Ingredients:

• 3 tsp Canola Oil
• 1/2 Lb Sliced Bacon
• 1 cup small diced Leeks
• 1 cup small diced Fennel
• 1/2 cup Diced Carrots
• 1/2 cup Small Diced Celery
• 2 Tbsp Thinly Sliced Garlic
• 2 Tbsp Minced Ginger
• 1 cup sliced Shiitake Mushroooms
• 1/2 cup White Wine
• 1/2 cup Sambuca
• 1 tsp Toasted Caraway Seed
• 1 tsp Toasted Coriander
• 1 tsp Chile Flakes
• 2 qts Chicken Stock
• 2 cup Cooked White Beans
• 1/2 cup Chopped Parsley
• 1 tbsp minced Tarragon
• 1 tsp Star Anise
• Salt & Pepper

Directions

1. Start with a large stock pot
2. Add Canola Oil and Bacon to render out all fat
3. Add all vegetables and cook until translucent
4. Deglaze pan with white wine and Sambuca
5. Add Chicken stock and cooked white beans
6. Simmer for 30 minutes
7. Add all herbs and final seasonings

About Cypress Grille

Cypress Grille

www.cypressgrilleboerne.com

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This week Chef Mark Arriola from SoGo demoed a Red Beet and Orange Salad.
(Note: I took some liberty in re-wording some of the steps or order)

From the recipe card:

“Every now and again, I go through these phases where I just fall in love with an ingredient and it seems to just show up all over my menus. Lately it has been beets, red beets to be exact.  Beets have the highest sugar content of all vegetables, but remain low in calories; one cup of beets has only 74 calories.  Flavor is sweet with a slightly earthy flavor, and when cooked has a great vfelvety texture.   Although beets are available all year long, we are just coming into the best time of the year for them.  These young beets are very tender, and to me always seem a bit sweeter.  The leaves are also edible and have a flavor similar to Swiss Chard which is a slightly better green.  I like to saute the greens with a bit of olive oil, a pinch of garlic, splace of white wine, salt and pepper.  Beets are a good source for potassium, vitamin C and a dietary fiber.  Studies have shown that beets contain nutrients that can be helpful in protection of heat disease and certain cancers, especially colon cancer.”

Ingredients

• 6 Red Beets, small to medium size
• 1/2 Red Onion, julienned
  You can view a video on how to julienne an onion at FreeCulinarySchool.com
• 1 Navel Orange, segmented
  This is a good video on how to segment an orange on Metacafe.
• 2 tbl Italian Parsley, chopped
• 2 tbl Red Wine Vinegar
• 6 tbl Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Sea Salt and Fresh Ground Pepper (as needed)

1. Preheat the oven to 400º.
2. Wash the beets and pat dry.
3. Wrap in a double layer of oil and roast for approximately 45 minutes to an hour.  The beets should be soft when squeezed.
4. Unwrap and let cool until it can be handled safetly by hand.
5. While still warm, peel the beets by rubbing the skin off.
6. Dice ( or slice or cut in to wedges ) the beets
7. Combine the beets with all of the ingredients except for the orange segments in a stainless steel bowl.
8. Place in a serving dish with orange segments and server chilled.
9. Optional:  Top with Bleu Cheese, Goat Cheese, Walnuts or Pecans.

At the cooking demo, the walnuts used were candied with a bit of spice.  While Chef Mark did not have a recipe, he did give a quick run down of how the make the candied walnuts.

These measurements are not exact and you will have to play with the proportions to get it just right.

In short the recipe is as follows

Ingredients

• Equal parts sugar and water
• Walnuts
• Cayenne powder
• Chili powder

1. In a sauce pot, dissolve the sugar completely in to the water.
2. Sprinkle in the cayenne and chili powder
3. Add in the walnuts and stir consistently for ~10-15 minutes.
4. Strain walnuts
5. Bake walnuts for 10-15 minutes in oven. (I didn’t catch at what temperature, but I am going to start with 350º)

I should have taken pictures of the final product at the farmers market and in the future I will try to remember that.  Once I get through assembling the salad, I will put up some pictures.

I will also update the proportions used in the candied walnuts.

-Alex

That gave me the idea to post them here so I can get rid of all the pieces of paper that I’ve got laying around.

All that being said, this first one is _not_ of the recipes I picked up at the Farmers Market.  It’s actually one that Starbucks gave out in one of their stores.

Banana Walnut Bread

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 1 1/8 cup sugar
• 1/c vegetable oil
• 2 Tbsp buttermilk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 ripe medium-large bananas (mashed)
• Chopped walnuts

1. Pre-heat the oven to 325°
2. Grease a 9×5x3 loaf pan and dust with flour.
3. Blend together the flour, baking soda and salt and set aside.
4. Mix together the egg, sugar, and vegetable oil until combined.
5. Add the flour mixture, and when blended, add the buttermilk, vanilla and mashed bananas and mix until combined.
6. Fold in 1/2 cup chopped walnuts and pour batter into prepared loaf pan.
7. Top batter with remaining 1/3 cup chopped walnuts.
8. Bake for 45 to 60 minutes unilt a toothpick inserted in toe center comes out clean.
9. Cool for 10 minutes on  wire rack before removing from pan

Banana Bread

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup butter
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2 1/3 cups mashed over ripe bananas

1. Preheat oven 350°.
2. Lightly grease 9×5 loaf pan.
3. Combine flour, baking soda, salt.
4. In a separate bowl, cream together butter and brown sugar.
5. Stir in eggs and mashed bananas until well blended.
6. Stir banana mixture in to flour.
7. Bake in preheated oven for 60 – 65 minutes.

