Accidental Enchiladas

Woohoo! Okay. Reality check. My wife and I just came home from vacation. We are not REAL foodies...but we like good, inventive cuisine and insanely, on Cape Cod, for us this meant Thai food this year. Wickedly warm and well seasoned Asian flavors! Of course we squeezed in our Wellfleet oysters, the must-have lobster and tender but surprisingly under-seasoned fried clams. We left craving spice and heat and with a couple of tomatoes still in the garden I decided fresh enchiladas were on the menu. Sunday I roasted chicken mediterranean style (loads of citrus plus home grown garlic and tons of fresh herbs) and used those leftovers to stuff the enchiladas. I scoured the grocery store for acceptable corn tortillas because both Donna and I love that white corn flavor. Turns out we both (different decades) savored tamales from street vendors in Tucson, AZ, and I like to have that flavor and texture. Wheat tortillas will not do! As I was roasting the chicken we were catching up on Pioneer Woman episodes from the DVR and there she was making simple http://www.foodnetwork.com/the-pioneer-woman/index.html enchiladas in a way my mother never did. Mom and I had a favorite Mexican restaurant in, of all places, Manchester, CT. When that closed down I didn't have any other taste test reference for her favorite Mexican meal.

Well. I think I have got it...in the oddest accidental ensemble I could imagine. Ree Drummond fried her corn tortillas VERY briefly in canola oil. I have always done that in the enchilada sauce itself. The oil works SO much better! The dish held together beautifully and the fried corn tortillas were actually lighter in texture than those dipped in sauce before rolling.

How else were these accidental? My cousin Cheryl and her husband rented here in CT this summer and when they headed home to Arizona we reaped the bounty of their refrigerator. Bob likes to cook like I do but I mistook a hunk of mozzarella for chedder. Yep. That became part of the accident in my "Accidental Enchiladas".

Combine what you like...but this is what I did:

Accidental Enchiladas
preheat oven to 350

6 white corn tortillas
2 Tbs canola or other vegetable oil
1 cup cooked chicken
1/4 cup boursin or seasoned goat cheese
1 Tbs chopped roasted or sun dried tomatoes
(With roasted garlic if you choose)
1 tsp hot sauce
1/2 chopped sweet onion
1 cup enchilada sauce
1/2 cup grated cheese (mozzarella was my accident~ I was sure I had cheddar)
1/2 cup grated OTHER cheese (I chose Romano for the compliment)
2 cups chopped romaine lettuce
1 1/2 cups chopped fresh tomatoes
3 Tbs chopped fresh cilantro
2 Tbs chopped red onion
sour cream for garnish

Heat the oil until it ripples in the pan. Cook each corn tortilla just a few seconds per side in the hot oil. Let drain on paper towel. Combine the cooked chicken with the roasted tomatoes and garlic and boursin cheese. Add in finely diced sweet onion. Mix well and use to fill tortillas. Put a couple of tablespoons of the enchilada sauce on the bottom of a casserole and line the dish with the filled and rolled tortillas.Cover the rolls with the remaining sauce. Top with the grated cheeses. let bake for 20 minutes and rest for 5.

In the meantime chop lettuce and tomato and spread on plate. Once the enchiladas have rested top plate with them and garnish with remaining ingredients.

That will nicely fuel my painting assignment! How about your fuel?

Welcome Autumn

Blue Moon

The signal of summer's end to me was the cold nights we had leading up to that twice-in-a-month full blue moon. In my parents' yard the cherry trees are the first to shed their leaves and as we sat visiting with family last Sunday a flurry of yellow leaves danced around us.

Art and Autumn go together well. It is perfect for painting outdoors or going to a fair or festival where people show off their creativity. I have been seeing some great work. Currently I have work up in the East Windsor Town Hall and the Butler-McCook House & Garden and Sunday I will be joining a "Pretty Wings" benefit show called "2012 Year of the Goddess at the MAC650 gallery at 650 Main Street in Middletown, CT. I have plenty of goddess stuff for that!

Goddess 

Chatty Cassandra

My promise for today is to at least spend a couple of hours painting. We all have plenty to do...pay bills, walk the pup, talk to the pretty kitty and all sorts of running around or reorganizing. I am fortunate enough to have a job where I can pull in or reach out to paper or canvas and see what comes and I need to be sure I do that every single day.

underpainting for latest work

Wild Summer

unidentified spider from genus Auraneus

This has been the year of the insect...and nearly everything else. In our pond frogs and turtles are prolific with bullfrogs staging impromptu concerts any time of day (while the herons aren't lurking). Over the last couple of days this year's red-tail hatch-ling has been calling for its parents to keep providing meals, competing in loudness with the bullfrogs.

