I wish everybody a very happy New Year celebration! My plans for recovery included tracking down a movie I remember from way back – The Quest, 1986. It has the kid from ET in it, and that’s about all I remember except that I liked it as a kid. p.s. Rain City Video in Seattle is great.

Jejune has posted an easy recipe for body scrub and breaks it down into three ingredients. Nearly yummy.

Know what makes half decent hot cocoa? One packet Swiss Miss Chocolate Sensation and two teaspoons of unsweetened cocoa powder.

Hot chocolate picks from David Rosengarten.

Last night I attempted to recreate an appetizer from Pies and Pints – freshly baked soft pretzels with a Welsh Rarebit sauce* for dipping them in. I used this pretzel recipe** and a pub fondue recipe from a book I have (beer and cheddar cheeses). It wasn’t nearly the same but still, yum. Homemade soft pretzels are totally worth it.

* Although, looking at this Welsh Rarebit recipe from Alton Brown I wonder if what we had was more of a mild but tasty Gruyere sauce thing.

** For smaller, cuter pretzels cut the recipe in half, but still divide the dough into 16 pieces. Also, they puff up quite a bit on the second rise so when shaping the pretzels make them sort of spindly otherwise you’ll end up with more of a dense roll than a pretzel – see my picture.

The magic of Netflix has provided us with both Star Trek tribbles episodes to watch side by side, we’re excited.

Origami business card puppy.

I got seasons one and two of Northern Exposure for Christmas, yay!

The Red Cross sells a Commemorative Knit Kit containing yarn, needles and a pattern for a pair of original World War II Serviceman’s Socks. Neat. They also have emergency preparedness kits, first aid kits, and t-shirts. The purchases give money to the Red Cross, and you can also donate from this site. via Spinning-Jennie.

Cthulhu the Great Old One, the Devourer, the Eater of Worlds, the Destroyer of Man showing some holiday spirit.

Last night I discovered that my boyfriend has never had green bean casserole, he’d never even heard of it (I know!). We were walking the aisles of our recently renovated and frustratingly rearranged grocery store seeking out a little can of French’s Fried Onions, another item he had never encountered, and trying to explain to him a food that had appeared on every holiday and pot luck table I’d been at ever was a little strange. He asked what French’s Fried Onions were, and I said they are like onion rings but more wimpy and they come in a tall thin can and they make a noise when you shake them.

I wonder if he’ll like green bean casserole, or if it’s one of those aquired tastes? I always thought of it as Midwestern thing, a survivor from the era when frozen vegetables were the new new thing and casseroles weren’t an occasional kitschy indulgence. But he grew up in a very Midwestern part of the country, the same part I grew up in, so that theory doesn’t hold up.

If you haven’t had green bean casserole it’s worth a shot, just pretend you’re living in the 1950s (?), here is the recipe.

Mariko made pretty surprise balls! She mentions my sad excuse for directions from waaaay back before I had a camera. Here is some information from the Carol Duvall Show (they mention this wrapping technique being as big as a beach ball if you’d like, eek). Mariko has some good advice — use sheets of paper inbetween layers of crepe ribbon, it’ll help fill out bulk and shape. I had a commerical surprise ball that used squares of thin acetate. Also, be sure to wrap lots of crepe between adding each gift, my original ones didn’t space the gifts out far enough and stuff just fell out uncontrollably.

how to prepare sugarplums via the morning news

an amazing number of gingerbread house patterns (pdf), look for the elf house, via j-walk blog

These felt donuts made by Sew Dorky are charming and cuddly. We’re rooting for Sew Dorky to have a web site soon, go web site go! (update: Sew Dorky the web site!)

p.s. You can find them at the Bluebottle Art Gallery (along with lots of other great things), and there is a pretty pretty picture of more Sew Dorky donuts here at ten years of my life.

Last night we made Megnut’s recipe for Brown Buttered Brussels Sprouts. Mmm. And she includes the recipe for clarified brown butter for those of us who don’t really know what that is.

Some things we saw at the Pacific Science Center this weekend – sadly, they had already taken the Santa hats off of the huge bronze dinosaurs outside.

A blue spider, blue!

At the jelly bean tasting part of the candy exhibit.

Gummi shot glasses! at CB2

Gingerbread CPU! via Popgadget

Made curious by the most recent Amazon.com customer service number hoopla, I opened the Seattle yellow pages: