Pinhole Camera Fun

I recently rediscovered these pinhole photographs that I did back in 2003 or 2004, I think. I was taking a class called Black and White Printing Lab with Tom Barkman. I saw Tom recently at the opening of the Annual Juried Exhibit of student photography at Webster University. I was one of the jurors, so it was extra fun to see my former instruct as a real life photography instructor myself.

Anyway, I’ve been doing some work with that pinhole camera in the recent past, and will be posting the results soon.

My Interview with Katie Sheridan

Katie Sheridan, a fellow St. Louis artist and blogger, is doing a series of interviews with local artists, including yours truly! Her blog is called Sheridan in the City. Here’s a link: http://sheridaninthecity.blogspot.com/2012/02/interview-erica-popp.html. I also recommend reading the stories under “Confessions of a Serial Dater.”

One of my prints featured on Katie’s blog.

Art Saint Louis – two more weeks!

You have two more weeks to view “Memory” at Art Saint Louis. I hope you have a chance to get out there. February 23 is the last day of the exhibit.

It’s been such an honor to be exhibiting with such talented artists in such a beautiful gallery. The photo below shows me and Samora installing our pieces. I’m hoping to find more opportunities for installation work, and for incorporating my photography into sculptural pieces. I’ll keep you posted.

Photo credit: Robin Hirsch

My Artwork in the Next Art St. Louis Exhibition

I usually share recipes with you, but today I want to share that I’ll have a piece of artwork in the Art St. Louis gallery in January. The opening reception is on Saturday, January 21, from 6-8pm. I hope to see you there!

Here’s a link to read more: http://artstlouis.org/index.php/exhibition-schedule/up-next-in-the-gallery

Best Pumpkin Muffins Ever

I promised you this recipe, and now here it is. So, I thought I had a pretty good pumpkin muffin recipe, but this one takes the cake. I’ve tweaked it, and these were the best pumpkin muffins I’ve ever eaten. This recipe makes about 2 dozen muffins.

Ingredients:

1 can (15 oz) pumpkin puree
3 and 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup flax seed meal
3 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 and 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 and 1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
1 and 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon coriander
1 cup white sugar
2 cups dark brown sugar
1 cup canola oil
4 eggs
1/2 cup water
Pumpkin seeds (it’s okay if they’re raw, and it’s also okay if they’re roasted and salted. I used salted pumpkin seeds.)

Oven temperature: 350 degrees Fahrenheit

Cooking time: 20 minutes

Directions

Step 1: Grease two muffin pans or pop in muffin pan liners.

Step 2: Mix flour, soda, powder, salt, and spices. Set these aside.

Step 3: In a large bowl, mix together sugar, oil, eggs, and pumpkin. A hand mixer is the speediest way to go, but you can whisk by hand.

Step 4: Stir in the flour mixture little by little, alternating by stirring in the water.

Step 5: Pour batter into muffin cups and top with pumpkin seeds. Bake for 20 minutes at 375 Fahrenheit. (For a loaf, bake for 60-70 minutes or until a knife or toothpick poked into the center comes out clean.)

Step 6: Let cool on a wire rack and enjoy with chai tea and friends.

Dark Chocolate Peppermint Marshmallow Pops

Dark chocolate peppermint marshmallow pops are really easy to make and are delicious as candy or as stirrers for hot cocoa or coffee. I’m silly and didn’t photograph the tray that was fully finished, but they look really pretty set out on a tray for a party. At the end of this post I also have a photo of them in cello bags ready to give away as little gifts.

Okay, so let’s make these.

What you need:
One 10 oz bag of jet-puffed marshmallows
One bag of dark chocolate chips (I bought Nestle, but I wish I’d felt rich enough to go for the Ghiradelli. If you can afford it, do it.)
12-14 peppermint candy canes (I had 12, but it wasn’t quite enough, so I suggest using a few more.)
A little vanilla extract (optional)
Wood skewers (or coffee stir straws)
Wax paper (optional, but helpful)

Step 1: Cut your skewers in half. I used a plant clipper. Don’t worry, I was careful to wash it before using it on something that was going to go in food.

Step 2: Skewer your marshmallows. You can do this as you go, but it’s kind of nice to have everything ready to go so you can have a smooth production line.

