Meatless Meals Made Simple

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

People who have to cook a meatless or vegetarian meal are often stumped about how to get past the mentality of 'meat and three veg minus the meat'.

Let me make some suggestions:

Ditch the idea of a Western style dish. There are tasty vege sausages, vege burgers, lentil loaves (instead of meatloaf), and meat substitute products such as TVP (use instead of mince) and various mock meats usually gluten based, BUT...

The real variety of meatless meals

is in ethnic cuisines that have a long history of meatless dishes already. Oriental, Indian, Mexican etc. Go cornicopia.

Explore!!

Each ethnic cuisine has a couple of signature carb bases, usually grains, but I'm counting potato here too. What starch/grain do I feel in the mood for? Potato, rice, pasta, polenta, bread, noodles, barley, wheat, oats, millet, quinoa....noodles, noodles, noodles (ok I have a mild obsession).

Choosing the base usually narrows down the cuisine options. Pasta lends itself easily to an Italian dish, noodles to an Asian dish etc. What cuisine am I in the mood to eat?

Do I want spicy or creamy or soupy or dry? Baked, fried, stirfried, stewed etc. Answering this sometimes helps narrow down the options.

What do I have in the fridge already? Failing that, what is in season? Handy tip, what's in season is highest in nutrients and is usually the cheapest to buy. Can't go wrong with that combination!

Then it's a matter of putting it all together. Hmm, a potato based dish from South America using capsicums and tomatoes. Hmm, a noodle based dish with lots of bamboo shoots probably means Chinese something. Hmm, rice with a creamyness probably lends itself to an Indian korma which is great to use up all those odds and ends.

And then go searching for inspiration. There are so many recipe sites online it's not funny.

Here's an idea on how to search; modify these terms to suit and head for Google:
cuisine recipe grain other identified ingredients (and sometimes putting vegetarian on the end helps)

For instance:

Chinese recipe noodles bamboo shoots

Chinese recipe noodles bamboo shoots vegetarian

Depending on the cuisine, if you want to use a substitute for meat in a recipe you've found, either tofu (Oriental) or beans (South American, Indian) will work very very well. Sometimes an appropriate cheese is great (Greek, Italian, Indian). I think because the meat is not the centre of many of these dishes, it is a lot easier to replace or remove it than in Western style I-have-a-hunk-of-steak-and-some-unidentified-greenery-on-the-side meals.

acrylic painting

Stretching Canvas

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Photo courtesy of Anita Thomhave Simonsen

Stretching canvas. All you need to know in one place. Why would you? What do you need? How is it done? (with a selection of curated videos).

Why would you?

Artists are always looking for ways to save money on materials without skimping on quality. Stretching your own canvas instead of buying it already stretched is a real dollar saver. It also allows an artist to have full control over the canvas they paint on and how it is prepared, and to have any size they choose. So not only can it be cheaper, but better quality too!

However, before getting outlandishly excited, stretching canvas does take time, so if you're not quick at it, perhaps buying ready-mades would be less expensive in the long run. There is also the option of having canvas stretched for you by professionals. Obviously this costs though you get the exact specifications you want and can focus on painting, which is presumably what you do best.

What do you need?

Stretcher bars, either pre or home made, to stretch your canvas onto
Canvas to stretch, which is about 2 inches larger all round than the stretcher size
Canvas pliers are useful to save your hands
A staple gun and staples, or nails or tacks and a hammer for securing the canvas to the stretcher
A mallet for tapping the stretcher together
Tape measure for checking the squareness of the corners
T square for chiecking the squareness of the corners
Scissors for cutting the canvas
A razor blade can be handy for removing excess off the edges
Blunt nose pliers or a flat head screwdriver for removing errant staples
Misting spray in case the canvas ends up too loose
Patience

How is it done?

Rather than write up a long winded explanation, I instead sought out a bunch of the most useful videos. There are an awful lot out there and most of them are awful! I've sat through as many as I could stand (about 20) to bring you the pick of the bunch.

A good general introduction

http://video.about.com/painting/How-to-Stretch-a-Canvas.htm

This is a 5 minute video which deals with stretching up to about the 2 minute mark has some neat tips with razor blades and misting sprays.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-271921060817845354#

Gallery wrapping of pre-painted canvas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkToBRa-O-U

A leisurely series on making stretcher bars and stretching canvas with plenty of handy tips

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7iRiF1k7s4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY5-7a6QX8s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ5H05A4184

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKey4crHzmc

Creative Cauldron - Margaret Preston

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Artist inspiration and artist influences. No biographies, dates or scholarly research here - this is a personal response to the work of Margaret Preston by Australian artist Fiona Morgan.

I would like to introduce you to one of my all time favourite artists, the Australian modernist Margaret Preston who produced fabulous and much loved art pieces from the 1920's to the 1950's. She is one of Australia's greatest artists, but because she had the curse of being female she has basically been ignored. It was only in 2005 that a full retrospective exhibition of her work was mounted. I think it's almost criminal that it took so long for her to be fully recognised.

