Recipe - Bulgur Wheat Summer Salad

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote this post about a Greek salad my parents used to make, and in it I mentioned that my mom used to cook bulgur wheat a lot when I was little. That got me to thinking, I haven't had bulgur in a long time, and I used to love it when (although I don't know if my mom would agree).

In case you're not familiar with it, bulgur is wheat that you can cook just like rice. There are some instant versions, but buying it in the bulk area of your supermarket is cheaper and, of course, cuts down on packaging. It can be used as a side dish - it has a lot of fiber and protein, so it's more nutritious than rice. It's also an ingredient in a lot of Middle Eastern dishes, like tabbouleh.

Uncooked bulgur looks like this. Soon it will be delicious.

I started looking around for recipes using bulgur, and since it's the HOT season here, I thought a cool salad would be nice. I'm trying to keep the cooking down to microwaving and boiling water, so I don't overheat the house and use too much energy. After reading a bunch of recipes, I created this mash-up:

Bulgur Wheat Summer Salad

No, it doesn't look like much, but it sure is tasty.

In a saucepan, pour:

1 cup bulgur
2 cups water

Cook on high heat until the water boils. Then reduce heat and simmer for about 15 minutes, or until most of the water is absorbed. When it's done, take it off the heat and fluff with a fork so it doesn't get too sticky.

While that's cooking, chop:

a 1/2 cucumber
2 green onions
a big handful of cilantro
2-4 mint sprigs
1 Granny Smith apple
Cubed, cooked chicken breast (optional; I think garbanzo beans would also be good, but I haven't tried it)

Put all the chopped goodies in a bowl. Add:

Raisins (1/2 cup or more, depending on how much you like raisins. Dried cranberries or apricots would also be good)
A handful of slivered, toasted almonds

When the bulgur has cooled off a bit, pour it into the bowl with all of the goodies and mix well.

To make the dressing mix:

The juice of one lemon
1 tsp. olive oil
2 crushed garlic cloves
salt and pepper to taste

Pour over the salad and mix. Put the whole mess in the fridge for at least one hour to chill. It's even better the next day after all of the flavors have melded.

Enjoy!

I've been trying to eat fewer processed foods, and this salad is a great addition to my repertoire of foods that don't involve a lot of processed ingredients. I did, however, cheat and use pre-cooked chicken breast to add some protein. It cut down on cooking time, and on the heat involved in the cooking process here in the house.

Note: Where is DIY Sunday? my loyal 10 light greenies might be wondering. Well, much to my unhappiness, I've been traveling every week for work, and therefore my weekends have been spent catching up on life. However, I have a few projects in the works, so I hope to return soon!

Close Encounters, or Why Every Kid Needs Camp

I know a little girl, whom I'll call S.

S. is an insect whisperer.

S. is just finishing second grade. She goes to school near Houston's ship channel, a neighborhood surrounded by warehouses, silos, and parking lots for tractor trailers. The neighborhood is mostly Hispanic, and its population is shrinking, crowded out by industry. School is not really S.'s "thing", and she has to work hard at her studies. Nevertheless, she is fearless, possessing a deep understanding of the natural world - an understanding which extends to a sixth sense about how to approach wild things without scaring them off. Butterflies and "roly-polies" grow immobile and quiet as S. nears. The picture above shows S. as she has a close encounter with nature at Girl Scout camp this past weekend.

S. is one of the reasons all children need camp.

I worked at a summer camp (YMCA) for 8 summers - much longer than is reasonable for an adult person. I had an idea, at that time, that camp was really good and important for kids. After all, it had been for me. However, in the years since then, I've come to believe that camp, or something akin to it, should be an integral part of the educational experience of every child, particularly in an era when sustainability is crucial to our survival.

