My Random iPhone Notes Day 4

My Random iPhone Notes Day 3

My Random iPhone Notes. Day #2

My Random iPhone Notes. Day #1

Ripple Stitch Morning

Ripple stitch swatch that I completed this morning. 3 rows.

Don't even ask me how  I figured this pattern out. I'm actually still in the process of memorizing it and I've only just started. I actually have Mikey to thank for making this youtube video tutorial. I can only learn knitting and crochet patterns this complicated by watching a live process. I have to see someone's hands and they have to instruct in a clear, comprehensive, patient and if possible pleasant voice.

I'm not sure what I'm making yet. I just wanted to see if I could get the hang of this. I've had to look the video over several times and probably will several times more before I can just write the pattern down myself and try to memorize it. I'm at the third row now I think. In the next row I will be adding another color! Wee! I'm so glad I stuck with this. I was starting to feel like like giving up. It's kind of messed up but I can never really believe it when I finally get the hang of something I percieve to be as difficult. I always think, oh there's no way I got this! I must have mucked up somewhere! Then when I do get it I get all over confident and obnoxious! So get ready for some serious gloating entries if this success continues! LOL!

No seriously, I'm going to be unbearable.

Last of the banana pancake spam

Last of the banana pancake spam
Originally uploaded by Zanalee

This morning I made banana pancakes before we went to go see "Bourne Legacy." I got some not so great news from the dentist yesterday and decided to bury my sorrows in grocery shopping. So among a variety of happy making foods, I purchased some whole wheat flour and three ripe bananas at Watkns, my local health food store.

Note: I have never baked a thing in my life. I got the idea for banana pancakes from my dear resourceful Shaherah who reported to me last weekend how she threw some together out of hunger and desperation using only bananas and coconut flour. Milk? She may have used milk as well. Anyway she said they came out perfect and at that moment I had a little synaptic yummy flip out in my brain center.

I'm intimidated by baking or any recipe that requires eggs; eggs which still mystify me. simply because I've been conditioned away from them for years. But I figured if it was a simple as Shaherah made it sound, I could take a stab at it.

Besides I'm on a banana kick (though I shouldn't be) and was very excited about that element of it. I had to look up a simple recipe for banana pancakes on the internet though. I'm a pancake making virgin so I needed some guidance.

What I understood essentially was that wet and dry ingredients have to mixed separately and then mixed together to form the batter to make pancakes. I've watched enough cooking shows to know that the wet ingredients get poured into the dry.

I measured the flour and milk and used two large cage free brown eggs . Everything else I eyeballed as Rachel Ray would say. I was in a bit pf a quandary over the use of baking powder and the difference between that and baking soda which was all we had. In the end I decided not used the baking soda because I kept pulling up search results on it's possibly adding a weird taste to the pancakes. I didn't want any weird taste. I trusted the eggs to do their thing without any help.

I added 1 table spoon of brown sugar and broke that down in 1 and 1/3 of a cup of flour. Little pinch of salt.

I melted 2 table spoons of butter and then cooled it, broke two eggs in that and then added 1 and 1//4 cups of Silk Vanilla Soy milk and mixed that together thoroughly.

I then poured that into the flour mix and then added the two ripe pre- fork mashed bananas and mixed until the flour disappeared and until as smooth as possible.

The rest is pretty easy. I poured out about four or five servings into a pan greased with butter. A few minutes on each side and we had lift off! It was so fun! And they tasted soooo good. That first one didn't last very long. It was in my mouth before I finished making the second. Ha!! Francis loved them as well.

I still really want to try it with the coconut flour though. I love all things coconut and i think the taste of coconut flour with bananas would be stupendous. I forgot to add some essence as well but I'll add that in the next batch I do. I can't imagine them being any yummier but I love to experiment. As a pancake making newbie, I would say this was a total success

Carribean Appreciation Weekend

Renee Cox:"Queen Nanny of the Maroons"

 From my surprise invite from Cece to see Fela on Thursday night to First Saturdays at the Brooklyn Museum with Shaherah to the "Caribbean Crossroads" exhibit at the Studio Museum of Harlem with Peggy and Christina and friends, I suddenly realized that I have been having an entirely Afro Caribbean appreciation week! And I have been loving it.

The Caribean themed First Saturday was to say the least a bit disappointing but I did get to make a carnival head dress in the "hands on art studio" as well as see a gorgeous young Hatian woman dressed in full carnival mass, promoting Caribbean festivities out in front of the museum while Shaherah and I sat out there in the grass discussing among many things, the huge difference between how Americans regard exposed flesh in Carnival compared with the rich historical background of Caribbean Mass troupe play which does not involve treating woman like sex objects merely because they have flesh exposed as a part of their beautiful, ornate costumes.

