A possibly bloody Valentine's Day tag

Lily Chilvers' wonderful Saint Valentine Octopode joined me yesterday to create a lovely and slightly strange Valentine's Day tag for My Guy!

Our Saint Valentine is a winged creature with a long, night cap-like hat and what appears to be a quite dangerous bow and arrow of love, making him absolutely perfect for a Valentine's Day gift, don't you think?

Me too!

Alright then ... the background was made using a Cuttlebug folder that imprints damask type swirls coupled with skulls and crowns.

That surface was inked with Fired Brick and Black Soot Distress Inks using the heat embossing technique "Rusted Enamel" from page 41 of Tim Holtz's Compendium of Curiosities (the only week I go without using the Rusted Enamel technique is the week I don't craft anything at all).

A slimy-looking border of drips at the bottom of the tag was created using Martha Stewart's goo edge punch on heavy, black card stock that was coated with Perfect Medium and Ladybug Red embossing powder. After heating we see that the drips look realistically wet and icky.

Yay! Wet and icky Valentine's Day! Is that even appropriate?

Ah well, on to the text: For the word "love" we have Tim Holtz's grunge letters finished using Double Distress, another of the Compendium techniques (page 40).

The final addition to this tag was the ribbon-esque string made instead of foil-wrapped wire garland that you can find at dollar stores.

The garland doesn't quite match the tag since the bulk of this project has a dark, matte appearance, but what the hell. I didn't have black or Spanish red ribbon. Plus, if one isn't careful holding this tag the garland wires might draw blood.

Let's hear three cheers for a Valentine's Day blood-letting!

Our vote goes to the green bananas

Last July I discovered the recipe Madoya at Guam Firehouse Cook. 

 

It's a super-simple dessert recipe that is basically deep-fried bananas. You'll want to try the original recipe as written by blogger Rueben, then maybe come back here for my twisted up version.

Battered bananas enjoying a relaxing soak in hot oil.

This recipe excited me because bananas are one of my favorite foods, and because the recipe suggests the use of plantains, an ingredient I had never tried.

After our August expedition turned up no even slightly green bananas, and no plantains, we finally got this project back on the current To Do list ... about two weeks ago.

So, a few days back My Guy and I were standing in the grocery store's fruit section discussing whether we should choose a few very, very green bananas or dive into the plantains of which we knew nothing, when a young woman helpfully explained why we'd prefer the plantains. She even helped us choose what she believed to be the best-looking fruits.

What a nice lady, huh?

 

I sure which she'd been at my house during the batter-coating, deep-frying day. Because those things were nasty.

Relaxed bananas are sweet and gooey!

As I said though, this was our first experience with plantains. Ours were dry and flavorless. Maybe that's the way they taste in America, after sitting who knows how long in a shipping crate, and then in a grocery store for another week until some unsuspecting recipe tester brings them home.

We chopped them up, threw them on the brown winter lawn and watched quail and squirrels happily munch. Silly animals. They'll eat anything.

Back in the kitchen, just yesterday, we peeled a handful of slightly-green bananas, dipped them in Rueben's batter and fried as directed in the recipe.

Hopefully we'll find some day-glo-green bananas to try, but until then the slightly-green, deep-fried fruits were delicious ... mushy and delicious (we'll have a less mushy finish when we find greener fruit).

Finally, my twisted version of the recipe: Add to the original batter a bit of ground cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves and about a teaspoon of orange peel.

 

We also agreed with Rueben on another point: Madoya is as addictive as potato chips ... loosen your belt before digging in!

Welcome to Two Thousand and Twelve!

Quail in snow 2009, Reno. 2011 Driest December in 128 years.

Happy New Year everyone!

We never set new year resolutions 'round my house, but what the hell we're going to join the fun this year ... who ever even thought we'd all make it to 2012 what with the obviously true End of World warnings anyway?

Now we're all stuck waiting to see if the Mayans knew something we didn't, so it's time for me to make some changes, including giving in to the resolution craze with two goals for the next 12 months.

One is too personal for Blogger and the second is itself Blogger or blogging as it were.

My resolution is to post and check in with my friends once a week. It's nice to post here once in awhile, but really I miss visiting all of you! I'm annoyed that the past few weeks I haven't found time to chat.

However in classic resolution failure fashion I'll admit to one caveat. Things might be a funky in these first few weeks of 2012 because my final 2011 project was to start my own Web site including a "new" blog.

Since you're here with me today ... you know that things have gone the way of several other sure things from 2011. Some of the trouble has been that I didn't have nearly enough time at the end of last year to complete all of the projects I'd planned.

The Web site failure isn't all on me, though. Another problem is that I no one told me about code. Secret Web people code. HTML, HTTP, FTSPQDBS.

Honestly I've begun to think that tech geeks aren't any smarter than the rest of us, they've only memorized a lot, very many, an ungodly number of acronyms that in the real world all mean one thing, "Don't tell the non geeks."

As a craft and art and food geek myself, don't you think someone should tell me the freakin' secrets already?

Geeks of all creed and design should stick together. Look at those poor Mayans. They didn't share their secrets and with no one to keep up their calendars ... predictions of catastrophe.

That's what happens when you write a bunch of important stuff using a language that can only be read by two headdress wearing nerds who spend most of their time scrawling weird drawings on the walls of their mom's basement.