I wanted something to feel better about, the only winter shoes I had were a pair of black plastic Wellies, and… well I just wanted them. And I love them and they go with everything and I think they’ll last forever. They’re the Frye Carmen 3-strap in brown (which is not reflected well in the picture, but it was an iPhone shot, so doctoring was better than color accuracy). I got them through *Zappos, and even though I have no affiliation with them at all, can safely say that they kicked ass in the customer service department. 

* link is to the horribly addictive new way to search Zappos, called Explore Zappos. It gives you a big field of shoes, you pick ones that interest you and then it shows more like that and you keep drilling down and down until you totally need those cork-soled red patent leather wedge gladiator sandals. You totally do.

The above is a really classy picture of me in the office bathroom, wearing the first sweater I ever finished knitting. And it’s cute! And warm. And, yes, I know I shouldn’t start sentences with “and.” The pattern is from Needled, the design is called Owls, and mine is all done except for the very Coraline-sounding step of “adding buttons for eyes.” Coraline, by the way, was super awesome. Go see it before it’s gone.

Desktop Gaming - Punch Out!

Desktop Gaming makes some sweet backgrounds that are all gaming-related. So it’s not just a clever name! Sent there from LifeHacker.

Shark Fin Tea Infuser

The husband shared out this Gizmondo post about the shark fin tea infuser design concept. If they’re looking for buyers, I want on that list.

La Princess in Liverpool

From Big Picture:

As part of Liverpool’s Capital of Culture year, the French group La Machine were commissioned to create a large piece of street theatre, on the scale of their earlier work, the Sultan’s Elephant. Many were expecting to see something using the iconic Liverbirds, the symbol of the city but instead we got a spider. 

How cool would it be to see that on your morning commute?

Horrific Yarn

Bent Objects makes some great … bent stuff. But, the knitting homage for this piece was what brought me to the site in the first place. Sent there by Craftzine.

Hamburgerpanda's Etsy wares

Hamburgerpanda has an amazing Etsy shop, in which I’d like one of everything, please. Also available on Supermarket HQ and through a great blog about more than just the cool shit they make. 

iPhone case with business card slot

Zaum is offering this iPhone case (and I want exactly this one) on Supermarket HQ for only $20. It’s all fleece and has a business card slot on the back. Plus, it’s pretty.

Amazing Russian Food Styling

This is a collection of seriously, um, inventive food product shots from a sausage manufacturer in Russia. Scrolling down the page, I assumed that the props were meant to indicate what was in the sausage or what it tasted like, until I got to….

Oh God, please, no. Cats and grape sausage? Mind you, I passed a number of tubes with horses nearby and thought nothing of it. People eat horses. But kittens and grapes? Shit.

Rommy No. 2

Sloth Paper Toys puts out a really adorable reclining figure every once in a while. But they get retired quickly, too, so it’s best to download while you’re thinking about it. The little guy up above went up recently and is still fair game.

Left 4 Dead Valentines

These Left 4 Dead Valentines are everywhere now, but I first saw them on the Penny Arcade forums from user beavotron. They’re all awesome, but my valentine has surely seen them already, so I’ll keep an eye out for something else.

New York in Legos

One more New York in Legos

From the New York Times Abstract series, these are the best – witty, spot on, observant, and totally recgonizable. About the artist:

Christoph Niemann’s illustrations have appeared on the covers of The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine and American Illustration. His work has won numerous awards from the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the Art Directors Club and American Illustration. He is the author of two children’s books, “The Pet Dragon,” which teaches Chinese characters to young readers, and “The Police Cloud.” After 11 years in New York, he moved to Berlin with his wife, Lisa, and their sons, Arthur, Gustav and Fritz. His Web site is christophniemann.com.

Creepy? Awesome? Papercraft Portraits

From Paperkraft.net, these awesomely strange bigged-up papercraft portraits by Loran Lichty. I’m amazed and creeped out at the same time…

Barbie get styled and goes to Paris

Margaux Lange at Midge’s Mind styled Barbie for Paris Fashion Week and it looks creepy cool. She even cast some amazing platform sandals to match the necklace of hands. Sent here from a post on Craft.

