Handmade Book: The Family Cookbook

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cookbook, cooking, craft, family history, food, German cooking, handmade book, illustration, lifestyle, traditional german cooking

My mom is a great cook. A few years ago, I thought it was high time to compile a cookbook of family recipes, which would of course include hers, as well as those handed down from her own family, and my father’s mother, not to mention family friends.

Below is the cover, with a photo of my mom skiing at age 28, and my drawing of her recipe box.

Bringing everything together became a labor of love, with my mother gathering and reviewing every recipe and double checking the instructions. The cookbook is divided into sections with family photographs and scans of some of the original handwritten recipes.

Here are some of the divider pages, with photos of us when we were young (I have an older brother and a younger sister) and my parents were in their thirties.

On the back of each divider page is a list of the recipes in that section. The photo below is of my grandparents in the 1930s. Looks like my grandmother was flapper!

Since my parents are German and most of their friends are European, we ended up with recipes from Germany (specifically Bavaria), Bosnia, Croatia and the Czech Republic. This meant heavy use of meat and enough desserts to fill a small truck. Also making an appearance are random additions, like stir fries, pasta and the spirit of Julia Child.

I thought it would be fun to illustrate and create a hand-written title for each recipe. The illustrations are drawn with black ink and colored pencils, then scanned and pulled into the page layout. The cookbook starts with special holiday menus.

Then it breaks into sections and individual recipes. Soups and salads…

Main courses…

Veggies…

And everyone’s favorite course, dessert! Look at that list of recipes! Everyone had a contribution for this section. Yes, that’s me reaching for my chocolate bunny on Easter morning in my fashionable robe.

After I scanned all of the art, I composed the book and printed out four copies, then had them bound at my copy shop. This became a Christmas gift for my mom, brother and sister.

A few questions for my mom:

Which recipes are your favorites? Holiday meals with either roast duck or roast goose.

Do you enjoy cooking? What do you like about it? Yes, but not every day. I like experimenting and being creative.

What do you like to eat the most? And the least? I like pasta, salad, fish, venison, crepes, spatzle, stir fries, paprika and curry chicken, and zwetschgen kuchen [an open tart made with pate brisee dough and Italian plums]. I don’t like raw shellfish, rich sauces or fatty red meat.

How did you learn to cook? Did you help your mother? No, I never helped my mother, since she made very simple dinners of pork roast or chicken, nothing fancy. I learned by buying cookbooks, and watching the Galloping Gourmet and Julia Child on tv. But mostly it was by traveling and eating new foods, being curious and recreating those meals with the help of cookbooks. Also, I found Julia Child’s cookbook at a rummage sale for $1, and starting trying her recipes.

Are there any foods that you ate as a child in Germany that are not available today in the U.S. but wish you could eat again? Yes! Real Weisswurst [a traditional Bavarian sausage made with finely minced veal and fresh pork bacon, flavored with parsley, lemon, mace, onions, ginger and cardamom], big Bretzen [giant soft pretzels from Munich], boleto mushroom soup and Leberkase [Leberkase means “liver cheese” although it contains neither. It’s a finely ground mix of corned beef, pork, bacon and onions that’s baked in a loaf until it has a crunchy brown crust].

What advice would you give someone who wants to learn how to cook well? Be curious! Take classes, buy cookbooks, and watch DVDs or cooking shows.

Thanks, Mom! Here’s a photo of us together on Mother’s Day this year. Whenever I’m cooking and not sure about something, I ask myself, WWMD? What Would Mom Do? It always helps.

Cruising on Down the East River

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diana camera, east river, iphoneography, new york city, photography, pinhole, toy camera

Manhattan is bound by the Hudson River to the west, the Harlem River to the north and the East River to the east. The East River, which separates the Bronx and Manhattan from Long Island, is actually a tidal strait that flows from Long Island Sound into the New York Harbor, which is obvious when you notice the high tide marks on the surrounding shores.

That may be the geographic reality, but as far as I can tell, the East River is simply a wide, aqueous road. It’s almost always busy, a mix of gigantic barges nosed along by colorful tugboats, pleasure cruisers zooming by, sailboats silently gliding next to  commuter ferries churning to their next stop, party boats with booming soundtracks, waving tourists on tour boats, police cruisers in their blue stripes and the occasional brave Jetskier.