I am quite sure that her incredible and apparently renowned self-belief, apart from her obvious talent, is to thank for us knowing about her at all. Without her vocal self promotion, she would have been just another talented unknown female artist hidden within a patriarchal society. There is a lesson here to take away, for every artist, and her self promotion and individual opinions are part of my admiration for her.

Another strong belief she held and championed that I am partial to, was the importance of developing an Australian artistic identity. While I lived overseas I came to see just how different and unique Australian culture is. We have a tendency to look overseas and believe that what's out there in Europe and America is somehow better than what we have here. I disagree. What we have, if we nurtured it, would be just as admirable and great. What we actually have now is stuck in a bit of a 70's time warp and overlaid with a growing Americanisation. Which is a shame.

But back to Margaret Preston. She was well ahead of her time with her ideas, being early to see the value of Aboriginal art. She appreciated it so much that she took the unusual step for the time of becoming a self taught student of Aboriginal artforms.

Today she is best known for her woodcut prints. In keeping with her strong beliefs on forming an Australian identity, most of these are designs of Australian native flowers, seeds and leaves or Australian landscapes. The two landscape prints here are both views around Sydney, where she lived for many years and the two floral pictures are typical examples of her many, many flora woodcuts.

If you can detect a Japanese influence in these woodcuts then you are absolutely right. Her style developed into a graphic based harmony of pattern and asymmetry, both often mentioned of her work, but also, I think, she had the knack of making icons. She would take everyday items and turn them into pictures that everybody already 'knew'. That's quite a gift for seeing. I have a strong admiration for all of these elements in her work.

In the 50's she began producing monotype stencil paintings in a woodcut style. These make me swoon. The colours, the painterliness, the pattern. The first and last pictures here are examples of this very mature style.

About the Creative Cauldron series of posts

Creative Cauldron - artistic influences & inspiration for Australian artist Fiona Morgan

The Creative Cauldron series of posts explores and showcases the visual styles, techniques, attitudes, ideas, artists and paintings that have had the most impact on me.

The rest of the series is accessible via the Creative Cauldron page. Have a meander if you please, and remember to check out my artworks on Flickr, and have an insider peek at life as an artist on Facebook.

artists guide

Diary of Becoming - Round Eight - June 2010

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Ah goodness, no, it hasn't been a month already has it? Surely not. Where the bleep am I up to? Need sleep.

What's happened?

The freelance/contract medical illustration project is still on. It feels as though it's been going on forever. I'm tired of being tired. Ten hour days as standard is too much. Trying to remind myself that it will all be over by this time next month. Looking forward to being able to exclusively concentrate on the cookbook.

Despite constantly feeling that I have too much to do, the Official Art Store is up! Very-Limited-Edition prints available now of all artwork done so far. From now on, as each recipe is posted it's artwork is available immediately. Please note that the current viewing pics are fairly quick camera shots of each piece and these pics will slowly be replaced with ones of higher quality as I have them scanned for me. If there's an image you like and you want to see a better quality version of it, let me know and I'll prioritise its scanning for you.

Also this month managed to set up the template for the newsletter for collectors. If you've signed up to receive this, I may actually send out the first somewhat monthly mailing soon. If you've not signed up, the yellow box top left is where your email address goes :)

And I managed the scary asking for help. Yes! Got it. Then it disappeared. Ah well, the asking was the hard. Now to try that again.

Learnings

The biggest learning for this month is that painting while upset or off centre is pretty much pointless. Either the ideas suck or the execution of a great concept goes pear shaped. So the painting something every day is an interesting idea, but not necessarily workable for me. The time when I'm unsettled is not the time to paint. That's the time to do other stuff such as coding, administrivia, PR etc. Figuring out ways to help get me back to centre FAST is a high priority.

A smaller learning for me is that I kinda think acrylic paints stink a bit. The colour shift, the too-fast drying time, the handling compared to oils. Part of this is unfamiliarity. Part of this is technical annoyances. So I've got me some drying inhibitor to see if my biggest gripe with this medium can be coaxed into a

Get done for July

A new approach to the ~~PR campaign~~ Collective Merrymaking. Do one of these a day (there are around 15 lined up), then send all these to my help as examples and get a bigger campaign done for me. Sounds like a plan. Nothing happened in this department last month and it really shows in the traffic stats.

Figuring out ways to help get me back to centre FAST. This is more than the 'take a walk', 'drink plenty of water', 'have a hot shower or bath' type of remedy. All of these are great, but I'm after the 'pressing issue needs attention and major soothing right now' kind of remedies. I suspect Havi's monster talking and Shivanautical dancing are the sorts of ideas I'm looking for. Just a hunch.

Meatless Meals Made Simple

People who have to cook a meatless or vegetarian meal are often stumped about how to get past the mentality of 'meat and three veg minus the meat'.

The real variety of meatless meals