squid sausage

good morning! forgive my little sabbatical - i started feeling pretty sick thursday afternoon and have basically spent the last few days sleeping, working, and not much else-ing. i started to feel better this monday, but i still can't get past this super sleepy feeling that's been preventing me from waking up early enough to take any outfit photos.

despite my sleepiness, i've had a pretty good week so far; monday night sam and i finally got to see tune-yards, after a couple of failed attempts, and last night a good friend came over for some hang time (sam is off fishing & foraging with a buddy for a couple of days) and i made us a super delicious dinner, inspired by this post i saw on the tasting table. i read over the recipe, thought about what i had in my fridge, and made a few adjustments; here's how it turned out.



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chorizo & yellow onion-stuffed squid

6 squid, tentacles removed & cleaned
2 links of chorizo
1 t olive oil
1/2 yellow onion, diced
about 1 t thyme leaves
1/3 cup panko
12 or so cherry tomatoes
8 stalks of asparagus
salt & pepper
olive oil or bacon fat for cooking

heat olive oil over medium heat in a medium sized pan; once hot, add onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until transparent. while cooking onion, start a small saucepan of water boiling; drop in cherry tomatoes, cooking for a minute or so, until skins start to burst. rescue them out with a slotted spoon and plop them in an ice bath for a minute or so; set aside.

next tackle the asparagus; with a very sharp peeler, carefully slice it into thin shreds of asparagus. drop this into the still-hot water from the blanched tomatoes for 30 seconds or so, then strain out and set aside.

at this point your onions should be ready. take the chorizo out of its casing and add it to the pan, using a wooden spoon or spatula to stir and break up the meat as much as possible; cook until it's thoroughly browned. at this point add the tentacles of the squid and cook just until they're opaque; take the pan of the burner and dump its contents into a bowl. add the panko & thyme.

now take your squid bodies; make sure anything that feels like cartilage has been removed and they are well-cleaned, them simply use your fingers to stuff them full of the chorizo mixture like they are little sausage casings. fill them about 3/4 of the way full, then use a toothpick to seal them up.

using the same pan you used for the onions & chorizo, add your bacon fat (or olive oil, if you're using that) at medium heat; once hot, place the squid in the pan and let them cook for about 3 minutes on each side, until the skins are totally opaqued and a bit crispy in parts. you don't want to overcook at this point or they'll get really rubbery.

and that's it! to plate, i carefully peeled back the skins of the blanched tomatoes but left them attached at the stem, then plated the asparagus, topped with a touch of olive oil, a sprinkling of parmesan cheese, and a liberal shake of salt & pepper, then topped off with the squid. the asparagus provided a nice background to the greasy meatiness of the chorizo, and the texture of the squid makes a perfect container for this filling. this looks a lot tricker than it is, and i think it's a good dish to impress a somewhat adventurous eater.














how was your weekend? cooked anything delicious lately? i'm always on the hunt for new recipes!

xo audrey

glowering flower

good morning! how was everyone's weekend? i'd planned on going into the city to see a couple of shows - fashion! - but instead i stayed home and cleaned my room, because THAT'S how cool i am. this is kind of a repeat, i guess, of what happened in september - delighted to be invited to shows, for the first time ever, i rsvp'd to almost all of them and then ended up only going to the one - rachel comey - that i was most excited to see. there are a few reasons for this - i'm incredibly flattered to be invited, to be sure, but i don't really think of myself as a "fashion person." i am really just a girl who likes dressing up. and this weekend, the craziness of lincoln center - the jumble of photographers, the legions of stick-thin models, the waves and waves of beautiful, confident women walking swiftly past me in several-thousand-dollar shoes as i wait in line, staring at my $12-on-ebay-miu miu's - just didn't sound like a good time. i'm definitely not judging - lots of close blogger friends attended many a show over the past week, and have some really gorgeous photos to show for it. but they know what they're talking about; i don't.

all that to say, i am going to a presentation tonight and i am VERY excited about it. my camera is fully charged and i'm dressed in an outfit that is the most show-appropriate i could put together; i'll post photos from both the show and of my outfit tomorrow, so you can (hopefully) see what i mean. in the meantime, here's an outfit from last week that i somehow never got around to posting.