Spending the day looking at clothes reminded me that I had not updated this damn thing in forever.

The other projects that I’ve got my hand in are taking up most of that time.

Anywho, lets keep this similar to before.

Benny Gold

I’ve been liking what they have been putting out recently.  While some of their shirts are simply logo shirts,  the items that are not are rocking.

From socks, to beanies, to die cut scout belts the accessories they are adding to the line make this brand stand out.

Really, that’s all I got.  Like I said, they can’t all be gold.

-alex

Talking to people at work it seems to be that everybody is getting this feeling of busy-ness in the air.

Too many things are going on and there are too many people trying to push those things along.

Just really quick, some things that have been keeping me up.

Work ( the rack is every busy)
SpringBot Design http://www.springbotdesign.com
Computers Get Me Psyched http://www.computersgetmepsyched.com

A fewSpringbot Design client have been keeping me busy, so that is good.

More to come.  I think the up coming weekend is going to be a bit of a shut in.

-Alex

I got to take a look at the exclusive Metropark and Two in The Shirt collab. . . and damn!  I got to see the girls edition.

Also just notced that Metropark seems to have picked up the new season  (or at least some of it ) for Two In the Shirt.

A few of my favorites follow.

Attraction Tee

Poker Face

That’s all I got for now.  Now only if I could get paid to do this.

word to your mother.
alex

Enjoy.

Tees / Shirts

Two in the Shirt / Smoking Mirrors Tee

Fiberops / Misawrench Tee

Plain Jane

Kicks

In this heat, this is my favorite shoe right now.  Bold and light weight.  The mesh toe box is my favorite part of this shoe, and the tri-color sole is a nice touch.

Caps

I like a good cap, but the majority of most lines use the cap pieces as a little billboard simply pasting their logo across it.  One of these caps no doubt is a logo cap, but done in a good way.  The second just carries a good message.

Tenga x Bloc 28 by Disney

Blake Griffin x NEW ERA

Best part of this cap?  Stitched underneath the visor, it reads “Success is when talent meets hard work”.  This is a custom design for basketball player Blake Griffin.

Links.

KRonikle – http://kronikle.kidrobot.com

That’s all I got.  Let’s see if I can get this back to being a bit more frequent.

peace.

-alex

Tees

Exploding Elephant by Sket One for Kidrobot

Ouch by Frank Kozik for Kidrobot

This is exciting because it hints at the new series 4 labbits coming out.

Obey – Have a Bitchin’ Summer

It’s a good thing Obey puts out so many designs, there is bound to be a gem under all those Andre faces.

LRG

The Kelly Tee

It was only a matter of time. Two in the  Shirt has slapped Kelly Karloff on a tee. Check out Metro Park for a exclusive color way.  Don’t know who Kelly is? Check her at Wrockette. Or you might know here from Karmaloop.com.

Update: Metropark had an exclusive color-way that was on-line when I first published this post, but has since seemed to disappear.  Oh well.

That’s all I got for now.

peace.

-alex

That being said, I’ve got a few ideas both computer and sans-computer related in the works and a few days off to get them going.

Tees

I’ve got to say that I’ve been let down recently by my searches for tees lately.  Also the amount of designs Obey puts out is crazy. Too bad none of them are really eye catching.

This one from Another Enemy did catch my eye.  I don’t know what it has been about girls on tees lately that has me buying them.

Toys

On their forum, Kidrobot committed to updating us every two weeks on upcoming releases.  SGT. ROBOT is the newest incarnation of their logo boy. This is set to be releases on June 4th with 600 in each color.

In the department of OH HELL YEAH!

On May 14th, Kidrobot is going to release the list for their ( seemingly annual ) scavenger hunt. I’ve entered the last two years. The first, everybody got at least something for trying. The second year, wasn’t as fun. This year, it’s all photos!

Extra Reading

A nice bit on the orgin of Comic Sans
http://www.veronicabelmont.com/2009/05/comic-sans-had-noble-beginnings/

Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit – http://insecure.org/stf/smashstack.html
This was required reading while in school. Now it’s just for fun.

Preview

This is something that I’ve been slowly been working on. I finally got a first round of paint so I’m excited at how it’s turning out.

So that is all for now. I’m summing this one up so I can make a 4 hour drive back home.

peace.
-alex

So that being said, I bring together another round of a few tees, some music, and maybe even some videos that kept me entertained this week.

Tees

Because you can’t be a winner every day.

You know you wish you could wear this shirt.

This is one of those that got added to the collection this past weekend.

Music

Inkwell, I feel in love with the second album “These Stars are Monsters” and have waited 3 years for this 3rd album.  Rivers of Blood and Sadness delivers on all levels.  It is one of those albums I can just put on and listen all the way through.

I have been obsessed with the lead singers voice since Metric since I heard her earlier last week on NPR’s All Songs Considered. Check out the video to one of their songs in the videos section.

Videos

That is all I got. Adult Swim has turned in to Cartoon Network, I think it is time to go to bead.

peace.
-alex