Random can be good

So you are Polish eh?

Yes, I am Polish.
I was born and raised back home. I left Poland when I was 18 years old and very often people ask me about Polish cooking.
This is the reason why I decided to creative this post (links to recipes included).

Polish cuisine (Polish: kuchnia polska) is a mixture of Eastern European (Lithuanian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Jewish, Hungarian, etc.) and German culinary traditions, with some Russian, Italian, and Turkish influence due to historical reasons. It is rich in meat, especially chicken and pork, and winter vegetables (cabbage in the dish bigos), and spices, as well as different kinds of noodles the most notable of which are the pierogi. It is related to other Slavic cuisines in usage of kasza and other cereals. Generally speaking, Polish cuisine is hearty and uses a lot of cream and eggs. The traditional cuisine generally is demanding and Poles allow themselves a generous amount of time to prepare and enjoy their festive meals, with some meals (like Christmas eve or Easter Breakfast) taking a number of days to prepare in their entirety.

Traditionally, the main meal is eaten about 2 p.m., and is usually composed of three courses, starting with a soup, such as popular bouillon or tomato or more festive barszcz (beet) or żurek (sour rye meal mash), followed perhaps in a restaurant by an appetizer of herring (prepared in either cream, oil, or vinegar). Other popular appetizers are various cured meats, vegetables or fish in aspic. The main course is usually meaty including a roast or kotlet schabowy (breaded pork cutlet). Vegetables, currently replaced by leaf salad, were not very long ago most commonly served as 'surowka' - shredded root vegetables with lemon and sugar (carrot, celeriac, beetroot) or fermented cabbage (kapusta kiszona). The sides are usually boiled potatoes or more traditionally kasha (cereals). Meals often conclude with a dessert such as makowiec, a poppy seed pastry, or drożdżówka, a type of yeast cake. Other Polish specialities include chłodnik (a chilled beet or fruit soup for hot days), golonka (pork knuckles cooked with vegetables), kołduny (meat dumplings), zrazy (stuffed slices of beef), salceson and flaki (tripe).


Grandmother's Cheesecake (Sernik Babci)

Dough:
1-1/4 cups flour
3/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 cup butter or margarine
1 egg
3 Tbps sour cream
1/3 cup confetioners sugar

Filling:
6 eggs
2 cups confectioners sugar
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 lb. farmers cheese or ricotta
2/3 cup melted butter
1-1/2 cups mashed potatoes (not seasoned)
Save the ones from the night before.
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 cup grated orange or lemon peel

For the dough, combine the flour, salt and baking powder in a bowl. Cut in the butter with a fork.

Beat egg into the sour cream. Stir into the flour mixture then stir in the sugar. Knead the dough until well mixed and smooth.

Roll dough on a floured surface into a rectangle. Line a 13x9x2 inch pan with the dough and bring dough part the way up sides.

For the filling, separate 1 egg and reserve the whites, beat remaining yolk and whole eggs with the the sugar for 5 minutes at hight speed of a electric mixer. Add the vanilla, beat at high until the mixture is soft.

Press cheese through a sieve, blend cheese with butter add the potatoes, baking powder, nutmeg, and salt. Stir in organge peel. Fold into the egg mixture. Turn into prepard crust in pan.

Bake at 350 degrees F for about 45-55 min. or until set. Cool well before cutting.

Poppy Seed or Nut Roll

8 cups flour
1 pkg. dry yeast
1 stick of butter or margarine melted
5 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. salt
2 cups of warm milk

Filling:
1 lb. poppy seed or ground nuts
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 sticks margarine or butter
1 cup milk, hot
1 lemon rind

Combine all filling ingredients and beat well.

Dissolve yeast in 1/2 cup of the warm milk. Combine the flour, sugar, salt and eggs. Add remainder of the milk, butter and yast mixture. Beat until elastic. Sprinkle top with a little flour and cover with a cloth. Let stand in a warm place until double in size. Punch down. Divide the dough into 2 pieces. Put on floured board and roll out into a rectangle. Spread cool filling and sprinkle with raisins. Roll like a jelly roll. Place in greased pan and let stand to rise again. Brush top with margarine or butter bake for 45-60 min in 350 degree oven.

Cabbage Rolls (Golabki)

1 head cabbage
1 lb. ground beef
1/2 lb. ground pork or veal (opitioal)
16 oz can tomato sauce
8 oz can tomatoes
2 cups cooked rice
2 eggs
1 onion finely chopped
2 Tbsp. margarine
Salt and pepper to taste

Remove the core from the cabbage. Put the cabbage in boiling water and remove the leaves as they soften. Saute the onions in the margarine for a short time. In a bowl add the onions, meat, rice, eggs and salt and pepper, mix this well.
Place about 2 Tbsp. of the meat mixture in the center of a cabbage leaf and roll. Put the meat rolls in a large pot and pour the tomato sauce onto the rolls. Then squeeze tomatoes from can and arrange on top of the rolls. Simmer over low heat for 2 hours.

Fire Vodka (Krupnik)

1-1/2 cup honey
2/3 cup water
1 tsp. vanilla extract or 1 vanilla bean
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
8 sticks cinnamon
2 whole cloves
3 strips lemon peel
1 bottle vodka

Combine honey with the water, vanilla, spices and the lemon peel in a large saucepan. Bring this to a boil cover, and simmer for about 5 min. Add vodka, remove from the heat serve hot or cold.

