hinkyzine

Looky Here! I’m Adding Buttons!

hinky — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 13:48:11 +0000

At least I think that’s what it’s called… I’m adding a link to the 30 Days of Lists registration page. This is a writing challenge for the month of September. I have never heard of it before now, so I am hella excited but really have no idea what we’re going to be doing. I think it has something to do with lists… (that was a little joke)

Use this link.

Or use this handy button:

This group is great! From what I can tell, this is the second year of this challenge started by some very creative young ladies to (I think) encourage others to write and create something new each day for 30 days. There’s a Flickr pool to upload shots of your own DIY notebooks which house your lists, and the materials the founders send you will give instructions for how to do that. They also show you how to make digital files for listing as well as crafty notebooks from ordinary household ephemera, like a deck of playing cards.

It costs $6 to download the instructional file, and this gains you entry into the private forum (where the other participants write, post photos, and make comments regarding their progress). There are also links to discounts on other crafters’ sites, so it’s a good opportunity to score some deals and meet some new creative friends.

I’m excited to get started! Even if you don’t think you’re a crafty person, making a list is STILL a creative endeavor, and chances are that you’ve already done something as outlandish as making a list before. Consider joining, and let me know! We can be new DIY buddies.

Hi buddy!

How bizarre, how bizarre

hinky — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 22:01:31 +0000

You remember that song, don’t you? Apparently OMC was mildly popular in New Zealand. Here, they just made it to the “One Hit Wonders” best-of list.

R.I.P., OMC

Anyway, I’m not here to talk about OMC. No, I am here to talk about what happened to my computer the day I wanted to upload a fantastic video of a guy freaking out over a double rainbow and the subsequent equally funny video someone made featuring background music, making the whole thing sound a lot like bad worship music.
Instead, my son spilled water on my keyboard, causing my computer to scream in horror and promptly shut down mid-post. Days later, I turned it back on (after being advised to let it dry out) and found that it now randomly capitalizes text, ransom note-style. Here’s a sample, and I’m not even kidding (this is an excerpt from an email I sent to a friend): “By the wAY i have been correcting it as i go and it”s taking too dang long so i”m just goinG to leave the weirdness in and get on with it> APOlogies>>>” Notice the ‘less-than’ sign in place of all periods.
Now, it’s doing it less, but it still happens. Also, my h, v, and t keys don’t always go, making unique new spellings for all my favorite words.
So instead of me breaking the double rainbow to the world, you had to learn about it via Huffington Post, who wrote a brief article about it hypothesizing the dude was dropping acid at the time of filming. For his part, Paul Vasquez, aforementioned rainbow dude says he wasn’t high when he filmed that footage. Reading this article makes me feel like I am, however.

Paul Vasquez, double rainbow spotter and prescription holder for legal California weed.

Historic, hysteric patriotism

hinky — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 14:15:56 +0000

Hoo Wee! Big fourth of Joo-ly fun at the grandparents’ house. Well, sort of. Usually, my Dad is so excited to buy fireworks every year that he can’t wait til actual fourth of July to set some of them off (just little ones – ground blooms, spinners, whizzers, snakes, etc.). In recent years, our city lifted its ban on lighting fireworks inside city limits. This prompted Baba (as we call him) to search out some more exciting choices like bottle rockets, ladybugs (my favorite) and the self-explained loud Neighbor Hater. For two years we have had all kinds of fun lighting these things and horrifying ourselves with the possibility that somebody is going to lose a finger, or that something is going to lodge itself into the rooftops and shingle siding of some neighbor with fantastic legal representation. So far nothing horrible has happened (cue mysterious, foreboding music).

This year, our little town decided to have a fourth of July parade. Most of the ‘floats’ were just cars carrying very old veterans, and there was no music whatsoever except the bag piper who started the show and the odd police siren throughout. The fire trucks blew their horns once in awhile, just to make sure all the babies were paying attention. My dad rode in the back of a truck dressed as Dr. Dougherty, for whom his historic neighborhood is named.

