Mmmm couscous

My recipe catalog has been severely lacking for the summer months.

Hot sticky weather doesn't condone itself well to chaining oneself to an oven and religiously mincing vegetables for some over involved comestible. So most recipes I come across are either unappetizing due to the amount of work, the amount of food, or the weird crap they try to stick in just because well we got a ton of durian and damnit we're gonna use it!

I've been sampling various other food recipe magazines to see if I can find a good fit for us and while it's only one issue so far think I may have found a good one. It's called Eating Well and while I might argue with many of their pseudo-science articles I can't with tasty sounding food.

Last night I made a couscous (I adore couscous. It's the food of the greek gods.) parsley chicken wrap thing. Now my husband and I can pretend we're prisoners in the Village eating nothing buy wraps.

It has a very obvious greek base with the lemon juice, the garlic and the olive oil and was super tasty. Nice and light for those summer days and took about 30 minutes to whip up. I did alter the recipe a bit to suit my tastes and needs. No cucumber as they could kill my husband (I exaggerate, they just had a big falling out over a spilled tub of yogurt) and I cut everything in half.

If you're curious about the recipe you can check it out here at Roots and Zest a somewhat new blog from a very awesome lady. It was she who suggested I try the Eating Well magazine.

Though you should really go read her blog because she's hilarious and has some tantalizing food posts. I cannot be held liable if your keyboard is destroyed from all the drool.

Now I'm off to try and figure out what I can make the other 6 days of the week. Maybe some kind of mud and rock stew.

Eerie Tree Painting

Last night was the big auction and while I haven't heard anything specific about my lot they did raise $1200 for charity. Go Whimsicle!

While I wait to find out the fate of my painting here are a few new ones that aren't as full of whimsy as they could be but there is some spooky and tiny red hair thrown in for good measure.

This is my 18X24. I was going for something a bit eerie. A haunted forest in front of a large setting moon. The forest was driving me nuts as I first painted it a far too bright blue and kept darkening it but not too much.  So I'd go back and forth with the black wash and the blue/gray.

Then I finally added a little haze around the trees so you could pretend it's fog, steam, or all the souls of trees that had to die to make the support structures of the painting.

I'm actually only charging $55 for this one because it wasn't too hard to make. Or I've got my trees down to a science.

I'd just listed it yesterday but it already made it into a treasury.

I also finished another pendant. I wanted to create something fairy like so I got the idea to paint a flower and then at first I wanted to add just one fairy flitting around the flower. But then I thought, where's the fun in that.?

Using my steady hand I added four fairies to my tiny pendant. Here's a picture of it next to a quarter to show just how insane I am:

There are more pictures of it in various garden type settings here. As seems to happen whenever I create anything with a lot of texture it looks a lot better in person. The flower's the most eye catching part and then as you get close the fairies sort of pop out as your eye realizes what they are.

I have one more painting to roll out of the workshop but maybe I'll tie that in when I get the news on how my invisible wedding people did at the Regretsy auction.

Keep watching the skies!

Cryptozoological Society for Really Weird Things

*Brrring Brring Brring Click*

Yes, hello. Cryptozoological Society for Really Weird Things I Saw and Tires? I'd like to report a sighting.

No, I don't need any new tires today. Yes, I'm sure. Look, I don't even own a semi. Fine mail me some literature and I'll be sure to toss it into my recycling.

Anyway I'm calling to tell you that I saw one of the creatures. Yes, I saw one myself. Where? Right out in my backyard.

It was a good 4 and a half feet tall, black as night with large glowing eyes and walked on two legs.

Yeah, yeah, no. No antlers.

Well it looked down at me from my deck and I snapped a picture.

No, it didn't try to control my mind using any special powers. Unless an urge to give it a bone counts.

No, there were no prophesies of impending doom that followed its visit. Though there is a rather nasty smelling present in the garden.


Here's the picture. Maybe you can tell me what it is because it won't stop looking at me and dropping a small rubber sphere at my feet.

Ah so it's the rare Canis Erectus. Any idea how to get rid of it?

What do you mean I'm stuck with it? I've already got bigfoot camped out in my tool shed, nessie overflowing my bathtub and mothman hoovering over my kitchen lights. I don't need another one of your wacky creations messing up my house.

*click*

Hello! HELLO! I don't know why I keep calling them.

I choo-choo-choose you

As some of you may have heard, facebook announced last week its plans to claim various chunks of the web like a greedy prospector with a hidden stash of small flags using its famous like button.

Before too long that little thumbs up will grace not just the f-book (why that acronym hasn't taken off I can't imagine *frantic whispering* Oh . . .) but all corners of this totally tubular network. They have plans to interact, connect and funnel every little thing you like back to all your friends and families on the book (and somehow use that info to break into Fort Knox and hide poison in women's cosmetics).

It's their first big gauntlet throwdown at Google's feet. The question is if Google will accept the challenge and come this summer roll out with its line of four story Googlebots to have a giant smackdown fight with the Defacebookcons over the backdrop of a fairly empty interstate.

We here at Introverted Wife thanks to some insider information from Al the janitor are pleased to share with you secret Facebook information: there will be a second button.

And I must say it's about damn time too. People have been clamoring, joking and just generally making rather giant donkeys out of themselves about it.

What? Oh and it seems we even have working images of the new button in action. Give me a minute to dig through the various jpg piles on my desk here. Hey that sandwich from last monday. Ah there we go.

Drum Roll please.

Most website interaction is a flitting thing, maybe once or twice a week you visit. You all know its nothing serious. But you don't want the poor little youtube video to think its anything serious so you say that while you  it you're not ready for a commitment.

Then one day, when you least expect it, while curling up at Starbucks the blog of your dream wanders across your mouse and visions of white picket fences and well manicured XML dance through your head.

How do you explain to all your friends/family/old classmates/random people you think you might have known at one point but you forget that this is the site for you?

May I give you, the Like Like Button:

No more ambiguity, now everyone on the playground -- I mean facebook -- will know exactly what you "like" and what you "like like."

Now we just have to wait for the giant robot social wars of '010. I hear twitter has plans to throw in its own glove in the form of a mechanized owl from a Greek God to help an idiot that can't keep track of his hat. I give them 2 minutes, tops.

New Bruce Wayne Version

 Leviticus 11:13-19 (New King James Version)

¹³ ‘And these you shall regard as an abomination among the birds; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, the vulture, the buzzard, ¹⁴ the kite, and the falcon after its kind; ¹⁵ every raven after its kind, ¹⁶ the ostrich, the short-eared owl, the sea gull, and the hawk after its kind; ¹⁷ the little owl, the fisher owl, and the screech owl; ¹⁸ the white owl, the jackdaw, and the carrion vulture; ¹⁹ the stork, the heron after its kind, the hoopoe, and the bat.

Batman is totally legit, the Bible says so! Suck it Joker.

By the way, anyone figured out what a hoopoe is yet?