Posted by Tiffany on Mar 12, 2010 in AWESOME, Gnomes
Freshman year of college is when Aryiel and I met. Half a year later when her roommate moved out and my 3-people-in-a-2-person-dorm was getting annoying (the space situation, not the roommates), I moved into her place in Braden Hall (ah good old Chapman U.)
We’d already become quick friends and basically, somehow through her love of gnomes (hers was more obvious, mine was latent from days of watching David the Gnome) we ended up making a rule that, should either of our virgin-but-not-wanting-to-be-selves have a guy in the room, that we were serious about wanting to sleep with, we’d let the other know through mentioning, somehow, something about a gnome.
I’ll leave the story that follows that for Aryiel and another post, the main point we’re going to travel back to is that - dude, GNOMES are effing AWESOME.
So if you’re seeing this on Google reader, you might see two posts, my apologies. Wordpress and I were dueling it out, and I won victorious in the end. Time for the gnomes!
A little music to help you with your gnome viewing:
Step 1: Underpants. Step 2: ??? Step 3: Profit
From Gnome Town. Sounds like a place I'd enjoy living.
Do the seven dwarfs (dwarves?) count as gnomes?
Okay, that’s all for gnome! …I mean now. Or do I? *strokes beard*
Seriously, this was really tasty. I made the sauce super quick by mashing some raspberries with raw honey, hence why you see seeds. The sauce MADE the cake even more awesome though. Every bite danced on my pallet. Yeah, I really just said that.
So for those of you who are reading my blog, you’ll know I’ve been venturing into cooking more raw foods. This was a cake I made based on this recipe by Ani Phyo that was over at the Raw Epicurean. Since I’m not making anything original, I’ve decided to rate the recipe.
First off you should know that I don’t have a food processor (one of the three key equipment you’ll need to switch to a raw food lifestyle, the other two being a Blendtec blender, which I have, and an Excalibur Dehydrator, which we’re getting.) A food processor is really wide and has a lot of horizontal space for the food to move around in. It also has “s” shaped blades, which helps to chop up food more evenly in a shorter period, so it doesn’t over process foods. However, it won’t get things as liquidy smooth as a blender, hence why both a recommended.
But, I’ll be using a blender until I find a good used processor that’s relatively inexpensive as Eric and I have already dropped a lot of cash between the blender and the dehydrator (getting her next week, whee!). When you’re making this recipe, you want the walnut/cocoa (or cacao based on what you have) mixture to be really flour like, but if you process it to much the walnuts will release oil and turn it into walnut butter, instead of walnut cake.
This plate is actually a small salad plate, so you can get a sense of how small it is. Also notice I only used five smashed up raspberries on the top.
Also this cake is REALLY small, but it’s very dense, tasty, and very filling per slice. Technically one serving size is 1/6th of the cake, and I had 1/12th and it filled me up. And yes, I had it for breakfast. We meant to eat it last night but I fell asleep, so it sat in the fridge and hardened up. However, since switching to raw food, my stomach has shrunk and I don’t need a lot to fill me up, which as many bigger ladies know, is an amazing thing. When you get bigger, your stomach stretches. Some really big people have huge stomaches, which is why you see people getting gastric bypass surgery. You can eat a tub of mac and cheese, feel full, but since you don’t have any nutrients, your body is still hungry. Eat 1/3 that amount in kale (or even just a bit in a smoothie) and you’ll find yourself able to take less naturally. Or make the mac and cheese with some sort of sprouted grain pasta and a whole raw goat cheese/almond milk sauce. With a side of spinach. Or chop up the spinach fine and sprinkle it in after your healthy food has been made.
Inside of the raw cake. Since I'm using a blender I left it a bit nuttier. It tastes like the moistest brownie you've ever eaten.
There are a few things I want to improve for next time. I made an avocado mousse the other day, but since I overmixed the avocado it left a slightly diff. aftertaste to every bite, so I under mixed a bit this time. You can see a few avocado pieces in the ganache, but it’s super duper rich, so you can’t taste the tiny pieces. I also added flax powder to the cake.
You should check out the recipe and try it yourself. If you don’t have a high speed blender or a processor, try to find walnut-meal, date paste, and dark chocolate powder (or cacao powder, or dutch processed cocoa powder.)
Hey the three people who still read our blog. So a few changes, mainly being that the menu is now at the top of the page, and that you can choose from the various topics we talk about in a lovely organized fashion.
