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Here is a recipe—a tester favorite—from the first issue of my potluck zine, perfect for your New Year’s day celebrations. Serve these any time of day with ketchup, hot sauce, or maybe a roasted red pepper aioli.

Hoppin’ John Cakes
serves 3-4

Be sure to use short grain rice here: the extra starch is essential in the recipe for helping the cakes hold their shape.  If you can’t find short grain brown rice, sushi or arborio rice will do well as a substitute.
1 cup uncooked short grain brown rice
3 cups cooked black eyed peas or drained and rinsed canned
2 tablespoons chopped pickled jalapeno or 1 tablespoon hot sauce
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon liquid smoke
3/4 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped
1/2 cup vital wheat gluten
olive or peanut oil for frying

Cook the rice according to the directions on the package and set aside.

In a large bowl, combine black eyed peas, jalapenos or hot sauce, olive oil, salt, and liquid smoke. Use a potato masher or your hands to mash the peas, just until they’re starting to stick together and clump up – about half of the peas should still be whole. Stir in the cooked brown rice, onion, and parsley, and now really get in there with your (clean!) hands and mush everything together until it’s uniform. Be sure to use your hands only — do not under any circumstances use a food processor or other device, as this will turn everything to useless mush.

Finally, stir in the vital wheat gluten and use your hands to mix it in well. This should take the consistency to the point where if you form a patty with your hands, it stays in the patty shape very easily. If it doesn’t do that, work it for another minute or so and it should stick together better.

Heat a thin layer of oil in a large skillet until it is bubbling slightly but not spitting. This will probably be medium-low,  but depending on how heavy your skillet is and which oil you use, it could be lower or higher. Make a 2 sheet  layer of paper towels on a large plate next to the skillet.

Form patties with your hands that are about 1/2″ thick and 3″ across — a little smaller than the the size of your  palm. Lay them gently in the oil, fitting as many patties as you feel comfortable having in the skillet at once. After a few minutes, check one of the patties for color: you want to flip it when it’s uniformly golden brown on the bottom. Use that timing to gauge how long the rest will take to get to the right coloring on both sides of the patties.

When both sides are cooked, transfer to the paper towels to drain. Serve warm.

I really need your help. I’m about to wrap up the second issue of the potluck zine, and I’m not sure if I want to:

• use the print-on-demand service which I used to publish the first issue of the zine, or
• sell the zine as a downloadable PDF, which you could buy for much less (think $3 as opposed to $7) and choose for yourself whether you wanted to print it on your home printer or leave it as a PDF and refer to it on your computer
• or… both?

Please help me decide by leaving a comment here! Thanks!

Five years ago today, long-time pen pals Matthew and Joanna met for the first time in person in Nashville, TN.

Things have been pretty awesome ever since.

Happy fifth anniversary to the best partner and dad I know.

Milo adores Flickr slideshows, and we love them, too, because while he watches them, he’s completely engaged for up to a HALF HOUR at a time—if you have a toddler, you know that this is nothing short of a miracle. We try to limit this to once a day, but while Milo watches a Flickr slideshow, I can accomplish a truly staggering amount of chores in the background.

Here are some of our favorite Flickr groups to put on slideshow mode for him:

• Babies
• Natural Light Child Photography
• Animal Planet
• Giraffes — he asks for this one specifically, of course
• Elephants, Rhinos, Giraffes, and Hippos
• Cute Kittens
• Dogs! Dogs! Dogs!

After his nap, I think that he and I will watch The 13 Cutest Animals of 2009 videos together.

Do you have any that you might recommend to him?

I just wanted to pop in here and make quick post to make a couple of quick announcements. I won’t take up too much of your time because I’m sure that you have crossword puzzles and mugs of hot chocolate to get back to.

If you come over, be ready to read a book to Milo

The first is that I’ve started a new blog: Is There a Giraffe? I will be reviewing some of Milo’s (and my) favorite children’s books. There will be strong emphasis on vintage and lesser-known titles. I won’t be able to stop myself from singing the praises of the greats now and again—particularly Maurice Sendak and Richard Scarry, two of my favorites—but since they get so much love elsewhere, I’d like to draw attention to a few of the many underappreciated children’s writers out there. Please check it out if you’re so inclined! I’ll be building it out a little more over the hoildays and adding a few entries before the new year.

