Illustration Friday: Something You Should Know

Okra has always been my favorite food which I think some people find weird. It's typically a pretty slimy food depending on how you cook it. Yeah, don't judge.

My favorite is fried okra. Anyways, two reasons okra is on my mind today. The first is that we went to the Bethesda Farmer's Market and I bought okra AND pickled okra. That's in addition to our adorable little okra plant Kevin is growing me. So I'm going to be eating a lot of it. Good thing I love it.

Second reason is that I saw this Project Doodle on Good for your favorite meal. So I figured I'd do this for the week as well as Illustration Friday which has the theme: perennial. 

"So what else can you do with a muffin tin?"

From Hispanic Kitchen via Pinterest

I'm one of those people who loves to predict the downfall of trends. Hello, cupcakes, I'm talking about you. I also read a lot of blogs that are trying to predict the NEXT cupcake (this might be interchangeable with bacon). Is it pie? Is it pie on a stick? Is it popsicles.

Oh no, cupcake lovers, I think it is much closer to home. Now that cupcakes are done, thousands (kajillions?) of home cooks are like, "So what else can I do with these muffin tins?"Answer: What CAN'T you do? Seriously!?

Over the past few weeks I have become somewhat obsessed with finding recipes that can be made in a muffin tin. Muffin Tin Tacos, Pizza Puffs, Mini-Mac&Cheese Cakes... the list goes on (thanks Pinterest). They are amazing because 1. sooo easy 2. you don't have to make a whole dish of mac & cheese which you will then eat and immediately regret and 3. generally delicious. So yeah, that's my thought for the day. Totally not design-related but sometimes you just need to experiment.

Response 4: Are Fried Pickles Easter Food?

This post was supposed to be about Easter eggs. But we haven't had time to dye our eggs yet and I couldn't find pictures from last year. However, you can be assured that my eggs would not have looked anything like this:

Source: wunderweib.de via http://pinterest.com/younghouselove/ on Pinterest

They would be no where near that pretty because, let's be honest, my egg-dying skills are somewhat lacking. So I'm not devastated that this post didn't meet my editorial aspirations. So in order to get this sucker out the door as we near the end of our semester, I'm going to take a slight left and talk about food instead.

My classmate Abby has been keeping up a baking blog and wrote a recent post about baking for Passover. Since they are related-ish holidays I'll share what we made for Easter last year: home-fried pickles... and other stuff.

Long story, but after dying Easter eggs there was of course a surplus of hard-boiled eggs. So we whipped up egg salad (it was slightly purple, pink and blue... hm) and made a delicious egg salad sandwich. What goes with a delicious egg salad sandwich? Fried pickles, OF COURSE, NATURALLY. And also apparently sweet potato fries and fresh home-made ranch dressing.

Here's what the whole meal looked like. The pickles were dipped in buttermilk, cornmeal and then fried. Same deal with the fries. The recipe for egg salad was from my dear friend Martha Stewart and can be found here on her website. Overall, it was an amazingly delicious holiday and even though the eggs weren't pretty by any means, they were delicious.