When I’m not drawing pictures or drinking beer, I also like to cook. This past weekend I threw a dinner party; here are some pics of the grub:

Cucumber Salad Canapes with a Spicy Lime Vinaigrette. Served with Serrano Cocktail from Imbibe Magazine

Chilled Tomato and Watermelon Soup with Key Lime Granita and Cilantro Garnish

Mango Jerk Seitan with Truffled Golden Beet Slaw

Barbados Black Bean Cakes with Mango Salsa

Key Lime Tart with White Chocolate Mousse and Mango Sauce

In case you want to make any of these tantalizing treats on your own:

The canapes were a variation on Andrea Meyers Cucumber Salad. My only change was that I put everything in the salad but cucumber. Then I cut my cucumbers into 1 inch rounds and scooped out some of the seeds to create little cups for my salad.

The black bean cake and salsa recipes came from the Vegetarian Times cookbook. The seitan and slaw recipes came from the two cookbooks put out by Horizons. The soup and dessert were from the Millennium cookbook.

I actually did not have much luck with Millennium’s mousse recipe. I made it once before and it came out okay, but this last batch was a disaster. Luckily my girl saved the day and made some fantastic mousse using some white chocolate chips and whipping cream. She sort of followed this recipe.

Related art:

I finally got around to getting some new art online. Apologies for the lack of new designs, it’s been a busy summer. Below are the newest creations. I hope you dig them:

In other Ex-Boyfriend’ish news, Fall is coming! To keep you warm and stylish I’m looking into ordering some long sleeved tees. For the guys, I’m looking at American Apparel’s 4.3 oz cotton long sleeve jersey. For the ladies, I’m look at Bella’s 3.5 oz cotton long sleeve crew neck jersey. Both are fairly light weight cotton and nice for layering. Let me know what your interest level is like and if I get some good feedback I’ll make these available. If you know of some better blank or have other comments, let me know below, or just reply to the poll below.

In the meantime, here’s what the blanks I’m considering look like:

So, those of you who read my blog regularly (all ten of you) may have noticed that I was MIA all last week. I wish I had a good reason for my lack of communication, but I don’t. The fact of the matter is, my wife was out of town (Way out of town. London, to be precise) last week, and if I’m being honest, it’s very difficult for me to stay on-task when she’s not around.

Tempting as it is to do the revisionist history thing and post a bunch of entries time-stamped for last week, let’s just pretend that it never happened (which is, in itself, a revisionist undertaking. Tautology! Look it up, kids. Also, what’s up with all the parentheticals today?)

Since only TWO of the aforementioned TEN readers have taken me up on my Meet the Fans Monday feature, I’ve decided to ease us back into the swing of things by interviewing myself. This exercise is two-fold: it give me a chance to mention Chuck Klosterman’s latest book Eating the Dinosaur, which examines the nature of the interview from the quasi-philosophical angle that Klosterman does so well, and it also allows me to talk about myself, which I love doing.

How did you first discover Ex-Boyfriend?
I started designing some stuff. It needed a name. And “The Beatles” was taken.

5 10 desert island musical artists?
Yikes! Idlewild, The Smiths, Waylon Jennings, The Who, The Beatles, The Cure, Miles Davis, Wilco, Elliott Smith, and Blur. I will rue this list on the days when I crave some Johnny Cash, Radiohead and/or Oasis.

Tell us about your pop cultural guilty pleasures.
I don’t ever really feel guilty about the stuff that makes me feel good… but I suppose the stuff that is the most incongruous with my persona would be my appreciation of certain Britney Spears singles, Jane Austen novels, “good” romantic comedies (Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, When Harry Met Sally, etc) and Gossip Girl.

What kind of tees do you hope we design next?
The kind that sell a lot! Ideally, stuff with monsters and robots and critters. You know, the usual.

Favorite haunts on the web?
Alright, time for some true confessions… I’m a bit of a sports nut. Not exactly the sort of thing you’d guess based on my job, wardrobe, haircut, listening habits, etc. But I LOVE baseball and football. So a lot of the places I visit deal with sports. Pretty much every one of the Yahoo! Sports blogs is choice. Fangraphs.com. CamdenChat.com. All are pretty entertaining reads. But I also love to drop in on chromewaves.net, because Frank Yang and I share a lot of the same taste in music (and I like free mp3’s), videogum.com is excellent because Gabe is one of funniest bloggers I’ve ever read. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention andiamnotlying.com, which is partially contributed to by my friend David William, who is an amazing artist “living the dream” in hipper-than-hip Brooklyn. And of course tastespotting and liquorious!

