What to give to the Etsy Artist who has everything and can make anything?

A website!

(Sample pages of website styles, featuring my own work as stand-in)

I have the pleasure of introducing the most awesome program in the world (healthy amounts of justified marital bias here) to the blogging world.

Blogging world, meet Artuit!
Artuit, meet your future fans!

My husband, the architect and web developer behind my own website,
ALittleCharacter.com
has just launched Artuit, the Artist's Website Creation Tool!

http://Artuit.com
http://Artuit.etsy.com


Artuit lets Artists create their own website, easily (can NOT stress that enough)
It automatically imports all your Etsy store information, photos, tags, categories, profile information everything, but allows you to go further than the limitations of an Etsy store.
Five photo Etsy limit?

Ha! DOUBLE HA I say!

Artuit has no limits on how many photos you can add for your items, as some of you who've visited my website have seen. I personally can't show enough photos of a character I've made, if it takes 50 photos to introduce the world to a hippo I made, then Artuit lets me do it!

(This is the edit page of Artuit, showing my own work as example. You can add photos, text, tags, item name, price, special tags, search your categories... ALL KINDS OF STUFF, here!)

Artuit connects your new personalized website to your Etsy store so that customers are redirected back to Etsy to complete a purchase when they click buy. It automatically updates your website to show an item as sold when it sells.

(This is the ORGANIZE page in Artuit. It allows you to decide in what order items are on your site, by double clicking an item you can then further arrange the order of it's photos to your liking! my favvvvorite part of this organize feature, if you have a lot of items, there is a work area to the right. You drag your items or photos there temporarily while you decide where to put them.)

Everything that I, as an artist, wanted and needed in an easy to update website, my husband has created and turned into a tool that EVERYONE can use.

Including a FREE trial version! Artuit is already available now for the public to use, including a generous free trial option that lets the user play around with all the features, but limits their items they can add to their site to just 10.

There are ready made "Styles" that users can personalize with their own photos, text as well as choosing background colors that compliments THEIR work. Switch styles to suit your changing mood and art! I LOVE THIS! I love the flexibility of getting to change my website's colors to suit my mood, of even changing the entire website's look. You could switch "Styles" a zillion times a day if that was your preference, or snuggle up with one you fall in love with and feel it out for a few months, picking the absolute perfect shade of vintage green to accentuate your artwork..... *sigh*

(This is the Setup page in Artuit, the section where you decide on what Style you'd like, where you can pick background colors etc.)

I love freedom, in everything. I love not being stuck with limitations. I can update the text on any of my pages in seconds, I can switch out my profile photo faster than I can take a new picture! Artuit lets me put as many tags on my art as I want. If I think a customer might search for pink polka dotted invisible giraffe hats, then I can tag my pink polka dotted invisible giraffe hats accordingly!

Feeling really creative?
There's a Custom option Alan, my husband aka web site designer, has included for customers who, like me, want a completely unique look just for themselves.
A professional-quality, custom-made portfolio web site can cost thousands of dollars with monthly management costs as high as $50 per month. But now, Artuit makes it possible to offer custom designs for just $250 with monthly costs as low as $23.
It's possible, all because while building this program that was initially for MEEEEEEeeeeeEEEeeeeEEEe (yay), we've refined the process for converting anyone's artwork into a custom style.
We've already developed the software needed for creating and updating your site. All of which means it now costs very little for anyone with an Etsy store to have a custom website, designed by themselves, that they can update on their own, easily.
You can design your website out of paper, glue and sparkles, knit your buttons, sculpt your page, sew your website design and the developer of Artuit can convert it into a working website!!!! You can scan it, photo it or mail your website deisgn to Artuit and before you know it you've got a website that really and truly compliments YOUR artwork!

There are even ways to earn a FREE custom website design through referral credits! http://artuit.com/refer.html SEE! I told you this was awesome!


I could go on and on and on, and probably will in the future but I am just so excited that I had to share the good news.

There are already 4 Styles available to play with, these are the templates that allow the user to have a website in moments!
(Playing with the styles is addictive, I keep changing the colors of backgrounds...today I feel mellow yellow but then atomic purple...no wait pastel pink...no wait....LIME green! There's no end and there doesn't have to be!)

We are bursting at the seams with a million and a half new ideas for more. Again, combining our two talents and preferences.
But for now the 4 templates available allow new users to quickly get familiar with Artuit and see their art showcased in different styles. And as new styles are added Artuit users are free to play with them!

The easiest way to learn about Artuit is to TRY IT! Check it out!
www.Artuit.com

So, all that said if you're looking for the perfect gift for someone, whether for the holidays or birthday or that Valentines gift you still didn't get...yikes..... how about something really original, something you can order from the comfort of your home... Artuit!

Give the Etsy Artist in your life a gift they really won't be expecting this Christmas.....give them a website!

