Now this is my kind of Nutcracker!

Thanks Ebay!

Lipstick and Nail Polish

Pretty amazing documentation from the Library of Congress. This set covers share cropping-fighter plane assembly - and the colors are amazing.

Summer Reading List

This summer I've been reading nothing but martha magazines and some comic memoriors - looking forward to getting back to some meatier readings.
this should be a good appitizer.

Cutique.com - another weakness

Cutique.com outlet to the handmade!



Weak...




Getting Weaker...

Honey-Do list

http://www.notmartha.org/tomake/shoerack/

Not Martha - my hero

Things I learned along the way. I read in someone elses experience that if you make the treats ahead of time and leave them at room temperature, the fruit roll ups can melt and become gooey. I made a few for a test run and left them in the fridge overnight, and while the fruit roll up didn't actually melt it become more sticky and not as fun to eat. So, make these the day of and store them in the fridge. Shavings of dried mango or papaya can serve as slices of pickled ginger.

I could only find green fruit roll ups with punch out faces in them, it still worked ok. But, here is a recipe for apricot fruit leather, I'm sure adding a little food coloring would make a nice murky green. The fruit roll ups stick nicely to themselves, and stretch if they don't quite reach all the way around a twinkie slice.

How do they taste? Not the greatest really, you'll want to pick the components apart. But look how darn cute they are!

I found myself wondering what results you could get from dipping fruit in chocolate and slicing it -- bananas, kiwi, strawberries. They all seem like they could make an interesting fruit sushi dessert.



There is a bunch of great faux sushi stuff I came across in my searches:
Pictures of candy sushi on Flickr rolled and the swedish fish variation.


Nicole makes the sushi cupcakes, and talks about some alternatives for dipping sauces -- chocolate and green marshmallow, promising.


Recipe for crispy candy sushi snacks involving wrapping rice krispie treats around candy, very cute.


Recipe from USA Rice for sweet coconut candy sushi, also uses candied ginger. Includes variation using chocolate and strawberries.


Another rice krispie treat candy sushi recipe.


Making candy sushi at Casa Walsh, they used that fruit by the foot stuff to wrap.


Boing Boing did a whole thing on the twinkie sushi and it came around to this savory twinkie recipe involving goat cheese and polenta (no actual twinkies are involved.


Version of the candy sushi using m&ms and coconut.


Sushi cupcakes using gummy sharks and the clever use of jelly bellys as roe.


The simplicity of this Hostess sushi project is lovely, presented in Engrish. The zingers and snowballs as nigri are clever.


Ljc made dessert sushi for her post-wedding party, so pretty. She mentioned using Swiss cake rolls as well, and it looks like coconut rolled zingers?


Edith Meyer sent me a link to this entirely different take on dessert sushi, Very Special Sushi using soy wrappers and sweet rice wrapped around fruit fillings, everything edible down to the chopsticks. Beautiful.


Weird Sushi has a clever use of candy to mimic roe. Note the sliced gummy worms, whipped cream (?) wasabi and mango ginger slices. You can click the pictures to get more and more closer looks.


The chocolate sushi at Koo-Ki Sushi is amazingly detailed right down to the condiments.


Some incredible examples of candy sushi in these photos at Flickr, by ozdema2.


Non-pareilles as roe in this very detailed candy sushi.


Some amazing ice cream sushi treats from the Haagen-Dazs Premier Lounge in Tokyo.


Acres of awesome candy sushi over at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories.

Nina Nina Nina oh how I want to sing like ya

From wikipedia:
On May 13, 1939, Herbert Halpert made a series of field recordings in Byhalia, MS, including several with the family of Walter and Mary Shipp.

Walter, a sharecropper and minister, and Mary, a choir director, had 14 children, several of whom participated in the archival project, but the couple's two daughters, Katherine and Christine, then 19 and 20 years old, were the real standouts, delivering several rope-skipping rhymes and rhythms that still have an intimate and haunting power all these years later, particularly the eerie and mysterious fragment called "Sea Lion Woman."

The lyrics of this song for keeping time are simple enough, mostly about drinking coffee and drinking tea, but there's an ominous, edgy, and unsaid eeriness about it that moves beyond words and meaning. The lyric has been given several variant titles over the years, including "Sea Lion Woman," "See Lyin' Woman," "C-Line Woman," "See-Lye Woman," "See Line Woman" (this is the title used by Nina Simone for her version), and "She Lyin' Woman," all of which only adds to the enigmatic nature of the recording that the Shipp sisters made that day.

Greg Hale Jones looped the original field recording of the song to lengthen it, added electronically enhanced ambience, and placed two versions of the modernized version (still containing Katherine and Christine's vocals) on The General's Daughter soundtrack in 1999. The end result was spooky and atmospheric, but then so was the original, which continues to fascinate anyone who hears it.