Do you have any pets? What are they, what are their names?
I think this is pretty well-documented, but I’m pwned by two cats, Oliver and Bigby. And let’s not forget the seemingly never-ending parade of foster animals.

If you had a time machine, where in history or the future would you go?
The future. To paraphrase Brian Fellows, I don’t do dinosaurs.

Beer, liquor, or wine (be specific)?
Beer and wine are more or less in a dead heat. I love a good Belgian-style wheat beer, but I also like a nice, flavorful copper, amber or red ale. As far as wines, I’ve graduated from the “I only drink whites” camp to almost exclusively reds. I tend to shy away from the drier stuff—no merlots for me, thanks. I like a nice full-bodied shiraz, cabernet savignon, malbec, or pinot noir.

What’s the first thing you notice about the ladies (or dudes if you prefer them)?
Teeth/smile. I can look past a lot of physical flaws, but bad teeth are pretty egregious.

Cake, pie or cookies (ice cream and candy are also acceptable, but be specific)?
This is tough! I love Starbursts. I like cupcakes a lot (though I’m pretty no-frills; plenty happy with vanilla-on-vanilla), and certain pies really get me going (key lime, blue berry, pumpkin, pecan). I appreciate a well-done cookie, but they’re more of a stop-gap dessert in my book—a sort of “well, if there’s nothing else around” treat. My wife’s cherry cheesecake is pretty awesome, as is her pumpkin cheesecake topped with toasted pecans and caramel-bourbon sauce.

As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, my wife and I love fostering animals for the Maryland SPCA here in Baltimore. The drag of it is, there are so many foster “parents” on the books with the MDSPCA that you only get a call about once every 4-6 months asking if you’re available. And just as our luck would have it, the last call we got was just days before we left for our tortuous fight with the Icelandic ash cloud back in May, which made it impossible to devote the two weeks the kittens needed before they were ready for adoption. I was pretty bummed, because, y’know, I love kittens, and it was very likely I wouldn’t get another call until this Fall.

Thankfully, I got another one on Wednesday, and promptly prepared our master bathroom for our fuzzy visitors. Five kittens, four boys, one girl, all named after Trueblood characters. Let the cuteness commence!

Bill

Eric

Eric & Bill

Lafayette

Sam

Sookie

My bathroom is now full of kittens. There are 5 of them: Bill, Sookie, Sam, Lafayette and Eric. I’m fostering them for the MD SPCA. I’ll take more/better pictures later and share them on Friday but in the meantime, here’s a preview of the cute:

I apologize for the crappy quality of this pic (and post; I’m severely hung over). What you see before you is supreme dedication.

While I was out with my wife and friends last night, a guy came over to our table and literally asked for the shirt off my back. Apparently his lady-friend (pictured above) loves penguins, and liked my Penguins In Love design so much that she had him ask me for it. Typically I wouldn’t have taken off my shirt in a bar, but they actually had a free crappy over-sized Bud Light tee of some kind to give me in exchange, so I wouldn’t be left shirtless. Since I’m all about going the extra mile for you guys, I gave this girl the shirt off my back. And since I rarely go out without one of my own tees on my body, you guys also stand a very good chance of coming away with a very sweaty cool free t-shirt of your own if you happen upon me. (Chances are especially good if I’ve been drinking.) Just keep an eye out for me; I’ll be the guy in the Ex-Boyfriend shirt complaining about the state of the Baltimore Orioles baseball club.

P.S. I’m too hungover today to talk about booze with any enthusiasm, so instead I’ll just point you to Fork Party’s list of 11 Terrible Hangover Cures. Here’s hoping your Thirsty Thursday is less headachey than mine.

I’ve been so busy catching up on stuff since I got back from my trip overseas that I forgot to tell you all about how the rest of it went. In our last installment, the heroes were trapped by a diabolic ash cloud in a land of ice. Thankfully the natives were friendly and we went out boozing with a fellow stranded passenger from Norway. The Icelanders were an affable bunch and we had as good of a time as one can have while being stranded.

