Posts Tagged ‘recipe’

Random Recipe: Minted Lemonade

Thursday, August 18th, 2022

A recipe made of 4 ingredients, and to your own taste!

You will need:

  • a pitcher
  • boiling water
  • fresh mint
  • fresh lemons
  • sugar

Make mint tea! Pour boiling water over washed fresh mint and steep for 5-7 minutes. Longer goes stronger, but much over 7 minutes and you’re adding flavors you probably don’t want.

Filter out the mint and then pour the tea into your pitcher.

Add the sugar to taste, keeping in mind that you’ll be adding a lot of lemon juice later. You want very sweet, minty tea. Cool it down.

Add lemon juice to taste and drink up!

For reference, I added 1/4 cup of sugar to 4 cups of tea, and the juice of 3 lemons. It could maybe have used a fourth for real tartness. I used a bundle of mint from our farmshare, and everything else was just guesswork and experimentation.

It’s pretty tasty, though.

 

PS – Please enjoy my new hobby, 8-bit pixel art!

Categories: Whimsical and Strange, Words Words Words
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Collard Greens

Thursday, March 21st, 2019

Collard Greens, an illustrated recipe by Amy Crook

Collard Greens, 5″x8.25″ pen & ink and watercolor in a watercolor Moleskine

Another addition to the cookbook project — you can see that I did the inks back in 2017, before the universe entirely fell apart around me, and am finally getting the scan edited and ready to share with you.

I get collard greens in my produce box sometimes, and since I don’t like pork we had to google around to find a way to cook them. I discovered that 2 turkey legs is a lot of meat, so we end up doubling up the collards with something else from the box a lot. Rainbow chard is a favorite!

I’m entirely certain that my red beans & rice recipe is Very White so I haven’t included it, as is this one, really, so take it with a grain of salt.

The advantage of this is that all the ingredients are pretty inexpensive, even out here in California. I can usually get a pair of turkey legs for around $5 and make a lot of meals out of this when the turkey meat is chopped up and added back into the mix.

Enjoy!

Categories: Completed Commissions, Pretty Words, Series and Books
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How to Roast Vegetables

Wednesday, February 6th, 2019

a recipe for How to Roast Vegetables, hand lettered and illustrated by Amy Crook

How to Roast Vegetables, 5″x8.25″ pen & ink and watercolor in a watercolor Moleskine

This odd little cookbook project isn’t entirely abandoned! Your artist is finally, finally starting to catch up with the many things that 2018 interfered with, and one of them is this cookbook project.

This one’s a little primer on how to roast veggies. Roast veggie hash with eggs is the best breakfast to have for dinner. Enjoy!

Categories: Completed Commissions, Pretty Words, Series and Books
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Pot Roast

Tuesday, September 26th, 2017

Pot Roast recipe, illustrated by Amy Crook

Pot Roast recipe, 5″x8.25″ pen & ink and watercolor in a watercolor Moleskine

Sekrit Patron and I are doing a very slow illustrated cookbook of our own recipes, and this is the first finished recipe! Look at those tasty veggies, omnomnom.

Categories: Completed Commissions, Series and Books
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This Beet Goes On

Thursday, September 21st, 2017

This Beet Goes On illustration by Amy Crook

This Beet Goes On, 5″x8″ pen & ink and Copic marker in a Moleskine watercolor notebook

Do you enjoy my occasional illustrated recipes? Well, then, I have a project coming up that you’re going to love.

Sekrit Patron and I are doing a very slow illustrated cookbook of our own recipes, and this is the very first page.* Next week, a recipe for Pot Roast is coming down the pike, complete with watercolor noms and a bonus cat.

*it’s also a sequel to this art

Categories: Completed Commissions, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Whimsical and Strange
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Random Recipe: Cardamom Milk

Thursday, April 20th, 2017

Cloves, Cardamom, Candied Ginger, and a Mug, illustration by Amy Crook

I found a great place to buy green cardamom, and then went hunting for this recipe, which makes a wonderful, warm bedtime treat.

  • 2 cups milk
  • 8 cardamom pods, cracked open
  • 3 tablespoons honey
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 2-3 cloves*
  • 6-8 slices of candied ginger*

*Optional — if you do use candied ginger, you might want to reduce the honey a bit to keep it from being too sweet. I know it seems like a lot of spices, but since you don’t boil them, it takes more to get the same flavor as in tea.

In a small saucepan, heat everything but the vanilla, stirring constantly. Once the milk is steaming hot but not boiling, remove from heat, add vanilla, and cover. Let steep for 5 minutes, then strain out the spices and serve.

I usually add the ginger back to the cup before serving, yum.

Categories: Things I'm a Fan Of, Whimsical and Strange
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Random Recipe: Earl Grey Vodka

Monday, June 22nd, 2015

It's Earl Grey vodka! Yum, yum.

It’s Earl Grey vodka! Yum, yum.

In case it wasn’t obvious, I’m in love with Earl Grey tea. I usually have upwards of half a dozen different kinds of Earl Grey in my cupboards, from vanilla to floral to straight-up bergamot. Captain Picard has a special place in my heart for his love of the beverage, as does James Bond’s newest Q.

Earl Grey vodka

  • 1 bottle of decent vodka*
  • 7 bags of Republic of Tea’s Earl Greyer tea, or whatever Earl Grey you like best

Put the teabags into the vodka. Wait overnight, at least 12 hours. Remove teabags. That’s pretty much it!

I found literally dozens of different recipes for this, and so I ended up randomly choosing a method and going for it. I did, of course, choose the laziest version.

By itself, I found the vodka way too harsh for my tastes, which is true of basically all flavored vodkas. It’s beautifully scented of both tea and bergamot, but the vodka and tannins made it too rough on the palate for me, so, I put it in cocktails!

Tea Times Two

  • 1 part Earl Grey vodka
  • 1 part Zen green tea liqueur
  • 1/2 part half & half

Since all of my ingredients were cold (including my glass), I just mixed them up and went with it. Otherwise, I’d serve it on the rocks since it’s basically a modified White Russian. The sweetness of the Zen and cream took away the harshness from the vodka and delivered a gorgeous, fragrant tea flavor that I will definitely enjoy again.

Quartermaster

  • 1 part Earl Grey vodka
  • 1 part Nolet Silver gin
  • 1 part sweet vermouth
  • dash of lemon bitters
  • 2 cherries

I love the idea of martinis, but I don’t actually like the dryness of the usual vermouth. I love sweet alcohol, and the Nolet gin is sweet and very floral, with a delightful rose overtone that follows the juniper when drinking it straight. The lemon bitters help keep the bergamot from drowning in roses, and the cherries are there strictly to allow me to enjoy eating them later.

It’s a nice marriage between a Vesper and my usual “semi-perfect” martini, which is just gin and sweet vermouth with perhaps a dash of bitters.

White Londoner

  • 1 part Earl Grey vodka
  • 1 part simple syrup or vanilla syrup
  • 1 part half and half

Serve this one over ice for a London Fog twist on a White Russian. It’s a lovely sipping drink for those evenings curled up with the cats.

What are you going to make with Earl Grey?

*I used some Crystal Head that was a gift from a friend who knows me far too well. I have named him Dorian. He came with two of the adorable crystal skull shot glasses. It was love at first sight.

PS – If you’re not on my list, you might want to fix that! Bookmark sale starts tomorrow.

Categories: Words Words Words
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