Sharks, and crafts

 

This has nothing at all to do with cooking, but I wanted to share an exciting tidbit with you faithful readers, and also alert you to stay tuned to some side projects of mine in the coming weeks.

It all began when last spring, my lovely sister and her husband turned 30, and we had a big joint family birthday weekend at a really swanky beach house on the Oregon coast.  For our main dinner event, we put out some shark-themed decor, which I made personally to liven up the dinner table a bit.  (I suppose it would help to explain that my sister is a Shark-Nut!) I made some laminated shark-design name-tags for everyone's drinking glasses, and also had this idea to put some shark jaws out on the table.  Well, it turned out that purchasing a decent pair of shark jaws would cost upward of $100 so that decoration idea went back in the ocean.  Thus, I started pondering how to make some out of cardboard or paper, and the idea popped into my head about creating them from paper plates.

A thorough Google search did not yield what I was looking for inspiration-wise, aside from a few kid-oriented shark projects, so I decided instead to look for images of real shark jaws, and was able to come up with a very convincing looking paper version of the anatomical real-deal!

When the beach-weekend had wrapped up, I posted my family photos on Facebook.   My friend, Heather Mann, who is the brains behind the multifaceted and very popular www.dollarstorecrafts.com saw my pics, and asked me to work up a tutorial for her upcoming Shark Week themed crafts.  I did so, quite happily, and was glad to contribute to her fun and clever website.

With the initial launching of that post, we saw quite a lot of traffic - upwards of a few thousand people.  Then last fall, as Pinterest started becoming a huge household pastime, Heather was able to use that as a vehicle to gain even more attention to the projects on her website.  I noticed a surge of posts for both the shark-jaws, and another craft which I had previously submitted to DollarStoreCrafts, (which is a Japanese-style lantern tutorial ).

In the last few days though, Heather let me know that the shark jaws had basically gone "viral" -- and the counter on her site went from about 5,000 hits to 7-8,000 in just a few days.  And as of yesterday, the very popular site BoingBoing picked up the article and a few thousand more visitors showed up.

Hearing about BoingBoing, I decided to just search it on Google, and lo-and-behold, one of the big hits that showed up on my search results was from Pee-Wee Herman's Twitter/Facebook feed.  Yes, THE Pee-Wee Herman had somehow stumbled across this project and loved it enough to post it on his own Facebook page! So within another day now, the counter on DollarStoreCrafts is up over 13,000 and counting.  I feel amused and flattered, and very honored to have come up with such a popular idea!

This surge in interest in my craft ideas has given me some incentive to also start a parallel website or blog for my various ideas and projects.  It may be a recipe one day, or a sewing project another day.  I have always been a Jane-of-All-Trades, Master of None, so this seems to be a good way to showcase all my hobbies and interests.

I'm pretty tickled, and if you are here on my site via either DollarStoreCrafts.com, or Pee-Wee's page, or BoingBoing, please make yourself at home, and enjoy the recipes that I have posted so far.  Most of them are largely invented or modified by me, and thus are about as original as any recipe can be these days...If you cook anything on my site, I'd love feedback, and  feel free to pin them to Pinterest, or share them on your own favorite social network. (Please include the original link as a courtesy to me.)

When I launch the other site, I shall let you all know!


Thanks again for all the love!


Jeanette

Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana smoothie

Well, we have had a nice snowy week a few weeks ago, followed by a nasty ice storm, which led to 380,000 homes or so without power (that was the last estimate I had heard anyway) so for quite a while I was not cooking much nor blogging, since we had no internet for a while, but the other day I thought that I wanted to upload my version of a well known smoothie from an establishment (which rhymes with Samba Loose, lest I be sued for copyright infringement) ... My version deviates a bit from theirs because I don't use sweetened yogurt (less sugar that way) and I don't use soy milk.  Actually, I don't use soy products in general, aside from soy sauce, and well... that would just be weird in a smoothie!

I'm taking this opportunity to also plug one of my favorite house hold appliances, which is the Cuisinart Smart Stick which makes single serving smoothies, grinds spices, coffee, makes peanut butter from scratch, whisks cream, and purees soup and guacamole with ease. I love it!  It's also easy to clean up, since the attachments can be removed from the motorized top, and several of them can be run in the dishwasher.  So click on the link and  buy yourself one.  You'll love it, too!

