Some of the nicest ones I've seen, to be found at:
http://wendleberry.livejournal.com/4686.html?view=29262#t29262
Congratulations, Wendleberry. Good job.

Here are some images from my phone camera via Photoshop effects squiggles. I made them last year and am posting to remind me to play some more.
( Viddy This )

I was piddling about today, and came across http://www.supercook.com/
What's different about this cooking site? It's like a reverse directory. Enter in the items you have laying around the house and it spits back lists of stuff you can make.
I told it I had

almonds
artichoke
baking powder
baking soda
balsamic vinegar
barbecue sauce
barley
basil
bay leaf
bay leaves
beer
beet
( more stuff )
and it said, You can make 2162 recipes right now! plus hundreds of others I'm lacking one or two ingredients for. Gives specific direct links to recipes on Epicurious, Vegweb, AllRecipes.com, Recipezaar, etc. The count is off, as it assumes, say, that mushrooms and/or some dairy items and like substitutions, are interchangeable, which they are not. Plus there's no way to filter out the meat dishes it suggests, coyly telling me I only need porkchops or something. I wrote them about that, as I think it's relatively new and still under development. Still, pretty interesting, even with wading through tens of similar bean dishes. I have engaging meal possibilities using items items I already have, which I might not have have considered. Altogether, it's a tool I'll use quite a bit.

I should add that it has word recognition-- you don't have to tediously enter all that stuff, only a letter or two before it guesses what you mean, or offers a list to choose from. Plus it asks do you have other items in a tag cloud if there are recipes that come close. I gave it my list in only a few minutes.

This meme was floating around the flist maybe a month ago. More? Dunno. And since I'm as prone to navel-gazing as any, here we go. I'll spot you a few, then cut away for the rest.

20 things about me:

One. I have a billion cookbooks, but I haven't tried most of them.

Two. These days I tend to head for the internet before I examine the billion cookbooks. Crazy.

Three. You really really really don't want to know what my sink was like before the last weekend. Going to take extreme measures to get every last little spot. It shall gleam gleam gleam. Forevermore. I mean it.
( More navel, no waiting )

Imagine, if you will, that you are 10 couples of varying age and sadly honking size, twenty individuals in all, meeting your fellows on a beach in Cairns, Australia for the first time. Having fought your way through tens of thousands of applicants, auditions, videos, interviews, screenings, legal discovery, medical tests and the like, you are submitting yourself and your every flaw to intense national and world scrutiny in what must be the Gameshow Olympics of Weight Loss. You have signed multiple non-disclosure and liability documents. You have set your house in order for an indeterminate period, packed your bags, probably quit your job or taken an extended leave of absence that leaves your future employment in jeopardy, since you could quite possibly be gone for six months. You could have a minor child, or children, even under two years of age, this happens frequently. You have quite possibly never exercised in your life.

You should know that anything can, and will, happen to you. At any moment. Because after three seasons, that should be old, old news.

You are greeted by beauteous hostess Ajay Rochester, your personal herald of doom heretoafter, who after pleasantries and flashbacks, directs you to a gleaming high speed ferry moored just off the strand. We set out for adventure in grand style.

( Off into the wild blue yonder. )

( Thataway )
Find out your Sim personality at PersonalityLab.org!

I loved my former tawdry red and pink, but during the recent "Will LJ implode?" scare, backing up entries made obvious how much of my journal was about pictures, and how much I miss photoshop. Especially if I am soon to upload shots from The Biggest Loser Australia S04, full of drop dead scenery! I will cut tag them, don't worry.

Anyway, red fought with the pictures. I may find another (much quieter than before) background repeat, but I feel satisfied with the other colors. It took a lot of clicking and reloading.

"WELCOME TO QUEENSLAND!

You Should Have STAYED ON THE BOAT!!!!"

Maybe you don't know that I am secretly addicted to The Biggest Loser Australia, which really beats our series to hell. Although the current US Season 7 isn't bad. (Season 6 sucked though). I download the eps.... the Australian series has 76 eps/year, as opposed to US 15 eps. They watch them every night during the week, I guess. So when they show up over here, it's usually 4 eps at a time... and I just got them all! New Season 04E01-E04, plus US S07E05. It's going to be an orgy of excess for me this evening... I love it. God, I hope the Commando is back.

I want one.

