Hugs, Kisses & FREE SHIPPING from Happy Hands Hand Cream

I’ve just sent a coupon for free US shipping to all my Happy Hands hand cream fans who’re signed up for my mailing list.

Would you like a free US shipping coupon too? You can join my fan list to get one for yourself. But hurry, this coupon ends April 4!

And if you’re outside the USA, sign up and stay tuned for a new coupon especially for international orders.

Don’t worry: I don’t spam, and I don’t share your email address with anyone. Ever. And it’s as easy to un-join as it is to sign up, should you tire of my mailings.

Even though this offer ends soon, you can join my list anytime to get my latest special offer to members. It might be a coupon like this one, or it might be free samples of a new scent, or a members-only sale. Always a goodie!

For those of you new to Happy Hands, I hand-blend this unique hand cream for knitters, crocheters and fiber artists from shea butter, goats milk, honey and aloe.

It’s non-greasy, and won’t transfer to your handiwork, which means it’s great not only for knitters, but also scrapbookers, rubber stampers, jewelry makers … anyone who works with her hands!

I offer Happy Hands hand cream in 25 different scents, plus Unscented, in my Happy Hands Store.

--MaggieBelize
Designer, kNotes for kNitters
Creator, Happy Hands Hand Creams for Fiber Artists
Sandia Park, NM

New from ABQ Library: Borrow a Kill A Watt!

Y’all know what an *enthusiastic* supporter I am of our local Albuquerque / Bernalillo County Library system. If you ever want to see something government is doing right (with the help of volunteers of course), look to your local library!

The newest service from our ABC library system is … drumroll … if you have a library card, you can borrow a Kill-a-Watt home electricity monitor!

Plug the Kill-a-Watt into the wall, then plug your appliances or electronic equipment into the Kill-a-Watt. It will give you a read-out showing how much electricity your item uses, and an estimate of how much it’s costing you to run it.

Hats off to PNM, too, who donated these devices to the library system.

Not a resident of New Mexico? Chances are your local library offers Kill-a-Watt borrowing too. Call ‘em, and check one out!

--MaggieBelize
Designer, kNotes for kNitters
Creator, Happy Hands Hand Creams for Fiber Artists
Sandia Park, NM

Importing Audiobooks from CD to iTunes 10

I love borrowing audiobooks on CD from my local public library, but I hate how complicated it can be to transfer them onto my iPod Touch for listening.

Because iTunes assumes that any CD I try to import is a music CD, the handling of audiobooks on CD gets messy. An audiobook imported as “music” shows up in the Music category of iTunes, each audio track as a separate item, subject to shuffling, and without bookmarks.

There are a number of resources on the Internet giving instructions for handling this problem, but I’ve worked out my own procedure using Windows & iTunes 10 that’s relatively fast and easy, and thought I’d document it here – for my own reference, and in case it’s helpful to anyone else struggling with this thorny issue.

Before You Start

• Launch iTunes.
• Pull down the Edit menu and choose Preferences, then make these two selections:
• When you insert a CD: Show CD (not automatically import)
• Import Settings: chose AAC Encoder (default) & Spoken Podcast (32 kbpps mono/64 kbpps stereo).

Import the CD

• Insert the first audiobook CD into your disk drive.
• In iTunes, select all the tracks shown, by clicking on the first track and Shift+clicking on the last track.
• Pull down the Advanced menu and choose Join CD Tracks. This groups all the individual tracks on the disc into one unit – much better!
• With the tracks still selected, right-click and choose Get Info. Enter an Album title using the book title and the disc number.

For example, type an album title like The Sugar House 01 or Sugar House Disc 01. Whatever you choose for the album title, use it consistently across all the discs of the audiobook so they’ll sort properly in iTunes.

• Now click the Import CD button.

After the Import

At this point iTunes has imported the audiobook disc as one big track, but it’s still in the Music category of your iTunes Library, not yet associated with your other audio Books. You can fix this after the disc has been imported into iTunes.

• Locate the disc you just imported, in the Music category of your iTunes Library.
• Click the right mouse button and choose Get Info again.
• On the Options tab, click Media Kind and choose Audiobook.
• Also on the Options tab, click to enable Remember Playback Position (your bookmark) and Skip When Shuffling.
• Optional: if you want to assign artwork to the audiobook files, click the Artwork tab and upload a pretty picture.
• Click OK when you’re done.

Now the first file of the audiobook is moved into the Book category of your iTunes library.

• Your Import Preferences will be remembered, so all you have to do is repeat the Import the CD and After the Import steps for each disc of your audiobook.

