It’s my 100th day of blogging! Wahoo!

Tonight I roasted a chicken and made a new recipe from one of my cookbooks, broccoli with dijon vinaigrette. Normally  I try to avoid reproducing recipes but this one is so delicious I feel like I have to share.

Related, I didn’t have any dry mustard so I left it out, and it was still amazing. Definitely make this!

Ingredients

• 2 pounds fresh broccoli
• 4 teaspoons olive oil
• 1/4 cup finely chopped green onions
• 1/2 teaspoon dried tarragon
• 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper

Preparation

1. Remove broccoli stems, and arrange broccoli in a steamer basket over boiling water. Cover and steam 6 minutes or until crisp-tender. Place in a serving bowl; keep warm.
2. Heat oil in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add green onions and next 3 ingredients, and sauté 3 minutes. Remove from heat; add vinegar and remaining 4 ingredients, stirring with a fork or whisk until blended. Drizzle over broccoli, tossing gently to coat.

Tomorrow I’m having a big dinner party/potluck, for which I’m making three dishes. To get a head start on the cooking, I made a white bean spread today (in my amazing yellow vintage blender!). I used this recipe from Giada. It’s pretty good, but it asks you to salt it “to taste.” I always find that kind of annoying. Just tell me how much salt to add!

Yay! After three nights of working on it, I finally finished my California el stop picture. I actually really like how it turned out and kind of love that Taquería Moran (in the yellow building) figures so prominently in it since it is my favorite taco place in the city. Their al pastor tacos are divine!

Because of his horrendous fever, I was excited Jim was still alive so I took some pictures of him last night. Most of them turned out kind of weird and blurry because I used the flash, but blocked it with my hand when I took the picture. It made them really red, which is kinda cool.

A certain someone has food poisoning (most likely) and a crazy fever so I spent the evening taking care of him. Therefore, I didn’t finish my California el stop picture yet. Instead, I did a doodle of the sun, which turned out kinda cute!

It looks like this is turning into a three-day project. Now I’m really excited to finish this tomorrow and see how it turns out!

1. Go rock climbing
2. Hike the entire length of the Ice Age Trail through Kettle Moraine South in Wisconsin
3. Draw at least one passable portrait of Christopher Walken
4. Read the manual for my new camera
5. Invite my Mom and Dad over for dinner at my new(ish) apartment
6. Make paella
7. Take a sewing class
8. Take dance lessons
9. Make soap
10. Make fire by friction
11. Get a pedicure (I’ve seriously never had one)
12. Make hot pretzels
13. Get my jewelry repaired
14. Visit a dairy
15. Have a special day with my niece
16. Buy a chiminea
17. Do a full push-up
18. Make cheese (beyond ricotta, which I’ve already made)
19. Walk to from my apartment to Lake Michigan
20. Take pictures of the stars and moon through a telescope
21. Play basketball in the park
22. Draw on the sidewalk with chalk
23. Can vegetables
24. Go to Hayward, Wisconsin
25. Have a picnic in a new place
26. Go sledding (I haven’t gone in years)
27. Catch a fish
28. Go to Pitch Fork, the music festival
29. Make a piñata
30. Run/walk a 5k
31. Go to South America (we’re planning to go to Argentina)
32. Complete the Making Made Project (meaning I will have made something and done a blog post every single day in 2012)

Let’s just say this is my first attempt at a Christopher Walken portrait and leave it at that…

Tonight, I tried a new recipe for oven fried eggplant, which I got out of my Cooking Light cookbook. Basically, it involved chopping onions and mixing them with light mayonnaise, making a breadcrumb and Parmesan mixture, and then lightly coating the eggplant pieces first in the mayo mixture and then in the breadcrumb mixture. I wouldn’t say it was the easiest recipe I’ve ever made since it required a lot of dishes, but the eggplant came out pretty tasty!

Anyways, because I’m sleepy, I decided to make these lemons really quickly. To do this, I just cut out the lemons shapes from construction paper, drew the outlines and dots with a thin marker, and then glued them to a white piece of paper. Super easy!

We took a drive around some lonely desert roads this afternoon, and I managed to get a few good shots of some mountains and deserted buildings. Photographing the buildings was especially fun for me. I guess I like the idea of documenting how these structures—homes or gas stations that were once very important to people—have slowly decayed and returned to nature.

We’re off to the hot springs “resort” today. I can’t wait to get there, watch the sunset while sitting in a hot spring, make a camp fire, and gaze up at the stars. Yay!

It’s kind of funny, I suppose, that I’m in Arizona and instead of drawing a sketch of mountains of cacti I drew what appears to be a Midwest country road.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll do something more Southwestern.

We went to an art expo today where lots of Arizona artists were showing their work–there were oil paintings, watercolors, sculpture, jewelry, etc. In the outdoor sculpture section of the show, I snapped a few pictures even though it was technically against the rules. Don’t tell anyone!

Vacationing in Arizona means taking pictures of cacti! I suspect I’ll end up taking about 200 photos of saguaro catcti alone. They’re such amazing plants, probably because they are somehow human-looking, with their straight backs and expressive arms. It’s sad when they start to die and their arms start to droop and decay away. Hopefully, I won’t see any of those over the next week.

I was a bit busy tonight packing for my big trip to Arizona, so tonight I just edited some already weird scans  I did of my face a while back. Definitely turned out creepy.

I really like this piece by fashion illustrator René Gruau (which I discovered via a friend who posted it on Pinterest today), and also really like Pee-wee Herman. Naturally, I combined them! What do you think?

We ate more corned beef and cabbage tonight over at my friend Christina’s, and it was delicious! After we ate, we relaxed in the living room while I did a pencil drawing of a house, which I guess is actually just part of a house. I also some Picnik filters to make a few additional versions. Fun!

This evening, I went over to my parents’ house to celebrate my uncle’s 65th birthday. We had delicious corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, salad, and homemade Irish soda bread for dinner (thanks Mom!) and afterwards, with a bit of help, I made a fire in the backyard in my parents’ chiminea. We sat around the fire all evening and even sang a few songs. It was lovely.

To capture the feeling of the night, I made a simple video of our fire and set it to the song “The Blizzard’s Never Seen the Desert Sands” by the Tallest Man on Earth.

Just a quick sketch using one of my micron markers and a few Picnik effects. Not sure why I chose to do an alligator.

One of my co-workers is definitely going to give me crap about doing another photography post this week, but I couldn’t resist! My friends invited us to a spontaneous evening barbeque in celebration of the magnificent weather, and I really wanted to try out my new camera in the dim light. I must say that it performed really well. I’m impressed!