Artificial Intelligence

Does the middle piece of your 3 part artificial Christmas tree piss you off as much as mine does me? Being all holier than thou, thinking it's the glue that holds my holiday fun together.... I tell you, after the first few years of fake tree bliss the honey moon period wears off and that middle tree piece just becomes annoying.
You start to notice things, like how it's so much more smug than the top and bottom pieces, how it acts superior every Christmas you haul it out and place it on the bottom piece, crowning it with the wee top. It acts like it invented Christmas and that I should give it more ornaments because it's easier to reach than the top and bottom.
Fret no more, your free loading, hate fueled by fake fir, middle tree piece days are OVER.
Say goodbye...to the jam in a tree sandwich, where in the top and bottom pieces are the bread and the middle is the jam and what I'm saying is you don't NEED THE JAM.
Hear that sound?
The sound of boo-hooing from the garage where the middle piece lays abandoned on the cold cement floor? Well ignore those tears, they're as fake as the whole tree.
I give to you, the world at large or at least the percent that uses the internet and wanders into my neck of the virtual woods..... the NEW look for your same artificial tree. If your tree doesn't have 3 pieces....well.......look on the bright side, no smug, superiority complex pieces for you to deal with.
I've been kicking around this idea for a while, sometimes hearing it rattle back to the forefront of my mind, squeezing it's way between clay character ideas, thoughts about coffee and world domination. (Ignore that last one, it's rather un-holiday-esque to admit to things like wanting world domination instead of peace)
This year my idea become a reality!
We left out the aforementioned and verbally bashed middle section of the tree. We did need to do a little creative finagling because the top piece didn't actually connect to the bottom piece all stable and perfect like. (It's as if the artificial tree craftsman don't WANT you to play with your tree like it's a really scratchy set of building blocks)
Not wanting to deal with yelling "Timber" if the top piece fell off, we found a sturdy bit of cardboard tube we'd saved, because of course we save cardboard tubes. It's an unwritten rule of life. Every one saves cardboard tubes and makes fun of each other behind their backs. This is one of those reaaaaaaaalllly sturdy sort, ultra thick. We cut a piece that fit over the bottom section of tree pipe..er...trunk...and also over the trunk of the top piece. It needed a little stuffing of tissue paper to create a perfect tight fit, but Voila! My new tree jam!
Since the cardboard tube wasn't working for me, decoratively speaking, I took a piece of artificial garland and wrapped around it.
Now you can't even tell anything is different! You can applaud if you want, I'd clap too if I weren't busy typing.
Fluff your tree as usual, connect the lights and go on about your holiday making with a brand new look for your same ol' fake tree!
I LOVE this look! We set our tree up on a stand we have in the living room to provide some of the height lost because we left the snooty middle piece out. The NEW tree look is more natural, less perfectly pruned and conical, more like the kind of Christmas tree you find in the wild. I like wild. I like my tree and maybe some year when I'm ready for a taller more traditional shaped tree maybe I'll even like my middle piece again. Maybe.

Melt

(This photo is here solely so you know this blog post has a happy ending. Consider it a spoiler.)

The existence of hot chocolate has always bothered me.
The premise is simple really, drinkable chocolate, and I am all over that like melted candy bar on my face after a gluttonous binge of untold levels of sugary decadence. But hot chocolate is a promise that isn't kept.
Maybe the wrong people are promising me though. Maybe if it was, say, Willy Wonka and not a hometown diner, offering up the promised delights of hot chocolate, it would live up to it's name. But so far it's been nothing. A dark, vaguely chocolate related, steaming hot mug of nothing.
I take my sweet treats seriously. VERY seriously. I have to battle away tears if I ladle hot fudge sauce onto ice cream and there is ANY delay in me enjoying that dessert immediately, before the warm gooey sauce to cold ice cream temperature window of good eatin' opportunity closes. Should anything delay me and the ice cream turns soupy and the fudge sauce is in turn diluted by the ice cream I am in untold agonies. I mean, don't get me wrong I'll still eat it, but mourning the lost perfection of what could have been the most amazing sundae ever the whole time I shovel it into my mouth. Plus every one knows tears and ice cream don't mix, it messes up the salt ratio.
So hot chocolate disappoints me. To the point where I shun it's existence. No longer being duped by decadent descriptions on menus and packages claiming dark, creamy chocolate heaven in a cup. HA! Ha, I say!
When I was a kid and given the choice of a beverage at a restaurant of course I'm going to order hot chocolate. When you're a kid your memory banks work differently. The part of your brain that controls the desire for sweetness overrides any bad experiences one might have had previously with watered down boiling hot brown water passing itself off as hot chocolate. It clobbers the rational side of the brain and grabs the grey lump that is chocolate desire and whispers sweet nothings in it's non-existent brain ear about the promise of how goooood the hot chocolate will be, much better than stinky ol' orange juice. I love a good orange but even as a kid, side by side, orange or chocolate? HA, again HA! Like there's even a choice?
But hot chocolate has broken my heart so many times that even the ever hopeful, puppy-dog-like, resilient, sweet treat lovin' part of my brain has at last learned it's lesson. We turned our backs on it, sneering at it on menus. It was deleted from our top foods menu of the mind and was never heard from again. We shoved hot chocolate so far away in side our brains that we almost forgot about it's pale unflavored existence, accidently making it on occasional hoping....hoping.....*sigh*
Do not weep for me though. I have had a break through.
Hot chocolate.
Hot chocolate and I have been reunited, we have done things to work on our relationship. It's become better quality chocolate now, none of this dried processed powdered stuff, and I have learned to treat it with a delicacy and restraint that can only come from experience and age. It's delivered a velvety rich chocolate experience that enrobes each one of my taste buds individually in warm luscious chocolate and I have come to accept that proper hot chocolate doesn't come in a mug. It comes in a shot glass.
I think that's what was wrong in our relationship all those years. I wanted hot chocolate to physically be more than it could be and fill a whole mug to boot.
How could chocolate have ever hoped to live up to that sort of selfish demand? How could it have turned a mug of warm water or milk into pure warm chocolate? It was spread too thin. Once I realized that the only way to have a decent hot chocolate was to give up my greedy notions of a Willy Wonka-esque type never ending river of decadence, harmony returned. Though in all honesty harmony was actually ACHIEVED as both hot chocolate and I can freely admit now, from the happy comforts of our newly renewed relationship, that what we had in the past was NEVER harmonious.
But, as I said that's in the past.
Because I know there are others out there who may have suffered similar torments as a child, being handed steaming mugs of brown liquid that broke our hearts more then quench our taste buds I shall share the secret to perfect hot chocolate.
It's not a measuring thing but a common sense thing.
Take a hunk of dark, good quality chocolate. The size of which you'd actually sit down and nibble on in one go. Be honest with yourself, it's gonna be a decent sized hunk. Now double it, after all hot chocolate is better if you share it with your sweetie. (see how much I've grown, when I was a kid I'd have been all "sweetie shmeetie, it's all MINE MINE MINE!")
Now break it up on a plate into smaller hunks with a knife.
Transfer these to a pot. Turn the burner on but keep it medium.
Let the chocolate melt slowly, stir it and as it's melting add a small splash of coffee liqueur and a dollop of organic milk. Not enough to dilute the chocolate to the watery stuff of hot chocolate by gone days, but just enough to thin it so that it pours and can be sipped before it re-solidifies into hard chocolate.
Now having stirred it into a gorgeously dark, creamy smooth, mouth wateringly perfect hot chocolate, prepare a plate of necessary side flavor essentials like fresh raspberries, lady fingers, cocoa beans and MORE chocolate if you're feeling ultra decadent.
Pour the liquid glory into the shot glasses and enjoy.
The shot glasses are the perfect size to fool the brain into thinking it's getting a whole glass full, plus they're pretty and the smooth column of warm chocolate between the fingers just adds to the whole experience.
Be prepared to jam your fingers down in the glass to wipe out every last chocolate drip.
I considered serving the chocolate on a plate for better lickability but I do draw the line. I am a lady, I have manners. There'll be no chocolate plate licking here, just finger licking and shot glass slurping, thank-you very much.

