♣ Hearty Breakfast "Egg-Muffins"

About six months ago I joined a start-up company, and while the work is engaging, the hours are long and sometimes I feel like it there is never enough time. So many things to do but never enough time and then there are so may video games to play BLAAAAAAARGHHHHHHHH

I very rarely eat out, so that means I cook a lot at home. With my new job though, I find it difficult to cook every night, so lately I've had to find ways to cook at home more efficiently and feed myself properly and wholesomely throughout the week. 

I'm not a toast-and-coffee kinda gal - I need to have some serious protein in the morning or else I have trouble curbing my appetite for the rest of the day. So I thought, what can I make a large quantity of that will keep in the fridge, is quick to pack in the morning before work, will reheat relatively well, and will taste good? I then though about one of my favorite breakfasts: egg and veggie scramble with some kind of meat. And then I thought about a way to make it more portable. I eyed my muffin pan and remembered seeing some paleo recipes where people would take a bunch of stuff like eggs, bacon, etc. and bake little "egg muffins" in their muffin pans. Not a bad idea! 

First, I sauteed a bunch of my favorite vegetables with a little bit of olive oil: red onions, red/yellow/orange bell peppers, mushrooms, and zucchini, with a dash of salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper for some kick. Whenever I can, I try to make at least 50% of the meals I eat consist of vegetables. If you like, you can actually skip this step and just put your fresh veggies directly into the eggs and bake them. I wanted to soften my vegetables a little bit, so I decided to sautee for about 1-2 minutes. 

Next, I sprayed my muffin pan with some cooking spray, and rolled a piece of turkey bacon into rings and placed them into the pan. I imagine you can use regular bacon here if you like!

Next, I take 2 eggs and 1 generous cup of Eggbeaters and whisk them together in a bowl. After whipping up the eggs, I toss in my sauteed vegetables.

Using a small ladle, I carefully scoop the egg and vegetable mixture into the muffin pan. Keep an eye on the egg vs. veggie ratio for each cup - chances are the vegetables have sunk to the bottom of your bowl, so unless you mix before every scoop, you may end up with some egg-muffins that are mostly egg and others that are mostly vegetables. Remember also that eggs will inflate during cooking and then deflate, so you don't want to fill the pan all the way to the top (though the bacon rings do give you some additional leeway!)

And of course, top off with a little bit of reduced-fat cheese - I think the one I used here was the Kraft "Mexican" blend or some-such.

Since I'm not following a recipe, I had to guess as to how long and at what temperature to bake my egg-muffins. I decided to go for 350 degrees for about 10 minutes to start, and kept an eye on the muffins every 2 minutes to make sure they didn't get too crispy. I also wanted the cheese on the top to crust over a little bit.

Conclusion: DEEEEEELICIOUS. What's great about these is that they are nice little portions, and you can eat them with your hands if you wanted (not that I did, but you know, just sayin'.)

For your versions, you can modify any of the ingredients. Maybe some fancy egg-muffins with olives, spinach, and feta cheese. Or meatier egg-muffins, which bacon, chorizo, and sausage (though I would recommend that you cook any raw meat in a skillet for a little bit prior to baking, to make sure that it is cooked fully through.)

12 of these egg-muffins provided a solid breakfast for me for 5 days, paired with some fruit or a green smoothie! A great time-saver in the mornings, when I literally had to roll out of bed and head to work while stopping by the fridge for a second to pack 2 of these in some tupperware. In fact, I think I will make another batch tomorrow, with different ingredients.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

♣ Zelda Ocarina Clay Charms Tutorial

During the holidays, I finished a somewhat large clay project for a very pleasant customer. She wanted several sterling silver necklaces featuring "songs" from the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. As a Zelda fan myself, how could I say no and turn away a fellow Zelda fan. 

Hundreds of little directional and "A" button beads and a dozen miniature ocarina charms later, I was thinking that I never wanted to see a damned ocarina ever again. Though recently I also finished beating Legend of Zelda: Link Between Worlds and man. That franchise will never get old.

