Picture a Day - Day 345

Thursday, November 12, 2009

I hope everyone had a much better Veterans Day than I did.

Previous post should explain some as well as the fact that I am into Defcon level three of my illness which means all that protective mucus my body built up in my lungs is now trying to escape through a series of body racking coughs and always at night.

And what a perfect segue from sputtering coughs to tasty food.

Over the weekend we made one of our bi-yearly adventures to Sams Club, and all without becoming horribly lost and resorting to eating our shoes somewhere around the giant piles of plastic silverware. We made it out with a few giant boxes of food stuffs that we don't see much elsewhere or were able to trick ourselves into thinking we were getting a good deal.

One such "deal" was a leg of lamb deboned and tied up in a roast.

While we have made lamb before it was in chop form and much easier to think of what to do (when in doubt, marinate and grill is my motto).

So I relied on a very simple and easy to make recipe that seems fancier than it really is.

First step is to chop up a couple bulbs of garlic. I always use the back of my knife and push down til I hear a little crack. Then the garlic paper all but falls off with a little nudging. So much faster.
Just slice the garlic into slivers. Don't worry you'll find out why later (or you could cheat and scroll to the end of the post, but you'd never do that. Cheating is wrong and hey get back here!).
Take a whole bunch of your favorite spices and mix them all together. I went with a more typical greek mix of oregano, rosemary, basil and for the hell of it tossed in a bay leaf or two.
Okay, now it's time to pull your leg of lamb out of the fridge and get it into a pan.

Don't worry, I'll wait.

What's a five letter word for making people wait because you're out of ideas?

Got it? Now just take out your paring knife . . . well go get that then, shesh . . . and cut some slits into your leg of lamb.
It can be either boneless or still have the bone in for this recipe, doesn't matter a bit. Though a lack of bone makes stabbing a lot easier.

Drizzle some lemon juice over the roast trying to work it into the slits a bit. Lamb and Lemon go together like McDonalds and frivolous lawsuits.
Time to find out why you slivered the garlic instead of randomly chopping it into little bits. See I knew you could be patient and oh you already figured it out. Well uh . . . the next step is to slide the garlic into the slits.

There will be quite a bit of manhandling but that's okay, the more you crush garlic the tastier it gets.
Now just rub your spice mix all over the roast.
Just pop this baby into a 325 degree oven for 1 and a half to 2 hours. I used my magical digital meat thermometer (that sucker is awesome and I'd never cook without it, if you don't have one go and get one now) and waited til it got around 145 before pulling it and letting it rest.

A little garnish of mashed potatoes and some gravy and voila fancy roast meal of lamb.
Have you had a lot of lamb or made it before? What's your favorite way to prepare it?

I've never been able to wrap my mind around the mint jelly idea but uh I may be willing to try it if someone else says that's tasty.

The funniest thing about this whole post, I don't even like roast very much. But it makes my husband happy and it isn't all that bad of a torture. There are worse ways to die than by meat and potatoes.

Fuck you Etsy!

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Every place has its problems, its pluses and minuses. Reasons why people choose it over others.

I'd never heard of Etsy til I went looking for something for my wedding way back in 2007 and a friend who sold on their pointed me in their direction (and she never sells there anymore I might add).

Then all of a sudden it sprung up overnight all across the wedding blog sphere.

Only there's a little hidden secret that Etsy doesn't want any of you buyers to know.

Etsy couldn't give a flying shit about any of you.

It doesn't want you to be able to find things that you want or need. Instead it forces its daily rotation of cowls, owls, fake mustaches and terrariums down the throat of every person who dares to wander in and click on one of the thousands of Etsy admin picked gift guides.

And now as everyone starts to hunker down for Christmas Etsy has just given the biggest Fuck You to sellers and buyers alike.

Head over to Etsy today and you'll see a giant orange button that leads to the admin picked gift guides full of the same stuff that's gotten free advertising the entire year to fit the Etsy ideal. Their guides are full of nothing but the same shops over and over and I can't tell you the number of re-sellers (aka people who just buy wholesale and claim it's handmade) that have been found out thanks to the Etsy admin picked gift guides.

But the buttons aren't just relegated to the main page, no they show up everywhere. Including the main banner of a shops header:So assuming a customer is even able to navigate the nasty and horribly useless Etsy search and stumbles into your store, they suddenly see this bright orange "Gift Guide" button up top and naturally assume it's a gift guide for your shop.