For S. and most of the kids who go to her school, "nature" consists of the school garden, chickens which roam the street around the school, and occasional field trips. At the school where I taught, nature was represented by the yearly termite swarm which drove my class out of the school, and the dead cockroach I nicknamed "Sketchy" (because it was sketchy that he lay in the school hallway for a week.) Now, let's face it, lack of access to the natural world is not only a problem of the inner city. A man-made lake in suburban Houston doesn't really count as "nature." However, as with many problems, income inequality compounds the issue.

Not only do kids like S. have few chances to encounter the natural world in their daily lives, but their families have few resources to provide such encounters. Camp (Girl Scout, Boy Scout, YMCA, YWCA, school-sponsored, church-sponsored ...) can provide those opportunities for kids - if we make a conscious effort to include kids like S.

So why does it matter?

Here are a few reasons why I think camp is as critical as school in fostering the next generation:

1) Camp, most obviously, gives kids opportunities to interact with the natural world. Now, we all know that kids don't get to go outside and play as often as they should -- and there are a number of reasons for this. Parents are afraid of the unknown, kids are hooked on video games, teachers give too much homework ... the list of targets for blame could go on and on. And while I don't go as far as to say that kids have "nature-deficit disorder", I do think that kids who don't get to experience the wilderness miss out on a vital connection with the world around them. If you've never seen a frog in the wilderness (or gone frog hunting at night, catching frogs and then letting them go), hearing about massive frog extinctions won't mean much to you. And if you've never seen the Milky Way glowing palely in the summer sky, it won't even register when you hear that light pollution has made it impossible for many Americans to see the stars. Kids who are going to be in charge of our sustainable future should have a good idea what they are sustaining.

2) Camp fosters innovation. At the camp where I worked for all those years, "building stuff" was a routine part of any week-long session. Inevitably, someone was going to take a bunch of 9-year-olds (boys or girls; it didn't matter - camp also fosters a relaxing of traditional gender roles, but that's a whole other blog) into the woods, and the group would find logs, branches, ground cover, and build a temporary shelter. Hiking around weeks later, one would find these abandoned palaces here and there, remnants of kids' ingenuity. Throughout the week, campers dressed in costumes, blazed trails, wrote songs, performed random acts of kindness, spoke like pirates, crawled on their bellies through grass pretending to be Scottish warriors, and created crop circles. Yes, their counselors had a lot to do with inspiring these bizarre behaviors. Kids, however, learned that their true selves might be a little different than what they had believed before. The future is going to demand innovative solutions to a host of problems that we have created. I want to live in the world where the engineers of tomorrow have built crazy shelters in the woods.

3) Camp bolsters independence. True story, the first time my parents dropped me off at camp, they had to leave me crying in the middle of the road, I so didn't want to go. But I had won a scholarship, and so I had to go. I wanted to be with my parents, where I knew what to expect. At camp, I had to make decisions. There, kids decide what activities to do, what songs to sing, what to wear in the morning, how long to brush their teeth, and if they're going to shower. They learn that attitude has an impact on the course of the day. And they have to get stuff done - set tables, sweep under bunks, clean up after themselves. Camp is a microcosm of society (albeit a society where you get to sing at the table and eat without silverware) in a way that school just isn't. School, in many ways (and I say this as an educator) is about learning to conform. Camp is about learning to take responsibility. We're going to need responsible, community-minded citizens to take charge and make the sacrifices that are going to be necessary in the coming decades.

4) Camp teaches whimsy. The other day I gave a friend a photo I'd had for many years. In it, he was dressed in a flowered muumuu and a broken sombrero, while beside him a girl frolicked in an orange drill team uniform and pink snow hat. Now. Ahem. Whatever was happening in that photo, which might have been conceptualized by Salvador Dali on crack, does not directly have any bearing on sustainability. However. I think whimsy is going to save us. Silliness is as sustaining as recycling. It builds connections between people and calls on brain cells we don't usually get to access. For this reason alone, every kid should get to go to camp.

So, what do we do?