When you’re finished you’ll have one “book” file in your iTunes Books library for each disc of the audiobook. If you’d rather have a real audiobook with just one or two files, you’ll have to use additional software like Chapter and Verse to consolidate the files. I don’t bother with this for audiobooks I’ve borrowed from the library, but I would do it if I owned the audiobook.

And don’t forget to delete the audiobook files when your library loan period is up!

--MaggieBelize
Designer, kNotes for kNitters
Creator, Happy Hands Hand Creams for Fiber Artists
Sandia Park, NM

What’s for Dinner? Maple-glazed Sweet Potato Wedges (recipe)

I love it when this happens: my mom emailed me this recipe in the nick of time for dinner last night … AND, I had all the ingredients on hand. Woohoo, score!

These were delicious. Family and houseguests ended up squabbling over the last few bits in the pan, a sure test of appeal.

Here’s the original recipe:

Maple-glazed Sweet Potato Wedges

3 sweet potatoes, about 1-1/2 lbs
2 Tablespoon pure maple syrup
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary

Cut the sweet potatoes lengthwise into uniform wedges, about 1 in. wide. Whisk together the other ingredients, then add the potatoes and toss to coat.

Arrange wedges in a single layer in a roasting pan, or on a baking sheet and drizzle with any maple syrup mixture remaining in the bowl.

Roast 20 min. at 450. Remove pan from oven, and carefully turn wedges over. Continue roasting until fork tender, about 15 min. Taste and adjust seasoning. Serve warm.

My modifications:

Our rosemary plant froze to death during this month’s Arctic cold snap, so I used dried rosemary, in the same quantity because I really like rosemary. Then I also added 1/2 teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes. I love the combination of sweet & hot.

I planned to cook these at the same time & at the same 375 degree oven temp as my chicken pieces. So I cut the sweet potatoes into 1/4” thick slices instead of 1” thick wedges, so they’d cook faster. I took them out after 45 minutes when they were thoroughly cooked & starting to blacken just a bit around the edges. Yum.

Addendum

• Do you know the difference between sweet potatoes and yams? Kind of a trick question, but this article from Self spells out the nutritional data.
• I always use the darker “Grade B” maple syrup for dishes like this. It’s too strong for pancakes, but adds more flavor to baked goods, including breads.

Bon appetit!

--MaggieBelize
Designer, kNotes for kNitters
Creator, Happy Hands Hand Creams for Fiber Artists
Sandia Park, NM

Blast from the Past: Pressure Cooking

 

I know, I say “pressure cooker” and you think (1) dangerous explosions, and/or (2) gray, flabby, over-cooked food.

It’s true, I witnessed a spectacular pressure cooker explosion back in 1968. Aunt Dee left me and my cousin Judy home alone, with vague instructions to “watch the pressure cooker”.

What’s to watch? We watched cartoons instead. Two hours later the pressure cooker went “BOOM”! We ran into the kitchen to find it had blown its lid, bashing a cantaloupe-sized hole in the ceiling and splattering green beans all over the walls.

Judy & I were in deep doo-doo for that one.

So I never considered trying a pressure cooker myself, until I moved up here to the high mountain desert. At 7,000 feet we have some unusual cooking “challenges” – my worst one being that I couldn’t cook beans. Seriously! I could not make a decent pot of beans up here.

My neighbors all advised pressure cooking to solve the high-altitude bean problem. And that’s when I discovered that “modern” pressure cookers are vastly improved over my Aunt Dee’s mid-century model. They’re electric, they’re digital, and they promise explosion-proof operation.

Okay … I decided to try pressure cooking.

After reading the reviews I purchased a Cuisinart CPC-600 1000-Watt 6-Quart Electric Pressure Cooker, shown here.

I’ve used it for almost a year now. And I have to say, this was probably my best purchase of 2010.

 

 

Top 5 Reasons to ♥ Electric Pressure Cookers

1. Dang, they’re fast! I’m talking 10-minute potato soup (although that project did make milk come out its nose), or a 40-minute brisket for 8.

2. They’re programmable. Punch in your settings and walk away (cartoons, anyone?). You don’t have to “watch” them, or adjust the heat, or anything. When the cooking cycle ends, they’ll automatically switch over to Keep Warm mode.

3. Yes, a pressure cooker IS the best way to cook beans. No, repeat NO, pre-soaking needed. And you can season the beans during cooking, even add a little salt, and they’ll STILL cook up beautifully.

4. They don’t heat up the kitchen. This past summer was the hottest of the century, so I really, really appreciated not having to turn on the oven, or even the stove burners, for weeks on end.

5. They don’t use a lot of juice. It’s about the same wattage as a hair dryer, and the actual cooking time is short, so the energy consumption is way less than a standard oven, or even a slow cooker.

