Originally published as “Found It on the Internet #15” on Tasteful Diversions, August 09, 2012.
Oh, Pinterest. The delights you lead me to. This one was so easy…a rectangle of jersey fabric with a couple yards of t-shirt yarn sewn on to opposite corners. You can wear it as a skirt, as a wrap, as a top.
So comfy on a sweltering day.This one is a bit longer and makes a great lightweight skirt — it can even be worn as a mini-dress.
You’ll need some jersey fabric, wide enough to wrap around your waist (or chest) about 1 1/2 times. The length of the fabric will determine the length of the skirt/top. The grey piece in the top pic is about 30″, and I flip it over at the top before I criss-cross and tie it when I wear it as a shirt. The red piece on the bottom is about 36″ and is a great longer skirt. Both pieces are 45″ wide.
This is one of those recipes that is so easy I feel like I’m cheating by posting it. But I figure if I didn’t know about this fast and easy method of making “cream sauce”, you may not, either. And believe me, if you like cream sauce, you want to know.
Tips and tricks: First, any kind of protein (or none!) would be great with this. I happened to use salmon because my dr. told me if I’m not going to take supplements (I’m not, because I feel like crap when I do), I need to eat salmon a few times a week. I think this recipe would also be really great with chicken. Also, when I made this, I made it for myself to have for lunch, and I mixed everything together (except the tomatoes) as in the recipe below. Next time, I’m going to keep the salmon separate, as by the 3rd lunch, the salmon flavor had completely overwhelmed everything else.
Originally published on Tasteful Diversions, August 12, 2011.
In addition to all the delicious food I’ve been finding on Pinterest, I’m finding lots of fun beauty tips (remember the hair? Still loving that!). Lately I’ve been getting into the whole decorative nail polish thing. I’ve played a little bit with stripes and stuff, but last week I went to the drugstore for shampoo and deodorant and found myself in front of the nail polishes. Normally I’m a more high-end polish kid of girl, because polish chips like crazy on me (I like OPI, China Glaze, and Zoya, in case you’re wondering), but for the fun stuff I tend to cheap out. Sinful Colors runs two bucks a bottle and they have a veritable rainbow of shades to choose from, plus metallics and glitters and all kids of other stuff.
This time, there was a pretty blue glitter that I just fell in love with, and then there was a bright orange that I picked up. Now, I’m not normally an orange girl, but I figured if I’m going to start doing arty stuff like flowers and whatnot, orange is a color I might want to have. This was a reddish orange, and reminded me of the color of one of the Vettes we had when I was a kid – orange being my dad’s favorite color, we had a lot of orange stuff. Hell, the house I lived in until I was 8 was orange. No kidding. Anyhow, I picked this up and glanced at the name – because I love a cleverly named color – and it was Big Daddy. So that one went home with me.
When I got home, I took a look at the stuff I had, and then at the new stuff, and then a plan formed: I would do grey/blue on one hand for a rainy day theme, and orange/yellow on the other hand for a sunny day theme, and then I’d try the galaxy thing on my toes (again – didn’t work out last time, but I thought I knew why). I did my toes first, and they came out just fine this time – I even did constellations! (From left to right: the Compass, the Indian, Bird of Prey, Orion, Cassiopeia, Big Dipper, the Sculptor, the Fox.)
Yeah, I need to work on getting them cleaner. But I still think they’re awful cute!
On to the fingers. I did a grey and silver base coat, but then I had a hard time keeping the blue up as high as I had intended. Also, all of tutorials I read said if you keep patting with the sponge as you’re doing the gradient it’ll smooth out, and that never happened for me. But, when I put the glitter coat on that hid the texture issue so that was fine. However, it didn’t look so much like a rainy day. Then my big plan for the other hand just went to crap. I can’t even begin to tell you what went wrong – it was just all kinds of fugly. So I started over. I decided to scrap the “sunny day” idea and try for a fiery look to contrast with the icy look of the other hand. I started with a hot pink base coat, then added orange, dark pink, and red over top, then finished it all off with a gold glitter topcoat. I’m pretty pleased with the final result, though I’m going to work on doing gradients higher on the nail.
Note: this was originally intended to be posted last week, but there was a bit of an issue with images. All fixed now and everything should be getting back on schedule! Apologies for the low quality cell phone pics — I completely forgot to get photos until we were at the party.
I had big party plans this weekend, then about mid-week started getting kicked in the head by social anxiety about said parties. So I cancelled out on one (I’ll get there someday, C!) but decided to just pop my head in at the other, largely because I’d offered to bring something and the hostess had requested a non-cake dessert: “You like to bake — bake something for dessert. But not cake. I’m baking a cake.” I like these kinds of parameters — guidelines are good. And also the cake was delicious. But ANYHOW, I decided I’d always wanted to make a flag tart thing, and this was the perfect opportunity. And I promised myself I could just drop off the tart and the kids and Kit and go home if I felt overwhelmed.
I perused Pinterest for a shortbread crust, grabbed some cream cheese for cream cheese topping, and picked up blueberries and strawberries to top it all off. I had intended to bake the crust Friday night, but then I ate too much Chinese food and laid on the couch like a lump instead. And then I didn’t get up early enough to bake it before the town parade. So I was down to crunch time when we got home and I discovered I was out of regular flour. Um. Oops.
I really didn’t have time to find a store open on the holiday, so I decided to wing it with the GF supplies I had on hand. And thus, the Gluten Freedom Tart was born. (Also, I ended up staying for the whole party because it was all awesome people I already knew, so that was nice.)
Gluten Freedom Tart
Print Recipe
A gluten free shortbread crust topped by cream cheese frosting and fresh fruit.
Combine butter, powdered sugar, and flours in mixer (will be slightly softer/doughier than shortbread typically is).
Spread dough on lined jelly roll pan to a thickness of about 1/4". (Dough may not be enough to fill entire pan -- if not, shape into a rectangle in the center of the pan.)
Bake for 12-15 minutes, until just brown.
Let crust cool for at least 1 hour (should be room temperature before adding topping).
Topping
Whip cream until it is just beginning to peak.
Add granulated sugar and vanilla.
Continue to whip until stiff, being careful not to overwhip.
Add cream cheese and whip until fully combined.
Spread cream cheese topping on crust.
Arrange blueberries and strawberries in flag pattern.