The winter was so warm there was no winter kill...seems every weed seed and insect egg survived. We saw several kinds of aphids in record plant-destroying numbers. Deer flies have been lurking in the shade for weeks and have bitten all of us ~ they are especially cruel to the dog. I know more people who have had Lyme disease this year than any other year previously, including me. Considering I spent a good portion of the summers of my youth where the disease was discovered I figured with smarts and caution I would continue to beat the odds. No chance, not this year.

A record dragonfly hatch brought hundreds of swallows gorging on an easy meal for several evenings. I have seen more kinds of insects I have never seen before. After Donna and I walked the dog last night I wondered about spiders. By now there would generally be several large webs in the garden. Don't get me wrong...they are there...just not the same types in the same places. Donna found the one pictured today.

tomato "cat-facing" 

Truth be told I have somewhat surrendered to the pestilence and vermin that are proving to be the scourge of the garden. Drought followed by 2 2" each rainstorms split most of the tomatoes which were already cat-faced. Patient trimming of tomatoes can yield edible fruit but hot humid weather gave insects a chance to occupy those yummy cracks and spoiled most of what I had. This year I changed types of plants on my father's advice but now this is the second year in a row with a poor yield I am not sure what I will do next year. Heirloom varieties are not always known for disease resistance and the plants were place improperly for irrigation through the drought. I gambled my garden and lost! I found the cutest little bunnies just outside the garden fence...and watched them zip right on in to the garden through tiny holes. They ate down favorite herbs and even nibbled the tomatoes they could reach. A rabbit now and again...yes...but a dozen? Really?!

The most surprising problem we had was with plants inexplicably dying. Turns out the black walnut and butternut trees my father planted years ago have put on just the right amount of root growth to touch the garden, destroying new asparagus plants and tainting a portion of the tomatoes. The trees put out a toxin in the soil designed to reduce competition. I dislike the bitter flavor of the valuable nuts...and now I have a new reason to scowl at these woody giants. I was already criticizing them for cutting down on morning sun in spots.

Time to get new bug books and figure out new gardening strategies.

Food Heaven?

Okay. So I admit it. One of the ways I express my creativity is through cooking. I suppose that isn't a surprise since my form is significantly more rotund than it was when I was younger, and I come from a family of cooks but unlike my the vertically challenged rest of the crew I am a mere 5 feet.

 I can't tell you how many artists I know are gardeners, and if not gardeners then straight out COOKS. The beauty of being a gardener and a cook is that as the bounty rolls in you just have to get more and more imaginative. This is late in the season because we started with high heat early on...like all of North America...so we are seeing the peak of the season early. Drought has all but destroyed the crops and four inches of rain in a few days after all that dry doomed what is left. But I wanted to have a revolution on the barbecue before it rains again. I had a ripe pineapple on the counter and grilled pineapple salsa has been the condiment of the summer. We like the cooking shows and in particular "Chopped", which currently is having a grill master series. They influenced me this way:

I took my pineapple slices and added SALT, pepper, brown sugar and cayenne pepper. Sweet caramelizing on sweet with a spicy kick. Awesome. And if you have to break up with someone at least take the family recipes. Turns out the family recipes were some of what I value most! To get near the original recipe but with my own twist I soaked 4 boneless pork chops (2 for lunch for each of us tomorrow) in soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, garlic powder, red pepper flake and salt and ground black pepper. In a bowl I combined Ken's french dressing (the old divorced family secret always was applied to lamb), soy sauce, brown sugar, granulated garlic, red pepper flake and ground black pepper. The pineapple slices and pork hit the grill at the same time, and I reserved the french dressing based sauce as if it was BBQ sauce. Essentially it was! After 3 minutes I flipped the chops and applied the sauce. Flip and apply...flip...rest. Yum freaking yum. What is your favorite food to BBQ?

Arctic Stories

After making several piece that included sea birds I kept wandering about the ocean and landed, easily, in Inuit mythology. This is the work contained in the Butler-McCook House & Garden show sponsored by CT Landmarks.

Keep reading for the longer version of how I got to these stories...

Over the last year as I muddled about with my work imagining and drawing birds trapped in oil spills and other at sea disasters the Audubon Society began a campaign to broaden understanding about the impact rapid warming in the arctic is having on species of birds we know and love locally. And I have always been a fan of Inuit art, often including a segment for kids when I teach. So I started reading...about new species being discovered deep in the trenches of the ocean, about Inuit life and the stories that make up their understanding of the world and all other kinds of arctic wonders.