9SPOTMONK's Thanks Card

9SPOTMONK has some very cool letterpress cards that are actually kind of gender-neutral. Sent here from Awesome!

michelle ramin @ Design*Sponge

I’m dying in this grey, cold, ick weather that we’ve been having, but I keep digging through more of Michelle Ramin‘s work because it’s just making me happy right now. Someday, I’m buying a few of her pieces. Refered by Design*Sponge.

The Monroe apron in Orange Sherbert

Two of the greatest girlfriends in the whole world opened their Etsy shop during the wee hours of last night. The Mad Haptic only has a few things up right now, but I can vouch for the awesomeness of their products whole-heartedly! Go buy things!

Grand Moff Tarkin and My Lunch

Amazing, spicy, rich, and way more interesting that the $2.58 worth of ingredients would lead you to believe. I got it from Girl Friday, which is always fun to read. My heavily adapted version follows. I’m sure as written it’s awesome, but this reflects what we had on hand.

Lentil Soup 
From Girl Friday, who cites A Taste of Mexico by Kippy Nigh as the original

Serves four hungry people, or six normal people

 
Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
6 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped finely
1 16-oz can whole tomatoes
4 chipotle chilies, seeded and diced
1 tablespoon or so adobo sauce
6 cups water
1 lb lentils
2 tablespoons (or so) soy sauce

Instructions
Add the oil to a big pot and, when it’s hot, throw in the garlic. Cook the garlic over medium-low heat for about five minutes.

Add the can of tomatoes (with their juice) and cook for a futher 10 minutes. Add the chilies and adobo sauce at any point while the tomatoes are cooking. Stir all of this around once in a while.

Add the water and the lentils and stir to mix everything up. Cover and bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer until the lentils are done (for this batch, that was an hour). When the lentils are done, stir in the soy sauce, check seasoning and tweak away.

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Bento Translation

I froze servings of this and it reheats alarmingly well, although the spice seems to take a back seat after the deep freeze. For the lunch, I threw it into my thermos with a cap of warmed white rice. Although Grand Moff Tarkin in the picture looks sternly displeased, I thought it was great.

Venison Sausage in Progress

So the brother-in-law had generously given us some venison sausage the last time we were back home and the husband got all drooly whenever he thought about it. Me? A former veggie who had never actually cooked fresh sausage before was intimidated. Dumb. It’s super easy and tasty, especially when added to the slightly-adapted version of Mushroom Bourguignon from Smitten Kitchen. 

Since I cooked the bourguignon, sausage, and egg noodles all at once, this qualifies as a big cook for me. We had a friend come over and eat, so it makes four very hearty servings, one of which was my Benito lunch today.

Mushroom Bourguignon

adapted from Smitten Kitchen
Serves 4

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons butter, softened
2 pounds portobello mushrooms, in 1/4-inch slices [I used baby portobellos, because the big guys looked like crap]
1/2 carrot, finely diced
1 small yellow onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup full-bodied red wine [left over from the Battlestar viewing party the night before]
2 cups beef broth
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
1 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 cup pearl onions, thawed if frozen
About 20 inches of cooked sausage, sliced into 1/3rd-inch slices (cooking instructions below, more for my reference than anything else)

Egg noodles, for serving
Sour cream for garnish
 

Heat the one tablespoon of the olive oil and one tablespoon of butter in a medium Dutch oven* or heavy sauce pan over high heat. Sear the mushrooms until they begin to darken, but not yet release any liquid — about three minutes. Remove them from pan.

Lower the flame to medium and add the second tablespoon of olive oil. Toss the carrots, onions, thyme, a few good pinches of salt and a several grinds of black pepper into the pan and cook for 10, stirring occasionally, until the onions are lightly browned. Add the garlic and cook for just one more minute.

