I found her in a souvenir shop in Tijuana, Mexico and have since nicknamed her my Ms. Boo-llerina. She’s the only ballerina Dia de Los Muertos figure that I saw as I pored over all those shops’ shelves. Isn’t she scaryfabulous with her pink hair? She has an honored place on my bookshelf as she’s just too cool for anywhere else in the house.

Speaking of cool, how about this pumpkin that my friend Simeen carved? This heartbreaker of a little boy is Lawrence, her nephew. (Check out those curls!)

As any good aunt would do on Halloween, she carved his face into a pumpkin. Yes, my friends, THAT is love. (It took her three hours, I hear!)

Now if she carved MY face into a pumpkin and lit it up, THAT would be truly scary. Haha! 

Happy Spooky Day to all!

This is recipe #3 in The Girl With A Curl’s Fallin For Soup project.

Cioppino is a happy hodgepodge of all things seafood. It originated from seafaring Italians in San Francisco in the 1800s, when fishermen would contribute their day’s best catch to a communal soup pot. It owes its name to the Ligurian word ciuppin, meaning “to chop” or “chopped,” which is what you do to all manner of gifts from the sea to throw together for this spicy, tomato-based soup that’s perfect for cold weather. You know what else makes it yummy? Red wine. I don’t cook with alcohol that much, but this dish wouldn’t have been the same without it.

This version used what I found at the fish market on the morning of the day that I cooked this dish. There’s crab, shrimp, scallop, clams and cod.

And some other ingredients that I’d never think to use in daily cooking: crushed red pepper flakes, bay leaves and dried oregano, and other usual suspects like garlic, onion and green bell peppers.

CURLIFIED CIOPPINO

4 large garlic cloves, minced
2 medium onions, finely chopped
2 small bay leaved
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried hot red pepper flakes
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 cup olive oil
1 green bell pepper, diced
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 1/2 cups dry red wine
1 (28- to 32-oz) can diced tomatoes
1 cup bottled clam juice
1 cup chicken broth

Seafood of your choice, like:
- crabs, cooked and cut in pieces
- clams/shellfish
- shrimp, heads trimmed
- scallops
- white-meat fish in chunks
- squid

1)    Cook garlic, onions, bay leaf, oregano, and red pepper flakes with salt and pepper in oil until onions are softened. Stir in bell pepper and tomato paste.

2)    Add wine and boil until reduced by about half. Add tomatoes with their juice, clam juice and broth. Simmer and season with salt and pepper.

3)    Add crab pieces and clams to stew and simmer, covered, until clams just open. Discard unopened clams as these mean they aren’t good for eating. Lightly remaining seafood with salt and add to stew, then simmer, covered, until just cooked through.

4)    Garnish with parsely or chopped basil and a sprinkling of cheese and serve hot.

You know what’s funny? I don’t even like crab or shrimp! And I wouldn’t touch lobster either, which is one other thing you can throw into the pot. I actually didn’t eat this for dinner (I had a cheeseburger and fries instead, ahaha). I know, I’m weird. I made it for the experience of working with seafood, and my seafood-loving friends and family said this hit the spot.

Cooking this made me remember Pappy. My dad’s an avid fisherman and used to take us fishing when we were kids. He would love this stew. I’ve made a mental note to cook this for him the next time he visits.

Hope you get the chance to warm up to your memories of the sea with this hearty dish!

This tag to tell you seven odd things about me came from Mai, who whips up her own brand of kitchen wizardry and documents it to torture people’s tastebuds through her blog. (Hallo, Mai! I’m finally getting the chance to do this!)

1)    I have a single letter for my first name—“J.” The period is included; not a dash, thank you very much. It isn’t short for anything. Some people think it stands for Juana, because there are lots of ‘em in my family on both sides, but not really. My parents were just weird about naming us. (My brother has “W.” as his first name. Talagang tinopak yung mga magulang namin. Our parents were just seized with a fit of the crazies.)

2)    According to Mama, the “Ana” from my second name is from the story of Anna And The King Of Siam. I like that my second name isn’t so random. I liked it even more growing up because in The King & I, that classic movie from 1956, Deborah Kerr gets to wear gorgeous dresses as Anna Leonowens, and Yul Brynner was actually kinda hot. Ahaha.

