Does learning new recipes count as a ‘transferable job skill’?

Being unemployed and looking for jobs leaves you with a fair amount of free time. I intend to fill a lot of that time doing something highly productive: making delicious food. Since everyone can’t be here to smell/taste/generally admire my amazing cooking, I thought I’d pass along a few of my new favorite recipes!

Avocado Fries

Original recipe found here: http://circle-b-kitchen.squarespace.com/food-and-recipes/2010/7/1/avocado-fries.html

Pretty much followed the recipe as listed on the site, but since I don’t own a deep frier, I just fried them in canola oil heated in a frying pan on the stove top. These go great with either sour cream or marinara sauce on the side!

Grilled Aspargus and Cherry Tacos

Original recipe found here: http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/main-dish/recipe-roasted-asparagus-and-cherry-tacos-150719

Asparagus and cherries are in season at the same time in the Pacific Northwest, so these needed to happen. I grilled the asparagus and cherries in olive oil in a cast iron pan with a handful of diced onions for flavor. I also added a bit of lime juice to top it off. So good!

Chicken Bacon Puff Pastries

I adapted this recipe from one I found online a while ago. I highly recommend adding fresh rosemary and cilantro if you can!

3-4 slices bacon

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 large boneless, skinless chicken breast, cubed

1/2 onion chopped

~3oz cream cheese, softened

2 sheets frozen puff pastry, thawed

1 egg, beaten

Rosemary/herbs

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. In medium skillet, cook bacon until crisp; remove, drain on paper towels, crumble, and set aside. Drain pan; do not wipe out.

Add olive oil to pan and add chicken and onion. Cook together until onion is tender and chicken is no longer pink, about 7-8 minutes. Remove with slotted spoon to medium bowl.

Add cream cheese and bacon to chicken mixture and mix well; if you’re adding fresh herbs, add them at this point. Roll out puff pastry to 12” square. Cut into four 6” squares. Divide  mixture among the squares and fold in half. Seal edges and press with fork. Place on cookie sheet and brush with beaten egg.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until deep golden brown. Remove to wire rack and let cool 5 minutes before serving; the filling is very hot!

Blackberry Oatmeal Bars

One of the easiest and most delicious dessert recipes I know, thanks for passing this one on Mom!

1 box yellow cake mix

2 1/2 cups oatmeal

3/4 cup butter melted

1 cup jam + 1 tbsp water (or you can substitute for fresh berries/fruit)

Mix cake mix, melted butter and oatmeal together in large bowl.  Add a layer of the oatmeal mixture (about half of it) to the bottom of a well greased pan. Spread out the jam/water mix on top and crumble the remaining oatmeal mixture on top of that. Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes.

Fun with javascript and perception

In the process of going through old work files, I discovered this little gem that I had worked on and abandoned last November (it functions, but has a weird error occasionally that kept my perfectionist self from ever sharing it online).

During down time at work, I was handed a Javascript book and told I could bill my time learning the language towards ‘reading and research’. As 8 hours of reading coding manuals is not my ideal way to spend a day, I used some of my time building this widget:

I learned during my first year of college that I have a neurological condition called synaesthesia, specifically grapheme → color synesthesia. Since then I have had to try to explain it to people many times. This widget is my attempt to communicate to people what I see in a more tangible and digestible form.

Sasquatch!

This weekend we (Melina Townsend, Sara Huntley and I) went on an adventure to the Gorge.

We arrived late Friday to catch the Foo Fighters as the sun set behind the mountains.

We met up with some friends once we got there.

Audrey was there to rock out with me to Bassnectar. Never in my life have I seen so many glowsticks! But Robyn was definitely my favorite performance.

The weather couldn’t have been more perfect. And the crowd watching opportunities were outstanding.

So many people got sunburned! Red man had the right idea.

We also stopped at a few wineries for tastings. Here we are at Cave B.

The wine also helped us take the edge off our stereotypically-classic-horror-movie hotel room in nearby Ephrata.

We finished off the weekend watching the Flaming Lips.

And somehow ran into both the WaggEd designers that came up from Oregon for the festival, Tyler and David.

Thankfully we all survived the sea of hipsters, bros, stoners and ravers, and after a long weekend in sunny eastern Washington, we are definitely happy to be home! Thanks for the memories Sasquatch!

