made to look like fingers ooooooh. Anyway, I went through a chip-and-dip phase when I was younger. No, not really the eating part, but rather, finding chip-and-dip containers that were clever or cute or silly. I had a swimming pool one that I was particularly fond of and was just grateful that the wonderful English language allowed for “chip-and-dip” in the first place. But I digress…

I’ll be gradually unveiling some of my own dip recipes here that will add some pizzazz to your Halloween festivities, though they will do the trick all year round. For this Spicy Tomatillo Guacamole, I ventured into unknown vegetable land, having never cooked with tomatillos before. My aunt Adele (who I used to help with craft shows growing up!) is known for her culinary skills in making chilis and salsas. She introduced me to tomatillos in the latter just the other week and I was hooked. After the jump, Spicy Tomatillo Guacamole.

Spicy Tomatillo Guacamole

2 avocados
2 tomatillos, husks removed and diced (about 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp)
1/2 cup plum or cherry tomatoes, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 green onions, finely chopped
1 1/2 tbsp lime juice
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

In a medium-sized bowl, mash up avocado insides. Add the rest of ingredients and mix thoroughly. Adjust the cayenne till you hit your heat factor preference. The above gives it a kick, but not a kill-you-kick. Serve with chips, of course.

For some reason, I have never been a bacon person. With only a few half-baked vegetarian stints and a general love of meat, especially of the barbecue/pork varieties, I have probably had straight-up bacon about five times in my entire life. And I’m pretty sure I’ve had good, well-prepared bacon too, and yet, I feel “meh” about it. I think it’s the texture of the fat that bothers me. The few times I have prepared bacon, I find myself “trimming” away at the fat for a minute or two before realizing that if I keep doing that, over half of the bacon will be in the trash. (What is wrong with me???)

Lately I’ve been forcing myself to cook with bacon, in brussels sprouts and burger recipes, for instance. And since I have a huge sweet tooth and bacon desserts seem to still be popular, I thought I’d try to come up with my very own bacon dessert for July 4th festivities. I’m drawing heavily from my Burnt-Butter Brown-Sugar Cupcakes and throwing in some caramelized bacon to make the Burnt-Butter Brown Sugar Cupcake with Maple-Buttercream Frosting and Caramelized Bacon you see above. (Quite a mouthful!) Want to make some? Click below!

Ingredients for Caramelized Bacon

12 slices bacon
3/4 cup light brown sugar
2 tbsp water
pinch cayenne

Ingredients for Cupcakes

1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp unsalted butter
1 1/4 cups self-rising cake flour (NOT all-purpose)
4 tbsp granulated sugar
4 tbsp light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking powder
5-6 tbsp milk

Ingredients for Frosting

6 tbsp unsalted butter
1/4 cup caramelized bacon drippings
5 tbsp chopped caramelized bacon
2 tbsp maple syrup
2 1/4 cup powdered sugar
pinch sea salt
3 tbsp milk

First off, caramelize the bacon: preheat the oven to 375 and grease a jelly roll pan, or line it with parchment. In a small bowl, stir together the brown sugar, water and cayenne. Arrange strips of bacon in pan and cover with brown sugar mixture, flipping so they’re all coated. Cook for about 20-25 minutes, or until caramelized and a darker brown, flipping once half-way through. Remove from oven and allow to cool slightly in pan. (Do not toss out the drippings!)

Meanwhile, time to burn some butter: place butter in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly until it turns a dark golden color (3-5 minutes). Take the pan off the heat and strain into a bowl (to separate from the sediment). Let the butter sit until it solidifies, but is still a little soft. (This took almost 30 minutes because it’s hot here; if hot out, put in the fridge for about 10 minutes).

When the butter is solid, yet soft, place in a food processor along with ALL cupcake ingredients except milk. Blitz! Add milk slowly and pulse till well-mixed. Divide among 12 cupcake papers and bake for 15-20 minutes.

While they are baking, finely chop up 5 tbsp of bacon. Pulse all of the frosting ingredients in the food processor except the milk. Add milk slowly and pulse till well-mixed.

When the cupcakes are cool, frost ‘em! Chop the rest of the bacon and top cupcakes with it. Thank me later? Now?

Um, where did April go? April was a cruel month in some ways, staying true to the T.S. Eliot poem, but let’s focus on the positive. When everything seemed to be going wrong (was going wrong), my parents decided to schedule an Easter vacation. Destination? Carolina Beach, N.C. Sign. Me. Up. During a tear-filled phone call the night before I was supposed to leave, my mom said, “Just make sure you get on the plane and we’ll make everything better.” Sounds good to me!

