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Maker Faire ticket giveaway!

Went to a Babes in Biz meeting last week at Trudy’s and got some Maker Faire tickets to giveaway courtesy of Average Jane Crafter!

I have 5 one day (October 18 or 19th) tickets up for grabs: 2 adult, 2 student (Students age 13-21, or with valid ID), and 1 youth (age 4-12). Kiddos 3 and under get in free and don’t need tickets. The tickets are valid for the appropriate ages – meaning, adults can’t use the youth tickets, etc.

Leave a comment saying which ticket(s) you want before next Monday, and a week from today I’ll have Yoshi draw a name at random from a hat. Be sure and comment with a way that I can contact you via e-mail should you win 🙂

The tickets will be available for pickup next week at Moxie and the Compound 2110 S Lamar Blvd Austin, TX 78704. (If you haven’t been, you should check them out!)

For more information on the event (maps, faqs etc…), visit their website. There are also posts on the Craftzine blog.


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Yum! Green Beans in Sesame Dressing (Ingen no goma-ae)

My fave! My mom used to make this for us growing up, we grew a lot of green beans in our veggie garden. (I used konbu dashi packets, so my version is veggie.)

From Bento.com:
Green Beans in Sesame Dressing (Ingen no goma-ae)

Ingredients:

  • 175g (6 oz.) frozen whole green beans*
  • a pinch of salt

For the dressing:

  • 1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds
  • 1 tablespoon caster sugar **
  • 2/3 tablespoon dashi stock ***
  • 1/2 tablespoon miso paste
  • 1 tablespoon soy sauce

Directions

1. Boil the beans in a pan of water for 5 minutes or until tender.

2. Finely grind the sesame seeds in a pestle and mortar or in a coffee grinder. Add the sugar, dashi, miso paste and soy sauce and mix together well.

3. Toss the green beans in the sesame dressing and serve as a side dish.

* I really prefer using fresh green beans, and I parboil (submerge in boiling water) for a few minutes, drain and then “shock” them with cold water and ice to stop the cooking. Recipe is yummier when the beans still have a bit of crispness.

** Caster sugar is superfine granulated sugar.

*** See the recipe for dashi (Japanese fish stock); you can also make instant dashi from freeze-dried granules, available in many Asian grocery stores. Dashi is used in so many Japanese recipes, it’s good always have the granules on hand or konbu dashi granules or packets if you prefer those.