Another reason I have been interested in the Inuit is that they seized upon traditional art-making as a way of life when their hunting and gathering ways were altered by the encroachment of modern life. Years ago I had read the story of Skeleton Woman as told by Clarissa Pinkola Estes in Women Who Run With Wolves. http://mavenproductions.com/index.php/services/dr-clarissa-pinkola-estes/ and I sought out the book and story again as I tried to embrace and feed my own bones of sadness after the snow storm accident last October 30. Skeleton Woman led to Sedna, the Inuit Goddess of the Sea...and suddenly a series of images was hatched. The Inuit people are spread across the world north of us and their stories of Sedna differ slightly from region to region. I created a panel that depicted an aspect of one of those stories and then a panel of text to accompany it.

then I created panels that depicted the new sea species being discovered. For the small but lovely gallery at the Butler-McCook House & Garden I displayed 4 of these completed panels along with 4 of the Deepwater Horizon Gulf Spill drawing. The preceding works are the panels. The stories have similarities and I have romanticized some details and minimized others, so you will see overlap in the texts.

"Catch 22" or "Running Around with my Hair on Fire"

I will likely do more to edit this little me character as I go forward (insert flames), but one of the things that makes me feel like I am doing just that....running around with my hair on fire...is begging people to "like" me or "click this and that" in an effort to get "the word" out and show off more art work. Most of my artist friends agree...we could spend 85% of our time on the computer or phone, marketing and maintaining communications, and a mere 15% (or, sadly, far less) actually making the art.

It isn't a balance that sits well with most of us. It isn't balanced at all.

We artists dream that we will simply "be discovered" like naive potential starlets in the early days of movies. We extract great joy from the process of creating, and then again great joy when a viewer really, really likes something we have created. From the drawing board to the wall there is so much to do! Now with facebook and websites and pins to manage as well as the old-fashioned finding gallery or public space to display the business of art has changed in a fabulous way. In a really fabulous sucking-all-the-time-and-life-from-you way. Like running around with my hair on fire. I am not really sure if I should just scream "look at me" or beg you to put it out!

With just two weeks until I unveil the new work going into the show "A Sea in Myth and Reality" things really are very busy, but here I am typing a blog entry. My first instinct is to keep the computers off, lock the door and stop answering the phone so I can get everything just right...but when I don't let you in on what I am up to then I don't sell a thing. And the only way to keep making art is to sell some.

So follow me, would you? 

Everything Little Thing It Does is Magic

Maybe "It" is New England. Maybe "It" or "She" is the community of humans experiencing this life and smashing into each other like the movie "Crash". I think "It" or "She" is the whole dang planet and everything IS magic.

Case in point: Donna helped me hang 26 works at the Simsbury Public Library, which is a great place within a great place. We popped across the streeet for a great lunch at Peaberry's and hit Rosedale Farms on our way back home. http://www.rosedale1920.com/about-us.html. They were having a wine tasting of their own vineyard's product...6 one ounce tastes for $9.While it seemed like a good deal we thought we would move on with the corn, peaches and strawberries we plucked from their stand.

In the meantime I am keeping pace with Audubon's education regarding arctic creatures you might not be aware rely on the arctic. http://policy.audubon.org/alaska-arctic-page

Each animal is becoming an art piece that works with the Inuit legends and stories that are told and retold to this day. One of the ways the Inuit coped with cultural change brought on by contact with other peoples is to make art...does life get better than that? All right, I am biased. But dramatic climate change is pushing up the pace on change all around the arctic, for human and animal alike. The Audubon Society wanted to know if I knew peregrine falcons relied on arctic wilderness. Yep. Knew that...but I didn't have any idea I would look up from my perch in our living room to find a peregrine falcon clinging to the deck. I assume the gorgeous bird had just missed a bird snack at one of the feeders but it was an amazing site that has yet to be repeated. Suddenly, what the arctic and I have in common closed it circle. Every little thing she does is magic.

When you live in a small town gossip and innuendo are your bedfellows and I had heard (but, truthfully, not believed) that a peregrine was nesting on the high power lines about a mile away. I still have no confirmation except for that one winter moment when the unmistakable peregrine mask stared at me from 20 feet away on my own deck. Recently we have had suspicious sightings of small falcon shapes...not quite sharp-shinned hawk definitely not american kestrel (goodness I miss them). Crank open my identifying mind and eye? Again, yes. Always look for the magic!