3)    I recently bought a purple leather wristlet. I love it, but that’s a strange fact, because I used to HATE purple with a pithy passion. Purple in all its incarnations: ube-jalaya purple, lavender, Barney-The-Dinosaur-purple, etc., = EW. But then I saw this. And I wanted it. And I loved it with all of my shallow, girly heart. But it was PURPLE! My brother encouraged me to get it. His advice: “You should be color-agnostic.” And so, fine. Hello, new purple thing. I heart you.

4)    I was stuck in an elevator at work for an hour two months ago. I was (embarrassingly) dancing to my iPod alone in the elevator when it came to a thudding halt on the ninth floor (I was on my way to the 12th). Then it dropped about a foot, and I made like a crazy woman and plastered myself against a corner, my hands and feet splayed out against the walls like my life depended on it, worried that I was going to plummet to my death. I was stuck somewhere between the seventh and eighth floors. They pried the door open and I could only talk to people through a slit at the top (see below for evidence). I read a magazine to pass the time. After the whole thing was over and I stepped out of the elevator, some officemates who’d been there started clapping and snapping pictures. I was sufficiently mortified. The office maintenance guy now calls out when he sees me, “Hey, Elevator Girl!”

5)    I’m Protestant but was schooled Catholic all my life: Salesian in grade school, Benedictine in high school and Jesuit in college. I’m more Catholic than some of my Catholic friends. I love teasing them by calling or emailing someone (especially the more heathen ones!) randomly and saying, “Did you remember to pray to the Sacred Heart? It’s First Friday today!”

6)    I can’t groom myself in public. I blame Social Graces class in high school. We were taught that a lady is never supposed to fix herself out in the open. You’re to gracefully steel yourself to the safe ceramic confines of the ladies’ room to powder your nose or retouch your lipstick. In school, if a class officer caught you brushing your hair in public, you’d never see your beloved Denman again because it would be confiscated and sent to hairbrush heaven. People have started to think me weird and antiquated these days, so I’m taking baby steps with lip balm. Like on the bus, or at the table after a meal. I still cringe a little, though!

7)    I can cuss in Arabic. I can also say, “I’m fat,” in Arabic. There’s a Lebanese lady at work (see # 4 for evidence again—she’s the one peering down at me) who I pester for Arabic phrases. It’s such a romantic language, but so far, I’ve only succeeded in remembering how to say “I love you,” how to call your mother a name that will warrant washing your mouth with soap, and how to say that I’m rotund. I really should expand my Arabic vocabulary because that’s just majnoon! (Crazy!)

This was fun. Anyone interested can pick up this tag. Go and be random!

Nothing beats getting off work and getting sloshed on a cup of tea and a good book as you wait for a friend in a coffeehouse.

Currently getting drunk on Sarah Addison Allen’s “Garden Spells.” Enchanting and cheesy in all the right places. I’ve been sucked in because the main character runs a catering business and uses edible flowers and other crops she grows herself (rumored to be magical) to bake and cook with. This book is like Laura Esquivel, Alice Hoffman and Joanne Harris all sharing a pot of Earl Grey together.

Hope all your hours are happy today.

I’ve gone and stumbled down a slippery slope. I’ve spent approximately 354,876 minutes surfing the web trying to cure my fascination…for apronsI And not just any kind of aprons (please don’t bring out your “Thrilla Of The Grilla” apron, or I just may burn it, so help me God!). I’m talking about lovely vintage ones, handcrafted with retro prints and detailed with embroidery or lace or rickrack or pretty something-or-others.

I appreciate the workmanship that goes into a well-made apron because my first attempt at one was in sixth grade. It was disastrous. It was our first go at using sewing machines (the kind that you worked with a manual foot pedal) and patterns. I was supposed to make one for my 12-year-old self, and with my tongue sticking out the side of my mouth the entire time and my brows knit together, I sewed and sewed. I was successful…if the project was supposed to be to make an apron for a three-year-old with a 30-inch waist. I’ve never made an apron since, and always somehow feel the need to wear one in the kitchen, maybe because I know how much work it takes to make one (well, it was a lot of work back then)!

I  saw the movie Changeling last Friday night and realized that I wasn’t riveted by the drama onscreen when scenes like this came on. Instead, I was checking out Angelina Jolie’s kitchen duds.