Step 3: Crush candy canes. You may have a better process for this, but I’ll tell you what I did. (If you have a better way, please let me know!) Unwrap your candy canes and put them in a ziplock bag. Place that ziplock bag inside another ziplock bag. (The candy canes tear through one bag, and even start to get through the second. I think the shards are sharp.) Crush with a rolling pin. A hammer would work too, I imagine, since I used the rolling pin like a hammer. Pour the candy cane pieces into a shallow bowl.

Step 4: Melt chocolate. Pour your chocolate chips into a small sauce pan. Add about a teaspoon of vanilla (I think. I didn’t measure; I just poured. I’m sorry.) Melt on low heat, stirring vigorously until smooth. Remove from heat or just turn off the stove and leave your pan where it is. If the chocolate starts to get too stiff, you can turn the heat back on and give it a good stir.

Step 5: Dip marshmallows in chocolate and then peppermint chips. You just dip them and kind of roll them in the chocolate. I’m sure this is pretty self-explanatory, but I’m going to illustrate it anyway, just for fun.

Step 6: Place on plate or tray and refrigerate. It’s important to let the chocolate cool and harden, especially if you want to package these cute pops.

Step 7: Package and give away and/or enjoy with your coffee.

Merry Christmas!

Coming soon!

I’m working on some new posts. One is a recipe that is a solution to the problem of what to feed vegans for breakfast. One is my new pumpkin muffin recipe that recently yielded the best pumpkin muffins I have ever eaten. The other is a really tasty recipe for apple muffins. Stay tuned!

Apple Harvest Muffins - all paked up and ready to bring joy to friends!

Meal Suggestion: gourmet mac & cheese and “wilted” salad with asparagus and avocado

I intend to write helpful recipes. However, a friend pointed out that nearly every post is about baked goods. She said she’d like to see some regular food. Meals, even. Well, alright, lady. Here it is: the meal I made tonight.  I made my cheddar and gorgonzola shells and cheese and a new take on a wilted lettuce salad. If I’d had time to bake today I would have also served up some fresh bread such as my roasted garlic and olive oil bread or french bread shaped into a baguette.

But wait – wilted lettuce? I’m imagining that you got caught up on that phrase.
That sounds awful, right? Well, apparently in the 1940s wilted lettuce was something people ate (unless The Joy of Cooking is not actually an accurate primary source for what people ate in 1943). Those salads were made with fresh-cooked bacon. The cook would fry the bacon, take the bacon out when it was done, chop it; and then add some extra ingredients such as vinegar, sour cream, and fresh herbs, to make a salad dressing. The cook would then add the chopped bacon back into pan and pour the hot bacon grease dressing over the lettuce, causing it to wilt a little. Or maybe a lot. I haven’t actually made bacon grease dressing, since I’m a vegetarian and all. But I like the idea of a hot salad dressing with something delicious on top. My take on it involves hot olive oil from a pan used to sauteé  vegetables.

Ingredients:

1 Bundle of asparagus (or however much you like)
1 Ripe avocado (see my post for suggestions on choosing an avocado)
Fresh spring mix
Olive oil
Red wine vinegar
Fresh-cracked black pepper
Thyme (fresh is best, but dried works too)
Chevre (optional)

What to do:

Step 1: Wash your asparagus and chop off the bottoms of the stems, especially if part of it is white. You want to end up with just tender green asparagus. The white ends never get tender.

Step 2: Heat a little olive oil and red wine vinegar in a large frying pan. I prefer a little more olive oil than vinegar. The amount you use will depend on how much asparagus you are cooking. Normally I would say to try to not use very much, but you are also going to use this as your salad dressing, so you can be a little generous.

Step 3: Add asparagus. Cook for a few minutes, keeping the asparagus moving.

Step 4: Add pepper and thyme. I add them a little later because I don’t want them to burn.

Step 5: While asparagus is cooking, arrange mixed greens on plates. Cut avocado into slices and arrange on top of the mixed greens.

Step 6: Cook asparagus until tender but not soggy. Remove from heat.

Step 7: Top salad with hot asparagus.

Step 8: Drizzle the oil mixture from the pan onto the salads.