All Fired Up!

I have more than a chip on my shoulder.....
You know how a person can rant and rave about how inanimate objects defy them and how the Universe is testing their patience, their will and their sanity?
And how if a person keeps blathering about things like coat hangers that nearly cracked the fragile and tenuous hold some one has on their mighty reservoir of frustrated anger how other people start to raise their eyebrow, just the one ala Spock?
And how it's pretty damn hard to gather evidence of these inanimate objects etc to bring before one's peers to shine the light of truth upon their evil little ways?
Because throwing a handful of coat hangers, carpet tacks and miscellaneous spilled trash before one's friends doesn't prove that they did you wrong. The stuff not the friends, they didn't do me wrong yet but I keep a careful eye on them. If the old adage "keep your friends close and your enemies uncomfortably closer" is true then doesn't it stand to reason that some of the people I consider to be my closest friends must actually be my enemy, or at least I theirs?
It's something to ponder when life hands you small moments to reflect on the weirdness of the world...
But anyways I was rambling on about the defiance of things I face. People with kids think they have it tough? Ha!
Finally I have proof that either the fates are in cahoots with the Universe, or the Universe is in cahoots with the inanimate objects or perhaps I have an alter ego type personality that is constantly trying to undermine my smooth sailing through the day or.....and this isn't just the conspiracy crazed voice of fear just talking here, maybe they're alllllllllll in it together......
How else can I, or you for that matter explain THIS?
(Please read that last word "this" as dramatically as you can ala your favorite mystery movie when the culprit is revealed with much dramatic finger pointing, British accents and Shakespearean flair. Thanks)
These are my corn chips....or they WERE....
Let me take us on a slight detour from my point.
Corn chips are a staple in our household. In fact if there could be some sort of blended cornchip coffee concotion I am pretty sure my husband and I would drink it and enjoy it and never have to eat another thing but said concotion. (I exaggerate for the purposes of expressing how important corn chips really are. We don't like name them and treat them like salty members of our family but we do panic when there is only 2/3 of a 1 lb bag of the delicious lil devils left. They call the 1 lb bag "family size", we call it "barely big enough to get us through the week-end." I'm not going to tell you if I was exaggerating that time.)
So about corn chips and me.
I like em warm and toasty. This is actually a fairly recent discovery on my part. That if you take store bought corn chips and spread them out on a cookie sheet and stick them under your broiler for a few seconds then magical corn chip deliciousness happens. Your home starts to smell like your favorite Mexican restaurant, the chips gets toasty brown and they are so crispy and delicious you will actually risk burning your lips to nibble a few right away.
Well............I am here to confess that in the eyes of every one who is not in the *know* about defiant inanimate objects and Universe ploys to trip me up, I have carbonized our favorite salty snack. Reduced those pretty little golden chips to a fiery pile of ashes. Literally FIRE. It was quite exciting, you can't eat flaming chips by the way....bad, bad BAD idea.
Accident?
Forgetfulness?
Just leave them chips under the broiling hot broiler for a little too long?
Perhaps......
BUT If this is so then explain to me THIS!
(You can apply the same dramatic reading of the last usage of the word "this" as you did to the afore mentioned dramatic "this". Thanks)
NOT ONCE BUT TWICE in one week have I completely destroyed a beautiful pile of corn chips. Watching them burn, burn away their corny goodness and salty exterior as my own face is salted from my tears.
I might accidently set fire to a cookie sheet full of corn chips once....but not twice. AHA! J'accuse you Universe! I accuse the stove, the cookie sheet and...dang it, even those chips if I have to because I know dang well I am not responsible for carbonizing TWO batches of corn chips. I'm just not. The Universe slipped up there, now I have more than two useless piles of inedible corn chips (I tried them they taste like ash...darn it).....Now I have proof.

