Mexican Rice

My friend, Angelica, showed me how to make this a few months ago but I thought I would share the recipe and technique…the technique being the key component. When I was back in college, I failed at making this soo many times but I learned it was because I lacked patience which unfortunately is still a work in progress.

Ingredients:

1 cup rice

2 cup fresh chicken broth (you can substitute with a cube of chicken bouillon and 2 c of water)

5 diced Roma Tomatos

½ chopped yellow onions (or red onions)

5 cloves of diced garlic

3 tbsp olive oil

Directions:

1.       In a pot pour the olive oil and heat it up until it becomes viscous then add the garlic and onions at medium heat. Cook the onions until it becomes translucent.

2.       Add the dry rice into the pot and allow the oil to cook the grains – remember to stir or they will stick to the bottom.

3.       Add the 2 cups of the fresh chicken broth along with the diced tomatoes. Turn up the heat and let the stock start to boil with bubbles.

4.       Place the lid on top and reduce the heat to low

5.       Let the pot sit on low for about 20 min and then it’s done.

The Journey of Stein

I know it’s been forever since I’ve written a post on my crafts. I’ve honestly been too lazy. Sometime between my last entry I learned how to Spanish potato tortilla that you find at tapas bar, turn an ordinary birthday card to something extraordinary, made a few Halloween costumes, and this. I will try to sit still and do some back blogging but there are no promises because I’m too antsy to sit still for that long.

Anyways, back to the entry I’m trying to write. Last week I was thinking about what to make my friend, Collin, for his birthday and all I had was…monkies, his touchiness about his hair, and Stein (an inside joke or bonding word that I still don’t understand its origins) In any case, I thought Stein was my best bet. So I asked a friend what type of image came to his mind when I said “Stein.” For awhile my friend kinda chuckled at the ridiculousness of the question but he proceeded to describe a diamond formed by hands. I took that idea and incorporated the Japanese rising sun because 1) Collin is white washed Japanese and I’m racist like that lol and 2) the rising sun has an importance in terms of graffiti art it would be blasphemy not to include it.

I created the logo at work in between my experiments and paperwork and then scanned it so I could have a digital copy to tweak. I have to say…I could have used a graphic tablet really badly because I spent about 6 hours after to make the image as clean as possible with my mouse.

Lets fast forward a bit….I went to Office Depot to buy iron paper and saw Steve Carrell with his daughter…went to Staples to buy a printer because iron paper is special and cannot be printed on at Kinkos (as explained to me when the dude at the one off Ventura Blvd looked at me with a DUH expression)

I finished the shirts…10 of them. Put 8 in a box with a monkey drawing on top holding a football and gave it to Collin on Monday night – unfortunately, I think I was more excited than he was. Key thing to doing this was to follow the instructions on the back to the T… I thought I could do my own thing and my first shirt was rather unsuccessful.