New Necklaces Listed in Etsy Shop

It's college basketball season; I can enjoy MAYBE one game per season. Since Marble Man is watching all of the UNC games, I'm retreating to the studio. This works for me, as I've been lacking serious work time for the past year.

My hard work paid off this past week, with four new necklaces to list in my Etsy Shop. I used the same design in all, but changed up the bead combinations to make four very different, fresh pieces. And I used up a bunch of beads that have been hanging around in inventory for a very long time. You know the great thing about using up beads? I get to buy new ones, of course!

You had a preview of two necklaces in a previous post, but here are all four, listed at $85.00 each plus shipping (you can click the larger pictures to see the actual listings at Etsy):

Freshwater pearls and Czech fire-polished crystals with a vermeil toggle clasp

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Czech glass black cathedral beads, topaz yellow Czech fire-polished crystals, and cafe au lait Swarovski glass pearls with a vermeil toggle clasp

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Czech glass turquoise blue cathedral beads, mint green Swarovski crystal bicones, and Czech fire-polished amethyst purple crystals with a sterling silver box clasp inset with amethyst cabachon

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Czech fire-polished crystals in deep garnet red and tangerine orange and olivine Swarovski crystal bicones with a vermeil toggle clasp

The basketball season lasts the entire month of March, so I can look forward to much more productivity in the near future!

What's Cooking Sunday: Light Chicken Parmesan

How often have you ordered Chicken Parmesan in a restaurant only to find the chicken is rubbery and stringy, and the breading is soggy and drenched with sauce? Yuck. Here’s a version that guarantees the breading will be crispy and light, and the chicken will be moist and tender. And it will wind up being so light in calories that your return trip for seconds will be guilt-free!

There are two major changes from traditional preparation to this version:
1) The breaded chicken is baked in the oven instead of fried, and
2) this recipe calls for using panko crumbs instead of traditional bread crumbs. You can see the difference between the two in this photo:

The panko has much larger crumbs, making for a nice crunchy crust. Panko is widely available now in supermarkets, as well as Asian markets. If you can’t find it, you can use traditional bread crumbs, but the texture of the breading will have a more delicate texture.

Light Chicken Parmesan
serves 6

1½ C panko (Japanese breadcrumbs)
1 T olive oil
1 oz Parmesan cheese (about ½ C), plus extra for serving
½ C all purpose flour
1 ½ tsp garlic powder
salt and ground black pepper
3 large egg whites
1 T water
cooking spray
3 large chicken breasts, 8 oz ea, trimmed of fat & cut in half horizontally into cutlets
2 C pasta sauce, warmed
3 oz shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese, about ¾ C
1 T minced fresh basil

Adjust oven rack to middle position and preheat oven to 475 degrees.

Combine the panko and oil in a 12” skillet and toast over medium heat, stirring often until golden – about 10 minutes. Spread the breadcrumbs in a shallow baking dish and cool slightly. When cool, stir in the Parmesan cheese.

In a second shallow dish, combine the flour, garlic, 1 T salt and ½ tsp pepper. In a 3rd dish, whisk the egg whites and water together.

Put a wire rack in a shallow baking pan and spray the rack with cooking spray.

Pat the chicken dry with paper towels. Lightly dredge the chicken in the flour, spank off the excess, then dip into the egg white, and finally coat with the panko crumbs. Lay the chicken on the wire rack. Spray the tops of the breaded chicken with cooking spray. Bake until the chicken feels firm when pressed with a finger, about 15 minutes.

Remove the pan from the oven. Spoon 2 T of spaghetti sauce onto the center of each cutlet and top the sauce with 2 T of the mozzarella cheese. Return the pan to the oven and cook until the cheese has melted, about 5 minutes. Sprinkle with the basil and serve, passing extra sauce and Parmesan cheese separately.

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You'll find you can apply this panko breading technique to other recipes as well. Last weekend I breaded tilapia with it, adding in some more savory spices to the dredging flour, and it was GREAT!

New Pieces

After the peyote stitch necklace was finished (Whew!), I spent some quality time this week in the studio working on simpler necklaces. Beautiful, but definitely simpler. I'm very happy with the way they turned out:

Black cathedral beads, fire-polished crystals, and Swarovski glass pearls finished with a vermeil toggle clasp.

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Freshwater pearls, Czech fire-polished crystals, and a vermeil toggle clasp

These will be available through my Etsy shop by Monday morning. Until then, you can find me here:

Oh, That Painful Artistic Process!