*****Corn chips really are tasty when they've been lightly toasted....LIGHTLY being the key word here. Do NOT turn you back on these guys under the broiler, they are just waiting to burst in to flame and make you cry. In fact if you do this do not walk away from the stove and check them literally every 5 or 10 seconds for *done-ness*. Seconds make the difference between a "happy meal" and a "muttering bitter infused obscenities at the Universe" meal........

The evolution of me n' beans.

Beans and me go waaaaay back.
Back to childhood when my nose turned up at the idea of any vegetable that wasn't a potato or corn on the cob. What a sophisticated palette I had. Only verrrrrry occasionally stepping boldly beyond my gastronomical comfort zone by eating an iceberg lettuce leaf with bottled, creamy cucumber dressing. This was as gourmet as I got.
I've mentioned being a picky eater before but unless you had witnessed the full scale archeological type dig I could do to a plate of food, mining for hidden vegetables and other nasty bits adults were always gunking up good grub with, you can't fully understand how far I've come.
My first recollection of beans was at my Grandma Prest's house. I'm not sure how she managed to do it, but she could get me to eat food, that if any other parental type unit had stuck it before me I'd have thrown a fit.
Maybe she never tried to MAKE me eat beans, and hence my curiosity. Parents, you're good people. God knows I couldn't handle the job you all take upon yourselves but here's a new flash from a former kid...MAKING some one eat their peas causes a years long rift between said kid and peas.....I'm just sayin'.....Kids are are not just young people, they're mini adults. I remember being told I HAD to eat my peas when I was 7 or 8, I'm 30 years old and it still pisses me off. I understand the logic behind it, health, nutrition, wasting food...blah blah blah....but me and peas had us a real long acrimonious relationship for a damn long time because of that.
Here's where I balance my Karma and say thanks to the universe for parents who provided me with food when lots of kids had none...they could have given my peas to those kids though...I wouldn't have minded.
So a visit with Grandma, meal time rolls around and out of a can comes this brown sludge that was not only beans BUT sweet.....how odd. Baked beans.....beans are a vegetable and I had a war on vegetables, but they had brown sugar or molasses in them lending not only a lovely shade of brown but a definite sweetness that was whole heartily approved by my childish taste buds. It was like some adult some where had screwed up and made a meal that was more like dessert. It was perfect!
I became a fan of baked beans.
Then the universe laughed in my face and caused me great pain one day after I'd become a fan of baked beans. It was when asked, by some distant relative whose house I was having lunch at "What do you want to eat?"
Ahh....the glory of a question like that, no slapping some food down on the table and saying "eat it" I was being given a CHOICE. THE POWER...SUCH DELICIOUS POWER.
"I'll have beans." I say.
*sigh* You can probably guess where this train wreck of a childhood moment is going......I didn't realize I'd have to specify what sort of beans. I didn't realize the bean manufacturer type peoples would waste their time canning anything OTHER than sweet delicious baked beans.
A few moments later a bowl of something horrible, a wet pile of nasty red giant THINGS that were most definitely not flavored with brown sugar, was placed before me.
"What is this?" I asked, hardly daring to breathe, hardly daring to believe that I was expected to EAT this stuff, hardly daring to believe any one would even BUY cans of disgusting red lumps.
"Kidney beans." I was told.
Well hell.
I didn't say that then, I probably didn't even think it, as I was too busy trying not to bawl, such was my disappointment. I could be a brat at times when I was a kid, I can admit it, but I didn't throw a fit THIS time, realizing this was IT, this was lunch. I was stuck. I pushed them around my bowl, as miserable as a kid can be, before heading back to school. Too depressed to be hungry. I can still remember the disappointment, the horror.....I think those kidney beans scarred me for life.
Fast forward a few years. I've learned a valuable lesson, always specify what sort of beans you want, lest some crazy adult thinks a 7 year old kid would enjoy a bowl of kidney beans for lunch. I learned something else.
My mother can MAKE baked beans, the RIGHT kind. The sweet, delicious, smokey from a bit of bacon, and dark from molasses kind. She just whips up a batch one day as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
Didn't I stand there and watch in awe and amazement as she made them? Didn't I taste them myself and realize that HOMEMADE baked beans kicked canned baked bean's tin can ass?
How gourmet I felt. Helping dump the brown sugar in with the beans after they soaked all night. MAKING baked beans. Making them...imagine that.
I always made mine a little MORE gourmet by dumping extra brown sugar on my bowl of beans after they dished up. Hmmmmm......just had an epiphany.....a bittersweet one...childhood sweet tooth equals adult root canals, methinks.
Me and baked beans enjoyed a companionable relationship for many years. They accompanied me through adolescence into adult-hood until I'm all grown up, I meet the love of my life online.
I move to California, and he proudly takes me out for his favorite meal. Something completely foreign to my Maritime taste-buds. The enchilada combo plate from an Alberto's drive through.
I can still remember when I opened my Styrofoam container and beheld the strange mass of brown and bright red that my husband was salivating over.
Refried beans, enchiladas and rice.
I hadn't a clue what an enchilada was, why any one would eat rice without soy sauce and why beans would be RE-fried???? What sort of world had I tumbled in to. And get this...these beans were NOT sweet!
I ate most of the enchilada, discovered the rice wasn't too bad but steered clear of the beans....for a while. Something happened though.
Pop, pop, pop went my taste buds. I think it was new ones growing. They can grow anything down here, it's all the sun.
Pop, pop, pop.
And anyone who has had a take-out combination plate knows there's no force on earth that can keep the refried beans from getting friendly with the enchilada. They softly cuddle up with the red sauce, they ooze under the tortilla, they embrace the cheese and find mysterious refried bean ways of getting on your fork when you only meant to get rice.
My taste buds grew, new refried bean taste buds that were inhabiting my tongue for the sole purpose of tasting salty, creamy, delicious refried beans.
I thought I was pretty hot stuff.
Willingly sucking down tons of refried beans from combo plates from every Mexican food place with in our neighborhood. I was on a stomach and brain awakening journey. The little kid who cowered from peas and onions was willingly buying them to cook up veggie delights of all sorts, most of it inspired by Mexican food.
Mexican food was like nothing I'd had back home in rural Nova Scotia. I bragged about the refried beans to the folks back there. I took pictures and sent them off, pointing out to my Mom how mature I'd become, eating non-sweet beans, willingly, loving every creamy bite.
I found out the stores around here carried cans of these marvelous beans, you could walk right in and have yourself a can of refried beans for a buck.
I cast less and less a wary eye at new foods my husband introduced me to. My palette expanded even more, my world was flavored with cilantro, chipotle and sour cream.
I made my own enchiladas, something that seemed so exotic and foreign 7 years ago became an easy meal to make in a hurry. Burritos a cinch, I started making my own tortillas and chili gravy was it's crown. It seems like the speeding train of expanding taste buds whizzes by faster every day. New food discoveries enlighten my tongue.
AND the bean evolution continues!!!
I went from refried beans to cans of whole beans, that I could flavour and mash myself. My husband's eyes rolled in ecstasy the first time I threw handfuls of spices in with a can of pinto beans and mashed it up. Beans are now a staple of our diet. Where once I raised an eyebrow over a bowl of beans for a meal I now willingly and greedily accept beans for my breakfast, my lunch and my supper. Not a drop of sugar in sight. No desert-like mash masquerading as beans for me...well.....not often anyways....maybe occasionally I doctor up a pot of pinto beans with brown sugar and onion for a little childhood reminiscence.
Then, just when I thought I'd reached the height of bean brilliance, I went higher.
Dried beans, that I slow cooked all day with spices, turned out to be the most brilliant, mouth watering beans you could ever imagine. I'm not just honking my own horn here. (honk honk honk honk honk honk!) In fact maybe you already know this and are scoffing at my innocence, but let me tell you the veil has been lifted.
Beans I cooked myself kick the ass of canned beans. There's a lot of ass-kicking in my kitchen. Including my own because why didn't I have this realization sooner?
All I can do is live in the now, and raise a spoon to the kid I used to be. The one who only ate potatoes and corn on the cob. Wouldn't I freak if I could see me now from the eyes of the me I was then? How far me and my beans have come.

