Ways to get FREE credits on IMVU

I was just wondering if IMVU's "spin and win" game was still around as I hadn't seen it or seen it advertised lately so I looked it up...I found a few other ways IMVU was giving away credits but they seem to be defunct. Here it is for my future reference...and yours!

Spin and Win
(can be played once a day, and you could win up to 500 credits)

Sunday Feasting

It seems Saturday my bf and I were both perusing our latest issue of our independent Vegetarian Times subscriptions and both felt drawn to some rather tasty sounding recipes, so today (Sunday) we prepared some stuff straight out of the mag...

Sunday Evening Menu

Root Vegetable Stew with Spices and Dried Fruit

Banana and Black Bean Empanadas

Ginger-Chocolate Stout Cake with Sweetened Sour-Cream

We had the usual suspects there for dinner, and Root Vegetable Stew ended up the clear winner. It was slightly spicy but also sweet, with nice chunks of turnips and sweet potatoes and a nice garnish of cilantro. We'd definitely make it again.

The empanadas...I dunno, to me they were too spicy and I didn't really think banana added anything to them. Maybe they should have had some kind of savory green banana instead of your standard cavendish banana, or maybe something totally different like seitan-stroganoff-in-an-empanada-crust or anything with a nice rich savory sauce. The crust was not my fave, either. I liked it but I'm just itching to try to make empanadas again just to try and make it more pie-crust-like, because I make a fabulous pie crust.

Cake...hard to mess up cake but I blame the recipe. It says to use 1 cup of maple syrup OR one cup of molasses. We used molasses because it's not often we come across a recipe that calls for it, but I have a feeling those two just don't substitute well for each other. It was just wrong and it ruined the cake. Also, my bf especially disliked the Sweetened Sour Cream, which is basically just (vegan) sour cream and brown sugar stirred together.

Oh but EARLIER in the day we had the most delicious breakfast of tortillas with refried beans, cilantro, tomatoes and avocado. We've made this over and over and I think it gets a little more perfect every time. We've stopped using Soyrizo in the beans and just mash them up with coconut oil and they are soooo good and simple yet slightly coconutty that way. Yum!

Somewhere in the middle we had wheatgrass shots. We are going to try and drink them every day now. It's expensive, though, so we're going to try and grow our own. Actually, I've grown large trays of it for my cats before and it's very easy. It grows fast and dies young without a foot of good soil underneath to keep it going, so you just have to get it off to a great start and keep it alive for maybe two weeks max. It doesn't even need that much light.

I think I'm going to go to bed and dream about those delicious coconut refried beans!

Gmail task list

I am totally loving the task list feature on gmail. It's been staring me in the face for a few weeks now daring me to click on it with little bubbles trying to explain it, and now I can see how this could come in super handy for this person who always thinks of all the things I must do "first thing tomorrow" until I wake up the next morning and my mind is a blank slate until maybe 7 pm when I start thinking again of all the things I'm going to do "tomorrow".

Since gmail is the first thing I check every morning...no more excuses!

Er, well...one less excuse anyway.

A tale of two wheatgrass shots

Sunday my bf and I made dinner for his family and I was very excited in the end because we made a pineapple-cucumber gazpacho and a warm tomato and corn salad with macadamia feta, both of which were raw, and we served those first and THEN left everyone at the table while we prepared them some cooked food. We made quinoa for the first time and tried making some dehydrated "chiken" soy patties as chicken fried steak and we served that with a mole sauce which was actually another raw recipe but rather tasty...it didn't really go with "chiken" fried steak, we should have had a mushroom gravy or even just a plain white gravy. Too bad because with a few tweaks I know my bf can totally perfect this raw mole and make it completely awesome, but instead he'll probably end up making a cooked one next time.

Anyway, I was excited because everyone liked the raw food so much! The only reason we made the other food was we were afraid people wouldn't like the raw stuff and might leave the table hungry, but really we could have served the soup and salad and then just ended it with the german chocolate cupcakes we had left over from valentines day.

Next week I think we're making gnocchi and a few types of sorbet. I hope it works out. I know sometimes we make plans to do stuff and then end up doing something totally different.