Early in February, I posted this story about learning new beading techniques to solve a problem. I was extremely happy with my early results, and vowed to learn more to finish the piece in the spectacular manner these components deserved. This past Sunday, I finished this necklace at the end of a painfully slow learning curve.

The components I needed to pull together were: An encase crystal rivoli pendant and two peyote-stitched beaded bead tubes. How to finish them? My early thought was to learn the tubular right-angle weave stitch and thread the pieces onto that.

I finished that tube and was deeply disappointed with the final result. I didn't like the colors I chose and the completed tube seemed lumpy and twisted. Not at all what I had hoped for.

OK, moving on... Maybe the African Helix stitch? I've seen finished pieces in Carolyn Wilcox Wells' book, and they are really lovely. I tried hard to learn this stitch from her book's basic instructions section, only to look at my result and say "What the Hell?" I was obviously missing something. So, I scoured You Tube and found a wonderful instructional video to follow. Wow. This is a fun, beautiful stitch... as long as it stays on the knitting needle I used to stabilize it during stitching.

I took the tube off the needle, and watched the beautiful metallic accent line collapse into the center of the tube. Crap! All that work, for THIS?!?

I contacted the person who gave the video tutorial, and she told me she didn't like this stitch much. She'd had requests for instructions so she learned it for the video, then stopped using it. *sigh* I cut my miserable attempt apart, rescued the beads, and decided to go with the tubular peyote stitch after all.

Apparently, I needed to go through all that aggravation to wind up with a piece of which I can be proud:

So many hours went into it that I have no hope of putting a reasonable price on it. ("YAY", another necklace for ME.) Now I know what I'm doing so I can make another one in a fraction of the time it took for this first effort. "Learn by doing" feels an awful lot like reinventing the wheel.

What’s Cooking Sunday: Artichoke and Chick Pea Pasta

With frugality being the operative word these days, I've been trying to use up ingredients that I've bought and stored in the pantry "just in case". I open the door and pull out three random ingredients and make a meal with them. Sometimes it's a good experience, and other times, well... not so much. This time was a big hit. The three main ingredients were:

frozen artichokes
a can of chick peas, and
a box of whole wheat rotini pasta.

Artichoke and Chick Pea Pasta
Serves 4

4 C cooked whole wheat pasta (reserve ½ C pasta cooking liquid)
1 onion, chopped
1 pound cremini mushrooms, sliced
2-3 T olive oil
12 oz package frozen artichoke hearts, thawed and chopped
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 C white wine
juice of 1 lemon
6-8 sun-dried tomatoes, soaked and sliced
1 can of chickpeas, drained
3 T capers, drained
¼ C pine nuts, toasted
pinch red pepper flakes
1 tsp thyme
2 tsp dried basil
salt & pepper to taste
4 oz goat cheese (I used herbed cheese)
Parmesan cheese (optional)

While pasta is cooking, in a medium saucepan sauté the onions and mushrooms in 2 T of olive oil over medium heat until the onions are translucent and mushrooms are soft. Add the artichokes, garlic, wine, lemon juice and pepper flakes. Cook for another 5 minutes, or until the sauce has reduced. Scoop out ½ C of pasta water and add to the saucepan, along with the sun-dried tomatoes, chickpeas, capers, thyme, basil, salt, and pepper. Cook about 2 minutes, until tomatoes and chickpeas are warmed through. Add pasta and toss with sauce. After serving, add 1 oz goat cheese to each plate and sprinkle with pine nuts. Add Parmesan if desired.

**Note: I made this without the goat cheese at first and it was merely "OK". When I added the goat cheese the second night, we both wished there was enough for seconds! The cheese added a wonderfully complex layer of flavor.

On That Slippery Slope...

I did it: I finally signed up for Facebook.

My webland evolution has been tortoise-like: slow and steady. First it was an email address, about 12 years ago. I was happy to dip my toes into the Web Pool with email, getting in touch with some old friends and current family. And it was great to be in such close, and frequent, contact. At the time, I thought email was about all the internet I was interested in. How wrong I was!

In the mid-90's, Marble Man, my resident techno-geek, told me I should have a website. So, we designed one, and after several permutations, got it to where I'm happy with the way it came out. Of course, no one EVER goes there! So, I use it mostly as an online catalog for store buyers and potential customers.

After the website was up for a while, I got turned onto blogging. And well, it was Marble Man who (once again) told me I should start one. After a bunch of false starts and some resistance on my part, I found my voice. You can see from my sidebar just how much I've enjoyed it. I've even learned a bit of html code so I can tweak my template. (I can't leave anything alone!) If there is a way to make my site reflect my own tastes, then I'll figure it out.