Mom said his beard made him look like Col. Sanders. I said he looked more like a capuchin.

As the truck carrying Dad rolled by, my brother took the opportunity to lob a very hard Double Bubble at Dad’s head, causing him to clutch at his eyeball and careen sideways, much to the horror of the crowd. While my brother dissolved into hysterics, I screamed, “Who throws candy at an old man!?” My brother, that’s who.

Cooperative kids carting candy

The kids were instructed to hand big fistfulls of candy to everybody, causing their brim-full wagon to empty out before the final blocks of the parade, where 75% of the crowd was waiting. Better luck next year, sweaty crowds.
My mom got so hot she didn’t even complete the parade route, having not agreed to walk with the float/truck in the first place. She said she’d NEVER do that again, and I think the kids were in agreement. Later, it rained, and everybody was so tired they didn’t care about fireworks anyway, even though the big display was walking distance from our own yard. It would be nicer if fourth of July happened more like October. I’m not terribly patriotic anyway; I’d just as soon be comfortable.

Let’s just call this blog “Back From The Dead”

hinky — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 21:19:20 +0000

Wow. What has it been – a year? What happened? One moment I was telling vendors I wrote a food blog (which is how you get free samples to review, btw) and the next I was like, poof – gone. I have forgotten how to upload photos, maybe even how to take them…

We also bought a house this spring – a beautiful home in the historic district of our town (Liberty, MO, yo) built in 1921, or thereabouts. Hello $6,000 tax incentive! Instantly upon moving our roof had to be replaced (goodbye $6,000 and a little more :’( look! I just made a keyboard crying face!). When I figure out how to use the camera again (and its little plug) I’ll post some photos.

We have had some other major repairs (radon mitigation – around $900 if you’re wondering, possibly a new furnace, some plumbing) and some health problems, so in all it has been a busy year thus far.

The whole experience has left me with the thought that getting back to my diary might be nice, helpful. Today, since I don’t have any new photos, I’ll show you an old one. This is a picture of a treat I made last year for Easter:

Wee chickie cake pops

And another photo from the same batch:

More cake pops!

Also, last summer my good friend (who I will call Saffron, because that is not her name and she can remain anonymous that way – and I don’t know anyone called Saffron, so it makes me feel exotic) got married in Maine and we took a family vaycay!

We stayed in a beach house...by the beach!

Since last summer when you last saw me eating hemp (see last post), I have cut my hair. Remember how I said I was growing it out to donate? It never got long enough. Something like 5 years of growing, and it just never got long enough. Ridiculous. I got sweaty and uncomfortable with it, so I just got it whacked off, but will probably start the long slow trudge to length again forthwith. Don’t ask me why. Hair torments me.

Last comment for today, and then I’m off to find my camera cord thingy — If you were tortured by Ke$ha’s appearance on Conan O’Brien, and you found that despite your horror and disgust at this so-called ‘artist’ you somehow managed to memorize the entire song and all the dance moves until the sound of it constantly ran through your mind like a phantom gravel truck on a loop to nowhere, then have I got a video for you. First, make sure you see that train wreck I just posted for you back there a few times. Make it thorough the whole thing. Ask yourself – who is she? Why does she say “sway-ger” instead of “swagger”? What’s with the drum majorette bodysuit… and who is her faux-hawked sidekick? If you have the stomach for it, watch parts 2 and 3 of this video load on YouTube. Familiarize yourself. THEN. WATCH. THIS.

Holy Cow. NOW I like it!

Hemp – not just for breakfast anymore

hinky — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:38:50 +0000

I had a great surprise waiting for me in the mail yesterday – a shipment of samples from Nutiva!

Yesterday's stash - Nutiva hemp seed, hemp shake mix, hem protein powder, and a flax-raisin bar (featured here half-eaten. For the record, it was not sent in that condition - it was complete before I tore into it).

