Monthly Archives: September 2012

September 21, 2012 · 12:08 pm

An ASTRONOMICAL Sale!

Tomorrow, at 8:49am MDT (14:49UT), is the Autumnal Equinox. There’s a whole scientific description of this biannual astronomical event, but to the layman: equal lengths of night and day. 12 hours of light, 12 hours of dark. Half and half.

Warm up your keyboards, folks, as I’ve had the crazy idea to observe this phenomenon (â™ª do doo de doo doo â™«) with a 12 hour/half off sale at Tiddleywink Vintage! From 9am to 9pm (MDT) tomorrow, September 22, 2012, you’ll save 50% on EVERY SINGLE ITEM. Even clearance listings! No code necessary! In fact, I’ll be turning off all other coupon codes for the duration of the sale. Don’t be greedy. (Shipping is still full price, sorry. Remember that all listed shipping fees are estimates, and any charge in excess of $2 over my actual cost will be refunded to you with-the-quickness.)

I’ve never before offered such a deep discount on the entire shop, and who knows when I’ll do it again. If you’ve had your eye on something, jump on it during this sale! There are only 187 days left until Viva Las Vegas, you know. Time is ticking!

_________________

Postscript: I was scheduled to write yesterday about transforming some unfortunate TV trays. The project is at a (hopefully brief) standstill while I try to remember whole out running errands to buy new ink for my printer, which is an integral part of this project. Stay tuned.

Post-postscript: You’ll notice that today’s blog post is notâ€”as originally scheduledâ€”centered on a vintage recipe. I made aÂ Pinterest-via-Bon AppÃ¨tit recipeÂ for dinner the other night, and I’m still eating leftovers. No point in making more food just yet.

TirammmmisÃ¹

Do as I say, not as I do.

TiramisÃ¹!

First, if you’re opposed to the consumption of raw eggs, stop right here. Come back tomorrow, when I share with you all how I manage to turn some unattractive TV trays into (hopefully) pillars of retro beauty.

Superfluous photo of Yolky, my goofy egg separator (which fits perfectly on a Fire King soup bowl) by JO!E.

Today, I’m going to give you the recipe for TiramisÃ¹ exactly as it is written on this (Italian) package of (Italian) ladyfingers (imported from Italy).

Are you catching that? I want to make this clear: this is an authentic, traditional, Italian recipe. As promoted by Vicenzi, the “No. 1 in Italy” brand of savoiardi (ladyfingers). This tiramisÃ¹ may not be what you’ll find in your local supermarket bakery, and it may not be what you’re accustomed to. It is, however, delicious. And incredibly easy. When made according to these instructions.

TiramisÃ¹
Ingredients for 6â€“8 servings
400 g Vicenzovo ladyfingers
400 g mascarpone
4 eggs, separated
100 g sugar
2 cups espresso
30 g cocoa powder

Beat the egg yolks with sugar until thick and foamy. Whisk in mascarpone. In separate bowl, whisk the egg whites until stiff. Fold the mascarpone mixture into the egg whites. Line a rectangular dish with halve of the Vicenzovo ladyfingers dipped into coffee and cover with half of the mascarpone cream mixture. Top with a second layer of dipped Vicenzovo ladyfingers and mascarpone cream. Sift cocoa powder over the whole surface. Refrigerate until serving time.

The very first time I made this, it was exquisite. The only change I made was to use, instead of the Vicenzovo “hard” ladyfingers, an equivalent amount of Trader Joe’s Soft Lady Fingers, which had fallen into the back of my pantry and gotten stale anyway. They fit perfectly into my large Pyrex baking dish, and with the addition of the eggy mascarpone cream and a dusting of cocoa powder, the result was heavenly.

But I still have 400 grams of these Italian ladyfingers in the pantry. And an invitation to dinner with friends. “I’ll bring dessert,” I say. But this timeâ€¦this time, things will be a leeeetle bit different.

Egg yolks, sugar, faux-mascarpone.

