My First Recipe: Bacon Seafood Vodka Ziti With Cilantro and Provolone

It’s a challenge for me to cook for a multitude of reasons, so here are a few tips that are helping me move into better cooking/eating habits.

Planning:
Shop and bundle it with other activities
Ask friends for cooking tips

Shopping:
Ask for help at the deli and meat counter on how to cook what you buy
Buy things you like in small quantities so they don’t go bad

Cooking:
Ask someone to cook with you, come over for dinner, cook for a reason, or in bulk to get motivated
Start early I have an alarm to begin at 6pm
Eat a pre-dinner snack to concentrate, I usually have an apple
Cook as fast as you can
Clean when you cook so if you get tired, you can just go to bed

Here’s what you need:

1 pyrex baking dish
1 frying pan
1 sauce pan
1 big pot
1 strainer

3 slices provolone cheese
3 mini zucchini
5 garlic cloves
1 jar vodka sauce
1 lb. mixed seafood
1/2 lb. bacon
4 oz. olive oil
1 jalapeño pepper
1 bunch cilantro
1 white onion

preheat oven to 425
start boiling a large pot of water

mince garlic divide into two piles
mince cilantro
slice zucchini 1/8″ wide
slice jalapeno into thin strips
slice onion into rings, then cut rings in half

add 2 oz oil into sauce pan on medium heat
add 1 pile garlic and add onions
stir and brown, cover and let steam, then stir again every 2 minutes
add bacon
add peppers
add zucchini stir again every 2 minutes

In frying pan
2 oz oil
add other pile of garlic and brown while stirring
add in seafood
cook and stir for 5 minutes

add vodka sauce into saucepan
stir and lower heat to simmer

add contents of frying pan into sauce pan including the juices

stir

put water in big pasta pot, after achieving a rolling boil add penne pasta.

cook pasta six to 9 minutes , rinse drain, add olive oil and stir.

place pasta in bottom of pyrex dish cover with contents of sauce pan
place three slices of provolone over the top and cover evenly with cilantro bake 20-25 minutes and watch for melted cheese and slightly browned edges on the leaves.

remove from oven let stand for 3-5 min serves 4-6

Visiting The Museum Of Jurassic Technology

I read Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet Of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology while enrolled in the San Francisco Art Institute New Genres Masters Program back in 2003, and today I finally had the opportunity to check out MJT in person. I particularly enjoyed the motorized rotating bell wheel installed on the first floor. Take a listen: Ambient Sound From the Museum of Jurassic Technology, Culver City, California

Tea garden on the roof of The Museum of Jurassic Technology, Culver City, California
Tea garden on the roof of The Museum of Jurassic Technology, Culver City, California

I also enjoyed sipping on hot tea with lemon and sugar while contemplating the view from the roof. The babbling fountain and the bird cages integrated into the columbarium are very appropriate touches.

I highly recommend checking out this hidden bastion of conceptual art especially if you appreciate detail, like reading, have an active imagination and a penchant for steam-punkery, even before it was cool. For more information contact The Museum of Jurassic Technology.

Hypermodern Audio: Ten Year Anniversary Of Something Fantastic

Enjoy the hot cut from the floor of the Blue Room, 2002
Cynical and DJZN Live – Fantastic Cutting and scratching with no slide mixer on my side…Yea I’m the platinum blonde…it’s a down-tempo jam with a ton of layers and a lot of back cueing with a knob, turntables run through analog guitar pedals…enjoy. For more sonic delights check out the audio section of Hypermodern.net

DJZN AKA (Pete Ippel) and Cynical (Ryan Schmidt) Mixing in the Blue Room, Cornell University Tjaden Hall, 2002
DJZN AKA (Pete Ippel) and Cynical (Ryan Schmidt) Mixing in the Blue Room, 2002

Rapid Eye Movement And Artistic Dreams

I found a piece of paper that I had forgotten about that was written last Friday. On it was the immediate morning scrawlings of a semi-conscious me. Here’s the dream drama:

A tall Asian curator female in a silk dress, very kind asked me to redo an older painting, so I cut it up and added digital sound and video (likely with a Milkymist) then my Dad and I work on it for a few days. During the installation (it was crated the day before) with all the chaos of the opening it was very hard to find the crate. Just in the nick of time the project was found and installed. In addition there was a device/sculpture component where the original 2d image was a city scape and transformed into a rolling chain of images joined with flexible joints, like a dragon kite.

One of the components was a window frame with the initials NJ in the frame…likely meanig New York was the skyline. Very exciting way to wake up. Everything got finished and the installation was complete right as I woke up.

The dream could have been influfluenced by the chain in Doris Humphrey’s water study, or the fact that I had gone to the studio with my father who was working with folks in wheel-chairs being propelled with whipping momentum across the stage the day before…plus I was anticipating building a crate before I left for California the 10th.

Unpacking Art

Now that I have the majority of my art pieces in my studio in California I’ve been emptying the transportation vessels, hand-built wooden crates, transparent plastic boxes, hole-filled duffle bags. I am pleased to report that there was only one breakage so far, no papers torn, no tubes crushed, no paintings pierced. The most surprising part is that the piece that was broken is constructed of brazed steel…That bag must have taken a major hit…though the hand-thrown glazed teapot made it in the same luggage without incident. Odd.

Love and Rhetoric Are Still Perplexing Topics As An Adult: Poetry From 1996

Two Poems: A Special Place and Literary Questions by Pete Ippel 1996
Two Poems: A Special Place and Literary Questions by Pete Ippel 1996

I found these pieces while digging through my childhood archives here in Illinois. In the process of packing and sorting. I have to be ready to fly back to California tomorrow morning. Here’s a few introspective gems. Enjoy.

A Special Place

I have a special place in my head,
where only memories dwell.
The manila folders I draw out each have importance pertaining to my life.
Some are pleasant,
others tear at my heart strings.
But, one particular folder,
RELATIONSHIPS,
stands alone.
There is only one piece of paper in that folder.
The memories on that white sheet of paper pulp reveal a side
of me I had never seen.
The side of a caring person,
capable of feeling a broken heart.
That folder will remain locked in my filing cabinet forever.

Literary Questions

Did the ancient writers before
me have problems
with grammar?
Did they worry about
embarrassing misspellings?
Was illiteracy a problem?
Of course not.
Since no one could read their ideas any way,
authors before me had it easy.
For a writer, a construction worker with words,
ignorance of the reader is bliss.