Last year, I signed up with Etsy.com. That was a big leap for me ~ having to take all those pictures, upload all my inventory, etc. But it's been good, and I've had some sales from it.

Now, along comes Facebook. Marble Man's family convinced him to sign up for it this weekend when they were all together. I was very surprised that he did it. But, he's been telling me about it and sounding so animated that I checked into it for myself. I never thought I'd do this - I mean, to have so many people out there able to see what you are up to minute-by-minute, seemed very intrusive to me. I signed up anyway - as Marble Man said "c'mon, honey! Get with the Millennium, already!"

I got my page all set up, lined up some "friends", and have been poking around the site getting familiar with it. So far today, I've been on Facebook for about 5 hours. I think I might need an intervention! As one of my friends just posted: "Slowly, back away from the computer..."

What’s Cooking Sunday: Risotto With Saffron & Shrimp

While Marble Man’s away, I decided I didn’t want to do so much cooking. I’m concentrating on one-dish meals. This one is very hearty, full of flavor, and is very easy as well:

Risotto With Saffron And Shrimp
serves 4
prep time: 10 minutes
cooking time: approximately 30 minutes

3½ C low-sodium chicken broth
½ C warm water
Pinch saffron
1 tsp olive oil
½ C finely chopped shallots
7 oz Arborio or other short grain rice
1 C white wine
12 oz shrimp, peeled, deveined, and halved, cross-wise
4 tsp grated Parmesan cheese
freshly ground pepper to taste
Chopped fresh parsley for garnish (optional)

In medium saucepan bring broth to a boil. Reduce heat to low and let simmer until ready to use.

In small bowl, combine water and saffron and set aside.

In separate non-stick saucepan, heat oil and add shallots. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, about 1 minute. Add rice and stir to coat. Continue to stir and cook 1 additional minute. Add wine and 1 cup of the simmering broth. Cook, stirring frequently until most of the liquid is absorbed.

Stir in saffron and water mixture and ½ C of broth. Cook, stirring frequently until liquid is absorbed. Add all but ½ C of the broth, ½ C at a time stirring frequently after each addition until liquid has been absorbed.

Add the shrimp and the remaining ½ C of broth. Cook, stirring frequently, for 3 minutes until shrimp are pink and rice mixture is creamy. Remove from heat. Stir in cheese and pepper.

Nutritional info for each serving:
330 calories
5 g total fat
87 mgs cholesterol
218 mgs sodium
54 g carbohydrate
1 g dietary fiber
19 g protein
76 mg calcium
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*Note: You can play with the ingredients for this recipe.

If you don’t have shallots, you can use ½ C chopped onion and a couple of cloves of chopped garlic.

Asparagus would be very good in it, or use your imagination and let me know what you did!

Enjoy. :-)

More Beautiful Music

While Marble Man is out of town for a long weekend with his family, Pooch and I are getting in some quality time together, exploring new musical genres. For a long time I was stuck in the 60's, 70's, and 80's (especially the 80's!). And while that's all fun and good, it doesn't do much to stretch my mind. So, I've been watching World Music on LINK TV again, and now have a new favorite singer.

She is Kiran Ahluwalia, Indian by birth, raised in Canada, and intensively trained in singing Gazals and Punjabi folk songs for the past 10 years. She is truly amazing: her voice is pure, her band is modern while maintaining the exotic feel of the musical color and rhythms. When I listen to her, I close my eyes and I can imagine the smell of hot, spice-filled air and beautiful sari-clad and bejeweled girls dancing. If you are looking for Far eastern music with a truly authentic, dreamy quality, she's your girl!

I hope you enjoy this gazal composed by her (her husband is playing the electric guitar):

Pooch Update

So now that some time has passed, I can tell you with certainty that Pooch has recovered from his sharp decline a couple of weeks ago. We've figured out that he stopped eating because he doesn't seem to recognize food for what it is anymore. He ACTS hungry, but put a plate of chow down in front of him and he just hovers over it, confused. I mentioned in a previous post that we've resorted to syringe-feeding him, and the weird thing is: he LIKES it! I feel our relationship has taken a kinky turn.

I sit over him on the floor, gripping him so he can't escape, stick the full syringe in the side of his mouth, and he *glugs* the food down. If I'm too slow at pushing the food out, he bites at the end of the syringe. AND, if I pick up any food that spills out of his mouth and offer it to him on a spoon, he turns his head away; if I put it back into the syringe, he can't gobble it fast enough. Weird. Luckily for him, it's not too much for us to handle at this point. So, we'll keep doing it.