Ok, so that one leaves a bit to be desired, but still, and maybe because the movie’s 1920’s costumes and sets reminded me of my love of all things of yore, it set me off on this three-day long apronfest that’s had me glued to the computer (or my phone). That’s the thing about the net: It makes you realize you’re not alone in your crafty obsessions, no matter how strange and specific they may be. If you like it, chances are, someone out there LOVES it!

These darling ones are from rickrackattack.com.

And these are from the Angry Chicken website, owned and maintained by my creative muse Amy Karol (whose Bend-The-Rules Sewing book is my bedside reading). The site even has entire Flickr photo pools dedicated to beauties like these.

And these are modern versions with a vintage feel—lovely apronology from Anthropologie! (Oooh, that was a bit of rhyme overkill, but, whatevs.)

There are also tons of vintage apron patterns on the web.

These aprons make me sigh and think about maybe making a go at sewing one again. I’m such a dork because I’m getting all nervous just thinking about it, remembering that ill-fated project from sixth grade.  But I’ll do it, someday.

…Sundays at the fish market.

It’s been around two months since I started working on my quilt. I haven’t posted any updates because I didn’t quite know what and how to tell its story. But today, I finally know how to begin. Today’s a perfect day for a beginning.

We start my quilt’s story with a question.

How many quilts have I completed in all my years of sewing?

And an answer.

One.

Quilts are tricky things, you see. I always start out thinking that I’m going to finish one in three weeks. Piecing squares of fabric together is therapeutic, mechanical and quick. All it is, quite often, is straight sewing, much like what I did the first time I learned how to use the sewing machine in home ec. Once the quilt’s started, I lose myself in the sewing machine’s steady hum, and something my grandma used to say when she herself used to sew: “One stitch in front of another, one stitch in front of another, one stitch…”

I think I’ll finish it, but I never do. My fingers find themselves tending to a new cake in the kitchen, or whipping cream for a strawberry mousse I’ve always wanted to learn, at the ends of a crocheted scarf or binding off a summer dress for my niece. These other projects are done in an hour, a day at most, so they’re quick fixes for my crafty twitchings. A quilt, on the other hand, demands time, patience and meticulousness. In the early years of my sewing I was much younger, and I had none of these.

And so it has been through many quilts: a silly dance around the possibility of completion. All in all, since I started to seriously sew about five years ago, I’ve started and stopped three wedding quilts for different friends, one of which was for Bona, who’s now not only married, but happily pregnant! Then there was my first attempt at making a Rail Fence quilt to keep my friend Gretchen warm when she moved to New York from Manila to study (she ended up graduating and I never got to finish it), another one to keep my friends Via and Noel cozy as they began the adventure of their lives in Torino, Italy. I even started working on a redwork quilt for Ross because red’s is her favorite color, though after all these years of never having finished the quilt, her favorite color is now, if I’ve heard right, brown (or orange? I can’t remember)! So many quilts…so many good intentions that ended up half-patched, half-made, half-lived.

But.

Somewhere in Manila is the only quilt I’ve ever completed.

It was made for a boyfriend from an old life, many seasons ago, a patchwork of colors he liked. I write about it because it was the first and last quilt I’ve ever made from start to finish. When you’re young, running on nothing but a dangerous mix of rock music and naive love, you can finish just about anything.

But I grew up, expanded my music library beyond the Foo Fighters, and allowed the years to roll on, some too quickly, others not quickly enough. When 2008 announced itself to me in the bright fireworks above Manila back in January, I decided that when I came back to Los Angeles, I would give myself the gift of a quilt in my favorite colors of green and pink. I would finally finish another quilt, just for me, and all on my own (my mom always helps me, and I’ve always wondered if I could make one by myself.)

I discovered that in the months leading up to when I actually started the project, I found my way back to the familiarity of sewing. I rediscovered my love for fabrics, reconnecting with a craft that’s been in my family for generations, making friends with the craftster in me who had fallen asleep between the piles of half-quilts in my closet through these years.

Choosing the colors for my quilt made me remember my favorites, but made me realize all the new ones I’d come to love.

Laying out the pieces and arranging them to make sense to my eye was almost like seeing myself on cloth (if that makes any sense at all)!

And sitting at my old post in front of the sewing machine, with Dave Matthews keeping me company, was like coming home.

I became whole, as the quilt did. A patch of old rose here, the delicate pattern of a gilded leaf there. Stitching those pieces together was like piecing myself together. (Yes, those are Band-Aids on my fingers. I’m a clumsy girl!)