I have been playing with more beans than just pinto, most recently black beans.
My favorite usage of dried beans is as follows:

This is a method not a recipe per se.

POT-O-BEANS

• Rinse a big bunch of beans in water and then put them in a big old pot. Your biggest one so that you can make a vat of beans and eat beans for a week. They get better every day.

• Cover with lots of water, and put on the stove. I start mine on high and then turn it down to simmer once they get boiling.

• I throw in a few tablespoons each of cumin, Mexican oregano and chili powder. Do not be stingy with the chili powder. Lately I've been toasting dried chilies in the oven for a few minutes and grinding them up in the blender to make my own chili powder. I use a lot of spices. I don't actually measure but it's a lot. I also will add about 3 dried peppers in there as well, ones that haven't been toasted. They'll get soft and disintegrate and you can pick the skins out later. Or leave them floating in there and call it a garnish. Don't think I haven't noticed that's how fancy pants cooks operate, anything inedible is labeled a "garnish".....sometimes I garnish my plates with my one and only barbie doll.
  
• She adds a lot of class to a bowl of beans...o.k., I kid. She's not classy at all.

• I let the pot of dried beans, spices and water boil and bubble all day until the beans are soft and tender, adding more water to it when ever it gets low. I like them soupy the first day, it's almost like a bean soup. (As they cool, and days go by they will thicken up, the beans, as well as me, absorbing more of the liquid.)

• When they are cooked enough I put a big dollop of oil in my cast iron frying pan. Maybe as much as half a cup. I chop up half an onion (give or take), two pasilla peppers and about 6 or 8 cloves of garlic and frizzle it all up in the oil with some salt. Softening the peppers and onion, infusing the oil with garlic, yummmmers. This part smells soooooooo good.

• Once the pepper mix has been cooked I dump all of it in to my pot of beans, and hopefully I've left enough room for the oil and peppers. ( Sometimes, an emergency "come help me find a place to put some beans" call is hollared to my husband as I realize physics is causing my addition of peppers/oil/garlic/onions to the beans is making the beans overflow in a very unpleasent, stove messing way. Wouldn't be the first time physics pissed me off.) I stir it all up, add more salt to the whole mix and then...step back.

• They're done. All they need now are a spoon and an appetite. (Though they're mind blowingly good with cheese, sour cream, cilantro, corn chips etc.)

Let There Be Light...

Recipe for a refuse lamp:

