This illustration by Jose Ortiz for client Linguagraphics makes me smile. Black cats and white rabbits are both recognized for their magical properties. The black cat as a witch’s familiar and the white rabbit as the magicians sidekick. Jose’s slick portofolio has a clean, cool finish and bears the hand of a perfectionist. His work can be found on his website www.jofolio.com.
The first fruit to drop from our feijoa tree went unnoticed by us, but Tofu the bunny sniffed it out and ate half of it before I caught him. Considering Tofu is blind, that is top marks to the bunny. Tofu loves feijoa and we have to check the backyard daily to clean up all the fallen feijoa or else he will eat more than is good for him. For those outside the loop, feijoa (Pronounced fee-JO-ah) are a guava with a perfumey, tart flavour and a grainy texture similar to pear. The originated in South America and I’m not how they found their way to Auckland, New Zealand, but the feijoa season here is short, intense and adored by many. We count our lucky stars that our rental has a thriving feijoa tree in the backyard. I have fond memories of feijoa season, we would sit around the table, eating feijoa and stacking up the emptied cups as we ate until the towers bent and swayed. In Cantonese, we call them “FEE-jo. To eat a feijoa, …
For the past 3 years, The Koala and I have been heavily involved with the Japanese Art Festival. Neither of us are Japanese, but we have a fondness of Japanese art, culture and food. It all began when a friend who was helping with the organisation for 2010’s festival asked if we wanted to submit some artwork. Since then, we’ve not only submitted work, but also branded, advertised, promoted and helped to organise different aspects of the event. The festival was well advertised this year with flyers and posters distributed all across Auckland, magazine advertising, radio advertising, and of course the mother of all advertising for free events: Facebook. It’s a fairly big task logistically and it all paid off seeing all the people that came to the festival to enjoy the art and various events over the 3 days. It’s been a great learning curve for us and it’s great to have a hand in something like this. The festival is now in its fourth year and is held at the Aotea Centre in the heart …
I am in love with these crocheted rabbits (actually, they’re hares) from the Crochetdermy collection by Shauna Richardson. These intricate, life-size pieces are a novel alternative to taxidermy. You can view more of Shauna’s work at her website: http://www.shaunarichardson.com
Toast: A Story of a Boy’s Hunger by Nigel Slater, 2003 I’ve heard the name Nigel Slater around the place before, a chef whose claim to fame was being a food writer for The Observer Magazine and also Marie Claire. He’s written several cookbooks and plays art director for his books. This book is the matter-of-fact memoir of a loner growing up in ’60s and ’70s England. Food obsessed since as far back as he can remember, each brief chapter in this book is written like a diary entry with dishes or food items rather than dates to define them. Food and happiness are linked and the point of view is from someone who is lonely, hungry, sexually frustrated and bitter toward most others. He’s not an only child, but he might as well have been. It’s never obvious exactly why he is a loner, but his selfish ways probably don’t help. Not everything is explained in the book and you often have to put two and two together. “Eating a slice of pie is …
It’s not often talked about, but here in New Zealand, all across the country, grown-ups have blue sticker fever. Since February, one of the supermarket chain giants, Countdown, has customers collecting blue stickers in the hopes to earn one of six knives and a knife block/chopping board. We achieve an unreasonable level of joy out of peeling each tiny sticker off and adding it to the chart on our fridge. It invokes the feeling of gold star sticker charts we get as children to award good behaviour. The thrill of being one step closer to a “free gift” is as ridiculous as it is real. The large Santoku (a large all purpose kitchen knife) I have my eye on is the result of at least $900 spent. It hasn’t changed my spending at all and I think most households can easily spend $900 over 12 weeks. That’s just a spend of $75 a week. Hell, larger families might even be able to save for all 6 knives. To get the full set, you would need …
Tofu hopes everyone had a lovely Easter. Check out previous Tofu Tuesday posts here.
Hope everyone is having a great Easter. This sweeter-than-sweet commercial for New York Lottery and is an oldie but a goodie. If you haven’t seen it before, you might try watching it a few times to absorb the full sweetness.
