The history of curry

Mostly Slate pisses me off, but occasionally it publishes something interesting. Today's find is an article on the history of curry.

Archaeologists from the US and India are working in the Indus River Valley. They analyze the microscopic signatures of food remains to determine what people ate thousands of years ago. The ingenious methods are fascinating to read about.

Surprise surprise -- they were currying the heck out of their cuisine, just the way we do today. [Well, not in exactly the same manner, but surely with the same amount of enthusiasm!]

...Now I want curry...

Articulated skeleton

...for the dead version of Isabel! I can work with a Monster High body!

What do you call a little hard piece of candy on a stick?

A smallipop, of course!

I finished making a bunch of 1:6 scale lollipops last night and tonight by modifying a tutorial by Linda Chang on WonderHowTo. She uses polymer clay for both lollipop sticks and the candy parts themselves, but I used toothpicks painted white, trimmed down and sealed with matte varnish for my sticks. I also lacked any colors of polymer clay besides white, so I tinted my clay with shaved chalk pastels, which worked really well! I was able to get surprisingly vivid colors, especially in my second batch of pops [red/white/purple].

These smallipops were really fun to make because they required very little effort to create a really cool spiral/swirl effect. My favorite smallipops are the green/yellow/white swirls and the red/purple/white ball pop.

Here's Peter and Isabel showing off my smallipops. I love taking pictures of both of them because they have so much expressiveness in their faces. Peter's all "Oh shit!" and Isabel's all "No shit." ( Read more... )