• Get you a lamp. Preferably one found sitting in the communal trash area of an apartment complex you lived at 4 years ago and you've been using as a plain jane boring lamp since then. (We lived at the apartment complex, not in the communal trash area, though from the amount of furniture discarded there every week you could make yourself right comfortable amongst the trash bins if need be. I swear that trash area had nicer furniture than most people's houses I've been in)
• Gather your guilt and accumulated pile of stuff you can't bare to throw in the trash and decide if you're gonna have it take up space in your house it might as well be as something useful. Things like aluminum coffee pots that got funky inside and are no longer being used since you've upgraded to the stainless steel model of them, a broken coffee cup, a sweet looking steel cut oats can and some corks are all good.
• Ask your Mother-in-law to keep her eyes peeled for a colander for a lamp shade for your kitchen-esque themed refuse lamp creation and then have her actually go one better and score a .25 cent fryer basket from a yard sale and be kind enough to give it to you.
• Don some swank looking safety goggles and then drill holes in everything so the rod of the lamp can fit through and stack it all up on the lamp rod as you see fit. Please note you can do a nice messy job of cracking out the bottom of the coffee mug because a neat and tidy hole won't make any difference, since it's pressed down against oats can lid. Holding your breath while slamming a screw driver down through the bottom of the coffee cup may or may not have been what kept the entire thing from shattering...but don't rule it out. Never rule out the power of holding your breath.
• Bat your eyelashes at your blue eyed husband and call upon his expert handy man skills and assistance in wiring the lamp back together, bending bits of metal and also encouraging you not to run around like a mad woman drilling holes in everything until you're sure they'll all fit on the lamp rod. Thanks to him I don't have half a dozen items with holes in them that don't need em.......
• Get a cute little fluorescent bulb and screw in to your wicked awesome refuse lamp and turn it on with a few soft spoken words and whispered bits of flattery...or you can just hit the switch.
• Bask in the soft light of your creation that cost...well what ever the price of the bulb and two bits of wire cost.

(Place of honor on top of the fridge for my kitchen-esque themed lamp!)

(The cat was exhausted and couldn't stay awake any longer waiting for us to finish our lamping. Either that or she was bored senseless.)

The Beauty of the Big Biscuit...

How delightful are biscuits?
Very, is the answer in case you had a momentary brain lapse and were fumbling through your mind desperately looking for a response that won't enrage this blogger. The answer is very.
A hearty, buttery, flakey bread type product that you can whip up at a moment's notice and be enjoying a bite of, albeit a steaming bite in about 11 minutes.
That's 10 minutes baking time and 1 minute preparation time, I will admit that if you're not a fan of dust clouds of flour, smacking your shins in to cats that get in the way as you dash at reckless speeds across the kitchen gathering ingredients, splattering globs of biscuit dough all over the kitchen, your self and your husband then perhaps a more reasonable (which I'm not, reasonable that is) estimation of total time for everyone else would be around 13 or 14 minutes. Any more than that and I gotta wonder what it is you're doing with your flour that I'm not doing with mine. *insert raised eyebrow look here, the sort Laura Holt is always giving Remington Steele, also guess who has discovered Remington Steele and has been watching back-to-back episodes on Hulu? The answer is meeeee.*
I have very fond memories of biscuits.
They were always the dainty, little, round, perfectly cut sort that made me think of baby showers and women's something or other meetings......sorry the name of that community group escapes me, all I can remember was the table laden with pot luck food, luck indeed, as there were always biscuits, pre buttered with a wee little square of cheddar cheese already adorning the golden beauties like a wee jewel in the crown of...oh God I'm hungry. How many minutes has it been? I've a biscuit in the oven you know.
A biscuit, as in singular.
Because that is my brilliance, my time saving, get a bit of biscuit to my gullet faster than you can say "Beam me up Scotty".
The....BIG...biscuit.
What's with all this rolling the dough out and cutting it in to wee circles anyways? That's like saying you're only going to eat one biscuit and nobody eats just one biscuit. My Grandmother when she lived at home was always in to weight watchers and health and calorie counting and scales and losing weight and this that and the next thing and even she did not sit down to eat ONE biscuit, she ate a whole bunch of biscuits in one go. The tub of Country Crock margarine spread between us, the molasses already loaded into a squeezable tipped bottle so we could ooze out the perfect amount on each beautiful bite of baked biscuit. Perhaps this was why she seemed so aware of her calorie intake every where else I am just now realizing, because when it came to biscuits and molasses we were *good biscuit eaters*. As if consuming a small truck load of biscuits in one sitting was a skill to be proud of.
The Big Biscuit is brilliant.
A batch of biscuit dough pressed out lightly onto a greased cookie sheet (maybe yours doesn't have to be greased but mine does or else there's a kitchen full of broken biscuit dreams, tears and curses when the big biscuit sticks to the sheet and refuses to give you the all important big biscuit bottom layer that's slightly crispy and golden and MINE! NOT the cookie sheet's but MINE. Not that I hold grudges against inanimate objects or anything...for long...it's just I don't like non-sentient things to defy me and my will, is that so wrong?)
Then you pop your big doughy biscuit in the oven for it's allotted time and within 10 or 11 minutes....ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.....a biscuit, warm and steaming and just ready to be plopped on your plate..er.....I mean divided up for you and your husband who is now the one giving you the raised eyebrow look but instead of Laura Holt's eyebrow routine it's Remington Steele's cause he's on to me and my Big Biscuit and wants in on the action.
Sometimes we just have buttered biscuit, some times the all important biscuit and molasses routine, though I warn you this is a routine that is impossible to stop. Butter a bit of big biscuit, drip a drop of molasses, munch away, repeat..and repeat..and repeat..and repeat.
You will hear a distant groan of protest that is your stomach but you will also find your molasses addled brain will ignore it and keep eating bite after perfect bite of BIG biscuit and molasses. It's just the unfortunate reality of something so dang simple and delicious.
Sometimes we dig out our cheeses and sit trading hunks of gruyere and cheddar and fontina back and forth over our plates.
Other times we plop a chunk of Big Biscuit on a salad, like a mega crouton.
Sometimes we have it with marmalade or cinnamon sugar or.....like today....fresh strawberries.
A little trick I do, if you like your biscuits extra golden on top, pop em under the broiler in the oven for a few seconds after they are baked. Another little trick I do, forget it's under the broiler, walk away, distracted by shiny objects and bits of fluff and then wonder why the kitchen smells like smoke.
I can only in good conscience recommend the first trick unless you're into charred biscuit.
A ha, which reminds me. A third trick, take your big biscuit while it's still in it's soft, warm dough form and.....pop it on your Bar-B-Q grill. Holy mama, that's a gooooood biscuit and it can get a wee bit of char but the good kind, not the stomach turning, we can use it as a piece of charcoal to draw a picture of our deceased Big Biscuit, kind. I usually dust my big biscuit with lots of flour so it wont stick to the grill when ever I've done this trick.
By the way for those of you with husbands who look at your biscuits with a dark gleam of greed in their eye I want to set the record straight that biscuits, big or otherwise..do..NOT EVAPORATE. Even a little, so should any biscuit disappear while it's cooling and the BIG Biscuit Baker is outside watering the plants then we'll all know it wasn't a natural phenomenon..... I do give him points for originality, and cuteness....so he can have as much of the dang biscuit as he wants if he continues to be my hand model.