Nutiva is a company with a conscious; they believe in sustainability, and growing hemp is one way to accomplish that. The back of the drink mix packet includes this sentence: “Growing hemp (a non-psychoactive crop) restores our soils and conserves forests, contributing to a healthy and sustainable world.” Other ingredients they use include acai berries, which they state “provide extra income for indigenous Amazon rain forest dwellers.” Isn’t that cool!

They didn’t send their other big product, coconut. That’s okay. I love coconut, but for now, it’s great just to have some quickie powder mixes to whip up two meals a day. I am trying to make my meals easier, and lower-fat. I’ll still cook for the fam at dinnertime, but having something simple for myself that just requires a blender is very helpful.

See? Easy.

Following the directions on the envelope, I mixed the contents of the Amazon Acai flavor with 2T hemp seeds, a frozen banana (or two) and a handful of strawberries. The result, after blending, was a lot like dirt. Now, I have heard this dirty talk about hemp before, and normally I can handle it. I like the earthy flavor you can only get from food that comes directly out of the dirt. Makes me feel like a fluffy little sheep. But this stuff knocked me backward. It had all the appeal of a dog toy you found buried in the yard, which you then decided to clean using your tongue. I added honey and it was much better.

At lunch, I tried the Berry Pomegranate flavor, using 2T coconut oil (look at Nutiva’s website to see it – it resembles Crisco in texture, but tastes like heaven), more strawberries, and honey. It was remarkable! Wonderful flavor, great texture; the coconut oil added a huge boost to my overall hemp morale. So far it’s my favorite.

Zoom in to see the hempstache.

The nutty bar in the picture above is good too – very seedy. The ingredient list includes sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, flax seeds, honey, pumpkin seeds, raisins, and almonds – all certified organic. Half of it was enough to get me through from lunch til dinner yesterday. The greatest part of these products (besides the benefits inherent in their ingredients, is they’re low in calories and sugar, but high in protein and fiber. Score.

Depending on the cost of this product, I would totally use it as a substitute for regular meals. The ease of prep is a huge plus, and the health benefits are nothing to sneeze at either. Thanks, Nutiva!

Presents!

hinky — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:07:57 +0000

Hoooo, boy I got some good stuff today. Molly over at Pom Wonderful sent me a box of this today:

Now in 8 oz. bottles!

It was just what we needed on a clammy gray day to go with leftover Indian food from two nights ago. It isn’t very sweet, just enough to make it delightfully palatable. Sweetened pomegranate juice is sticky, and this product has none of that. In addition to the beautiful little bottles I got from this company, I also received some literature about the health benefits of drinking pomegranate juice.

First, you have to understand the company name, Pom Wonderful refers to the variety of pomegranates used to make the products – the wonderful variety (like “Fuji” apples and navel oranges). Wonderful variety pomegranates are known for their deep red color, sweeter taste than other pomegranates, and also happen to contain a fantastic amount of antioxidants. Apparently, the presence of polyphenols in the wonderfuls give the juice a potent antioxidant content superior to those found in other juice known to contain antioxidants, like green tea, cranberry and even acai juice.

In addition to these benefits everyone can enjoy, men in particular make out like bandits on this one as juice made from the wonderful variety is proven scientifically to reduce recurrence of prostate cancer in cancer patients, as well as serve non-cancer patients toward good prostate health. Go prostates! I’m not going to get into any intimate details about men and their dangly bits, but if you want to read some great stats about clinical studies and antioxidant potency, get thyself over to www.pomwonderful.com pronto.

At the website you’ll find more great information about the juice, tea, and capsules they sell, as well as a cute mini-vid about pomegranate superheroes.

As for me, I’m making a commitment to keep drinking this stuff. It’s good for heart health, and as we all know by now, antioxidants have anti-cancer properties for everyone, big or small, boy or girl (or old dogs). It’s also cheaper and better for you than a latte-a-day at your favorite coffee shop.

Small enough to carry in your pocket - almost.

A special thanks to Molly for being such a peach (or a pom).

