Settlement Sunday #4

This weeks Settlement Sunday is taken from the Sandwich Section, of which is filled with many strange things. There are not many recipes for what I guess would be called more modern sandwiches. They are mostly pretty simple and boring. One of the recipes is actually for a lettuce sandwich which is just lettuce with some mayo between bread. This book must predate peanut butter and jellies rise to dominance because there is not even a mention of that combination. There is a recipe for a peanut butter and cream cheese sandwich and then of course there is the Hot Bacon and Peanut Butter Sandwich.

This recipe proves this whole bacon fad is nothing new. It's actually a pretty good sandwich, I don't think I would make one for lunch but they would be good appetizers at a bacon themed party.

Thrifty #16

Gadgets

This weeks thrifty post is a little gem I found buried on shelf in the tool section at Goodwill. It's a drawer handle with 'gadgets' written on a ceramic inset.

Its about 3"x1"x1/2". It's a great vintage looking handle. All I need to do now is find a drawer to put it on and then some gadgets to stick in there.

Price: $1.99.

What I'm Up To

Rings, Lots of Rings

I've had a little bit of a break from dismantling the Wawona and starting up on John Grade's new projects so I've been busy making things for my etsy shop. So far this week I've made a bunch of wood rings I'll be posting over the next few days. I've also been making some more chainmail bracelets, but as you can see the last two days I've been making wood rings like there going out of style, which I hope they aren't. The sizes in a range from 5 to 16.

 

The materials I'm making them out of are rosewood, purpleheart, and bocote. The rosewood has a really nice dark subtle beautiful wood grain. Where as the bocote has a very pronounced wood grain with the contrast of the dark and light swirling stripes. The purpleheart has a deep rich color to it. 

The purpleheart starts out much more purple then what the finished piece looks like. The sawdust from this wood is actually quite beautiful and rather then making my studio look messy it adds a nice touch. It also has a very familiar fragrance to it that I can't quite put my finger on, the best way I can actually describe it is that it smells like purple.

I'm not sure how many more rings I'm going to make, I'm sort of on a role. It takes about an hour for each ring. When I post them to my etsy shop they will probably be around $15 each and I may also be having a Valentines sale here soon. Stay tuned.

Watch This

ACID

Here is an interesting documentary on the history of LSD. It was done by the BBC in the 80's but never aired until the late 90's because of the taboo subject. They were also probably worried that it would spark peoples interest in the drug as it sort of idealizes the drug throughout the film. Watching this kind of makes me want to try it, I mean what could possibly go wrong?

Here is another great documented test. 

I wonder what that lady is seeing. I remember back when I was in school when finals came around I would sometimes not sleep for 3 or 4 days strait. This was mostly because I was taking 20+ credits of art classes and I had projects and papers due in each one and sleep really was not an option. If I was to get everything done I needed to stay up night and day. Anyway, after about 3 days of not sleeping filled with writing papers and making art I would start to see things. Most of the time it was subtle things, and I always knew what I was seeing was not actually there, at least I think. I remember one time watching it rain but the rain drops were in a perfect grid and moving super slow, even through it wasn't raining, and it was sunny out. It was like the dream part of my mind and the functioning part started to merge together. I haven't stayed up that long for a while now and I actually kind of miss the feeling of utter exhaustion after completing so much, and also the hallucinations, yea defiantly the hallucinations.

Settlement Sunday #3

After the first two Settlement Sundays filled with deserts I decided to lay off the sweet and go with something more savory. There is a recipe for mulligatawny soup which is a English-Indian fusion dish. It's fairly strait forward and simple to make, although it does take some time cutting up all the ingredients by hand. Speaking of ingredients check out all this fresh produce. Look mom, vegetables. Tomatoes are out of season.