How to Enjoy a Big Biscuit:

1. Break it in to hunks, use your hands just like the caveman biscuit makers did.
2. Prepare a little love for the biscuit with some sliced strawberries, a touch of sugar and a drip of Amaretto, let the mixture combine in an almost carnal like way until it coaxes the blushing strawberries in to releasing it's juices at which point introduce the whole thing to it's betrothed...the BIG BISCUIT!
3. Clean the table like mad in a frenzy of energy because you realize that as the sun sets it's highlighting every bit of dust on the surface and making you look like a bad house keeper, which you might very well be but there's no need to photograph the evidence now is there?
4. Raw...HEAVY....cream......thick and luscious and much more adult than the whipped gelatinous-y type stuff that masquerades as whipped cream in the freezer section of the store. If you have the patience you could whip it up, if you don't..like me, just pour a dollop over the sweetened berries and bit of Big Biscuit and try not to let your hands shake cause it looks too impossibly good to have come together that fast.
5. Lure your husband out on to the patio with promises of telling him where you hid the spoons if he'll hold the plates of strawberry shortcake type cousins in the dying rays of the sun.
6. Eat.

p.s. The recipe I use for my Big Biscuit is adapted from Bob's Red Mill
However I use only 100% whole wheat flour in my recipe, omit the sugar, and replace the shortening with coconut oil. Oh and....um depending on what's closer the fridge or the sink I'll replace the milk with water.

How to Get Fried!

French fries have such a bad rep, poor little oily buggers. Is it their fault they've been turned into fast food dietary demons? Is it their fault that suggesting French fries for a meal is akin to asking if you wanna snort a little whiskey and jump off a bridge into a vat of lard and live there for a week? Becoming little lard fish people that will triple their size in an hour and eventually become one with the lard, where you and the lard will bubble and burp and belch in blubbery bliss forever after.
French fries aint all bad. It's like anything, moderation.
Mod-a-what?
I know, that never sounds fun but trust me I do know about moderation. Just because I don't apply it to coffee, ice cream and chili gravy doesn't mean I don't KNOW about it.
I like to reserve my moderation for the really important things, like bacon, flour and exercise. I'll have a little of each but not too much, I don't want my life to become all about bacon, flour and exercise. Borrrring.
I think French Fries if made with good potatoes and good oil aren't so bad. Not to mention the way I make them uses barely any oil at all. It's pretty dang cool. I start with a half a cup of oil and I end with just barely under a half of a cup of oil, I measured!
I get crispy, yummy French Fries made in healthy coconut oil and I don't have to swallow a load of guilt at the same time with them.
Plus if you're clever (like some people I won't name, ok ...it's ME) you have a big ol' green salad on the side and you end up with a filling meal that's actually pretty good for you!
Some days though we just have a plate of fries. Just so that we can thrill in the complete tastiness of a darn good fry. Saturating our taste buds in salty, crispy, moisty potato delight. And also because we were lazy and too hunnnnngry to wait for anything else and too tirrrrrrrrrrred to whip up a 3 course meal that would fill the belly hole as completely and happily as a plate of fries.
I have my fry making down to a science, I could probably make them blindfolded but I don't want to blog about my experience chopping my finger off and going to a hospital and finding out if cayenne pepper jammed into a bleeding wound really stops it fast. (We read about that and have been curious ever since. It works on wee little cuts but thank goodness we haven't had to try it on any big cuts.)
Anyways I shall share with you my oh so awesome method of preparing perfect fries if you'll promise not to get all up in my face if you use a different oil, different potato or different temperature than I and end up with horrible little carbonized fries instead of golden delicious ones.
Also my disclaimer is that not all ovens are created equal, not all their temperatures the same, use common sense. It's free after all, so use as much as you want.

Perfect French Fries:

• preheat oven to 475 F

• Get a 1/2 cup of coconut oil and put on a big baking pan that has sides so the oil doesn't run off the edge or your potatoes run away.

• melt oil if needed (coconut oil gets solid at cool temps so you might need to pop the pan with oil on it in the oven to de-solidify it. Don't let it get too hot, you're gonna be handling it soon)

• Get 4 or 5 potatoes

• Cut them, ignoring all little potato screams as you gouge their eyes out. I like slightly thick French fries, I haven't tried this method with thinner fries, I imagine the baking time would be shorter.

• Dump the cut fries in to the pan, roll them in the oil, till well coated, spread them out in an even single layer.
  
• sprinkle with sea salt and black pepper
• put on middle rack of oven for 17 minutes (I use a timer that beeps annoyingly and gives me a near heart attack when it suddenly starts beeping cause I forgot I set it)

• The fries will be pale after 17 minutes but will be cooked
• Now to brown them up like a California beach bunny.
• Turn oven to broil and with the fries left in there on the middle rack leave them for exactly 5 minutes or until brown enough to your liking. (yes I realize that sounds funny, exactly 5 or longer...that makes the 5 un-exactly, so what?)
  

