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Crafty Wonderland Winter Holiday Market December 10th and 11th in Portland Oregon

It’s back! The Crafty Wonderland Winter Holiday Market returns to the Oregon Convention Center again this year. Panda With Cookie is so happy to be back. The market takes place on Saturday and Sunday, December 10th and 11th, from 11 am to 6 pm. There is a special ticket only event on Friday night from 5 to 9 pm so you can come in and shop without the crowds. Tickets are on sale now!

Get there early to get in line and hope to get one of their great crafty swag bags that go to the first 150 people on both Saturday and Sunday. Look for the Panda With Cookie ornaments! Stop by and say hello! I’ll have my new plush kangaroos and sharks as well as old favorites such as my cat ornaments. New this year will be a small selection of dog ornaments as well! It’s the biggest holiday market in town so don’t miss it!

Working With The Creative Mind Workshop in Portland

My friend Trista is co-hosting a creative mind workshop on Saturday October 29th from 1-5 pm. From their website:

“Our workshops combine creative writing techniques, meditation, and gentle yoga to help you clear mental clutter, silence self-doubt, and refuel your creative mind. ”

Registration is $55 and the workshop will be help at Another Read Through, located at 3932 N. Mississippi Avenue in Portland, Oregon. Check out their website for more details and join their Facebook group!

National Cat Day 2015

Every day is National Cat Day here at Panda With Cookie, home of the personalized cat ornament. We spent 30 minutes this morning feeding and brushing our resident cat George, who wanted to send a greeting to some of the great cat shelters here in Portland, Oregon.

Photo from Feral Cat Coalition

The Feral Cat Coalition does great work with trap and release programs to spay and neuter feral cats to help keep their populations down. You can visit their website to find out how to take in your neighborhood feral cats. Look for that distinctive tipped ear to see if they’ve been fixed.

The Cat Adoption Team is where our buddy George came from. They always have a variety of cats and kittens to choose from and it’s always great to adopt from a shelter. They also have a thrift store at 3848 SW Scholls Ferry Road, with proceeds going to benefit the shelter. Buy some new cookie sheets there, or donate your old crystal wine glasses.

The Pixie Project is also a great place to look for a new cat friend. They have a sweet George looking for a home right now, too. Maybe you need to take him home this week?

10% for the Portland Women’s Crisis Line

It’s that time of year again! Time to decide who to donate 10% of shop profits to for the months of November and December. We’re pretty fortunate to have the Give Guide here in Portland, OR, that encourages people to give at the end of the year. The have both a website and a print publication that highlights numerous charities. Many charities get matching funds for part of their donations that go through the Give Guide, so I’ve decided to donate through them this year.

I’ve chosen the Portland Women’s Crisis Line as this year’s recipient. Please take a moment to read about their 24 hour service support for women who are experiencing domestic or sexual violence. You can donate to them directly and 10% of all sales in my shop from November 1 through December 30 will be donated on December 31 (which is the cut off for Give Guide donations).

Buckeye Balls Now With Vegan Recipe

Buckeye balls! Who doesn’t love them? Peanut butter and crispy cereal rolled up in chocolate. This is my favorite quick dessert to take someone. They are easy to make, don’t require a lot of ingredients and need no measuring.

I first learned of Buckeye balls from kittee’s great Papa Tofu zine and I use a mix of the recipes from there and Vegan Finger Foods. Today I’m going to share my magical recipe with you.

Buckeye Balls Panda Style

-Put some powdered sugar in a bowl, and add some crispy style cereal to it. Mix. Make sure there’s about twice as much crispy as there is sugar

-Add a dash of cinnamon and mix again.

-Plop in some peanut butter and mix it up until it’s a good consistency. Add more crispy cereal if it is too soft, add more peanut butter if you can’t incorporate the dry mixture.

-Roll into balls and freeze.

-Melt some chocolate and dip each frozen ball in and cover. Drop onto wax paper and freeze again. Don’t worry if they aren’t perfectly round and smooth like the picture people put on Pinterest. They will be more tasty if they are lumpen and uneven.

-Eat 5 with some tea in your garlic mustard mug.

There’s Still Time to Geek Out Your Baby for Halloween

Halloween is the perfect time of year to dress your baby as Manos from that MST3K and Rifftrax favorite, Manos: The Hands of Fate. Panda With Cookie headquarters has you covered with our Manos onesie in sizes up to 18 months.

Dress yourself as Torgo with any beige clothes you have had hanging out in a corner of your basement for a few years and pop your wee one into this 100% cotton one piece. You are sure to be the hit of the office Halloween party.

I will be shipping all onesies the day after they are ordered for the rest of the month so you have time to order and get your Manos oneise in time to terrorize the neighborhood this Halloween.

Ice Tea and a Bagel NYC Edition

Y’all! Thanks to the magic of one j.d. funkadelic of the long running vegan blog Come Scone With Me, I have a stash of pumpernickel bagels in my freezer straight from New York City. Where the bagels are big and the rent is ridiculous. In honor of the final Sunday of MoFo I have returned to my theme and have a nice iced earl grey tea. Though I’ve had the bagel stash for a while I was afraid of posting too early for fear of a crazed and desperate west coaster pillaging my home in search of the magical pumpernickel. They don’t make ’em like this on the west coast.

As Seen on TV: The Rollie Brownie

I wanted to branch out this week and conquer a sweet treat in the Rollie. That vertical cooking technology seems like it could bake up a brownie, so I decided to try a marshmallow stuffed chocolate Rollie brownie. I decided to grab a mug brownie recipe to try even though I have never made a mug brownie. You don’t need a lot of batter for the Rollie and I thought the mug brownie batter would be a good fit. This may not have been my wisest decision of the day. The ingredients are assembled, the brownie batter mixed.

I used the wooden skewers to skew some Dandies marshmallows. They look so happy on the bag but into the Rollie they went. The brownie batter got poured nto the cooking chamber and the wait was on!

And on. And on. And on. I should have pored less batter into that cooking chamber. There was a slight rise in the batter but it just did not seem to be cooking at the top. The 10 minute timer buzzed and I reset for another 10 minutes. Another buzz, another reset. I scooped a bit of the batter out and discovered that the brownie did appear to be cooking underneath. At 30 minutes I went ahead and pulled the Rollie brownie out.

Or rather, I attempted to pull the Rollie brownie out. Much as with the biscuit of last week, the wooden skewer slid right out and left all brownie inside. Unlike the biscuit of last week, this thing was not coming out with out a fight.

I managed to get a bunch of large chunks out by running the skewer around the edge and shaking. You can see the well melted marshmallow in the bottom right. Now, this might look like a failure. And it certainly was in that I had no brownie cylinder to chow down on. But a pile of half baked gooey chocolate marshmallow pile is better than having no half baked gooey chocolate marshmallow pile at all.

Iced Tea and a Bagel Sweetpea Bakery Edition

I am drifting from my theme but hopefully no one will be too upset. I do indeed have a bagel but that is water with nary a glass of iced tea in sight. This is an old favorite from Sweetpea Bakery here in Portland. The bacon scallion cream cheese on an everything bagel. It is becoming less and less iced tea weather, so I went with a simple glass of water this morning. Stay tuned next week to see if we become hot tea and a bagel.

Tofu Pirate Comics: Answering the Vegan Critics for Vegan MoFo