That's not true with Las Vegas (this time) though! Woohoo...my bf got the Ka tickets, the plane tickets and even booked our room at THEHotel because he knew that was where I wanted to stay (I'm such a spoiled brat sometimes) so we are FOR SURE GOING in a couple of weeks. It's so exciting!

I even found a good use for my Kindle and downloaded one of the latest Las Vegas travel guides onto it. Of course then when my bf wanted to see it while we were out to brunch on Sunday it wouldn't turn on properly. It didn't turn on until I opened it up and manually rebooted it. My bf said I must have shown it what I did to my iPhone and let the Kindle know it could expect the same fate if it didn't cooperate.

So about that wheatgrass...

My bf and I have been talking about doing wheatgrass shots at Jamba Juice for a while now...we even tried to get them one time but they were out of grass. Monday we weren't working out at the gym together, so on a whim I decided I'd go wander around in the rainy weather we've been having and see if I could find a shot of wheatgrass at Jamba Juice all by myself.

I thought I was going to be disappointed when I got to Jamba Juice becaause the wheatgrass tray was empty, but they managed to rustle up a whole fresh new tray from the back, and they served me a carrot-orange juice and my tiny shot of wheatgrass with an orange wedge on the side and I was nervous because when we were in LA we went to a Jamba Juice clone and there were two women at the pick-up counter trying to down some wheatgrass and it took so long and so much grimacing was involved I thought it must be really, completely nasty.

I stood there feeling sort of foolish...wishing my bf was there to look foolish with me and wondering if anyone was staring at me and I steeled myself, downed my shot of wheatgrass and bit into the orange wedge. And you know what? It was really not that bad. It just tasted like grass. And afterwards, I felt really energized.

Not to be outdone, my bf went to Jamba Juice to get some juice and oatmeal this morning and he got a shot of wheatgrass for the first time, too. His reaction? "I liked it! I like the taste!" Wow, he likes the taste? Maybe he and my cat Rodney can start a "wheatgrass tastes great" fan club or something.

Now we want to do wheatgrass shots all the time.

Happy Day After Valentine's Day

Valentine's is a pretty silly holiday if you ask me. This one was pretty romantic to me, though. We stayed in and made seitan stroganoff and german chocolate cupcakes and watched several episodes of the reality show "Work Out". Okay, that show isn't very romantic and my bf really dislikes reality tv but it was a good excuse to cuddle on the couch.

I'm not big on presents for v-day...if it must be celebrated it should be as an expression of affection, not a reason to buy cheap roses or giant heart shaped boxes covered with red taffeta and plastic flowers and filled with cheap chocolates. Last year, you may remember, I gave my bf a big bottle of sweet smoked paprika (with a pretty pink bow on it.) Cuz that's how I roll.

This year we both sort-of kind-of got each other something...my bf wanted to fly us to Las Vegas just for the day/evening or maybe one night so we could see Cirque du Soleil's "Ka" as a surprise, but then he couldn't get tickets, so we are going to go probably within the next month and it is kind of semi-officially to celebrate valentines day. I think being flown anywhere as a surprise is pretty well...sweet and romantic no matter what the time of year!

My gift is late, too. I wanted to make my bf vegan coconut bonbons and wrap them up all pretty-like. I didn't manage to get it done in time, but I WILL get it done.

The following is my recipe for seitan (and mushroom) stroganoff. It started off as a "regular" stroganoff recipe that I adapted to be vegetarian maybe ten years ago, and now I have made a few more adaptations to make it completely vegan.

I like to pronounce the dish as "Satan stroking-off".

Seitan Stroganoff
(makes 4 servings)

Olive Oil
1 large or 2 small shallots, chopped finely
6-8 oz. Seitan, cut in strips 1-2 inches in length
aprox. a dozen medium size cremini mushrooms, quartered

2 cups vegetable broth
1 cup red wine (the heartier the better)
2 tablespoons flour
1-2 T water

1/4 c. vegan sour cream
1-2 T dijon mustard
fresh Dill, about 1/4 c. chopped
sea salt
white pepper

eggless egg noodles, OR mini lasagna noodles OR if you can't find those, rotini will be fine (or you can always use rice or quinoa)

Put a large pot of water to boil on the stove (for noodles.)

