The Messy Chef Reaches more turning points.

Oh, blog.
How lax I've been about keeping you updated! But, I swear all that will change. It's late tonight, and I'm here on my boyfriend's couch correcting my kid brother's essay on Athena, thinking about my life and the crazy turns it's taken since I last wrote about my job, only one short post ago. Lots of things have happened.

1. I finished my internship with Partners + Napier.
This was the most incredible work experience of my life, thus far. I really got a good grip on what the advertising agency is like, and especially if I had a role in it. I do. I was meant to be an account planner all my life--I can feel it. Basically, the person who finds out what makes consumers tick, and then gets to explain it to everyone else. How fun is that??? I got to write creative briefs (basically boiling my research and cool insights down to simple sentences that can represent a whole campaign or brand), do a ton of research, take interview videos, brainstorm the hell out of things, and work with 9 other brilliant, funny, sweet, and wonderful interns who I am sure will be my dear friends for as long as I'm alive.
It wasn't just an internship. It's a family of creative ideamakers.

2. I broke up with my SO.
...yeah, it happened. I was really torn up about it for a while, and it's not really my policy to talk about personal stuff on my blog, so I'll just put it this way: it has all been very, very good for me. I learned that I am my own person; I am independent, strong, cool, and very capable of making myself happy; I am beautiful and wanted; I should enjoy the little things in my life; I am very special and I deserve someone very special! Well all that is great, because the minute I stopped trying to ignore my need to grow up by filling it with a boyfriend, any boyfriend...

3. I met the most amazing man in the world.
What can I say? This speaks for itself.

4. I got ready to graduate.
AHHH!!! It'll be academically over after this summer folks, so get ready.


Just get ready.

More soon. ;)

What can I make with...

          So I found myself waking up from what seemed like a stupor of life recently. I had stopped cooking completely since August, when the SO and I split, and cooking just didn't feel like the right thing to do for some reason. My mom had always told me that food takes on the flavor of the emotions of the cook--and honestly, right about then, my food would have tasted bitter and unappetizing.

But, for some reason--be it my own heart's will to regenerate or just the passing of time--I suddenly wanted to cook again.

So, what to cook?! I found myself with little to no cookable food items in my house...at least, nothing that seemed like an obvious meal solution. I DID have some turkey cutlets and some very, very, very almost bad tomatoes. But that was pretty much it. However, after a bit of scrounging, I came up with this very easy (and very delicious) meal.

TURKEY CUTLETS

some thinly sliced tukey cutlets
1 c. bread crumbs
1/4 c. parmesan cheese crumbs
some herbs and spices (I used parsley, sage, and chives)
salt
butter

TOMATO/ONION TOPPING

1 medium tomato
1 medium onion
1 large clove of garlic (or 2 small)
butter
herbs and spices (I used sage and oregano)
salt

1. Wash the cutlets and pat dry with a paper towel. Put the 1 c. of bread and the 1/4 c. of cheese crumbs into a bowl (as opposed to your hand?). Add salt to taste. Yes, you stick your finger in and taste it. Add a pinch of your chosen herbs and mix well. Make sure the whole mixture is evenly distributed.

2. Take each cutlet and put it into the bowl to coat it in crumbs. They obviously can't be TOO dried off for this to work. If they are, quickly stick them under running water and dry them off again to almost dry-ness. The crumbs need to stick, after all.

3. Heat up a skillet on medium heat with two pats of butter, 1/2 Tbsp. each. When it melts, swirl it to coat the pan, and put the cutlets in the butter. Fry about three minutes to a side, more if the cutlets are thicker. The crumbs and the butter help to keep the cutlets moist inside and not too chewy, as is the nature of cutlets sometimes!

4. For the topping, I seeded and cubed the tomatoes, chopped the onion into medium chunks, and minced the garlic. Since I like to absorb flavor, I used the same skillet as the cutlets, and I melted a bit more butter in there (because the bread crumbs tend to absorb the butter they are fried in.) I threw the whole mix into the pan, added some salt and herbs, and let it sautee until the onions were clear. Immediately, I topped the cutlets with it, and served with mayonnaise.

A word on mayonnaise and turkey cutlets: YUM.


I happened to have some desperately frozen peas (last thawed about 1 year ago?) in the freezer, and luckily they thawed out deliciously. I sliced a cuke and called it a meal!
Voila!

So, this week's tip is to be resourceful...it's easy to make great meals with very little. You just have to be creative. :)

Vintage from a Barn Sale

I really love shopping. In fact, I find it most rewarding when I shop at things like estate sales, just because anything you find in a place like that automatically carries more weight...you had to dig for it! Here are some of my latest finds at a recent barn estate sale in Bloomfield. They can also be found on my etsy shop at http://www.etsy.com/shop/lxp3478.

The little things.

Way back when, in the times before the seventies, I have this opinion that life was not necessarily better..just more detail oriented. The thought comforts me. I guess this is because I myself am very detail oriented--not just in the way I do things,but also in the way I dress, decorate my home, and act.

