Cranberry Apple Pie

This is my favorite apple pie! Not too sweet, not too tart. Although, my recipe is more like a guideline for making the pie since I don't really measure anything. The quantities of the ingredients are to my best approximation. You can substitute fresh cranberries for dried but may want to double the sugar added.

Enjoy!

Ingredients

• Bag or approx 8-10, peeled, cored and thinly sliced apples 
• 1 cup dried craisons or cranberries
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 1 1/2 tablespoons cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon mace
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons butter, softened

Pastry for double crust pie

• 2 cups flour
• 2/3 cup + 2 tablespoons butter or shortening
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• approx 4- 5 tablespoons cold water

Directions

1. Pastry for double crust pie.
2. Combine flour, butter and salt with a pastry blender or fork until balls are the size of a large pea.
3. Sprinkle enough cold water to mixture until dough starts to clean itself off sides of bowl as you work and knead the dough.
4. Separate dough into 2 equal balls and roll out each one to fit a 9" pie pan.
5. Preheat oven to 425°F.
6. Combine sugar, flour, and spices in large bowl.
7. Stir in apples and cranberries.
8. Sprinkle lemon juice over mixture and blend.
9. Line pie pan with unbaked pie crust, trim pastry, crimp to edge of pie plate. Fill pie crust with apple mixture and dot with softened butter.
10. Brush crust edge with water and place pie crust top on top of pie, crimp to the bottom crust. Make some slits in the top crust for steam to escape. 
11. Here you can use any remaining pastry for pie decorations. Roll out and cut shapes or use cookie cutter. Then lightly press onto top.
12. Brush top of pie with egg whites for a nice glaze
13. Bake for 15 minutes. 
14. Brush top of pie with egg whites again. 
15. Turn oven down to 350°F and bake for 40 minutes longer or until crust is brown and juice begins to bubble through slits. 

Walking

..".in our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our mind the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned around, - for a man needs only to be turned around once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost, - do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature. every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations."

Henry David Thoreau

Fall Bulbs for Spring Blooms

One of my simple pleasures in life is the much needed burst of color of spring flowers after a long, white, and drab winter! To ensure a burst of color this spring (and each spring thereafter) plant bulbs right now in the fall.  I found that it is much easier and more affordable than I thought. I picked up these bulbs half off (approx $3/each) at Ocean State Job Lot. Your odds are better to find them on sale if you wait until later in the planting season. Make sure that the bulbs are not crushed or dried out before you purchase them. I chose these particular flowers based on they're bloom season- so that I will have a colorful display from approximately late March to early June. Crocus bloom early in the spring, Daffodils bloom early to mid spring and finally Iris's bloom mid to late spring. Once you get them home just decide where you want the blooms to come up and then plant. (Keep in mind they will multiply over the years.) Planting is as simple as cutting the shovel in the ground, pulling up the earth enough to place the bulb in, and then gently pull the shovel out. The general rule of thumb is to plant before the ground freezes. You don't even have to rake any leaves away from the area as they actually help insulate the bulbs throughout the winter. In the spring, say sometime in March, rake the leaves away and wait for the display. I'll post some photos once they start to come up this spring and would welcome anyone else to post pictures of their spring flowers as well. Happy planting.

Halloween Pumpkins

My husband decided he wanted to carve a Frankenstein pumpkin for Halloween this year, so of course I had to carve the Bride of Frankenstein! I found a couple of great old movie photos online and brought them into Photoshop to tweak and change into a template. The problem was that our pumpkins were wet from the rain the other day, so we couldn't use the template's after all, and ended up drawing them freehand. I think they turned out fabulous! Even though we think ours are pretty cool, they're nothing compared to some others! There are really some incredible portraits and carved pumpkins, to the point of sculptures, out there! I couldn't find out who created this Jack Nicholson portrait but, boy, is it scary! Probably the best pumpkin sculptor I've seen is Ray Villafane. I can just imagine the kids walking up to his house on Halloween!

I <3 Autumn

This is my favorite time of year! I love everything about it; the temperature, the changing colors, the crisp smell of the air, the thin layer of ice on the water in the mornings, the sound of crunching leaves under my feet, squash, apples and hot spiked cider... There is just one thing I don't like about autumn- the short days.

Wildlife Cam: Fox, Coyote, Bobcats, Oh My!

My husband has a motion censored wildlife cam that he puts out in the woods to monitor what kind and how many animals live and go through the woods abutting our property. Most of the photos are not a surprise- deer, raccoon, squirrel, fox, possum, you know, your typical woodland animals, but it was a surprise to see the two photos that are posted above. You can probably tell but the first picture is a coyote and the second picture is a bobcat. The bobcat was the biggest surprise of all. I had no idea that this was bobcat territory. I'm glad that my cat is an indoor cat, but I'm going to worry about my little Boston terrier if he runs off in the woods. Thinking back, we did find a small skeleton (probably a cat) on our property when we first moved here. It's kind of cool but also a bit unnerving to know as I'm walking the dogs on the rails to trails through the woods that there are coyote and bobcat lurking about.

