Hey, That Looks Good, How Do You Make That? Can I Have A Piece?

Other cooking tips:

Hey That Looks Good, How Do You Make That? Can I Have A Piece? E - Click here for this week’s top video clips

For frugal living

I started to collect these in the tense weeks waiting to hear back from my first batch of interviews. You can clean just about anything with baking soda and vinegar, but there are products we use regularly that are sold in very small quantities (for marked-up prices) at bodegas. While we're on the subject of recipes:

Homemade toothpaste
6 tablespoons baking soda
2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons glycerin
20 drops peppermint, spearmint or cinnamon essential oil

Combine and store in a small container.

Homemade dish soap
1 cup liquid Castile soap
3 tablespoons water
a few drops essential oil (if using unscented Castile soap)

Combine in a vessel of your choice, mix well, and use.

Homemade dishwasher detergent
1 part borax (see description of borax here)
1 part washing soda (see description of washing soda here)
distilled white vinegar

Homemade laundry detergent
1/3 bar Fels Naptha or other soap (link above includes specifics)
½ cup washing soda (baking soda is, sadly, not a sufficient substitute)
½ cup borax powder
A small bucket, about 2 gallon size

Grate the soap and put it in a sauce pan. Add 6 cups water and heat it until the soap melts. Add the washing soda and the borax and stir until it is dissolved. Remove from heat. Pour 4 cups hot water into the bucket. Now add your soap mixture and stir. Now add 1 gallon plus 6 cups of water and stir. Let the soap sit for about 24 hours and it will gel. You use ½ cup per load.

You can also make your own sunscreen, lotion, or bug spray.

Good luck constructing your Ikea furniture. Check out HousingWorks or the Brooklyn Flea for already-constructed furniture.

Recipes

The Kitchn has been posting recipes for recent graduates all week.

Here are the recipes that have gotten me through since college. There's a farmers' market in my neighborhood, so each week I buy a tomato, an onion, garlic, eggs, a loaf of bread, and either some cheese or some nuts. A small basil plant, if you have an apartment with windows, can be an enormous asset. Most of the recipes are based on those ingredients. Cooking in the city is a treat & saves a lot of money at lunch hour.

Penne Frittata with Basil and Ricotta
This one's quick and leaves enough for lunch the next day. You can get fresh ricotta at Garden of Eden stores in the city. Ricotta is great just added to a little fresh pasta with marinara or vodka sauce, or used for stuffed shells.

Pasta al Pomodoro
Make sure to use red onion to get the sharp summery flavor.

Bruscetta
Chop tomato, onion, garlic, and basil. Slice a loaf of French bread (about half) into small pieces. Pour olive oil onto a plate; dip both sides of the bread into the olive oil. Spoon tomato/onion/garlic mixture on the top & bake until the edges of the bread are brown. Try variations on this theme. You can make crustini with just bread & olive oil, which is especially useful if the bread is a day old. If you mix olive oil with balsamic vinegar, a little fresh pepper, and basil if you have it, you can serve it as a dipping sauce with plain bread.

Potato Pizza
Totally delicious, and you can bake leftover potatoes in the oven with butter and rosemary. Or make homemade potato chips, or rosemary roast potatoes.

Pretty much anything with quinoa
I never made quinoa until after graduation--a box will make at least four meals, and it's versatile. Sometimes if there's no bread to pack a sandwich for lunch, I sautee red pepper, onion, and katamala olives in a little olive oil, then mix in quinoa and a little cumin. Takes ten minutes.

Stir fry
Most fruit markets in the city and in Brooklyn carry fresh tofu, which is an added bonus once you've gotten the hang of cooking with it. Serve with rice.

Risotto
If you have rice left over, cook rice with warm stock and white wine. Flavor with whatever is on hand.

Grilled Cheese
When our neighbors moved out, they donated a bottle of truffle oil to our cabinets. My roommate and I made many a grilled cheese with truffle oil. But you can do a lot with the basic recipe (check out the ten versions in the link above).

Omelettes, or eggs in general
Don't worry about perfecting Julia's style. Heat the pan with oil. Beat 3-4 eggs with a little milk, a dash of salt, and a splash of water (which makes them fluffy). If you have herbs d'Provence, add a sprinkling. Pour into the pan and cook over medium heat (err on the side of low). Run a knife over the edges when they start to brown. Add cheese (sharper cheese makes for a stronger flavor) and whatever toppings you have on hand, fresh basil if possible. Cook open-faced for a minute or two, then flip half the omelette over. Continue cooking on low heat until the cheese melts. Flip off the pan onto your plate & enjoy.

Here's how to open a bottle of wine without a corkscrew. (Friends of mine once Googled for this and wrapped the wine bottle in a rug, then broke the top of it against the wall. 1/3 of the wine remained in the bottle.) Happy cooking.

Flip-book-like animation

parkour motion reel from saggyarmpit on Vimeo.

Via Looking Up.

"Going West" passage animated

Via EW.

Lively leaves

Biodiversity by Christoph Niemann for the NYT blog.

Book dissections

Brian Dettmer blows my mind! He does great stuff with cassette tapes, too (thanks, Gene!).

Smell of Books

Now you can finally enjoy reading e-books without giving up the smell you love so much. With Smell of Books™ you can have the best of both worlds, the convenience of an e-book and the smell of your favorite paper book.

Smell of Books™ is compatible with a wide range of e-reading devices and e-book formats and is 100% DRM-compatible. Whether you read your e-books on a Kindle or an iPhone using Stanza, Smell of Books™ will bring back that real book smell you miss so much. (Thanks, Kat.)

In B Flat

In the mood for a little music In B Flat?

Colm Toibin

Colm Toibin has the best interviews of anyone I've read of late. The comment about getting no pleasure from writing was incredible, and this bit about being bald as well as gay was a nice zinger.

"The world is peopled by ghosts."

"The Office Girl," a short story by Joe Meno.

Delicious words

The Language Log article mentions the word "kumquat," which makes me think of this little girl's face.

PERPENDICULAR!

The Language Log on word attraction.

Happy Mother's Day!

Image via MNArtists.

In celebration, may I present Postcards From Yo Momma.

May 7

By Embloggery.

I've been working for years to get the job offer I got yesterday.

Letter by Strange Letter

Have I mentioned I finally fulfilled my dream of starting a blog of alphabets?

Just alphabets.

Sometimes blogs are better when they're simple.

Flying Dreams

My boss tipped me off to this series by Tabitha Vevers, titled "Flying Dreams." She painted all sorts of people's dreams about flying - simple but delicious, isn't it?

Kindle is bigger, not better

I get it, Amazon. You hired Toni Morrison and Steven King to advertise for you. But a bigger screen doesn't add the color photos or interactive elements a handheld reading device could offer. Let me know when the price drops lower than $500 and the design is a little more attractive. The pink doesn't help much of anything, even if it makes Steven King smile.

Before the notebook computer there was:

Noteboek from Evelien Lohbeck on Vimeo.

Brilliant little video with a high-tech little black notebook. (via BookFutures)

James Wood finger drums

James Wood's finger drumming, analyzed by Alex Rose for Opium Magazine.

I had the pleasure of seeing Wood lecture at Columbia in a very crowded seminar room just a few weeks ago. Everyone held her breath while he talked. If only they'd seen him drum!