I was hunting through Recipezaar... they have this cool feature, where you can check out the latest reviews of their over 400,000 recipes on a daily basis. So my attention was arrested. I have not tried this yet, but today at the grocery store, I bought a special mug for the occasion, will get to it later tonight:

Dangerous Microwave Chocolate Cake-In-A-Mug

Recipe #338964 | 5 min | 2 min prep
By: Lucy #3
Nov 21, 2008
This cake is from Haydee's Chocolate Journal (http://haydeechocolatier.blogspot.com/2008/10/one-part-chocolate-one-delicious-mug.html) and is fantastic for those times where you want just one or two servings of all-natural, warm chocolate goodness. It's easily made with basic pantry items. I found the texture to be more spongey and very moist, it really was delicious. It fit perfectly in a regular-sized mug, although it did get a little messy when it puffed up. If you've got a slightly larger mug, I'd recommend using that.
SERVES 1 -2 , 1 Cake in a mug (change servings and units)
Ingredients
4 tablespoons cake flour (plain, not self-rising)
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil
1 dash vanilla
3 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional)
Directions
1. Add dry ingredients to the mug; mix well with a fork.
2. Add egg and mix thoroughly.
3. Pour in milk, oil, and vanilla, and mix well.
4. Add chips, if using.
5. Put mug in the microwave, and cook for three minutes at 1,000 watts. Cake will rise over the top of the mug -- do not be alarmed.
6. When finished, carefully remove mug from microwave and allow to cool a little. Tip onto a small plate prior to serving, if desired.
7. Yields one generous serving or two "more virtuous" servings.

==========
Review:

Okay, this is pretty deadly. It's not really a good-looking dessert, but I think that belies its manufacture. Cope.
I did have cake flour.... but did not have milk, so I used water and threw in some nondairy creamer. I did not have chocolate chips, but added a teaspoon of instant coffee. I used Ghiardelli unsweetened cocoa. I probably should have sprayed my mug with Pam, still, it came out in one piece after I ran knife around edge, and should clean easily. Apparently my mug was big enough, because nothing escaped. I was unsure of the wattage of my 1989 quasar oven, so cooked it an extra 30 sec.

The texture is spongy, but in a poundcake kind of way. It's quite dense. Would have guessed it was some kind of bundt cake. After cooling, it sliced into 4 rounds about 3/4 inch thick. If I wanted to hurt people, I'd spread them with nutella, jam, chocolate syrup or something, and serve with ice cream, still warm. I think I'll skip the coffee next time. I think you could make it with less oil, which would be good, because the calories are horrendous.

I think 2 should eat as is, but you could stretch to three people, maybe even four, with strawberries or other addition. Alas, you can easily polish off the whole thing yourself.

I have had a gardening bug hit me. I didn't have much garden last year after June or so because the summer "blast" moved in early and made outdoors unbearable. By the time I could really think about gardening in that weather, everything was sticks anyway. And again, I had a year where I bought plants and supplies and they all died. So I'm gardening on the cheap this year! That way I won't be so bummed about nonsurvivors, and flushing perfectly good money down the john.

But that means things from seed. I decided this year I would grow a lot of seeds in my cabinet collected in twists of paper and envelopes. Some I can generally identify by looking, some I have completely no idea. And I can find some unusual seeds while out walking. So there's no telling. I'm hoping to find a lot of zinnias, marigolds, salvia, columbine among the project X. We'll see. Plus I have packages of seeds several years old... which might sprout, might not. Coleus, basil. Wildflowers. Carrots, from some hopeful magazine. Radishes.

I'm going to zero expense on the pots... I rolled up some tubes out of strips of newspaper around a toilet roll, folded a bottom, stapled the newspaper on the bottom and the side to keep it from unrolling, filled with soil and set in a plastic dishpan. Read about this method some time ago in a book. I have maybe 20 of them or more before I ran out of paper. They look like little wrapped sandwich halves. When watered, they are a little fragile, but I think they will be cohesive enough. I'll just plant the whole thing when it comes time to transplant. I made labels out of cardboard tvdinner box. So far they read "Mystery!!!" but I've only planted two. Both pod things, probably shrubs or decorative trees. But maybe not! One of them could be the south african lily things that used to be at Lover's Lane Dart Light Rail Station. Waiting to plant more until I finish loading the dishpan with paper tubes, so they don't fall over when moving around. I have a big window with strong morning light they can hang around at until nearly March. I'm going to plant all kinds of things, mad science fashion. If I have to, I'll get another dishpan or two.

Anyway, that should keep me amused.

Life from Edithland:

I'm knitting a scarf, have just finished a scarf. Still great love for objects rectangular. Didn't knit very many hats last year, I have made up to 30 something/year before. I like to keep a cache of things to give away, which is one reason to go for short projects... also maybe attention span issues, who knows. Anyway, cache is low, knit faster. Many baby blankets to get to, as well.