top: quail
skirt: thrifted, vintage
shoes: a few seasons old pour la victoire
brooch: thrifted vintage clip-on earring

this shirt is one of my all-time favorites, but i don't wear it much anymore because i accidentally ran it through the wash about a year and a half ago, and it's shrunk up to be less of a crop top. . . well, yeah, less than a crop top. i saw a girl rocking this color combo on the F train a couple weeks ago and made mental note of it, and this green skirt is just high enough to make this not-totally-unreasonable for work. all together, the colors & shapes felt very floral to me; a nice little last-hurrah for summer.

oh! i've recently gotten a lot of questions about how i learned to cook. i did go to french culinary school, and graduated about 2 years ago; my concentration was pastry, though, so all of my classes focused on pies, tarts, brulees, napoleons, macarons, chocolate, etc. as far as cooking - rather than baking - is concerned, i really got into cooking a few years ago, when i moved to chicago; i love good food but couldn't afford to go out to eat, so i started slowly, cooking recipes from the cookbooks my mom had given me, and just kept on going from there. i was lucky enough to grow up with a mother and two sisters who knew their way around the kitchen, so i learned some simply by observing them. within a few years i'd cooked enough to know how to make the basics, and started experimenting more; in the year before i left chicago, i started an underground restaurant of sorts, selling tickets to a four- or five-course meal to be cooked in my apartment. it was not only a success, but the most fun i'd ever had - that's when i decided to move to new york to attend culinary school. i decided to focus on baking instead of cooking for a couple of reasons - one being that cooking is something much more easily experimented with. once you know the basics, you can pretty much throw whatever you like into a dish and it will work, so long as you've thought the flavors through - baking, though, is an exact science, and i wanted to be able to play with recipes the way i can when i cook.

i hope this answers some questions, and wasn't too long winded! thank you all so much for reading - you make this a lot of fun for me.

i hope you all had a lovely weekend! until tomorrow,

xo audrey

picture book

good morning! how was the long weekend? sam and i left to head back to the city super early yesterday morning, but caught bad traffic and a lot of bad luck and i ended up racing, late, to work, and not having a chance to blog. so today's a little catch-up - aka, a major photo dump. but if you make it to the end, you'll find out who won my contest! yes, blackmail! employed, for the first time, here in blog form.

saturday morning, bright and much too early, i hopped on an amtrak to new london, connecticut, ate corned beef hash in a diner, lugged my bags to a salvation army for a bit of shopping, and then caught the ferry to block island. it was a really gorgeous ride.









there i met up with sam and our friends haley and julie and hit the beach for awhile (hit the beach, aka pass out on a beach blanket for a couple of hours) before heading back to julie's parents' place to drop off our stuff then pick up food for dinner. fish market to grocery store, we feasted on oysters, clams casino (a delectable concoction of clams, red peppers, bacon and white wine,) and a leek and goat cheese galette. . . and lots of wine.




the next morning we picked up sam and haley from fishing and hit a yard sale, then changed into our suits and went down to the bluffs. it was sooo beautiful - hot but breezy, sunny but not unbearably so; i think so many tourists had decided to skip the island after the hurricane, assuming the worst, that it wasn't too crowded anywhere and we pretty much got our pick of beach. sam and i fished up and down the coast, soaked in some sun, then headed back home to pack up and take the ferry back to newport.








we grabbed lobster rolls and clam strips, smuggled a couple of pbr and snuggled up on the ferry for the ride back; there we climbed in sam's car and drove up to newport to see our buddy johannes, who was just finishing up a shift as a chef in a restaurant downtown when we arrived. we joined him for a beer, then two, a shot of whiskey, a couple more beers, another whiskey. . . and so on, before stumbling back to his apartment, where i quickly zonked out on the couch but sam, johannes, and his sister sarah chatted for a couple more hours. needless to say we slept in, late, and required a very greasy breakfast in the morning.




our bunkmate for much of the night, rex.