Step 9: (Optional) Crumble chevre cheese and sprinkle generously over the top of the salad. At this stage you may also want to add a little fresh-cracked pepper and possibly a little more olive oil if there wasn’t enough hot oil in your pan to create enough dressing.

Bon appetite!

Bread Pudding with Meringue!

Meringue is a beautiful thing. It’s certainly not vegan, but it’s such a lovely top for a lemon pie, a key-lime pie, or even bread pudding, as recommended in my vintage copy of The Joy of Cooking. This book is from 1943, and a lot of the recipes are strange. In the breads section, author Irma S. Rombauer talks about “yeast cakes,” which I had never heard of (it’s equal to one package of  dry yeast, or 3/4 of a tablespoon of dry yeast). Other unusual things: several recipes call for lard, there are multiple recipes for brains (maybe Irma Rombauer was a zombie?), and the author’s favorite spice seems to be Hungarian paprika. Rombauer also seems to have a personal cook. Weird. Oh, but I’m starting to go on a tangent. My point is that I am sometimes skeptical of the recipes, and the directions are sometimes difficult to decipher. Because of this, I was skeptical about the Rombauer’s recipe for “Bread Pudding with Meringue.” I had never had meringue on bread pudding, but both things are delicious, so how bad could it be? It turns out that it’s awesome.

  Here’s a close-up, all toasty and fluffy like a big marshmallow. I’m sorry about the slightly greenish cast caused by the fluorescent lighting in my kitchen. There isn’t a lot I can do about it today because my very old version of Photoshop (CS2 – I bought it when I was in art school) decided that it doesn’t want to work anymore.

Back to the food. I had made a loaf of bread with a new recipe and it was not very tasty. It just didn’t taste like much of anything. I didn’t want to eat it, but I certainly didn’t want to waste it. Bread pudding was the clear answer this time. (Another use for stale bread or bread you can’t use up is to make buttered bread crumbs for topping some delicious gourmet mac & cheese.)

In general, the recipes you see here are either my own original recipes or an altered recipe from a cook-book such  The Joy of Cooking. I try out new recipes, try them again with adjustments to make it tastier, and then explain the recipe in clear language and easy to follow steps. I want to make cooking and baking as clear and to the point as possible. To show you what I’m up again, today I want to share the Joy of Cooking recipe straight out of the cookbook, [with my commentary in brackets]. Don’t worry, I’ll put the meringue part in my own language.

BREAD PUDDING with MERINGUE
6 servings [I found it to be more than 6 servings unless you're serving really big portions]

Well-made bread pudding is an excellent dish, particularly if one is clever about “jazzing up” the hard sauce that accompanies it. [I'm still not sure what hard sauce is, but it seems like it's a kind of sugar candy thing. I don't know. When I get around to making it, I'll let you know what it is.]
Cut bread into slices and trim away the crusts. Soak for 15 minutes:
5 cups diced fresh bread or 3 1/3 cups stale bread* [I used relatively fresh bread, so I used 5 cups - perhaps the reason that I ended up with more than 6 servings.]
in:
3 cups warm milk
Add:
1/4 teaspoon salt
Combine and beat well:
3 egg yolks [save the egg whites for the meringue!]
1/3 to 1/2 cup sugar [the more the merrier, I say]
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg (optional) [but highly recommended!]
Add:
1/4 cup raisins or nut meats (optional) [I am going to put raisins in my bread pudding the next time I make it.]

Pour these ingredients over the soaked bread. Stir them lightly with a fork until they are well-blended.** [I did not stir them lightly; I stirred them thoroughly because I wasn't reading the instructions carefully. It still turned out well.] Place them in a baking dish set in a pan of hot water in a moderate oven 350 degrees [F] for about 3/4 hour. [I gave it a smidge of extra time.] Cool the pudding. Cover it with a Meringue (page 510) made with:
3 egg whites
1/8 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Bake the pudding in a slow oven 300 degrees until the meringue is set (for about 15 minutes). Serve it hot with:
Hard Sauce (page 670), Strawberry Hard Sauce II (page 671) or cream or fruit juice.
A layer of:
Jelly or stewed fruit, drained may be placed between the pudding and the meringue. [I did not do this.] In that case, the pudding is good served with cream. You may vary the flavor of bread pudding by adding: 1/2 cut of dates, figs, bananas or some orange marmalade.
* The bread should be measured lightly, not packed.
** If preferred the meringue may be dispensed with. Whip the egg whites until they are stiff and fold them in at this time.

