Sleepy cats of 2014

Luke and Allie, January 2014

Gelli Prints

Played with the gelli plate yesterday.

I've been away from paint projects for the past couple of months and got carried away with gelli printing yesterday! These first 3 are finished. I added collage pieces that include tissue paper, collage scraps, text, and "tulip" paint skin as demonstrated by Jane Davies.

Mom's spinach and knoefla

Another favorite Slovak dish my mother used to make and that was passed down from her mother is creamed spinach served over knoefla. Here is the recipe for creamed spinach:

Ingredients for creamed spinach

1 nine-oz bag of spinach (or 1 pkg frozen)
1 c water
3 or 4 cloves of garlic, chopped fine
2 T flour
2 T butter
1 cup milk

Place spinach and chopped garlic in 2-qt saucepan with water and cook until spinach wilts down and is tender. Drain the spinach and save the spinach water in separate containers and let cool. After the spinach has cooled, put it into a food processor and blend until chopped. Be careful not to over-process to ensure that the spinach does not turn to a liquid (it should be "finely chopped" spinach). I use the Nutribullet and process the spinach with the nut-chopping blade for about 3 seconds. Set aside.

Using the 2-qt saucepan, melt 2 T butter and mix in the 2 T flour to make a rue. Cook and stir this until bubbly. Then slowly add spinach water and milk to the rue, all the while stirring. Be careful not to add the liquids all at once so that the rue does not cool down and become lumpy. When you have added all the milk and water, you should have a smooth cream sauce. To this cream sauce, add the chopped spinach. Heat through and serve over knoefla (recipe below).

Prep time (including knoefla): 1/2 hour; serves 2 nicely with leftovers

This dish is delicious served with breaded pork chops or just hard-boiled eggs cut in half.

Mom's sauerkraut and dumplings

My mother frequently made this wonderful meal of Sauerkraut and Knoefla (apparently also known as "knedliky"), which she learned from her mother, who was from Czechoslovakia. I recently made this dish and realize how fantastic it is, and I hope it never gets lost to future generations!

Ingredients for sauerkraut

Pork chops (with or without bones) (no more than 3 for this recipe)
1 package of sauerkraut
1 onion
1 tsp caraway seeds
1 potato
2 T butter
2 T flour

Brown pork chops in oil or butter then cover with water and let simmer.
Rinse sauerkraut with water in a colander and add to meat along with 1 chopped onion and 1 teaspoon of caraway seed. Grate a medium size potato and add to the boiling sauerkraut and meat mixture. Simmer for approximately 1 to 1.5 hours until meat is tender and falls off bone or breaks easily. In a separate pan, melt 2 T butter and mix in 2 T flour along with some of the juice from sauerkraut to make a rue. Then add this to the sauerkraut and meat mixture to thicken slightly. Serve over dumplings.

Ingredients for dumplings, or Knoefla

1 cup flour
1/3 t baking powder
1/3 t baking soda
1 egg
1/4 t salt
2 slices cubed bread
3/4 c milk

Fill a 2 quart saucepan with water and boil. Mix flour, baking powder, soda, and salt in mixing bowl. Make a dent in the middle of the flour, add egg, and beat with fork. Add milk slowly until mixture is smooth and thicker than cake batter. Meanwhile, take 2 slices of bread and cut into half-inch cubes (I use whole wheat slices, but you can use any bread, including the crust). Fold the bread into the dough and mix well. The dough will be too sticky to handle, but use extra flour, and with your hands, shape dough into 3 2-inch balls. Drop the balls into the boiling water and cook for about 30 minutes until they float to the top, which indicates they are done. When you cut the balls in half, there should not be any uncooked dough; if there is, simply place these back into the boiling water for another few minutes.

To serve

Cut 1/2 dumpling into small bite-sized pieces and spread on plate. Top this with the sauerkraut mixture and a piece of meat. Enjoy!!

For leftover dumplings

Cut into bite-size pieces and sauté in frying pan with butter; add onion and mix in a beaten egg. Delicious!! You can also sauté the dumplings with onion and potatoes for an interesting and tasty "home fry."

