the society inc

I love interior design photos -- my tumblr "interior" tag is so overflowing, tumblr won't even show you all of the posts -- but the photos I like don't always have to do with the interior decor and furniture I own, like, and am likely to ever own. 

The Society Inc. is brimming with the rare interior photos that include everything I like in a photo, in a room, in an image, in color, in patterning, in clutter. (It was even a big inspiration for my butterfly boxes-- because I'm not as big a fan of actual dead critters.) 

Also check out her book, Etcetera: Creating Beautiful Interiors With The Things You Love.

Photos are from the Society Inc website and Sibella Court's Design*Sponge sneak peek. Also, as many images as are here, there are even more on my society inc tumblr tag. 

creamy vegan pesto, with white beans and braised garlic

Like I promised, here's my pesto recipe! It's almost the same pesto as in my post about white bean pesto and heirloom tomato salad stacks, but it's a complicated (and delicious!) enough recipe that it deserves its own post. (Also, the pictures in that post, other than the tomatoes, leave much to be desired.) 

I depleted my basil plants to make this pesto, and it was worth it! (Especially since they seem to be recovering.) I put it on pizza: I made the same slow-rise crust, spread the pesto on, covered in more tiny, sliced grape tomatoes, and baked. YUM. 

Braising the garlic is optional, as are the herbs, though if you have time, and fresh herbs on hand, it's worth it. Sautéing the garlic so there's not 1-2 heads of raw garlic in the pesto would be a good idea, or leave it out. (And anyway, when basil and pine nuts are pureed together, I find it difficult to go wrong!) 

Other than the braising, this recipe is fast and rewarding. It's recipes like this that make me so, so glad to have a food processor. (There was one time I picked over 3 full grocery-sized bags of basil from my CSA, then spent over 3 hours chopping by hand, and nearly destroyed my computer in the process. Long story.) 

 CREAMY VEGAN PESTO WITH WHITE BEANS AND BRAISED GARLIC

Stovetop-Braised garlic:

1-2 heads garlic 

1 tsp minced fresh rosemary 

1 tsp minced fresh thyme

olive oil

White Bean Pesto: 

1 cup cooked white beans

stovetop-braised garlic, above

2 tsp minced garlic (in addition to the braised above) 

2 - 3 cups fresh basil, or as much as possible!

a handful of chives, snipped

1/4 - 1/3 cup pine nuts

1/4 - 1/3 cup water 

2 -3 tbsp olive oil (optional) 

1 tsp ground pepper

1 tsp sea salt 

To prepare the garlic: Trim the root and top ends of the garlic head. Separate the cloves, but don't remove the peels. Heat a tablespoon or so of olive oil in a frying pan (cast iron works best) to almost smoking point, then turn down heat as low as possible. Add the garlic, skin and all, to the pan. Roll the cloves in the olive oil and cover the pan. Cook for about 5 minutes. Then check the garlic: it should be light brown and smell absolutely amazing. Shake the pan to turn the cloves. Cover the pan and cook for another 5 minutes. After this, add the rosemary and thyme, then leave the lid off as you carefully stir the garlic for another 5 minutes. The skins should be falling off as you stir, and be incredibly fragrant. 

If not braising, chop the garlic roughly (it'll end up being pureed anyway) and saute with the herbs, if using, until golden. 

To make the pesto: In a blender or food processor, combine the beans, the braised garlic, minced garlic, basil, chives, pine nuts, water, oil (if using), pepper, and salt and blend until smooth. 

more ponyo animated gifs

More amazing Ponyo gifs! Found on lovegifs. My other posts with gifs are on the animated gifs label.

linkspam, what I've been up to, and sorry for the absence

heirloom cherry tomatoes, my favorite tomatoes at the moment

Sorry for the lag in posting for the past week. I'm finally getting my move across the country together! More on that as it develops. 

I've been cooking and drawing in the last week, so look out for recipes here (pesto, coming up soon, is pictured below) and new work on my art blog in the next few days. 

Today I killed a ton of time with candybar, software that lets you change icons on your mac. At first it was because 1) I'd just read (and downloaded) this gorgeous post from Jessica Hische about the dock icon set she made, and 2) the new itunes icon is hideous. Next, I was browsing iconfactory, where I found this cute Doctor Who icon set (can anyone who has watched Doctor Who and owned a mac possibly convince me that a TARDIS icon is not completely perfect for my time machine backups?). I also found these pretty steampunk icons (though I'm not quite sure what to do with them... I love that trashcan, but will I ever recognize it as a trashcan?) plus this other, HUGE set of still more steampunky icons (it's somewhat more hit or miss, but there are so many that I found a lot I loved. the hideous itunes icon is now replaced by a gramophone). And finally, tons of amazing and gorgeous icons by PixelPress, which I found on a notcot link. 