I leave really early the following day, so that even after a subway malfunction, I still manage to get through security two full hours before take-off. I plop down in a seat, realize to my dismay that LaGuardia doesn’t have wi-fi (doh!) and succumb to the effects of severe sleep deprivation. I wake up 15 minutes before take-off and still see everyone sitting at the gate, no movement. The take-off time has been pushed back 15 minutes. I wander off to go look at the snack and magazine selection, pondering coffee but concluding I’d rather pass out on the plane too because there’s no way I have the energy to work through Proust or book proposals. And then I hear my name–I’m being paged! “Passenger Kachmar, please come to Gate 4,” but my last name was butchered enough so I wasn’t sure if they were really paging me. She repeats it. Oh. I’m at the wrong gate. (It was glarey, for the record). Oh no. I run to the gate and am met with a stern, “Didn’t you hear us paging you all those times?” The plane is ready to take off. “No, I…er…fell asleep and then went to get snacks.” Oh dear…

Leave it to me to arrive at the airport the full two hours ahead and still almost miss my flight. My lack of travel skills continues to amaze me; I really don’t know how I do it! This almost tops when [I thought] I threw away my customs form in Mexico (but later found it when back in NYC) and almost wasn’t allowed back into the States, OR when I went to the airport a day LATE at Thanksgiving and the USAirways guy said, “Um, your flight left yesterday.” Anyway, I did make it, and even though I had to a) do work b) do taxes and c) think about health stuff, it was all very lovely and sunny and enjoyable. More pictures here.

I just got back from another escape, this time to Pittsburgh, where I finally ventured to The Mattress Factory, a contemporary art museum where a HS friend of mine works. But not without a bump in road, of course: I have wanted to go to The Mattress Factory FOREVER, so of course 5 minutes before leaving, I get a terrible migraine. I sleep for 30 minutes and rally, determined to go, despite the blade through my head. What’s particularly funny is that the current exhibit is called, “Nothing is impossible.” The description reads: “If we consider that nothing is impossible and that anything can happen, how would we live differently? What could we envision? Where could we be? What can we hope for?” Yes, nothing is impossible indeed, I felt like I had waited my entire life before paying a visit to this museum and then I get a migraine. Envision? I see flashy lights and holograms. Hope for? Make it stop!!! Somehow I made it through a lot of audio and visual stimulation, including 3-D-glasses-wearing (kill me) and still managed to enjoy the place.

On the same street as The Mattress Factory is a row of writer residency houses, courtesy of City of Asylum/Pittsburgh, each with some kind of work of art on the facade. (It reminded me, not visually but just concept-wise, of one of my favorite children’s books, The Big Orange Splot). “House Poem,” seen above, was the first house, and was the home of Huang Xiang, an exiled Chinese writer who was jailed many times for writing. For someone who occasionally complains about writing and their accompanying deadlines, it really made me think: what if I were not allowed to write? What if my life were threatened just for the act of writing? I can’t imagine…

While at home, my parents and I participated in Art All Night, an 18-hour long open, un-juried art show that took place at Iron City Brewery. And as if that weren’t enough creativity for the weekend, I finally got to do something I’ve wanted to do for about a year now: have a baking/cooking afternoon with my extended family, particularly my little cousin Joey who loves to cook and bake with his super duper cook/baker/crafter/jane-of-all-trades mom. On the menu: bread pudding, bacon pine cone cheese balls, pecan rolls, cinnamon raisin rolls and a baked Alaska. Gulp! My extended family is quite large and everyone cooks and bakes from scratch, but usually we arrive at whatever holiday dinner or party with the dishes in hand–we eat together, but we don’t cook or bake together. I thought it would be fun to do both!

When I awoke from the resulting food coma at home, I went looking through my “work desk” in the basement, where I did lots of art projects as a kid. I found pages and pages of hand-copied notes: recipes for bread dough, craft books to buy, lists of projects I wanted to make, instructions for a papier mache sculpture. You name it…. I came upon this list of projects, which my sister totally DEFACED with the word “dork” written over and over. She even adds a definition entry of dork. “Dork: doork, adj; Alicia, one having the characteristics of Alicia.” I think I’ll send her copies of the craft book coming out (it’s basically done!!!), or my magazine design work (coming soon!!!) with a copy of this and the message: “The dorkiness paid off, now didn’t it?”