Well, we can do stuff like giving our yearly charitable contributions to organizations which sponsor camp or wilderness experiences for low-income kids, voluneer with organizations such as Girl Scouts and YMCA, and fight legislation that would end summer break and extend the school year. And we can continue all of the sustainable practices we attempt to keep up day-to-day, in order to preserve the wilderness for the next generation.

Cute Cat Picture

Sheep, Cotton, Guerillas -- It's a Knitters World, and You Just Live In It

The Product Review Part of the Entry:

Sadly, I am a knitter who is allergic to wool. Not deathly allergic. 10% wool, I can handle. Much more than that, however, and I begin to itch like a 6-year-old with chicken pox. Soon, attractive hives begin to burst into flame wherever the wool touches my skin.

Therefore, I'm always on the lookout for new yarns that won't turn me into Poxy the Hive-adelic Fairy. I'm completely jealous of my friend Darci and all the amazing felted creations she makes (for you non-knitters, felting must be done with 100% wool), not least of all because felting hides mistakes. I often use Lion Brand Wool-ease, a 10% wool-90% acrylic blend which has some of the softness and stretchiness of natural fibers. And really, I can't say enough good things about it -- it's cheap, comes in many beautiful colors, and knits up perfectly. However, as an eco-warrior, I'm always on the lookout for more natural products.

I knitted this baby sweater with organic cotton yarn made by Lion Brand. The color is called "pistachio." The pattern is super-easy for beginners who are ready to exit their scarf-knitting phase.

That's where Lion Brand Nature's Choice Organic Cotton yarn comes in. Now, there are lots of fabulous companies that make organic fiber products, local spinners creating hand-dyed yarns and selling them on Etsy, and LYS's (Local Yarn Shops, in fiber artiste parlance). They are all awesome. For big projects, however, I just can't afford that stuff. And while Lion Brand is a megalith in the yarn industry, they are moving into more creative products as hand-crafting gains momentum amongst the hipster crowd, and expands beyond the realm of grandmas.

So, how's that yarn? (Here comes the knitter talk. Andy H., if you've stumbled here, you can skip to the next paragraph). Well, Nature's Choice Organic Cotton is a worsted weight yarn with a bumpy texture, which is available in many pretty, muted hues. It is best for patterns that don't involve too much precision - it makes a beautiful garter stitch, but retains its bumpy quality when knitted up. It's also good for baby items -- we all want our babies to have happy, pesticide-free products against their skin. Nature's Choice, while worsted weight, seems a bit chunkier than your average worsted -- so it knits up quickly. Drawbacks, however, include a rather stiff feel, and a tendency to break if you pull on it too hard.

All in all, this is a good product; I applaud big companies who move into the green market. I don't care if they're doing it just for profit. Every time organic takes over a market nook or cranny, it's good for Mama Earth.

In other knitting-related, creative-living, barrier-busting news:

The other day I was driving around looking for a place to get my oil changed, and lo-and-behold, I looked up and saw this sight:

So? You might think. Shoes hanging from a telephone line ... so what?

But this is Houston, and those shoes, upon closer inspection, looked like this:

Those shoes were encased in knitwear.

Houston, happily, is home to the Knitta Crew, an underground group of guerilla knitters who tag trees, posts, signs, etc. with knitted signatures. In my neighborhood, Montrose, it's not uncommon to be strolling along and to see a young sapling wearing a sweater. Then you know -- the Knitta Crew has been there. The Knittaz are constantly expanding their whimsical experiment (and seriously ... who doesn't need more whimsy in his or her life?) to dress up America's cities in sweaters, shoes, and caps. In my mind, this is exactly the sort of thing America needs -- a little pointless, a little serious, and guaranteed to make you smile.

Travelogue: Atlanta

One of the perks of my job, as the loyal Light Greenies (all 10 of you!) know, is that I get to travel - A LOT. This week, my travel took me to Atlanta, where I was looking for greenie goodness.

