Why Yes, We WERE Mad Scientists in Another Life: DIY Vanilla Extract and Hard Cider

I've always loved crafty projects, and tend to have a bad habit of going "Hmm I could make that..." on a regular basis.  My husband's DIY streak is of a much more of a science-y variety, which is totally cool with me since I seriously considered majoring in chemistry in college, and already had a habit of conducting science experiments in my kitchen from my homeschooled high school years.

Which is all to say, the husband and I were totally mad scientists in a previous life.

Our most recent projects are homemade vanilla extract (inspired by Simple Dollar, but these instructions were actually a lot more helpful) and homemade Hard Cider (inspired by Paupered Chef, who has excellent directions and a very science-y four-variation experimental run).

As you can see, we went with the big ol' jug of 365 Organic Apple Juice and have the fancy schmancy air lock mechanism (that thing that looks a bit like a torture device at the top) as well.  We even bought the lager yeast that the Paupered Chef ended up preferring.  Yeah, we're groupies like that.

We add a good bit of cinnamon as well, which should add a fun kick.  Its about half done now, but we already sampled it just to, you know, see how it was going.  It's... going.  As far as we can tell.

I'm also super excited about our homemade vanilla extract... we started the process about a week ago, and our vodka has already turned a promising vanilla-brown.

I just HAD to get the organic vodka, but hey there was a rebate offer on it so it was actually about as cheap as Smirnoff would have been... (and, spazzy girl moment: isn't this bottle just SO much prettier?)

We bought the vanilla beans at Costco.  They were pretty affordable but not organic... I'll probably hunt down organic ones online in the future.

As you can see, our apartment is quite the temple to culinary experimentation at the moment.  If you've heard of any other interesting/weird edible/drinkable DIY projects lately, do please tell... we might try them next.



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Monday MP3 Madness: 15 Free-and-Legal Downloads from Spin Magazine!

Is the download you're looking for no longer available?  :(  Free-and-legal tracks are often offered only temporarily, so I'm sorry if you have missed the window for this one.  Look to the right to subscribe via email, feed reader, blogloving, twitter, etc, and I'll make sure that you never miss out on free music again!

Spin Magazine's June sampler is available until the 30th, featuring:

I think my favorites are "Own Side" by Caitlin Rose (but, warning! its sad) and "Cement Slippers" by Dengue Fever (upbeat and entertaining).

Click on the image to see the track listing expanded... too small to read is what I get for being too lazy to type it all out...  =/

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Quick! Pay $5 for $20 Worth of Digital Downloads!

For my music-loving friends out there (and who doesn't like some kind of music, be it ever so specific), you should totally check out the daily deal site plum district.  Today through Monday their "everywhere" deal is $10 for 20 song downloads from Hip Digital Music Store... and better yet, there's currently a coupon code available for $5 off at plum district, so you're overall cost is just $5 for 20 downloads.  SWEET DEAL!

Check it out -- they have downloads from literally EVERY genre and popular artist, with a full catalogue of over 3 million mp3s.  If you decide you want the deal, sign up with plum district and use the coupon code 'winwin' (which should be good for $5 off any purchase through July 13th).  Then buy the deal and download away!  :)

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Review of Zevia Natural Soda: Calorie-Free and YUM!

My husband and I were both super psyched when I got picked to do a Mambo Sprouts product review for Zevia All-Natural Soda -- for the last couple of years we've gone all-natural on almost everything, and organic when possible too.  We had thought that choosing natural and organic options meant giving up soda all together, and boy was it HARD!  Even when I was waitressing and broke right out of college, I still used to find enough loose change to keep my fridge decently stocked on soda.  I more or less gave it up cold turkey after we made the natural/organic shift, but I still miss that sweet, bubbly goodness on a hot day... which, lately, means pretty much every day here in Atl.

Enter Zevia!

Zevia is all-natural, but doesn't carry a load of calories due to the fact that it's sweetened with Stevia, a South American herb that is naturally extremely sweet (100 times sweeter than sugar!) and calorie free.  I did a lot of research on Stevia a few years ago and added it to my first attempt at gardening -- I even tried to brew sweet tea using fresh stevia instead of sugar -- but basically I discovered that it can be a little tricky to isolate the 'sweet' without keeping the 'herb aftertaste', so I shifted my energies on to other things.  It's a great herb though, and Zevia was one of the first brands to utilize its potent sweetening-without-fattening abilities in soda form.

