Yummy stuff!

Including Ramp Pesto,  Raspberry Kulfi, Salmon in Parchment, Cool as a Cucumber cocktail, No-cook Strawberry Jam, Rainbow Bubbles (from Sister Diane‘s Mom!), Poured Sugar Icing… and more!

Go See our new recipes and spotlights!!

yeah.
..
you should really check it out.

If you’re on Facebook, I’d totally love it if you’d go Like our Facebook Page! I’m planning on using it more in the future, but right now I post cool crafty links there, plus it gets the Dabbled RSS feed so you can see links to the most recent Dabbled posts there too. I’m planning on doing some contests and other fun stuff there too! So go share your love for Dabbled there!

If you’re a twitterer, there’s a great crafty community on Twitter. I’m DotatDabbled – if you friend me, be sure to send me a message so I know to friend you back!. And let me know if you need some recommendations on other cool people to friend… come on, come to the dark side!

You of course already get Dabbled via email or in your feedreader, right?  I’d be remiss if I didn’t provide a link: Get the Feed (RSS) or Get Dabbled via Email :)

Today The Boy has his graduation from Pre-K!

Amazing how the time flies…

Here’s a few random photographs from this year! (some of them are from projects this year… Like: How to make Homemade Slime! The Perry The Platypus Costume Quick Project – Kids T-shirt Mod! Fun with Kids: How to do a photo safari Knight Costume for dress up fun!

Oh! Foodwhirl giveaway ends today! Go enter quick!

Here is the ballooning robot in the early morning light.  I imagine he got up early, and just headed out on an adventure.  Not quite sure where the winds will take him, as his craft has very little ability to steer. (Maybe he’ll see the Ship of Gnomes!)

Cute huh?  Well, I think so at least :)

I just posted a recap of last week’s recipes on Foodwhirl: Poured Sugar Icing, Lentil Soup, Bunny Treats, Summer Salads, Rhubarb & more! And enter to win a $80 prize, yay! http://ht.ly/1P7NQ

And I’m trying to be more social ;)—  You can go Like Dabbled on Facebook and/or Foodwhirl on Facebook!  And Twitter, of course–if you friend me on Twitter be sure to send me an @ message so I know you’re from Dabbled, not a spammer!

Ciao!

The Boy has a birthday coming up, and I figured I’d better be early (ok, I’m reaching for an IF theme! edit: Another IF for Early is HERE!) drawing an illustration for his birthday party invite. (Previous year’s party invitations: Dragon and Robots.) His pick for a party theme this year? Phineas & Ferb AND Star Wars – The Clone Wars. So what was I to do? Well, I’m still not sure about the party itself yet, but here’s the invitation (he’d better appreciate it, it took me all day to draw)!

Whatcha think!?

Too bad it will be too hot to wear his Perry Costume…!

I have been so slack at drawing lately, even sketching—and I haven’t done an illustration friday in weeks! So, here’s a quick pencil drawing I did at The Boy’s Kung Fu class Tuesday night. I MIGHT get around to a colored version eventually….

Joanne, at Ready, Set, Craft!, asked me to do a guest post on her blog today (and she’s done a great one for Dabbled previously–the flower pinata!), so I figured I’d return the favor! So pop on over there and see how to make a business card holder (or mini-wallet) from recycled sweater material!

I had a scrap piece of sweater fabric, which had a lovely beading design, that was left over from the original Ele-purse from way back in 2007… and it was just waiting to have something done with it.  As per usual with my sewing related tutorials, this is a great project for beginning sewers!

Go to the Tutorial!

…

• On Foodwhirl today, pick your favorite recipe for a chance to win an $80 gift certificate!

Go ahead… I’ll wait. OK, you entered the contest? Good. Now, on to some recipes!

More recent recipe yummies on Foodwhirl:

Spotlight: Pork Ragu

Over at Talk of Tomatoes, Janelle has a tasty looking recipe for Pork Ragu!  This looks like a wonderfully simple ‘go-to’ meal…
“I am in love with ragu. Shall I marry it? I made this ragu recently for lunch, and my eldest son says to me: “mom, this is the only thing I am willing to eat the rest of my life.” His way of saying: make it again and again and again and again and again…”

Don’t fear the Quinoa! Crunchy Quinoa Salad.

Quinoa. Pronounced “keen-wah”. What the heck is it? It’s a grain-like seed from Peru that is incredibly healthy (high in protein, and full of amino acids) and quite tasty too! You basically can use it as a healthier substitute most places you would use rice or couscous.

Spotlight: Rhubarb Cream Pie

Reader Allison, from the delightful newish blog, Radishes and Rhubarb, does her first actual rhubarb related post… And it’s a sweet one, dedicated to her mom, with a delish looking recipe for Rhubarb Cream Pie.  The recipe is her mom’s, and thanks to Allison for sharing it!  (I must admit, I have never tried to cook with rhubarb… although those gorgeous red stalks always look tempting.)

Chicken & Spinach Enchilada “Lasagna” Casserole

The other night I was brainstorming on dinner, and my eyes feel to a bag of tortilla chips we had opened the other evening when we had friends over. “Hmmm…” Dot thinks. “What can I do with those?” (Because Dot is inherently cheap and knows that the chips will just end up going stale and being throw away…)  This fabulously easy and tasty enchilada casserole was the result.

