#kabocha
El otoño es mi estación favorita. Me encanta el colorido del paisaje en esta época del año, con sus tonos amarillos, ocre, marrón, naranja y rojo. Tienen una fuerza increíble.
Por otra parte, la época otoñal nos proporciona unos alimentos extraordinarios para disfrutar de la buena cocina. Solo a modo de ejemplo aquí están unos wagashi de castaña (los wagashi son pastelillos elaborados conmochi,anko y frutas) y dos formas de preparar kabocha (calabaza japonesa): la crema y el pan dulce de calabaza.
Están para comérselos!
Imagen vía Chopstick Chronicles yWagashi Maniac
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BUG CHOIR • late summer, budding harvest
ー recently XP-Pen kindly sent special edition Innovator 16 for review for their 15th anniversary. It’s the perfect time to stew in nostalgia for summer’s end, so I drew some noisy little bugs to try this tablet. The full review can be found below.
I’ve been very taken with Dvorak’s piano pieces as of late, so I tried to incorporate some of his works into the backgrounds and motifs for these pieces. You can glimpse some of the sheet music (waltz op.54 no1) particularly in the stag beetle/kabocha, and night’s journey (allegro moderato, in cicada&yam) is a really pretty piece too.
The anniversary edition tablet came with cute stationery - pen, stickers, postcards, keychain - centered around the theme of “identify your colour”; everything was packaged very nicely and a joy to look through. The Innovator 16 itself is surprisingly light. It doesn’t quite fit into standard laptop case, but the daring may tuck it into a bag ー I’m clumsy, so won’t push luck taking outside! it also has 8 shortcut keys + mechanical&virtual wheel (though i didn’t really get into habit of using both haha)
For this tablet too, I was struck by the vividness of colour display, it may have been a little crisper than even 13.3 pro. While adjustments were made to mirror the laptop screen, colours nonetheless seemed to hold more depth on tablet. To this point I’m still not sure which screen depicts more ‘accurate’ colours; regardless it helps to have multiple points of colour reference while drawing. I really think that the colour display is one of XP-Pen’s strongest suits. The drivers ran smoothly the entire time, though it should be noted that mirror mode isn’t supported fr left hand use; I continued using extend mode.
(i wanted to record drawing cicada, but got carried away and only remembered to record yam leaves :-o !!) the drawing experience wasn’t so dissimilar from analog.
(for the morbidly curious, this was the state the sketches were in before starting illust. am trying something fresh and fun called not obsessively helicoptering control over sketch lines, and working on display tablet gives a lot of freedom to consider composition more directly.)
Taking into consideration tablet size & attributes, i do recommend Innovator 16 for those aiming to move further in digital projects; the quality of experience is on par w/industry-type tablets at an accessible cost - moreover, they seem to be holding an anniversary sale on their tablets, if anyone is interested in checking out. I feel very fortunate for having had the chance to try this tablet, and my sincere gratitude to XP-Pen for this opportunity.
links to XP-Pen shop:
US:https://bit.ly/33Z87Wf
AU:https://bit.ly/2DRVIZx
UK:https://bit.ly/310wUrf
EU:https://bit.ly/2DRVIZx
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Okay, first of all, now I know why they’re always wiping down the edges of dishes before serving them on Top Chef. This looks awful. But it tasted DELICIOUS!
This is a soup that a friend and I made by modifying a recipe from www.epicurious.com. I absolutely adore that site. The original recipe can be found at
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Curried-Pumpkin-Soup-232968
but we had to modify it a bit because we didn’t have all the ingredients here. So we made our soup as follows:
Tasty and Warming Kabocha Soup
2 medium onions, finely chopped (2 cups)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 large garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons minced peeled fresh ginger
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 ½ teaspoons salt
¾ teaspoon chili powder
LOTS of curry powder (we didn’t measure)
½ kabocha, pre-cooked in the microwave (in a bowl with a bit of water at the bottom), peeled and seeds removed
5 cups broth made with vegetable bullion
1 (14-oz) can unsweetened coconut milk (not low-fat)
Cook onions in butter in a wide 6-quart heavy pot over moderately low heat, stirring occasionally, until softened, 3 to 5 minutes. Add garlic and ginger and cook, stirring, 1 minute. Add cumin and curry and cook, stirring, 1 minute. Stir in salt, chili powder, pumpkin, broth, and coconut milk and simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, 30 minutes. Purée chunks in a blender until smooth (use caution when blending hot liquids), and return to pot. Keep soup warm over low heat.
Seriously, this tasted SO GOOD! It was pretty thin though, so I think next time I’ll add some potatoes to be pureed as well, and I bet some roasted red and yellow bell peppers would be absolutely fabulous.
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