Urbis Designday is an accessible, entertaining design event for Auckland city. I guess it’s easy to forget that everyday items were designed at some stage. Look at the closest table to you. The closest chair, lampshade, set of drawers. Someone or a team designed that to be the way it is. Designday gets these designed items into the radar of both public and professionals. Admire the things in the showrooms, the creative collaborations between designers in different industries and interact with anything they let you touch. This year’s Designday featured lots of painted and interactive elements. Here are some of the designery sights from the day: The Kohler showroom with Resene and Art Associates had interactive elements such as a painting wall using your choice of Resene testpots, throwing games (bathtubes, paintbuckets and balls) as well as painted artworks on live models. The “Identify Your Design” flowchart painted on a huge wall at Essenze in Parnell was an interesting way to figure out your style. The Photo Booth Fun with dress up boxes at Mini …
Post 2 of my 3-part review on Urbis Designday which was on Saturday the 24th March. I’m going to post about 3 blog-specific aspects of Urbis: post 1: Bunny, post 2: eats and post 3 (sometime in the coming week): design. This post is all about the delicious delights to be found at Urbis Designday. I had been looking forward to the Fisher & Paykel exhibit and this year’s The Social Kitchen did not disappoint. Last year, it was in a huge inflatable structure in Auckland’s Britomart Station area and this year’s reiteration at The Cloud on Auckland’s Queens Wharf was a great step up. The Cloud was the venue for many of the Rugby World Cup events including a special edition of Taste of New Zealand. You can read more about that event here. Brilliant and light, The Social Kitchen at The Cloud is a 50m+ installation/exhibit/buffet line/kitchen line/processing plant while the rest of the room was made up of long tables and coloured stools to sit and enjoy the creations. To say this …
Like most bunnies, Tofu has a sweet tooth and adores raisins and bread. Neither are good for rabbits but can be viewed as occasional treats. Tofu goes crazy for hot cross buns and a single bun can transform this usually mild-mannered lagomorph into a common thief. One Easter, I left a plastic-wrapped hot cross bun in my handbag which was on a chair near our front door. The next morning, half the bun was found under our bed in our bedroom. Tofu had sniffed out the bun, foraged for it in my bag and carried his trophy to the bedroom to enjoy. We now know to keep treats like these firmly out of reach. For those that are considering adopting a rabbit just for Easter, please don’t. Rabbits are not a holiday decoration. Animal shelters become inundated with unwanted rabbits shortly after Easter as kids and families move on. Parents with seemingly innocent intentions purchase a rabbit for Easter, only to get rid of it when the season is over. This is irresponsible and teaches …
I’ve been busy with work and such, but a couple of weekends ago, I had a great time at the annual Urbis Designday. Each year this event woos me and this year it did not disappoint. I can’t think of a better all-emcompassing design and food event. A must for fans of design and food and if you work in the industry, you really should give it a day. It’s only one day and you won’t regret it! Urbis Designday is everything this blog stands for and if I had to make a 3 item checklist (Bunny, Eats, Design) I would be able to tick all three items off many, many times. I will post a post on the great food at Urbis as well as the design, but until then, let’s begin with all the bunnies at Designday. And if bunnies aren’t your thing, perhaps some of the baby chickens that were at the Essenze showroom will tickle your fancy? Easter is coming up soon after all. Bunnies and baby chickens are Easter personified. If …
A sneak peek at at one of the pieces I will be exhibiting at the Japanese Art Festival at Aotea Centre this weekend. For those of you in Auckland, the Japanese Art Festival starts this Friday and runs through until Sunday. There are lots of things to see and do on top of all the wonderful art from both Japan and New Zealand. There is a Dr Sketchy anti-art school drawing session at 1pm on Saturday. I’m a big fan of Dr Sketchy and love their macabre flavour of life drawing class. Taiko drumming demonstration on Aotea Square at 1.30pm on Sunday is guaranteed to give you goosebumps. If you missed it last year, the acoustics at Aotea Square are incredible and the drumming is not to be missed. For more information, visit the Japanese Art Festival Facebook page here. Dr Sketchy Auckland runs once a month and you can view their website here. Check out previous Tofu Tuesday posts here.