Pedestrian paths run almost the entire circumference of Manhattan, perfect for biking along the river on a warm summer morning. Here’s a little tour in pinhole, Diana and Instagram photos.

The remains of this abandoned pier are at about 120th Street. Across the river at the right edge of the photo is a tent from Cirque du Soleil, which sometimes sets up camp on Randalls Island.

This beautiful little bridge at 103rd Street, the Wards Island Bridge, is a pedestrian and bike bridge that leads over to, surprise! Wards Island and Randalls Island. It’s painted a beautiful shade of turquoise. The center portion between the supports lifts up when river traffic needs to pass through and when the island closes for the night.

This pretty spot is next to Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence, although he doesn’t actually live here. It’s in Carl Schurz Park, which has a beautiful promenade. In the distance on the far right is the ramp to the Triborough Bridge, now renamed the RFK bridge, but nobody calls it that. It’s still the Triborough to the masses.

Here’s a bit of river traffic, a sturdy little tugboat. This is shot from the promenade at 82nd Street. You can see the Queensboro Bridge coming into the photo on the right. These buildings are on Roosevelt Island, a long, skinny sliver of land which once housed both grazing sheep and a smallpox hospital, which survives as a ruin on the southern end of the island.

This is a pinhole shot looking north from the pedestrian walkway that crosses the East River Drive at 78th Street. The long exposure resulted in something you never see: a carless New York. Of course, the pedestrians and boats disappeared as well.

Here we are looking south from a high terrace on 72nd Street. The river is a little sliver on the left.

The Queensboro Bridge! What a beauty. I love this bridge. It’s the one you see in the movie Annie Hall, in the scene where Alvy and Annie sit on a bench and talk until sunrise. It’s also known as the 59th Street Bridge. Marathon runners come streaming over this bridge into Manhattan every November.

That was a pinhole. Here’s a Diana photo. I love the way the bridge hovers over Roosevelt Island like a protective shield.

This shot of the Queensboro was from a client’s bedroom window. Boy, would I love to wake up to this! Unfortunately, someone recently decided to paint the bridge beige. It looked more macho in its former light blueish-grey.

And we’ll finish with the famous Brooklyn Bridge. Instead of the classic head-on shot, I went down to the promenade and shot from below. Just behind is the Manhattan Bridge. There are 10 bridges that span the East River, so it looks like I have a bit more work to do!

Just Another Wimpy Vegetarian

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craft, craft tutorial, food, graphic design, lifestyle, t-shirt design, t-shirt how-to, vegan, vegetarian

I’ve been a vegetarian for almost three years and it’s great, I love it. But some people seem to think, despite an appetite that can decimate a farmer’s market, that I’m going to waste away. Instead of constantly pointing out that all plants have protein, some more than meat (lentils, anyone?), I thought I’d make a few t-shirts and carry the message out into the world.

What better ambassadors than the biggest, strongest, fiercest vegetarians around?

Ms. Rhino was first. I figured the easiest way to do it, since I don’t have silkscreen equipment, was by iron-on transfer from my ink-jet printer. Easy peasy! Here’s the process.

I designed the image and output it onto the transfer paper. The rhino drawing is from a book of 19th Century engravings, which are copyright free. The design was inspired by Barbara Kruger.

I let the paper dry for 30 minutes, then trimmed out the image. The default background color of the transfer is white. I defined the outline of the drawing with an indelible black sharpie marker.

As a New Yorker, of course I’m transferring onto a black t-shirt. A pack of 5 iron-on transfer sheets for dark-colored textiles is $13.50 from Dick Blick.

Next, I peeled off the adhesive backing, placed the cut out image on the shirt, covered it  with the supplied parchment paper, ironed for three or four minutes without steam, and waa-la! A new shirt to wear.

I wasn’t happy with the legibility of my message, so when it was Ms. Elephant’s turn, I switched the typeface to black and the shirt to gray.

