PicoBlog

I know that a lot of people find it hard to create good clipart using AI… Wether you want to use it as-is, or recreate it using Procreate/illustrator. In today’s video I was showing a cool way to create clipart using my FAV AI art generator- Lexica. I am NOT showing the recreation on an external app, BUT- using it as-is by removing the background of it!

I appreciate everyone here letting me pop into their inboxes, especially all the paid subscribers offering their direct support. But lately, I have been letting you all down with the infrequency of my posts, so I have paused billing. You can still expect recipes from me (I can’t promise how often), and they’ll now be free to everyone. I want to be totally honest with you all, my relationship with food is currently not in a good place.

Anne is back again this week (she shared herchicken chili recipe with us while I was on maternity leave) sharing an idea for how to doctor up a simple butter cake box mix to make a really special, impressive summer cake. Today’s my birthday, and growing up, my “birthday cake” request was always strawberry shortcake. My mom would pile shortcake with sliced strawberries and so much whipped cream it looked like a cloud.

call it confirmation bias but i feel like i’ve been seeing a lot of green soups making the rounds this soup season: see this one, this one, this one and this one, aptly named “swamp soup.” i have nothing against green soups, but i have to say, if someone made made me choose just one for the rest of my life, i’d without a doubt be team #redsoup (side note: this hashtag has just over 6,000 posts whereas #greensoup has over 37,000 lol).

I started going to Iceland in 2010, when I had a few random assignments about the food there. Even though a lot of what I ate then was rather gimmicky and uninspiring, a meal at the end of the trip at Gunnar Karl Gíslason’s restaurant Dill, which had just opened the year before, showed me what else Icelandic cuisine could be, both through its traditions and its future. As it’s a surprisingly quick flight from New York, I started going there regularly, and wrote about everything from forgotten breeds of goats to food halls opening in old fish factories, plus updated a few editions of a guidebook.

I have some ideas about how to fix the supply chain. I’m not talking about the root causes—the backed up ports, the fed up truckers, the pent up demand. I can’t do jack about any of that. But shipping efficiency? I have some notes. Every cubic inch of shipping real estate is precious right now, and we’re squandering millions of those inches on Styrofoam and bubble wrap. What if we could transform that deadweight loss into a cut-rate win?

I might have missed the boat on getting this recipe out in time for this year’s eclipse, but you can save the recipe for the next eclipse in 2044! Or just make the anyway because who can resist chocolate and vanilla combined in anything?! You can also use this recipe to make very stylish little checkerboard cookies. For even darker chocolate, use Dutch or alkaline cocoa powder which will give you a hue closer to an Oreo.

Eddie’s List: San Francisco Bay Area Events This Week By Eddie Hernandez Free email event newsletter/calendar: art, festivals, volunteer, galas, classes, talks, music, street fairs, startup/tech, pop-ups, comedy, shows & cultural. Curated Bay Area events, things to do in SF, news, food/drink recommendations & more. ncG1vNJzZmirpZfAta3CpGWcp51kjaaww6KcoZ2io66vsMSz

Genius rarely follows a straight line. It certainly didn't in the case of Eddie Van Halen, the greatest guitarist of his generation and one of the handful of instrumentalists who shaped the sound of popular music in the 20th Century. Often, Van Halen's career seemed to resemble a supernova: a bright, blinding blast slowly decaying into aftershocks. Blame this on how his recording career with his namesake band was bookended by a flurry of activity and yawning years of quiet, a semi-retirement born of perfectionism, disinterest, and addiction.