I posted a photo of one of the final necklaces on DA and since then I've had a few more interested customers, so I guess I won't be seeing the last of those cursed little directional and "A" beads.

To change things up a bit here though, today's post is a quick and dirty DIY tutorial on how I make my ocarina beads out of polymer clay. If you are new and unfamiliar to polymer clay, I strongly suggest you do some googling to understand the medium! It's very interesting and there are so many wonderful artists doing so many creative things with it.

One of the most fundamental rules (or I guess it's more of a guideline?) that I tell people working with polymer clay is this: the less you mess with it, the cleaner the result. Too much fiddling with your fingers or tools can sometimes result in a lot of unnecessary textures and marks on your clay piece. Not to mention, it'll probably warp the shape so much that you'll want to start over. FORTUNATELY though, polymer clay virtually never hardens (though it will stiffen and dry out a bit if it's really old) so you have all the time in the world to make something over and over. :P

First, start with a ball. Everything starts with a ball. 

(Well, that second piece was also a ball, but I forgot to take the picture beforehand. Apologies for any confusion this may have caused.)

If you're wondering what the pieces are: the large ball will become the main body of the ocarina. The smaller cone-shaped piece is going to be the handle.



Now pay attenshon: roll the ball gently in the center of the palm of your hand - this will achieve the smoothest and most uniform ball. If you apply too much force, you'll notice that the ball will become angular, kinda like a cube or rhombus or whatever you call it, and you don't want that. To roll that second piece, first roll a ball, then put it down on a clean, flat surface. I use a long piece of clear plexiglass as my clay work surface. Now take a smaller, smooth plexiglass piece, hold it at an angle over one side of the ball, and roll it back and forth gently against your surface. You'll notice that it will start turning into a cone shape. You'll get it, just keep practicing. Once you've done that, pinch the other end of the cone to have a sharper point.

If you're asking why I do this with tools and not simply roll the cone with my hands, the answer is simple - I want a super-smooth, uniform surface for this piece. I'm sure you CAN do this with your hands, but you know... work smarter, not harder! :P 

Return to the larger ball you rolled before, and return that back into the gentle embrace of your palms. While keeping one hand still and laying flat so your palm is facing upwards, use the palm of your other hand to apply gentle pressure against one side of the ball in order to start turning it into a teardrop shape.

Once you have the two pieces, at this point you may want to take a step by and review the proportions of the pieces against eachother. For example, you don't want the handle to be huge compared to the body, or have the body be too big compared to the handle. Depending on which piece offends you more, add/subtract clay from that piece accordingly and make it again.

If your main body piece is satisfactory, take a pencil (or similar tool with a point) and make a small indentation on the main body piece - this is where you're going to stick the handle. Look at some ocarina references online to get an idea of where it should be - don't just poke a hole anywhere and stick it in, you may regret it later (that's what she said.)

Now, depending on the shape of the hole and the shape of the point you made on the handle piece, you may have to do some additional adjusting. I do this with tools - I take a wooden curved blade tool and gently blend in the edges of the handle piece into the main body piece. Remember - less is more. Try to mess with the clay as little as possible. You don't have to make this super neat though, because this portion of the charm will be covered in a minute here. 

Now that that's done, put the ocarina aside, and bust out some silver clay. The next step is to make the silver ring that goes around the top rim of the handle that is adjacent to the body. Roll the clay into a long rod-shape with your hands, and then roll it flat like cookie dough with a thin acrylic roller (or any smooth roller or roller-shaped object you have.) You want to roll this piece out as thin and as uniformly as possible - if it's too thick it will look off-proportion with the other piece. Once you've completed rolling, use a razor blade to cut it into a clean, uniform strip. Slide the blade carefully between the bottom of the clay strip and your work surface to separate the strip if it's stuck - don't try to pull it off with your hands or else you'll warp the shape.