Except it's not. It's just Etsy advertising for their handpicked shops on YOUR shop.

And it isn't even on just shop pages. Nope every single listing also leads right back to the Etsy Gift Guide:It isn't just a giant Fuck You to sellers, it's also to buyers. Buyers who don't want the Etsy approved ideal.

Etsy was sold to me as the place to buy anything handmade, but that isn't true anymore. It's the place to only buy Etsy admin approved items that they can't even bother to check and see if they're sweat shop produced or not.

I know Etsy became the buzz word for handmade across the wedding blogs but please I beseech you for Christmas, for anyone still doing the wedding thing, look elsewhere.

There's 1000 markets that's just started up. Or Artfire, where I also have a shop.

The fact is that Etsy has been screwing over sellers for so long a lot of the really talented non cowl makers jumped ship long ago and now have set up shop elsewhere. So a search of Artfire yields much better and quicker results than a comb through the crap at Etsy ever would.

Sadly, because buyers aren't aware of the other and better options out there the attention is still on Etsy and the fewer and fewer views are there but maybe if we spread the word a bit Artfire will become the next big thing.

Please just take a look, see what you think of it and spread the word if you can. People need to know they have other options for Christmas this year than just terrariums and fingerless gloves.

Picture a Day - Day 344

I have been a bit remiss at sharing all of the my latest and finished paintings and pendants with everyone here.

While it was easy to fall into the "Oh I'll just put it on twitter quick, get instant feedback and call it good" habit I also swear part of the problem was that I never had any good pictures.

Yesterday I finally decided no more excuses so for most of the day I trucked my pieces around trying to get as many good pictures as possible and then editing said photos before finally listing them in my stores.

I listed three different pendants (I actually have a fourth but it needs a few touch ups before its ready for its closeup) and one huge painting (okay huge for me, I swear some people will paint the side of a barn and ship that).

One of my pendants is for that nerd in your life who likes wisecracking and bad movies.
Another was back to the simple, a silhouetted raven about to take flight on stained wood.
And that big painting I was talking about? Well it's my 16X20 of a foggy forest walk. What still kills me about this painting is that it's all in black and white (and I swear it is, no color anywhere near that sucker) yet depending on where it sits on the wall it looks like it has a bit of a color sheen.
Now for the exciting news even though I still have more paintings I finished and listed to share.

All that stuff up there sold in under an hour of being listed!

Okay so I had a pretty good idea that the foggy forest was going to someone after a twitter back and forth or 10 but I had no idea she also planned to buy a few pendants.

And another shocker, someone also came in and swooped up the raven pendant. In fact the only one I still have in my shop was the third one I added yesterday.
It's my winter scene, for those yearning for some snow before the icy doldrums of January beats it out of us all.

And despite traveling into someones cart for a little bit it's still available for sale for the low low low low price of $6. (The more I think about it too, it'd make a cute gift tag for Christmas as well).

I also waited til today to list my dancing couple painting. Here's hoping it has as much success as my trees.
Hurray for one hell of a good painting sale day. I'd like to pretend that it's just up and up from here but well let's just say I'm starting to see the writing on the wall more and more at Etsy. (Maybe if I did paintings of owls wearing cowls).

But for now I shall revel in my small victory for a day. I always revel small victories with a small feast made up entirely of small foods and half danced by small rodents.

My pendants have been weirdly popular (I really thought they'd just disappear through the jewelry cracks never to be seen by anyone) and I was just wondering if there's anything you'd like to see on one of these bad boys?

Is there anything in my repertoire of paintings that you could see people wanting to wear around their neck? Or anything you'd want to give to someone else?

Picture a Day - Day 343

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

It was a family reunion this weekend for our little girl.

My parents came to visit and brought down not only both of Essie's parents but also two of her rowdy brothers. Es hasn't seen these two since August when she was only 8 weeks old and oh so much smaller.

When we watched all 7 of the litter back in early august being the runt our little girl was picked on mercilessly by her two bigger brothers and sadly not much has really changed.

This is Vulcan and Tiber. Vulcan is the black with the lighter blue camo collar and my Dad's dog while Tiber is the yellow and my Mom's.