Painting Storage Unit

One day after my studio renovations were finished I looked around and realized that my paintings were taking up too much wall space. If I stacked them (which I often did) it became difficult to get at one particular piece, so I decided to build a painting storage unit. It was obvious to me where I should install it in the studio so as not to take up too much precious space so I began designing it based on it's location. It needed to be 3' wide x 8' tall x 3.5' deep. I planned the shelf heights based on my work- I had to make sure I had slots for 6', 4', 3' and  2' paintings and then I divided up the left over space for the smaller work. Figuring out materials was a matter of math, which resulted in a 2nd trip to home depot anyway. Sometimes I underestimate the time & work involved in a project- I think eh, I'll just throw up some crown molding (my husbands rip on me), but it turns out to be much more difficult than I originally thought. I think it's because I see the finished work in my head so clearly it seems like I have it all figured out. Not quite. Where I thought I could build it in one day like my work tables, it actually took me three days. This storage unit literally kicked my butt! I smashed my foot (maybe broke a toe), got tons of splinters, and drilled my finger (lol), but it was worth it! Now, my work is stored all tidy and organized in one location which opened up a ton of wall space to work off of.

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da....

I've got to stop starting blogs and not finishing them till days-weeks later. I usually start my blog entries with an image and a quick blurb so that I don't forget the idea I want to write about. The strategy works well if I were to actually finish them right away, but alas, sometimes life gets in the way and there they sit. I hope that  the delay in posting hasn't disappointed any readers. I'm not even sure if I have any readers... is there anybody out there?

Fav Flix Friday - Down By Law

Down by Law, directed by Jim Jarmusch 1986

The first time I saw Down by Law I was immediately spellbound by the opening scene- a montage of traveling shots of New Orleans with a husky Tom Waits sound over. The film is shot in black and white with a rich tonal range. Every still is a perfect photograph- exquisite cinematography! Not everyone likes a Jim Jarmusch film, but anyone who appreciates film as art will. What Hollywood or mainstream film considers extraneous and unimportant, Jarmusch considers significant and essential. He has a particular way of focusing on characters over plot and accentuating life's mundane moments that usually occur in between events. The main characters, Zack (Tom Waits), Jack (John Lurie- who also composed the great and moody score), and Bob (Roberto Benigni) are all marginal characters that live for the moment and literally go where the road takes them. The basic story is about a jail break yet all the details of the jail break are left out because the real story is about the characters, their relationship, and their journey.  This film is poetic, atmospheric, human, and funny. I highly recommend it!

Other Jarmusch films I loved: Coffee and Cigarettes (which has a super awesome cast!), Night on Earth (especially Roberto Benigni's bit!), and Dead Man (with the beautiful Johnny Depp)

Guerilla Art Update

Last month I posted a couple of pictures of a guerrilla artist (!?) in my neighborhood who put up a humorous road sign and airmail mailbox. The last time I drove by, I noticed that the sign appeared to have changed and grown so I had to stop and check it out. It certainly had grown! Where once there were 13 directionals, there were now 16, a town stats sign at the top, rocks at the base and a smiley face. There's not really any more room on it, but it would be funny if it just kept growing. I love the idea of a work of art changing and growing!

Even though I have a great appreciation of this anonymous project (probably because I'm an artist and I have a sense of humor) there are a couple of things I've been wondering about ...

I'm curious to know if it is posted on public or private property? If it is posted on private property that is one thing but if it is public property do they have permission? If not, why isn't it viewed in the same (negative) way as graffiti? Not that I want it to be, it is just that it recalls an experience I had with a public moss graffiti experiment I did in the spring and I am curious to know why one would be viewed as acceptable while another is not. For my moss graffiti project, I mixed moss and beer in a blender to make a kind of emulsion which you can then brush on to an object like a pot, rock, brick or whatever and the moss is supposed to grow on it. My idea was to brush this emulsion onto the barren concrete overpass tunnel and create life where there was none. When I was in the middle of doing it some passerby had called the police on me and they came to check it out. I told them what I was doing and explained that possibly it would grow into moss or the rain may end up just washing it away, it was up to nature. They said, "Well, we can't control nature" and they let me continue. The next day when I went to water and check on it someone had painted over it to cover it up. As if it were offensive. It was so annoying to me because if you looked at it up close, you could tell that it was not paint. It just looked like mud brushed on the concrete. The actual graffiti there was the paint covering it. I guess the real question here is what is acceptable as public art and why.