Way back in the dark ages, just after I finished college, I picked up this fabulous cookbook:

Not only are most of the recipes super easy and interesting, this book has been invaluable in preventing food waste around my home. The above was a clever way I found of using up some cream cheese that had been sitting in the fridge a bit…long. It wasn’t expired, but it was getting old. Four desserts over two days (with two of us.) Not too bad, and adding the cardamom and cinnamon sticks gave the entire mixture a subtle flavor rather than leaving it as a bland egg-and-vanilla dessert.

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seasonings I add to my coffee

I’m a relentless caffeine user. My other vices pass after a bit, but coffee I always return to. While whether I add milk and sugar depends on my mood and whether I’m counting calories, I still like to experiment with my considerable store of herbs.

In the image I have here, I decided to add some cardamom pods and cinnamon to my coffee. It made it taste just a bit richer, and while I did add a little sugar, it did not need nearly as much sweetening to my taste as usual. I chose these spices not just because they smell great in a latte anyway, but because the woody/seed nature stands up to the searing-hot water going through it pretty well. While I can sometimes add stevia leaves, most of the time green/leaf herbs just don’t handle filter treatment as well.

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sassafras sun tea

I had an order of sassafras tea from a favorite herb supplier of mine, so, after reading up on reusing pickle jars/mason jars for sun tea on another crafter’s blog, I decided to try it myself but use sassafras leaf instead of black tea.

The result was peculiar: the sassafras gave out what was almost a sap, it was so gooey and sticky. Even after diluting it a bit, there was still an odd, saplike quality to it. So I decided to go and read what that sap stuff was.

On first reading, I learned two things:

1. It gets used as a thickener in traditional gumbos.

2. Sassafras contains safrole, which was determined to be cancer causing back in the 1960s.

By that time I had ingested several glasses of it, so it threw me into a blind panic. Denial causes me to reread things. In this case, that was good.

I read that the safrole is found in the bark and root – that the leaf has less than .005% of the dose required to be cancer causing. I could eat an entire tree’s leaves and it would still take me a long time to get that dosing.

It also turns out that trying it as sun tea was a good instinct – apparently if you hit sassafras leaf with boiling water, it just turns to gum. Fine if you want to thicken a shrimp sauce but a bit weird if you just want a nice cup of tea.

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This was from my “good colors” “bad colors” exercise in the Artist’s Way. The “bad colors” really were way more fun!

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It took me forever, but I finally figured out the Insert Gallery mode and how it differs from Insert Picture mode. Gallery allows you to present a series of thumbnails, uploaded into your blog, that visitors can click on to see expanded pictures. You can see some examples of galleries I’ve done on my artist’s cluster blog here and here. Since a Twitter follower asked me to share, I am at last delivering on that request (now that the quirk in my wordpress that allowed me to upload nada is gone!) I’ve collected screenshots – this is for the most recent version of Wordpress. While on older versions the same basic steps apply, it’s likely that it would really benefit you to upgrade if just to be more secure.

Step 1: upload your photos

After upload, the screen should look like this:

After several uploads, your menu should look like this:

Step 2: Click “save all changes.” After you hit that button, your screen should look like this:

Be sure to link thumbnails to the image file:

Step 3: type in the order in which you want your images to appear:

Step 4: indicate how many columns you would like:

After you click “insert gallery” your result should be something like what is below:

Try it out – share your galleries in comments!

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My self-portrait for today was taken many moons back when the Post Secret exhibit came to the downtown library in Minneapolis. This appealed to me because it was the condition of my favorite cartoon heroine (Daria.)  I had not intended to center my own reflection exactly behind the sign – essentially, I pinned this one on myself.

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I’ve been taking care of my little garden, and sure enough, the bugs found ‘em, too. While it’s nowhere near an infestation, I’m not one to take chances, so I whipped up this concoction. It’s just a bit caustic and I advise against getting this on your skin, but it doesn’t harm your plants, is non-toxic (just very acidic) and can rinse right off your plants at harvest time.

In a spray bottle, I put in:

• 1/3 cup dish soap
• 1/3 cup Everclear

In a pan, I brought to a simmer:

• Cayenne
• Black Pepper
• 1 Clove Garlic, broken in half
• Chili seeds
• Crushed red pepper
• Mint
• and Thyme

After done simmering, I allowed to cool.

While cooling, I added three drops of each of the following essential oils to the spray bottle:

• Lemongrass
• Peppermint
• Citronella
• Eucalyptus
• Pine Needle
• Sassafrass
• Rosemary
• and Hyssop

After the mixture has cooled until it is safe to touch the pot, I poured it through a funnel fitted with a coffee filter.

Once room temperature, spray on plants as needed.

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Since I began making perfume, I’ve ruined a LOT of clothing. It’s my own fault for not making sure I owned a smock from the get-go, but since I learn best by making mistakes, it’s a lesson I learned a few rather nice shirts at a time first. I also learned that if you don’t act fast when you do spill oil of any kind on yourself, you may just have to give up your garment.

However, once in awhile I emerge from a spill triumphant. The basics to cleaning up oil products can be found here, although my own methods differ just a bit. When I get an oil spill, as soon as I can I dab it with vinegar and then follow this with rubbing alcohol. Then for good measure, I use one of those rub-and-leave it stain sticks you can get at Target for around $4. It’s actually saved me some nice stuff.

In the event that that fails me, I toss the item onto my “T-shirt surgery” pile and experiment on it with scissors, ribbons, safety pins and grommets – and that’s another story for another day.

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I possibly haven’t mentioned it, but I’m a member of the Etsy Trashion Team.  This is a collective of artists who reuse and repurpose materials ordinarily discarded as art, or even as further functional objects. For those of you cringing and worrying about how this works in perfumery – shhh. It’s OK. I don’t do anything scary or unsanitary. Right now I’m interpreting it as finding ways to use materials I’d ordinarily get rid of, like items sold as “natural” that were actually synthetics. But I’m also taking the trashion philosophy into my home life.

I have coveted the magnetic spice jars since I first read about them on Apartment Therapy - New York. While the rest of my apartment is roomy enough, my kitchen is roughly the size of a hall closet and it’s not really my favorite place to concoct as a result. This is a problem, since as a perfume/bath and body creatrix, a good portion of my time should be spent in the kitchen! However, I live in the land of the (narrowly) self-employed, so I have to think of and steal ingenious methods of making small spaces and limited resources really work for me.

One resource is a computer scientist boyfriend, who loathes getting rid of his computers. He always thinks he can use them for parts, and while sometimes he can, sometimes that computer really is dead weight. Since computers are in the top ten things that should NEVER be disposed of, and getting rid of a computer or two would also free up space in our home, he had a great idea:

He would remove the magnets from the defunct computers, and I could glue them onto the bottom of my spice jars.

I loved the idea- freeing up space in our shared office AND in the kitchen? Hooboy, yeahdaddyo!

The process was a bit more difficult, and my boyfriend did injure himself once or twice. He concluded that a Torx screwdriver would have been better, and so a couple hard drives still sit unopened until that is remedied.

Gluing took awhile – the magnet has to sit exactly right for the glue to take, and I actually had to pull the magnet off and reglue it when I found it wasn’t working physically with the refrigerator surface because of its shape.

In the end though, I got the spice jar up, and sticking pretty darn well. I only have two like this right now, but I’m going to hunt down that screwdriver – I can’t wait to open up that shelf.

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