I also organized the categories, so you can find stuff easier, yay!!!
Plus for those of you obsessed with Aryiel Hartman, you’ll soon see her new website. I’ll post it when it’s up.
Now onto the meat of this real post.
SHOES. OMG SHOES. THESE SHOES ARE EFFING AWESOME. I WOULD DANCE IN THESE ALL NIGHT AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN. I would be BURIED in these shoes they’re SO AWESOME.
This is Flat Tire from Turn if Off productions. I went to school with these guys and ran into Phil (the one with the er, poofier hair) at many a party, event, random crossing of the school. Nice guy. Anyways, just click, and watch. The video is hilarious and made me laugh in one of those wonderful blurt Edna Krabapel “HA” laughs.
I’m really really excited to share it with you, so I’ll be launching the new feature of “Works-In-Progress” on the Cherry Fizz/Tiffany Rose flickr which’ll then post directly to here.
Well, we all learn in grade school that getting our veggies is an important part of eating right. Some people go one direction and go vegetarian, then go vegan, then go raw. At first, I thought raw was essentially just an extreme form of being a vegan. But instead it’s just a very souped up version of living super duper healthy. And yeah you can still eat meat (and it can be cooked! No thank you, raw chicken.)
When I was in college, a book that I thought looked amazing by the cover was one in the Jamba Juice of The Block (the outdoor mall I worked at/frequented.) It was a book on Raw cuisine, and while the idea of of going raw intrigued me even more than 2 years ago, I didn’t buy the book. (Of course part of that can be attributed to the fact that in college with money being scarce, 25-30 dollars was hard to scare up.
When I got my new Blendtec blender (bought because Eric & I had wanted one forEVER to make awesome soups, smoothies, and the most to-DIE-for milkshakes), I bought two books that were recommended by Amazon, Green For Life and Green Smoothie Revolution.
Victoria Boutenko relayed her amazing, amazing recovery from her and her husband being practically near death due to various illnesses. Both of her kids also had sicknesses that are hard to grow up with – her son had diabeties, and her daughter had asthma.
After switching to an all raw food lifestyle – and then additionally, later, adding in green smoothies – the WHOLE family got better. Literally. The son doesn’t have diabeties, the husband who had been told he had 2 months to live is healthy, the daughter no longer has asthma, and Miss Victoria herself, aside from the health benefits of losing over 100 pounds, also gained (pardon the cheez, folks) a second chance of living, free from her ailments.
Honestly I won’t lie, part of me is in it for the weight loss. Just from a brief foray onto Chat Roulette (I’ll write another post about THAT hilarious beast later) it’s obvious that the average person still feel’s it’s okay to make fun of, belittle, and generally be disgusted by a fat person. While I myself am not disgusted by myself, quite the opposite (I’ve gotten past my sad self-loathing days-a-thank-yew), there are physical things that I just cannot DO because I feel physically trapped by the body I’m in. I manage to make do for Joshua Tree rock climbing, the main thing I’m DYING to do is parkour.
My fiance is pretty thin, but he isn’t really strong enough to do parkour things as well, hence why as I switch myself over to this lifestyle, when he’s at home I work towards making him healthy as well. While I do have the strength to do it, I don’t have the stamina, nor the sleek physique to squeeze through tiny spots. The strength is limited when I have to deal with an extra 100 pounds more than the average person does.
At first I had planned on just making green smoothies, which I tend to drink mostly daily. (I’ve skipped a day or two here and there, but overall drinking them for just more than a week has made me feel better and I plan on drinking more of these.) But the more I look into eating raw, and the more I learn about the health benefits, I eventually had to ask myself this question.
If, in 20 years, I had cancer and was going to die prematurely… and I found out that I could have prevented all of it by simply learning how to properly eat right, what would my future self think of my current self?
What if I was told that I could have skipped having all these diseases? I don’t think at this point enough long term studies have been done in a scientific setting to make complete scientific proof that we should all live this way for perfect optimum health, but I think that between all the people who have switched to this method of eating (and by switch I mean go somewhere between 80% and 100% raw), not only do they get healthy, they also manage to stave off other sicknesses as well.