• Then remove them from the oven and carefully tip the pan so that the oil pours off into a heat resistant bowl or what ever.

If you want your fries even browner you can put them on a rack closer to the broiler at this point now that the splish splashy oil is gone and give them another minute. Keep a careful eye, some people have been known to start small fires in their oven from forgetting they have something under the broiler, hence the reason SOME people have a timer that beeps when things should be removed.
And voila, perfect French fries with barely any oil left on them!
This recipe makes a nice plateful for 2 people so if you divide the oil that was used between two people it's a ridiculously small amount. See, I start with a half a cup of oil and end up with....
Woohoooooooo, remember the missing oil is divided between two people as well. Alan and I are now jonesing for a measuring device that is heat resistant and more accurate so we can get our geek on in the kitchen and measure stuff more precisely. You don't want to know the amount of time we spent discussing measuring oil.......lets just say it was a revealing amount.....as in it revealed how odd we are. Entire conversations have been had for hours about measuring the oil.......We figured out at the end of it all as conversation dwindled down, silence crept back into the household that it looks like we used approximately 6 or 7 teaspoons of oil. We theorized there was about a teaspoon of oil left in the baking pan, covering the whole thing...we moaned and groaned at our inability to measure that. We sobbed great heaving sobs as we held each other tightly and realized we know the math, we have the oil but just not the means to say 100% for sure how much was used, we decided it was probably 6 teaspoons, that gets divided by 2, so 3 teaspoons per person per giant ol plate of fries......
Psssssst......Sometimes we sneak up on the pretty little French Fries and smother them with chili and cheese and red onions. YUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMY!

FREE Tutorial: How to turn....

STEP ONE: the first requirement for turning 30 is that you must be at least 29 before beginning this process.
If you are unsure of your age then please, let me help you determine if you are about to knock on 30's door and actually have it answered.

• Do you scowl at clusters of teenagers and wonder if giving the finger is illegal?
• Do you find yourself backpedaling at high rates of speed away from persons who are so heavily doused in scent they smell like they own stock in a perfume/cologne factory?
• Do you reach for well aged whiskeys and tequila over sugary candy colored schnapps and gag at the idea of neon green margaritas?
• Do you avoid going to the theater when it will be full of youngin's?
• Do you know what calories are and hate them with a passion born in the fiery depths of hell over their DAMNABLE existence?
• Do you feel like you know the answers to every body else's problems and have to bite your tongue in half to avoid speaking said answers aloud?
• Do you drink water?

If you answered yes to all of the above then you are probably about to hit 30 and can proceed with the rest of the tutorial.

STEP TWO: The second requirement for turning 30 is at least two kinds of homemade ice cream. Any less is unacceptable and any more isn't fair as I myself only made two.

(salted butter caramel ice cream from a recipe by genius David Lebovitz.)

STEP THREE: Turning 30 is a big deal, it's important that you let loose and go a little wild on this most important day.
Remember that in most countries what ever you do on your 30th birthday is considered legal no matter what it is.....huh?.......WAIT!
This just in, my conscience/legal adviser has asked me to add that actually all the same laws apply to a 30 year old as they do to a 29 year old..............umm......I may have some explaining to do to the kind people at the San Diego Wild Animal Park then. BUT in our own defense we make out a little in every elevator we get on...so.....it's not like we're amateurs here.

(face to face with a lion is a truly wild experience, sure there was an inch of glass between he and I but when he roared...my skin crawled in a deliciously scaredy cat way.)

STEP FOUR: This one is a little trickier, as you need to have at the VERY least 2 strong espresso type drinks on the day celebrating your birth. Preferably iced, with a tiny touch of sweetness and a drop of raw cream. They should be had at such times as to fully experience and enjoy the wonder that is fricking good coffee. It will be up to you to decide if that is in the morning, in the afternoon...one right after the other or spaced apart? There are a lot of variables and you should really start planning this special day weeks in advance so as not to find yourself chugging coffee at any moment just to get it down so you can move on to the next item on your birthday list.

STEP FIVE: The feast. Every 30 year old gets a feast on their birthday. It's a known fact. You may choose up to 86% of what your feast will be.

(My feast consisted of fast easy home fries that I will blog about in the future, homemade tartar sauce with horseradish and pickled jalapeños, beer battered cod, GIANT crab legs, mixed lettuce salad and every sauce and condiment I could carry. Please note these TV TRAYS are the bestest things for your dinner AND a movie turning thirty celebration.)

What ever you choose, it could be anything, just be sure it's the sort of meal that makes your husband say things like "Good God, the fridge looks niiiiice." when he's digging in it for ingredients to help cook your fabulous meal extravaganza.

STEP SIX: A good movie and good company.
You will need to rest your feet anyways after a long day of running wild. (see above step three).

(my good company, best husband in the world!!)

The movie should be sufficiently scary that you gasp in shock at least 5 times but not SO scary you are a quivering ball of fear whose hands shake so bad they are nothing but a blur of 30 year old fingers.

STEP SEVEN: This is not so much something that you do as it is something that will just happen. When you turn 30 you will be endowed with special powers. The sort that makes people look at you with shock, awe and respect. It may or may not involve levitating and mind reading, every one is different. If you start shooting lasers out of your eyes though I'd be interested to know as that's the one I wanted to get and I didn't.....aw well, luck of the draw I suppose.

Congratulations, if you have followed these steps carefully and with great reverence then you too are now 30 years old! Welcome fellow Thirty-arian!