By golly, it worked!

hinky — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 22:15:59 +0000

I’m so happy I have finally figured this out: I never seem to find a use for the leftover almond meal that remains as a product of almond milk manufacture. In another post, I’ll document how I do this, but for now, I want to tell you about my fantastic baking breakthrough. I have seen all over the interwebs that people like to use this stuff as a facial scrub, but I want to EAT it, not scrub with it. So today, I put two sticks of butter (you can adapt this using vegan substitutes, by the way), an egg, and about 3/4 cup of sugar in my standing mixer and beat it senseless. Then I added vanilla and the almond meal and enough flour to make it look like cookie dough. Using a teaspoon, I scooped humps of dough onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet, pressed them down with a sugared glass, and baked them til the edges were a little brown (at 375 degrees). It took maybe 13-15 minutes, but that will depend on how done you like them. Here’s the result:

Thievery!

Next time I’ll toy around with spices or replacing the egg with 1T flaxmeal mixed with 1/4 cup water (that’s a good egg substitution). Maybe I can enhance the flavor a little with some almond extract…hmmm…that sounds good too. I’ll let you know what shakes out!

Superfoods: a working definition

hinky — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 14:33:59 +0000

In case you haven’t heard, “superfoods” can mean many things, but it’s getting to where it means a product which contains phytonutrients and is high in antioxidants. Okay, so what does that mean in lay terms? A good list of the “old” superfoods is beans, blueberries, broccoli, oats, oranges, pumpkin, salmon, soy, spinach, tea (green or black), tomatoes, turkey, walnuts, and yogurt. According to Stephen Pratt, M.D., the author of Superfoods Rx:

Available on amazon.com

these 14 foods contain the highest amount of antioxidants of any food. Antioxidants are the vitamins, minerals, hormones and other chemicals that prevent the chain-reaction oxidation has on cells in the body. Oxidation stress causes all manor of havoc in the body such as cancer and heart disease. Here, just read this (if you are a scientific type and like food chemistry…or if you can’t go to sleep and need a catalyst): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antioxidants.

Okay, so Stephen Pratt wrote this very readable, very helpful and easy-to-follow book about antioxidants and how to get them from your food. Since then, more research and publicity has surfaced from the food chemistry world that shows some other foods contain even more amazing properties including high antioxidant levels, and nutrient density. Many claim you can live on these foods alone. A few of these which are getting to be well-known even in your local grocery are acai juice, pomegranate, and certain types of cocoa (actually, cacao). Yes! Chocolate! But I digress… There are more exotic fruits/foods too like goji berry, maca, and mesquite which help make up good tasting health shakes, among other things, but also help regulate sugar and hormone production.

You'll find dry goji berries for sale in a bag. They're about the size, and are similar in flavor to raisins.

So here’s the deal – you can research your brains out on this topic. There is plenty of stuff available for you to read and ruminate about. Just keep in mind that whole foods, especially the foods in the “superfoods” category, should be tops on your list for optimum health. To help you with this conversion or with your research, I am going to start sampling products from the superfoods world and report back to you about what I discover. At present I’m just using the raw components (gogi, cacao, maca, etc. – they make a great shake and substitute for coffee), but soon I will review commercial products (shake powders, meal replacement bars, juice, etc) available at your drugstore or grocery (or if you’re super-lucky, you have a health food store near you) and I’ll tell you just how super-human I’m getting to be. I’ll be sure to get someone to take my picture when I get to the point that I’m lifting the family car over my head. So far it’s just Matchbox cars:

OBSERVE THE BREADTH OF MY BRAWN. Unnnghh!

