How to Roast A Chicken

How does one roast a chicken? Well, one could do it with stuffing. Without. Rubbing butter on the skin. Marinading. Stuffing the chicken with a duck stuffed with a pigeon (if you're not into the whole brevity thing). After this last foray into chicken roasting, however, I've become firmly convinced that the best method is the simplest one of all.

Theater Costumes

I learned to sew by apprenticing as a costume designer in our high school theater department. Blissfully, our director leaned more toward "provoking the Central Texan establishment" than "put on Oklahoma!", which meant a lot of fun experimentation for the creative teams behind the scenes. After apprenticing for the first few years, I became head of the department for the last two, during which time we put on A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1930's Romeo and Juliet, 1984 and Woyzeck. 

The Galveston

Peter and I celebrated our first anniversary on the 19th, and since we'd been tripping the light fantastic for the past weekend, we decided to keep things low-key and treat ourselves to a nice homemade brunch to celebrate. And when I think brunch, the first place I turn to is The Black Dog Tavern Cookbook. 

Romeo Jacket: We Cut!

And now...the most exciting photo collection EVER TO HIT THIS BLOG!

But really, it is a day to celebrate. Cutting a pattern is always one of the most nail-bitingly stressful parts of starting a garment, especially if you're working from your own pattern. What if you run out? What if you accidentally clip something you shouldn't? How much is future Bailey going to be swearing at past Bailey while she's trying to fit all these mismatched seams together? Why can't I follow someone else's pattern like a normal person?

Pepperoni Rolls

On tonight's agenda: The Oscars and its associated drinking games, fun times with a good friend and her baked goods...and these pizza rolls, which I spotted recently on Bon Appetit and have been dying to try ever since. I wish that pepperoni was its own food group.

Lego Man Marries a Unicorn

The other day my good friend Katie texted me. "Hey Bailey," she said. "Can you draw me a picture of a Lego man marrying a unicorn?" "Okay," I replied. And here's how that went.

Steampunk and Lace: Masquerade 2012

This costume retrospective takes us back to the companion piece to Peter's Masquerade jacket. Portland's annual Masquerade Ball (thrown by Peter's band, Just People) is just about as much fun as a group of pals can have. Photo booths? Stilt walkers? Hula hoopers? Fantastic live music? Everybody dressed up to the nines with masks, facepaint and body art? Check, check and check.

Santa Fe Dreaming...

Santa Fe, New Mexico, has always held a very special place in my heart. It comes of having spent a relatively large amount of time there when I was very young and not as much as an adult. My great-grandparents lived there in the twilight of their lives, and we used to visit every few years. The memories I have aren't really memories...more impressions of color and texture and tastes. Bright turquoise, brilliant burnt reds and yellows, dust and sand and adobe, turquoise, sticky sweet syrup poured over fresh sopapillas.

Cocoa Nib Cookies

Do you sometimes get the urge to bake? Do your urges list towards an intense hit of chocolate straight to the noggin? Look no further, dear reader, for I have the cookie for you. Light on the sweet, heavy on the chocolate; a tall glass of tall milk is an essential ingredient.

Love in a Blanket

Being in a long-distance relationship is one of the toughest situations a young couple can find themselves in. I know, because four out of my last four relationships were long distance for a period longer than a year. It sucks. My mom, who was in a long distance relationship with my dad for the two years before they were married, always says, "You've got Facebook! FaceTime! Skype! You kids have got it easy!" It's a double-edged sword. Is it great that Peter and I can get together and watch an episode of Freaks and Geeks on FaceTime together? Sure. But I'm so hyper-conscious and hyper-informed of his comings, his goings, his parties, his shows, new friends...sometimes I'm not sure if we've made it easier on ourselves. In some ways those updates only emphasize his absence and our distance from each other. So every tangible thing we can do to feel close to each other takes on a value of tenfold importance.

Enter the blanket.

Black and White Ball 2012, or How to Score a Man-Friend

One year ago, on February 18th, Just People hosted their first Black and White ball in Portland. My bus date was my best friend Peter (continuing a tradition of bus dates that stretched back to our first meeting at the 2011 Masquerade Ball). I performed with the band, the two of us went back up to the band's Lodge for the afterparty, then we wound up trekking back to my house in the wee hours of the morning. The next day we smooched. I think the general sentiment among all our friends was less "Yay!" and more "FINALLY. Dear God." 

So, how does one capture the fancy of a young man? In my vast experience, it is best to start with a top hat.

Birthday Presents

Peter is one of those infuriating individuals who had the nerve to be born less than a month after Christmas. It makes the winter season that much more stressful (not least because I get super impatient for people to open the presents I make and waiting without giving anything away is not one of my strong points.) I think the idea for this particular gift was inspired by something I read about Elizabeth I embroidering a prayer book cover for Catherine Parr one Christmas. I liked that. So this project developed into a fourfold creative endeavor: embroidering the cover, constructing the book itself from scratch, and filling it with poems and photographs I'd written or shot that I thought Peter would like. You are not allowed to see the poems or photographs, so we'll just talk about the cover!

A Very Valentine's Menu

Yep. It was pretty epic. I would have also photographed the charcuterie plate but Piper ate almost all the sausage before we got home from the airport.

Valentine's Day Guide or: How to Pick Your Boyfriend Up from the Airport

A few pretty little things...