Lastly, while I was in Pittsburgh, an event known as Veggie Conquest, a vegan baking/cooking competition was going on a few blocks away from my NYC apartment. I participated at the last one as an amateur chef, where we were instructed to make cranberry desserts. It was intense, but fun! This time around, I had the esteemed privilege of being a “sponsor,” which in my case means I donated some smiling crochet vegetables (arguably, some fruits, a bulb and a tuber also). Our Hen House put together a nice video of the event, and you see all the above crocheted items in attendance.

While I’m not vegan, I like a good self-imposed food challenge, especially when it comes to baked goods. How to replace eggs and butter, two prominent cookie ingredients, in particular? I was asked to come up with a “pumpkin spice cookie,” but I figured I’d go the extra mile in recipe-developing by finally buying my first package of egg replacer and going for a vegan version, with a little crochet pumpkin motivating me from the sidelines.

I’m pretty convinced I must be the most excited non-vegan when it comes to all vegan cooking and baking. (Oh, remember my best-chocolate-cake-ever that happened to be vegan? That’s up to 109 comments on Instructables and still continues to wow even the non-believers).

Iced, cakey, with pumpkin puree and a spicy kick–recipe after the jump!

Ingredients

1/2 cup vegan margarine (I use Earth Balance’s vegan buttery sticks)
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup canned (or fresh) pumpkin puree
egg replacer equivalent for 2 eggs (1 tbsp replacer mixed with 4 tbsp warm water)
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp allspice
1/2 cup wheat germ (optional)

In an electric mixer, cream the margarine and brown sugar. Add the pumpkin, egg replacer and vanilla, and beat thoroughly. Add the rest of the ingredients, including optional wheat germ, which gives it a little bit of crunch/texture. Mix thoroughly. Chill in the fridge for an hour, if you have the time. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Drop by heaping tablespoonfuls onto a cookie sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes, or until lightly golden and puffed up. Remove and place on racks to cool.

For the icing: beat together 5 tbsp vegan margarine, 3 cups powdered sugar and 4 tbsp soy milk until smooth and glaze-like. Generously ice the cookies.

I went to Westport, Connecticut for a long weekend, where my aunts from Pittsburgh were house/pet-sitting for my grandma’s cousin, Alberta Cifolelli, who is a painter and whose Chelsea show(!) I had just seen. You get all that? While there, we: did a lot of egret watching, visited the Stepping Stones Museum (see pic with Safety Cone and Safety Barrel), went to a beach state park, ate hot dogs at one of Martha’s faves and went on a tour of the Philip Johnson’s Glass House (no pics allowed!).

Side note: in college I learned about the Glass House in architecture class, so when on a CT trip with my parents back then, armed with just the town’s name (New Canaan), I decided that “we’ll just find it.” Well, we didn’t find it, because my “we’ll just find it” directions that I so often rely on failed (and do so about 90% of the time to my surprise). I saw the little dot on the map in my head and didn’t think beyond reaching that little dot in real life. Hey, I’m here! Okay, wait, where’s the Glass House? Yeah.

I biked up to The Cloisters, a branch of the Met “devoted to the art and architecture of Medieval Europe,” and which has been on my list for a good 10 years now. A difficult uphill ride, as Manhattan’s terrain at the top western part is steep and tricky, but you’re rewarded at the tippity top with The Cloisters in beautiful Fort Tyron Park, overlooking the Hudson River and across from New Jersey’s Palisades. Really stunning, and this is easily now one of my favorite places in New York, but I think I have to always get here via bike along the Hudson River Greenway, and on a sunny day at that. Kind of a magical combination.

I worked on a fun custom crochet custom order for my blogger/writer/performer friend Chelsea, whose band Eleanor is going on tour out west. They are going through a band/website overhaul, but check ‘em out on Myspace. Her crochet request? A Ukulele and Eleanor the tour van. The latter is one of these older vans in dark orange and white:

Though excited by the challenge, I reacted in the same way I do to the daunting task of reading a 600-page book–what if I can’t do it?! Fortunately, crochet pattern-designing has become like haircutting to me it–I just get it for some reason. Behold, baby uke and baby Eleanor:

Here are baby uke and baby Eleanor on the dash, en route from Denver to New Mexico:

Image courtesy of Chelsea

Speaking of crochet (there’s no order whatsoever to this post’s contents, by the way), I have come up with a few new designs of my own. Frowny DEflated balloons and Smiley INflated balloons:

A lobster, which is much bigger than the things I usually come up with:

And thanks to my friend, Sarah, who came back from China with a tiny 1-inch tall plush fabric owl and wanted to recreate it, I got to do some non-crochet craft–sewing! She came up with a basic pattern and made some wee wee little ones, I made a bigger pattern based on hers and made some bigger ones, and we are now both obsessed. Wouldn’t you be?

