Tiny Tuesday (A day late.)

I forgot Tiny Tuesday. ::sad trumpet sound:: Three-day weekends always throw me off my game. I have a feeling this YouTube clip will redeem myself, though. He he he

Barbeque Birthday

 

Taking turns in the hammock. / A birthday present: Barbecue, History of and American Institution.

For Kurt's birthday, his one request was to lay in his hammock all day, drink beer and barbecue a massive quantity of meat. A brisket, actually, to be marinated, smoked and babied for 11 hours in our new hand-me-down smoker. We packed up the car, filled a cooler with Oberon, and headed to his Mom's backyard for a full day of laziness, only punctuated with hourly breaks to check on the brisket, and mop it with our homemade sauce. In the evening, lots of friends came by for a taste, and we drank on the patio until late in the night.

 Summer drinks. / Delicious pretzel croissant! / Corns on the fire pit, / Brisket master (me), 

post-run. / Pork Belly for braising and grilling. / Brisket in its 11th hour.  

I used this Kansas City Brisket recipe, and we smoked this beast for 11 hours. Fantastic. Served with elotes, a vinegar slaw, brioche buns, plus fresh baked cookies from my new Milk Bar cookbook.

No backyard barbecue is complete without a sky lantern launch!

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P.S. Our barbecue obsession began here, in case you missed it.

Tiny Tuesday!

Tiny rabbit in a bag, by Mairuru_Siesta on Flickr

This tiny rabbit comes with his own carrying case. I'm confused. I'm in love. Why is he so sad? Somehow, I think it makes him even more irresistible. 

2 years.

Today marks our two year wedding anniversary. Kurt has decided to re-write the traditional anniversary gift guide. He wanted me to note that it is still a work in progress, since the list only carries us through our 61th anniversary. (We'd be 90 and 91 years old) I bolded the ones that made me laugh the most.

1. festive cocktails 2. ground beef 3. plane tickets 4. awesome coat 5. animal ride 6. sporting event 7. unusual slumber locations 8. a helmet 9. cheese 10. foreign film 11. electronics 12. hammocks 13. literature 14. magazine subscription 15. dairy 16. wings 17. liquid 18. rocks 19. grains 20. esoteric units of measurement 21. dead people 22. music 23. tickets 24. wood working 25. projectiles 26. light 27. vehicles 28. Mexico 29. fermented things 30. steel 31. salt 32. mystery prize 33. deep fried food 34. art 35. paper 36. wind 37. semi precious stones 38. education 39. fruit 40. cured meat 41. gambling 42. exercise 43. smoking 44. charity 45. candy 46. photography 47. snacks 48. aeronautics 49. laziness 50. sharks 51. laziness again 52. fire 53. games 54. breakfast food 55 nice socks 56. the color green 57. hats 58. barnyard animals 59. night time 60. board games 61. sleep


I think he made the second anniversary ground beef because he knows my favorite dates involve hamburgers. 

Tiny Tuesday! Printstagram!

Check it out. You can make tiny photo books with your Instagram photos! You could leave a stack of them near your baseboards so your mouse friends have something to read while they are at the doctor's office. Or sneak one into your kid's lunch box! Or! They'd fit perfectly tucked inside one of those ridiculously small shirt pockets that Target puts on their women's tees. Flip through the pages while having a tiny cup of coffee. Give one to a pygmy slow loris. Put one in your mouth, just because you can.

From Prinstagram:

"Is there any cuter way to show off your pics than this? The photo quality is surprisingly great, and Tinybooks even magnet together or to your fridge. Each book has 24 photos and you get 3 books with each order. If you choose 24 Instagram photos, you'll get 3 of the same book, choose 72 images for 3 unique books."

Tinybooks measure only 1.7" inches x 1.5" inches.
3 books for $10.

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Thanks, Mike Bigtime, for sharing this piece of tiny news.