Here is the recipe if you want to copy and past it:

Mulligatawny Soup

3 lbs. raw chicken

4 quarts cold water

2 sour apples, slided

1/4 cup onion, sliced

1/4 cup celery, cut in cubes

1/4 cut carrot, cut in cubes

1 teaspoon curry powder

1 tablespoon flour

2 cloves

1 cup tomato, strained

1/2 green pepper, chopped fine

1/8 teaspoon mace

1 teaspoon chopped parsley

1 teaspoon sugar

Salt and Pepper

1/4 cup butter

Cook vegetables and chicken in the fat until browned; add flour, curry powder, cloves and rest of the ingredients and cook slowly until chicken is tender. Remove chicken and cut the meat in small pieces. Strain soup and rub vegetables through a sieve. Add chicken to strained soup. Season and serve hot, with Boiled Rice, page 226.

Here's how it went together. I skipped all the cutting up of the ingredients because it just took too long, and I figured you would get the idea.

I have to say that although this is a really tasty and hearty dish, if I was to make it again there are a few things I would do differently. First I think I would double the amount of vegetables in the dish. Right now it seems fairly empty, which is why I think I would also not run the soup through a sieve. I like my soups more on the thick side, more like a stew. Secondly I would get a better curry powder, I just went with the generic and I think something a little better and maybe even a little spicy would really set this dish off.

I sure have a lot of it left over, I guess you all know what I'll be eating for dinner for the next week.

What I'm Up To

Wawona Chainsaw Massacre

This past week I've been moving pieces of the Wawona down to John's studio so we can start to dry it out. We moved all of the planking over the weekend which took about three truck loads. I've also started cutting off chunks of the large frames. With all the planking removed we are just trying to get as much as the usable wood that we can now. The wood used for the frames on the ship are two beams that are sandwiched together. A chainsaw makes pretty quick work of this wood, as long as you don't hit any of the iron.

In the video you can see me brush away sawdust from the beam, that's me looking for the pattern of trunnels and spikes in the wood. Before, as I was removing the planking, the spikes were just loped off at the surface of the beam so there is still a good 4 inches of iron spike ever so often in the wood. There are also drift pins ever so often running through the beams. For the most part I've been able to avoid these but sometimes I would graze a piece of iron or there would be a mystery spike where there shouldn't be one. Needless to say I've gone through about 5 chains so far cutting up 20 frame sections, so not too bad. At least I still have all my arms and legs.

Look At This

Seattle Of Old

I just discovered the Seattle Municipal Archives' Flickr photostream.There are some pretty amazing photos of old Seattle as well as some great maps and other things cataloging Seattle's history. It's great to see all that has changed over the years but also all the things that still exist and that have stayed the same. Here are some of my favorite photos from the bunch.

Here is a photo from 1916 of the Fremont Bridge under construction. In the background you can see Queen Anne hill on the right side, and you can see Dexter going up the side as well. Off in the distance on the left side you can see Capital Hill with Lake Union below it, and you can also see what use to be Stone Way Bridge.

Here is a photo of the Aurora Bridge under construction in 1931.

The Smith Tower under construction in 1913. Look at all the street car lines along 3rd and Yesler. Almost all the buildings in this photo are still there today.

The Denny Regrade, 1914. I'd hate to be the milk man or the paper boy for this house.

 

 Traffic sucked around the Fremont bridge back in 1957 too.
 

Check out the Publix hotel \in the skyline photo taken in 1954.(E shaped white building just left of center)

Here is a great areal photo of downtown Seattle before all the tall sky scrapers went in. You can see the Publix again the the lower right. Also look how wide 5th ave is back then, it's at least twice as wide as it is now. There are also the train lines going to Union Station that Paul Allen now has his buildings over.

 

Here is a photo looking north up 5th at Union and King st. station. On the right the empty lot is now where the new Uwajimyaya store is, and in the center is where Paul Allen's buildings are now.

 

Look at this crazy design proposal for the West Seattle Bridge, maybe one day in the future we will all be living under a freeway.

Well, that's it for now. There are many more amazing photos of Seattle in their photostream. It would be great to do then and now photos for some of these shots just to get a good sense of what has changed over the years.