Lastly, I got to attend one of Brooklyn’s infamous Dumpster Pool Parties, due to a strange domino effect of writing, cocktail-partying and meeting people. But not only did I score a coveted invite, I got to participate full force, by way of crochet goodies for the GIGANTIC pinata and ocean-themed cupcakes. And I got to help fill said pinata with these 4 rad people behind the party. (How cute are Chanel‘s cube crafts?!)

Image courtesy of Sarah

More Dumpster Pool Party pics here and here AND here. Whew.

Stay tuned for very very VERY exciting crafty news from yours truly…

Tomatoes+Pesto on Focaccia Bread

Scored some free bread from my neighbor, on the very day I didn’t have many lunch ingredients in the fridge.

Caprese Salad, sort of

Caprese salad is basically mozzarella, tomatoes, olive oil, basil, and salt and pepper. I, instead, made it by chopping up 20 grape tomatoes, 10 mini balls of mozzarella, adding about 1/4 cup homemade pesto and 1 1/2 tsp balsamic vinegar. I like the tang of the vinegar.

Caramelized Tofu with Pecans and Brussels Sprouts

You can find this recipe on the 101 Cookbooks site, a great resource for vegetarian recipes, stunning food photography with a healthy dose of stories thrown in. Five years ago, I don’t think I could have predicted that I’d be shouting from the rooftops about a tofu and brussels sprouts recipe, BUT, I am. This is one of my new favorites, like a healthy take on crunch n’ munch almost. And as the neighbor downstairs said about it, “It’s like candy to me. I can’t stop eating it!”

Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks

Recently I made a list of New York places I have yet to get around to going to for one reason or another. I’m pretending that I’m leaving New York, and therefore must see these places. One such place was Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks, a hole-in-the-wall cookbook shop in the West Village. It’s tiny and packed to the brim with cookbooks, old and new, some vintage kitchenware, old cooking magazines and lots of treasures waiting to be discovered…and then treasured.

I found the above cookbook, called Metropolitan Cookbook, put out by a Life Insurance Company in the 1960s. All of the food illustrations have faces, and sometimes act out fun little scenes. In other words, a cookbook after my own heart. Isn’t the above great? Those yeast breads rose too much and therefore have frowns! They remind me of how I personify my little crochet foods. It has been fun to indulge in my since-high-school habit of reading cookbooks and really looking at the pictures.

Wow, it has been two months since I did a little photo-and-verbal check-in about my garden; I can successfully report however that I am up to 29 grape tomatoes and 4 cucumbers harvested, edible nasturtium flowers, countless palm-fuls of herbs used for pestos and vase displays, and even a simulated mini-lily pad pond I came up with for a dinner party.

No run-ins with the law, but sadly my cucumbers succumbed to some kind of disease, and my beloved air plant Tilla also died. (I can’t even talk about the latter without getting choked up–why do I get attached to non-humans so intensely? I think I am done with personifying plants for a while).

My nasturtiums grew HUGE leaves, and they remind me of lily pads, so I arranged some of them and baby pink flowers (?) in a shallow tray of water. Mini-lily pad pond!

My mesclun mix refused to get any bigger, and I’m convinced Safety Cone put a hex on the future salad components so that they stayed Safety Cone-size.

I’ve gotten in the habit of putting fresh mint sprigs in the bathrooms. Mint is an invasive (I hate that term–come on, it’s just really good at growing), so I have to cut it regardless of recipe usage or it will take over the rest of the herb container.

The tomato plant is unbelievably healthy, and despite the number of tomatoes, it didn’t really need staking until one day when it was windy and stormy and I feared for the baby tomatoes.

I trained my morning glories to travel up the fire escape railings instead of strangling the dill and tomatoes, which they seemed to prefer. It’s a nice daily ritual.

The cucumbers in happier days, before something struck them down.

Now that I have a full-fledged herb supply, I make A LOT of pesto, including one of my favorites, a vegan mint-parsley with potatoes and green beans, and a basil-parsley version, since my parsley has decided to become a tree and I don’t know how to use it all before flowering.