I've been investigating crock pot cooking recently... just at the moment not cooking much, but developing a file of OMGihavetotrythatone. I have on the backburner the additional desire to construct a crockostat: http://www.delcollo.us/icp/crockostat.html for which a trip to the hardware store is in order.

I just found a recipe for foolproof piecrust, so it says, which is very encouraging. I'll test it and let you know.

Although I need another online community like a hole in the head, I finally bucked down and joined recipezaar, a site I've lurked for years. http://www.recipezaar.com/

All I can think of for now, just tossing a nickel out into the communal wishing pond.

You may not be able to sit through the whole thing, but I just had to:

I'm just going to post like I haven't been gone for forever. Merry Xmas!
A thing I found on the flist and am spreading around:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53pLaZii0zs&eurl=http://lj-toys.com/?journalid=602067

I'm quoting a article I read off Lifehack.org, called The Science of Setting Goals. It was under the productivity header, if you want to find more of it, written by Dustin Wax. Anyway, I'm just quoting the part that caught my attention, whether or not it reflects the totality of the article. That's not material. It's just this part I want to think about right now.

The Neurology of Ownership
Ownership turns out to be about a lot more than just legal rights. When we own something, we invest a part of ourselves into it – it becomes an extension of ourselves.

In a famous experiment at Cornell University, researchers gave students school logo coffee mugs, and then offered to trade them chocolate bars for the mugs. Very few were willing to make the trade, no matter how much they professed to like chocolate. Big deal, right? Maybe they just really liked those mugs!

But when they reversed the experiment, handing out chocolate and then offering to trade mugs for the candy, they found that now, few students were all that interested in the mugs. Apparently the key thing about the mugs or the chocolate wasn’t whether students valued whatever they had in their possession, but simply that they had it in their possession.

This phenomenon is called the “endowment effect”. In a nutshell, the endowment effect occurs when we take ownership of an object (or idea, or person); in becoming “ours” it becomes integrated with our sense of identity, making us reluctant to part with it (losing it is seen as a loss, which triggers that dopamine shut-off I discussed above).

Interestingly, researchers have found that the endowment effect doesn’t require actual ownership or even possession to come into play. In fact, it’s enough to have a reasonable expectation of future possession for us to start thinking of something as a part of us – as jilted lovers, gambling losers, and 7-year olds denied a toy at the store have all experienced.

I am level 48! Ding!


For once, I'm pleased about having had a birthday. My Birthday Dinner Observed® was last night at Kosta's on Greenville Ave., a lovely food place with yummy options for varied diners. I was proud to share my birthday with elcucuyfeo and thevalkyry. It's not the first time Doc and I have celebrated together, and technically, V's birthday is the day before, but we had the trifecta going on last night and it was pretty mellow.

I do not plead for presents, because I already have everything! and I got a card, a burny thing, and a box of the fertilizer that turns hydrangeas blue, which was all I could desire other than friendship, continued health, and a fresh future. Just making a happy announcement.

Thanks for the well wishes, everybody who has come forward already!

Hey, everybody, since I room at A-Kon with Amie Gantt, head of ConD/FW and old pal of considerable longstanding, thought I'd help out with promotion for this great small literary convention, gearing up for year number nine next February. It's a great time, but mysteriously still relatively unknown in the area, even though choice guests abound. I've started a livejournal about it, which will be blank until I compose some stuff which hopefully Amie will send material for. If not, I will come up with something.

Please help us figure out some ways to promote the show... I'll be writing a pdf flyer soon, and some other stuff. Suggestions would be appreciated.

Here's the url for the profile page,
http://community.livejournal.com/condfw_texas/profile

Please join up if you are at all interested. Thanks for your attention!

Fandom's beloved Uncle Bob, of legend, song and story, apparently passed away at his home last night in the French Quarter in New Orleans. I hope to post again, once I have absorbed this news. He was a great guy, I'll miss him a lot.

Here is one of those fill out the questions meme. I answered it on kingsgrave's page, and agreed to repost on my own. Should you care to fill it out, I will of course, read and comment. If you don't care to fill it out, I will not be shattered.


YOU'RE ON MY FRIENDS LIST, I want to know 36 things about you. I don't care if we never talk, or if we already know everything about each other. Short and sweet is fine... You're on my list, so I want to know you better! And what's more, I'm feeling a bit isolated and estranged after con and traveling, and I'd really like a mailbox full of fluff for a day or two. So if you've time and inclination, click below, and fill 'er out.
BE HONEST! COPY FROM HERE THEN SEND DIRECTLY TO ME IN A COMMENT THEN, if you want to, repost the empty questions in your own blog. If you don't want to, then by all means ignore the suggestion, as it probably means you have better things to use the time and brainpower on.

( Questions behind cut )