Have you shopped for mascarpone lately? My local supermarket carries two brands, at $5 and $6 per container. This recipe requires two containers. Now don’t get me wrong, I like my friends and all, but that’s a steep price for someone as ~~cheap~~ frugal as I am. Enter: the Internet. And an assortment of recipes for making a mascarpone substitute. I can’t imagine that any of them will taste like proper mascarpone, but I pick a substitute formula that I think will come closest: a mixture of neufchÃ¢tel, sour cream, and heavy cream. The ratios required will make too much “mascarpone” for this particular recipe, but I figure hey, did anyone in history ever once complain that their tiramisÃ¹ was too creamy? Probably not. So I mix up a batch, thus cutting calories while doubling the prep time and dirtying an extra mixer bowl.

Lay, lady, lay.

I start lining my Pyrex dish, and these ladyfingers are not the same size as their Trader Joe counterparts. I have to break them to fit, and even then, each layer of ladyfingers is coming in well shy of the prescribed 200 grams. Oh heck, it’ll be fine, right? Right? I spread the layers of floofy (technical term, that), creamy cheese mixture, I dust with cocoa, it looks lovely. See photo at top of this post. Delightful, right? Because of all of the extra cream mixture, the dish is precariously full. I set it into another, larger dish for travel, and head to see my friends.

We dine on delicious black bean and corn tacos, we chat, we laugh, and now it’s time for dessert. I grab a spatula and some plates, and start servingâ€¦tiramisoup. The scant amount of ladyfingers can’t soak up all of the extra cream mixture. Well, that’s okay, it will still taste likeâ€¦cream cheese. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I mean, look at cheesecake, right? But this does not taste, or feel, like tiramisÃ¹. It has a vague tanginess that cream cheese has, and which mascarpone does not. And it’s soupy. So, follow the recipe as instructed. Use a big enough pan. Learn from my mistakes. And enjoy!

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Filed under food, friends, kitchen, packaging, reviews

September 18, 2012 · 5:55 pm

Facebook Fiasco: An Update

As many of you know, a buncha weeks ago I’d been involuntarily logged out of my Facebook account, and no longer had any access to my personal profile or my shop’s fan page. The page was still public and visible, I simply couldn’t administer it.

The other day while helping a friend work on her own business page, I asked her to surf over to mine to see a particular app I wanted to show her. Curiously, she was redirected back to her page. I tried viewing it from my own device, and was redirected to the default Facebook login page.

Today I tried from my desktop, and was again redirected to the login page. I figured I had nothing to lose, and tried to log in. I was greeted with this:

DISABLED. And in red, so you know they’re serious.

I certainly do have questions or concerns, so I clicked on the hyperlink. That brought me to:

Impersonation? Nope. Misrepresentation? Nope. Spamming? Nope. Hmmm.

When I click on the “contact us” hyperlink shown above, I’m instructed to upload a JPG of a government-issued ID such as my passport orÂ drivers liscense [sic]. Which there is no way I’m doing. Jeepers, they can’t even spell “license” and I’m supposed to trust them to safely store or delete a scan of my passport? PLEASE. But there’s this little caveat lower down on the page anyway:

No warning? SEVERE VIOLATION. No soup for you.

So I guess Facebook doesn’t want me, or my shop’s fan page, on their site. At all. Access to my government-issued IDs notwithstanding. So, to all of the human admins behind the many pages with which I enjoyed interacting: It’s not you, it’s me. Well, really, it’s Facebook. But the point is, it’s not you.

You can visit tiddleywink.com for easy links to some of the social media sites that haven’t kicked me off.

Improve Your Photos In One Easy Step

Facebook. Flickr. Instagram. Picasa. Twitpic. Photobucket. Snapfish. Smugmug. Everybody you know is posting their photos online, somewhere, somehow. And the most common, numero uno “flaw” I see whenever a person is the subject of a photo is this:

Centered Head Syndrome

The subject’s head is squarely in the center of the photo. Her body is cut off at an awkward point, and there is an enormous amount of empty, boring sky overhead. Now, this is a completely natural thing to do. As a typical human being, your focus is on your friend’s face. And your camera’s focus, quite literally, is in the same spot. But you need to embrace technology, break some boundaries, and MOVE YOUR CAMERA. Move the viewfinder down a bit. Maybe even turn it sideways. Take two steps closer. Now:

Make your friend the centerâ€¦of attention.

