Special Screening of Serenity:

Come join us on Sunday, December 6th at 12:30pm at the Village Alamo
Drafthouse Theater for a special screening of Serenity.
All proceeds from this event will go to the Al Wooten Jr. Heritage
Center, which is
our beloved Shepherd Book's charity organization. More information
about the Center can be found at: http://www.wootencenter.org/
Tickets are $6.75 and they are available on the Alamo web-site:
http://www.originalalamo.com/default.aspx?l=3&d=12/6/2009
We hope to see you there!

Happy Friday everyone! Last Friday's Saucy Cats post was delightfully popular, so we decided to extend the pet theme to this week to include all of your 'Saucy Pets'.

Next week we'll do Winter/Holiday decorating. Whatever you do for this time of year, even if it's Elvis.

Have fun and bon weekend.

LiveJournal: The First Decade

Just in time for holiday shopping, we're thrilled to announce the release of our ten-year anniversary anthology. Published by Blurb.com, the book showcases a decade of extraordinary talent drawn from LiveJournal users around the world. This must-read compilation features stories, memes, photos, comics, editorials, graphic content, and more, including:

1. Excerpts from Oh No They Didn't (a/k/a ohnotheydidnt), the largest community on LiveJournal, covering celebrity gossip, entertainment news, and pop culture
2. A look at post-Katrina New Orleans from the journal of Poppy Z. Brite
3. Gripping narratives, including a poignant reverie on a blind date
4. Photography that spans the globe, ranging from old-fashioned Polaroids to underwater photography
5. Mouthwatering dishes from food_porn

What began as a late-night inspiration back in Brad Fitzpatrick's college dorm in 1999 has grown to encompass nearly 25 million users worldwide, with journals and communities covering every conceivable hobby, passion, and topic. To get your copy, please visit the Blurb Bookstore. For updates and entries from book contributors, please join lj_turns10.

Tweaks and enhancements

• You can now ban a user from all of your communities and journals at once. To access this feature, hover over the person's userpic and choose Ban user everywhere from the drop-down menu.
• Follow LiveJournal on Twitter!

Give a little to help a lot!

In honor of National AIDS Awareness month, we've added a new charitable vgift. For each red ribbon you purchase for $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to support the development and global distribution of an affordable HIV vaccine (we'll cover credit card fees). You can read more about IAVI at lj_cares. While we're on the subject, we raised $740 from our November fundraiser for Love Without Boundaries, which supports emergency healthcare and adoption of Chinese orphans. We thank you for helping us help others.

Photos of the week

We're back with more incredible pictures from our super-talented LiveJournal photographers. Congratulations to ilya_gorokhov, who is the winner of our very first lj_photophile poll.

Curtains

Thanks, again, for joining us. Stay safe and snug out there!

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

I decided I would make fudge last night. I had never made fudge before, so I figured it would be a good thing to do. I did a quick search for fudge recipes, found a simple one and went on my way. Recipe Here

It was relatively painless. I didn't have any half and half or light cream, but I did have some heavy cream. So, I combined half heavy cream with half milk to get my own half and half. Playing with chocolate and sugar is fun. Some people seem to be scared of one or the other, or both. But, I've never had issues with them. My only issue was that my candy thermometer stopped at 210F. it has more graduations, but the mercury (or whatever) didn't rise above 210F last night. So, I pulled out my digital thermometer that we use for roasting and stuck that in the mix. It worked decently well, so long as I didn't touch it to the bottom of the pot.

How did it taste? *Ridiculously* good.

Two words: Pomegranate Cheesecake (For more pics and recipe visit FotoCuisine.com)

Since it is coming on that gift giving time of year.. I wondered if you have any book suggestions?

One book I bought and loved this yr was Jam It, Pickle It, Cure it by Karen Solomon. I really liked the recipes inside. I made cordials for all my friends for xmas. http://www.jamitpickleitcureit.com/

One book that I have borrowed from the library that is on my list to buy is Eugenia Bone's Well Preserved. She has a blog here: http://blogs.denverpost.com/preserved/ I find myself itching to make the recipes.

I bought some books while visiting Storey Publishing a few weeks ago. They had this deal of everything in the building being 50% off. I bought Home Sausage Making by Peery & Reavis as well as A Guide to Canning, Freezing, Curing and Smoking Meat Fish and Game by Eastman. I haven't yet dug into these 2 books, but the price wasn't to be beat. There are quite a few Storey Books I wouldn't mind owning. I suggest looking under Preserving or Traditional Skills in their Food and Drink sidebar. http://www.storey.com/category_listing.php?cat=Food Even at full price their books aren't expensive. I bought quite a few holiday presents that day for family and friends.

