She's baaccckk!

Big things on the horizon.  More info very soon!

The sun is shining, the air is cold, feels like the start of something new!

Hello lovelies!

As I've said in my last post, I am determined to start blogging again!  New school year, new town, lots of things in store!

But first, we need to get you caught up!  So let's see.  I finished my Masters in Music at the University of Surrey.

 I timed it perfectly to be able to send off my visa application before the closing date AND be able to attend the commencement ceremony with the MMus students that I started the program with.

An attractive, educated looking bunch, eh?












I also did a bit of performing at Live at The Ivy, the Music Department's open mic/cover songs/piss-take night.  I decided to throw in a few shockers as this was one of my departing gestures at Surrey.

First, I learned how to play the bass:

Rockin da bass on Janis Joplin's "Piece of my heart"

Then.....

I sang....

"I WON'T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME!!!!"

...Rage Against The Machine!  


It was probably one of the nuttiest things I've ever done!











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At the end of the year, I created my own group, The Stag Hill Chamber Orchestra.  The group is predominantly Surrey students (both old and new) and a few local members of the community.  We performed Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf in an itty bitty church up a big hill just outside of Guildford.

The views looking out over the countryside were breath-taking!



















The concert went off so well, we decided to reprise Peter and the Wolf at a Diamond Jubilee Street Party in my neighborhood.  We performed right next to my house, while the neighbors set up tables and bbq-ed in the green between our houses!










The S.H.O also did a bit of studio time, lending their talents to a few tracks produced by Andy Land and orchestrated by Jess Littlewood.

We've worked together quite a bit.
You can check out the video for our cover of "Crossover" by Magnetic Man here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diF73zQlwgM 

and an original track called "Hide" by Syrencia here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkddmZvUSRY

Check back here for another video coming out soon of our cover of  "Guilt" by Nero.

So as you can see, I've been a busy bee!  Conducting, performing, entrepreneuring!  Basically, just living life to the fullest!  

Since finishing that school year, I've moved down to Southampton to be closer to work and start a new chapter of life.  But that will have to be a post for another day!  So stay tuned!

Much Love,
Sierra

Like a Phoenix from the Ashes

Dear Me,

The sun is shining, your Masters is FINISHED, and adventures are afoot.  Start blogging again.

Love,
Me

I AM A DOMESTIC DIVA!

An Italian-American Classic, and easy to make.

Hello Fabulous Readers!

Yes, I am blogging!

And today, it's all about foooooooddd!

I've mentioned this before, but I love to cook! And it turns out that I'm not too shabby at it  :)
So over the course of these last few months (happy 6 months in the UK to me!)  I've gotten into a nice routine with quite a few friends where I do the cooking, they provide the kitchen and utensils, we split the costs evenly among everyone eating, and a quality evening is spent with good food and good friends :)  So far I've cooked for 3 different households, and anywhere from 3 to 10 people at a time, and I've got plans to cook for a few more friends when our schedules will allow it.  A few people have asked me to write down all the crazy meals I've made, so today, "Seeing the Sights with Sierra Schwartz" is now "The Kitchen Conquering Cooking Blog"! All of my recipes are completely thrown together and usually aim for the least amount of actual work involved. Unfortunately, I don't have pictorial evidence of my own magical creations,  but I'll show you the basic gist of what they looked like through the cunning use of google images!

So, let's get cookin!




Chicken Parmesan, Angel Hair Pasta, and Garlic Bread


Ingredients
4 chicken breast fillets
Breadcrumbs
2 eggs
Olive Oil
Fresh thyme, or coriander, or basil, whatever you can find.
Pasta sauce
Angel Hair pasta (or just normal pasta...cuz Angel Hair doesn't exist in the UK...)
Mozzarella Cheese, grated
Butter
Garlic
Crusty Bread

Before you even start on the chicken, you make the garlic bread!
very simply, here's what you do:
Preheat Oven, and heat a bit of oil in a pan
Slice your crusty bread longways, and make some hashmarks into the openfaced side of the bread (so the garlic butter seeps in)
mince up a gazillion cloves of garlic
add garlic and a copious amount of butter to the pan
saute everything for a minute or so
drizzle the garlic/butter/oil combo onto both halves of the bread, then add even more butter (yes, heartache inducing, i know) and mix it all together
close the 2 halves of the bread, wrap in tin foil, and pop into the oven
Note - DON'T CLEAN THE PAN!! anything that's left in the pan will just make the chicken extra tastey!

Now for the chicken!
beat the eggs
Chop fresh herbs up finely and add them into a bowl of breadcrumbs
dip the chicken into the eggs, then into a bowl of breadcrumbs
fry on medium heat, turning over once or twice
Once chicken looks mostly cooked, place them on a baking sheet, pour a small amount of pasta sauce over the top, then generously top with mozzarella
Place into the oven for about 30 minutes

While all of that is cooking, get the pasta going.  Then, 30ish minutes later, check that the chicken is cooked in the middle, the garlic bread is melty and saturated, and the pasta is made to perfection.  Then serve!