Unfortch, as Trent at Pink is the New Blog would say, not a lot of green was to be seen. Well ... correction: green trees were to be seen all over the city; green bucks were to be seen in the neighborhood of Buckhead, where I was ensconced in a luxury hotel. Apparently, this neighborhood can be described, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "Where old money lives, new money parties."

So green was all over the place, but GREEN-with-a-capital-G? I'm not so sure. Here, in a nutshell, are a few highlights of my journey:

I stayed at the Intercontinental Buckhead. The advantage of working for the government is that sometimes you get to stay at crazy-nice places because the government gets a standard rate for whichever down-filled pillows it decides to lay its head upon. The Intercontinental was BY FAR the nicest hotel I have ever stayed in. I mean, I had a bathtub and a shower and they were in two separate rooms. The place even had turn-down service, which has pretty much disappeared for those of us who aren't Donald Trump.

However, in terms of greenness, the Intercontinental was eh. Of course, they had the standard cards in the bathroom telling you that if you hung up your towel they wouldn't wash it, to conserve water, detergent, and energy. However, there was no recycling in the rooms or hallways, which is becoming almost standard in hotels these days. And while I don't think eco-warriors need to go veg, the restaurant -- Au Pied de Cochon (roughly translated, by someone who took high school French long ago, as "by the foot of the pig") -- featured a lot of veal, along with actual pigs' feet, which, I have to say, was a turn-off. I understand that meat is "in" right now, and I myself am not a vegetarian. I simply don't eat mammals, though I really don't have anything against eating Bessie and Wilbur. Nevertheless, I never ate at Au Pied de Cochon due to the prevalence of baby cow on the menu.

The bar, however, was quite nice, and they served a free snack plate which included beet chips. Yum.

All in all, the Intercontinental Buckhead was lovely, but if I had to pay $360 a night to stay there, I'm not sure I would feel so sanguine.

Luckily, I had a friend in Atlanta who took me to Ecco. This was exactly the type of modern yet cozy place I love. I had the organic chicken thighs with salsa verde (having spent way too many years working with 7-year-olds, I giggle a little when I say thighs). No side dish was included, but the waiter suggested spinach with pine nuts and tomato. Now, any kid who thinks spinach is "gross" or "yucky" has never had the spinach at Ecco, because that was the highlight of a meal that also included roasted chicken thighs (giggle, giggle). Not everything on the menu was green or organic, but I like a restaurant that gives you a choice. Our waiter was chill and let us chat and chew, without any pressure to be up and out. Thanks, Roo, for taking me to Ecco. Roo also claims that Ecco is Bill Murray's favorite stop in Atlanta, which makes it uber-cool.

I flew in and out of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. Apparently, ATL is the busiest airport in the world. I'm always on the lookout for recycling bins at airports -- they make sense, since so many travelers are carrying water bottles and/or newspapers. However, ATL had no reycling bins that I could see. In fact, they had scary garbage cans which groaned mechanically every time trash went in -- I think they were compactors. It's hard for me to believe that the reduction in trash size off-sets the energy consumption needed to smash and bash after EVERY SINGLE piece of trash is discarded.

My plane was grounded due to an oil leak, but the folks at AirTran quickly found us another bird. I had planned to nap on the way home, but all of the on-and-off the planes resulted in me being wired. Instead of sleeping, I read an article in The New Yorker entitled "The Sixth Extinction", which sort of terrified me. The article chronicled various mass extinctions throughout history, and then described the extinction which is going on right now. I won't go into all the details, but this extinction involves bats, frogs, fungus and humanity's urge to expand into new territories. Basically, we're the asteroid that's going to hit the earth and blot out the sun. It's the sort of thing that conservatives will pooh-pooh, either as God's will, or not important.

Lest you think that my travelogue makes me a Negative Nelly, I have to say that Atlanta welcomed me and charmed me, and it's only through my green goggles that the city seems to be struggling to catch up to the greening of the American culture. I hope that it's only a matter of time before Atlanta is lean, mean and green.