In a hot saute pan, put 1-2 T. olive oil. Add shallots and start sauteeing on medium heat.

In a smallish saucepan heat the vegetable broth to boiling.

When shallots have started to turn soft and golden, add the mushrooms.

Add the wine to the vegetable broth and return to boil, then let simmer until it is reduced in volume by about half.

mix the quarter cup of sour cream with the dijon mustard to taste. You want it to have dijon flavor without screaming "mustard!" Stir in half of the chopped dill and set aside.

Add noodles to boiling water and cook to al dente. When done, drain then return to pot with a little olive oil to keep them from sticking and set aside.

Add seitan to shallot/mushroom mixture and saute until browned.

Combine flour and water to make a paste and then whisk paste into wine/broth and cook until thickened.

Pour thickened wine/broth mixture into shallot/mushroom/seitan mixture and stir, then remove from heat. Add sour cream/dijon/dill mixture and stir to combine. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve the seitan stroganoff over the noodles/rice/quinoa and garnish with the remaining dill.

Enjoy!

Eight Views of Actors In Their Dressing Rooms

Well, I'm back from the trip to LA. Actually, we've been back several days now, but I'm finally getting around to making an entry. This is why people use blog readers instead of going and checking manually over and over, right?

Sunday we went to Dark Delicacies straight from the airport, and the place was PACKED. They gave me a number and it was number 58 and they were on number 18 and calling one person every several minutes to go up to the tables they had set up and I dunno...smell stuff, buy stuff...whatever they were doing I couldn't even tell. So we browsed through the skull motif purses, hats, shirts, sunglasses, underwear and jewelry for a while and perused the ginormous horror movie selection but it was totally not "our kind of place" and then we decided we'd be better off getting lunch and coming back. Like maybe they'd not even have gotten to number 58 by then.

So we ate at Vegan Plate in Studio City and it was so delicious that we went back there again for lunch on Monday. Well, because it was delicious AND because we tried to eat on the Queen Mary but they had a long wait and because the restaurant isn't far from the tv studios.

Coming back to Dark Delicacies we found there was NO line any more. I guess they had sold out of some stuff by then but I didn't really know what they had in the first place so I didn't really miss it. I had free reign to smell all the different scents with no lines and no pressure, just the nagging thought that my bf was totally and completely bored. Most of the scents didn't excite me too much and I just ended up getting Eight Views of Actors In Their Dressing Rooms and PPGC456, both prototypes that I guess aren't available anywhere else, and they threw in a bunch of samples which was pretty cool. I read somewhere that some room sprays were supposed to have been available, but I didn't see anything like that.

I can't believe all the fantastic restaurants in the area! After we checked into our hotel (the one in downtown LA where Arnold the Governator rode a horse in the elevator in some movie) we went to have dinner at a mostly-raw restaurant called "Cru", which was pretty cool (and tasty, too!) but didn't serve wine. They do allow you to bring your own in, and there is even a liquor store down the street, but we decided to have a green smoothie instead. So we could have had wine, but instead we had some scary green goo made with kale and bananas and stuff. It wasn't bad! Then the waiter told us there was a wine bar just a few blocks away, but we somehow ended up driving for miles and miles down Sunset Blvd until we FINALLY made our way back to the wine bar to find it was closed.

Soooo...we went to the lounge at the top of our hotel. It's one of those rotating places, so we sipped wine that is normally $11 a bottle at Whole Foods for $11 a glass as we rotated around the top of our hotel towers while a few blocks away glamorous people were getting out of the Grammys and looking for their glamorous after parties.