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Pesto Pasta and Chicken


Ingredients
Chicken,
   in cubes, or you know, whatever shape you want
Pasta - again, whatever shape you want,
      I like Rotini (corkscrews) or Farfalle (bowties)
Mozzarella, in cubes
Cherry Tomatoes
Sweetcorn
A jar of Pesto (cheating, I know)
Fresh Basil
Mushrooms (totally optional, like everything else here


So, ready?  Here we go

Cook Pasta, drain it, put it in a massive bowl
Cook the chicken in some olive oil in a pan (throw those mushrooms in now and let it all cook together)
Drain the excess liquid from the pan and throw the chicken and mushrooms in the bowl with the pasta
Chop up the cheese, tomatoes, and basil, (and corn if its not already in bits)
throw EVERYTHING into the bowl
add copious amounts of pesto and a pinch or 2 of salt
 MIX AND SERVE! Tadaa!
(tastes good hot AND cold!)

See?  Aren't these easy?  Let's keep going!





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Teriyaki-Glazed Salmon

Ingredients
Salmon Filets (or... a whole fish...I cooked for 10 people)
Teriyaki Sauce (again, a cheat, I know)
White Rice
Spinach
Potatoes, chopped up into little pieces
Olive Oil

So simple, but SO good!

Preheat Oven
Place salmon (skin side down) on tin foil on a baking tray
slather in teriyaki sauce (if you have time, marinate for 2 hours before hand... I NEVER have time, so doing this on the fly works too)
create a "tent" by folding the tin foil up over the fish, but leaving plenty of room at the top
Place in the oven for at least 30 minutes (the packaging on the fish will tell you how long it needs to cook for), occasionally check on the fish, and keep adding more teriyaki to the top with a spoon
Cook the potatoes for a while (not to the extent you would if you were going to mash them, but enough so they are actually cooked)
Cook the rice so its ready when everything else is
Sautee the potatoes and the spinach in olive oil until the excess water from the spinach cooks off
Take the salmon out, make sure it's properly cooked in the middle, then add it all together!

told you it was easy!






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And now, my piece de resistance!

Bacon-Wrapped Herb-encrusted Pork Tenderloins with Apple Sauce and Garlic Mashed Potatoes



Ingredients
Pork Loin
Bacon
Dried Herbs
BreadCrumbs
Honey
Olive Oil
Apples
Cinnamon
Sugar
Potatoes
Garlic
Butter
Milk


Start by peeling the apples and potatoes and preheating the oven
Fill 1/3 of a pot with water, add the Apples, and Boil (add cinnamon and sugar to taste)
Fill 2/3 of a pot with water, add the Potatoes, and Boil

In a frying pan, heat oil, mince garlic, and sautee the garlic with some butter
When the potatoes are done (they will fall off a fork if you try to stab them), mash like mad, add the garlic/butter/oil combo, and splash in plenty of milk

When the Apples are done, you should mash them with a spoon, then set the sauce aside to cool

Place Pork in a roasting pan
Coat the pork generously in the following order
 - honey
 - dried herb and breadcrumbs mixed together
 - bacon (either laid across the top, or wrapped around it, like a bandage)
 - honey
 - dried herbs
 - olive oil

Place in the oven for 35 minutes, then turn off the heat but let the pork "rest in a warm place" hehehe.
Once it's "rested" (hehe) slice into medallions, and serve it with the apple sauce, mashed potatoes, and then include some steamed asparagus and cranberry sauce for  good measure :)  There should be some pretty fantastic tasting juices at the bottom of the pan, so pour that over the pork if it looks like it's missing a little something-something.






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And there you have it, ladies and gentleman,  I CAN actually cook!  Amazing, I know!!  Be on the lookout for bigger and better Culinary Creations coming from me!  I'm still determined to perfect my Corona-Battered Fish with lime juice and avocado sauce, and I have yet to properly tackle a steak, so watch out!

I hope you enjoyed this little cooking detour, but hopefully the travelling will resume soon!  After all, April Break is just around the corner and I have a few ideas in the works!



As always, thanks for reading!



~ Sierra
(The Kitchen Conqueror!)

Back from the depths!

Dear readers, so sorry I've abandoned you!  But I have truly been living life!!


As you may have noticed, my frequency of posts declined in direct inverse relation to my acquisition of friends - and a social life!  But don't worry, I'm back with a vengeance!

