there’s one tuesday every week. and today it’s here again.
last tuesday i finished writing this and sent it off and had some lunch and walked downstairs out to the street where i usually park my car sometimes and discovered that my car had been broken into via the rear left window and that i had also been given a parking ticket. hopefully, the parking ticket was given prior to the window smashing. but there are sadists everywhere, even in the city parking enforcement department i’m sure.
the breaker-inner took my tent and a box of art supplies including all my worldly paintbrushes and most of my paints. they were in a toolbox so i think the breaker-inner was hoping for something potentially more valuable but hey - those are the breaks. they did not take my sleeping bag (to which i am indifferent) or my “outside quilt” (for which i am grateful). and there wasn’t really anything else in there worth taking i don’t think. and i taped some cardboard up in the window and my friends all recommended a glass repair guy and the glass repair guy came out in his van the next day and fixed it in a jiffy and allegedly my insurance company is going to pay for some of that repair although that remains to be seen. and i got to be welcomed in to the club of people who have had their car windows broken.
and then later that night when i was biking home from a friend’s house, where my car will be spending most of its time for the foreseeable future, i caught an old streetcar track with the front tire of my borrowed Nike e-bike and went over sideways in slow motion and blasted a lot of skin off both hands and arms and thankfully did not break any bones although my left arm the one i broke before when i was in middle school is still kind of sore.
and i got to be welcomed in to the club of people who have caught streetcar tracks with their bike tires and been semi-violently catapulted into the pavement.
there is a lot of overlap between those two clubs, actually. they could share an office. some experiences are universal. everyone swims in the same ocean.
1. painting
i told my brother the other day that i was thinking about taking another trip out to the alvord desert soon. “be careful” he said, “you’re going to end up moving there.”
i will not be moving there. but nor will i be careful. there’s no question i’m on my desert shit recently. i’m in my sand era.
this week we have something a little looser and more fun. i have been doing a lot (“lot”) of more studied paintings or more constructed illustrations and this one i had a really quick and simple idea and i wanted to get some bright colors down and i just kinda went for it. did not use any reference and it felt good to stretch some of those mental muscles.
sketch, drawn while essentially asleep. quickly scribbled out in 30 seconds and then my head hit the pillow. you can see the little guy there at the base of the far tower though.
very beginnings of color. yuck! no contrast! get outta here dude.
here again is the point where i would have stopped if this was just a speedpaint doodle exercise.
i will note that one thing that is nice about extensively using photo reference to paint a bunch of rock shapes recently is that some of those shapes have finally worn themselves into my brain at some basic level. to where more believable rock shapes are things my hand can do a little better now if i just let it go and do its thing.
on the left of the rocks you can see some bounce light from the desert. and on the underside of some of those overhangs too.
when i was painting this i realized there was really no way that the far pillar could be fully lit and this close pillar be fully in shadow, which is what my mental image was originally. unless there was an even bigger pillar like, behind us, back a ways, casting its shadow on this near pillar. which i guess is actually very possible. it was just a layer i did not want to add here. so they are both half-lit.
and here i am forcing myself to use more contrast. this made me realize i want to learn more about how bounce light and shadows actually work. i have built up a lot of mental shortcuts over the years and it’s information i’ve been presented at at least three points i can think of but i am due for another dunk in the theory tank, i think.
then i added a couple cowboys peeking at each other around their respective pillars, which you can see if you scroll up.
2. poem
“cheeky poem” - spring 2021
i’ve had enough experience with wives
at this point
that i think i could be ready
for one of my own.
short somewhat silly one this week! some of you know some of these stories. maybe someday some of the rest of you will hear some of them too. probably not!
