Sometimes I feel like I’m gonna get really healthy and eat a bunch of fruit n stuff, so I’ll buy some bananas and eat like ONE. Fast forward a week, and I have two really nasty looking bananas. Instead of throwing them away, I decide to make Renee’s banana nut bread. When I lived with Renee, she would make one loaf with nuts and one with chocolate chips to satisfy the needs of the household. In 2008, I asked her for the recipe. This is the first time I ever tried to use it.  I decide to go crazy and make one with chocolate chips AND NUTS.

So I wait until my bananas are REEAAALLLY RIPE. Like fully 100% brown on the outside. And then I get crazybusy with my art show deadline. Then Lisa Fulmer tells me to freeze them nanners, so I do. Then I defrost them in the fridge, and they leak out their BANANA ESSENCE all over the fridge, which looks like maple syrup and which I clean up and don’t tell Hairy about. I wonder if my bananas have begun to ferment, because they are really slimy, like so slimy  it almost makes me want to barf when I free them from their blackened skins. But I still use them. So what if they are fermenting? That will just make banana bread FOR GROWN UPS, and I am one of those!

I am not a chef. I am not a baker. I want some banana nut bread, I don’t know what I’m doing, I make some stuff up, and IDGAF.

Search your email from 2008 for Renee’s sour cream banana bread recipe. Discover that Renee’s delicious bread is from this recipe at AllRecipes.com. What! SIX BANANAS? WHAT ABOUT TWO!? Renee has made notes for a 2/3 recipe, so all you have to do is 1/2 that one (maths!).

Your ingredients look like this:

• 1/4 cup Earth Balance fake butter stuff (cuz that’s what’s in the fridge)
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 crazy ripe banana slime aliens that require no further mashing as they are nearly liquid form
• a little more than 1/2 of an 8 oz container of sour cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/6 teaspoon salt which means a SMIDGEful
• 1 teaspoons baking soda – which you don’t have. So you put in 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, which you do have, and seem to recall that baking powder contains baking soda, so it can’t be THAT wrong……right?…. IDGAF
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup …. wait for it …. HAZELNUTS! AW YEAH! GO CRAZY, HAZELNUTS! YOU LOVE HAZELNUTS! They are your favorite nut. Nobody else is eating this banana nut bread except you, cuz everybody hates banana bread, so you get to pick whatever nuts you want!

First things first.

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

Grease and sprinkle a sugar/cinnamon mixture onto your loaf pans. You’re using mini loaf pans cuz that’s what was in the baking-stuff drawer.

Cream the butter and the sugar. You actually remembered to leave the “butter” out to soften while you had dinner with Manda. You’re doing a great job! So what if you keep hearing Rihanna sing “We found love in a hopeless place” in your head, cuz you watched the MTV VMA’s last night, but you replace the words with something like, “You are no baker, you’re a hopeless case.”

Add the egg, bananagoo, sour cream, vanilla, and cinnamon. Stir that shizz up! Combine the flour, salt, and baking soda in a bowl. This is when you realize you don’t have baking soda and use baking powder instead. You know your bread won’t rise correctly, but, whatever, nobody else is eating this, nobody’s gonna judge you, nobody’s gonna care. It’s all for you. It’s all about YOU. AND YOU DGAF.

You’re probably letting the batter mix too long because you’re busy snapping photos of said batter. Your batter is probably getting glutenous and gluey, and you’ll probably be baking banana nut bricks. But it’s gonna be okay.

So what if you BROKE A SPOON while scraping the sides of your mixing bowl? You have other spoons!

You have so many freaking spoons, that you are going to use ANOTHER spoon to BASH SOME NUTS WITH. BASH DEM NUTS, GIRL!

Throw your nuts and your chocolate chips into the batter.

We like it CHUNKY!!! Then pour your batter into your loafy tins.

Then pop those suckers in the oven! The original recipe calls for 1 hour in the oven, but since you are using mini pans, you have no idea how long to put them into the oven. Google tells you that 40 mins is probably necessary, but check in on them around 20 mins. Bee tee dubs, that toothpick trick never works for you. The toothpick is always clean. You ask Hairy for some help. He does not seem happy. Plus he is judging you about the baking powder thing. HE IS NOT GOING TO EAT THE BREAD SO DON’T LISTEN TO HIM.