Monday I decided a trip to the Fashion District to buy fabric was a bad idea because I wasn't prepared. I didn't know what I wanted or where I wanted to go. Instead we took a short trip to Long Beach and the Queen Mary, then had lunch at Vegan Plate again, then made our way to the set of the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. That was pretty fun...or at least it's easy to get this weird semi-false sense that you are having fun as you are trained and then recorded laughing and clapping on cue. My bf said they panned the audience from the back, and you can see the back of my head, but I must have missed that part, and our flight was delayed so we didn't even get home in time to watch or tape the show. We got to see Glen Campbell sing Rhinestone Cowboy and one other song, that was pretty cool, he was nice and he had his daughter and two sons up there playing with him. And of course Craig was very funny, and he said on camera "the audience wrangler just said only applause, hold your chuckles" and they cut to a shot of the "audience wrangler" in the aisle near us as he made a joke about what "holding your chuckles" might mean.

Finally after losing our souls in the great Hollywood machine, we decided to find a wine bar. It wasn't easy but we finally found one that I thought was just about the coolest wine bar EVAR and that my bf found rather horrifying, which I think illustrated pretty well the area in which our tastes differ. The place was pretty close to looking like a dive bar crossed with a bordello and had Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation playing on the tv. They served several kinds of microbrew beers and one red and one white wine and I think that's it, but because the Pinot Noir they served was pretty good IMO, *I* was happy there. Or I would have been if it'd been at least 5 degrees warmer and if my bf hadn't been so miserable.

Finally we went to a tapas place, which wasn't vegan or anything but they were totally chill about finding us something vegan to eat. I mean, not just finding us something, but without even having to question us about what vegan means or think much about it at all, like they are quite comfortable dealing with different dietary requirements. So that was nice.

I was thinking how great the restaurants in LA are, with their delicious menus and chill but friendly staff and stuff and feeling kind of envious, but then Thursday night we went out to Tamarine, our favorite Palo Alto restaurant, here in the Bay Area, and we love the food and they always prepare the dishes vegan for us and the all the bartenders are totally chill and this time we talked to a couple that was mostly vegetarian and we got along really well with them and found we've read a lot of the same books and stuff like that and we met another woman who talked to us and then we saw her again afterwards at The Wine Room (also in Palo Alto) and met some more new people at The Wine Room and saw some old favorites, and I just thought "who needs LA when we've got the Bay Area?"

Jinx: Unplugged

Yesterday i started getting ready for our trip to Los Angeles. On the one hand, it shouldn't be a big deal because it's only one night so how badly can one screw up packing for that or how long could it take? On the other hand, I have on MANY OCCASIONS been up until 3am doing laundry so I have something to wear for a trip and I thought I would do something different this time. Plus today I spent pretty much the whole day at the salon which is like ya I know...boo hoo don't you feel sorry for me but srsly it is EXHAUSTING being poked and prodded and styled and having a bunch of little hairs ripped out of your body for over half an hour and having one's scalp and limbs and stuff massaged for hours...

Then we went to Millenium for dinner and I almost got trampled/smooshed on the way because I had to fight my way through the chinese new year parade crowd to get there and some crazy guy started talking to me and about the time he started trying to walk arm-in-arm with me I ducked into the Lush store and that got rid of him but OMG that was a disaster waiting to happen because I was about to kick his ass and I could probably get in trouble for that because if I have him down on the ground and I'm punching him or something they might not exactly believe that HE was the one bothering ME...

But anyway, back to yesterday...I did a bunch of laundry to avert the 3am half-dozing-off-between-trudging-up-and-down-to-the-laundry-room thing, and I also tried to fix my iPhone. It's been half broken since I spilled some grapefruit juice on it, and I thought if I could just open it up and clean it with some alcohol and a q-tip that maybe it would work properly again and I could actually use it when it is unplugged from my computer, so after ruining two case opening tools and a couple of razor blades I finally managed to get it open and broken all the way instead of halfway and hey...did you know that the battery inside the iPhone is actually squishy? Isn't that weird?

Also, although there are many tutorials, pictoral and video in nature, on the web that describe how to take your iPhone apart, none really seem to tell you how to put it back together. I don't know if they think it just seems obvious OR if they're just like "haha dummy...we tricked you into taking your phone apart and voiding the warranty, but hey...check out the squishy battery!" Also, even though EVERY OTHER part of the phone came apart in a billion pieces, the part that got grapefruit juice in it is still inexplicably sealed shut and NOT included in any disassembly instructions. Apparently people DO need to replace the battery or maybe the LCD but they NEVER EVER get grapefruit juice in the bottom part where the power/usb cord attaches.