Now then, here is the basic recipe, which is quite off the cuff, but can be easily adjusted if you want more peanut butter, or more chocolate, or a thicker or thinner texture, just by adding a splash more or less milk.

 INGREDIENTS:
1 ripe but not mushy banana (just a nice yellow one!)
1/2 cup of skim or 1% milk (give or take, depending on desired texture)
1/2 cup plain, Greek Yogurt (or other plain yogurt)
2 tbsp peanut butter
2 tbsp chocolate syrup, or plain cocoa powder
1-2 ice cubes, optional (or slice and freeze your banana a few hours before making)

Puree, and ta-da!!! Delicious, and affordable.  Not to mention lower in calories than the 700-calorie bomb at Samba Loose.  I estimate this to have about 450 calories, and only the "nut fat" which makes for a nice breakfast or protein packed afternoon pick me up.  Serve it up in a nice frosty mug for a little extra deliciousness.

Off The Cuff Cooking: Mole Pulled Pork Tacos & Spanish rice

Off The Cuff Cooking: Mole Pulled Pork Tacos & Spanish rice: Happy New Year, readers. Did you miss me? All four of you? I haven’t blogged for a while, because as much baking & cooking as I did dur...

Sweet Potato Chili

Well, well, well... Happy 2012.  Undoubtedly, it will take me the next 8 months to figure out how it is 2012. I'm not the swiftest one to get used to writing  the new dates on checks or correspondence in general.  A couple of years ago (so, maybe 2009) I was writing a check at the grocery store, and I started to fill in the date box with 1996.  NINETEEN-NINETY SIX.  What? It wasn't even 2006, let alone 1996.  Brain-fart.  (Oh, I don't suppose it's appropriate to use the word fart in a post about a bean-based recipe, but  ha ha ha... it has now been typed, and I'm too lazy to delete it.)

Pumpkin Ice Cream Pie

First of all, these photos are a little dark and uninspired, but as is usually the case, I do most of my cooking late at night, and it's currently 11 p.m. Pacific Time.  So I'm a little sleepy, and it's very dark and very rainy out.  In fact, I believe we got nearly 2 inches of rain today.  Now then, I made the promise to try to do my chili-themed blogs this month, but I will admit that I overlooked how fast this month would fly by, and how side-tracked I would be by holiday-related crafting and other projects.  So ... it's still on deck for me to finish up the chili-recipes, and I think I'll get a chance to do so in December, but for now, let me do a last minute Thanksgiving appropriate dessert, which is really yummy.

The recipe came via my mother-in-law, as it was apparently one of my husband's favorite Thanksgiving desserts.  I've modified the spices a little bit, but other than that it's the same as the one she gave me.  It's a very fast, easy and tasty pie; and totally All-American. I mean, it has Jell-O brand vanilla pudding, and you can't get much more All-American than by putting Jell-O brand pudding into a recipe! (Which reminds me of how much I miss Jell-O Pudding Pops, and those ads by Bill Cosby.)  Oh... and HAPPY THANKSGIVING.  May we all find something in our lives we are profoundly thankful for.  If you are reading this, I can already remind you have a computer or smart-phone, electricity and a roof over your head. And that's more than what much of the world has.  We are blessed.


INGREDIENTS:

1 cup canned pumpkin
2 cups vanilla ice cream (softened a bit)
1 3.4 ounce package of Jell-O vanilla instant pudding
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp ginger
1 dash nutmeg
1 dash all-spice

1 pie crust (I like the graham cracker no-bake crusts, as a great contrast to the pumpkin ice cream, but you could also do a regular pie crust, and bake it first according to directions or make your own from scratch.)

Optional:
Cover top of pie with whipped cream, after it is set up.

Blend all ingredients in a large bowl with electric mixer until fluffy, and fill into the pie-crust.  Chill, at least overnight (you can also freeze it and let it thaw a half hour prior to serving, if you want it more ice-cream like.  Otherwise, it serves up nicely, like a 'cream pie.' And you will clearly not be able to refrain from licking the beaters or possibly licking out the bowl with your tongue.  It can't be done.

