Fairy tale anthology try outs

Hey, I am currently waiting with baited breath to hear if my submission to GuruKitties ‘Once Upon a Time’ Fairy Tale comic anthology will be accepted.  I put in a piece for the cover art as well.

This dude here is my wolf.  Surprised right?  – that I could choose a fairy tale with a wolf character in it?  I mean, it’s not as if you couldn’t toss a rock in the land of fairy tales and hit a story with a wolf in it.

Anyway, I hope I hope I hope I get into it.  I’m tired of all this success publishing articles and chapters professionally as a librarian.  I want some success publishing as a comicker!  I’m just kidding, I’m not tired of professional publishing success, but I do want some art/comicking/novelist publishing success too.

So, keep your fingers crossed for me!

Dinner challenge turned recipe

Ok, the challenge was:  a variety of chicken things from various dinner stops at the Fresh Market.  That is, LEFTOVERS.  And I hate it when food goes to waste, I mean really.  People make fun of me for how upset I get when food is wasted in my house.

So there was chicken from inside a chicken Ceasar wrap, market chicken salad (really nice big pieces of chicken without much goop), and chopped chicken liver.  There were also some eggs to be used and a half bag of frozen homemade stuffing in the freezer from previous left overs. (the stuffing was crazy heavy on carrots and celery which is the reason for the picture)

The solution:  mix it all up into a big chicken parts stuffing cake and EAT IT.  And serve it to others to eat.  Mix it is what I did, in a big old bowl and used the eggs for binder before spooning it into a greased casserole dish. Then I topped with some seasoned bread crumbs and baked at 350 until I smelled all the ingredients and the bread crumbs were browned.

Verdict:  success!  it was well received and loved – enough to get its own name and maybe be repeated again.  But honestly, how often am I going to have frozen leftover stuffing, chicken salad, chicken bits, and chicken liver on hand to make it?

Dinner Challenge

Ok, so I had too much yogurt – at least I thought I did, though the other inhabitants of my house assured me it’d get eaten before it went bad.  Yeah, ok.  The challenge was something savory for dinner that used the yogurt along with some of the other things in the house.  The solution (hypothesized) was a recipe-less palak paneer.  That’s cheesy spinach curry for those of you who have never had the awesomeness.

So, I put a little less than half a big tub of greek yogurt into a pot with two cans of spinach some curry, some extra cumin and garlic salt, and then, later in the cooking, some cubes of feta cheese (most definitely not the usual palak paneer cheese).

The result…DUN DUN DUN… was that it was ‘not overly spiced’ which resulted in a very ‘strong spinach flavor.’  But then he hadn’t gotten to the cheese yet.  And it looked just like the real thing.  Yay, yogurt used and a bit of left-overs that I am more than happy to eat ’cause I liked it.

Eaten along side brown rice and fried eggs.

Participate in the 2nd Annual Mini-Comics Day: May 26th, 2012 | Mini-Comics Day

Participate in the 2nd Annual Mini-Comics Day: May 26th, 2012 | Mini-Comics Day.

Do you know me well enough to know that I am already way too excited about this even though I’ve only known about it for 10 minutes?  Of course I’m going to do it.  You should do it too.

Now I gotta figure out what I’m drawing.  And, should I print up multiples; do you want one? …without knowing what it’ll be yet?

Recipes – Dinner bucket

Yo.  As the resident cook of my household and a big old fan of not following directions I end up making a lot of things that have no recipe.  Well, they have to have a recipe to be made right, ’cause all a recipe is is ingredients you include within the thing that you are making.  They just never came from anywhere other than my brain putting together the things I saw in my fridge.

In an attempt to record the best liked things my brain came up with while perusing my fridge I will talk about them here.  First up – the Dinner Bucket.

Dinner Bucket

Description:  a muffin shaped pastry shell stuffed with stuff

You will need to fill a half dozen large muffin pan:  two tubes of pre-made crescent roll dough, six eggs, shredded cheese (or other cheesy stuff), veggies or meat to suit (best if meat pre cooked)

You will do:

  1. Unroll the crescent roll dough and smoosh the diagonal seems together (illustrated above), so that you end up with three rectangles per roll.
  2. Fit the rectangles into the hollows of the muffin tin so the longs ends flop out – you will fold these over later.
  3. I suppose you could turn on the oven now so it heats up to 350 – or you can do it later when you remember.
  4. Crack an egg into each dough lined muffin tin hollow.
  5. Put some cheese in.
  6. Put some other stuff in.
  7. Put some cheese in.
  8. Fold over the long ends of the dough and stick entire thing in oven.
  9. Bake about 30 minutes or until you’ve smelled each ingredient cooking or until top looks way too dark for crescent rolls but still not quite burnt yet (if you pull them out when they are a pretty golden brown the egg will not have cooked).

I have made these with corned beef hash, spinach and feta cheese, ground beef and collard greens, pork and broccoli (also best if pre cooked), and stuffing and spinach.  Dinner buckets are a great way to use up all your left overs.

Faith Erin Hicks

A little while ago I may have mentioned Friends With Boys because it is an awesome comic that has now come out in honest to goodness touch-able form.  Really, you can buy it from bookstores (if any have managed to survive around you) and hold it’s wood pulpiness in your hands.  I did.  One of the coolest things about Friends With Boys is that the author has more comics in pulpiness and intangible form.  Check them out on faith erin hicks’ webpage » Web Comics.

I wish I had more afternoons to while away reading her comics, and then when I am done I wish she had more comics I could while myself away within.  Faith Erin Hicks is awesome.  I kid you not.

Project rambling

I don’t know if you noticed that I have a few comics listed on the site that haven’t really started yet.  It’s kind of a commitment to the project.  If I tell someone I’m going to do it, then I have to live up to my side of the bargain.  That’s what this is, I’m going to ramble on about all these great ideas I have and that will mean that I’ll have to follow through eventually.  I am actively trying to limit myself to how many running projects I have at any one time.  I found that the relief and pride of getting one of them done is too good to delay by adding more commitments to the mix.

I will be finishing a couple more things before I get on with it, I mean with the other things I want to do.  The other stories I want to write.  Did I tell you that I usually think of my characters first and then make the story around them?  Maybe they aren’t completely thought out, but they’ve got flesh.  I’ve got so many stories racing through my head, gathering up so many characters, that I felt bad about abandoning them to dreamy memories.  So when I drew them I had to figure out a container to put them in so they wouldn’t get lost.  That container is a highschool.  Yup, at some point in time they all went to school, sorta.  Anyway, once I get some things scanned I’m going to start building an online (and expandable) yearbook so ya’ll can see the people who fall out of my head.

And in the midst of thinking up a highschool for all these people to live in, I figured out a great flashback story for Levi Levi.  It will explain how Annie became his book-keeper/office-manager type person.  And it will feature the time traveling twins Clement and Rosalie Skitt.  They’re up on the characters page, but did not yet have a story of their own.  Technically Levi Levi’s next chapter isn’t their story either…so I came up with one.  It will be a choose your own adventure type alternative format comic – which means I can’t put it up anywhere until it’s mostly figured out and drawn.  I mean, choose-your-own adventures don’t happen linearly so they can’t be doled out once a week.

And none of this has anything to do with my next huge comic idea:  The 22 Lives of Marcus Trapp.  This one actually requires research, so it’s slow going.  Just writing about all of these makes me excited about them all over again.