After breaking my iPhone the rest of the way, I thought maybe I could use my XO laptop to connect to the Internet when I'm away from home. Cuz I don't care about actually talking on the phone, I just want my Net connection, damnit! It wouldn't connect to my network, though, and I ran out of time to say, go to Starbucks and see if it would connect to their network or to try and steal some bandwidth from a neighbor or to maybe read on the web how to install another operating system version since I think I heard something about how you should do that if like me you are an XO owner but not a child in a 3rd world country. Or maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.

So today I left my apartment feeling rather lost...I never realized how much I do on my iPhone, from checking the weather for 20 different cities every morning to texint my bf every time I'm bored (which apparently is quite often) to using iTunes Apps, to of course monitoring my sales transactions. Basically, everything but make phonecalls. Phone calls are like, sooooo last century!

I did happen to grab my Amazon Kindle on the way out, though. Last night I insisted to my bf that I would only be able to use it to read books while I was in San Francisco and that OF COURSE I wouldn't be able to surf the web with it without a wifi network connection but...guess what??? I was W-R-O-N-G. Unfortunately the browser on the Kindle is totally primitive and I can't seem to log in to PayPal or to my own websites, but it is good enough to run Gmail so I was a little bit connected after all.

Tomorrow and Monday I'm going to be trying to use my bf's phone as my web browser replacement, so that should be interesting. He does have one of the latest and greatest PDA type phones, so it should work okay I just get frustrated trying to navigate with it after using the iPhone interace for a year and a half. Now I'm going to go pack and make a list of vegan restaurants, otherwise I'll be up until 3am. Again.

What do you mean we're on a diet?

My bf says he wants to lose a few pounds. I don't know where he expects to lose them from. Maybe he could lose a pound around his stomach but that would be "pound" and not "pounds". Still, I thought I'd be agreeable and offer to lose some weight along with him. I think I will have a much easier time finding some extra poundage.

So I'm thinking "great, I'll walk for an hour every day and eat vegetables and salad like I'm always saying I'm going to do anyway, maybe add five or ten more minutes on the treadmill at the gym. This is going to be easy and fun!" Little did I know my bf's idea of losing weight involved 1.) working out harder and more often at the gym and 2.) eating less.

Eating less? Are you serious?!? I thought maybe just y'know...change ones eating habits a bit, but now I think I've signed up to share just one appetizer instead of two when we go to a restaurant, skip dessert, skip having a burrito after the gym, no after-dinner muscato. All kinds of wacko stuff like that. I think it even involves drinking less wine.

Saturday, since I'm going to the salon, we are doing the traditional after-the-salon THANG and meeting at Millenium for dinner. If he thinks I'm giving up having an irish coffee after dinner there he is quite mistaken!

Okay, I'm just kidding around...the truth is a.) my bf isn't going to hold me to any of his ideas about eating less...in fact just tonight he bought me a burrito even though he didn't have one and b.) he's right, we do eat too much. Just because you can indulge doesn't mean you always should. In fact, I shouldn't have had that burrito...it wasn't even that good and I was stuffed afterwards.

I'm still having that irish coffee, though.

Invasion of the flesh-eating reindeer from Uranus

That most romantic time of the year is almost upon us.

That's right, it's been almost exactly 2 years since my bf and I first met. To celebrate the occasion we are going to Los Angeles for about a day and a half. Woot, woot!

Why Los Angeles? Well you see, one of my latest obsessions is Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, a "purveyor of fine esoteric goods, perfumes and potions". This place makes perfumes that are, well, weird. There are a bunch of different themes, like "Neil Gaiman", "The Graveyard Book", "Mad Tea Party" and "Pharmacopoeia" and the perfumes have both unusual descriptions and obscure ingredients. Here is a sample from their "Carnaval Diabolique" series:

The Parliament of Monsters
You pass through the golden mouth, and find yourself inside a narrow, cramped corridor. Large wooden paintings of skeletal hands crook their bony fingers, leading you forwards. At the first turn, you hear a bizarre jumble of sounds: the high-pitched sound of gears grinding, metal on metal, the sound of sultry, low-pitched laughter, a clattering, wings flapping, soft hissing. Suddenly, a sharp howl pierces the darkness. As you make your way around the corner you are momentarily blinded as floodlights flicker to life, and thirteen gold-gilded stages are illuminated, bathed from beneath in sinister caramel-colored light.