I received samples of six flavors of Zevia:  Mountain Zevia, Cola, Cola Caffeine Free, Grape, Grapefruit Citrus, and Cream Soda.  Other flavors on the market include:  Ginger Root Beer, Dr. Zevia, Black Cherry, Ginger Ale, Lemon Lime Twist and Orange.  Here are my impressions of the six flavors my husband and I tried, roughly in order of preference:

Cream Soda:  OH MY GOSH SO GOOD.  And heck, I don't normally even like cream soda.  But it was AMAZING;  the soda had a perfect balance of flavors and a wonderful creaminess.  My taste-buds thought they had died and gone to heaven.  My husband's quote:  "The Cream Soda was divine.  Transcendent.  It was exactly what Cream Soda was always meant to be."

Grapefruit Citrus:  Crisp and refreshing, and even more than that, this soda tasted FRESH.  I'm not talking about the carbonation here either (though it was plenty bubbly), the flavors themselves had a fresh edge that I'm not accustomed to finding in a can.  It was certainly a pleasant surprise though!  My husband called it "better than Fresca" and thinks it would make a great mixer.

Grape:  Neither my husband nor I had previously had much experience with grape soda, but we found this one was surprisingly good.  It was just as fruity as we would have expected, but not in a "generic purple candy" kind of way, but more reminiscent of actual fruit juice.  Yum!

Mountain Zevia:  You can probably guess which mainstream soda this one is meant to evoke, and since I'm a pretty big fan of that mainstream soda (or was anyhow) I can say with authority that it does a good job in evoking it.  I thought that this one had a veeeeery slight herb-y aftertaste, but then it was the first of the samples that I tried and I was sort of expecting an aftertaste due to my previous experiences with Stevia, so I might have been projecting my expectations on it.  I thought it was still really good, but  Husband wasn't as impressed.

Cola and Caffeine Free Cola:  These two were my least favorite simply because colas always tend to be my least favorite soda option.  So what can I say but... they tasted like cola.  They were quite refreshing.  I would certainly drink Zevia Cola while eating popcorn or pizza and I'm sure I would enjoy it just fine, but I would also be keeping my eyes open for someone with Cream Soda that I could trade with.  My husband on the other hand liked them a lot more than me, and said that they were everything he would expect from a cola.

Overall, our Zevia tasting party was a lot of fun, and definitely an eye-opening experience.  Stevia-sweetened sodas can be DELICIOUS!!  And even better, Zevia is 100% natural (no nasty chemicals or excitotoxins), calorie-free, gluten-free, Vegan, and certified Kosher.  If you want to try them for yourself (which you SHOULD by now, have you been READING this blog post???) you should hop over to the Zevia facebook page and print the $1/1 six pack coupon you'll find there.  Zevia is sold at Whole Foods, Kroger, Sprouts, Sunflower Farmers Market, Henry’s, Fred Meyer, and Earth Fare, to mention a few.  And may I recommend the Cream Soda?  It is, after all, transcendent.

Why look!  Proof that Zevia wrote the book on tasty, healthy, and refreshing.  (I entered this photo in the recent Zevia facebook A-Z photo contest... sadly, it didn't win.  I wonder why?)

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Hanna and Spreepark, a Journey into Innocence and Decay: A Film Review

We watched Hanna the other night, and I simultaneously enjoyed it very much and was very unsettled by it.  Given that it's a movie about a teenage assassin, the former is probably more surprising then the latter, but oh well.  Part of the appeal for me arose from the fact that it is filmed in several different countries, including Finland, Morocco, and Germany, and that we see them through the eyes of an innocent yet lethal girl, who has been completely isolated from the world for her entire life.  Somehow the sights are more captivating, the people more fascinating, and the colors more intense, juxtaposed as they are with the primitive white wilderness where the film begins.  Towards the end of Hanna we encounter an abandoned theme park in Berlin that I found especially haunting... especially because I vaguely remembered that it was an actual place called Spreepark, photos of which I had seen online in the past (I'll just confess now, I have a morbid weakness for urban decay).  So after the movie ended, I went and googled them up... and spent the next 45 minutes weirdly entranced. Take a look!

