Illustrated Etymology

One of the sites I love visiting is Illustrated Etymology. I just wish they had more food related art!

“Illustrated Etymology is just that - a collection of visual correlatives to English word history. These illustrations are an exploration, evolution and celebration of the history and meaning of words and language. Each interpretation is up to the individual artist, but most serve a “descriptive / informative” function, whether abstract, figurative or diagrammatic.”

My favorite one is their newest one, Porcelain, illustrated by David Iglesias:

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Things I Did This Weekend: Cleaning Everything. Like, EVERYTHING.

Spring cleaning: my accomplishment this weekend.

For us this also means new sheets, new bedding, and new storage boxes to organize existing crap that will probably be messy again by the end of the year. We also have the most awesome, labeled, and organized pantry in the world state city neighborhood now. Thanks for making me spend more money than necessary, The Container Store and Ikea.

Besides, it was raining a lot so there wasn’t a lot to do anyways.

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Failed Recipes

My failed experiments:

• Ziti with roasted corn and an avocado based sauce. It was so incredibly fatty just to get the consistency and texture right. Also, it looked like baby puke.
• Gojuchang glazed cod, inspired by Nobu’s famous miso black cod. A little bit of that chili paste goes a long way. I haven’t given up on this yet…it’s just been too salty and boring every time.
• Baharat based noodle soup. I was like, “let’s toss in some shiitakes and fried tofu” like an Asian soup. It sounded like a good idea at the time. It tasted like…identity crisis.
• Matcha marbled castella. A lot of people can make castellas well. But I can’t. I think it’s because I just have so many memories of it and the type of texture it is supposed to be from the cakes I’ve had in Japan and Taiwan. My expectations are too high.

What have you made that seemed like a good idea but actually turned out…not so great?