Falafel

When I was a young whipper-snapper of a hipster, and I was always hanging out in Seattle, there was a place called Aladdin's on The Ave in the University of Washington District. (Now, if you're not a local, you won't know that The Ave is actually officially called University Way, not University Avenue.   It's anyone's best guess why it's called The Ave.)  Aladdin's had really great Mediterranean food, and my go-to was falafel sandwiches with tzatziki.  So good. Mmmmm.

Going even farther back, into the misty, water-colored memory windmills of my mind, when I was a kid in Sweden, our mom had a recipe which she occasionally made, and at the time we referred to this recipe as "ärtbullar" (or pea-balls) from an authentic Mediterranean recipe of chickpeas.  I'm not sure if the recipe just called them ärtbullar or if we just were too ignorant to call it Falafel.

A Note About Spices and Seasonings

I wanted to take this opportunity to mention that knowing the proper balance in seasoning your dishes is the difference between simply following a recipe versus cooking with a gut instinct (ha ha!) for a true "off the cuff" cooking experience.  Some recipes you should probably not mess around with too much (for instance, due to the scientific nature of baking, cookies, pastries and breads are left best unaltered.)  But with herbs, spices and seasonings, there is an acquired learning curve that will eventually take a novice chef up to a more instinctual level.  So I'm going to give a few points here to ponder if you are just learning to cook.   It took me a while to master some of these myself, so don't be discouraged if you have to approach these suggestions with some trepidation. 

Black Bean Chili with Cilantro

I promised in the last entry that there will be a "Chili" theme on the blog. Quite overly ambitious as I tend to be, I may have even promised a "Chili Week" but then I realized that would involve cooking chili multiple times in *ONE* week, and that led to the sure knowledge that I'd probably quickly tire of both cooking and eating chili.  Thus, to be realistic, I will just make a reasonable attempt to blog all the chili recipes by the end of November.

I know, I know...

Hello faithful readers -- all 16 of you at last count.  .... Happy Fall!  First off, my apologies.  I'm SO delinquent in updating the blog lately. I've been sick, hubby was sick, things just got kind of uninspired, tired, and just flat-out busy there for a while.  But, if I maybe can whet your appetite, stay tuned for my upcoming theme of CHILI-week, where I will be featuring several chili recipes, including:
1. My trademark "Black Bean chicken chili with cilantro"
2. My mother-in-law's recent experiment with the regional favorite, "Cincinnati Chili"
3. My husband's aunt's cook-off-winning "Real Texas Chili"
4. ...and a potential fourth recipe from another friend who recently placed in a chili cook-off as well.

In the meantime, go check out some cookbooks on Amazon for inspiration

Oh, and by all means try this recipe out for pumpkin cookies that have the texture and flavor of a spice-cake, and are just amazingly delicious.  For my own variation I drizzle a tangy icing that I make from powdered sugar, and lemon juice.  There's no exact measurements-- just take about 1/3 cup of powdered sugar and add a tablespoon or two of lemon juice and stir ... add more juice or more sugar to control the thickness.  It is meant to be drizzled, and not spread.  Lemon sounds like a  strange contrast to the spicy pumpkin flavor, but believe me it's really good.

Some Tips about Onions

Given that I have not bothered to write up a recipe for a good while, I'm going to 'pepper' my blog with some random tips, as in the previous entry about cleaning a stove without the use of chemicals. 

So we shall talk about chopping onions, fast and efficiently.  If you weep uncontrollably at the thought of chopping onions, you can borrow my little trick of keeping some swim goggles handy in the kitchen.  No -- not a snorkel goggle-- I mean those sleek things that folks like Matt Biondi or Michael Phelps would wear. It might look a little ridiculous to wear swim goggles, but hey... better than having your mascara run all over your face.

Now, I realize that most people with rudimentary knife skills can probably figure out how to chop an onion.  I mean, you just chop it, right?   However, if you want to really increase your efficiency, I figured out a way to speed things up and control the size of your diced onion cubes with a little more calculation involved.