They're the more typical lab puppy (unlike our little thoughtful weirdo), full of boundless energy and just a bit clumsy on those big feet with very selective hearing. But oh how they love to wrestle.
At first Es was none too pleased to have these scary dogs in her yard. She darted and hid hoping my husband or I would intervene.
Getting tired of all the sniffing and rough housing she showed off her Mother's lineage cranking up the speed and zooming around the yard staying on the outside track but still keeping ahead of her brothers.
As Tiber and Vulcan wore off some of their energy and calmed down some Essie got better, even feeling up to a sniff or two.

It's crazy just how much smaller our little girl is compared to those two. All born in the same litter but they look like completely different dogs. Vulcan has his dad's curly coat while Es got the sleek almost liquid oil coat of her mother.
Not to mention she's also nowhere near the same width and stockiness of her brothers but surprisingly just as long. We don't have a lab, we have a greyhound pretending to be a lab.

Eventually our Miss Essie got up the courage, shook off the old days of being bullied in the pack of seven and realized this was her yard and those two yahoos had to listen to her.
Or bare the consequences.
It was quite a day for our little girl, first there was a pre-schooler and baby then her old brothers came to town to have some rumble and tussle.
After a bit the big brothers went back on the truck and Es got to meet up with her Mom again. That wasn't such a rowdy reunion and she sniffed and licked her Mom and Calli did much the same. And it was pretty obvious Essie, our "I don't like any doggie at first" girl recognized her mother and she just wanted to play right away.

The funny thing is that even though I'm sure Es knew her she's much more dependent on my husband and I. She raced past Calli to jump into my husbands arms and lick his face and barely noticed when her mother had to go back home.

I guess dogs just have a much easier time of letting go and looking towards the future. Or they know where the food's coming from now and much prefer the taste of kibble.

Have you ever had a family reunion with your pets and their litter mates? Was it interesting watching to see if they'd know and recognize who they were?

Genetics is a weird thing sometimes. All the same litter born at the same time but so many differences. She also has a sister that's a complete lookalike but they have completely different personalities too.

It just makes our little Essie May that much more special, or that much more weirder depending on how you want to look at it.

Picture a Day - Day 342

Monday, November 9, 2009

This weekend was a whirl of activity and M&M's.

My best friend came to visit with her almost five year and six month old. My husband was relegated to the back room to play Legos for a few hours til he got blisters on his thumb with the five year old. (It's okay though, he really enjoyed it no matter how much he pretends he doesn't)

Meanwhile I hung out with my friend and her baby. He makes some of the funniest faces I've seen this side of a cheeseburger craving cat.

So I thought I'd try to share some of what must have been going through his little mind during the weekend.

Essie helped a bit sometimes.
I just love how serious he is all the time.

And many many things went into the mouth. Best way to play after all.
Essie was such a good girl, sniffing and occasionally licking the baby but otherwise leaving all his toys alone.
Teething: no fun in any species. Well except for birds.

Even Essie had to get in on the act reminding us she's still our little baby girl.
Hope this little funny baby series lightened up your Monday morning. Or maybe even encouraged you to pull out your camera and follow a couple babies snapping pictures of them being adorable.

Note: Introverted Wife is in no way responsible if and when you are arrested for stalking little babies as if you're their own paparazzi. Won't somebody please think of the children!

Picture a Day - Day 341

Sunday, November 8, 2009

I'd like to return a dog I recently purchased.

Yes this is the one:Now I know she looks like a dog but there's something just not right about her.

In fact I'd even dare to go so far as to say you took a cat, dressed it up a dog and sold that to me.

Proof? Why I have the proof right here:What normal dog chases after a pointer's beam of light?

What's next? She'll start curling up on the dryer and chasing after balls of yarn?

I demand a full refund and also my parrot seems to be dead.

Picture a Day - Day 340

Saturday, November 7, 2009

I thought today would be a great chance to share my pumpkin cheese cake recipe. It tastes super yummy and is incredibly easy to make.

You have to start out with a nice big glass bowl to which you add 12 ounces of cream cheese.
Then add 1 cup of sugar and 3 TBSP of flour.
Mix that stuff up like crazy til the cream cheese is nice and sweet. I suggest licking the batters a few times to make sure it's just right.
Reserve half of your cream cheese mixture for later in a smaller bowl.
To the other half of your cream cheese mixture in the big bowl add 15 ounces of pumpkin, 3 eggs, and 1 TBSP of Pumpkin Pie Spice. If you're also a huge nutmeg or cinnamon fan this is the time to play.
Just beat that til it's nice and creamy and then set aside.
Now for this version I wanted to try something a little different, so I added some cocoa powder and chocolate chips to my extra sugared cream cheese mixture. But it tastes just as good without it needing to be chocolate.