after some bacon and eggs, we packed up the car once again and headed to a beautiful pond not too far from the apartment. sam and johannes both snagged a couple fish apiece, but i wasn't having any luck so i took photos of the scenery instead. take that, nature.






after fishing, we grabbed some groceries and invited over old friends mike and katie for a big family dinner; johannes crafted a delicious fish soup with some of sam's catch, and i made some marinated zucchini and heirloom tomato crostini with ricotta and pear & almond cream puff pastry for dessert.

it was really a pretty perfect weekend. i'm not sure anywhere is as beautiful as new england this time of year, and getting to see so many friends (and eat so many good meals) in a few short days is pretty much my idea of heaven. a relaxing vacation it wasn't, but it was a perfect end to the summer.



and, the winner of the loehmann's giveaway is. . .



heather of 29 skirts! i internet-love heather so i'm so happy for her! heather, email me your address and info and i'll have this shipped right out to you. and thanks so much to everyone for entering - i loved seeing what you're eyeballing for fall, and now i can steal all of your ideas and be the most stylish girl in brooklyn. bwahahaha! just kidding. OR AM I?!

tell me what you did for your long weekend! staycation? go out of town? anything epic? i am very much looking forward to a quiet weekend or two at home. . . in a couple of weeks, after fashion week comes and goes.

xo audrey

dumplings for good luck

last night i headed out to chelsea to meet up with keiko, kim, and at the last minute claire for an event thrown by blue stripe pr. we sipped on cans of sofia champagne, browsed racks upon racks of gorgeous clothing (sadly, the momeent i was waiting for - when they tell us we can take whatever we want - never came,) and chatted it up with lots of stylish girls, mostly about food, which seems to happen every time i lead a conversation. getting dressed for these events is always a messy affair for me - i'm so indecisive, and it's so hard to dress for the weather, and somehow i almost always end up dressed in primary colors. last night was no different.






i'm trying out this new thing where i post closeup photos. i've always done the one-photo, this is it thing, and i have my reasons for doing that; but i've realized as i've been browsing more blogs lately that i really love blogs that are photo-heavy and show all the details, and that's something that my posts have always lacked. i got a new fancy camera (!!!) that allows me to do high-quality shots, so there you go. i tried taking a couple of face shots and i feel like i look like a fish in all of them, so we'll do this photo thing in baby steps.

shirt: j crew
skirt: thrifted (originally united colors of benetton)
tights: man on the street
necklaces: vintage jewelry shop in atlanta, gift from sam's mom, gift from sam
shoes: thrifted


it was a lovely time, and we left with arms full of great gifts, but i was in a rush to make it to whole foods before it closed so i could grab some ground pork and head home to the most exciting part of the night, for me - dinner. my friend ashlee, who spent a couple years in mongolia and has also traipsed much of the rest of asia, came over and showed me how to make dumplings, which we promptly scarfed down, along with a couple of white ales, in honor of chinese new year. i'm told eating dumplings is good luck for this year, which is the year of the rabbit - any excuse to stuff my face with pork in any form is good enough for me.


Gif animation creator





she is a master of sealing those dumplings.

here is the recipe we used:


ingredients:

1/2 pound ground pork
1/2 cup of chopped green onion
1/2 cup of chopped cabbage
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoon rice wine
A few dashes of white pepper
5 drops of sesame oil

for the wraps:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup water

sprinkle the cabbage with salt to draw out the water and let it sit until it's dry. combine the filling ingredients and set aside.

use 1/2 cup of BOILING water, pour into the flour, and knead until it springs back to the touch; let it rest for a bit, then you can do what we did, aka cheat, and feed it bit by bit into a pasta machine to get it nice and thin, and then use a 3" cutter to cut it into circles; fill each with about a tablespoon of filling, and seal it however you can.

put a bit of vegetable or sesame oil in a pan, heat until water spits when you splash it on; brown the bottoms of the dumplings, then add a cup or two of water and cover them tightly with a lid. let them steam until cooked through, about 4-5 minutes.

we made a sauce of ponzu, sesame oil, soy sauce and a bit of srirachi sauce. dip and enjoy!