I wore the Elephant shirt for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and it was a hit! At a vegetable stand at the side of the road where we were choosing our wildly overpriced heirloom tomatoes, the young girl at the cash register told me she was a vegetarian, too. Her younger brother looked at my shirt, considered it carefully, looked at me and told me soberly, “You don’t look wimpy to me.”

Up next: bison, hippos or maybe a giraffe. I’m still undecided about the color, though. What do you think, black t-shirt or grey?

Lions at Large

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black and white, cityscape, diana camera, lions, new york city, photography, plastic camera, sculpture, symbolism lions, toy camera

New York City is crammed with people. If you take an early morning or late evening stroll, it will become obvious that it’s also chock full of dogs. But what you may not realize is that the city is teeming with lions.

They stand guard above…

and glower below.

They meow in the morning…

contemplate lunch…

and snarl in the evening.

Some want to play…

while others won’t give you the time of day.

All of these lions made me wonder why, of all animals, are lions so popular?

It’s because everyone loves lions! Lions first showed up in the Paleolithic cave paintings of Lascaux, France, and they never left. They’ve appeared in sculpture and statuary since the origin of civilization, are found in cultures across Europe, Africa and Asia and are thought of everywhere as the King of Beasts. They symbolize bravery, valor, strength and loyalty. They’re the epitome of power, both primal and royal.

Have you noticed that the Sphinx in Egypt has a lioness’s body? There are lions at the entrances to cities and sacred sites, in palaces, temples and tombs, in the Bible, on flags and coats of arms. They appear as gods, on currency, as symbols of ancient dynasties, in movies, literature and myth.

Lions also symbolize guardianship and protection, which explains why they’re found on many doorsteps. With so much work to do, it’s no surprise that they’re with us still. Next time you’re wandering the streets, look around… lions abound!

All photos shot on Diana cameras, printed on warm tone Ilford paper.

August’s Portrait: On the Job

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black and whtie, new york city, photography, pinhole, pinhole camera, portrait

This is the only successful pinhole portrait I’ve ever taken. It’s a photo of me with two of my painting assistants, Sanja and Alana, as we sat out on the sidewalk one day eating our lunch. We were sitting next to the apartment building that we were working in, surrounded by street construction equipment and barricades.

This photo is an example of how context changes everything. On the surface, this is a straightforward picture of three women, sitting outside on a sunny day, playing with a pinhole camera. But there’s more to the story. The photo was shot on September 18, 2001. One week earlier, the twin towers fell as we worked here together. We watched the unthinkable unfold on a television set in the apartment before we swiftly packed up and went our separate ways. Three days later, we reconvened and continued the job.

Look at the photo again. Does it seem any different now? Maybe yes, maybe no. For me, that pinhole photo, Sanja, Alana and that apartment are forever tied to 9/11. Looking at the photo today, I notice how tightly we’re sitting together.

This photo reminds me that when I look at art and say to myself, “That’s not very interesting,” I’m not serving myself or the art well. It’s almost always worthwhile to have the curiosity and patience to learn more about what I’m looking at, to find out if there’s a story behind the image and to try to understand what the artist is saying. Sometimes it makes no difference at all. At other times, it makes all the difference in the world.

Hooked on Featherweights

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art, craft, illustration, ink drawing, paperweight, pebbles

When I work with decorative papers, the wind is my enemy. One moment, papers are neatly stacked in carefully sorted piles and a single gust later, chaos! Enter the paperweight. Or as I like to call them, featherweights.

Some might say that I make paperweights to have an excuse to wander on the beach in search of the perfect stone, and that’s certainly true. But paperweights also allow me to indulge in an ongoing fascination, drawing feathers.

After experimenting with different drawing tools, I settled on an old-fashioned metal-nibbed dipping pen, since it makes hairline marks and satisfying scratching sounds when it drags against the stone. Acrylic ink is perfect: if I make a mistake, I plop the stone into my water jar and the ink slides off, but if I’m happy with the outcome, I let it dry and the ink becomes indelible.

The quest soon became, just how thin can a line get, and how close together can the lines be while remaining legible? The stones are small, most less than two inches/5 cm across, so it’s a challenge.

I like the curvy feathers best. They’re all drawn freehand, no sketching or planning first. Each feather gradually finds its form. They take only a few minutes to draw.

Featherweights like to hang out together in small flocks.