The main trend I see with raw food is “first I started it for a whim/to be healthy for a detox period/just to test it for 30 days (or) 100 days” but then it turns to “and it made me just feel so healthy that I just kept doing it.” This is what I am striving for as well. My main thing right now is, if I can replace it with something made in a raw food method, than I might as well because it’ll be better for me overall. Of course, provided it can be eaten raw. (No raw rhubarb or raw kidney beans. Cause, you know. Poisonous.)
Parsnip rice, teriyaki shiitake marinated mushrooms, this is my new favorite recipe.
Honestly I made that between last night and tonight. The mushrooms marinated for 24 hours (Eric and I meant to eat this last night but we filled up on salad), and made the parsnip (slash pine nut slash macadamia nut “rice”) last night as well. Tonight was feeling peckish and remembered I had the ingredients for this. And omg this is GOOD. This is actually my second round of it because the first one was a wee bit loose and not picture worthy (although I nommed it down anyways.)
Cool things: If you want meat, you can have meat. Just pair it with other meat, not with a starch, or else it makes the digestion process longer (also don’t pair with nuts or fruits). Also try to get the grass fed kind when you can, if you can, because it has better nutrients from the chlorophyll from the grass versus the sugar/fats/blahs from cooked over processed corn. If you want starch, pair it with another starch. Have a sweet potato (I have a pretty decent looking recipe for maple sweet mashed potatoes that are raw, going to have to make that soon), and some bread. You can also eat veggies with most groups just not with fruit. Fruit, when starting out, is best by itself, and you’ll want to try to wait 30 minutes before you eat something else. Actually, I’m gonna let you go check it out for yourself – The Raw Food Detox is Natalia Rose’s book on basic way to move yourself towards eating raw-er and healthier. Some people do go all the way raw, I’m going to ride this out myself and see if I like it, and where I want it to take me. Can’t wait to make some dehydrated sprouted grain cacao crepes.
Hey everyone! So as you may have guessed, on top of being the pin up photographer, groovy web designer type of chick I am, I also am a graphic designer! While I don’t hold a candle to some of the greats, I have taught myself enough to pull something together that looks good. I particularly love working with indie films, such as the soon-to-be-film Crooks.
I saw the sizzle reel and really enjoyed the way it was put together (what can I say, I’m a sucker for character stories and awesome editing). When Matthew Sullivan made the call out to design the poster for the film, I threw my hat in the ring. After he told me what he looking for (a Saul Bass type feel), I enlisted the help of my sweet betrothed* Eric to draw out what I was envisioning. Usually if you seen an element that’s drawn to my work, I most likely had Eric draw it out first then fixed it in illustrator/photoshop/etc. because while I can draw – it usually takes me a few hours to crank out something good while it takes him a few minutes. Anyways, here’s what (between my ideas, Eric’s drawing hand, and my ability to trace and age-up) is what we did together:
Another poster I did was for another indie flick, When the Voices Fade. Erika Cohn and I went to Chapman University together, and Matthew recommended my poster skills to her. So between various versions, picking, redoing, picking again, redoing, the results are very pleasing.
What’s this? Another drawing in my poster? Why yes! The girl’s body was drawn by Eric, the hands are Erika’s hands (yay for pictures and the pen tool). The sunset was actually a picture of a desert sunset I took in Joshua Tree – I’ll probably post a bunch of my various pictures of my ongoing photojournal on flickr. Although if you’re a fan of my Cherry Fizz design style, you should check out seeing the world through Cherry Fizz eyes. (How? You ask!) Check out my Fluidr account, and scroll down – best if you click in your scroll wheel or just press the down arrow.
Speaking of posters, I actually have another post i’m working on about the ridiculousness of movies posters that copy each other, and are from different films. Geez, creativity people, creativity.
*About use of the word betrothed: Eric and I got engaged last summer, and I always revert to saying “boyfriend” because I feel that “fiance” is a little bit too snooty for my taste, a bit too wasp-ish. I don’t know where it comes from. So instead, I’ve started saying betrothed. It might sound MORE upper-crust to you, but to me it takes me to Lord of the Rings-esque places (mostly the bridge scene.)
Whenever I stress out about the state of the day to day stuff I have to get done, whether its website and various graphic/photography projects, or planning a wedding, or just cleaning house, it helps to remind myself that this is the size of our planet. Then to take that out a step further…
This is based off of a great image, but this version comes with music (yay!)