I went to an estate sale yesterday in a barn, and was floored by how many little tidbits there were from this woman's life. Each dress I purchased had a matching bolero, often made out of delicate tulle or lace. Wedding dresses had crowns. Little purses had detachable clutches inside.

Whatever happened to the following details?

The perfect hat

Gloves.

The beautiful sweater guard.

The thank you note.

The well-fitted suit.

The peignoir/nightgown set.

The scarf.

The decanter set for liquor.

These days it feels like no one takes the time to dwell on the little pieces of appearance that make us feel and look special. I get that we're all busy, but maybe by taking that little extra second to dwell, we can use our time to inflect upon our own selves a little more. After all, one can't care for others until one cares for themselves.

SO much has happened! Where to begin?

Well, OK. So, first, I broke my collarbone. I fell off of a horse during a riding lesson, which is bad enough--but on top of all that, his name was Spanky. Seriously, universe?

The wrath of Spanky.

Then I got to get surgery. I flew home to Atlanta and everything, which was rad because I got to take off school and work, but not rad because I then became entrenched in homework-land. I'm still there, because I have got this fabulous internship at Partners + Napier as an account planning intern, and when I come home, I am TIRED!

SO, very little sewing for now. BUT, i have learned to crochet in the meantime. I've made a skirt from Mary Jane Hall's Crochet That Fits, and wear it all the time. I love it. Crochet was easy for me to do with my arm in a sling, so now I'm obsessed. I am working on a bag currently, and after that...who knows? I'm thinking some pink, fluffy bunny slippers....as if I need those in the summer. :/

So, that's most of the news for now. Let's catch up again soon...I'll show you my latest hook projects, and maybe this crazy jumper dress thing I sort of am making up as I go along. LOL.

Let's talk about my fear of skirts.

I recently purchased this really great Joel Dewberry fabric from an Etsy seller in two colors...the lime green and the dark pink.

Now, I was in love with this fabric, but honestly had no idea what to do with it. I really wanted to make something utterly cool, but it doesn't seem like this fabric would be all that great all over your body--as in, a full length dress. After a little bit of snooping, I found this skirt over at Bird and Bread:

(img courtesy Bird and Bread)

Isn't it sooooo cute? She did an amazing job sewing it, and I only wish I could replicate the effort. Unfortunately, I have this little problem. Ok, a big problem.

(I look really bad in pencil skirts.)

Even I get how defeatist this is, but it's totally true. I just can't find any styles that accommodate my curvy hips with my small waist. I'm not built like a stick...I can't help that. But, I can totally take a cue from the fabulous blogger above and sew my own, well-fitted skirt.

I looked for a long time. Vogue had a lot of high-waisted options that I really liked, but I finally settled on this pattern from the "project runway" line. It's kind of a tulip skirt sort of shape that I think will go really well.

The link to the pattern review is here.

The one that the reviewer made up looked a little poofy in the hips...but hopefully this will work for me. I've never worn the style, personally. Here goes nothing!

Tea Sandwiches and Transversally cut bread

It has been beautiful here in western New York recently, and the SO and I decided to go on a picnic. There is a really beautiful lake nearby that we decided on as the spot for our munching, and the only thing left to do was to figure out what to munch. I didn't have much in my fridge (this is very typical, really) but the SO was hell-bent on making what basically amount to tea sandwiches. We had them a lot when on our trip to Argentina so see his family a couple years ago. They are square, usually thin sandwiches on thin white bread, with a very small amount of filling.

(Image taken from Asado Argentina)

The basic idea behind these is that you have to eat about 50 to satisfy hunger, but they are defninitely light and would be easier to haul around than thirteen Tupperware canisters full of potato salads, cocktail weiners, and all the other elaborate food I wanted to pack. So, we made them. Ah, but how does one get the bread so thin?

By cutting it lengthwise instead of width wise!

The fine people at Wegman's were understandably confused, but could not fight my rock solid logic. 

"This is the last loaf," the bread woman said skeptically. "I can't cut it that way here." We both looked from the loaf in my hand, to the machine, and then back to the loaf. I allowed my face to settle into a patient, oh so very patient smile.

"Is there any reason why you can't do it here? Can't you just put it in the other way around?"

And she did, and it worked. She was definitely not impressed with my bread cutting style, but since it was the last loaf and all (and it's not like I was at the bakery section of a grocery store or anything, right?) I can understand her attachment to it. The point I'm trying to make is that Wegman's is full of excellent people who always try to accommodate the customer. Even if we are weird bread-murderers!

The great thing about these sandwiches is that you can basically put whatever you want on them. We did three types: cuke/mayo/mustard/ham/salt ,  cuke/mayo/tomato pesto/turkey/tomato , and cuke/mayo/tomato/ham/mustard.

Yum!!! We had a great picnic, and though I didn't make fifty, I wish I had--because I really could have eaten at least three more. I wonder how much of sandwich eating is eating a bulky crust? Maybe that's why most people can only eat one real sandwich, but fifteen of these?