The Auntie Chronicles: Music to Soothe (?) the Young Savage

Parenting Advice for People Who Aren't Parents

I have 10 or so nieces and nephews. Only one of them is actually related to me. The rest just know me as Auntie Catfish. As a former live-in auntie and former elementary school teacher, I've acquired a lot of kid-centric knowledge. Some of my friends have said, you should write a book for people who have to deal with kids but don't know how (either new parents or the friends of new parents). I don't think anyone would actually want to read that book - but I do have some stuff to share (Ballzy - this is for you!). This particular post has nothing to do with green living, but future posts will, as the young parents I know are greatly concerned with having an earth to leave their kids.

But let's just cut to the chase, shall we. The real reason that many singletons don't want to hang out with their best friends who now have a two-year-old ...

Many of the world's young and childless are hesitant to be around their parentish friends because they think it will mean endless rounds of singing "Where's Jeff?" along with those annoying Wiggles while talking about poop. And yes, that has been known to happen. However, kids are not necessarily wired to want to listen to Elmo.

My nephew (the actual one, and the one with whom I lived when he was a baby) who I will call H, was exposed to lots of cool music from a young age. Yes, he did like the Wiggles. Among his all-time favorite songs , however, were also "Not Ready to Make Nice" by the Dixie Chicks, "Gigantic" by the Pixies, and almost anything by the White Stripes. My first graders had DEAD (Drop Everything And Dance) time, and we all jumped around to Jack and Meg playing "Seven Nation Army." By second grade, their song book included "Ring of Fire" and "Big Yellow Taxi."

So, next time you have to baby-sit for your friends' seven-month old, here's a track list of songs that aren't for kids, but that kids love:

Wind Up (for riling up your friends' kids right before your friends get home from their date, or for dancing around when someone's CRANKY)

• Kids, by MGMT
• The Bleeding Heart Show, by The New Pornographers
• Gigantic, The Pixies
• Buddy Holly, Weezer
• Heroes and Villains, The Beach Boys
• It's Oh So Quiet, Bjork
• Big Yellow Taxi, Joni Mitchell
• Sea Lion Woman, Feist
• To Zion, Lauryn Hill
• Lights, Journey
• Ring of Fire, Johnny Cash

Wind Down (Time to calm down and take a nap)

• Buckets of Rain, Bob Dylan (when I was little I thought Dylan actually was a children's artist because of this song)
• White Winter Hymnal, Fleet Foxes
• We Love our Children, Kanenhi:Io
• Galileo, The Indigo Girls
• We're Going to Be Friends, The White Stripes
• Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road, Elton John
• Send In the Clowns, Judy Collins
• Falling Slowly, The Swell Season
• The Rainbow Connection, Sarah McLachlan
• Mad World, Donnie Darko soundtrack

A word about The White Stripes: Kids love 'em. I cannot stress this enough. Don't know what do when your friend says: "Can you watch my three-year-old while I run to Starbucks, or I'm going to go bat-crap crazy staying in the house all day?" - and being a nice person, you agree? Well, just bring Icky Thump with you, put it on the stereo, and dance around. My personal opinion is, kids can't get enough of Meg's thunderous drumming.

Have a non-kids song the kids in your life really like? Post it in the comments below.

DIY Sunday: Make It Your Own, Whatever It Is

Sadly, I haven't had a lot of time to DIM (Do-It-Myself) lately, but I like to be ready when inspiration strikes. Sometimes, you just want to add a personal touch to whatever you've got going on.

For example, last weekend I thought that I would make a Mother's Day CD for two of my friends who are new moms. This project was inspired by one of the moms, known as Kryptonite, who was looking for some music that might be good for dancing around the house with her new little guy Ian. Ian is fond of "Prison Girls" by Neko Case (he has awesome taste) but Krypto wanted a few new things to add to her repertoire.