So that’s the Joy of Cooking version of how to make bread pudding. I’ll hope that you can follow it, and now I’m going to give you my own directions for the meringue.

Meringue

Ingredients:
3 egg whites
1/8 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar (to help the meringue stay fluffy and tall)

Tools:
Large mixing bowl
Electric hand mixer (you can probably beat them by hand with a whisk, but I always use an electric mixer, so I don’t know from experience)

Step 1: Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.

Step 2: Separate your eggs if you haven’t done so yet, and place them in a large mixing bowl. Add the cream of tartar.

Step 3: Use your electric mixer and beat the eggs on high speed for about three minutes.

Step 4: Add the sugar, vanilla, and teaspoon salt. Continue to beat for 5 minutes or until the meringue will hold its shape in little peaks.

Step 5: Using a rubber spatula, pile and spread the meringue on the top of your pie or, in this case, your bread pudding.

Step 6: Bake for 15-20 minutes or until there’s a little bit of browning on the meringue.

Step 7: Serve and enjoy!

Roasted Garlic and Olive Oil Bread

Yum! This is a really nice cold-weather bread that will make your house smell amazing. Also, who doesn’t love roasted garlic? Who doesn’t love olive oil? Who doesn’t love crusty homemade bread fresh out of the oven? No one. Everyone likes those things, right? Okay, so here’s what you do to make this delicious loaf.

This recipe makes two loaves. Don’t be shy about eating them both in one sitting.

Ingredients:
2 whole heads of garlic (you can actually use much less, but I like lots of garlic.)
1 and 1/3 cups lukewarm water
3/4 tablespoon granulated yeast (1 packet)
3/4 tablespoon coarse salt (use less salt if it’s finely ground)
1/3 tablespoon sugar
1/8 cup extra virgin olive oil (the tastier your olive oil, the tastier the bread)
3 1/4 all-purpose flour

Step 1: In a large bowl, mix yeast, salt, sugar, and olive oil with water.

Step 2: Mix in the flour with a wooden spoon. (If you are fortunate enough to have a mixer or food processor with a dough hook, I image that also works well.) You might need to use your hands to get the last bit of flour mixed in. (Get your hands wet first so the dough doesn’t stick to you too much.)

Step 3: Cover the dough with a tea towel (or a lid, but not airtight), and let the dough rest at room temperature for about two hours or until the dough rises and falls (the top should look kind of flat).

Step 4: While waiting for your dough to rise, roast your garlic. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Wrap each head of garlic in aluminum foil and bake for 30 minutes. Let the garlic cool and then chop off the top of the head. It should be easy to pull/squeeze each clove of garlic out of the papery skin.

Step 5: When your dough is ready and your garlic is cooled, turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Kneed in the garlic cloves. You don’t need to kneed very long – just enough to make your dough (with garlic) into a homogeneous mixture.

Step 6: Divide dough in half and shape into rounds. Place the rounds on a lightly greased baking sheet (or you can sprinkle cornmeal on the baking sheet instead). Cover and let rest for 20 minutes.

Step 7: Preheat oven to 450 F. Sprinkle the top of each loaf with flour. Use a sharp serrated knife to cut a pattern into the top. I usually go for just a lot of slashes, but a tick-tac-toe pattern is cute too.

Step 8: Place a pan of water on the lower shelf of the oven. This will give the bread a nice crisp crust.

Step 9: Place the loaves in the oven and bake for about 35 minutes or until brown and crispy.

Step 10: Let cool a little bit before slicing. Serve warm with a delicious Mediterranean meal.

Things I want to try with this bread next time: To give the dough a little more flavor, I want to try using more olive oil and less water. I might also try adding a little more salt or a little pepper to the dough. I thought it might also be tasty to include pitted kalamata olives in this loaf, or maybe some feta cheese. If you try any of these alterations, I’d love to hear how it goes.