The simplest thing to do, and if your photos fall prey to Centered Head Syndrome it will improve them by 1000%, is to think to yourself, “head to toe.” While looking through the viewfinder, can you see your friend’s head and toes? Good. Start there.

“But the landscape is so pretty, I don’t want to leave it out!” Great, work with it.

There are plenty of instances where you’ll want to get creative and start cropping your friend’s body for artistic purposes, and there are diagrams online which tidily map out where to crop, or not crop, for the best image. You can delve into the “Rule of Thirds” to think about better composition overall, no matter what the subject of your photo. But before you go there, I want you to have 10 photos under your belt where you can see your friend, or friends, from head to toe. Master this one thing, and then expand on what you’ve learned. Your friends will thank you for it.

__________________

With many thanks to the U.S. Gov’t/Peace Corps for providing a copyright restriction-free photo of a beach in Togo. It’s so restriction-free that I don’t need to credit anyone or anything, but I will, because I can.

1 Comment

Filed under design, family, friends, Thank you

September 17, 2012 · 3:57 pm

Monday Rounderp

Whoa. Number of things I’m getting done today: Zilcheroonie.

Well, that there’s the “beauty” of the way my disorganized mind works. It’s not that I got nothing done, just nothing on my list. I was going to work on finishing Friday’s “To Do” list, which got preempted by spending an afternoon with a friend whom I don’t get to see enough (which describes most of my friends, really, but I digress WHAT A SURPRISE) and so Friday’s list was to become Monday’s list and then I woke up this morning with an idea for reorganizing some bakeware in my overburdened kitchen cabinets and I figured I’d better act on it before the brilliance wore off and that led to my completely rearranging my living room furniture. Which kind of cut into my morning plans. By the time I took a lunch break, I’d pretty much written off getting anything done today (outside of a little freelance and packing weekend orders). But I have an obligation to you guys, and I shall not shirk my responsibilities! So here is this week’s Rounderp:

Nifty frosted glass Kansas tumbler from 1961 picked up at a thrift store.

Whoop whoop, after a day of errands and a brief thrift store adventure, I picked up my newly tuned-up and re-tired bike from the fine folks at The Bicycle Shack on Saturday! Buuuuut I didn’t have so much as a minute to test ride it, as we were leaving promptly to go toÂ Colorado National Speedway, where I had my first experience with watching figure-8 races. I had no idea that these existed in real life, I thought they were just the domain of slot car tracks! We had a good time, and the Speedway is close enough that we were home before midnight. Yup, I’m apparently an old lady now.

New Schwalbe “Delta Cruisers” on my 1972 Raleigh Sports.

Sunday morning started with a first come, first served come-and-get-it offer on Facebook, and I didn’t think Woody should pass it up. It wasn’t until after the (surprise, you’ll find out later) was loaded into the back of his pickup truck that we looked at each other and asked, what are we going to do with this? But we’re smart cookies, and between the two of us, we’ll think of something. After all of the fetching and depositing was complete, I finally got a chance to test the newly-tune Raleigh! The brakes, even with brand new pads, are still a disappointment (if not outright dangerous) but I doubt I’ll be zooming around at high speeds. The next project is to find myself a helmet that looks appropriate with an old English 3-speed, which may take some doing. So far, friend Erica’s idea to don an English equestrian helmet is sounding like a not-entirely-wrong option!

Now, how to fill the rest of the week?

Tuesday: A couple of simple tips for taking better photos of your friends.

Wednesday: Mmmmm, tiramisu!

Thursday:Â I’ll show you how to “upcycle” ugly old TV trays into customized decorator trays with spray paint and water-slide decal paper. Or how not to. Depends on how it goes. :)

Friday: Vintage Victuals. What are your suggestions for this week, dear readers?

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Filed under cars, collections, day job, kitchen, life-threatening clutter, sports