Dust, incense, wet tobacco, and a curl of opium smoke

Actually, some of the ingredients are much odder. "ozone", "ethereal white resins", "Balm of Gilead", "thin lubricating oils", "drooping seaweed", "the blackness of space".

There is even a huge forum dedicated to talking about and trading these scents. A forum which even has exclusive scents not available anywhere else. The one thing PBAL doesn't have is a physical store/location. Well, except during the full moon. On the night of the full moon, BPAL has a few locations open for several hours and you can get scents without having to wait and even get to smell some of them ahead of time, in case you're not sure if you're going to like a scent called "Banana Peel In a Graveyard".

It just so happens one of those locations is Los Angeles, and it just so happens that the full moon is February 9th and it just so happens that Feb 9th is ALSO that romantic day of the year I referenced above. AND it ALSO just so happens that on Feb 8th a store called "Dark Delicacies", in beautiful downtown Burbank, which carries some exclusive BPAL scents (like Invasion of the Flesh-Eating Reindeer from Uranus) is having it's OWN special BPAL event.

So I figured it would be a REALLY GREAT IDEA if my bf and I went to Los Angeles for our 2 years since we first met anniversary. Cuz we're always talking about going places but we've never actually made it further than wine country unless you count last year for my birthday when I dragged him to the San Joachim Valley (and by drag I mean "made him drive me") so we could spend the night at a rather weird B&B at a weird winery (so I guess we didn't escape wineries/wine country after all) and buy raw almonds. Except we turned out to be two weeks early for getting raw almonds...ooops.

I also wanted to go to the Fashion District because I want to buy fabric. So really I'm afraid the trip was looking like another big "let's do what Jinx wants", just like that trip on my birthday, so I was feeling kind of bad and guilty about that. Then two things happened and now it's exciting again..

1.) We got tickets to the Craig Ferguson show! We are going to be part of a Live Studio Audience! And I think Craig Ferguson is funny. Our choices were either Wheel of Fortune or Craig Ferguson and I'm pretty happy with our choice. My bf was happy we got the tickets even though he seems to think I'm going to yell out something embarrassing like "ILOVEYOUCRAIG, YOU SEXY SCOTTISH RECOVERING ALCOHOLIC...RUN AWAY WITH ME AND LETS MAKE BABIES!" He's wrong though, cuz I'm totally not.

Nope.

Not.

Totally not.

Probably not.

2.) Before we go, I am going to get my hair done, and a bunch of other girlie things at the salon in San Francisco I always go to. And by "always go to" I mean that I theoretically go to every 3 months but it's probably been more like 7 or 8 by now and I'm soooo way overdue my bf is THRILLED that I'm going. He's convinced I finally made an appointment because I'm going to be on television and I think he's plotting how we can go to Los Angeles every three months to be in the studio audience of any lame show that will have us or even sign us up to be movie extras if that's what it takes to get me to a salon.

Not only that, but I looked up "vegan" on Yelp in Los Angeles and a TON of fantastic restaurants showed up. I don't think we'll be there long enough to eat at more than 3 or 4 places, but I'm so excited because it's like, the mecca of vegan food and since we love to eat but we are now eating a plant-based diet, this is perfect for us.

Hollywood here we come! (or Studio City or Burbank or wherever the heck we're going.)

Knitting with Cat Hair

I just received a book in the mail today called "Knitting with Dog Hair: Better a sweater from a dog you know and love than from a sheep you'll never meet".

I purchased this book because I thought it was quite silly and weird sounding and I wanted to give it as part of a gift set, but flipping through it and reading about chow you can collect cat har too, I must admit I am feeling a bit tempted to try and collect/card/spin cat hair and then knit something with it.

Probably take about ten years to get enough hair to knit much of anything, but I'm sure the cats will enjoy the collection process, so what the heck.