Sometimes the Feather Muse will be off taking a snooze, so I’ll draw something other than feathers. I have a bit of a soft spot for beetles.

But at the end of the day, the visual pun of drawing a light, airy feather on a smooth, solid stone usually wins out.

Marbling on the Right Side of the Brain

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craft, decorative painting, faux finish, faux marble, interior design, marble, painted marble, trompe l'oeil

This marbling job was quick and fun. This beautiful fireplace surround was cut from an unusual black and grey stone with irregular stripes and blobs. Unfortunately, the slab that lay on top had been cut from a completely different stone. The designer asked me to paint the top to match the other marble.

First, the offending stone was sanded, primed and base coated in a solid gray.

Using acrylic glaze, plastic wrap and a 2-inch wide brush, I created patterns with the same dimension and flow as the original stone. The plastic wrap was laid onto a wash of color, then pulled off quickly, creating random patterns with crisp edges, a look that can’t be created easily or quickly with a brush. Then I went back in with a small brush for detail work.

The “after” photos are a bit confusing because the fireplace backs up against a mirrored wall that’s partially covered in paper, so you’re seeing both the newly painted surface and its reflection.

To tie the stone together, I painted the top to look as if the pattern below was a natural extension of the pattern above. It was sealed with three coats of water-based varnish.

When I’m painting marble and other complex finishes, it helps to play music or the radio. It’s always easier to paint or create if I’m listening to something. But why is that?

The theory is that our left brain is verbal and rational, thinking serially and in language; our right brain is non-verbal and intuitive, thinking in patterns and pictures. I’ve discovered that when I give my language-loving left brain something to do by listening to music, my visual-loving right brain is free to go along its merry way, fluidly solving creative puzzles with agility, falling into that blissful state of flow where time loses all meaning and the work is effortless. If I’ve given my left brain something to do, it doesn’t come knocking, trying to butt in and boss things around. Many artists work with music playing, and that’s one reason why.

I learned this a long time ago from the classic instruction book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. If you’re someone who says, “I can’t draw at all,” this book will prove you wrong. It’s your left brain that’s sneering, “you’re no good at this.” Your right brain has something else to say, and if you can get your left brain out of the way, amazing things happen. After all, every one of us drew as a child, without inhibition. We can learn how to draw well at any age, we just have to send our bullying left brain off on an errand for a little while and let our right brain run around gleefully by itself.

To complete the marble story, here’s what the fireplace looked like after all of that blue tape was pulled off, the dust swept away, the mirror polished and the furniture installed. Such a difference!

Pinhole Portfolio: The Lady Vanishes

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black and white, central park, landscape, new york city, photography, pinhole, pinhole camera

I love pinhole photography because of the complete lack of technical gadgetry. I’m out shooting with a cardboard box, how much simpler can it get? When I started, I wanted to understand light, to be able to take a good look around, think about the level of sun, cloud, haze and reflection, and figure out the exposure time without using a light meter or other tools.

The learning curve was steep. Eventually I got the hang of it, but I also discovered that portions of the scene in front of me would vanish due to overexposure, resulting in a photo of a landscape that didn’t actually exist. I liked that!

Here’s what I mean. All of these photos were shot in Central Park, which of course is surrounded by buildings. This is the Lake, looking toward the skyscrapers beyond Central Park South. Really? It looks like upstate New York to me.

Here’s the Lake again, shooting north from the opposite shore. Such serenity! Look, a building has appeared… but only as a reflection.

Here’s a favorite, shot on top of Umpire Rock after a heavy rain. The buildings of Central Park South seem to have jumped into the puddle.

This photo is shot in the Ramble, one of the Park’s thickly wooded areas, but you wouldn’t think so, from these sparse tree trunks. All of the trees in the background disappeared. That’s the Gill, an artificial stream that feeds the Lake, frozen during the winter.

This next one is completely blasted out, and has taken everything with it — the lake, the opposite shore, the buildings — leaving this lone tree in its wake.

And to finish, the photo that showed me this phenomenon in the first place. We’re on the Lake again, and only one of the tall residential buildings on Central Park West has appeared, with the illustrious towered buildings surviving as mere reflections.