g&g

Lori pointed me to this post over at Cute Overload with some of the most imaginative, adorable bento I have ever seen! I think these inari babies are my favorites, but it was a close one.

<3

The raw apple and pear tart pictured above may be the hippiest thing to ever emerge from my kitchen. And that includes the Mission: Possible where we all made green cleaning supplies. The crust is raw and completely cribbed from this recipe. I ended up using only about 2 cups of walnuts instead of 2.5 and probable not a full 1.5 cups of dates, since my tart pan is a little on the small side. For the filling, I marinated a couple of sliced up apples and pear in brown sugar, lime juice and maple syrup, then ground it coarsely through the blender…not enough to make applesauce, just enough to make it feel like pie filling to me. The whole thing is topped with the remaining 1/2c walnuts mixed with a couple of tablespoons of maple syrup. Oh, and of course blueberries. Because pretty much everything I make ought to involve blueberries for the foreseeable future. I’m thinking I’ll serve this on Wednesday night when folks come over to watch MST3K!

The Indie Craft Experience was awesome, as always! The past couple of days have been just sort of a blur of crafting and good friends.

OK, first, obviously, let’s talk about Friday night’s preparty! Holy crap, you guys. This came off wonderfully! I don’t think I can thank Ashley, Lori and Idalys enough times for the amazing vegan eats! Folks were amazed when we told them all the snacks were vegan! These ladies were more generous than we could have ever asked for, and you really helped make the party so special. Here is where I have to admit that some of the leftover dip from the party sustained us through the day yesterday and I may have just finished up some mini cranberry-orange scones for breakfast. Maybe.

We also had awesome live music by DP3, who also played at ICE the next day! I am pretty sure we couldn’t have pulled off parts of this party without Davis from DP3. He sure did not sign up to be the MC for the night, but he did a fantastical job! Davis helped us transition between the music and showing the Handmade Nation trailer and helped wrangle folks when it was time to announce the Alternative Apparel t-shirt contest winners!

OMG AND! Faythe Levine, the woman responsible for Handmade Nation and owner of The Paper Boat Boutique wants to carry my Lunch Kits in her store!! AAAAAAH! I was completely wound up from all the good vibes when I got home, so Dave and I watched Battlestar Galactica and I tried to sit still.

On to the show!

OK, I’ll get this part out of the way first. It was hot. Like…brutally hot. Whenever I asked someone how they were doing, they would say, “Hot, but good.” There, done!

I know that after every ICE I say that this one was the best one yet, and this one was the best one yet! This was the best group of vendors I’ve seen at any show in Atlanta so far. Folks traveled to come here! My only regret about the show was that I never had the energy to make the rounds and meet as many folks as I would have liked. I didn’t even really get to visit anyone that wasn’t in the immediate vicinity. I only saw Leslie from The Green Wardrobe at the very end, when she was carrying stuff to her car!

The day is sort of a blur, but everyone was super duper nice. We had awesome neighbors, too! We were right beside some of our favorite folks and just across the way from the super-sweet Miss Alison! Our other across the way neighbors were Missy and Raoul! It was great to gab with them. We had Flickr Confession, wherein we admitted that we love looking at each others’ photostreams, especially the cat pictures. They had a brilliant idea about this picture of my kitcats that I am totally going to put into action! More to come on that once I get it together!

Oooh ooh! I did get a chance to visit Jeanette from The Vegan Dish’s booth. She wanted a Lunch Kit and was into a trade!! I got a beautiful serving dish printed with a swirl and tiny stars and a bunny butt magnet!! Best. Trade. EVER. She, of course, took the Squirrel Lunch Kit. I was happy to see it go to such a great home!

So I guess that’s it! Christy and Shannon put on another kickass event! They are the best! Hurrah!

Oh! While I’m thinking about it….a few folks yesterday asked me questions about Atlanta Craft Mafia stuff, so I just wanted to reiterate here that Liz, Lori and I decided to leave the ACM and focus on SuperCute!. You can read my original post about it here. If you do have questions for the ACM, you can email the ladies directly at atlcraftmafia@gmail.com.

I had to head out from the vegan potluck a little early to have a Lunch Kit and headband photoshoot! There was great light today, and our toys made wonderful headband models! I’ll be listing new stuff all week over at the shop! Whee!

The potluck was superfun! I made garlic tempeh with tahini-miso dipping sauce. Even Liz liked the sauce, and she doesn’t like tahini! I’m going to give the credit for that one to copious amounts of nutritional yeast. I’ll make a proper post about the potluck over on the recipe blog soon. I’m sort of work out right now.

I hope Dave wants to watch The Office later! We just started season 4, and I’m slightly obsessed!

I updated the shipping on all my Recycled Pins to include shipping to everywhere!

We have no plans all day today! Amazing. I want to sit in my robe and drink coffee for at least another hour and then maybe hit a thrift store. I love a lazy day!

Tonight, I sort of want to brew even more coffee and stay up and sew. Hopefully, the thrift store will yield some fun new fabric….it would be really nice to whip out 4 Lunch Kits, so I can bring a couple to Cosmo’s and put a couple up on Etsy, too!

Oooh speaking of Cosmo’s! I ran across Leigh, one of the owner’s, Flickr account. This woman posts the most amazing vegan food! While I was browsing, I found this crazy sammich. Amazing. She’s a genius! I’m going to make one right now!!

These sweet little birdies are living over at Cosmo’s Vegan Shoppe. Obviously, I trip over to Cosmo’s wouldn’t be complete without some sort of amazing treat. I totally lucked out, because today they had Fauxstess Twinkeys by Vegan Honey in stock!

Now, I’m not certain that I have ever eaten a Twinkie before. My folks were pretty selective about the junk food we were allowed, and by the time I was buying my own junk food the list of ingredients on a Twinkie grossed me right out. This is not so with the Fauxstess Twinkey! The ingredient list is short and pronounceable. The cake was super-tasty and it was filled with some sort of white frosting. It was totally perfect with a cup of coffee for dunking.

OMG also, I was browsing her shop and it looks like she has a Dessert of the Month Club! Ohman.

Dave and I stopped by Cosmo’s Vegan Shoppe yesterday, and I couldn’t resist the tub of ricemellow creme. It’s basically marshmallow fluff made without egg whites, and it’s delicious! After my friend Bonnie’s birthday party last night, I ate it on crackers with peanut butter. They were like tiny fluffernutter sandwiches, and I am not sorry!