Now that he's recovered, he's back to doing what he does best: snuggling, sleeping, and, well.... dog stuff.

Our little "Couch Hound" hard at work

(I promise he only LOOKS like roadkill here! No need for mouth-to-mouth {EEEwwww} - he's busily chasing dream rabbits.)

Thanks to all of you for your kind comments in my last posts about Pooch. They helped a lot.

What's Cooking Sunday: Apple Crisp

One of the many diets I've been on is the South Beach Diet. It's probably the BEST one I've experienced, being the easiest to maintain. ( Over time, I became lazy and stopped paying attention to what I was cramming into my face.) Today's recipe is one I gleaned from the Prevention.com South Beach message board many years ago. It seems like it has a lot of fat in it, but I make it very often, and STILL lose weight!

Apple Crisp
serves 4
preheat oven to 350 degrees

4 medium-sized tart apples, peeled, cored and sliced
1 C rolled oats
1/4 C oat flour (place 1/4 C rolled oats in a blender to make this)
1/2 tsp nutmeg
2.5 T + 3/8 C Splenda, divided
1/2 C Smart Balance buttery spread
1 T cinnamon
2 T water

Spray a casserole dish with Pam. Place apples in a large bowl with nutmeg, cinnamon, water, and 3/8 C Splenda. Toss until apples are well-coated and transfer to casserole dish.

In a small bowl, combine the oats, 2.5 T Splenda, and oat flour. Add Smart Balance and work together with your fingers until combined.

*Note: this will seem like a sticky mess and you'll think something has gone horribly wrong. Don't worry - it will be delicious and crunchy at the end. Place this oat mixture on top of the apples.

Bake, uncovered, for 1 hour - 1 hour 15 minutes. Top should be golden brown. Serve warm and enjoy!

And, as Charmaine of High Desert Diva commented, this is wonderful the next day for breakfast. Not as crisp, but still good.

Winning Announcement

It's time to announce the winners for the One World One Heart giveaway contest! *Drumroll*

Hooray! Enzie at World Market Portraits is the lucky winner of my blue silk ribbon-embroidered picture frame.

♡♡♡♡♡

And Christine of Du Buh Du Designs won the Agate and Sterling silver earrings.

Congratulations to you both. Send me your snail mail addresses and I'll send out your prizes as soon as I can.

♡♡♡♡♡

Thanks to all who commented on my entry. I've made many new friends and I'm going to be spending a lot more time in Blogland from now on, that's for sure!

Taking Time For Me

I've been consumed with the act of keeping Pooch going for the past week and a half (actually for the past year). Somehow, I've gotten lost in the shuffle: I began defining the quality of my day by how well the dog did that day. Thankfully, Marble Man stepped up this weekend and I got to swipe the cobwebs out of the studio doorway and do some beading. (Oh, yeah... she makes jewelry, right?) It took a while to get my groove going, since I haven't made any jewelry projects since Thanksgiving. It really got away from me!

A couple of weekends ago, I treated myself to a triple-shot-skinny-latte at Barnes & Noble while perusing the latest issue of Bead and Button Magazine. There's something special about a new mag: the smell of the fresh pages, the promise of projects to come, and the thought of learning something new. Last Fall I made a stab at teaching myself the flat peyote stitch. I love the whole idea of bead weaving. You take piles of little tiny things and weave them together to make a greater whole. The bracelet I made was fun and cute, and used fairly large beads. It was a good first project but I wanted to step up the difficulty a notch or two. I set out my dishes of size 11 and 15 seed beads and polished up my reading glasses. Those 15's are very tiny!

I started with some beautiful 14mm crystal rivoli's. When they arrived in the mail, I thought, "well this is interesting - there's no hole for stringing! What do I do with this?" I sat down with my new mag, turned to the instructions for bezels and figured out how to make one using peyote stitch. Basically, it's a beaded cage that encases the rivoli. It came out pretty well. So, now I have this beautiful pendant, and what am I going to do with it?

The bracelet I made last time used even-count peyote stitch. To shake things up I thought I'd try odd-count peyote and make some beaded tubes to match my new pendant.

Turns out, odd-count peyote is a little trickier than even-count, but I got it figured out and see the result!

Now to make a tubular right-angle weave rope to hang these beauties on, and I'll have a real treasure.

Too Busy Cooking for Pooch...

... and much too tired to cook for us. I had to skip the What's Cooking Sunday feature this week. We've been just picking at leftovers and foraging for ourselves.

