Eggs, for your ears

For christmas, my sister got me a knitting book called "Knitorama", filled with awesome vintage inspired, quirky patterns for accessories, items, and more. I can knit a cake, I can crochet a mushroom cap or two. On Christmas Day, I made the blindfolds, and my face is warm and covered now when I sleep.


But the MOST exciting pattern was for Egg Earmuffs!!!! Now, it's for crochet, and normally I knit but this pattern called for simple crochet. The day after christmas, I was in the car on the way to the knitting store for crochet hooks, and maybe a little yarn.


I don't know if I exactly followed the pattern, but I followed the picture, and here they are!


I made mine sunny side up. Now eat up some eggs!

Celestial Eggs!

I can happily report that the celestial egg white recipe from Incredible Eggs is tasty and delicious. Using the 3 egg whites from zabaglione (a custard like desert made with egg yolk and amaretto, served with berries), I steamed egg whites whisked with water, sugar, and vanilla extract. Topped with a strawberry, these deserts are light and sweet, and a great way to end a Sunday evening with some coffee or liquer (for the grown ups!)

Eat your eggs as sweet as you can!

Fritata-Omelet Debate

Recently, I have had to grapple with the difference between an Omelette and a Frittata.

I will examine this from Good Eats - the Food Network cooking show hosted by Alton Brown. Now, my boyfriend and I are religious followers of Mr.Brown, so when we watched the omelet-making episode I was floored.

The traditional 'omelet' as Alton calls it is technically 'The French Omelet' and is called so because of the technique in flipping, frying, and cooking the eggs. It is folded over, it's undercooked slightly in the middle, but the texture is out of this world. Growing up, we just had Saturday Morning Eggs, and our omelets were at the standard of an American Diner - much healthier, but texture-wise, very amateur.

It's roughly a ten step process, not kid-oriented, but easy enough for a twenty-something:

1. Crack warm eggs in a bowl, add salt, blend with a fork - this is essential for the texture

2. Heat a 10-inch non stick aluminum pan over medium-high

3. Pour eggs and sir vigorously with a rubber spatula for 5 seconds. et them scramble and settle a bit.

4. Now, swirl mixture so excess liquid pours onto pan.

5. Use spatula to clean eggs off the edge of the pan

6. DO NOT touch omelet for 10 seconds

7. Shake pan to loosen the eggs

8. Lift up the far edge of the pan and snap the omelet back towards you.

9.Use spatula to fold over 1/3 of the omelet

10. Slide and fold the omelet once again over onto the plate so that the omelet is a tri-fold. Coat with butter and chives, and serve!.

Making a French Omelet with my boyfriend the other night, with a hint of dill and parmesan cheese was heaven.

Now, a Fritata is the Italian Omelet, and the main difference from the French Omelet - it's finished off in the oven.

Alton's Recipe is as follows. Now go and eat some eggs!

In medium size bowl, using a fork, blend together eggs, Parmesan, pepper, and salt. Heat 12-inch non-stick, oven safe saute pan over medium high heat. Add butter to pan and melt. Add asparagus and ham to pan and saute for 2 to 3 minutes. Pour egg mixture into pan and stir with rubber spatula. Cook for 4 to 5 minutes or until the egg mixture has set on the bottom and begins to set up on top. Sprinkle with parsley.

how to lay out a recipe

As I share the rest of my cookbook with you in the coming weeks, you will notice there are several fonts interacting with each other, and getting

to this point has been exciting.

I must explain that my cookbook is not just a collection of egg recipes, it stresses a kinship with healthy foods with character and a light, imaginative narrative. When laying out the final spreads for the dummy, with text and all, I have had to consider the super-hero, comic book dynamism that these threads of my book embody, and as such, the fon

ts were specifically chosen to complement. I think the best way to document my exploration of font and lay out is through the Power Fritata Recipe example.

thumbnail:

These are some things I learned in the process:

realize the text is a shape in the image just like a table, a character, or anything else. it must be explored with the same freshness as suggested by the image.

if the text is like an image, the font is a brush stroke that should complement the picture being made.

remember not to put the text in the gutter, and make it at a readable font size and color, and you're ready to go!

I'm not an expert at text, but I like to experiment with diagonals and arches of text. It complements the movement of my characters, and I like the words to talk with the pictures.

The Power Fritata Spread is actively composed, a double spread perfect for a powerful, delicious recipe. The composition is circular, and the text shape compositionally emphasizes the circularity and but interacts narratively as well. In the end, the fritata just must be enjoyed!!

final spread with text:

Evolution of a Spread

Here's a sneak peak at the opening spread of the cookbook, which I will be printing in the coming week and binding for presentations. But it took me a lot to get to this point, and I have a lot to show for this process.

Before I started this semester, I never realized how essential it is to compose a book like a 32 page painting, from title page to end papers.

I spent many weeks "thumbnailing" my cookbook - that is, laying out each page at a fraction of the real size on a poster board to see how dynamic the entire book was. This meant I had to think about angle, zoom, composition, action, and pacing.

Going forward, I think this experience has sharpened by design abilities. Because the shapes of my book drum and bounce in and out, playing with the white of the page, vignette shapes, color, and big and small shapes. This opening spread shows the sketch to final spread transformation:

thumbnail:

final with text:

With text, the image is complete, as it was composed to include a narrative.