In case you're too lazy to click a link, here's a peak:





In Hanna, this rollercoaster is a wolf's mouth, a la Little Red Riding Hood.





I'll just tell you now, an evening of Hanna + an hour spent glued to photos of abandoned Spreepark = really, REALLY weird dreams that night.

As it turns out, Spreepark has quite a sullied history, complete with a bankrupt owner who smuggled amusement park rides to Peru, which seems rather fitting given the violence it witnesses in Hanna.  Abandoned in 2002, the amusement park's website is even still in existence.  It's currently fenced off rather thoroughly as I understand it, and there may or may not be a caretaker who lives there with a dog to keep out nosy tourists and photographers, so if you're planning a spur-of-the-moment trip to Berlin to investigate you may want to keep that in mind.  I wish they would open it for walking tours or something.  As a piece of history and evidence of how nature takes over once people step out, it really is an intriguing site... and of course, it's deliciously creepy too.  Even aside from Hanna, Spreepark certainly will capture the imagination!

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Friday Frivolity: Thunderstorms and Traumatized Kittehs

Over here it is about to rain *cough* puppies and kittens.  We've got the thunder, we've got the lightening, we've got the crazy wind...

No but seriously, there's water coming down in sheets... and bedspreads... and comforters.

All joking aside though, the rain makes me think not only of lolcats but also of North Dakota.  :(  Praying that everyone (humans and kittehs alike) are safe and dry there tonight.

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iTunes Tuesday: Free-and-Legal Downloads from Ledisi, Matt Nathanson, Milos Karadaglic, Liam Finn and more!

Is the download you're looking for no longer available?  :(  Free-and-legal tracks are often offered only temporarily, so I'm sorry if you have missed the window for this one.  Look to the right to subscribe via email, feed reader, blogloving, twitter, etc, and I'll make sure that you never miss out on free music again!

It's a pretty good week for free music on iTunes!  You will find:

"So Into You" -- Ledisi (sexy soul... love it.)

"Pressure and Time" -- Rival Sons (a "maximum R&B quartet".  Commenters describe the track as "raw" and "rockin'" and I'd agree with both.)

"Suite Espanola" -- Milos Karadaglic (They had me at "classical guitar."  Awesome track!)

"Cold Feet" -- Liam Finn (retro singer/songwriter vibe)

"Mercy" -- Matt Nathanson (Rocky pop.  And handclaps!)

"Conejo en el Sombrero" -- La Gusana Ciega (good song, that takes you on a journey through some awesome musical transitions)

"Moonlight Equilibrium" -- The Black Dahlia Murder (all right heavy metal fans, get your clicking finger ready, this one is for you!)

There's also some new free TV, including:

The Nine Lives of Chloe King (err... blond catwoman?)

Toddlers and Tiaras (please watch this for how NOT to raise your children... but then hey, beauty pageants in general weird me out, let alone ones for the under-5 age group)

Happily Divorced (confused... where's the drama there?  Is this like a New Adventures of Old Christine thing?)

Night Raid: 1931 (Yay anime!)

Enjoy!

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Friday Frivolity: The Day the World was Supposed to End (in LOLcat)

As tomorrow is the one-month anniversary of the day of the reputed rapture and alleged beginning of the end of the world, this lolcat seems particularly appropriate.

By the way, the author of all the furor, Harold Camping, insists that the rapture did occur May 21st after all, just "in a spiritual sense" -- and that judgement day in a physical sense will be October 21st.

Just, you know, FYI.

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I Kissed a Beet and I Liked it... with before and after photos! Beet DIY Natural Lipstick!

Last week I mentioned my little romantic adventure with a beet, as well as how it was motivated by a Canadian Defense Group study on heavy metals commonly found in every.single.cosmetic.tested.  (Problematic?  Hell yes.)

However, I failed to take a "before" picture prior to smooching my vegetable friend, so it was hard to tell just how efficacious our little encounter really was.  I decided to remedy this today.