So, let's see,  since my last post I've started my program (duh), made a ton of friends, starting playing regular weekly football with some guys from the music department, gotten involved in EVERY SINGLE MUSICAL ACTIVITY I COULD FIND (or  create!), started cooking dinner for the masses, gone into London, been up to Brum (birmingham), down to Pompy (portsmouth), across to Amersterdam, and seen a whole lot of beautiful Guildford.  I've managed to make myself known to almost EVERYONE in the music department, and am happy that I'm getting to know such fabulous people.   Unfortunately, my laptop crashed (like.. 2 months ago...) so I can't upload any pictures right now,  but hopefully soon.



I'm in music nerd heaven here, playing horn and conducting every ensemble I can find.  Here's a quick list of what I'm in -

Conducting the Wind Band, Jazz Band, Brass Band, String Orchestra, Dorkestra and will be conducting something like 5 student compositions for the Joyce Dixey competition coming up in a month or so
and
Playing in the Wind Band, University Orchestra (first horn baby! bring on those Mahler solos!) brass trio, brass quintet, brass dectet, piano trio, wind octet, soon-to-be-formed horn quartet, and playing in another 6 or 7 Joyce Dixey pieces!  phew!  yes, that IS alot!

aaannnnnddddd I'll be conducting the University Orchestra playing Les Preludes by Liszt for my assessment in May!!!!!   eeeee!!!!!!!!

So yes, life is gooooooddd.  and the blogging will resume!

but now it's late, and I'm tired, so I will bid you all adieu!
(always leave 'em wanting more  ::wink wink::)


~ Sight-Seeing Sierra

First Day of School?!

Oh my god,  It's the first day of school!

Dear readers, this is a weird feeling:
1)  I'm a graduate student in ENGLAND?! (How did that happen?)
2)  I'm actually getting my masters in the thing I love most?!
3)  I haven't been a student in 3 WHOLE YEARS!!  I've been on the other end of those lectures and lessons!
4)  As a grad student, I don't even have classes today - I have an orchestra audition, a conductors meeting, a big band audition, and a wind band rehearsal.  You should be jealous!  My life rocks!

However,  I will have you know that some things never change. 
What did I do last night?  Play football with the music department. 
What did I do this morning?  My first homework assignment as a grad student. 
 Yes, that's right, even at 25 I'm still putting off doing homework until
THE LAST POSSIBLE SECOND. 
Ah, well,  you can't teach an old dog new tricks ;) 

Anyway,  for those of you wondering what the schedule of a master's program conductor looks like, I'll give you an idea
Monday - absolutely nothing until the evening!  Wind Band and Big Band both rehearse at 7ish I think, so we'll see how that goes...
Tuesday - Popular Musicology from 2-4, Masters Research Seminar from 4-6, then Orchestra from 6:30-9:30
Wednesday - HE2 Conducting  (for second year students)
Thursday - HE3 Conducting from 11-1, PostGrad Conducting Seminar from 1-2
Friday - Drunk Orchestra (or Dorkestra) sometime in the evening.  More developments on that later..it's still in the works.

So yes, that's my WHOLE schedule! Amazing!  All of that extra time will probably be filled with ensemble rehearsals  (I'm pretty sure I'm missing something else, like Jazz Band, and University Choir, but I can't remember what day/time those are...)  and maybe a job.  Hopefully a job.  I NEED a job.  College life is EXPENSIVE. Mostly because of the sheer volume of alcohol consumed, but also, this girl needs clothing!  And shoes!  and presents for myself!

So dear readers, after you've read this, and are about to head off into the working world, just remember,  I'm waving a stick in front of a group of people all day! :-p

~ Sie

Back in the UK, time to start posting again!

Good morning all!

I'm finally back in the UK, back in Guildford, and settled into my new dorm room! 
 Which means, you probably want to hear some more about my trip to France! (Of course you do..)

 So First - A note on French Cooking

While I didn't get to eat EVERYTHING my heart desired,

I did get a good sampling of french food.  And here's what I've observed: the french do subtle very well.  As I jotted this little note to myself down, I was sitting in a cafe on Rue La Fontaine eating a wonderful duck confit.  I had my reservations about ordering that particular item because the meal came with garlic potatoes and I didn't want to be walking around Paris reeking of garlicky goodness for the rest of the night!   But let me tell you, this meal is wonderful!  The duck has a nice crunchy coating of I don't know what, and the potatoes have only the slightest hint of garlic, salt, and....thyme? basil?  I'm not even sure, but I just know its amazing!  Same for the other formal meals I've had here.  The escargot had some kick to it, but within reason, and the canard a l'orange has such a delicate orange flavor that I literally couldn't stop smiling at the dinner table.  So over all - what would I say about french cuisine?  C'est magnifique! 

 

 Next time on "Seeing the Sights With Sierra Schwartz" 

we'll learn how Sierra cut the line - not once! not twice! But THREE TIMES!  Stay Tuned!

~ Sie