Jimi's Salsa

When my friend Jimi made this salsa, she and Aurora and I stood in my kitchen and ate a not-insignificant sized bowl in about 10 minutes.



It's that good.

Luckily this salsa recipe is also quick and easy and makes a bunch to share (or save). You can easily halve it, but since we've been going through it pretty quickly, I made a big batch. Also, after a few days, any leftovers taste wonderful added to tortilla soup, or slathered over breakfast.

The Ingredients
2 big cans of diced tomatoes (If you can find it, I really suggest using Muir Glen; it is second only to homegrown tomatoes. If your grocery store doesn't carry this brand, you can ask them to order it for you.)
4 chopped jalapenos, seeds and membranes removed (this number depends on their spiciness. If they are super hot, only use 2 and then add a less hot pepper- even a half a bell pepper will work.)
1 clove of garlic, peeled and sliced
Half an onion, diced small
Half a bunch of cilantro, chopped small
One lime, juiced
Salt to taste



How To
Note- When I say 'blend' I mean either pulsing it in an upright blender or mixing it with an immersion blender. When I say 'stir' I mean with a spoon till it's mixed.
-Combine the tomatoes, the peppers and the garlic (in either the blender or a big bowl).

-Blend till it's fairly uniform and the peppers are in tiny pieces.

-Stir in the onion, cilantro and half the lime juice.

-Taste and add salt and more lime juice as needed.

Tips
-If you like your salsa chunkier, start with half a can of tomatoes and blend that with the peppers and garlic till they're in tiny pieces. Then add the rest of the tomatoes and pulse briefly.
-You may be tempted to blend up the onions and cilantro (especially if you don't really like them), but I wouldn't suggest it. Chopping them and stirring them in actually contains their flavor and keeps it from overpowering the entire thing.

Note- My brother called me on Sunday night and told me that I was totally accurate in describing the addictiveness and general wonderfulness of this recipe. He said he was *this* close to using a spoon.

Deconstructed Breakfast Burrito

We call them Potachos (short for Potato Nachos). Feel free to call them whatever you want. They won't mind.



I must admit that I invented this one tortilla chip-less morning as I was pondering the best way to get a fantastic batch of leftover salsa into my mouth by a means other than a spoon.

As it turned out to be really tasty (and easy) I thought I'd share the results with y'all. And I haven't yet verified it, but I feel sure that this would be perfect hangover food.

Ingredients
4 or 5 potatoes (cut into half inch square pieces)
Olive Oil (several glugs from the bottle)
Salt
Pepper
1/8 t. Chipotle Chili Powder or any other chili powder (the stuff I used is there in the next picture- McCormick's)
Can of black beans (drained)
Eggs (3 or 4)
Shredded Cheese
Your favorite salsa (Jimi's salsa is our personal favorite.)


How To
-First mix the potatoes in a bowl with the oil, salt, pepper and chili powder. You want the potatoes to be all glisteny with the oil and well seasoned with the spices.
-Pour into a baking dish.



-Put in a 450 degree oven until the potatoes are well cooked and all brown and crispyish. It's a good idea to scrape the bottom once with a sturdy spatula.



-Remove from oven, and both carefully and quickly, break the eggs all over the potatoes, doing your best to keep the yolks intact, if you like runny eggs, which I do.




-Sprinkle the can of black beans over the eggs. (maintaining a heightened level of vigilance against the scorching hot sides of the pan.)



-Put back in the oven until the eggs are done to your liking.
-Remove from oven and sprinkle on the cheese. And the salsa.



Feel free to nacho these up to whatever level your arteries can handle.



Once I verify all the salsa ingredients with my good friend Jimi, I'll share the recipe here. (She did make it in my kitchen, so I should have been paying attention, but I hadn't yet tasted its awesomeness, so I had no idea I should have been video taping its creation.)



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Jimi's Salsa

Tutorial- Handsewn Bookmark

Today I'm wrapping up the series of tutorials for the book gift set with a hand sewn and hand painted bookmark, which, conveniently doubles as a gift tag for the whole shebang.



As a recap. This gift set includes...
-Bookplate Stamp (with ink pad)
-Library Bag
-Handsewn Bookmark/Gift Tag
-and if you really wanna go above and beyond, tuck a gift card from your local bookstore into the library card pocket. But, really, that should probably be reserved for Grandparent-level spoiling.

Individually, any of these are pretty great gifts. But, put it all together and it's extra fun. And I have to say, there were adults who were jealous of the kids who received these. So don't limit it to just the little ones.



(One Note- I would only give the stamps to kids old enough to understand the difference between stamping in their own books and stamping in library books.)

OK, on to the tutorial.

Materials & Tools (Hopefully you'll have a lot of this already.)
-Watercolor Paper (This stuff is really thick and absolutely necessary for this project).
-Good quality pen (I used a Micron Pen)
-Watercolors
-Paintbrush
-Matching Embroidery Floss
-Light Box (optional, but really helpful) I have a Light Tracer.
-Pushpin
-Needle
-Low Temperature Glue Gun
-Hole Punch

How To
-Cut out 2 pieces of watercolor paper, each 2 inches by 7 inches.
-On one of the pieces, using the pen, outline the words 'Happy Birthday' (or their name or 'Merry Christmas' or 'Good Night and Have a Pleasant Tomorrow'), along with whatever little design you want to embroider, leaving room to punch the hole.
(I did trace these on a light box.)
-Paint the inside of the words with watercolors. *

-As long as you have the paint out, you can go ahead and do the inside of the balloon at this point, though I did it after the embroidery. (Either way works fine.)

