Last month we wrote about the Silicon Valley Electronics Flea Market.The next one is coming up this Saturday, April 14. As usual, it’s bright and early in the morning at De Anza College in Cupertino, CA. If you haven’t seen the photo set from the last flea market, go take a look.
All posts by Windell Oskay
Meringue peeps round-up
Last week we showed you how to make your own Meringue Chicks.
Since then, a few brave souls have tried it out and posted pictures of their own homemade Pseudo-Peeps. You can see some photos at
Assorted Notions and in the Recipe Maven community, who also show off some interesting meringue bunnies. Speaking of assorted meringue animals, we might have to make these silly snails next time.
It’s fairly off-topic, but while browsing pictures of Peeps on flickr this week, we also came across this reminder (NSFPL – not safe for peep lovers) of what’s in regular old peeps. We’ll stick to meringue, thanks.
[Related @ evilmadscientist: Pretzel Snails, Play with your food]
Easter cartoon from Surreal Estate
From 1997-1999, I was a cartoonist on both the comics and editorial pages for the Daily Texan, the student newspaper of the University of Texas at Austin. The Deadly Toxin, as it was widely known, was a fairly “big” paper with a daily circuation (on weekdays) of around 25,000 copies.
I wrote the cartoon off and on with the help of Kirk Madison, hence the byline “Krik and Lledniw.” The cartoons were published under three titles, “Surreal Estate,” “Fire Andy Smith,” and “Unit Normal.” They ranged from very, very silly (like this one) to pointed editorial cartoons that even once earned me a concerned letter from the president of the university– but that’s another story.
We are slowly working on getting the archives online. But here’s a teaser: the cartoon above was the Easter special in 1998.
Happy door
We spotted this extremely happy doorway on the second story of the back side of an industrial building in Santa Clara, CA. Mere coincidence, or could they have planned it to look like this?
[Related: Secret Entrance]
Making Tiramatzah
Tiramatzah is a tasty and seasonal variation on a classic dessert: tiramisu made with many layers of matzah bread. Because it’s made with many thin layers of matzah instead of just a couple of layers of ladyfingers, it develops a very interesting flaky and layered texture, much like the alternating custard and pastry layers of a Napoleon. Even so, it retains the distinctive flavor of tiramisu and is a darned sight easier to make than traditional pastries.
More cool dessert sushi
Dot wrote in with this photo of some beautiful dessert sushi that she made (link).
The “fish” pieces are primarily pieces of dried fruit– a brilliant (and healthier) alternative to our all candy version. She also included some tips for future sushi endeavors, all of which sound like good points:
- Yogos fruit rolls come in green and seem to work well for seaweed, though not as pretty green as fruit rollups.
- Dried papaya, sliced, looks like Tuna! We also used dried mango and candied ginger for our ‘fish’.
- A tomato paste can is a good size to be a cookie cutter to cut out the round ‘slices’ and we just put slices of the fruit on to to similate the effect of a roll.
Neat stuff– we’ll have to include dried papayas in our next batch of sushi!
[Related: Dessert Sushi]
Reminder: POV-Ray class this Saturday
 | We posted earlier about (Evil, Mad) classes that we’re teaching at TechShop, the SF Bay Area’s public-access workshop. The first of these, Technical Graphics with POV-Ray is this Saturday afternoon, 3/31. POV-Ray is free software that can make genuinely impressive 2D and 3D graphics and animations (examples), but the learning curve is such that it can be difficult to get started on your own. So, drop in and learn how to make it look easy! |
Solder your own wine charms
Here is how you can put together your own extra-snazzy wine charms out of electronic components. They look great, are easy to make, cost next to nothing, and make great conversation pieces. For an added bonus, you can solder them in place, making them semi-permanent yet easily removable.
Continue reading Solder your own wine charms
Play with your food: Rework your toast
It’s a simple formula, really: hot air gun + bread = interesting toast.
Continue reading Play with your food: Rework your toast
Tips for Evil Overlords
We don’t normally dwell much on the word “Evil” in “Evil Mad Scientist,” but this list of advice for Evil Overlords (and heroes, and henchmen, and wicked-but-beautiful daughters of evil overlords, and so on) is really quite insightful and comprehensive.