Just a note, these are my opinions and no one paid me to say anything. Just wanted to make sure I disclosed that. I just really love books and wanted to see if you had any suggestions for gift giving. I always love to add another book to my collection!

Salty, poofy, chewy, and delicious.


These are amazing dipped in mustard. And even better with a nice cold pint.

( Recipe under here! )


I also think this would be a fun baking activity to involve kids in if you happen to have any around! Kids are really good at making dough ropes. :)


See more at The Cast-Iron Darling!

Kicking off my 12 days of cookies with these lovelies!
More at my blog HERE

**EDIT Thu Dec 3 23:24:15 UTC 2009 **

Hey Everyone, we are about to run the last alter job that we need to on our database servers. This will effect userpics / scrapbook / vgift images for the next few hours. Have no fear, your images aren't lost, there is just a really intensive process running on the servers which store the information for mogilefs. Thank you for your understanding and all the LJ love...

Hey LJers,

I just wanted to let you all know that we are going to be performing some mogilefs maintenance over the next few days. We will be upgrading our current version to latest stable as well as changing some db config information to better handle the amount of files we are currently hosting. This shouldn't cause a big impact on site stability, but you may see some minor delays with userpic / scrapbook images appearing or other requests associated with our mogilefs. We would love to not have that happen, but unfortunately with some of the steps we need to take we have to cause a delay with images. I figured this was a better solution than taking down all of LiveJournal because well lets face it, we all need our daily LJ fix ;)

Thanks,

Heres something i made a while back, it did start off life as a pig but i ran out of one colour pink so i just continued with an other, till it kinda clicked as to what it looked like.


Heres the link

http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs50/i/2009/314/2/d/Boobie_by_twinkerbell2791.jpg

long time no post! like i think it's been over a year, lol

I 've been up to much, as always, but i just wanted to share a few crochet ami pieces.

first up... lamb!



(  more lamb, larger lamb, and doggie here! )

i got before n after pics too

( so far only livin room n kitchen which desperately needs help )
thanks for lookin!!!

Yarnography is open for registration.

You can find all the info on it [HERE]

as some of you know, my boyfriend is a russian immigrant who came here as a teenager. while we were visiting his family in orange county this year, his mother made some traditional ukrainian cookies BY HAND with us. god, they are soooo good. they are called oreshki and are made by baking the halves, then filling them with a mixture made of nuts, leftover crumbs from making the cookies (for extra crunch), hazelnut paste, and condensed milk that has been boiled in the can for many hours to make it taffylike.


here is a finished oreshki. look how delicious that looks!

( more this way )

My latest “thing” is meal in ones on weeknights…mainly pastas but instead of throwing together a salad, I throw in some veggies to the pasta.

I got really lazy, and I didn’t even bother to roast my tomatoes in the oven for the smokey taste. Mainly cos I wanted the garlic flavour to be intense…def not a first date meal unless well…your date is a garlic fiend too…then it is all good!

Dinner was ready in 30 minutes….and it sure hit the spot. I like it that this pasta doesn't involve any wine and instead I used the shells from the prawns to make a stock for the pasta.

Click here for the recipe

Happy with your thrift find, proud of a paint job, want to show off pictures of your new saucy sofa? Inspired by something you saw or just want to leave a show-me-your... request?



You can show it here... have fun!

Lost Recipes

Over the weekend my cousins in Queens gifted me with a recipe I had thought long lost to death. My grandmother on my dad's side passed away in the mid 90's. She was a terrible cook. All of her food was cooked until it had died a second death, turned to mush, and ceased to be palatable. She used bisquick for pizza crust for god's sake. But her pies were to die for, especially her pie crusts. Here I gift you with her recipe. I promise you the crisco makes it extra flaky and delicious, though I admit I've never encountered a recipe that encourages you to heat the fat in pie crust.

Pie Crust - makes 2 crusts

3/4c Crisco
1 Tblsp Milk
1/4c boiling water
2c flour
1 tsp salt

Scoop crisco & milk into a bowl. Add boiling water and whisk until the consistency of whipped cream. Add remaining ingredients. Mix until just combined. Turn out and knead a few times before dividing and rolling into two crusts.

I'm pretty sure she didn't even bother with chilling before rolling, what with the boiling water and all, but I'd have to verify with relations to be sure.

This was a big hit at Thanksgiving this year...



Recipe here: http://www.theklutzykitchen.com/2009/11/thanksgiving-part-ii-blue-cheese-almond.html