Monterey Chicken

Monterey Chicken
For a change, I thought I'd include a recipe for the Monterey Chicken dinner I made tonight:

Monterey Chicken
4-6 chicken breasts, each cut into 3-4 thin strips
1/4 cup olive oil
2-3 cups Monterey cheese
one package of bacon
fresh corn tortillas
2 cups of tomatillo sauce (recipe follows)

Garnish:
diced roma tomatoes
diced green onions
Mexican sour cream
Queso Cotija

Preheat oven to 425.
Prep the grill with REAL mesquite wood. If you do not have mesquite wood, QUIT!
Prepare the tomatillo sauce, keep warm.
Cook bacon until lightly brown. Not too crispy.

Marinate the chicken in olive oil, sprinkling with salt and pepper. Cook over mesquite wood until just brown. The wood should be nice and HOT. Do not overcook! We're trying to just cook it, but we're really just after the smokey flavor.
Chop strips into bite sized strips. Place into 13x9 baking dish. Add bacon bits all over. Smother with plenty of sauce and LOTS of Monterey cheese. You might need more cheese. Toss into hot oven on the top rack for about 30 minutes. You're just trying to melt the cheese, but a little charring of the cheese will only add flavor!

Lightly fry the corn tortillas in oil until they are soft (about 20 seconds per tortilla. Oil should be HOT, or you'll end up with a pile of torn up tortillas.

To serve: Place one or two fried tortillas on the side of a plate. Serve up a nice mound of rice and beans on the side. Plate up the chicken and sauce on the tortillas. Add garnishes of your choice.


Tomatillo Sauce:
2 lbs tomatillos
1/4 cup dried chile de arbol
4-6 chile serranos
1/4 cup cilantro
2 teaspoons finely chopped garlic
1/2 sweet onion (vidalia is my choice)
2-3 teaspoons vinegar
1-1 1/2 teaspoons salt
Chicken broth

over mesquite grill, blacken tomatillos, onions, serranos and chile de arbol. Once well blackened, process along with the rest ingredients in blender or food processor. Add up to 1/2 cup chicken broth to thin down sauce.

Cook in medium saucepan for about 30 minutes, or until the sauce is fully cooked, adjusting salt and broth for personal taste

Lessee.... I promised some pictures of some of the vinyl blanks I've been working on. It'll come later. Exhausted at the moment.
I'm off work tomorrow. My little girl is having a party this weekend. Her Birthday is in July but she wants to have an end of the school year party and birthday party now. Bernie noticed that I'm handy with the paintbrush. She asked me to make a 'pin the tail on the donkey', only to make it a Littlest Petshop monkey. I complied. It came out well enough that she then asked me to make a monkey head pinata. Did that today after work. I'll be painting it tomorrow.
So circling back to the pictures I promised of the vinyl blanks... I've been using the magic sculpt to modify golf balls. I finished one and I have three others that need to be painted tomorrow. So that's where I'm at. I have several pieces waiting their final paint jobs. Once that's done, it's picture time, then load to my Etsy shop.
Wait, did I say modified golf balls? Yep. Golf balls. Modified, meaning I add some magic sculpt. Then paint them up. Why golf balls? Because they're cheap! I bought a dozen for about $2. Plus I make two or three items at once, so I feel accomplished.
Looks like I'm going to be busy tomorrow, painting stuff up. We'll see how it goes.

I've been doing blanks more than anything lately. Doing is a relative term; I haven't done shit in about a week. I ordered some magic sculpt and I've been waiting for it to get here before doing anything. What *IS* magic sculpt?
http://www.magicsculp.com/
I can't find my own words for this stuff, I'm at a loss for words. AWESOME begins to describe what I think about it, but way beyond that. It's forcing me to rethink the sculpting process. It's a two part epoxy clay that sets in about 2-3 hours. When you first mix it, it's a bit difficult to work. Has the consistency of marshmallow cream, but as it sets, it gets stiffer.
The odd thing is that it's supposedly safe to use with bare hands. The instructions advise to wash your hands before and after handling. It also has a slightly unpleasant smell. Sort of like bad BO.
Bernie bought a vinyl toy blank. I used the top part, which was round, and about the size of a baseball. I started a Cthulhu-esque octopus with sculpey, making the tentacles, oversized beak, and eyes. I used the magic sculpt to create horns, which are becoming wings, and to cover the ball in its skin.
I have two other semi-finished vinyl blanks. Semi-finished in that I've created the face, but I still don't know what to do with the bodies. One is supposed to be wearing a mask. The other is a kitsune wearing kabuki makeup.
Pictures to follow.

I decided to do another vinyl toy blank. This one started life as a small kitty blank. I was trying to keep it as a cat, but a demented cat. The grin was too dragon-esque, the ears became horns and before I knew it, the head had morphed into a Quetzacoatl Temple Lion....

I decided my MUNNY was a bit too expensive for my first attempt at DIY vinyl toys. I looked around and found these:
http://www.colorblanks.com/toys/
Color blanks. DIY viny toys, but at very cheap price. I also found another DIY vinyl toys by brand Doodle Buds. I bought a bunch of the color blanks and doodle budz at various sizes. All combined they cost about as much as my one Munny!
I wanted to experiment, see if I could bake sculpy on these guys without melting them. I found some instructions at instructables.com that mentioned you could cure the sculpy at 200, so I tried that. The sculpy didn't quite set at 200, so I turned up the oven to 225. This is only 50 degrees cooler than what sculpy should set at. However, the vinyl toy was VERY wobbly, on the verge of melting. But it was successful! I was able to add some sculpy pieces. I decided to set the detail sculpy with my hot air gun. This combination gave pretty good results.
I really wanted to take a picture of the before subject and take some pictures as it came together. I painted up my test subject and put the finishing touches before I could take pictures. It came together THAT quickly. I created a small top hat and scythe for it. I took pictures before I put the final clear coat, but you get the idea.
So what have I found? You CAN use sculpy on vinyl, but you have to be really careful.

I've posted both finished dragons on my etsy shop. Speaking of which, I decided to combine both etsy shops into one.

yay.

Go to my etshy shop now. Look at my finished product. Marvel at the genius of love that is me. Buy shitloads of stuff from my shop.

I'm taking this blog too much to heart. Last Thursday was my day off. I was looking for this place called red hot robot:

http://www.redhotrobot.net/

My youngest is going through potty training and I promised him a robot if he had two days with no accidents. Was looking for red hot robot, got lost. Finally located it, but along the way I picked up a copper pipe and some fittings. I made two blowguns for my older boys. I picked up the robot for the youngest, but I also picked up a munny for myself:

http://www.kidrobot.com/Toys/DoItYourselfToys/MUNNYWORLDminiMUNNY4InchWhiteEdition.html

I plan to modify the life out of this little guy and make something fun.

My son LOVED the robot I got. It's an old old school wind up tin toy. He sleeps with it and he's about as careful as a 3 year old can be with such a thing, but it's only a matter of time before he breaks it.

Hey I found pictures of the snake dragon in progress, so I'll be posting them:
There's a couple of body shots from different vistas to get an idea of what I was trying.
There's also a couple of close up shots of the claws so you can see the wire armature and clay claws.
Though you can see the FEEL of the finished product, the pre-built up aluminium section looks different. Sort of like seeing it's skeleton.