As I was burning the CD (more to come this week on that CD, by the way) I thought: hey, instead of writing the tracklist on a piece of printer paper and folding it up, or making the generic iTunes collage CD insert, I could make my own, personalized CD case insert.

When you get these little flashes of inspiration, the key is having the supplies you'll need on hand. Inspiration tends to flit away if it has to wait for you to go to the craft store. Here are some things that I find it's always good to have available for these moments:

Pretty craft paper, glue sticks, scissors, and a variety of colorful pens. Sharpies are one of the world's greatest inventions. You can never have too many Sharpies!

Some other things that are always useful:

• A glue gun and glue sticks
• Needle and thread
• Paper clips/binder clips (another one of the world's greatest inventions)
• Yarn or wire
• Old magazines (I once made my mom a birthday card out of cardstock and a picture of Javier Bardem cut out of People magazine. She asked me where you could buy a card like that).
• An Xacto knife
• The cardboard envelopes comic books are mailed in - to protect your table when you cut things with the Xacto knife
• Stamps and ink pads
• Weird stuff that you find
• Buttons

This list could be considered a pretty basic stash of craft supplies for randomly personalizing cards, wrapping paper, envelopes, menus, CD cases, manila folders ... the list of paper goods that can be dressed up by gluing stuff to other stuff is endless.

Anyway, I was able to spruce up the CD inserts a bit, sending out some love to accompany my amazing taste in music. Since I didn't have much time, here's what I did:

Step 1: I found some groovy craft paper in my stash.

Step 2: Using the insert from another CD as a template, I cut the craft paper to size.

Step 3: I looked at the craft paper and tried to get some inspiration for the lettering I was going to do. As every thirteen-year-old girl knows, you don't need special pens to do your own cock-eyed calligraphy. Just go for it. The first CD was this kind of mod, anime looking tree with white circles all over it. I used a purple Vis-a-Vis to write in block capitals in the white circles.


The second was a bit more elegant, so I used a regular gel pen to make some swoopy letters following the curve of the bird seen below.


Step 4: I wrote the track listing on the back.

The point is, if you have some stuff around, you can DIY. It doesn't have to be fancy, time-consuming, or expensive (unless you want it to be). I know a lot of people who say, "I'm not artistic. I wish I could make stuff, but I can't." Luckily, artistry has little to do with it (I mean, anyone can cut a rectangle and write on it). All it takes is glue and a willingness to make some mistakes along the way.

Coming up: I'm heading off to Atlanta this week so I'm going to check out whether I catch any green goodness in the heart of the south. Also, look out for a new feature: The Auntie Chronicles: Parenting Advice for People Who Aren't Parents. First up will be some more info on that baby CD I made for little Ian and Rowan.

The Return of the Blog and ... a recipe (Greek Orzo Summer Salad)

So, I feel like a very bad blogger (slap my hand, if you wish) because I've been absent for many days. While there are no excuses for delinquent blogging, I can say that it has been an extremely busy time at work. That said ... sorry to all 10 of my loyal readers. I mean to be much more faithful in the future.

In return for your patience, I have a recipe for you.

But first, a little background.

My parents were of the hippie persuasion. I grew up eating bulgur wheat (where did my mom get that in Priest River, ID?) and being refused sugared cereals and gums. To this day, I'm grateful that my parents exposed us to lots of different foods -- beets, brussels sprouts, squash -- I didn't like all of them, but I was supposed to try them.

In later years, my dad was an experimental gourmand, trying out enchiladas with nopal (we lived in Spokane then, but seriously - where did one find nopal?) , recreating the Italian meal in The Big Night, and cooking up various Asian specialties. Vividly I remember the afternoon when my dad came out and offered my friends salmon mousse and toast points.

"What's a toast point?" my friends asked.