Now, return to the ocarina - and this point, I suggest that you pierce the piece with a large needle (I'm using bead piercing needles) in wherever you intend for it to be pierced, and keep it on the needle. This way, you can now hold the needle while continuing your work and won't have to worry about warping the shape of the ocarina with fingers.

With the same wooden curved blade tool I mentioned above, gently lift the silver clay strip and carefully wrap it around the top base of the handle. Chances are, your strip is going to be too long, which is good - if it's too short you'll have to start over and make a new strip. The simplest way to do this step is to first align one edge of the strip in the center of the handle (like where the trigger of a gun would be.) Wrap the rest of the strip around 360 degrees until it overlaps, and then use a blade to cut off the extra.



Using the same wooden tool, gently blend the two edges of the strip into eachother until it's no longer visible.
And yay, no fingerprints! Thank you, bead needle!

Next - the TRIFORCE!!! Take out some gold clay. If you don't have gold clay, yellow will work too, but if it's a bright neon lemon yellow you may want to consider maybe toning it down a bit with some orange or red to give it a more golden hue.

Roll a rod of gold clay in your hands and roll it flat like you did with the silver piece. I generally try to achieve the same level of thinness with both of these parts. If they're too fat you'll have a hard time sticking them on, and they may look a little off in terms of proportion.

Once you have a thin bar cut out, use an x-acto blade to cut tiny triangles out by cutting at a 45-degree angle. Cut out 3 triangles (or if you like, cut out a few more and pick the 3 that look the most uniform together.)

Pick up your x-acto blade (or whatever other precision tool of your preference) and carefully pick up each triangle piece by one of the edges, and place it onto the front of the silver ring on the ocarina. Notice here that the width of the gold strip is about 2/3 of the silver strip. Usually I aim for about 50%. The reason why you want the triangles to be shorter than the silver strip is because if they are the same width, that third triangle on the bottom of the triforce would not sit on the silver strip, and it would be at a different level than the rest. You want all 3 triangles to be on the same plane. Once you've aligned all of the triangles, gently flatten them further using the flat edge of your x-acto knife.

Now it's time to add the holes to body. I have some clay tools that have rounded ends of various sizes, but you can use whatever you find - the dull end of a pencil, etc. While referencing a picture of the ocarina, carefully aim and gently make uniform round dents into the front surface of the ocarina. Aren't you glad it's still on the bead needle? That's exactly what I'm sayin'.



Now, this next step is technically unnecessary, but since I was making pieces for jewelry, I thought it would sophisticate things a little if the ocarina beads looked more like metal. I turned to my fine collection of glittery mica powders for the final touch: pearl/white for the silver strip, blue metallic mica powder for the ocarina body and handle, and gold metallic mica powder for the Triforce.

Of course, you can simply use the pearlescent mica powder for the whole thing if you don't have the other two. I just like to mix it up :)



Using a clean DRY brush (if it's wet you'll just make a huge soggy mess!) start first with the gold, silver, and then the blue powders. You're going to have to aim a little bit here or else you'll get the wrong color powder on the wrong areas (but to be honest it doesn't really look that bad, so don't worry too much about it.) Or if you're just using one powder, you can be a lot messier and just brush the whole thing over with a bigger brush.

Once that's done, carefully, using clean DRY fingers, hold the ocarina charm and use your other hand to pull out the bead needle by ROTATING it like a screw rather than just yanking it out. This will put less pressure on the clay piece and prevent any unnecessary warping.



Bake, glaze, and assemble. Voila! Geeky yet classy jewelry.

And of course... if you'd like to not bother making one yourself and want me to make one for you, drop me a line and I'll see what I can do!

♣ Matcha White Chocolate Chip Cookies

Earlier last year, I told myself that if I ever craved desserts, that I would have to make them myself rather than buying them from the store (with the exception of ice cream, though I guess "I don't have an ice cream maker" is maybe not the best excuse...?) 

I figured this rule would be beneficial in two ways:

1. I can control all of the ingredients going in (and sometimes even being able to substitute healthier ingredients in the process.)