Plus there are serendipitous benefits. For example, I’ve discovered that my electric pressure cooker makes the best stocks imaginable – chicken, beef, pork, vegetable, whatever. And it’s now my go-to method for ribs: cook ‘em with pressure, finish them on the grill.

Best Pressure Cooker Cookbooks

I’ve since acquired a number of pressure cooker cookbooks, and of them all I recommend two to get you started:

Victoria Wise’s Pressure Cooker Gourmet

From the first chef at Chez Panisse, this book is all you need to convince unbelievers that you can cook delicious food in a pressure cooker. (I started with her Brined Pork Roast & Figs, a revelation.)

This one’s also available in a Kindle edition.

 

 

Any of Lorna Sass’s pressure cooking cookbooks are great to have on hand, but I especially like her Pressure Perfect: Two Hour Taste in Twenty Minutes Using Your Pressure Cooker. Her substitution charts are pure gold when it’s time to convert your favorite traditional recipes to the pressure cooker.

 

Bon appetit!

--MaggieBelize
Designer, kNotes for kNitters
Creator, Happy Hands Hand Creams for Fiber Artists
Sandia Park, NM

Mad at Apple–iPod Touch Battery Drain

 

Well well, looks as if the latest OS update to my iPod Touch included a battery killer.

Before the update, my Touch battery would easily run all night, with at least a 50% charge left in the morning.

Since I downloaded & installed the iOS 4 update last month, the battery can’t make it through the night. I wake up to a completely drained battery, a dead-in-the-water iPod, and … no alarm.

Scrounged around on the net & found this cNet report on the battery drain issue. Glad to know it’s not just me, or my iPod, it’s caused by changes Apple made to the OS.

Sigh.

So now I’m keeping my Touch in Airplane mode. I only turn on WiFi when I actually need to check email, then try to remember to turn it back off again as soon as I’m done.

This at least keeps my Touch alive overnight, but the battery life still isn’t anywhere near what it was before iOS 4. As in, maybe 2 days intermittent usage as opposed to the 4 or 5 days I used to get.

Thanks a lot, Apple!

--MaggieBelize
Designer, kNotes for kNitters
Creator, Happy Hands Hand Creams for Fiber Artists
Sandia Park, NM

Belize City Attorney Gunned Down

I was horrified and saddened to learn that a prominent Belize City attorney of my acquaintance, Rodwell Williams, S.C, was ambushed and gunned down in a Belize City parking lot near his law office at 8 pm on Monday, May 31.

Two Belize City men were charged with the assault, Ricky Valencia, 27, and Akeem Thurton, 18. The attack is widely rumored to have been a “contract hit” paid for by a Belize City businessman recently defeated in court by Mr. Williams.

Mr. Williams was initially treated at a Belize City hospital for a single shotgun blast to the abdomen, and was later transferred to a Miami, Florida hospital where he is recovering.

Mr. Williams, Senior Counsel and law partner of Belize’s Prime Minister Dean Barrow, had been previously attacked on April 15, when a “projectile” was fired through the windows of the Barrow & Williams law office at 99 Albert Street in Belize City.

This latest armed assault is just one of more than 100 reported shootings in Belize City this year, where the death toll climbed to 30 as of August, 2010. According to The Economist, as reported on Belize’s Channel 5 News, “Belize is the world’s murder hotspot”, with a 2009 death rate of 32.7 per 100,000 persons country-wide.

The Campaign to Stop Human Trafficking in Belize confirms that relative to its size and population, Belize outranks all nations in murder.  “The latest statistics show Belize with 97 murders for a population of 320,000.  To put that into perspective, metro Toronto has 41 murders for the same period, but for a population of 2.4 million people.”

While violent crime statistics are higher in Belize City than in the rest of the country, crime throughout Belize has steadily risen over the past two years, says the Overseas Security Advisory Council.

“Major crimes in Belize (murder, rape, robbery, burglary, theft) increased in 2008 by 8.1 percent from 2007. The murder rate within Belize has continued to increase on an annual basis by five percent since 2003; the number of murders in 2008 (103 homicides) has now more than doubled those reported in 2000 (47 homicides) and represents a nationwide murder rate of 34 per 100,000 persons.”

Links:

Rodwell Williams Shot, Amandala, June 1, 2010

Rodwell Williams SC shot in street attack, The [Belize] Reporter, June 4, 2010

Two charged in shooting of Attorney Rodwell Williams, The Guardian, June 10, 2010

Belize is world murder capital, Belize Channel 5 News, September 7, 2009

Canadians Boycott Belize Tourism, Murder Capital of the World, Betty Phillips, July 23, 2010

Belize 2009 Crime & Safety Report, Overseas Security Advisory Council, August 17, 2009