Recipe #4: Little Zeno’s Pizza

I may look more like my Polish half, but I definitely get my taste buds from the Italian side (not to mention my taste for wine—or could that be from my Irish blood?). I absolutely love, love, love Italian food and have a special affinity for pizza in particular.

My relationship with pizza goes way back—back to before I was born and my dad, the best pizza chef I know, had dreams of opening up his own pizza shop to be called Zeno’s (you know, since Dzenawagis’ doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue). Although he went as far as purchasing the equipment and acquiring the recipes, apparently it wasn’t meant to be because things fell through at the last minute (on two separate occasions) when a term in the purchase and sales agreement wasn’t agreed to. This didn’t stop him from making pizza for the family though, and it certainly didn’t stop me from thinking he was still the best pizza chef in town—Zeno’s or no Zeno’s.

Pizza also served as a sort of special occasion indicator in my family. The arrival of the Papa Gino’s deliveryman signified the start of the weekend, a bunch of Christo’s pizzas at Grammy’s house was a telltale sign that a family party was underway, and a trip to Town Spa in Stoughton meant something even more special than both of the previous two events combined. So for me, pizza has always been a little more than just pizza, it’s a harbinger of happy memories.

So when my family came up last Sunday for a visit, is it any surprise that they suggested pizza as their meal of choice from Danne’s Kitchen? Since one of my clauses this month is that I try all new recipes, I decided to make a few pies with ingredients that I haven’t tried before. In addition to a few staples like pepper and onion and sliced tomato and garlic, here are a few new combos that were added to my pizza library:

Little Zeno’s Pizza 1: Red sauce, mozzarella, and sautéed sweet potato with globs of ricotta
Little Zeno’s Pizza 2: Red sauce, mozzarella, sautéed white potato with garlic, spinach, and onion.

Many pizzas were made and many Zeno’s were fed, and since I again failed to photograph the meal, I’ll leave you with this photo of two pizza loving Zeno’s.

Recipe #3: Rigatoni a la Norma

Although this recipe is pretty basic—it's essentially just rigatoni with sauteed eggplant and ricotta—it's totally delicious and a great way to add a little excitement to pasta night. I found this recipe in last October's issue of Runner's World (oh, marathon running dreams *sigh*).

Ingredients

Pomodoro sauce
1 medium eggplant, peeled, then cut into one-inch cubes Salt and pepper to taste
4 tablespoons flour
2 garlic cloves, crushed
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 pound rigatoni
6 tablespoons ricotta cheese

Directions

Boil a pot of salted water. Heat pomodoro in a saucepan. Sprinkle eggplant with salt. Place on paper towels to drain for 10 minutes, then dust with flour. In a saute pan on medium, saute one garlic clove in 1 1/2 tablespoons oil until golden. Add half the eggplant; saute until brown on the outside but tender inside. Place on paper towels to drain excess oil. Repeat with 1 1/2 tablespoons oil and remaining garlic and eggplant. In the same pan, saute onion in last tablespoon of oil until tender (seven minutes). Add to pomodoro sauce. Season with salt and pepper. Add pasta to boiling water. Two minutes before pasta is cooked, remove from water and add with the eggplant to the pomodoro sauce (with some pasta water if needed to keep the sauce liquid). Cook until pasta is tender. Divide into six servings. Top each with a tablespoon of ricotta.

Mangi!

Recipe #2: Donna H’s Blueberry Scones

Growing up, I was pretty convinced that I was born in the wrong decade. I took swing dancing lessons, wore wing tips and cardigans with my initials sewn on, knew every episode of I Love Lucy by heart, and spent my Friday nights watching old musicals I rented from the library. And yeah, I had a crush on Taylor Hanson like a lot of other girls, but Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley were the ones who I really swooned over.

When the movie Pleasantville came out my sophomore year of high school, I was obsessed. Could I please get sucked into a 1950’s sitcom where my closet was filled with poodle skirts and my boyfriend gave me his letter jacket? Truth be told though, the neighborhood that I grew up in shared a lot of similarities with the one in the movie. It was the kind of place where there were so many kids your age that you never had to worry about not having anyone to play with. One where the annual 4th of July cookout with cakes made out of strawberry stripes and blueberry stars was the big event of the year. And one where you could expect a crowd gathered around your new car when you drove it home from the lot. In other words—it was awesome.