Lazy Christmas Day

These are the festive Christmas cats of 2013.

Ice storm

December 22, 2013

There was approximately 1 inch covering my car, and it was tricky getting it off. I attacked it with a screwdriver because my scrapers were inside the car, which I could not get to because the doors were frozen shut! Was thinking that the ice would thaw as the day wore on, but the temperature never went up and continues to stay below freezing. Ice is here to stay for a while, it seems. 

Blog lessons

I learned a lot about blogger from using it with Jane's class! 

Layering and veiling - Lesson 6 continued

Been working on these for a few days. They are not done yet, but I haven't decided where to go with them. I think the top one needs the red circles to disappear a bit. I was looking for a focal point of interest and that's why they are there. 

The bottom piece I like, but it needs finishing touches and cleaner lines somewhere. 

I am sorry Jane's class has ended. It was very inspirational and I learned so much about technique and approach to creating. The online teaching is amazingly effective for learning art because you get to see everyone's work and their comments; and you can revisit these over and over, which is so interesting and helpful. I'll be taking another of her classes again, I'm sure of that. Right now I want to play a bit with some of the things I learned before moving on!

Reworked on December 22: The above piece was cropped at the bottom and green transparent paint used over the right quadrant and over parts of the circles, and below is the result:

Worked the above one a little more and came up with the one below. I added transparent color and veiled over with zinc white and then used red crayon to emphasize the red in spots. Perhaps this is a little too on the foggy side, but . . . it's soft.

Christmas wrapping paper

Doodling on painted newspaper. Paint = acrylic. White circles = gesso. +Various markers. Size = Seven Days "tabloid" page.

Lesson 6 - Atmosphere and veiling - first attempts

Lesson 5 line and collage

Bloodlines

Lesson 5 - Line compositions

Lines drawn (in order) with Signo white overwritten with Sakura white gelli pen, Sharpie fine black, red India ink dropper, Derwent charcoal pencil, Copic teal blue brush end, and Pitt medium black. Had some trouble with the pens working on the matte medium. The Signo white was sketchy and had to be overwritten with the Sakura gelli pen, the Sharpie did not want to write, the India ink worked great, the charcoal was fine, the Copic worked very well, and the Pitt black was used to overwrite a gray Sharpie line that did not show up well enough. 

Because of some trouble I had with the markers, some of my lines do not seem spontaneous, but I like the white line on the first one, the "blood" line on the third, and the last piece with the Pitt pen best.

Since posting these, I smudged the charcoal line in the 4th piece and I think it's become my favorite!

The neutral backgrounds did not photograph true, but the colors consisted of neutral gray, Naples yellow hue, and unbleached titanium white. They are nicer than they look here.

I loved working on these quick little studies and really want to do more, but time is at a premium. I will be out of town all next week and will not be able to post. I will try to get to part 2 of this lesson before leaving!

Green and blue quick studies - pattern

Jane suggested doing some studies to see how different patterns work together. The green series was what I did this morning. The stamps used were handmade line stamp, 2 different-size box lids, a couple of handmade circle and square stamps, top of Distress paint dabber, and pencil eraser. Against a background of Golden's green/gold, cobalt blue, sometimes mixed with titanium white. Other colors for stamping included pthalo blue, paint dabbers in Distress sapphire and mustard seed, and Basic's crimson red.

The following is the blue series, done this afternoon. Painted with light ultramarine blue and cobalt blue backgrounds.  Stamping with white, cobalt blue, green gold and green gold mixed w/white. Introduced the corrugated card and triangle handmade stamps.

Not sure what I think of them, but both studies were very relaxing and fun to do. They were small, at 5 x 5, so less opportunity to get lost in too much confusing detail.

Lesson 4 - Patterns 2

Fun making the patterns, but relating them into composition is a challenge. I'l be playing with this some more. Maybe more variety in background and palette will help. These were large compositions at 10 x 11--lots of space to try and fill!!

Lesson 4 - patterns

Playing around with some stamping materials. Yellow and bold and colorful!