Good dog

hinky — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:28:46 +0000

If you haven’t seen this amazing clip of sheep herding dogs yet, allow me to bring you into the light (that’s a pun you’ll understand in about 2 minutes 45). Done? Okay, let’s continue. If you read the recent post from Pet Meds Online, you’ll recognize the smartest of the dog breeds, the Border Collie, in the clip above. I can’t tell what breed my little Leah is:

DUK: Dog of Unknown Origin

but I’ve always guessed it was partly Border Collie (and this was before I knew about the #1 smartest part). She is an excellent herder, a watchful guarder (of the bird feeder), and gives impressive chase to kids, cats, squirrels and her now-deceased dog toy, Wishbone, rest his stuffed soul. Leah came to us through a veterinary program at a local community college, where she had given birth to 5 babies, weaned them, had her teeth cleaned, her nails clipped, her worms de-wormed, and her puppymaker taken out. Then she had a bath, and the vet school gave us our new beloved companion. For free. They also threw in a bag of dog food. This was 3 years ago. Since then, she has been my constant buddy, and a gentle presence in a home fraught with the frantic activity only two little boys can provide. I love watching her twitch in her sleep, and hearing her groan and sigh as she gets herself comfortable at the end of the day, retiring to her dog bed next to my side of the people bed. I love my dog. Since it has been proven her (suspected) breed is so smart, perhaps I shall teach her to talk, so she can say “I love you” too.

A little clarification

hinky — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 01:47:11 +0000

Hi Folks – There seems to be a little confusion about what I have been trying to tell you. I want us to understand each other! Don’t you see, I LOVE YOU! I want to be together foreeeevvvveeerrrr! So here, listen: I’m not writing my zine anymore. I hope I can return to it someday, but for now, it’s too much work. I’ll tell you what happened: Several years ago, I started a wee publication, the beloved Hinky, to help still the craziness I felt in my core from being the mother of small children. I loved my kids (still do!), but I didn’t handle the chaos of those early years with the grace I imagined other moms had. One of my problems was I didn’t know any other moms! So I stayed up late, writing funny stories, sometimes drawing irreverent pictures of naked game animals (I know, I know, they’re all naked – but mine wear kinky undergarments). This creative outlet kept me driven, and I looked forward to getting my thoughts out on paper every day. Once the copy was done, I took them to be printed, then I brought them home to assemble, staple, and mail. At its biggest, my subscriber list was 50 (thank you Marky G!), so the operation from start to finish was a bit involved. After a couple of years of this, something amazing happened – I got some friends! Real live other moms just like me who sometimes never got out of their jammies before dinner, moms who admitted they didn’t always feel like spending a 15-hour stretch with a toddler who didn’t necessarily have great interpersonal skills, moms who sometimes wished a jar of peanut butter and a handful of Cheez-Its could pass for “dinner.” In other words, I found out I wasn’t alone! And not only that, my friends had interesting things to share with me, and they liked hearing what I had to say too! I felt like I came out of the darkness and into the light. I still credit my mommy group for making my town a nice place to live, because once I met my new friends, all sorts of other opportunities and outlets for stir-crazy moms like me started to open up just because I had new input from other people who were looking for the same sort of distractions as I was. Suddenly, Hinky started to take a back seat to my new life as a mom who could actually handle things. My stories didn’t seem as outrageous anymore, none of my recipes seemed publication-worthy, and worse, I couldn’t think of any more large game animals I hadn’t already put into a skimpy nightgown. So I slacked off, dear reader, and I didn’t write much for what’s getting to be a year and a half now.

Several friends suggested I write a blog. I never liked that idea because with my Hinky zines, I told everyone you can just take them to the bathroom and read them piecemeal while you’re in there…doing, uh, other things. It was portable – you could give it to a friend, put it in your backpack, keep it near the toilet…whatever! You can’t do all that with a blog, and you can’t turn the pages, which I think is what I liked about it. Also, I don’t want to scan my pictures because it seemed sort of sterile. But since expressing this concern, friends have told me there’s nothing to using the scanner. So I’m going to figure out how to do that and see if I can’t start producing some artwork for youse guys.

I’ve missed you too! I don’t want us to grow apart! That’s why I’ve started this blog. And your job is to let me know how it’s going. Leave me comments, give suggestions, complain if you need to. I welcome your ideas. Let’s work it out. I think we belong together.