-On top of a thick piece of cardboard (or corkboard), use a pushpin to make holes along the length of the embroidery design. This part isn't completely necessary, but it does help create even stitches as well as make pulling the needle through the paper less aggravating.



-Using all 6 strands of embroidery floss, sew the design. (Stitch-It Kit has some very simple instructions for embroidering these stitches. I used the stem stitch.)

-Write the To: and From: info on the second piece of paper.
-Now using a low temp hot glue gun, attach the pieces of watercolor paper together, keeping the glue at least a quarter of an inch from the edges.
-Don't stress if a lot of the glue has cooled before you get it all stuck together.

-Cover the two pieces (top and bottom) in a thick piece of fabric. (Denim worked perfectly.)

-Iron the whole thing (using medium setting) for about 10 seconds. Check the bookmark and squoosh together with your fingers. The glue should gently heat up, allowing you to push the papers together firmly. If the glue hasn't softened enough, re-cover and iron again. Note- I would NOT try this with any paper other than thick watercolor paper. You will burn your fingers.
-Punch a hole and thread with floss.


You're done.

Tips
-The idea for embroidering bookmarks on paper came directly from Aimee Ray's book Doodle Stitching: Fresh & Fun Embroidery for Beginners. If you're interested, this book has some really cute patterns.
-For these, I would suggest making the embroidered design fairly simple, which will keep the time frame for this project manageable. This balloon took me less than 10 minutes to embroider. The entire thing took less than 30 minutes total.
- You can cut off the corners with a punch (or use scissors), but I didn't think it looked all that much better for the level of effort it required.
-*To get the gradient effect, I painted the whole thing a very light color, waited for it to dry, and then painted the bottom half a bit darker, let it dry again and then painted the very bottom the darkest shade. (1, 2, 3)

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How to Sew Your Own Handles

This Lawn is Your Lawn*

Just after Barack Obama was elected president, I ran across a group called Kitchen Gardeners International. They had created a campaign called Eat The View that was petitioning the president elect to replace the front lawn of the white house with a kitchen garden.

(Here's a quick little cartoon explaining the history of growing food at the White House. Good lesson for the kiddos too.)


The Garden of Eatin': A Short History of America's Garden from roger doiron on Vimeo.


Of course I signed their petition and put myself on their (e)mailing list.

And just yesterday I received an email from KGI announcing that the Obamas will actually be putting in a garden.



I'm not even sure exactly why it is that this makes me so very happy.

But it does.

* The title was borrowed from another video at the Eat The View site.

The Night Sky

Note-Even though this already happened, you can still check out the satellite tracker website and see what upcoming events will be visible to you. The ones labeled 'Very Bright' are going to be the best.

This is just a quick post to let you all know that if you look up in the sky this evening, you might be able to see both the International Space Station as well as the Space Shuttle Discovery as the crew of the Discovery goes about replacing some of the solar panels on the station.

According to the very cool website, spaceweather.com, "Just before the two spaceships joined, Quintus Oostendorp watched them fly side-by-side over his backyard in the Netherlands."

He was able to get this amazing picture.



How great is that?

The exact times it'll be visible in your area can be found if you enter your zip code in the satellite tracker at spaceweather.com. And from what I can tell, it'll be visible for just a couple of minutes.

In just a bit, we're headed out on the roof so Joey can use a compass and protractor to figure out in what direction and at what elevation everything will be visible tonight. Maybe we'll even practice in the bathroom to figure out how to keep the shutter open on our camera.

This comes right on the heels of our day at the science museum yesterday, where we learned why it is that if you head out into space without your suit, your blood will boil and your lungs will explode. She didn't like seeing the marshmallow man expand in a vacuum, but it was pretty amazing to watch water boil at room temperature.

Honestly, my favorite thing about homeschooling is that I get to share in so much of this learning with her.

Protecting my Orchids from the Cat

His exact words were, "I waitin for her ta chew on dah pwant."



He stood there for a good 10 minutes before he got his chance.

A Few Random Things About Me- 46 thru 50

50- I am totally yawn susceptible. If anyone even thinks about yawning, I’ll yawn. Just typing the word yawn has made me yawn. (And proofreading it made me do it again.)

49- I think this is my favorite video ever.



48- My handwriting is almost exactly like my mom’s and my sister’s.

47- As a kid, I've experienced exactly what Pink Floyd sang about in Comfortably Numb. “my hands felt just like two balloons” I still get it as an adult occasionally. Without the help of drugs, I feel I should add.

46- I cried inconsolably when I saw Han Solo frozen in carbonite. My parents had to carry me, bawling, past a long line of people waiting to see the movie while I ruined it for them, sobbing about the fact that Han Solo was dead. Wait, you have seen Empire Strikes Back, right? Crap, did I ruin it for you too?