It’s quite a common knowledge that I’ve always had a soft spot for anything French, and their fabulous cooking is definitely up top among some other things. After spending some time in France, I very much enjoyed helping out in the kitchen to get a better essence of French cooking and take as much out of it, so I could later enjoy it myself or my family and friends. I had a wonderful friend Isabelle who has given a wonderful cookbook by France Loisirs called La Bonne Cuisine D’aujourdhui and this is also the book where I got my recipe for what better companion to go with your morning cup of coffee or tea than a moist and fragrant but very supple madeleine?
So, let’s get to it.
Ingredients
6 eggs
200g sugar
1 vanilla bean
zest from 1/2 of a lemon
200g flour
1 tbsp of baking powder
200g butter
Instructions
Mix eggs with sugar until nice and frothy, pretty much doubles in volume and turns nice pale yellow
Slice your vanilla bean open and scrape out all the seeds out and add into your mixture with zest of half of a lemon.
Combine flour with baking powder and then slowly start folding it in until well incorporated.
Add melted and cooled butter.
Fill in your madeleine pan about 2/3 in and then put into an oven for about 15-18 minutes at about 415F, or until they rise and get golden with slightly browned edges.
I am sure this little treat will make any start to a new day to be a better one.
Note: I had a madeleine with larger molds but if you have smaller ones, your baking time will reduce probably down to 10 minutes.
Tip: Madeleines’ recipe is very versatile, so you can change it up by adding different flavors, like replacing about 1/8 of flour with ground almonds, or add some coco powder, orange zest. Don’t be afraid and get creative.
Here it is! Yet another year has gone by and it’s that time of the year for me to reflect on what has happened, where I’ve been or have achieved, people I’ve met or got to be with. What an eventful and meaningful year this has been, I must say.
Last year I thought that my 2010 has been the most fun year I’ve had in a while but this year has most definitely surpassed it by far in more ways than just one. After attending more web conferences as I ever had before in one year, I got to learn, get inspired and get motivated to get even better at what I do while doing more traveling. It seems like each year there are more and more wonderful conferences to choose from and this year was no different.
There were some great events taking place in Portland itself and I got to be part of it in one way or another, so I got to take a break from all that packing and unpacking. Prior going to Seattle, I was very happy to welcome Jeremy Keith & his wife Jessica in Portland and show them at least some of its charm on their first visit to the city. After some sightseeing and Portland geek meetup, we drove up to Seattle where Jeremy was speaking at AEA and I was attending Luke’s workshop. I was very excited to see my fellow Spiderwoman and friend Geri who I’ve met at AEA Boston in 2010 and haven’t seen since. This was also where I got to finally meet Sarah Parmenter and spend some time together while showing her a little bit of Seattle on her trip that was cut short due to her bad ear infection.
In April, besides finally booking my flights to go back home after almost two years for two entire months, I also got to be guest on Dan Benjamin‘s podcast show The Daily Edition with his cohost Jen Simmons called Puck Yeah!.
May was most definitely definitely a geek month as well. Attending AEA Boston was a one huge mega fest where for the first time all three Spiderwomen got to meet, hang out and have some fun together.
Spiderwomen brought Eric Meyer to his knees. Who knew? Watch the Spiderwomen in first row doing the Thriller dance
In Boston, I got to meet so many amazing people, many of them I have been talking to on Twitter for some time but just have never met in person until then, or there were bunch of reunions there as well. Among the many, there were some amazing illustrators like Anton Peck and Brad Colbow, then got to meet the “other” Brad, Bridget, Gerardo, Kreshnik, Jen Simmons who ended up being also my roommate along with Candi.
This trip to Boston was most definitely eventful, lot of fun as well as tiring but still fun that I tried to capture through as many pictures on flickr as I could.
After AEA Boston, for three days, I went to visit my friend Trisha who since my last visit to the city has moved to Providence, RI. Those few days flew by but still managed to have a lot of fun with her friends that I either already got the pleasure of meeting before, or it was my first time. I sure hope to be back in 2012 and continue where we left off.
Rest of the month of May sure kept me busy in Portland. I got to have two lovely guests stay with me who I also finally got to meet for the first time, Dot and Faruk. Faruk was scheduled to speak at Web Visions that I also got to attend during the day, and then practiced my tour guiding skills in afternoons. Later in the week, Tim Kadlecwho was also speaking at Web Visions, joined us for few touristy ventures, as it was his first time in Portland as well.
