Unfinished Projects

Coming from out of the blue, here are my favorite albums of the last year.

• Vee Dee — Public Mental Health System (Criminal IQ Records)
• Mi Ami — Watersports (Quarterstick Records)
• Mika Miko — We Be Xuxa (Post Present Medium)
• Animals and Men — self-titled ep (Convulsive Records)
• Fuck Buttons — Tarot Sport (ATP Recordings)

Honorable Mentions are No Age — Losing Feeling ep (Sub Pop) and Abe Vigoda — Reviver ep (Post Present Medium)

Best concert of the year was definitely the Vee Dee record release party at the Empty Bottle.

According to my last.fm stats, the artists that I listened to most are…

1. Young Marble Giants (264)
2. Crystal Castles (238)
3. The Lines (218)
4. MF Doom (214)
5. Hercules and Love Affair (212)

I’m looking forward to music in 2010!

Lots of family came out to Chicago for the weekend. It was hectic but fun. After some departures, I went to the Garfield Park Conservatory with my mom, Kara, and Jenn. Here’s the cellphone panorama.

It was my first time visiting GPC and I really liked it. Maybe when I am working on the thesis this fall, I’ll try to go there to hang out and write.

I’ve been in a bit of a rut lately cooking wise. The cooking still happens, but I feel like I’m always rehashing the same regular things and there is no innovation going on. The one exception is a recipe that I came up with on the walk home from work about a month ago. I’ve tried it twice now and it’s quite good, but there are still some kinks to work out.

Zucchini Quesadillas with Balsamic Reduction

• one medium zucchini
• queso chihuahua (maybe 1/2 pound?)
• 6 small corn tortillas
• 3/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1.5 teaspoons brown sugar
• olive oil
• salt and pepper

To make the balsamic reduction, bring the vinegar to a boil in a small saucepan. Reduce heat and simmer until it is reduced by about half. Add the brown sugar and continue to simmer. Keep the balsamic reduction warm while cooking the quesadillas.

Coarsely grate the zucchini. Press the zucchini between paper towels to remove some of the excess moisture. Add salt and pepper to the grated zucchini. Shred the cheese and assemble the quesadillas by added roughly equal amounts of cheese and zucchini to one half of each tortilla.

Heat the oil in a large frying pan. Fry the quesadillas in batches, depending on the size of the pan. Start with the tortillas open. After the cheese begins to melt, spoon a couple of teaspoons of the balsamic reduction over them, fold the tortilla over, and fry on both sides.

Serve with salsa fresca.

Ok, so that’s the recipe. Now the problem that I’ve been having both times I cooked it is this. My desire is to have crispy fried corn tortilla on the outside, with a mixture of savory cheese, sweet balsamic vinegar, and zucchini inside. The flavors are great, but I just can’t get the crispy fried outside.

My first suspicion was that the zucchini had too much water in it and was preventing the frying from happening. That’s why I patted down the grated zucchini and also added some salt (I salted the zucchini at least 20 minutes before I started cooking with it). This didn’t really help, so I’m starting to thing that I just don’t really know how to fry a corn tortilla. On top of this, once I add the balsamic reduction, some amount of it is bound to leak out of the tortilla and onto the frying pan. Once that happens, it instantly starts burning, smoking up the kitchen and staining every quesadilla that I cook on top of it. Maybe I should open up the quesadillas after they are cooked and just spoon a little vinegar inside?

Any suggestions are appreciated.

I drew a couple more pictures and uploaded them to flickr, so let’s post them here too.

Marie Curie, looking pretty scary (and photo reference)

Then, I tried to draw a 1-minute self portrait, but I failed and this came in around 8 minutes.

Also, I now have an account on twitter (@colinflipper). It’s pretty awesome as a source of constant distraction.

Here is another drawing that I made a few days ago. Between this drawing and the last one, I am realizing that I make everyone look much older than they actually are. Maybe it is the crosshatching? Also, I think that I drew her head huuuuuuge.

I was sitting around, bored, on sunday, so I did a little sketch. For reference, I was using this old photograph, from the Flickr Commons. I don’t think I really nailed it, but it looks nice anyway.

I was thinking that I should get back to drawing more. So maybe there will be more of these posts in the future…

This photo is pretty different from the last one.

Also, I’ve got some more photos here from my trip home. If you like corgis as much as I do, click here.

I need to get this out of my system, before heading back to cold, cold Chicago.