One favorite of my youth was a Greek orzo salad; I think the recipe might have come from the newspaper. The other day, driving around in the 90 degree Houston heat, trying to think of what to make for dinner that would not turn the house into a sauna, I remembered this salad. Although the recipe is long-lost, here's my re-creation:

GREEK ORZO SUMMER SALAD

Cook according to package directions:

1 to 1 1/2 cups orzo pasta

While that's cooking, chop up:

1 cucumber (yummy organic, if you can get it)
1 package cherry or grape tomatoes (I really like Cherubs, although I wonder what mutant process might have created them)
About 1/2 cup kalamata olives, or more if you like them a lot
1 package fresh basil
2-4 sprigs of rosemary

When the orzo is done, mix it up with the chopped goodies. Add to that mixture:

1 can garbanzo beans (CHICK PEAS!), rinsed and drained
about 4 oz. crumbled feta

Then make some dressing.
With a fork, mix up:

2 tbsp olive oil
The juice from 1 juicy lemon
1 smashed-up clove of garlic

Pour that all over everything else.
Chill the whole mess for at least an hour.

It makes a great main dish salad, or can be a side dish with a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, or some grilled fish.

Bon Appetit!

Break-throughs!

Recycling Break-through #1!: The folks at work decided they felt bad about throwing stuff away. I mentioned (not for the first time) that I took home recycling every day, and I would take home their stuff too. "Oh," someone said, "Is that why all those plastic bags are sitting by the sink?" We all agreed that, even though there is no recycling at our building, we would buy some bins for our office and take the stuff to a recycling center.

Recycling Break-through #2!: One of my neighbors saw me dropping off a coupon circular in the recycling bin and asked me when they take the bins. I launched into my recycling spiel and he was positive in his response.

Score 2 for Mama Earth!

City-wide Break-through!: Houston now has an initiative to build solar-powered, super-energy efficient homes for low-income families. This makes complete sense. Who needs to save money on energy (well, more than the rest of us). Low-income families. Yet, too often, green living is a luxury rather than a necessity.

Score for Houston, Mama Earth, and the Good Guys!

Please pardon all the exclamation points - but haven't we been waiting for some good news?

DIY Sunday: Papel Picado

Cinco de mayo (a celebration, not of Mexican independence, as many Americans believe, but of Mexico's defeat of the French army) is this week, and so I thought I'd offer up a seasonally-appropriate craft. Papel picado, or pierced paper, is like an advanced variation of the snowflakes you might have cut during your second grade Christmas party.

Here's a professional version of papel picado, courtesy of chuchomotas at Wikimedia Commons

In Mexico, and many areas of the U.S. where Mexican culture is prominent, papel picado designs often provide holiday decorations for Easter, Christmas, and Dia de la muertos. You may have seen garlands of these designs at Mexican restaurants, community fiestas, or other holiday events. But how can you make your own - albeit less-sophisticated - versions?

You'll need:

Tissue paper (you can re-use tissue paper you've been saving from holiday/birthday gift bags)

Very sharp scissors or a craft knife

A cutting board or cardboard if you're using a a craft knife

Step 1: Take your lump of tissue paper, and cut it into a rectangle. Then, fold the rectangle in half. If you'd like, cut a design (a zig-zag is common) along the vertical edge.

Step 2: Just as if you were cutting a snowflake, cut designs on the folded edges - such as triangles, hearts, circles. Remember that any designs you cut on the edge, when unfolded, will be doubled.

Step 3: Fold in half again. Cut more designs on the folded edges.

Step 4: Repeat Step 3 as many times as you can.

Step 5: Unfold. Voila! You've got a beautiful design!

A caution: Tissue paper can be a bit hard to work with. Make sure you have a flat surface to work on. You don't want to get tissue paper wet; the dye will bleed.

You could make a series of small papel picado designs and string them on a piece of yarn for a garland.

Also, you can create more sophisticated designs by creating a template on copy paper and using it to cut your design. Each line must be cut outside and inside (like the outline on the skull below).

Have fun - incidentally, this is a great craft to complete with kids.