We've had quite a trying time with Pooch. He's decided to be just as finicky as That-Cat-He-Thinks-He-Is and is refusing food. One of the sideways symptoms of his liver failure is that now he's hypoglycemic. We HAVE to get him to eat or deal with seizures. So, we pulled out the feeding syringe and have been force-feeding him four to five times a day!

Hopefully, Mette will be back in her office this week and can pull some rabbit from the deep recesses of her magic hat.

Our Dog is a Cat...

From drawings

We've always suspected this, but yesterday had it confirmed. Several times throughout his 15 year lifetime, our heroic vet, Mette Tompkins, has had to snatch our dear Pooch from the Jaws of Death. The first time was when he bit off the pointy end of a corn cob, swallowed it, and couldn't pass it. He had major exploratory surgery to have it removed. And we moved the trash can to a closed closet. Who knew a 12 pound little dachshund could open a garbage can on his own?!?

A year later, our Foolish Boy swallowed the knuckle-end of his Nylabone. *sigh* I just KNEW I was taking him to see his Auntie Mette, the vet, the following day. Sure enough, she said we had to have the SAME surgery, they would even follow the previous incision. We told her to go ahead and install a zipper since we sensed a developing pattern!

Throughout the years, he's burned through what seemed to be the first eight of his Nine Lives. Then the worst news ever: 2 years ago, our Beloved Beast was diagnosed with liver failure. Hello Ninth Life. Defying all odds, he's lasted 2 years with this terminal condition, when the vet said he'd probably be done in 6 months. (We're convinced that he's decided to outlive us out of sheer cussedness!) It hasn't been easy.

This past week was a bad one. He stopped eating. Nada, Zip. No amount of doctoring of his prescribed dog food could convince him to eat. I was even trying to spoon feed him. His reaction upon facing the plate of chow was to physically recoil and he seemed to say "Ew, ew, ew EWWWWW!" Stress and Worry piled onto our shoulders - yesterday I was in serious need of Cupcakes, or Chocolate... or maybe both.

We took him back to Auntie Mette's office yesterday. She suggested we try cat food and opened up a can right there in the exam room. She, Marble Man and I, and the vet techs watched as the dog hoovered the stuff up. Success! Then he looked around with this look of suspicion on his face: "Wait a minute... when I come here, they don't usually put stuff in THIS end!"

Long story short, the little Monster is eating with gusto... for now. This just confirms our belief that he's a cat: Nine fully-lived lives, and he gobbles cat chow.

Feb 6, Update:
The honeymoon with the new food lasted exactly 24 hours. Crap! Now he's back to hovering over the dish, but refusing to eat. We've tried heating it up, adding tomato sauce, peanut butter, Parmesan cheese... to no avail.

Any ideas?

What’s Cooking Sunday: Black Bean & Turkey Chili With Golden Raisin & Rosemary Muffins

What’s more iconic to serve on Superbowl Sunday than chili and cornbread? Well, I’ve got a lean, yet delicious, version of chili here using black beans and ground turkey. You can go with the usual cornbread on the side, but how about trying some Golden Raisin and Rosemary Muffins instead? They are light, savory, and slightly sweet at the same time.

Black Bean, Turkey, & Corn Chili
Serves 6

1 T vegetable oil
1 lb ground turkey
1 large onion, chopped
1 T ground cumin
2 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp cayenne pepper
½ tsp ground black pepper
2¼ tsp garlic powder
1 ¾ C chicken broth
1 C chunky salsa
1 T sugar
1 (15 oz) can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 (16 oz) can whole kernel corn, drained

Heat the oil in a 4-quart saucepan over med-high heat. Add the turkey, onion, and spices. Cook until turkey is well browned, stirring frequently to break up the meat.

Stir in the broth, salsa, sugar, beans and corn . Heat to a boil, then reduce heat to low.

Cover and cook for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Golden Raisin and Rosemary Muffins
Makes 12 muffins

1¾ C all purpose flour
¼ C sugar
1 T baking powder
¾ tsp salt
¾ C skim milk
¾ C golden raisins
2-3 tsp fresh rosemary leaves, chopped
1/3 C cooking oil
1 egg, lightly beaten

In small saucepan, heat milk, raisins and rosemary at a simmer for 2 minutes. (It will look curdled, but this is OK.) Add cooking oil and cool slightly. Add in beaten egg.

In large mixing bowl combine flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder. Add milk and raisin mixture all at once to flour mixture. Stir until just moistened.

Divide evenly in greased muffin tin. Bake at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes until golden. Remove from pan, and serve warm.