Looking at this helps me keep in mind that while all this stuff that we worry about and stress over seems SO BIG in our every day lives, in the long run everything is so incredibly tiny, that you can really just breathe, relax, and keep on trucking. (or it’s modern equivalent)….
:) Anyways, if you read this, hopefully it’ll enlighten and make your day flow better. Just keep swimming…
No, not the country. The amazing, amazing song from Toto.
There are too many amazing things about this video.
Like 1:09, where the globe spins around to AFRICA. IN CASE YOU DIDN’T KNOW WHAT THE SONG WAS ABOUT. OR THE VIDEO.
Yep, that's what the song is about. Africa.
Or whenever they cut to the band singing, they’re standing on a giant book. Was this green screen, or did they build a giant book stage? It’s probably green screen, however, still ridiculous and cheezy.
We shrunk down to be able to play for the gnome king.
Let’s not forget the main singer. Aside from the fact that he looks like a date rapist, you know that this dude got SO MUCH PUSSY when this song was in its prime.
"Hey baby, remember 'It's gonna take a lot to take me away from you' - yeah, that was alllll me."
…So did this guy.
Nice pornstache dude.
And this guy.
I LIKE TO PLAY TEH KEYBOARDS YEYYYYYYYY.
He kinnnnnd of looks like the not-right-in-the-head little brother that they HAD to have in the band or else “mom wouldn’t let us play in the garage” type scenarios.
Anyways, originally I started to really dig this song (and I mean as opposed to being unaware while listening to it on top-whatever stations when I was a kid) because of this scene from Scrubs.
That plus the combination of a best friend who was also digging the ridiculousness of the video and a fiance who is also, for whatever reason, enjoying the rock out factor of the song, lead to it being one of the best singing-out-loud-top-of-the-lungs-in-the-car songs.
I leave you with the ever lovely Aryiel, as I dropped her off at the train station in the rain from San Diego. And of course, the drive there looked like Africa. A very rainy Africa. I only WISH I was making this up. The best part was during the singing of the song at the top of our lungs, we couldn’t decide what the lyrics were. (I had sung “I guess it rains down in Africa” which… was wrong. After the use of smart phones and google, we found out it’s “I bless the rains down in Africa” – which .. I guess.. makes just as much sense…)
After this, when she got out of the car, we were magically in the plains of Africa. True story.
That is sooooooo not something you would hear me say normally.
Being an actres, there’s a certain amount of bullshit I can stand. But there is sooooo much of it right now that hollywood is practically sinking.
Now, I’m the worst person to take to a movie nowadays. I’m an extremely harsh critic because it appears that there’s no real art to the cinema anymore; it’s all become about marketing campaigns and demographics. Scary to think of how tunnel-visioned Hollywood is. And then I stumbled upon this film : “Ink”. It was recommended on my Netflix. Sounded interesting. Sure, why not? But I have to admit that after an hour and forty minutes, I can easily say it is truly one of the greatest films I’ve ever seen and one of the top films of our generation.
If you watch it, you’ll understand. I’m so glad Hollywood didn’t get their hands on this. They would have bastardized it and made it a safe PG-13 movie geared towards young adults or something while losing all of its humanity. Bravo to the directors and producers for not selling out and doing this movie with such blatent passion and integrity and vision.
It beauitfully blends fantasy and horror without shoving anything down your throat. There’s some beautiful sequences that will make your 5 year old smile and some sequences that would make any adult quiver.
There’s no giant explosions, but there is AMAZING fight choreography. There’s not a whole lot of special effects except for some crafty camera work and editing devices. There’s no big stars to name in sight but all throughout the movie the acting is remarkable. All of these brought together an actual piece of living, breathing art that I’m proud to say I will watch over and over again. I highly recommend to you all to do yourself and your sensibilities a favor, relax, take a breath, and watch this ravishing film.
It’s availalbe streaming on Hulu (with commercials) and also on Netflix instant watch (totally without commmercials which is definately how it should be watched).
Seriously, all lolcatinternets speak aside, you guys are losing out on MAJOR MONEY. The only show that is doing it right thus far is South Park. South Park Studios is something that the fans wanted, nay, demanded. (Demanded? How exactly, Tiffany?)