Unfortunately, things mostly got worse before they got better. Iceland Air refused to fly us over to London until Saturday afternoon, putting us in London after 11pm on Saturday night. This means we really only got about 24 hours to hang out in London. Further exacerbating our already raised ire, the London guest house gave away our room! You see, as soon as we realized we were going to get to London a day late, we called the guest house there and told them we’d be late. They said okay. I assumed we’d be stuck paying for the room for Friday night, but what can you do at that point?

So we arrived in London at 11pm on Saturday night and that’s when the guest house owner chose to inform us that he’d given away our room! This was a pretty huge deal because the room we reserved was the nicest one they had. It was the only one with a proper king-sized bed and private bath. The guest house owner tried to pawn another room off on us, but my princess wife wasn’t having it. I think I saw actual steam come out of her ears.

The alternate room was really not an acceptable substitute. It had cracked dirty walls, a bed that was really more of a cot with a paper thin mattress. It had a shared bathroom with some filthy creature who littered the space with their toiletries and didn’t believe in flushing the toilet. There was no wastebasket in the place at all. There was trash scattered around the apartment. It was more suitable as a crack den than an actual hospitality venue one might pay money for. The wife insisted we find a proper hotel immediately, despite having already paid for guesthouse from hell. I can’t say I disagreed with her.

We tried to salvage the night, and our moods, with a drink at a bar. The place we checked out was full of surly aggressive locals who all seemed to be one inadvertent glance away from starting a fight. One of them loudly berated me for a good 60 seconds for “interrupting” her when I hadn’t even spoken to her. She seemed to be crazy. I also overheard her accuse the bartender of stealing her credit card, which later turned up in her purse.

We ended up just spending a lot of time in the hotel, hiding out from what felt like a city full of angry drunks, even during the day. London’s one saving grace was dinner at Saf. It was probably the best meal we had on our trip, though there were other good ones. I guess overall, London was too much like NYC for our taste. Here in Charm City, people are, well, mostly charming. You don’t run into a lot of angry aggressive types where we live, so the scene in London was kind of a culture shock. We did get to take a walk around Primrose Hill (very cute neighborhood) and took a spin on the London Eye.

Thankfully, we made our way to Amsterdam on Monday and from there it was all smooth sailing. Amsterdam was amazing. We’ll definitely go back. It was clean, laid back, pretty and full of fun things to do. We saw tons of amazing art, drank really good beer, checked out the kitties at the Cat Cabinet and got some unbelievably delicious Indonesian food. Despite it’s reputation for dope and hookers, the city didn’t really have a seedy vibe. The other fun thing was the 24 hour access to spectacular junk food. You can get ahold of pizza, falafel, pastries, pretty much anything, at any time of day. I was in carbohydrate heaven.

We wrapped up our trip in Iceland. We rented a car and drove around the southern part of the country, checking out the exotic landscape, geysers, hot springs and waterfalls. Iceland had a lot of spectacular scenery and uncrowded, easy-to-navigate roadways. The bars were full of friendly beautiful people and the local brew, Viking, was even pretty tasty on tap.

Below are a few photos from the trip:

Yesterday I got on a plane to go to London and start a much needed vacation. The plan was to fly Iceland Air to Reykjavik, have a 1 hour layover, and then head to Heathrow. An hour before we were supposed to land, it was announced that we were instead being diverted to Akureyri, Iceland.

First of all, let me tell you about Akureyri, or as my wife keeps calling i,t “Atreyu” (both because it sounds a little like “Atreyu” and because the place looks like The Nothing from Neverending Story had its way with the place). Akureyri is 5 hours northeast of Reykjavik. It’s practically IN the arctic circle. I was half-expecting polar bears to greet us. It appears to have about 5 man-made structures, in addition to the airport. If you want to call it an airport; it’s about the size of a 7-11.