2. That there would be times when I was too lazy to go and make something from scratch, and therefore may end up making a better choice instead (ex: that Fuji apple I spied in the fridge earlier.)

For the most part, both have happened, and I sincerely believe that I am better for it. Though... the one unfortunate side effect of making your own desserts is that most of the time there is more than one serving, and sometimes it's hard to stop just after one cookie. :P 

A few weeks ago I had the worst craving for cookies. Not just any cookie, either - I wanted matcha in it. Recently I discovered how to make green tea vanilla lattes at home, after coincidentally trying the drink at Peet's Coffee. Hooked instantly, but unwilling to pay $4.50 per drink, I immediately turned to the internet and found several similar recipes and eventually adapted them to something I like. Anyway, point being is that I have been on a matcha kick for a few weeks now.

After looking at several different recipes online, I settled on the one that had the most similarities to my favorite standard chocolate chip cookie recipe. The one notable change that I did make to this recipe though, was adding 1 tsp of good quality pure vanilla extract. Why? Because it's delicious. (By the way, I recently bought a 32 oz. jug of the stuff on Amazon.com. It'll probably take me like 5 years to work through it, but sometimes I just want to drink that stuff straight.) 

All things good start with sugar and butter.

The matcha batch I'm currently burning through is stuff I bought from nuts.com. Not having tried many different brands, I can't really say if it's the best, but I like the flavor - it is robust and clean.

Next: Ghirardelli white chocolate chips. Not due to any particular preference, I just happened to have them on hand. Though in general I do prefer Ghirardelli chocolate to say, Nestle or Hershey. I used to be able to eat Hershey's chocolate on its own when I was younger, but I think maybe I've grown to like the more higher-grade chocolates as of late?

Since these are all for me, I tend to be a little looser with my cookie dough. Looks like delectable green gobs of frosting. Yumm.

After I had finished setting my cookie dough mounds on the pan, I suddenly thought about my Silpat baking mat, which makes baking cookies a breeze, especially if the dough is particularly sticky.

One of the best features of the Silpat baking mat - the bottoms virtually never get burned!

My cookies didn't come out as green as those in the original recipe, and I wonder if that's a good or bad thing. I stopped wondering for the most part though after I bit into that first fresh, warm cookie right out of the oven.

Awwww yeah. And the white chocolate chips were slightly melted and goopy too. Green tea flavor was strong and did a nice job of offsetting the sweetness of the sugar. All of that wrapped up in delectable butter flavor.

A few days later though...

To my utter horror... I realized that after eating about 3 of these cookies, that I didn't want them anymore. Any other cookies (chocolate chip, sugar, etc.) that I make, I want to eat them all the time until they're gone. But not these. WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT that my month-long green tea kick would end here so abruptly.

I'm not really sure if it was the matcha + cookie combination, or whether it was fated for my green tea kick to end at this particular time. Or maybe I've just had enough green tea altogether. I'm glad though, that I tried these out before the end. 

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♣ ♣ ♣ My First Post ♣ ♣ ♣

I am not usually one for blogging, especially about my personal life or any current conflicts I might be having. Not that that's going to change, either - I think there's a time and place for that. I think it's more productive to post about things that are fun and positive, especially if a bunch of people may end up looking at it!

I'm a young working professional who loves trying and learning new things. I have an immense drive to find hobbies and crafts that will help me expel pent-up creative energy, and more importantly, de-stress from all the complications that make up life by indulging in simple pleasures. And while I have several online venues where I share my hobbies and creations online, I thought maybe one place where I can sum up everything together and display it all in one place would be nice. And thus, my blog is born in the year 2014! 

So what kinds of things do I do, and like? 

First and foremost, I draw. Started when I was a kid, haven't stopped since, and am fortunate enough to be working professionally as an artist. My true love though, resides in anime and manga. Oh, and gaming. Lots and lots of gaming. (Can't really call that a hobby, as it's more-so an obsession :P)