 

Decorating the cave: how we creatively spend our free time in the office

Its been a while since I’ve posted anything online, be it a blog post, tweet, or fb status update (god forbid I get back into that…), but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been keeping myself busy! Between moving, crazy amounts of new projects at work, exploring a brand new neighborhood, and taking advantage of the recent glut of ‘Groupon’ knockoffs to take some interesting classes (guess who can salsa dance now!) I’ve had more than my share of blog photo worthy experiences but I have been too social-media burnt-out to share.

I’d like to keep this blogging thing up for a while though, and so I’d like to share a little bit about my work life here at Wagg Ed…
So this is my view from my desk at work.

You can’t tell from the photo, but I basically work in a windowless box in the center of the building. There are two doors on either side of the room, effectively rendering it a hallway, or ‘shortcut to the bathroom’. My coworker, Sara Huntley, and I created the inspiration wall you see  in front of my desk. It ain’t no window, but its a hell of a conversation starter!

The wall has become a collection of silly pictures

Out of context magazine headlines

And ancient Chinese wisdom.

But even more impressive is the giant fucking red wall that has been creeping up behind me.

That bad boy is constructed entirely of small rectangles of girly magazine cutouts…

At the rate we are going, we figure it will probably be done by the time our office remodel starts and that particular wall is demolished. In the meantime though, it has kept us from going insane during intermittent down-times in our windowless fortress.

Infused booze

And the countdown begins… in a couple weeks it will officially be spring and my weekend project will be ready to pop open and enjoy. The pic above shows the results of a couple of hours work prepping mini wine bottles and slicing tropical fruits: four gorgeous bottles of homemade infused vodka. These little guys should be ready to drink after they sit for a couple weeks, and if they taste anything like they smell, they should be delicious! The specific ingredients used are listed below (from left to right).

1- Lemon, lime, blood orange, vanilla

2- Kiwi, strawberry, mango, lemon, basil

3- Rosemary, lemon, blood orange, apricot

4- Vanilla, mint, pear, apricot, mango

Tired of Playing – a music video edited in Premiere

Over the past couple weeks I’ve been learning how to edit using Adobe Premiere. It’s been a goal of mine for a while, considering that I both own a copy of Premiere and know the basics of editing software via my experience using Final Cut Pro in school.

My inspiration for this project came from a video project I had done previously for a class in which we took old public domain footage and remixed it to a track to create an original music video. More specifically, I was inspired by a video called ‘Jealousy‘ that I found in the Prelinger archives on the site www.archive.org which became the basis for this project.

My music video is hosted on Vimeo, click the image below to watch!

Wall art and wishing it was spring

A while back I stumbled on a blog post on Apartment Therapy showcasing the work of Chris Waind. Since then I’ve been amassing a collection of photos to create my own butterfly art. Hopefully this will get me through these last few weeks of winter… here’s hoping for an early spring!

Goodbye 2010!

Some holiday photos to send off 2010! Cheers to a year that brought many changes, including graduating from college, moving to Seattle, and landing my first professional job!

Happy Thanksgiving at the James’ household! I celebrated this Thanksgiving with the fam up in Bham, including my Aunt Barbara who recently moved there

And my two puppies, Olive (who is terrified of the camera)

And Jasper (note the one ‘bad’ ear)

Mom made some tasty baked goods

And the tree was trimmed

We survived a family reunion in Vegas (barely)

And an unexpected snowstorm

All in all, it was a lovely holiday season. Happy New Year everyone!

Top 5 Stock Photo Captions: Santa

In honor of Black Friday, here are the top 5 captions describing what I assume Santa is up to during all the holiday maddness.

Santa flasher

Low key tired Santa Claus

Santa posing akimbo and pointing

Pitiful Santa (a picture of Santa being held at gunpoint)

Daddy Santa Claus smoking a cigar

snOMG!

In the past 48 hours, the weather conditions in Seattle have rapidly gone from ‘look at the delightful snowflakes!’ to ‘oh my god is that a bus tipped over on its side?’. To give the full effect, I’d like to post some before and after photos. The first two were taken Sunday morning when I went out for a pleasant walk while my laundry was drying. The last are from a couple hours ago when I ventured out to buy emergency candles and lighters from Rite Aid across the street.