After de-planing in Akureyri we were subjected to a 5-1/2 hour bus ride to Reykjavik. On a bus without heat. Let me tell you right now, “Iceland” is aptly named. It’s fucking cold here. My cranky wife was simultaneously nerdy and creepy when she said she wanted to wear me like a Ton-Ton for warmth. She later decided against that, saying she might need to eat me instead since we hadn’t been fed in over 12 hours. Our sleep-deprived road trip consisted of a death-defying jaunt through a barren wasteland of snow and mountains. We saw the occasional sheep and/or pony farm every hour or so.

An hour outside of Reykjavik our frozen bus broke down. In a tunnel, while I was asleep. So I woke up in a dark cave to an Icelandic woman urging me to get off the bus. I was all “What? Huh, where are we? Are we in a cave? Are you leaving me in a CAVE?!” They wanted us to get on some other bus, without our luggage. Iceland Air people lied to us and said assured us our baggage would be delivered to a hotel and we’d get a flight to our eventual destination.

We spent the rest of our day trying to get Iceland Air to make good on the promise to give us our luggage and trying to find another flight. We also spent much of our time lamenting the fact that our toothbrushes were in said luggage and our teeth felt gross. Also feeling pissy about the hotel demanding $20 for martinis! At this point it’s almost inhumane to not have free martinis. We eventually also paid $20 to get a cab to the bus terminal to retrieve our misplaced luggage out of pure despair for toothpaste and clean undies.

We are starting to wonder if this volcano isn’t some elaborate ploy to trap travelers in Iceland and force us to spend exorbitant sums on booze to stimulate their economy. We are tentatively going to London tomorrow. This gives us only roughly 24 hours of actual vacation time in London before we have to head to Amsterdam for the next leg of vacation. All I can say is 1. Amsterdam better happen and 2. It better be epic to make up for our thus far atrocious vacation. Who needs a drink?

P.S. I don’t really hate Iceland. It’s a neat place and I totally understand that sometimes things happen beyond the airline’s control. I still don’t forgive the frozen bus/lost luggage. I mean, they aren’t flying today. Would it have been sooo hard to get a bus with heat and not separate us from our luggage? Or at the very least pay to reunite us with our luggage and buy us a few rounds at the bar? Being vegetarian, this offer of a free reindeer sausage is not make me feel better about things.

Although I do the actual drawings around here, many of the design concepts come from my wife. She’ll be fast to tell you that she can’t even draw a stick figure but she’s creative nonetheless. On a typical weeknight you’ll find us curled on the couch with a bottle of wine watching Rachel Maddow. (When I say a bottle of wine literally we’re usually drinking from the bottle, wino-style, because we’re too lazy to hand wash our delicate wine glasses. Is that wrong?)  The other night this commercial for Scott Trade came on and my semi-drunk sweetie giggled and said “Unicorn ranch… hehe… that’s funny. Matt, draw a unicorn ranch!”  Really, this is how a lot of the design ideas come to life around here.

Any way, how was your weekend? I spent mine prying SPCA donations from our friends with liquor and cupcakes. (s’mores, mint chocolate, margarita,  rum raisin and vanilla chai, om nom nom)

I can’t send you cupcakes through the intertubes but I will send you a nifty keychain bottle opener if you help me raise some more cash for the critters. (Now through April 17th I’m donating 100% of the proceeds from bottle opener sales to the MD SPCA.)

How was your Easter? Mine was like every other Sunday, being a heathen and all. I slept til noon, hung out with my wife and worked on my garden.

Sadly our brutal winter did not destroy the Audrey II-like demon plants that took over my rosemary. Those stinging nettles were back in full force and my only option was to dump the entire container. Thankfully it didn’t spread to my mint or chives and those babies are already back with a vengeance. The only thing winter did manage to kill was our patio chairs and table. Stupid winter. Here are some scenes from the garden.

So now my official love-hate relationship with warm weather can begin. Meaning I love our fresh herbs and the soothing babble of our fishpond, but hate having to remember to always water the plants and feed the fish. How was your weekend?

P.S. We have a new contest winner for our monthly comment-on-this-blog-to-win-free-stuff contest. The winner is:

“Officer: You’re under arrest for indecent exposure.

Oompa Loompa: I was just trying to show the kids my everlasting gobstopper!”
- Marisa wrote in response to Title This Tuesday: Oompa Loompas Gone Wild

You can be our April winner. All you have to do is leave some comments around the blog