Double Victory for Dana O!

Two of the loves of my life have been honored by the president... AT THE SAME TIME.

Midnight Baking

So, lately I've taken to making cookies at odd hours of the night with my roommate's dog. I started off with the standard chocolate chip, but since I ran out of chocolate chips, I was forced to get more creative with my flavors. This time, I'm making cinnamon and brown sugar cookies in honor of this winter weather.

Tonight's recipe is based on the "Smart Cookie" recipe in Cheap & Easy: A Cookbook for Girls on the Go by Sandra Bark and Alexis Kanfer (which I highly recommend!), but as usual, I've made some adjustments.

The recipe calls for:
1/2 stick of butter
3/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
1/2 cup all-purpose flour <----- I pretty much always triple the amount of flour. I just add enough to make the consistency more doughey and less like batter.
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

** I added 2 teaspoons of cinnamon to the dough.**

With the oven at 350, I tried desperately to reasonably portion the dough so that we won't end up with just one huge cookie on a lightly greased baking sheet. After that, I brushed some melted butter over the dough and sprinkled brown sugar on the top. You can afford to be generous with the brown sugar.

Andrea Fraser

Just a few quick links about an artist I not only find compelling, but has quite a bit to do with my thesis.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2007-02-13/art/critiqueus-interruptus/1
kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu/files/AndreaFraser.pdf
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_10_43/ai_n27870052/

Are the arts REALLY worth our money?

After giving away dozens of oil paintings to people from craigslist last night, I saw this post on the artblog about an upcoming panel concerning how much public money should be spent on the arts.

Lately, I've been curious about the function and value of art in contemporary society, so perhaps I should go to the panel and let some experts answer all of my questions.

I have an unreasonable crush on paintings.

Especially these Lara Viana paintings. (Via Daily Serving.)

A Perspective on Wilhelm Reich

Oddly enough, through the latter part of my upbringing, I became quite familiar with Wilhelm Reich and his ideas about orgones. It's always fun to meet other people who "know about orgones" and compare notes.

So, naturally while I was enjoying some Chianti and Easy Mac, looking for a full text online verson of Debord's "The Society of Spectacle" and came across this article, I thought I ought to pass it along.

New York! At Last!

I haven't been to New York since the Cretaceous Period, so I finally nailed down a date. I'll be going up on the first Saturday of March and don't want to waste the twelve bucks I spent on bus tickets, so I'm planning ahead.

Here's the list (so far) of shows I'm planning to see:
Guido van der Werve: Nummer twaalf at Luhring Augustine
Yun-Fei Ji: Mistaking Eachother for Ghosts at James Cohen Gallery
Jason Bryant and Kevin Cyr: Behind the Curtain at Raandesk Gallery of Art
Nicholas Di Genova: Chimera at Fredericks & Freiser

Any and all recommendations are welcome!

The Latest Love of My Life

Albert Goldbarth

Hear him read his poem, "Too Here" on PBS's Art Beat Blog.

Raspberry Shortcakes for Valentine's Day

It's that time of year, kids.

This year, my task is to make a fabulous dessert to pair with a Mediterranean seafood dinner, so I wanted to keep it light and fresh.

Really, there are three parts to this dish. The shortcake base, the fruit glaze and the delicious toppings. Since I'm about as domestic as Hyundai Sonata, I went to the internet for recipes.

For the base, I mainly used this recipe, but made some adjustments. Instead of shortening, I just used the equivalent amount of butter. I ended up doubling the amount of butter and half and half to compensate for what I thought to be an unreasonable amount of flour. I also added a dash of vanilla extract to compliment the raspberry flavors that will be added later.
**My batch came out a little dense, but it's all for the best since it supports a lot of fruit and cream.**

The glaze was the fun part. I used the first part of this recipe. Since I wanted this dessert to be as fresh as possible, I left large chunks of fruit in the glaze and did not run it through the blender. I also left a lot of the liquid in because the shortcake will absorb the juices later and it will be magnificent. (I've been 'testing' the glaze all morning....)
**Since the base isn't particularly sweet, and the fresh raspberry topping will be relatively tart, you can afford to use a lot of sugar in the glaze.**

The delicious toppings will be as simple as possible. I thought about adding some fresh mint leaves, but decided it best to stick with fresh raspberries (if there are any left after I'm done 'testing' them, too) and good ol' whipped cream. The whipped cream is the only part of the recipe I didn't make myself, so I guess it'll be the only edible part of the dessert.

** Best served when the glaze is hot and the raspberries are chilled.**

Become a fan of The Great and Terrible Collective!

Last night was the first official meeting of The Great and Terrible Artists' Collective! We, of course, ironed out some technical bits and each of us has some serious homework to do to prepare for the opening of our gallery slated for May 2010, but we couldn't resist having a little fun promoting ourselves, so we made a facebook page.

Become a fan of us on facebook!

While we currently don't have a space, we're working on a blog so we can show our work online. Also, we're going to have official stickers and a logo soon.

LOLtheorists

You know, like LOLCats but for ... uh... people interested in learning.

http://community.livejournal.com/loltheorists/

A sweet lil' animation

Lifeline from Andres Salaff on Vimeo.

Quick link

These 5-Second Films have been entertaining me all afternoon.