Protein packed Goji Sugar Bombs and a week in review

Here's what I've been working on this week:

left to right: 1~new dress in the works/2~gardening/3~asparagus gouda galette/4~mena gift certificates

Here's what I've been thinking about this week:

Dear food bloggers,

Stop putting beans in cake. I don't want kale in my ice cream, and if I ever see brown sugar quinoa cupcakes with spirulina merengue I'm staging an all out revolt with Paula Deen as my Joan of Arc. I'm even wary of flax seed, but I'm gonna let that one slide, hippies.

The fact that you can not taste a certain ingredient should not be its selling point. Just because soylent green doesn’t taste like people does not mean I want it in my smoothies. If you are going to add a savory or unique ingredient to your bundt cake, you better fucking feature it not hide its flavor like a low budget masquerade ball. 

NEWS FLASH!!! Cake is dessert, whether you add a can of kidney beans or not. Eat it for breakfast, lunch or dinner if you will, but don’t delude yourself, it’s still just a mountain of sugar making love to that dirty gigolo known as carbs. You can break it in chunks and douse it in kombucha, or roll it up in a slice of low sodium nori. That doesn't prove that you're healthy, that just proves that you have an eating disorder. 

Fat free does not mean guilt free. OMG are people still on the fat free diet? How quaint. 

I know you want to stay skinny. So do I. It's called moderation. Get with it. One chewy buttery sweet chocolate chip cookie made the way the gods intended is more satisfying than 10 protein packed tofu chard eclairs. I would even go so far as to say 10,000 tofu chard eclairs, but I don’t want to seem sensationalistic when this is a true crisis crippling the nation. 


If you want to eat cake, eat cake. If you want to eat something healthy, full of fiber, nutrients and anti-oxidants you can start by not eating cake.
 

keep in mind that I had an earlybird gin and tonic at 7am this morning, so clearly I’m no nutritionist.

I’m going to leave you with this simple recipe for brownies. We’ve been making this recipe in my family for years. It has no healthy pretense, added fiber or omega 3’s. You will not find any trendy superfoods in its ingredient list. The gluten content is out of control. It’s a crowd pleaser, so for godsake make it for a crowd. If you end up eating the whole tray; (wo)man up and take some responsibility for your actions.

See you allz at the gym.

Fudgey Brownies

3/4 cup cocoa

1/2 tsp. baking soda

2/3 cup oil

1/2 cup boiling water

2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 1/3 cup flour

1 tsp. vanilla

1/4 tsp. salt

Stir together cocoa and soda. Blend in oil. Add boiling water. Stir until thickened. Science rocks. Stir in sugar and egg until smooth. Add flour, vanilla and salt. Blend completely. 

Bake in lightly greased 13X9 inch pan. Bake at 350 for 35-40 minutes. Let cool and dust it with powdered sugar. 

In Wonderland

Woman Leaving the PsychoAnalysts Office, Remedios Varo

I need to trasport my studio to a dark and quiet cave with no internet connection. Maybe I shouldn't even take a computer, just a rusty old typewriter that's missing a few keys. Then and maybe then I could focus and formulate one single complete thought. I'm in the middle of ten different projects right now, and instead of finishing them off one by one, I'm constantly trolling the horizon for a new one to start.

Saturday night a few lady friends and I went to a lovely exhibit at the LACMA. It was called In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States. I didn't know much about the artists other than Frida Kahlo and I was so pleased to leave the museum with a few new favorites. The majority of the work was dated between 1931-1968. Much of the work was self-referential with portraits and studies relating to the struggle between traditional and rapidly changing gender roles, or commenting on the one-dimensional portrayal of women by their male colleagues in the art world.

Family Portrait by Dorothea Tanning

We left the exhibit thoughtful, thankful and inspired. Inspired to make a self portrait, that is. Which is perfect. I was looking for a new project to start anyways.

Here are a few of my other favorites from the show:

Creation of the Birds, Remedios Varo

Mimesis, Remedios Varo

Self Portrait, Rosa Rolanda

Double Portrait of the Artist in Time, Helen Lundeberg

Birthday, Dorothea Tanning

The Seven Spectral Perils~ Fifth Peril, Dorothea Tanning

The Exhibit ends May 8th, so get on it.

Mena Paper Dolls: Garden Party Essentials

I spent last week in illustrator making flat sketches of my entire collection. Often times the finished collection looks a little different from the sketches you started with, so once the collection is finalized and the samples approved they need to be revised in detail. That means every topstitch, rivet, zipper, etc. needs to be drawn and accounted for.  These technical sketches then go to the production company along with a very detailed packet explaining the construction of the garment. This is what we in the "biz" call a tech pack. Since I am my own production company, when I'm done I take them from one side of my desk and place them on the other side.  I'll use them mainly for quality control purposes, and to add to my lil portfolio.

Whenever I'm working on flats I'm always reminded how closely they resemble paper dolls. They're just so darn cute all lined up together with teeny tiny zippers and perfectly rendered topstitching... 

So. Naturally I had to turn them in to paper dolls for realz.

It's been awhile since I've played around with markers. Half of them are all dried out, but it was fun anyways and now I want to do the whole collection as paper dolls.

I could make paper dolls for a living. I'm easy.
Thanks for indulging me.
-Misty