The winning, “Hot Pink Elephants” Dodgeball team With Sarah & Naomi
In addition, I also got reunited with lovely Sarah and met her hubby Stu. Yet again, this was a fabulous conference with so many wonderful people, filled with great ideas and sure left me inspired upon my return back to Portland where then later I got to be part of Indie Web Camp. On Flickr you can see more pictures from Interlink or Indie Web Camp.
Our Indie Web Camp gang
In July, I got to be part of CSS Summit behind the scenes as it was broadcasted from old ISITE Design’s office. Organizers Christopher Schmitt and Ari Stiles were in Portland for OSCON conference that week, so they needed a space to run the online conference from. Let me tell you that it was a lot of fun to be part of and can’t wait to do it again in 2012. That same week, I got to put my tour guiding skills to test again when Remy Sharp was in town for the very first time to run his two workshops at OSCON. Seeing Remy’s & Jeremy’s tweets made me feel reassured that I did good.
There was nothing else that I was more excited about this year than for my trip to Europe. I sure had an idea of things I wanted to do, places I wanted to go to and people I wanted to see. I had made my wish list that was definitely packed but was trying to stay realistic about how much I’d be able to achieve within those two months. I already knew that I would be making my first trip to UK. I was planning on visiting London & mainly Brighton where I was attending two web conferences: dConstruct and Update. In addition, I also got to see a little bit of Canterbury, Southend-on-Sea and Leigh-on-Sea as well.
However, besides spending some quality time with my family & friends back home, the top of my list was somehow after 13 years making my way back to France and my beloved Chamonix to get reunited with Véronique and her two sons I used to take care of and my best friend, Frédéric. Not only I got to see them all, I also got to travel through Switzerland a bit and even spend few days sightseeing Prague with my friend Zuzana, go see two musicals, theater play and even a concert as VIP.
Véronique and Frédéric Been there, done that. One of the many pictures of Chamonix I took during my visit after 13 years.
With all said and done, I have to admit that seeing my family was truly the highlight of it all. I loved spending any little bit of time I had with my nephews Joshua & Ryan, as well as Lukáško (my cousin’s 2-year old son) and his little sister Simonka, who was born just one week prior me returning to US. I have definitely had some memorable moments with all of them that to this day bring a smile to my face.
Wow, I still can’t believe what a great this year has been. Just by writing this post, it made me realize how blessed I was to go to so many different places and meet or hang out with so many lovely people and make more unforgettable memories that I’ll get to cherish for years to come.
Ryan and Joshua With Marcela, Lukáško and the latest addition to our family, Simonka
Well, this is it! 2011 you were amazing and have truly exceeded all my expectations, and then some. Many thanks to everyone who made this year for me as special as it has been. However, today is the last day of this year and the one thing I’ll be doing at midnight, I’ll be kissing 2011 goodbye. I’ll be looking forward to see you all in 2012!
I’ve been a vivid supporter of responsive web design approach for some time, so whenever there is an opportunity to implement it, I am all for it. About two weeks ago, I was approached at work if I could build a landing page for our new fun app, PhotoBlast. I didn’t even see the creative and had said yes as I knew I could take on something small that I will sure enjoy working on. Even though “responsiveness” wasn’t necessarily part of the scope, I made sure to make time for it, regardless the amount of time I got allocated.
Once I got to see the creative, it was quite obvious that this one might be somewhat challenging to achieve in about 20 hours all the little details but I was ready to take it on anyway.
This the creative that was given to me to work with
I first had to really take it all apart to see how I could split up and mark up the content in a way that would make sense but could also accommodate all the creative directions that this one page had. Once I’ve completed with marking up the content in HTML5, that’s when I turned to my CSS file. While still keeping with “content first” concept, I went into structuring my CSS using 320 and Up approach.
This is when the real fun has begun when I got to start with the smallest screen and making decisions what will people get to see and at what dimensions or screen sizes. What truly saved my life and lot of my time was this fabulous tool called ResponsivePx that was created by no other than the talented man, Remy Sharp. He told me about it few months back when we first met during his visit to Portland; however, I wasn’t truly able to test it out until now. Oh man, and does that work like a charm!
For this project, since there were so many image elements on the page, I wanted to fit them as soon as I had the real estate for it and this was where this tool came super handy when trying to figure the “break points” for different screen sizes. I found it better to use in Chrome, as you got to have a slider to modify width and height of your screen rather than use dropdowns, which you’d have in Firefox.
Close up of PhotoBlast App within ResponsivePx for iPhone screen size in portrait mode Another closeup view, with wider dimensions
Well, I am sure you get the point. It’s fun and super easy to use and maybe you’ll get to try it on your next project yourself. There are definitely many aspects that need to be considered when us developers and designers are being responsively responsible but thankfully there are so many resources out there for you to dive in and get inspired.