Vegetable Stir Fry with Orange Ginger Sauce

“All of these vegetables need to be eaten before they go bad!!”  Sound familiar?  We went to visit my man’s parents for Mother’s Day and had just gotten my organic produce box the day before we left.   I contemplated taking the whole box with me, but it wouldn’t have fit in the overhead compartment… I love my organic produce, and I really hate it when I let it go bad!!    I was determined not to let that happen this time!

Fried Chicken

Fried Chicken is one of my loves, along with chocolate, mint juleps and David Tennant’s Dr. Who.  However, like most things I love, it’s something that I can only have in small amounts. Why is that?  Why do we love that which is bad for us?  Why can’t fried chicken be a HEALTHY meal? That plaque on my arteries should be good for me – some added structural basis to weakening coronary vessels!

Spotlight: Potato Gnocchi Tater Tots

I ran across this recipe the other day at Deliciously Organic, and had to save it into my ‘to post’ folder! I love this updated take on that old favorite (and guilty pleasure), tater tots.
“What a blast kneading the fluffy potato with a little flour and arrowroot, rolling it into tiny logs, boiling then frying them to golden brown perfection. They taste way better than the tots you find in a bag.”

Simple (almost) Summer Salad

As much as I really wanted to try out Dot’s frank-and-burger loaf recipe for dinner tonight (I mean, yum, right?), I opted to go a slightly simpler and (more than slightly) healthier route. I received some lovely avocados, tomatoes and corn in my produce box this week, and all of them were in need of being used, so I decided to throw together this quick and tasty salad as a side with my stuffed poblano peppers for dinner.

Recently on Dabbled:

• Knight Costume for dress up fun!
• Star Wars, Pancakes, Goldfish and other mostly geeky links
• Interview: Debbie Does Cakes

So, what follows is not exactly the most well crafted costume I’ve ever done, but it was easy to make, and looked great, and the boy was absolutely loving it!  By following these general instructions, and actually taking some time and care, you can have an even better costume!

Also note:  This is a summer costume, so he just wore shorts and a t-shirt under it to avoid heat stroke!  In the winter, add a long sleeved shirt  and pants underneath– if you can find or make those in silver you’ll have the perfect knight’s mail!

Materials:

Two pieces of fabric, approx 52×15 inches and approx 38×22 inches (you’ll hem down to 50×13 and 36×20).  This worked for an average size almost 5 year old.  Measure against the child to ensure fit!

Also needed:  Cording and some clear duct tape for sword belt, Trim to decorate cape, Felt for tabard design, Velcro to fasten cape, 1 inch grosgrain ribbon or bias tape for the neck of the tabard.

How to make a knight’s costume:

We basically pulled this together from items on hand and in my stash…  We started off with some purple taffeta I happened to have stuck away in the basement.  A halloween costume creation of mine from years ago–a queen, maybe?  It was wrinkled and faded, but it worked!  From the same old costume, I had some gold cording (upholstery trim) and some green and gold embroidered trim.  The purple fabric became the tabard and cape, the gold cording (plus duct tape!) became a sword belt, and the husband designed the red crusader’s cross for the front, and cut it out of red felt.

Tabard: 1 rectangle of fabric, hemmed all the way around so that the final piece is approx 50 x13 inches.  Hold it up to the child to get an approximate length and shoulder width.  We erred on the large size so he’ll be able to wear it for more years.

Fold the fabric in half (so it’s ~25×13 inches) and find the center of the fold.  Measure out about 3 inches from the center on each side, and make a vertical 1 inch cut.  Then cut from the bottom of one cut to the other, making a square neckline.  Try this on, and see if it fits over the child’s head.  If not, cut down another 1/2 inch, and repeat the process.

Once you have the neckline, you can just leave it unfinished if your fabric will allow (ours frayed too badly for that) or your can try turning it under and hemming, or you can use extra fabric or grosgrain ribbon to cover the rough edges.  I did this (albeit very poorly! — I just used one long ribbon and scrunched it up at the corners).  Taking the time to do this right would be worth the effort I think–cut lengths of ribbon for each side of your square.  Fold the ribbon lengthwise and pin, so it covers the rough edges, either mitering the corners or just overlapping the ribbon at the corners.  Sew.

To decorate the front of the tabard, cut out the design of your choice out of felt, then sew around the edges to applique it to the front and center of the tabard.

Cape: Rectangle of fabric hemmed to ~ 36 x 20 inches.  (Note, there are lots of great cape patterns around the crafty blogosphere, but this isn’t one of them.   If you’d like to make an even better cape, try this one from Creative Kismet)

This was just a quick and dirty rectangular cape, which was fastened with velcro.  To fit the neck better, I ended up tying the ends together in a half knot, then velcroing the ends together, which worked pretty well.

I sewed on a piece of trim a little larger than the width of the cape to add a decorative detail at the bottom.

A length of cording tied around the waist becomes a simple belt.  (The husband used duct tape to create a loop for the sword to go through, also).

This guy is awesome… Way cool pancake creations from Jim’s Pancakes!

At Superpunch: a Shark sleeping bag
and also more clever ads for Star Wars Weekends at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

At Neatorama: This is just weird.  Wear This Plastic Ball on Your Head So You Can Enjoy Some Peace and Quiet

A third grader in Texas gets detention for possession of a Jolly Rancher. What the heck is the world coming to?

Anatomy of a goldfish cracker (and other cool links at Superpunch)

Star Wars meets Mexican bingo (Loteria) at Dudecraft

Like weird trivia? At Mental Floss: Spell It Out: 16 Abbreviated Company Names Explained

Interesting article on Boing Boing about SyFy (“Siffy!!) network programming.

Coolio!  An inside out grilled cheese sandwich!