You just need to add 1 TBSP of milk and then pop it in the microwave for 30 seconds.
When it comes out stir it up so it's a little runny and easier to work with.
Now just take out a pre bought deep dish pie crust and pour in the pumpkin mixture.
Finally glob the tasty chocolate (or not necessarily chocolate, completely up to you) mixture on top of the pumpkin and swirl it around with the back of a spoon so it sinks in a bit.
Into a 375 oven it goes for about 60-65 minutes until a knife comes out clean.
Add some whipped cream and there ya go a pumpkin cheesecake that's super tasty and super easy to make.
Best of all, you only wind up dirtying two bowls which is about the smallest mess I've ever made when it comes to baking.

Guess the Painting

Friday, November 6, 2009

When I'm not cleaning, trying to get better (work you stupid white blood and T-cells!), or watching all the unfolding drama at Etsy I've tried to get in a few paintings here and there this week.

I've had an idea in my head for a while that I've wanted to put down onto canvas. It was actually from before Halloween but well one thing and another. You know how it goes.

The first step was getting the background just right.

For the fun of it I snapped a picture as that was drying and thought I'd let you all take a guess as to what I was gonna get up to.
Really, take all the time you need.

What would I do with that strange choice of shades and weird smokey background?

Nope, got all the time in the world. Do de do.

Oh and while you're deciding here's another painting I'll be putting up for sale soon. It was an idea for something I tried for a friend, wasn't quite their taste so it's going to the highest bidder.
Okay times up.

It's a foggy forest!
I have no idea where the color comes from in this second pictures, it was all in black/white/gray I assure you.
While my husband was busy KOLing last night I just cranked out a bunch of trees in various depths and shades and have my first ever ready to sell 16X20 painting.

What do you think? It needs a few more additions, some extra branches but the life of the painting is mostly there.

I've got it hanging on my painting wall right now and I swear it almost follows you around the room. Or maybe I keep expecting a ghost to pop out from behind one of the trees.

Picture a Day - Day 339

I am a mac girl.

In fact, I have been my entire computing life because all we ever had at home were macs.

While other people were learning about the blue screen of death and just getting into all those big computer games I was cutting my technological teeth on Clarisworks and Nanosaur (the game where dinosaurs shoot rockets).

Much like being left handed and having to learn to adjust to the right hand favored society I quickly became computorially ambidextrous. I flew on a mac but could also perform fairly standard things on Windows. It also meant that the rare times I'd run into a mac in high school or college I could fix the problem much faster than any tech support.

Before the Apple Store or the iPod and iBook helped to bring Apple to the masses, you pretty much had to rely on your own wits to fix your computer. Tech help had almost no idea what the hell to do with it short of take your money and hide it in the back hoping it'd go away. Luckily it rarely ever broke down.

So while I'll never have anything else and generally just curse up a storm when I have to use Windows on a machine there is one thing that's always been a bit of a pipe dream for me, and it's just a piece of plastic on an axle.My dream was finally realized when after about 5 years of abuse and at least 6 moves my old mouse was starting to die.

I started what I thought would be a long search to find a compatible mouse.

Once again growing up with Macs in an all Windows landscape that was the late 90's I was trained that almost nothing was mac compatible and you had to be extra super careful and do tons of research before purchasing anything for fear it'd never work.

Though that's all changed a lot now with Intel going in iMacs and those cool white machines inhabiting just about every coffee shop. Not to mention USB. I adore those three little letters.

So what would have been a much more expensive and much longer wait 10 years ago was a quick and simple here's $15, here's an optical mouse with a scroll wheel.

Oh how I love that little thing. You never realize just how great something is until it's gone, or it was never really an option.

And because I can't show off my mouse without also showing off my mouse pad:
I think you can about guess how old that is. It's fraying on the edge, Samwise looks like his skin is starting to flake off and Sauron's pretty much faded into the background but how else can I proclaim to the world that I am a nerd? And a hobbit loving one at that?

Okay so the entire post should probably do it as well but it's hard to get in mouse pad form.

What do you have on your mouse pad? We can call it show off your mouse pad day!