3. empanadas
look at all that beige. maybe i should get some more photogenic surfaces.
this week i wanted to actually make something sort of on my own again. the last couple weeks i’ve shared some pretty good recipes but thats basically all they were. and im not saying this is super complicated obviously. but this is a return to more instinct-based cooking. instincts, as we know, are the canyons worn by experience.
empanadas are good. i don’t have a particular connection to them, culturally or historically or life experience-ly speaking. but a dough pocket with good stuff inside is a pretty universal human experience i think.
here’s the stuff. potatoes, soyrizo (maybe the best trader joes product in existence), a pepper, salt, red onion, plant butter, flour, garlic, and lime. did not end up using the lime. i was going to make a salad to go with this but i didn’t.
flour and salt, chilled cubed butter, and ice water. pastry cutter to chop the butter in to the flour and salt, then once that’s pretty well incorporated, you add cold water about a half cup at a time until…
…you get a ball. i think you’re not really supposed to knead dough like this. there are all kinds of rules of which i am only vaguely aware. i kneaded it a little bit but only to get it into this shape.
then it went into the fridge to chill while i made the other stuff.
here’s the filling. everything’s chopped pretty big and rough because i wanted to keep the textures distinct. especially with this soyrizo, if things are too finely chopped it all kind of becomes a big grainy mush. which is fine it would still taste great. but not what i was after.
yum. look at it go. the soyrizo goes in after these things cook for a bit. then you let it cool while you switch your attention back to the dough.
here i am guessing wildly again about proportions. four little dough balls on a floured surface. let’s see how they roll out.
pretty good! of all the circular objects i own that could be used for cutting templates, this little bowl was pretty close. i could have used something maybe slightly bigger but i did not have one of those around. and this guy had an edge that was sharp enough to cut dough if you leaned on it and twisted a little bit.
circles and scraps and more educated guesswork re: filling proportions. you can brush those scraps with oil or butter and sprinkle cinnamon sugar on them and toss them in the oven while you’re getting everything else ready. i did not do this, i just ate them raw. but you could.
with a little water around the edges and some tucking and pushing and poking and restraining, you can seal these up into pockets. then crimp with a fork. then into the oven! at 350. i brushed olive oil on top a couple different times during the baking process. takes about 20 minutes. if you turn the broiler on toward the end they get more brown but don’t burn them.
yum look at that. the sauce in the first pic is some coconut cream i had in the fridge from another meal, with hot sauce and chili powder and cayenne and a little vinegar and a little mayo. good for dipping.
4. the kitchens of my life
here are all the kitchens of the places i have lived:
a photograph exists of me opening drawers. dark wood, faded light.
big windows, gas stove. white plastic appliances slowly chipping. we replaced the floor once when i was older. we replaced the dishwasher once and maybe twice too.
we each had a water glass we decorated and washed ourselves. the door opened right onto the garden, and i learned to take more care.
it was too small for two people sometimes and sometimes just the right size. i told you once i thought the exhaust fan was actually a jet engine.
the kitchen was dark and we felt that way too, most of the time. you could hand things across the counter. you could stack up a lot of bottles in a row.
the door never shut quite right and something was always burning. when i came home late one morning and told you who i’d slept with the night before, you whooped and hollered and slammed all the cabinets laughing.
i got used to the awful orange. i got used to the cabinets. the door handle came off the fridge one day and i didn’t fix it for months.
nobody else used it and by the time i left, it felt more like my home than the bedroom did. when i came back, it was like seeing an old friend.
i’m sure we cooked together, we must have. i’m sure we shared plates but i don’t remember them now.
you could scooch along behind me while i was cooking and just barely avoid knocking the spices out of their little nook. and sometimes it was unavoidable.
warm light in the evening, warm tile. tequila in bigger bottles than i’ve ever seen. two stools in the corner. and tension, sometimes. of all kinds.
bright and clean and simple. i lost a lot of bad habits here.
gas again, and i’m cooking more than i ever have. one cabinet too few maybe, and a little dance around the corner. i haven’t yet broken a toe.
that’s this week for ya. have a good week everyone. free palestine. see ya next tuesday. bye.