Spent Grain Dog Biscuits

Brendan and I tried out this recipe for homemade dog biscuits from one of our local home brew shop's blogs. The recipe is fine as is, and I didn't come up with it, so I'll just link it for you.



Mostly this was an excuse to make treats for Gordon, then take pictures of him enjoying them (which he did).

Making Labels for Beer

While I've been coming into my own as a home cook, my husband Brendan has been exploring his passion for making beer. It's been about a year since he started home brewing, and (matrimonial bias aside) he's getting very good at it, both in the technical sense, and developing his palate to know which malts and hops work together harmoniously.


Yes, that's a wine glass. We don't own beer snifters... deal with it.

Today, we tasted his latest beer, an eisbock called Cletus the Defenestrator, and I've decided that this should be Beer Week on Fork and Brush. Although I've learned a lot about the process by watching Brendan, I'm not concerned with the technical stuff here. There are plenty of other blogs for that, including one recently launched by my good friend Joe.

I'm more interested in how beer and brewing relate to cooking, and occasionally art, so that's what I'll be focusing on here. Today, I want to tell you about our label.

Brendan gets full credit for its design, and we executed it together. The label features the name under which he brews, Dead River, the silhouette of a mischievous goat (Cletus), and the feet of someone falling from a window. Home brewers often have a lot of fun making their own labels, and there are ways to do it on the cheap. For example, these were printed using my ink jet printer and affixed to the bottles with whole milk. Milk works unbelievably well as a label adhesive, and when you want to re-use the bottles they peel right off with warm water.


Surgeon General's Warning: Do not consume alcoholic beverages near goats or open windows.

Game of Thrones Party Preparations

It's just one week until the Game of Thrones premiere party! The official invitations have been sent:



Just for fun, I made a short video of myself digitally painting the portrait of Daenerys Targaryen on the invitations. Continuing the art project thread, Brendan indulged in a bit of woodburning and made a wall hanging for the dining room. Along with some intricate knotwork, he created a family sigil in the style of the show:



Other little details involve making the long grocery list and finding some decorations to finish off the theme. I managed to score this medieval-style candle holder centerpiece (with candles) at a thrift store for $15:

Medieval Cooking, pt. 1

The popular HBO TV series Game of Thrones returns for a third season later this month, and to celebrate, I'm trying to put together a themed dinner. This is something I've done before; when I was a meat eater I did a Skyrim-inspired stew to celebrate the game's release.

To do this month's themed meal, I have some help from an awesome cookbook my friend got me as a gift- A Feast of Ice and Fire, the official companion cookbook of the series, written by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Sariann Lehrer, two women after my own heart.



I love this book, and if you're thinking about picking it up yourself, I will encourage you for several reasons:
1.) For a glossy, thick hardcover, it's very reasonably priced.

2.) The dishes are translated from authentic period recipes, from sources like the Forme of Cury (the writings of King Richard II's master cooks) but most of them also come with easy to follow modern updates, so you can choose between authenticity or availability of ingredients. Many of us don't have galangal and pigeon breast just lying around...

3.) Each dish is also accompanied by a quote from the A Song of Ice and Fire book series, great for fans of the story.

4.) The recipes are all beautifully photographed. I admit to having one of my first pangs of meat-eating envy at the sight of the rabbit stew in this book.

After a cheeky foreword by George R.R. Martin, the opening section gives instructions for stocking a medieval kitchen, and covers some of the basic components such as spice blends, preparing pastry dough, making a basic roux for sauces, etc. My first task was to mix the two most common period spices, Poudre Douce (sweet powder) and Poudre Forte (strong powder).


McCormick Gourmet Collection spice jars are relics of the past, right?

I made my own custom labels, and if you have some empty jars lying around and want to have the same ones, I made a free PDF you can download and use to print your own.

Also, there's a certain amount of flexibility with period recipes- because nothing was manufactured en masse back then, no two kitchens had the exact same spice blends. For Poudre Douce, think classic apple pie spices, and Poudre Forte is a similar blend sans sugar with a higher ratio of ginger and clove.

The next step will be trying out some of the recipes and creating a menu. I have a few ideas so far... also, **UPDATE: I just saw that the book's authors provide a convenient Game of Thrones party planning idea list on their blog, Inn at the Crossroads.

Apples and Avocado

Yesterday's one hour oil paint warm up.

While I'm fixated on color— I found a really excellent food photo set on Whole Living called Eat The Rainbow, featuring whole foods of different colors and accompanied by their common nutrients. Definitely go check that out, as well as the rest of Christopher Baker's food portfolio. Yum.

Eggplant and Onions

Last year, I decided to get back to my roots in two ways: 1. I started doing more oil painting, and 2. I started intentionally discovering and re-discovering how to use whole, fresh fruits and vegetables in cooking.


Eggplant & Onions. One of my food paintings, Summer 2012

I felt really rusty at both. But cultivating any skill takes practice, and time, and patience, and more practice.

I began to note around this time that cooking is about more than just making flavors work together. By painting still life food paintings (food portraits?) like this one, I was unintentionally learning to connect a little better with my ingredients.

Baked Citrus Holiday Ornaments

Like most people I know that decorate for the season, I leave my holiday decorations up through New Years, so I contend that it's not too late to post this:



My husband and I were on a pretty tight budget for gift-giving and decorating this year, so we ended up doing a lot of handmade/homemade stuff. I found this recipe for Homemade Citrus Ornaments on the Whole Foods Market website, and decided to try them out.

Without copying everything verbatim from the Whole Foods site, you cut your citrus fruit into thin slices and bake them on a parchment-lined cookie sheet for 2-3 hours, turning them every half hour or so until they're dried out (but not burned).

I was pleased by how simple and uncomplicated they were (and how warm my kitchen was with the oven running for several hours). A little spare picture hanging wire and ribbon turned these fruit slices into festive ornaments and gifts for my family. And we ground up the ends and spare fruit bits in the garbage disposal to disperse their sweet smell throughout the kitchen.