Now you can wash off your face mask and wash your dishes. There’s also time to have a savory snack and make a cup of tea.

Here’s the fun part!!! Watching your loaves rise! You know they won’t rise correctly due to the baking powder / baking soda debacle, and they are rising very cubically with flat tops. They are kind of like sponges, or those little rubbery dinosaurs that you put in water and watch grow and they never change shape. Don’t mind the loaf on the right. That one is dead because you and Hairy poked and prodded it with a knife after the whole toothpick thing.

40 minutes later and they are ready to be born! They are not the right color. They are kind of pale and not as toasty and brown as you recall banana bread being, but they are definitely cooked, so you think it’s time for them to come out.

Since you did such an awesome job greasing and sugaring the pans, and since your banana bricks are so dense and glued together internally, you can pluck them straight out of the pans with your hands and plop them onto a cooling rack!

YOU DID IT! You made yourself a treat….and a weapon! ENJOY!

p.s. Yes, it is a million times tastier when Renee makes it, but you gave it your best, and 11 year old Ryan Gosling approves. Adult Ryan Gosling…probably not so much.

BABY vs. GUMMY BEAR

I HAD to share this video with you guys. The end just cracked me up big time!

Thanks to Jessy, one of my trusty crochet elves!

We will ensure that future gummy bears are not encrusted with baby goo 😛

On Friday afternoon I left for L.A., and I was back by Saturday afternoon! I really wanted to go to the opening for Sweet Tooth, but Hairy was out of town, Manda was out of town, and my relatives were visiting my parents’ house, so they could only watch my dogs for one night anyway. It seemed kind of silly to pop in and out like that, but I thought it would be worth it to support the show and also meet the people who were throwing it. I’m glad I went!

There were a couple little things that seemed like SIGNS, like BAD OMENS, so I am glad nothing actually really super bad happened!

1) I accidentally booked a smoking room, and when I called to see if they had any more non-smoking, they said  no 🙁

2) I didn’t realize that a cab from LAX to my hotel would be $70.oo. Good to know for next time!

3) When I opened up my suitcase, a can of Pringles had exploded all over the inside. Getting out all the magical Pringles dust was one thing, but…..they had also left PRINGLES OIL STAINS on the suitcase liner. I had borrowed this little suitcase from my mom, so, that wasn’t cool!

4) When I opened up my toiletry bag, my Demeter Coconut Spray had leaked all over EVERYTHING. Luckily, it was not sticky or gooey, and I like the smell of coconuts anyway, but I definitely just left the bottle there to avoid any future worse mishaps.

5) I had somehow forgotten to pack my outfit for the night AND my pj’s! So I just kept on my crinkly airplane outfit and then slept in my shirt for the next day.

I know these are not big ordeals, but I just usually don’t experience all these weird little travel blips!

Anyway, Nellie and Kevin were nice enough to pick me up, and we all went to Backside together. It was PACKED!! Like super-duper packed! When I got there, the koala piece had already sold, and as I was approaching, someone told me that she had just sold a second piece. YAY! I also saw someone wearing one of my cupcake slouchy hats when I got in there, and as it turned out, she had also purchased the Strawberry Bunny painting.

Dramatic lighting!

Adrienne! I’m going to adopt her. Hope she doesn’t mind.

Benjie, who organized the show. Nicest dude EVER!

Quick snap of the crowd.

Fun ice creams painting by Bobby Hundreds,  inspired by those cylindrical ice cream scoops from Thrifty’s!

I was really excited to see this embroidery art by C. Ann (I think that’s who it was…?)

It was getting really hot inside, and my sweat moustache was in full bloom, so we headed outside to get some air. I got to meet Ducky, Benjie’s lady, who I think was the one who told him about my work in the first place!

On Instagram, I jokingly called this photo Family Reunion! It’s actually me with Mighty June and Nat Sin.

I wanted to show you guys a better shot of my hair bow! It’s super cute and made by SparkleGalaxy. Okay, on second thought, that is not a great photo of the bow at all. Next time next time!

