700!

699 is a big number,

but 700 is even better.

So thank you to all of you wonderful people out there who click on the links I post and make this possible. I don't necessarily know who you are, it may have been accidental, and you may not actually read anything I write, but I still appreciate you.

Over and out.

10 Favorites

1. The CD my gorgeous friend and partner-in-crime Brittany made for me this summer (it's amazing and I'm listening to it right now) <3 I might post a link to the tracks on it. If I don't get distracted first.

2. The Pioneer Woman's blog. I love it to death, probably because a part of me wants to be Ree Drummond. (I can't help it, honest.)

3. Red nail-polish, and the color red in general. Red is basically the best color ever, other than orange, which is just red plus yellow. And speaking of orange...
4. Coca-Cola's new World Champion cans. 'Nuff said.

5. Is it over the top if I say best movie ever made? Probably. But it's definitely up there.

6. Uglydoll Ice-Bats: they're so ugly, they're cute. And these two are Halloween colored, which means one of them is orange, and the other is black...

7. Slipper-boots. GAH! I love them so much. Wait - what's that color on them?? Yeah...

8. My new shoes and necklace. The shoes are cute, and the necklace is a wishbone, which is just AWESOME. Thank you, Sway in Oakland, for existing, and Angela for taking me there and being awesome, too.

8. The relationship between my dog Wiley and my cat. She hates him so much, but for some reason he's convinced she's his new best friend. He actually tries to PLAY with her... and then she tries to scratch his face off. Absolutely adorable.

9. The way Wiley tears off the hair on his new bee toys. It's obviously a show of intelligence, because bees don't have hair on their heads. Good boy.

10. Drinking Yerba Mate tea in a Tigger cup, while wearing fingerless orange knit gloves. And yes, that does count as one thing, because it's an experience, okay? Everyone should try it. Instant Fall.

xoxo

Wednesday Wileys

These days, Wiley refuses to let me take his picture. I'm convinced it has something to do with the complex he's getting from me calling him Cone Head, so hopefully when he gets it off later today he'll be over the running-away thing.

He's also decided that the most interesting thing he can do with his time is find something to chew on. Whether it be my shoe, my leg, the laundry or a tissue box, he'll grab it whenever he gets the chance and run off. Which is amusing, unless it's my leg. Or shoe.

That is literally the best picture he let me take of him today. And as you can probably tell, he was caught by surprise.

My other two (photogenic) pets would like you to know that they very willingly sit still and pose for me whenever I want to take their pictures, even though they don't have days dedicated to them. And since Wiley was being uncooperative, I thought they might as well get to be stars, too.

xoxo

How-To: Fried Chicken

Recently, I've been having serious fried chicken cravings. Why? No clue. But I decided it was worth satisfying with REAL fried chicken (a.k.a. not KFC), and that was what I did this weekend.

Pre-Prep: I started with a whole, raw chicken, and then cut it into the appropriate pieces; but since that's a pretty difficult procedure to explain, for the sake of this post you either know how to do it, or you bought a pre-cut chicken/pieces of chicken. Soak the meat in a bowl of milk for several hours before you want to fry it. 

Ingredients: Chicken, Milk, Flour, Salt, Black Pepper, Cayenne Pepper, Oil.

Materials: Three Bowls, Pan, Stove, Tongs, Plate Covered in Paper Towels.

1: Take two bowls, fill one with flour, and make an assembly line of sorts with the milk-chicken bowl first, then flour and empty bowls.
2: Remove a piece of chicken from the milk and pour a light covering of the two peppers and salt over it. Roll this piece in the flour so that it is completely floured. Do this with all the chicken pieces and place them in the empty bowl.
3: Pour vegetable oil into the pan so that it's approximately 3/4 of an inch full, and set on medium heat. To check the temperature, hold your palm over the oil: when it feels hot, flick a drop of water into the oil. If it sizzles, it's ready.
4: CAREFULLY set as many pieces of chicken as you can into the pan. Try not to move them once you put them in.
5: When the submerged pieces of chicken begin to look brown, lift them to see if the bottom has turned a golden brown. If so, carefully flip the pieces over.
6: Your fried chicken is completely done when both sides are a nice, golden brown. Carefully remove them from the oil and set on a paper-towel covered plate. If you have more chicken to fry, cover the plate loosely with aluminum foil and place in the oven on warm, and repeat steps 4-6 with the second batch. 

And ta-da! You have authentic, delicious fried chicken. Serve warm or cold; it's great either way.

Enjoy!

xoxo

Meet Wiley!

Greetings from the newest member of my family! My baby Wiley was a stray living in the Southwest desert, but now he's an adorable, food-obsessed, vain (yes, he actually DOES like to look at himself in the mirror...) city-dog. And other than the fact that he catapults his body at me whenever I have food, and sometimes he likes to wake me up at 5:44 by whining in my face, jumping up on my bed, and rolling on top of me, he's fantastic.

Unfortunately for him, he has to wear the cone of shame for several weeks due to some surgery. He keeps running into door jams with it (which is extremely funny and sad at the same time), and now whenever I take the camera out, he runs away.

Very self-conscious about it, apparently.

xoxo


P.S. And since I know you're probably thinking it, yes, I do know the word "wily" is not spelled with an E, and yes, I also know Wile E. Coyote is spelled... well, Wile E. Coyote. Wiley is just a combination of the two.

Baking Adventure #2

Baking Adventure #2 proved to be somewhat of a disaster... at least initially. I'll let you known now that the recipe for Elsie's Wedding Cupcakes is extremely delicious (in other words, the ones I made ended up being edible, even though at first it seemed like I was making a giant failure), and I'm sure if you try them they'll turn out perfectly. I'm just a bit baking challenged.

Everything was going fantastically in the cupcake-batter making process. I can even say after sampling some that it is the best cupcake-batter I have ever tasted, so it didn't seem that I went wrong there. The cupcakes (all 18 of them) went into the oven, and life seemed good.

..and then I took them out. The toothpick came out clean, but as soon as I started cutting the little cupcake-cones out they looked undercooked. I panicked. Back in the oven they went (a good 10 minutes after I turned it off), and it was basically downhill from there. On the upside, the frosting and filling turned out great! I ended up using apricot-raspberry preserves instead of raspberry jam, but it was still really yummy. I ate a lot of that to comfort myself while the cupcakes baked again.

Eventually I just gave up: they were not baking anymore. I was going to have to throw them all out, and I was going to have nothing for the class potluck the next day. That is, until I sampled one on my baking guinea pig... And guess what! She liked it! Turns out they were in fact really good, and I'd been freaking out for no reason. About a gazillion people told me they were fantastic the next day, and everyone lived happily ever after. 

(Which I'm hoping is going to be how I end ALL my baking adventures, but you never know...)