Being born and partially raised in Brooklyn until I was about nine years old, my mother who was born in Trinidad used to take my brother and I to the Eastern Parkway Caribbean Labor Day Parade every year. It was quite an event, second only to the huge African Market Fair at Boys and Girls High which we attended every summer for years, even after we had moved to the Bronx. Then there was the Harlem Day Parade which we not only attended for years and also vended a raw food table for a few times. These are things my mother would make sure we did on the regular to connect with as many aspects of our African and Caribean culture as possible and to to become social and network with those of like minds, family and friends alike.
Oh we did it all and more. And yet, it's all become kind of a foggy but fond memory to me now, which has all but faded away. This weekend those memories was injected with some new life as I realized how important it is for me to continue to attend, participate and share cultural events like this, particular those events directly related to my own culture.

I was so lucky to get to be able to see Fela and I was so honored that Cece called me! Fela has been such a long running hit for the last year or so, and so many of my friends, my parents and parents' friends have all seen it. It was spectacular! And not only entertaining but very informative about the history and politics of Nigeria, where Fela was born. But oh man, the music!!! Needless to say that became my next Pandora station.

Studio Museum of Harlem

On Saturday, after the Museum, Shaherah and I went to her friend's place to have a little Soul Sister picnic on her roof shortly before being interrupted by a rather loud and annoying party. But that's another story for another blog. We had a great time regardless and stuck it out for a long time since we were the first to be up there. We helped Shelly set out a nice little smorgasbord she had shopped for at Trader Joes on a wooden door frame which rested on two plastic crates.  Shelly's laptop was set out on the makeshift table with Pandora playing Shaherah's Machel Montano station. I was so loving the music on that station that I had to create one on my Pandora when I got home as well.

It's so weird the things you forget that you always knew. Calypso, Socca and Reggae and  music had been apart of my life in such a prominent way as a child but I realize now that it was really by way of my mother and like many things your parents do traditionally when you're young, I took a lot of it for granted. I was a very American child I guess and while I have adopted much of my father's music, Jazz, R&B, Soul, I never really kept up with the Soca, Calypso and Reggae music my mom played in the house. Until recently that is.

About a year ago I started re listening to Peter Tosh and Steel Pulse again, two artists that my mother loved and played a lot. It's not that I never listened to them before but I guess I just didn't care or understand how what they said applied to life. Perhaps the only Reggae artist I never stopped listening to was Bob Marley. But these men are prophets. They are the truth. Forget "The Secret." Just listen to any Peter Tosh or Steel Pulse if you want some simple tenants on the right ways to live or the conditions of race and class relations in this world. Still very relevant to this day.

As for the Soca and Calypso, listening to the Machel Montana station I created on Pandora Sunday, I heard all kinds of songs I remember from my youth, songs like "Nani Whine" and  "Tiny Winy." I was like wow! I remember all of this! I can't believe I ever let this go! You hear this music and all you want to do is dance so I was having a solo dance party in my apartment before I headed off to see the "Caribbean Crossroads" exhibit at the The Studio Museum Sunday afternoon. For me, it's like finding lost treasure that was never really lost. Plus, I now have some brand new Soca favorites which I can't wait to  hear again!

And speaking of lost treasure, the "Caribbean Crossroads" exhibit is so vast and varied, it took about seven years to curate and is showing pieces in three different museums through January 6th. We met to take the guided tour at 1:00 on Sunday and I have to say that while the tour itself was not the best, the pieces were freaking amazing. It never ceases to amaze me, how people can create the most amazing records of history using a variety of mediums you might otherwise never think to use. Although for me, art is never just about materials but about the imagination. One of my favorite pieces which I'm not sure was apart of the exhibit was by Geandy Pavon. He incorporates many of the things I love most about art by illustrating the power of imagination coupled with simple tools and elements in a way I have never seen before. He creates simply, powerfully and in a way anyone could replicate on their own way but which for him represents something definitively specific and personal.



One of my favorite pieces in the show was a photograph by Rachelle Mozman wherein she uses herself to represent both the higher and lower class structure in a wealthy household. I love it when people use themselves as subjects in their own work to make commentary about types, classifications and social positions. The indications are clear and the speculations on deeper commentary are very evocative. As the hired help, her skin is darkened. As the lady of the house, she is very pale, and on first viewing, you cannot see immediately that they are both this same woman but the difference is not only in appearance and outfit or uniform but in the whole physical demeanor, and posture. I plan to go back as soon as I can to take a longer look at other incredible pieces that caught my eye and I also plan to see pieces at Museo Del Barrio as well. Here is a link to a short slideshow from pieces across all three Museums, The Studio Museum of Harlem, The Museuo Del Barrio and The Queens Museum of Art, which are exhibiting the show through January 4th.