Our Pleasantville neighborhood was also equipped with our very own domestic goddess, my best friend Sondra’s mom, Donna. Donna is an absolute master at all of her many crafts—cooking, baking, sewing, embroidering, you name it. And the best part is that she’s super generous, always making an extra loaf of English Muffin Bread for you, or mailing you a pair of hand knit mittens just because. So when I wanted a delicious scone recipe, there was really only one person to turn to.

A few days after my written request, I received a card from Donna containing a bunch of different recipes for scones. I’ve been sitting on them for a few weeks now, so I decided to dedicate Saturday morning to trying out the blueberry ones. I was a little nervous that they wouldn’t come out just right—scones have a very particular consistency—but low and behold they turned out great (not as great as Donna's, but I knew that was impossible). Now that I have confidence in my scone making abilities, I’m excited to try the other recipes that she sent and to make the amazing lemon ginger scones from my Flour Bakey cookbook. The recipe that I tried is a little lengthy (like this post turned out, whoops haha) so I didn’t post it, but let me know if you’d like me to pass it along.

Thanks Donna!

p.s. Yes, I know, I should be photographing these delicious things, coming this week!



A photo of Donna and I in Tortola last year

Recipe #1: Mixed Bean and Toasted Corn Tacos with Agave Nectar Margaritas

Last night I kicked off my month of cooking with my very dear friend Jocelyn, or as I like to call her, Joyce. Joyce and I go way back to 2002 when we were suite-mates (we preferred suite-mateys) in the dorms at MassArt. Not only did we live together and take all of the same classes, but we also studied abroad together in Florence, Italy the summer after our junior year.

Not surprisingly, that experience left us with a strong culinary bond (not to mention a deep love for anything involving truffles), and we’ve been making dinners together ever since. She’s one of my besties and one of my favorite dinner party companions, so it only made sense to start out this month’s challenge with her.

Now, on to what we made…

Even though Spring is only a few weeks away, it’s still pretty frigid in Boston so we were in the mood for something warm and crunchy. After looking through dozens of recipes, we decided on the Mixed Bean and Toasted Corn Tacos from my favorite cooking blog, Two Blue Lemons. And since it just so happened to be Thirsty Thursday (she’s my friend from college, I’m allowed to make these references), we decided to mix up these delicious Agave Nectar Margaritas as well. Both recipes were delicious, easy to make, and fulfilled the warm and crunchy requirement (well, not the cocktails, but they weren’t supposed to). While a taco isn’t branching too far from my list of staple meals, the bean mixture and toasted corn is a great addition to my usual fillings that I will definitely try again.

And for dessert? A new episode of the Jersey Shore. I think I’m really going to like this month…



Joyce and I enjoying some Pinot Grigio at our apartment in Florence

Viva La Dinner Party

I’ll start out by saying that this month is an open invitation to invite yourself over for dinner, seriously.

Because of its insular nature, winter has always been the perfect time of year to hunker down and clock in some serious time in the kitchen. After all, is there anything better than a warm, home-cooked meal on a snowy, winter day? Since I consider myself to be a pretty domestic gal too, you’d think that I would have been cooking up a storm all winter long, but I haven’t. I must have kept too busy sorting through all of my worldly possessions and drawing fruits and vegetables because I can probably count the times I made a home-cooked meal on one hand.

While I don’t have dreams of going to culinary school or working in the food industry again (if you can call putting out a complimentary cheese tray for passengers on a ferry, "the food industry"), I really do like cooking and I can never manage to do enough of it. This month I’m making up for lost time with Danne’s Kitchen, a month where I try out 3 new recipes a week and invite you over to join me, because really, what’s a delicious meal without someone to share it with? Plus, I’m ready to come out of my winter hibernation and hang out. I want March to be filled with good food and good friends.

Viva la dinner party! (and really, invite yourself over)

p.s. This one’s inspired by you Jess Powers. I’ve been salivating all winter long over here reading about all the wonderful food that you’ve been whipping up.

28 Days of Drawing

I can’t say that drawing month was as impactful as my last few lents have been, but I will say that it was pretty fun assigning myself miscellaneous art projects to complete. I did struggle (not surprisingly) with drawing for the sake of drawing though, and ended up creating practical applications: kitchen art, greeting cards and logos, instead of pursing purely artistic endeavors. I guess that’s what the last 10 years of graphic design has done to me, so I might as well just go with it instead of blame it for the destruction of my intrinsic creativity. I won’t get into that though…

A few observations from the month:

-I already draw way more than I realized I did, especially for work.