Instead of designing icons and costing me extra, why don’t you just use the ‘Wingdings’ font?

clientsfromhell.net

"I’ve decided that the amount you invoiced us for is far too much. Here’s my thinking: We are paying you to come up with an idea — we’re not paying you for the time you take to think about it. The actual idea must only take about 30 seconds to think about as you come up with it. All these visuals, that’s just typing. I can do that in Word. It would take me 5 minutes. So I only want to pay you for 5 and a half minutes work."

Client: “The blue isn’t right.”
Me: “What PMS color are we trying to match?”
Client: “Oh, you know, the color of the Texas sky around daybreak.”

“I hate this new font. Use the first one I showed you. This one makes the site look cheap instead of elegant.”
The ‘cheap’ font was Georgia, the ‘elegant’ font was Georgia Italic.

"Wait, you’re working on other projects? For the money I’m paying, you should be exclusive to me."

"Thanks for emailing me the PDF. Can you please resend it to me at 100% and not at 147%."

"Well I’m a bit of a designer too. I have a Myspace."

One client called me this morning. After a brief discussion and proposing the price, suddenly he said :
“I’m sorry, I thought freelancers work for free.”

Client: “It’s a great design. Beautiful, classic, elegant and sleek. It hits everything on our wish list, can we add in some cheetah or leopard print?”

"We shouldn’t have to pay you for this, because if we had the resources in-house, we’d be able to do it for free."

"We need a logo. It needs to have a picture of a barn, a river, and some fish in it, along with our name, and our tagline. It’s very simple. I already drafted up the idea for you in powerpoint. It should be pretty easy, and won’t take up much of your time. You can do this for free, right?"

Client: “That font right there! It’s clean yet edgy. There’s no WAY I’ve seen that font before, I would’ve remembered! What font is that?”
Me: “Arial.”

"Make sure it’s not too edgy, not too flashy, not too much detail, not classical/traditional, not too complex, exciting, but not all over all over the place, efficient but fun, clean, fresh, modern, up beat, contemporary, high readability, smooth, shapeless, timeless, not outdated, but simple."

A client just submitted his logo to me by sending a link to his store’s address on Google Maps… “Click on the thumbtack and it will take you to a picture of the front of my store. The logo is on the sign.”

The Grumpy Sailors

Welcome to the world of Ray Ceasar

Title: "From such foulness of root does sweetness grow"

Yet another amazing artist I stumble upon years ago. I believe I saw his work promoted in one of the art magazines.

Ray Caesar creates fantastic, grimly hopeful and gravely whimsical images of wizened children who radiate an enigmatic serenity. Sprouting bio-mechanical limbs and appendages, the figures are otherworldly, a melding of sci fi fantasy, lush landscapes, and Victorian sensibilities. Working for 17 years in the Art and Photography Department of The Hospital For Sick Children in Toronto, Ray documented things such as child abuse, surgical reconstruction, psychology and animal research. The artist explains, “I often awake in the middle of the night and realize I have been wondering the hallways and corridors of the giant hospital. It is clear to me that this is the birthplace of all my imagery.” These experiences continually haunt and present themselves in his dreamy images, which draw inspiration from the works of Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dali, and Paul Cadmus.

Ray's work is most astonishing in the fact it is all digitally created; most people assume they are looking at paintings due to the seamless blending and "painterly quality" of the work as well as its unique emotional impact. Creating models in a 3D modeling software called Maya, he then wraps them in painted and manipulated texture maps. Each model is set up with an invisible skeleton that allows him to pose each figure in its 3D environment. Digital lights and cameras are added with shadows and reflections simulating that of a mysterious and strange “real” world.

www.raycaesar.com

Title: "Kitty Kat Study"

Title: "Messenger"

Title: "Bride Study"

I am just a greek in london.

I would like to introduce you guys to an fantastic artist.

Her name is Christina Koutsospyrou.

Christina Koutsospyrou is a London-based illustrator and screen printer renowned for her unique depictions of contemporary culture which sit at the forefront of the London art movement. Her critically-acclaimed pieces are influential and dynamic while retaining an underlying innocent and romantic narrative. Christina's extensive work has afforded her a staunch worldwide cult following with companies eager to brand her distinctive and progressive style. Her illustrations have been snapped up by international record labels, magazines, fashion houses and TV companies as well as other individuals and organisations who source visually-stimulating art. Apart from producing digital work, Christina creates beautiful delicate screen prints, which she has been exhibiting successfully in various spaces around London over the last few years.

link: http://www.dieforlove.co.uk

Playing games & being creative

cover design by Agnieszka Jeglinska

I really love fun games, and if they happen to include creativity then it's a win win situation if you ask me.

This was an old game which was circling around Facebook, but probably one of my favourite.

So here we go, rules are simple, go nuts! And blog about it and show me later, I want to see it!

The album cover project.

1 - Go to "wikipedia." Hit “random”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to "Random quotations"
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.

The man who told everything

Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QNB9mwBPus

There are moments in our life when we wonder if what we did, or said was right. Those little situations when you take a step back and wonder, what if.

Sometimes lies seems to be the only way to go, until you loose something close. Till you feel the burning pain of not really telling what was sitting in your heart forever.

And on those rare moments the truth hurts more then anything, it will bring tears and will make you want to run, run far away from everything.

So what do we choose?

How do we go about our life and live...right?

Where is the line of right and wrong? and who is there to say that what we did wrong now, may at the end be the right thing to do?

If you had one moment to pause, one decision to put on hold, one person to ask to come back, would you? Would you change the way you make your decisions? Would you change how people see you? Would it make a difference? if so, why?

Life is to short.

We all will die at the end.

So tell everything, in right moment, or when asked, or when expected.

There is no more to it.

It's pretty simple.

Before you loose something dear to you.