Bon Vivant >>> Behind the Scenes

:: From Bon Vivant Laboratories ::

We baked over 500 macarons on a Friday night!

Our Danish pretzels are sweet, buttery shortbread cookies that melt in your mouth. We hand-
shape each one and sprinkle them with sparkly pearl sugar. They'll put crumbs in your mustache. 

Props to my little Sis who helped package all these Neapolitan cookies!

Whew! My butt is whooped. Baking can be some seriously hard work. Our arms ache from hand folding twenty batches of macaron batter in a bowl the size of a tractor tire, and then there are the tedious tasks that last well into the morning, like rolling tiny logs of dough into pretzel shapes or filling 500 sandwich cookies with teaspoons of butter cream. My teeth are slick from trying a hundred bites of cookies. By the time I crawl into bed, sugar and egg whites are plastered to my forearms like stucco, and my heavy limbs are still tangled up in apron strings.

But I love these cookies. And I love seeing people's faces light up when they try them for the first time. There are people I've never met before, eating my cookies right in front of me, and they're SUPER STOKED. They make funny faces to illustrate how good they taste, and my head just kinda wobbles on my neck while I smile at them in awe. I'm kind of a dork like that. I'm really happy + tired.

:: At the Market ::

Harold as our sales representative. / Danish Butter Pretzels / Neapolitan Cookies / 
Buttered Popcorn and Salted Caramel Macarons




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Louisville's David

Louisville buddies! Have you been downtown yet to see the newest addition to Main's streetscape? It is fantastic and outrageous, and exactly what our city needed, if you ask me. To you outsiders, 21C Museum Hotel installed a massive golden David replica in front of their doors on Louisville's busy Main Street. The artist, Serkan Ozkaya, created the sculpture using a 3D rendering program that enabled him to replicate David (inspired by Michelangelo) at double the size. The statue was hauled across the Atlantic from Istanbul, to a port in New York City, before making its journey to its home to Louisville. A little bird told me that the truck driver received some very interesting salutations from on the CB along the way. ;)

I work on Main and pass David every morning on my walk from the bus stop. In just a couple of blocks, I pass this statue in all its golden glory, followed by the worlds tallest baseball bat at Louisville Slugger. A few blocks further, I walk by Caulfield's humongous vampire bat. Needless to say, this city can be pretty magical sometimes. If I can't fit into a tiny world, a land of giants will have to do!

Garden Days

From top: 1 & 2. Paul's Fruit Market. 3,4,5. Thieneman's Nursery 6. Kurt's Mom's 
new pup, Andy 7. Merguez 8. New garden!

Sunday was the first of many days I plan to spend outside, tending the tiny garden I planted in Kurt's Mom's backyard. We spent the afternoon picking out heirloom vegetable plants from Thieneman's, my favorite nursery. I added a few tomato plants, sweet peppers, herbs, lettuces and one poppy plant to my my wagon. After a couple long hours of preparing our garden bed (with a lunchbreak intermission to the taco truck for beers and gorditas), I was able to get all the little plantlings into their new homes before the sun went down and our dinner hit the grill. Being outside in the sun, covered in dirt, with food on the grill, and our dogs running circles around me? Can't get no better than that.

Tiny Tuesday! Finnegan the Squirrel

Finnegan the Squirrel, via Snopes (TRUE!) 

I realize that this has been making it's way around the Internet for a while, but it is my personal mission to ensure that some cute memes never die. There's always going to be some deprived soul who hasn't seen photos of a mother dog snuggling her adoptive baby squirrel son. In fact, I need to tell you something. ::deep breath:: I was that someone, until this morning. Thankfully, my sweet friend Brandy showed me whatsup in an email forward. It was a hard pill to swallow, knowing that thousands of moms with AOL email addresses knew about Finnegan the Squirrel before I did.

You guys. Don't let me miss this stuff. You know what to do > johannainman @ gmail dot com.

Happy Tiny Tuesday!