Did anyone else have a mac growing up when they were computational machine non grata?

Picture a Day - Day 338

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Halloween has come and gone. Discounted candy roams the stores aisles begging for someone anyone to be brave enough to try one of those nasty orange and black peanut butter yucks from Palmers. Yeah, you know the ones I mean. YECH!

A crisp fall wind turns a bit colder, baseball hangs up its jerseys in favor of big burly shoulder pads, it can only mean one thing.

Christmas is less than two months away! GET READY! SELL SELL SELL! BUY BUY BUY!

While the stores preen and groom Christmas for another year at the top of the economic ladder a little holiday sits back smiling to itself a little sadly, waiting for someone to pass the potatoes.

My family has always been fairly big into Turkey Day. To me it was common growing up to have three different turkeys each prepared a different way, ham, two kinds of stuffing, three gravies and numerous pies all brought to the groaning table.

One of the favorite turkey preparations was the smoked turkey (note, not a turkey rolled up in a cigar though that does make a funny visualization). It became quite the traditional challenge as my grandfather would claim that his turkey was smoked for 12 hours, then 24 hours. We all thought a bit much when he was starting to say it'd been in the smoker since the fourth of July.

The cool thing about smoking a turkey, there's very little work needed for a really nice dinner and it's very cheap.

We got our smoker free but you can also get a little ceramic smoke box for your grill. It takes a lot more work watching and replacing chips than the set it and nearly forget it smoker but you still get tasty turkey for a tiny price.

If you are gonna try smoking the first thing to do is pick chips. If you check out some hardware stores you'll find tons of options. Mesquite, hickory, cherry, apple all of which offer a slightly different flavor pallet.

I've been sampling a few over the summer: I love cherry as it gives just a slight almost sweet smoky flavor while apple to me doesn't have enough flavor to bring anything to the party.

But by far the most popular and best flavor chip is courtesy of Jack Daniels.
They chop up the old oak barrels they use to age their whiskey in and sell those for wood smoking chips. And it's pretty obvious once you open the bag and a strong heavy whiskey scent hits you in the face (also a good reason to make sure little puppies who like to eat wood don't get their jaws on it. I'm just saying).

I like to mix and match chips so I included some Maple as well out of curiosity.

The first step, soak the chips in water for 30 minutes to help the smokey goodness leech out.
For my Thanksgiving Wednesday in early November I picked some Turkey Thighs which are the size of small chicken breasts. Last week Turkey was super on sale so we got a breast for $3 and some legs for under $2.

Sadly it wasn't quite the same sale this week but still a pretty good deal for so much meat.
Now's a good time to pick what you're going to put on your turkey pieces. There's a simple option of a poultry rub, something a bit more bbqish, or you could even try brining the turkey the night before you decide to smoke it.

I went with a Tandoori rub because my husband and I are strange individuals. It worked okay. I actually have a South African rub I like a lot that's a sweet and savory mix that I think I'll try next time.
Mr. Turkey Thighs go into the smoker for 4 hours or so to get golden and tasty.

It's best to watch this sucker in case something were to go bad and when I was previously employed we used to smoke at night, put the meat in the fridge for a day and when we came home warm it up in the oven and finish on the grill.

So you get tasty smoked meat with very little work right after coming home from work. Win Win.

To go with our Turkey Thighs, I wanted something very traditional and homemade Thanksgiving - whole cranberries.

It's actually really simple. You heat one cup sugar to one cup water to boiling.
I tossed in a cinnamon stick for some extra flavor but not necessary.

Once it reaches boiling dump in 12 ounces of whole cranberries. Turn that down and let it simmer for 10 minutes stirring occasionally.
You should get a nice gooey mess like this. Then just dump that into a bowl, cover and stick in a fridge. Tasty fresh cranberries in under 15 minutes, no can needed.
I made a little stuffing to go with my turkey thigh and cranberries to complete my Thanksgiving Wednesday.
My husband and I are nowhere near ready to host Thanksgiving for anyone other than us, but it's nice to know that if we were to become snow bound thanks to the random weather we could whip up something so it'd still feel like the holidays.

And it's so easy we can have Thanksgiving every week. Take that Christmas with your Advent Calendars and fancy candles.

Anyone else employ a smoker for all your smoked meat needs? Have you ever made what seems a fancy meal in the middle of the week just cause?

Is anyone else getting excited for the coming holidays or dreading all the work?