The second is that I’ve done the layout for the next issue of my zine, and I have a couple of blank pages. For layout purposes, my pagecount needs to be a multiple of 4. Rather than trying to create filler for those pages, I’ve decided to offer it as ad space. The first issue of my zine has already sold over 100 copies and has only been out for a little over a month, so this would be a great way to get exposure for your small business or Etsy store. Quarter-page ads are $15, half-page ads are $25, and full-page ads are $40. Please let me know if you’re interested—include some information about your business, please, as I want to be sure that your business is in line with my ethics so that I’m not unwittingly pimping porn in the back of my zine. I like to wittingly pimp porn, thank you very much.

1. Attend free holiday events in your town, like tree lightings. Or pack family or friends in a car and drive around a swanky neighborhood looking at their Christmas lights.
2. Bake something using only what you have in your pantry right now. If you only have enough for a half batch, make the half batch and drop it off at a friend’s house with a nice card.
3. Make popcorn and a warm beverage (mulled wine, perhaps?), bundle up in a blanket or two, and watch a movie on Hulu.
4. Reread your favorite book. Bookmark your favorite passages and copy them into an email and send them to a friend of yours who might like them.
5. Get on Yelp and write 5-10 positive reviews of your favorite local, independent businesses. It might not be fun, exactly, but it’s certainly a nice thing to do.

I wanted to do a quick list of inexpensive gifts that come from independent retailers. These are coming straight from my personal wishlists!

Each of these retailers has their own rules about what dates after which they will not guarantee shipment for the holidays, so don’t dawdle. Wrap up your shopping this week so you can put your focus on more important things this month. Of course, I mean cookies.

Cow Hugger Kids tee from Herbivore: $15. Am I biased because that happens to be my cute kid in that picture? No, dummy, I’m biased because Herbivore shares my values. You know, the values where we don’t treat living things like garbage. You believe in that, too, right? So you’ve already added this to your cart, right? Awesome.

Revive 2010 Wall Calendar by Nikki McClure at BuyOlympia.com: $16

Mum’s Garden hair pins from MiaBeads: $17.50. I would be overjoyed to receive any of the hair pins from this shop, actually. I’ve had short hair for so long that, now that it’s growing out, I’m rediscovering the joy of hair accessories and would love to splurge on a big lot. Pretty hair things fall solidly in the category of “I would love them as a present but I’d never spend the money on them myself,” so I bet there is a woman in your life who’d love these!

Missed Connections print, by Cat and Girl: $10. This print is so genius that I’m kicking myself for not having come up with the idea myself. The Missed Connections junkie on your list must have this.

Paper Dolls from The Black Apple: $16. I wish that paper dolls were this amazing when I was a little girl. Then again, I did have a set of Jem paperdolls which were truly, truly, truly outrageous.

Coffee Contraptions hand silkscreened print from Jen Oaks: $15. Show your dedication to caffeine by hanging this print above the coffee nook in your kitchen. While you’re at her shop, why don’t you go ahead and buy her incredible 2010 wall calendar which, since it weighs in at $26, can’t technically be on this list, but which is the only item on my wishlist which I wanted so badly that I couldn’t risk not getting it, so I went ahead and bought it for myself. After you admire it for a year, you can frame each one of those beautiful illustrations, so you’re really getting a calendar plus 12 prints for $26. When you think of it that way, it’s too good of a bargain to pass up.

Pumpkin Pie print from Amber Alexander: $18. I own a couple of Amber’s prints already and might not be able to stop myself from adding this one to my collection. That bear is going to eat the shit out of that pie, and you know he’s going to love it!

Apple and Spice print from Kris’s Color Stripes: $10. This would look awesome in your kitchen, good luck giving it as a present to someone else. Oh, hell, just get yourself one, too, they’re only $10!

Potluck Mania, my zine! $7. You didn’t honestly think I wouldn’t take this opportunity to self-promote, did you?

Finally, last but not least: Yellow Rose Recipes gift set from my Etsy store: $25, marked down from $30 for one week (until December 9). In addition to a signed copy of the book, you get a batch of vegan parm and a batch of tofu scramble seasoning mix, both of which are slightly different from the recipes in the book! After a week, this price is going back up to $30, and I’ll only be guaranteeing holiday arrivals until the 12th, so you should probably act on this one right away, kids.