I’ve been busy like crazy as of late. Lots of work, quite a few crafting projects that need to be finished on tight deadlines and still not enough to keep me from starting other stuff just for the heck of it. I don’t have batteries in my camera for proof at the moment, but just to name a few:
Yet another baby blanket for a little girl who is due the day after tomorrow. Not to mention two more blankets after that.
A top secret project whose recipient may be reading this blog so I am not going to really go into it. Let’s just say that it involves intarsia and a certain Captain.
My Undertaking of Grandiose Proportions, which I am now confident is doable so I’ll spill the beans: Neta’s birthday celebration at her daycare center is July 11th. While I love birthdays, I hate that they are equivalent with cheap plastic party favors that fall apart on the way home and industrial snacks and sweets the nutritional value of which would make your toes curl, and not in a good way. So I decided to break the rules. Even though the daycare center gives you a piece of paper listing exactly which crappy industrial foods you are supposed to get at the supermarket, Neta’s birthday is going to be catered with homemade baked goods and fresh fruit, and instead of store bought junk for party favors, each child will receive a sock creature, hand made from a single sock from a heap that has been lying around the house. I will be celebrating my daughter’s birthday with a clear conscience.
Tal’s birthday is on the same day as Neta’s, and I want to make him a little bag of treat, all of which allude to this:
The concept:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.
The Questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.
On Tuesday night, Tal and I left the kids at my mom’s house and went out to see Dee Dee Bridgewater live at the Holon Theater, as a birthday gift from his parents. After driving up to Tel Aviv from Beer Sheva with both kids by myself, and two weeks of regression back to awful awful sleep at night, I was sure that I would fall asleep during the first ballad, and that would be it.
My acquaintance with Dee Dee Bridgewater so far was mostly through the album “Keeping Tradition” which holds an esteemed place in our 500-strong CD collection. From that I already knew that she is a vocal virtuoso and truly a jazz musician - many jazz singers often leave me feeling that they don’t really have the jazz in them, they just have nice voices and know how to do what they’re told. Female singers in particular often irritate me because they bring the diva pose onto stage with them, when they’re really just vocal technicians.
We managed to put the kids to sleep, get dressed, stop on the way for pizza at one of our old haunts, and hit the road for Holon. Getting to Holon: 15 minutes. Finding a parking spot in Holon: 50 minutes. Running to the theater only to find out that the web posting that the show starts at 21:30 was wrong and that we are in fact already 15 minutes late: priceless.
When we got to our seats, we were glad to find out that the show hadn’t actually started yet.
And then, the musicians take the stage, and start playing a jazzy intro. And then, in she walks, wearing a snakeskin print dress, rocking a bald head and huge blingy gold earrings, and she just brings the house down. What can I say? Such an amazing performer. Such a jazzy sex bomb. The voice, the moves, the attitude. She’s just got it all. And did we mention that she is exactly twice my age? I was born 3 days before her 29th birthday. So help me god if I’m half as awesome as she is now in 29 years.
I’m not going to go into anything more - I’m sure if you want a good review of Dee Dee Bridgewater you can easily find more than one written by people who actually understand what they’re talking about. All I can say is that personally, I was blown away and moved to bits by her.
Let me leave you with a little Dee Dee charm, then.
But that’s you. As for me, well, today is my birthday. 29th, to be precise.
I could write about taking stock of my life so far.
I could write about my dreams for the future.
I could just plain write about myself.
But I decided to leave that to you. Here’s the deal: write me something, anything, whatever, about me. It doesn’t have to be true or even remotely based on any kind of fact. It does, however, need to make me feel good somehow, what with this being my birthday and all.
ONLY the comments that make me smile, laugh, or need a cold shower, will go into a draw to win one of three fabulous gift bags. And what is in these gift bags, you ask? There will be some destashed items, such as books, cd’s, dvd’s, handbags, yarn, or whatever the hell else I decide to pass on to a new home. There will also be items handcrafted by yours truly. All items will be in good condition, and come from a smoke-free home, however I do have a cat so if you are allergic I will be unable to send you anything soft and fluffy. I am not currently specifying the exact content of each gift bag, because that will be determined after I have done some creepy stalking of the lucky winners.
I’m giving y’all a week. Comments posted until the end of May ‘08 will be included in the draw. Good luck to you, and Happy Birthday to me!
* Be warned that some of the people I hang out with on teh intarwebz have quite impressive pottymouths, and I have no control whatsoever over what they might choose to say here. Read other comments at your own discretion, and please don’t be offended by anybody else here. This is about me, after all, and I can say to a certainty that I’m not offended by any of it.
1 June ‘08 - I’ve locked the comments and will be drawing the winners when I don’t have any screaming babies trying to destroy my laptop.
Need I say more?
No pictures, but boy, do they taste fabulous.
2 cups self-rising flour
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
50 grams bittersweet chocolate (the darker and more cocoa solids, the better)
1/4 cup oil
100 grams butter/margarine
5 tablespoons Irish cream
2 tablespoons of milk or substitute
Preheat oven to 150C degrees.
Melt the butter, chocolate, and milk together until smooth. In the meantime, mix the remaining ingredients in a bowl, and then add the chocolate mixture in slowly. Using a teaspoon, scoop batter onto a cookie sheet, setting each scoop at least 3 cm apart (the cookies double in size in the oven). Bake in the oven 20-30 minutes. The cookies will be slightly soft when ready.
They go really well with Irish coffee - that’s coffee with a tablespoon of Irish cream. Irish music optional.
I’m going bake-crazy!
Sunday was brownies.
Monday was bread.
Today I was going to do some cleaning up. Yeah, right. I lasted an hour, than I decided I HAD to try something that I’ve been meaning to do for a while.
So here’s my recipe for vegan halva cookies:
Preheat oven to 160C degrees.
2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup sugar (brown or white goes)
1/2 cup unmixed sesame tahini
1/2 cup olive oil
mix
scoop spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper
bake and be careful not to burn them - my oven took 15 minutes. If they start darkening, take them out immediately, these will burn easily.
Cool completely before eating.
You will probably have to make another batch for the original purpose because you may well eat them all up as soon as they’re ready. But these are guilt-free calories, the ingredients are all super healthy.
And, if my culinary productivity isn’t enough to get you very concerned, I’m starting an Undertaking of Grandiose Proportions. Let’s just say it involves a certain curly girl’s birthday and these:
I’m not disclosing any further information in case it doesn’t end up happening so I don’t cause myself more public humiliation than absolutely necessary.
I’m having a series of good days. Kant’s socks are done, and many lessons have been learned from them about sock knitting in general, and the odd deformities of my feet in particular.
So of course I feel accomplished enough to experiment with building my own pair of toe-up socks, with some bamboo yarn, which is also an experiment.
I am also in negotiations to score a significant amount of dyeable yarns. I’ve enrolled Yiftah to Neta’s daycare starting September, and I’m already smelling the freedom in the air.
To increase my levels of awesomeness, I baked some fabulous bread today, and decided that I’m not going to buy bread anymore.
Here’s the recipe. I sorta winged it:
Preheat oven to 180C degrees, and mix
500 ml self-rising flour
500 ml whole wheat flour
330 ml pale lager
a pinch of salt
knead into dough, shape loaf as you wish (you can make it rounder or longer)
bake on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper - my oven got it right in 35 minutes
Yum.
My next experiment in breadmaking will involve freezing unbaked loaves so I can make a large amount and then pop a loaf in the oven as necessary.
I’m off to try to ride this high for as long as possible. At the moment, my world is a good one.