Intense Chocolate Mini-Cakes with Rum Buttercream

If you're going to go Valentine's, go decadent. That's the current motto under which I'm operating, especially after today's preparatory trip to Whole Foods (gulp).

Off the Beaten Path: Valentine's Flicks

I know there are a lot of Valentine's haters out there, but I've never really seen the point. Valentine's Day is a day to celebrate love; we all (hopefully) have some form of love in our lives, be it romantic, familial, friendly. And we get an entire day to remember it, celebrate it and share it! I think it's lovely.

We enter a very important phase of Valentine's Day preparation: the film. What you watch and who you watch it with can make a world of difference between a memorable Valentine's Day and a "that time we watched Love Actually that wasn't Christmas" kind of day. We all know the classics: Titanic, Romeo + Juliet, Pride and Prejudice, etc. Boring (or not, I'll be watching Romeo + Juliet, don'tlookatme). But, dear reader, whether you've got a honey by your side on the big day or not, I shall now draw upon my five years of cinema scholarship and select five more offbeat films that will make your night something to remember.

Valentine's Brown Butter Spice Cookies

A few days ago I posted my desire to invent my first cookie. A Valentine's cookie. A "sexy" cookie, if you will (not some milksop sugar concoction with tastelessly sweet frosting). And voila, a few tries and a few cardboard-tasting failures later and I have found my cookie. A bit nutty, a bit chocolatey and a bit spicy. Mouth-meltingly soft. What more can you ask for? I'll still be playing around with this a bit; I had one try that came out perfectly and the others have been a bit varied, but I'll keep this recipe updated.

What Would Keller Do?

Answer? In all likelihood, he would make a meatball. Like most culinary enthusiasts, I revere Thomas Keller as a deity. A benevolent deity, whose sublime cookbook Ad Hoc at Home is chock full of bad puns like Keller cradling a certain eating implement with the caption "I love to spoon." How can you not love a guy like that?

New Year's Eve 2012

This New Year's Eve it was all about the old Hollywood glam.

I should begin by saying that last year's New Year's Eve was not all about the glam. Last year's New Year's involved going out in a fur coat and velvet dress, getting stranded at a NYE party and waiting half an hour with my sister for a taxi to take us to the one place we wanted to be: Peter's. Then we played teamball and drank beer and listened to Horses and didn't smooch and then went to Megan's, where we had pizza. Fun? Undoubtedly. Classy? Not particularly.

Portrait of a Lady

As a present for my dad last Christmas, my sister and I decided to collaborate on a portrait project, where we'd watercolor portraits of one another! We got our friend Andrew to do the photos, which led to some considerable silliness:

Valentine's Cookie Musings

I've been toying around with the idea of a Valentine's Day cookie for a little while and this morning I had a few ideas that I wanted to jot down. The usual "sugar cookie with crumbly royal icing" has always seemed a little insipid to me, especially where Valentine's Day is concerned. Those cookies are fine if they're representing some kind of little schoolgirl crush, but I want a sexy cookie (yeah, I said it.) A cookie that evokes the deep, toe-curling, passionate feeling of full-blown love.

Dodger podger!

A portrait of Dodger for me Mum.

Sweet Bluebonnet Spring

This was the pillow I made for my mom last Christmas. She and my dad have been thinking of places to retire, and if they decide to move out of Texas I wanted her to have a little keepsake of one of her favorite things about this state: the bluebonnet. There's nothing quite like driving down the highway and seeing these pretty little white-tipped heads bobbing to and fro in the sweet spring breeze every year. Then, of course, after the two weeks of spring the temperature cranks up like a gas oven and the red ants swarm all over everything and anything that is remotely pretty or green or alive withers up and turns brown until the two weeks of spring the following year.

Ah, Texas.

Road to the Superbowl, Day Two

So the 49'ers lost. There was a lot of tension during our party, let me tell you; far more emotion than I was expecting. I even found myself yelling at the screen a couple of times. There were tears, emotions, Beyonce...pretty much everything you could ask for. What wasn't there at the end of the Superbowl? These wings, that's what.

Road to the Superbowl, Day One

For me, the Superbowl is less about the hormonally imbalanced man-boys working out their childhood aggression. Nope, hard as it is to believe, it's all about the food. Normally if I'm within range of a television on the big day there'll at least be some ceremonial chunky salsa munching. But if there's a full-on game day party with my UT cohort? That's an excuse to go a little crazy. This year, crazy is taking the shape of Nick Malgieri's "Intensely Moist" Chocolate Cupcakes and a big batch of Pok Pok wings. Wings are tomorrow. Today is all about the cupcake.

Romeo Jacket: The Inspiration

This is going to be the first "track the project" on this enterprise. After Peter's leather jacket made such a great hit at Masquerade, I've sort of been jonesing to make him another one in black. After all, every rock star needs a little color variety, right? Right.

Food Photography Studio!

I put together a little food photography studio tonight out of...wait for it...posterboard, parchment paper, and a daylight lightbulb! I am super excited. My sister sort of gave me the "you're cute but insane" smile. Let's hope some mouth-watering things come out of this bad boy!

Because it's Friday...

HERE ARE SOME PICTURES OF MINI-CUPCAKES.

Which are basically the cutest things in the world.