Add the wine to the pot, scraping any stuck bits off the bottom, then turn the heat all the way up and reduce it by half. Stir in the tomato paste and the broth. Add back the mushrooms with any juices that have collected and once the liquid has boiled, reduce the temperature so it simmers for 20 minutes, or until mushrooms are very tender. I started the water for the noodles around this time, because I hate to wait for boiling water. Add the pearl onions and sausage and simmer for five minutes more.

Combine remaining butter and the flour with a fork until combined; stir it into the stew. Lower the heat and simmer for 10 more minutes. Throw the noodles in the boiling, salted water. If the sauce is too thin, boil it down to reduce to the right consistency. Season to taste.

To serve, spoon the stew over a bowl of egg noodles, dollop with sour cream (a strong addition that I would say is worth a trip to the store if you don’t have sour cream on hand) and sprinkle with chives or parsley, which I forgot to do.

*I used my 6.5 qt Dutch oven, which was too big, but I think my 2.5 qt one would have been too small.

Simmered Venison Sausage

method from the in-laws
Serves four

You need:

Two links of fresh sausage [ours were about 10-ish inches long each and made of venison. The spice mix was really heavy on coriander and pepper, which worked well with the bourguignon]

What to do:

- Defrost the sausage if frozen and cut any ties between links, but don’t puncture the links
- Put the sausages in a pan that’s wide enough to hold them flat and in a single layer (and has a lid that fits)
- Add enough water to the pan to come up about 3/4 of the way
- Bring the water up to a boil, cover the pan, and lower the heat to simmer
- Flip the sausages about every 10 minutes until the middle of a sausage registers 170-degrees, about 30 minutes total
- (optional) You can simmer off the water at this point and brown them up, or remove them from the pan and slice after a few minutes rest

———————————————–

Bento Translation:

I packed the last leftover serving into my Stanley jar with a lid of white rice. I heated everything up really well before packing it up, and it was piping hot when I ate lunch later that day.

The other byproduct of this schedule is that I want to, and end up, cooking way too much food on the weekends… which leads to leftovers we don’t need to eat during the week because of studio dinner… which leads to wasted food… which makes me sad and poor… 

And not cooking at all isn’t an option, I’d just get a little nutty.

So, I’ll be doing big stockpile cooking sessions on the weekends when it’s fun and I have time to do the shopping, big cooking, and cleanup. Those meals will get portioned out, frozen, and eaten as lunches during the week. To make this admittedly not terribly clever idea work for me (and I am crazy bad about leftovers, so I need some help), I have a few tools I picked up:

Stanley 17oz. Classic Vacuum Food Jar

I grabbed this one at Target for $22, which seemed like a lot. Amazon sells it (in a number of sweet fashion colors), but I’m sometimes in need of instant gratification. I used it today and I’m totally amazed – very hot food went in at 9am and at 1pm, I had to blow on it to cool it before I could bited down. It promises 12 hours of heat retention, and I can vouch for at least four hours of maintaing an ambient temperature of “blistering.” Some people on Amazon complained about it after a few weeks use, so I’ll wait and see, but right now I love it.

Also, it says 17 oz. capacity, but the lid takes up some inner room. This was a great size for some soup with a cup of rice on top, so it’s excellent for lunches that are one serving of one “thing.”

My Dear Mr.

Mr. Bento, all splayed out

The Zojirushi Mr. Bento Stainless-Steel lined Lunch Jar is really awesome for lunches that have a lot of components that need to get put together later. I bought one a while ago and really love using it. Full disclosure: I’m a sucker for food with accessories, so the whole bento thing is kind of up my alley.

The Mr. doesn’t keep food nearly as hot as the Stanley jar, so I use it for stuff that’s not so temperature sensitive. But it does come with a stainless steel spork, which is almost worth the investment itself.

Did I mention that the microwave and the fridge at work are both pretty dubious? That’s why I was looking for lunch solutions that would let me keep stuff at my desk and not have to re-heat.

The next phase are recipes for stuff that works well to be made in big batches, but are good in either of these units as desk-bound lunches.