The "Before":

The "After":

So, a definite effect, but not a dramatic one.  More of a subtle "What? I always look this good..." look then a dramatic "out on the town or off to a business meeting, I haven't decided yet" look.

A commenter on the "MacGyver Your Makeup" post on ReadyMade suggests mixing beet powder (which apparently people take as a supplement?) with vegetable glycerin to create an actual lipstain, so I'll need to try that soon too.

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Monday MP3 Madness: Free-and-Legal Downloads from Mindi Abair and Nathan Pacheco

Ok, for some reason Campbell's Soup "Labels for Education" likes to give away free music -- I think I posted back a while ago about the downloads they had available (music from Kate & Kacey and Crosby Loggins, still available btw) but they have a couple new ones now:

"L'Esprit Nouveau" from Mindi Abair
"Tribute" from Nathan Pacheco

Somewhat confusingly, the Mindi Abair download is an almost entirely instrumental, jazzy saxophone piece.  The Nathan Pacheco download is actually really cool, a solo vocalist piece in Italian with an orchestra behind (I might be wrong about it being Italian... and honestly it might not be a full orchestra, but that's the impression it gives), so if you like that kind of thing totally pick it up.  Nathan Pacheco's song also might have something to do with Yanni, because once you get the Mp3 into your player the label is "Yanni/Nathan Pacheco" so maybe its... a tribute to Yanni?  Sheesh Labels for Education, way to be cryptic with your free downloads here...

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Friday Frivolity: Has it Been One of Those Days? (aka, Ineffectual babies are cute, right?)

In honor of "one of those days."



We all may be bigger now, but we're usually still just dealing with the same problem over and over again.

Metaphysically speaking of course.

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A Day in the Life Of Me (aka, why should babies be the only ones whose lives are documented?)

Lately I've been trying to catch on up literally *years* of neglected scrapbooking.  I'm not the super artsy type of scrapbooker who spends hours meticulously cutting out and arranging photos in a frame-worthy composition (though I do have the scissors that cut those fancy little designs), but I enjoy having one central, ordered, and maybe even visually appealing place for photos, written memories, and bits of paper memorabilia.  My scrapbooking over the last few days has made me profoundly grateful for the people in my life and good memories I've accumulated;  I'm very blessed.

I've also been contemplating how my friends with babies are constantly documenting their lives, and how over the past few years I've hardly taken any photos at all.  In fact, due to this dearth of recent pictures, once I finish scrapbooking my camera-happy college experiences, my wedding will be almost the only thing left to memorialize... and amazing as it was, it's hardly been the only scrapbook-worthy memory of the past four years!

As a result, I resolved to be more deliberate about documenting my life. Unfortunately, I made this resolution rather late in the day yesterday, and I figured that nothing very document-able was likely to happen before bedtime.  Until I noticed how very pretty the peppers going into our dinner were... and so of course, I had to take a picture.

And once I took a picture of the peppers, why, it only made sense to take a picture of the curry I made with them...

For anyone confused, no, you do not make curry in a baking dish, but its a good place to store leftovers.

I used the oh-so-delicious Real Simple Curry-Coconut Sauce recipe, which I highly recommend... The rest of the stir-fry recipe also sounds delicious, but since I neither used meat nor any of the vegetables they mentioned, and I DID take the liberty of using lots of other vegetables and couscous instead, you can kind of take it or leave it as you want.

The sauce is the thing.

And while I was making that delicious dinner, chopping up the vegetables reminded me of a Ready Made magazine article about "homemade" cosmetics, in which the authors suggested kissing a beet as a stand-in for lipstick.  I'm a very literal person, and couldn't quite tell whether the writers were kidding or not, so I figured this was as good a time as any to give it a try.

So I kissed that beet.

(several times, for maximum effect)

This desire to suddenly lavish affection on vegetables wasn't merely motivated by my fervent love for them, but also by a report I read recently from the Canadian Environmental Defense group, in which they tested 49 different cosmetics and discovered lead, mercury, and/or other heavy metals in every.single.one.  American ladies, don't breath that sigh of relief quite yet because they weren't strictly Canadian cosmetics.. they were everything from L'Oreal to Benefit to Physician's Formula.