Basic Parsley-Basil Pesto

1 cup packed Italian parsley (flat-leafed)
1 cup packed basil
3/4 cup Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup pine nuts or walnuts, toasted
1/4 cup olive oil (1/2 is more standard, but I like it less oily)
3 cloves garlic

Throw ‘em all into a food processor and process until smooth. Toss in pasta, add tomatoes, or spread on French bread with tomatoes, balsamic vinegar and mozzarella cheese. Now I just need to tap into those Italian roots and start making my own pasta…

I’m bordering on being obsessed with my fire escape garden now that the seedlings are becoming full-fledged plants. As the resident green thumb for Brooklyn Based (well, I’m calling myself that anyway), I got to investigate a kind of new “victory garden” in the form of artist Leah Gauthier’s Sharecropper, a summer-long public-art-meets-farming project here in New York. Seventeen gardens across all five boroughs–fire escape, rooftop, windowsill, etc.–will each get one crop and with the help of volunteer gardeners, will become a piecemeal urban farm come harvest time. Tastings, discussions, soup kitchen donating and other corresponding events will be sprouting up all summer. Oh! And you should read my Brooklyn Based on Sharecropper and another endeavor Gauthier’s involved in called Windows Brooklyn.

When I was working on the above, I got inspired to cook something with my garden’s herbs, which I’m having more luck with than any other year in New York. Must be that Holland Tunnel traffic off in the distance! Rarely do I get inspired to make those salads that combine potatoes, macaroni, etc. with a soppy mixture of mayo and who knows what, but looking at my furry dill and billowy parsley turned on a light bulb–> it’s potato salad recipe invention time! Don’t these salads tend to taste really bland to you? Even if they aren’t a soppy mess, it seems like they never have enough flavor. I set out to to make an overwhelmingly tangy and herby one and I’m pretty happy with the results:

Not-a-soppy-flavorless-mess Potato Salad

Ingredients

3 medium red potatoes
1/2 cup light mayo
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp spicy brown mustard (I used Whole Foods German mustard)
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
2 tsp vegetable oil
salt and pepper
2 scallions, roughly chopped
2 tbsp dill, finely chopped
2 tbsp parsley, finely chopped
1 tbsp tarragon, finely chopped

1. Cover the potatoes with water in a pot, bring to a boil and cook until soft, or about 20 minutes.
2. Drain water and run cold water over the potatoes in a colander until cool. Cut into 1-inch cubes and set aside.
3. In large bowl, combine mayo, lemon juice, mustards, vinegar and oil.
4. Add salt, pepper and all herbs, and mix until well-blended.
5. Add the potatoes and mix. Done!

-I highly recommend baking the above, a honey almond cake with lemon zest, a recipe I found in Vegetarian Times. Can you tell I’m still going through a beekeeping-honey-obsessed phase since writing this Brooklyn Based? Well, I am! After a 24-hour headache, this was my way of self-medicating: “My head is KILLING me–I shall bake a cake!” Perhaps I’ll make this for the Big Bee Bash BBQ coming up…

-making my own Fire Escape of Dreams next door to the Ghostbusters firehouse (I hope I don’t get in trouble). Planting this garden also achieved what I consider very important for feeling a sense of belonging to a neighborhood: befriending the people at the hardware store. The smell of hardware stores alone gives me a sense of comfort, so much so that I’m always looking for excuses to buy eye screws and such. And one of the employees recognized me on the street the other day! Mission accomplished.

-sewing capes for Only Make Believe, a non-profit that puts on interactive theatre performances and shows at hospitals for kids. My logic went something like this: Sometimes I’m jaded with internet jobs and their disjointed-from-reality nature–I should volunteer as a Cape Crusader at Only Make Believe, i.e. sew capes. I even made a cape for Safety Cone, lest he feel left out of the fabric fun. I’ve been sewing so many capes that I actually wake up sore from foot-pedal-cramp. Haha.

-I participated in Tofu Takedown, did not win, but experienced my first food competition–I like it! I considered doing Cupcake Cookoff the following day, even making these Burnt-Butter Brown-Sugar Cupcakes for it, but decided to eat ‘em instead…and bring some to “the office,” where my motivation for going there is heavily influenced by a desire to be Mother Hen. It’s a win-win for them, when you think about it. “I like going to the office because I get to bring you all cupcakes.” Hmm.