-As much as it was relaxing (drawing before bed was a great way to unwind), whenever I had expectations for the outcome it become more stressful than stress relieving. I think this can be true for a lot of things in life, “He who has no expectations will never be disappointed”, or however the saying goes…

-I have an embarrassingly short attention span because I actually felt proud when I would get through even half an hour of uninterrupted creative time. Can I blame this on Facebook and the Jersey Shore?

-Apparently my drawing career peaked in high school because there has been little to no improvement since then. Cool. Sean, I’m handing the artistic torch to you bro, make us proudawagis.

While I didn’t get around to the 12MOL logo and my happy pappy roommate chart (again with the expectations and disappointment, or is that just Catholic guilt making another appearance?), it’s okay; it was a fun month regardless of what I accomplished. And since my self-portrait was a bit of a bust as well, I figured that I could at least leave you with a happy pappy self-portrait, circa 2011.

And now on to March: Danne’s Kitchen, which I’ll write more about tomorrow.

My Very Own Museum of Bad Art

Since the self-portrait that I’ve been working on won’t be finished for a few more days, I thought it would be fun/funny/pretty embarrassing actually, to show a few of my self-portraits from high school and college. Yep, I’m really posting these on the internet, oh wow...

First up is this gem that I did junior year of high school. It’s actually a somewhat decent drawing and bears a slight resemblance to me, but really? After two weeks straight of staring into a mirror in Mrs. Cazealult’s classroom this is the best that I could do?



Next up is this one that I did in my painting class at 4C’s. I laughed out loud when I saw it again for the first time the other day. While I think it actually kind of looks like me, what’s with the color palette? I really hope that was a requirement of the assignment…



And then there’s this thing. I forget which class I did this for at MassArt, probably Typography 1, but here it is, Danne made out of type. It is what it is I suppose. Hey, at least I got the size of my mouth right.



A shout out to my brother Sean who sorted through piles of bad Danne art in my parents basement to pull these out and photograph them. Sadly, I was informed by him this afternoon that my Roy Lichtenstein inspired self-portrait drawn with sharpies on a kitchen tile is nowhere to be found.

A moment of silence…

Moving on. Coming sometime this weekend is my 2011 self-portrait, but don't expect to see some sort of artistic progression. So far it's looking like 10 years and a BFA haven't improved my ability to capture a likeness. I've still got a few days though, we'll see if I can make it look like it's fresh from one of those sweet portrait kiosks at the mall.

Handmade Cards

When you’re artistically inclined, it’s sort of an unspoken expectation that you make your cards instead of buy them. I could tell my parents were a little bummed the first year that they received a store bought card from me instead of one of my wonky (but lovable) handmade ones. While I definitely prefer making them when I can, sometimes there just isn’t enough time and I have to cheat and hit up Paper Source (hey, at least they look kind of handmade). Not this month though!

Since it’s drawing month, I’ve been making cards for all kinds of occasions: thank you, Valentines Day, congratulations, going away, you name it. It’s been really fun to make them and I hope they've been just as fun to receive.

I Draw Pictures All Day

There seems to be an underlying assumption held by those who aren’t in the creative field that as a graphic designer, your job is essentially to draw pictures all day. This has become such a funny misconception that Veer even made these T-Shirts. While it’s obviously not true most of the time, there are definitely some days—those magical days—when drawing is actually part of the job description, and you’re given the green light to spend most of your day sketching out ideas.

In college, I was taught a design process that encouraged me to develop my concepts and sketch them out on paper before bringing anything into the computer. While I’ve tried to hold true to this practice in the working world, sometimes there just isn’t enough time to sketch things out the old fashioned way. In the last year or so, I’ve made a conscious effort to make time for hand sketching in my design process and not only has it made my sketchbook way more exciting to look at, but it’s improved my work as well.

Below are a few pages of sketches for a project that I’m working on at Jeff Kennedy Associates for some exhibit signage. Although I can get cranky about work just like anyone else, I have to remind myself that a lot of the time I do get paid to draw pictures all day—and that’s pretty awesome.

The Georgia O'Keefe of Produce

Just how Georgia O’Keefe exclusively painted flowers, for whatever reason (my vegetarianism, my yearning for farmers market season…), I’ve been obsessed with drawing fruits and veggies all week. Luckily, I didn’t throw away my collection of decorative scrap paper last month because I’ve created this funny library of produce from it:



Next up on my drawing agenda: A “Happy Pappy” (who remembers this from high school?) illustration of all of my roommates (past and present) and my first self-portrait in a very long time…

and p.s. I just noticed that this is my 100th post, horray 12 Months of Lent!