Care to join me in kissing beets?

Lastly, I discovered an adorably grumpy kitten snoozing in my dresser drawer, and while I wouldn't normally volunteer the locale for a cat-nap, it was definitely photo-worthy.

My life is apparently quite document-able after all.

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iTunes Tuesday: Free-and-Legal Downloads from We Are Augustines, Artic Monkeys, Portugal. The Man, and lots of free TV!

Is the download you're looking for no longer available?  :(  Free-and-legal tracks are often offered only temporarily, so I'm sorry if you have missed the window for this one.  Look to the right to subscribe via email, feed reader, blogloving, twitter, etc, and I'll make sure that you never miss out on free music again!

I think my favorite thing about the iTunes free downloads this week is the entertaining group names... I mean seriously, check it out:

"Headlong into the Abyss" -- We are Augustines
"Morning Thought" -- Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. (no typo there, I swear)
"Got it All" -- Portugal. The Man
"Don't Sit Down Because I've Moved Your Chair" -- Artic Monkeys

I would say that these four tracks more or less cover the spectrum of "rock"... nothing spectacularly exciting, but still worth downloading.

You can also download full episodes of:
Franklin and Bash (new TNT lawyer show)
Switched at Birth (ABC family... becha can't guess what it's about)
The Glades (A&E homicide/detective show set in a resort town in Florida)
Locked Up Abroad (National Geographic show about people who get arrested/imprisoned while traveling.  Um, YIKES)
Ice Road Truckers (History channel show about... ice road truckers.  Sorry to all the die-hard fans out there, but how is there episode after episode of this show?  As I understand it, its about big trucks sliding around on bad roads.  Again, and again, and again.)
Teen Wolf (I guess we should have seen this coming, what with the whole Edward vs Jacob thing.   Now we have a teen werewolf show to balance out Vampire Diaries, courtesy of MTV.  At least they seem to have no pretenses about the situation...)

There's a lot of other TV episodes if you click "Show All", including Life According to Paris, Single Ladies, Haunted Collector, and Love Bites, but you'll just have to go check those out for yourself.

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Friday Frivolity... Why did the turkey cross the road?

...because he was suddenly struck with identity confusion.  But hey, at least he was law-abiding!  No jay-walking turkeys here, thanks.

My husband took this photo... we're not sure what happened to the turkey, and though we did debate taking it home and making it a pet (or dinner) we did neither.  Honest.

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iTunes Tuesday: Free-and-Legal Music from Fleet Foxes, Lowline, Mogwai, Matt & Kim, and 34 others!

Is the download you're looking for no longer available?  :(  Free-and-legal tracks are often offered only temporarily, so I'm sorry if you have missed the window for this one.  Look to the right to subscribe via email, feed reader, blogloving, twitter, etc, and I'll make sure that you never miss out on free music again!

I know this is going to blow your mind... but I have 35+ free-and-legal downloads for you from iTunes today.

Check out facebook for the hook-up on this one;  right now you can download not only a 15 track "Made in Brooklyn" sampler courtesy of Converse, but a 20 track "Sub Pop Summer Sampler" too.  Pretty nifty, huh?  Tracks from "Made in Brooklyn" include music from Matt & Kim, Theophilus London, The Antlers, and Endless Boogie.  Tracks from the Sub Pop sampler include music from Fleet Foxes, Mogwai, The Head and the Heart, and Niki and the Dove, among others.  Sub Pop is probably my favorite of the two collections.

In addition, the new iTunes weekly freebies are up too -- you'll find:
"Outside" -- Lowline (is it just me, or does this one sound vaguely U2-esque?)
"Black and White" -- Royal Taylor (one commenter calls it "Christian Disco" and several people compare it to Maroon 5)
"Y Que" -- Herencia de Timbiqui  (great music for an outdoor summer party, especially if you're up for a little impromptu dancing in your backyard...)

PS This was meant to be posted yesterday, but I spent the better part of the day in the car, whether or not it was  actually moving (long story) so needless to say there was no internet.  Or air conditioning, at points in the venture.  And when I got home I forgot.  So, oops.

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