I find myself referring back to any of A Book Apart books that I keep religiously expanding as new ones are coming out, and I think you should too. In addition, I have attended several conferences or workshops that touch on the subject but this topic is still quite hot, so there are more upcoming ones. If you find yourself in Vancouver BC area in March or you were looking for an excuse to go there, then maybe Simon Collison‘s full day workshop on Crafting Responsive Experiences might convince you, just like 3-day Breaking Development Conference in Orlando, FL one month later – your choice.
Anyway, that’s that. So now, if you are an iPhone owner, go and download PhotoBlast from App Store and go have fun with it. Or just play with the landing page I built while dragging around the corner of your browser to see how it adapts.
Update: Thanks to Joel Shapiro, I found a video that Remy did demoing responsivepx.
I got invited to a Christmas party and was asked to bring a dessert. I have been baking quite a bit in the last few weeks, so I was ready to try something different, something I haven’t done before, like a Peach & Almond Cream Tart. So, let’s get to it.
Ingredients
3 firm pears
lemon juice
1 tbsp peach brandy or water
4 tbsp peach jam
Shortcrust Pastry (Pâte Brisée)
250 grams flour
125 grams of unsalted butter
65 grams of sugar
1 egg
Almond Filling
175 grams blanched whole almonds.
60 grams superfine sugar
5 tbsp butter
2 eggs
5 drops almond extract
Instructions
Start with making a shortcrust pastry by mixing all its ingredients together with your hands until a crumbly dough begins to form.
Wrap your dough into plastic wrap and put into fridge to chill for at least half an hour. Roll out your dough and use to line your pie pan, then place back to fridge to chill while you are preparing the filling.
Put the almonds and sugar in a food processor and pulse until finely ground; they should not be pasty. Add the butter and process until creamy, then add eggs and almond extract and mix well.
Place baking sheet in the oven and preheat to 375°F. Peel the pears, halve them, remove the cores and rub with lemon juice. Thinly slice the pear halves while keeping the slices together.
Pour the almond cream filling into the pastry shell. Slide a spatula or a wide-blade knife under one pear half and press the top with your fingers to fan out the slices. Transfer the fruit to the tart by placing them on the filling.
Place the tart on the hot baking sheet and bake for 55 minutes, or until the filling is well browned.
Cool on a wire rack.
Meanwhile, heat the brandy or water and the jam, then brush over the top of the hot tart to glaze.
With the cooling temperatures, without any doubt the summer is long gone. This is usually that time of the year when we find ourselves to long for comfort food, something that will warm us up on the inside & satisfy our taste buds as well. I enjoy cooking quite a bit as I find it therapeutic and relaxing. I like to try new things by testing out recipes of my friends or renowned chefs, or just make up my own based on what I have on hand at a moment.
Few weeks ago, after seeing Colly’s tweet, I got cravings for a nice hearty beef stew. Even though this has been a busy week at work, I made sure to find some time and unwind while doing the minimal prep required and then just let all the magic happen on its own. And I have to say, it turned out heavenly, so I figured I’d share my version of the winter stew with few different ingredients.
Ingredients
1 pound of beef
3 large carrots
3 parsnips
1 celery root
1/2 mushrooms
1 leek
1 onion
fresh rosemary
1 orange
3 tbs of Vegeta, or use vegetable or beef stock cubes
1/3 bottle red wine
fresh parsley
Instructions
Start with heating up a little bit of oil, add the meat in and keep steering preventing it from burning and sticking to bottom of your pan.
Keep steering for about 5 minutes till all the sides are nicely seared.
After the beef is nicely browned, add all chopped carrots, parsnips, celery root, as well as mushrooms, leek and onion, and continue steering. You’ll notice that the vegetables will start releasing juices, so you won’t need to add more oil, even though you might be inclined to do so.
While the meat and vegetables are cooking, get to do some more chopping. This time, chop up your fresh rosemary, which you add into your freshly made broth.
Pour the broth with rosemary over the meet and vegetables. I chose to add some red chili pepper flakes for some heat.
All there is left to do is to add red wine and zest of one orange before you cover the pot and let it cook for at least 3-4 hours, until the beef becomes flakey. You can use this time to just sit down and relax, watch a movie while either finishing that bottle of wine.
For a little punch of color, I like to garnish my serving with a little bit of fresh parsley. And that’s all there is to it! Hope you enjoyed it and maybe get creative and put your own spin on such a versatile recipe.