And today, I look at how far I’ve come, step back and think, I believe I’m actually going to finish this. I know this with a certainty like no other. After this is done, I can truly say I’ve made not one, but two quilts in my life, and I’m on my way to making more.

I’ll be posting more updates, including a simple tutorial on how the quilt was constructed, in case you’re interested in making your own patchwork story. It isn’t as complicated as it may look!

However this post found you today: eating a bowl of strawberry porridge before you begin your morning, maybe as you’re rushing on your way to someplace, or as you’re taking a breather from a hectic day, I hope it reminded you that in the crafting of YOUR life, it’s never too late for beginnings.

You’ll celebrate with me when the final piece of thread’s been snipped off, won’t you? A brand-new quilt. I’m almost, ALMOST there! One stitch in front of another. I can’t wait.

Thank you to Ross, Via, Gretch and Ms. Nina for seeing me through this project in more ways than one. You are all pieces in my crazy patchwork life, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

My obsession with Madeleines didn’t start with Marcel Proust. He apparently put these scallop-edged tea cakes on the world’s culinary map by mentioning them in his novel Remembrance of Things Past:

She sent for one of those squat plump little cakes called “petites madeleines,” which look as though they had been molded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell … I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure invaded my senses …

And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray … when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Leonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane …. and the whole of Combray and its surroundings, taking shape and solidity, sprang into being, town and garden alike, from my cup of tea.

Since then, they’ve taken on a mythical quality and have become an object of adoration and among bakers (and readers) the world over. My introduction to them didn’t involve any Proustian interests whatsoever. I could claim otherwise and spin a tale of how I used to while away my summers appreciating the subtle character shifts and narrative devices in Proust’s novels. But my family reads this blog and they know the extent of my reading only goes as deep as, well, it doesn’t.

The real story behind my Madeleine mania lies in the discovery of pans like these at a baking supply store five years ago. I have a fondness for making tiny, delicate things. Petit fours (many tragic attempts and I STILL haven’t gotten the hang of them!), mini cupcakes, spun-sugar threads around made-from-scratch cream puffs—these are what I LOVE to do. The more work something is, the more compelling it is for me to make. So, when I saw these buried under a bunch of other baking pans, I thought about how the tiny cakes would come out as pretty seashell shapes, with golden brown, crisp edges, and I couldn’t wait to get them home and try them out.

And try them out, I did, with many disastrous attempts. The first pans I had were smaller than these and didn’t have a non-stick coating, so I burned them. I also couldn’t find a recipe I was happy with. Madeleines are supposed to be substantial and dense, a bit dry (but not too much), and should have a characteristic hump on the back.

The humps mean you’ve worked the batter at just the right level for it to develop, without the aid of leavening (like baking soda or baking powder). The recipes I tried led to results that spanned the spectrum: On one end were the sponge-cake like, airier ones, and on the other, the tasty excuses for hockey pucks.

Finally, this past weekend, I found Madeleine nirvana. I was actually nervous about this batch because the batter was thicker than anything I’d ever worked with—almost like cookie dough! It was so thick, I had to use my cookie-dough scoop to measure them out into the shell shapes. (You’ll see below that I did three globs for each shell.) I made sure to use cooking spray and flour for the molds.

Something in my gut told me this recipe was IT. You know why? It was uncomplicated. It didn’t ask me to let the dough rest for an hour, or refrigerate the pans, chant a secret incantation or whatever else I had to do in many other past recipes. All it took were the most basic ingredients found in a pantry: sugar, eggs, and flour. Add some butter and fresh lemon zest, and you have the simplicity that’s characteristic in the greatest desserts.

The clean, honest flavors came together in a diminutive morsel that’s perfect for dunking in tea, or in melted dark chocolate (which is what I decided to do).

I’m sharing this recipe by giving you a link, HERE, to the Epicurious website, where I found it after many years of searching. My only advice to you, if you plan to make these, is to trust the recipe’s simplicity. Sometimes, we all make it harder for ourselves, even in the kitchen.

I hope you enjoy making these as much as I did, and that you make Proust proud.

Another test post, to see how I can do this with an image from the web, rather than from my phone. These yummy clues are from a cupcake decorating contest featured on laughingsquid.com.

…the eggs! I’m testing out mobile blogging from my new toy.:)