I've been collecting other links, too. I looked up book arts in the San Francisco bay area: Bay Area Book Arts; San Francisco Bay Area Book Arts; and the zine library at Rock Paper Scissors. Also miscellaneous links: I seriously think that all of these animals are cute, especially that amazing star-nosed mole;  Smashing Magazine's new list of great wordpress themes; advice from Frank Chimero on his tumblr, which has already been linked approximately everywhere, and a corollary reading list which is linked slightly fewer places; this cool diy project for storage "books" on design*sponge; these perfect gingko-leaf shaped post-its, which I found on myaloysius.tumblr.com, which is the tumblr of a polar bear's tale, which I've already reblogged a ton on my own tumblr. 

Whew! That was a lot of links. Here's some pesto, recipe post forthcoming: 

Mirko Hanák

I love everything about Mirko Hanák. His use of line, color, color bleed, shape, composition, and of course his subject matter. All of these images are from his Bambi, other than the last two, which are from  The Book of Hanak's Animals. 

I found these images on der_onnder's flickr, but they don't seem to be there any more.  

road trip pasta salad

I made this huge batch of pasta salad for a short road trip we went on recently. I didn't want a sandwich that would just get mushy, not that I'm a huge fan of sandwiches to begin with. This pasta salad was filling, hearty, and a whole meal in one dish. Everyone has their own ideas about what goes in pasta salad, so I won't really post a recipe, just the ingredients I used and roughly how I put it together.

I was also more or less following this guide to perfect pasta salad. These are sort of my favorite pasta-related ingredients, but I was also aiming for a combination that would be both colorful and briny. 

ROAD TRIP PASTA SALAD

1 pound rotini, cooked to package instructions, drained but not rinsed

1 pound mushrooms, sliced 

1 basket yellow grape tomatoes, diced

1 cup canned chickpeas, rinsed 

a few handfuls baby spinach, ripped or roughly chopped into bite-sized pieces

1-2 cans artichoke hearts, quartered

a couple red bell peppers, sliced

1 can black olives, sliced

1/4 - 1/2 cup capers

extra-virgin olive oil 

white vinegar 

lemon juice 

red pepper flakes 

black pepper 

salt

various herbs, like dried basil, oregano, tarragon

So, I don't like raw tomatoes, and I don't really like raw mushrooms either. This is what I did: while the pasta was cooking, the tomatoes and mushrooms were the first things I sliced. Then I marinated them in what would pretty much be the same dressing the whole salad would be in: oil, a little bit of vinegar, a ton of lemon juice, red pepper flakes, black pepper, a pinch of salt, dried basil, and tarragon. Then, an hour or two later, after everything else was already mixed together, I tossed the mushrooms and tomatoes into a pan and cooked them a bit. (Actually, as you can see in the pictures, I overcooked them a bit! But generally, I try to just barely cook them so they're tender and awesome.) Once they cooled, I added them to the rest of the salad. 

The rest of the salad is pretty standard. Once the pasta cooled, I mixed in the raw ingredients. I added oil, vinegar, and seasonings gradually, until they tasted about how I wanted them. I used a TON of lemon juice, more than I did vinegar. Also, I try to avoid using balsamic vinegar; even though I love vinaigrettes, balsamic vinegar will make the whole thing brown and kind of sad-looking. I stopped a little before it was as flavorful as I wanted it, since everything would be marinating in each other's juices for a couple days in the fridge. 

Cornelia Hesse-Honegger

A couple years ago, I stumbled across Heteroptera, a book of Cornelia Hesse-Honegger's work, at a used bookstore. It was a surprise in several ways, chiefly that  it's the type of used bookstore that rarely has art books featuring work newer than 1945, let alone contemporary illustration. Hesse-Honegger has been a huge inspiration to me ever since. Not only are her watercolors gorgeous and delicate and of insects (some of my favorite subject matter!) but she's also found a way to use her precise, scientific illustrations to make political statements. Browse her website for more info on how her work chronicles and illuminates environmental changes due to proximity to nuclear power plants.