happy chinese new year, everyone, and have a great weekend!

xo audrey

hot child in the city

i don't mean to suggest that i am "hot," at least not in any sense except the sweaty, sleepy, sticky one. my apartment has no air conditioning (which i suppose is normal in new york, but it shouldn't be) and sam attempted to do me a solid and install an ac unit yesterday only to discover after lugging the thing a couple of states, up a flight of stairs and into the back room, that it doesn't work. so, i sweat.

i also jump. i write this while lying on my bed (and, to be honest, catching up with lost [i have no tv so i had to wait for hulu,]) and my favorite bedspread is falling apart, releasing little bits of feather all over the place; the fan i have set up keeps blowing them and out of the corner of my eye it looks like my bed is being consumed by white, furry spiders. oh, hello summer. nice to see you again.

but, not to complain. i know i've been away awhile; so what have i been up to? mostly just the usual - working, sleeping, hangin' with my man, cooking, hanging, shooting hoops. yes, sam and i have taken to playing some one on one, and i even win a few games! which sounds impressive when i tell you my fiancé is 6'2" and much less impressive if i told you what my handicaps were. but i digress. i am coming to terms with the fact that having a job where you a. start at 7 am, b. work for 8 hours with no breaks, and c. spend the entirety on your feet, lifting things, mixing things, and pulling things in and out of a hot oven, you are bound to be pretty damn exhausted after, and that's okay. so i'm going to continue to blog, as flakey as i may be, when i really wanna blog. and i thank those of you who've stuck with me.

thursday night is my friday and this past one i had a dinner party for a few friends i hadn't seen in awhile; i spent the days beforehand preparing a menu (with much input from sam,) and then making as much ahead of time as i possibly could, which led to much more enjoyment of the party itself and much less time spent in the kitchen than usual. the food turned out pretty damn good, too: a beet salad with a mini tomato tart, homemade basil goat cheese ravioli, and acai berry ice cream. of course i had a few drinks while the night commenced (ahem) and didn't take as many photos as i should have, but what can ya do.




man, sloppy pictures. i hate that. the dessert was so pretty, too.

perfect pasta.

1 1/2 cups semolina flour
2 eggs
2 T water
2 T olive oil
1/2 t salt
some all-purpose flour for dusting

whisk together the semolina flour and the salt. make a well in the middle and add the eggs, water, and oil; mix with a wooden spoon until it's all come together. add a bit of water or a bit of flour as needed; it should stick together but not be super sticky. wrap in plastic and let it rest for about 20 minutes, then knead it on the ap flour for about ten minutes, until it's stretchy and elastic. use a pasta machine (i have a pretty cheap-o one from amazon.com and it works awesome) to cut into whatever size and shape you want. you can also easily add a couple of tablespoons of chopped herbs of your choice to this for a bit of flava.

and now for clothes! huzzah! i must apologize for the silly pose. most of you have blogs - do you ever try to take an outfit picture only to realize after the shutter's gone off that the only picture that isn't blurry or otherwise unwatchable is the one where you're doing something kind of stupid? this is one of those.



i've been looking for a good pair of shorts for awhile now; somehow i've ended up with only very brightly colored and VERY short shorts from last summer. i happened into a j crew outlet this past weekend and found two pairs that are great colors and the perfect length, so i'm hoping to get a lot of use from them. this is a dress i bought back in the dorms in college off a roommate of a friend of mine, and then shortened - unfortunately, a bit too much, so now i am forced to wear it as a kind of tunic-top. the necklace is one i've had since high school, i think, but broke awhile back; it was always shorter than i wanted it so today i just attached another necklace to the opposite side and voila, problem solved. i am noticing my overuse of semicolons, by the way, and i swear to do something about it in the next post.

dress: purchased off a girl in college
necklace: off a small and now out-of-business shop called kaleidescope in carbondale, illinois
shorts: j crew outlet
shoes: pour la victoire

all right. that's enough from me for now, although i promise more soon - i have a pretty free week ahead and lots i still want to share.

xo audrey