After hanging out at the show, Nellie and Kevin and I went to eat dinner. But that photos is going to be saved for IEatYuckyStuff…

The next day, I packed up my bags and had lunch with my business partner at Brite Spot. On the way to the airport, he had to go pee, so we stopped at his house, which was a very cute little gnome house covered in flowers and greenery, and the woman who was his downstairs neighbor had BUNNIES on her patio! HELLO, BUNNIES!!!

Now I gotta whip up some cupcake hats to fill orders, and also bust out some goodies for Halloween! Think CANDY. LOTS OF CANDY.

After giving Bibi a bath, I decided to paint my nailz! I’d been wanting to try a jawbreaker-inspired mani. If I did this again, I would use fewer flecks of color and leave out the pink. Sorry these are horrible phone cam pics, and sorry I didn’t clean up the messy nail polish yet! I am going to L.A. tomorrow for 24 hours just to see the Sweet Tooth show, and I haven’t really packed or prepared yet and it’s 2am!  I also JUST realized that I accidentally booked a SMOKING room and they are already out of non-smoking! Crossing my fingers that when I arrive there, there might be a cancelation or something…

Okay back to the nails! This mani is super duper easy peasy. A couple coats of white for the background. Red, yellow, and blue polish. A couple toothpicks. And you’re set!

Just dip your toothpick into a color and then tap and drag it in dots all over your nails, some big, some small. The messier the better, I think!  You don’t even have to wait for the first color to dry because even if the colors mix a little, it’s ok! As easy as this is, my right hand still looks a thousand times crappier than my left hand. Oh well!

Enjoy! I do know there are glitter polishes out there that are meant to resemble jawbreakers as well. After picking through some images online, I ordered two! We’ll see how it compares!

Don’t forget to come say hi at Backside in Echo Park tomorrow for the Sweet Tooth show 🙂 8pm! Please forgive me if I smell like a thousand cigarettes :(.

Macaroons vs macarons. Do you pronounce them the say way?

Anyhoo, I was sketching out ideas for my crochet paintings for the Sweet Tooth show this Friday in L.A. (come say hi! I’ll be there!), and I kept changing my mind. At first I was going to do a series of cakes, and thennnnn wanted to do a collage of bulk candies, and thennnnnnnnn I saw THIS blog entry and knew I had to try making macaronimals with coffee/tea.

First up: my horrible sketch! I wanted the colors on all 4 canvases to look nice together, so sketching it first really helped me to make sure that everything looked relatively harmonious and that I wasn’t over-using one particular color throughout.

I didn’t really know for sure how I wanted to execute the little cookie sandwiches and the sense of perspective I was going for. As it turned out, actually making little sandwiches was looking the best, which made everything really puffy and thick, so I ended up putting two cookies each on the canvases instead of three.

Kuragoma (black sesame) Koala, Strawberry Bunny, Cinnamon Kitten, and Pavlova Panda! Each one is 10 in x 8 in.

I think my favorite are the kittens, since they looked the most realistically biscuity. I made the choice to NOT put a little stuffing in the koalas, which I made first, and I sort of regret this choice, as I think the puffiness would have enhanced the macaron-ness. I intend to make more of these after the show and will definitely add a little puff to the top cookie. Also, of course, HAIR CLIPS.

People have been asking if these could turn into laptop covers or purses. If I ever did that, I would really have to change how I constructed everything, because the 3D nature would make the piece bulky and a little too delicate. We’ll see! 🙂

I’m really happy with how these turned out, even tho each piece took WAY longer than you’d think or I ever expected/planned for. Luckily, I pulled it out!

While making these, I was particularly struck by how people would perceive my work as trinkets or novelties for little girls and babies. I have had a hard time with this for a long time, since I design everything as if I would wear it/use it/love it myself, and I think that shoving my work in the “for little girls only” category is really limiting. I will just keep doing what I do, though, and hopefully all the big girls who still have a nostalgic fondness for the fun, color, and playfulness of their girl magic will also get what I’m about.

And now… close-ups!

Continue reading →