Beautifully illustrated label by Tenfold Collective for Grimm Brothers Brewhouse beer: Hare’s Bride. The label is adult and whimsical without being twee. A man wouldn’t be afraid to hold this in his hand. This label is printed using white and black inks on top of a silver foil. A high alcohol content beer, this is sure to knock the bride off your hare. Bonus: Look for the animated rabbit over at the Tenfold website! Via The Dieline.
East of Eden by John Steinbeck, 1952. East of Eden isn’t a foodie book. But I started reading it and I couldn’t put it down. Since I spent so long reading it (for reasons I’ll make clear below), I couldn’t fit another book to review this month I’ll will review this non-foodie book from a slightly foodie perspective. Luckily, food is universal. With a story about people, food inevitably comes into the picture, either as food or in description. The title of this book had instant appeal to me. I live in Eden, on Eden Street, near the mountain of Eden, down the road for Eden Reserve and not far from Eden Park. Written in the 1952 when Steineck was 50, this book is set mostly set in the 1910’s in the Salinas Valley in California. It is the allegory of generations in a brutally honest way. It’s a long story, but I honestly didn’t want it to end. Let me get this straight. I’ve never been a one to read romance novels or floofy poetry. …
Urbis Designday is back and it’s on all around Auckland city tomorrow. Online ticket sales end tonight but if you still miss out, you can get door sales tomorrow morning at Mini Garage, Ponsonby Road. General tickets are $30 each or if you bring a buddy, it’s $50 for two. There’s a big group of us going this year and I can’t think of a more worthwhile all encompassing event. This year, Urbis Designday is in it’s 7th year and I think I must have been to 4 or 5 Urbis Designdays already. Yep, I guess I’m a Designday groupie. I had a great time last year and I’m excited about this year’s event. Still haven’t made up your mind? You can view my photos from last year and read a write up of the event here. Urbis Designday encompasses many facets of design including architecture, fashion, photographic, graphic, spatial, product and one of my favourites: food! This year’s theme is Colour in Motion and I’m looking forward to to seeing how the collaborators work it …
In honour of St. Paddy’s Day, I invited my friends over for a pot luck dinner. The theme for the dinner was green or Irish and we had a pesto green starter and several green desserts. I made individual steak and Guinness Pies and we also had a green hued potato and pea mash. I confess. I’m not a huge fan of Guinness. I can drink it, but I find it heavy and savoury and pint or bottle is usually enough for me. I do however, enjoy it in a pie. You will need a lidded pot for this recipe (I used a dutch oven) and a 6up muffin tin. This is not the time for a dainty cupcake tin. My muffin tin makes large muffins about 3 inches or 8 cm wide at the base. To measure out how wide I needed the pie cases, I first measured across the wall+base+wall of a muffin tin with the edge of a teatowel and matched this measurement across the mouth a bowl. This bowl became the “cookie …
The sweet and talented Cass from the blog FoodmyFriend recently awarded this blog with a Versatile Blogger Award. She lives just over in Sydney, Australia and it’s nice to read her blog because it’s always the correct season for me. She has a lop earred princess called Flatpac and any friend of the lop is a friend of mine. When given this award, bloggers are asked to do three things – link back to the blog that gave them the award, list seven things about themselves and finally, give the award to five others. 7 Things About Me I’ve only ever kept bunnies as pets and have outlived 6 bunnies. When I was a kid I wanted to be an architect. In my last year of high school, I was awarded a scholarship to study anything at a local university. I picked graphic design. I folded 1000 paper cranes for our wedding day. I can’t drive. It takes me 12 minutes to walk to and from work. I’ve visited 10 countries in the last 10 years. …
Dougal the fluffy ginger cat lives next door, but spends a lot of time in our front yard (where Tofu the bunny does not hang out). Dougal is a cowardly lion. At first, he would never let us near him but has since gotten used to us and he now permits patting. Every now and then, Dougal will come into the back yard, but he is sure to give Tofu a very wide berth. I snapped this photo of Dougal on our deck and Tofu (oblivious) on the ground below. Check out previous Tofu Tuesday posts here.
At home, we have a magnetic knife strip on the wall so I don’t need a knife block. But even if I did, I would find this rabbit knife block a little weird. It reminds me of the popular voodoo knife block, only stabbing an innocent bunny in the back seems more evil. Source: Home Interior Trend.
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