Okay so even when South Park was relatively young, people were ripping episodes and posting them online. 10 years ago I was 14, a veteran of the internet at the time (between being a latchkey kid in a no tivo/DVR place) there wasn’t much to do. Before megavideo, youtube, and other video streaming sites you had the choice between downloading WMV or MOV formats. There were at least 3 big-ish sites that allowed you to download ripped, horrible quality but decent enough sound South Park (and Simpsons yay!). So, I got to catch up on my episodes. A breaker of the laws in place at a tender 14 years old.
Now that I’ve been provided with the awesomeness of SouthParkStudios.com, I can watch episodes anytime I want – provided I’m online. Obviously there’s that catch, which means that people still will buy DVDs if they’re dedicated enough (or, if they want to hear those awesome mini commentaries from Trey & Matt, *dreamy teen fangirl sigh*). However, I’m certain that with nerds who have computers hooked up to their HDTVs (like I do) or the plethora of internet savvy youths who will watch most everything online provided they get the chance to, there’s FINALLY a way to bring commercials back to the game! (You mean, putting things on the internet will help us with the money we lost when Tivo and it’s fast forwardable commercials came into play?) Possibly, executives. Possibly. I mean, the same people who mute the commercial will probably take the effort to do the same (even if it’s unmuteable, computers can still be muted.) However the majority of people won’t care, the commercials are HEAPS shorter (30 second break? That’s fine! 3 minute break? Please no mas!). Also with the fact that you see that same commercial three times within a 20 minute period, it sticks folks, and that’s your goal, as far as making money from advertisers goes, right? Making it stick?
Let people choose what they want from a series of choices and you’ll not only get invaluable market research (from the fact that while neilsen groups only pick 1-in-such-and-such amount and with this you can have exact numbers, data, with real time results, that shows you the complete total of people, not just an appx. loose amount based on a small survey of people.), but you’ll see an increase in purchases. More invested, because they had the power to choose a specific brand instead of having it hoisted on them in this age of 5000 + ads per day. Getting to choose, getting to in a sense, be heard, has a much more memorable affect than trying to blindly get their attention with what may or may not work, depending on the mood, person, etc.
Quick aside about advertising: I’m not joking folks. People love to choose. Hulu’s doing a pretty good job of the quick survey, and even sometimes lets you play advertisements. If you give people a choice of commercials geared to different demographics (ex: South Park caters to gamers. Gamers are usually boys, and there’s a greater percentage of boys who watch south park versus girls. Great match right?) who typically watch the show. Bonuses are again, market research, on top of that, people will be more likely to pay attention to the commercial because you paid attention to THEM.
TheSimpsons.com – if that offered me every episode, available to watch not only through my computer, but also through the ps3 hooked up to the TV, would probably play NON STOP. (Okay, not literally. I do sleep people, and occassionaly like to watch other things.) Give me a TheSimpsons.com and a “random episode” button, and I’ll watch it whenever I don’t have anything in particular to watch. As part of a new generation of freelancers and get-it-done-ers who spend the better part of their day trapped behind a computer, we’ve learned to multi-task. Watching TV while catching up on the latest blog while organizing our RTM and planning out, possibly cooking, dinner, is all part of the daily practice for us. We would LOVE to have a no hassle way to know we’re going to enjoy what we’re going to watch!
Also, do you know HOW many shows I missed out on mostly because I couldn’t watch the first episodes of the season? You will get sooooooo many more new viewers both to the cable showings, Hulu “new episodes” showing, etc. Now that I have TVShack.net I work from home, edit photos, create websites, clean house, etc – all while either Pandora’ing or TVShack’ing. What can I say, after living in a media world for so long, the comforting flicker of the TV screen helps me to focus my mind and get things done (I think with portability we’ve gone well past the “zombie” stage of TV, and should stop fearing it.) Obviously it’s not the only thing I do on the internet, I just happen to function better while multitasking. I think it’s generational. I hear many similar things from many student friends of mine (well, some friends, some former classmates).
Back to the point – all the TV shows you’re keeping in “wait” for someone to buy or to see on the internet is money lost from advertisers that would pay you for very specific research, very specific demographic and psychographic data you could be capturing at the SAME TIME as advertising. How’s THAT for innovation?
This is part 1 of a series, I’ll eventually write more once I get some hard data, research, and more. Because I know that’s what you executives like, numbers. Hopefully I can get examples on LOST, as leading up to the sixth, and final season, the purposely put all episodes on Hulu and on Netflix so people could watch and catch up, or rewatch and find out more mysteries (ooooOOoooooo).
