Zeno's Bar & Grill

I've broken away from my two new obsessions long enough to write this blog, though I doubt the laundry will get done.

The first is The ESP Game. You and an unknown partner look at pictures and try to come up with a word that describes the picture, while avoiding a list of taboo words. Every time you make a match you get a point. The second game is called Phetch in this game you and three other unknown players take turns describing an image that the other three can't see.

I try to placate my guilt of spending so much time on these games with the notion that this is actually science and will help the visually impaired use the computer more effectively by having descriptions of images. The games were created by people at Carnegie Mellon University.

The problem that I see is that it might be dumbing down the descriptors to the lowest common denominator. For instance a picture of three men shaking hands was given in Phetch once the picture was revealed I saw that one of the men was Jimmy Carter which was never given as a clue.

In any case it is fun way to waste a few minutes on the computer.

Now back to my game!

--Kelly

And now, just in time for back to school (okay, it's only July, but if Macy's can do it, so can we)...presenting our latest dual effort--Mind Candy Clothing: Rhinestone Tees for Girls Who Think!

And you always wondered what we were doing when we weren't blogging or making fabulous homemade buttah. Now, all your questions will be answered.

It all started when our kids began begging us for those glam shirts with messages spelled out in rhinestones. With four girls between us, we wondered where the shirts were to encourage them they could be whatever they wanted--whether that was a doctor, mathematician or rocket scientist.



Um...yes, our parents forced us to listen to "Free to Be You and Me" over and over again when we were children. Why do you ask?


When we couldn't find the kind of shirts we were looking for, we decided to take matters into our hands, by designing our own. So, we took the glittery "princess" tee and gave it a shot of IQ points along with a bunch of fun, positive messages for girls.



Our website has been up for a couple of months, and so far the response has been very encouraging. We've sent out shirts from coast to coast, and it's fun to think of girls all over the country wearing our designs. We are currently trying to promote our site and get the word out about our shirts, so if you know someone who would be interested please pass this on or if you have any marketing ideas for us, we'd love to hear from you!

--Melanie & Kelly

Inspired by the simple directions in the Sunday New York Times Magazine section I decided that a fun activity for my camp-free kids would be to make homemade butter.

Step 1: Fit your electric mixer with a whisk.

No problem. In fact, I bought my Kitchen Aid mixer for the express purpose of making the same coconut cupcakes that Melanie waxed ecstatic about in the blog below.

Step 2: Pour the heavy whipping cream into the bowl and beat until yellow and pebbly about 5-8 minutes.

Yeah right! Thirty minutes later and my cream hadn't even gone through the whipped stage and my kids had lost interest and were back to watching the Flintstones marathon on the Boomerang channel.

Step 3: Strain butter through a fine mesh sieve and knead by hand for 5 minutes.

My sieve was woefully too small to handle the mass of congealed fat and my hands are still greasy because the new environmentally friendly soap I bought is woefully unequipped to wash so much grease from my hands.

The good news? I have about 2 cups of yummy homemade butter and another 2 cups of homemade buttermilk. And my hands are soft like buttah. Maybe I'll use the butter and buttermilk to make those coconut cupcakes that I never got around to making.

--Kelly

Labels: cooking

Just watched the latest installment in the "Up" series of films. You know, the ones starting with "7 Up", where they filmed a bunch of British kids at age seven and then followed up with films every seven years. It's an amazing thing to watch, because it give you such a sense of the passage of time and the transitory nature of any particular phase. There was one comment that really struck home about "all those memories of the children growing up...it's like a closed chapter now." I know people say this all the time, but somehow this film really drives the point home, because it can...sort of...prove it.