Filed under: in the kitchen
I found some of those infamous Meyer lemons at the Japantown farmer’s market and immediately juiced six of them to make strawberry lemon sorbet. Which was dang good in and of itself.
But the later use of it as a concentrate, mixed with sparking water to make soda, was in-cre-di-ble.
Start with this recipe. Prior to chilling, put mixture in your blender and add a large handful of strawberies – fresh or frozen. Proceed per usual.
My time in this big Victorian barn of an apartment has drawn to a close and I have, with the help of some dear friends, spent the last week packing. The packing of the kitchen has been an amusing thing – I wasn’t the one who packed it, and because I am still in residence for the next week and a half, several things I’d like to still have out to cook with are in the bottom of a taped up box somewhere.
But I managed to squirrel my way into the kitchen during the pot packing, and insisted that this pot stay free of bubble wrap and cardboard. I need something to cook my remaining meals with, and this just seemed like the right choice.
Filed under: shopping
These abaca pillows, made from a plant fiber grown in the Philippines, are $11.25, down from $45, as part of hip & zen’s closeout clearance.
I’ve long loved the abaca goods available on Bitters Co.’s textile page, but the prices were out of reach. So here’s a starter purchase!
I have long wanted a working seltzer bottle. I had to order three off eBay before I realized the vintage ones didn’t actually function. Oh, I love those wire wrapped Art Deco beauties! Oh, how they are pointless paperweights! Why did no one tell me it’s impossible to get the caps off them and refill them with water? That age has fused them into metallic and glass lumps?
Filed under: architecture
I got news of the TVCC fire through Daily Dose of Architecture, but this came through from my school friend Elyse, who lives in Beijing. Thought it was worth sharing. Her full post is here.
Filed under: green
This is more like a future reference note to myself, but why not share?
This webpage offers information about where you can send CDs, cases, and liner notes to be recycled (pick-up is available in New England). I don’t see why your liner notes can’t go in regular local recycling, but the info about CDs and cases is handy. I personally am still hanging on to my music CDs, but I saw CDRs and CDRWs get trashed regularly in school and if I’d known about this, I would have organized the collection of them as a grassroots project. As it is, I am going to keep it in mind for all the offices I work at in the future.
Filed under: in the kitchen
The farmers markets are expensive around here in the winter. But the flea market on Berryessa has bags of peppers and potatoes and green beans measured out and tied up and selling for a dollar a bag. My lengthy, though unscientific, survey tells me there’s generally over a pound of produce in each bag (that’s three peppers for a dollar). It’s probably from Mexico. But man is it fresh. And cheap. And going in my freezer pronto.
Filed under: design
I’m somewhat obsessed with this fabric. The print is small enough that when you step back from it, it reads as a neutral, and in upholstery weight, it’s just really really great. I’d love to do the two barrel backed 60s club chairs I got off Craigslist in it. If only I could find it. Because considering where I took this picture, I don’t have high hopes for ever locating it again.
I remember reading a quote a long time ago about fried rice and stirfry style recipes developing as a way for poor families to make a single serving of meat serve a whole family – when the meat is chopped very small, everyone gets a few pieces in their bowl.
The sandwich above is more generous in its serving of meat, but the idea is the same. A 5 ounce steak looks tiny when placed on a plate in once piece. But if you slice it thinly and pile it on a slice of rustic bread, it doesn’t feel so small anymore. In fact, it feels quite indulgent.
Whether you’re trying to eat smaller portions or you’re long overdue a bit of steak on your tight budget, it’s a concept worth keeping in mind.
Filed under: shopping
Love these “mod” pet beds.
Too bad the covers aren’t removable for washing.
But still, happy things like this are available on Etsy for not-300-dollars.
Filed under: green
European Brita has been recycling water filters since 1992, but apparently the service has not been available in the United States. On one hand, “That sucks!” On the other, I’m kind of glad, because I would have felt stupid for every time I’ve put mine in the trash with a bummed out sigh if I was actually supposed to recycle the thing.
Good news as of January ‘09, however!
I went to recycline.com this morning to get a postage label for my Preserve toothbrush and what should I see but an announcement that Preserve is going to start accepting Brita Filters! Even better, you can drop your filter off at select Whole Foods and skip the shipping altogether. I have my fingers crossed that because I live in a wealthy part of tree-hugging California, my local Whole Foods will be one of the “select.” Participating stores will also accept any #5 plastics. Check with your local recycling folks to see if that is a boon over your current program or not, though, as it makes no sense to divert your #5s if they’re already being properly recycled.
Now, shall we start a petition to get them to accept PUR filters too?
Did you know…that a Twinings tea tin is the absolute perfect height to hold Q-tips?
Filed under: in the kitchen
First, I’ve had this tray for ages and not had an excuse to use it. It’s a pearly gray with a hint of lavender and made from plywood. You can see the ply around the edge. I love it. So, tada! Here it is! (Humor me.)
Second, Saturday I put together a pumpkin carving party for thirty folks, on a budget. They’d all paid ten dollars to attend, and the pumpkins had eaten up half of that per person. After buying red wine for mulled wine, apple cider for mulled cider, hot chocolate, and sodas, I had a limited amount to work with for edibles. The treats had to be tasty and inexpensive, but, because I’m just like that, they had to look twice as fancy as they were. Personal standards will be the death of me, yet.
Filed under: in the kitchen
I was at an Easter potluck barbecue when I first tried these. A guy in attendance had brought a huge, huge bowl of them – so huge we thought he was out of his mind. Then we ate one. And the bowl was promptly emptied.
Thankfully, he was willing to tell us what was in them. And even more thankfully, it was so simple that I still remembered the recipe last weekend when I decided to make them for a pumpkin carving party at my house.
Zaha does injection molded plastic.
This just in, passed to me by a friend: Zaha Hadid teams with Melissa to create her own footwear. Full blurb at the AIA website.
Not sure I’m digging that coral/salmon, nor how they look without feet in them, but I’ll wait for more images before making a judgment call. (Who am I kidding – they cost $350 – my judgment is irrelevant!)
Also on Inhabitat, where the color is slightly less garish, but still no images of it being worn.
On Youtube, a video of a ‘making of’ a mockup.
(To their credit, several readers on other websites have pointed out the glaring non-sustainablity of making shoes in Brasil to be sold only in London.)
Filed under: home
Going through some life changes that have me at home during the days. I confess I ought to be more worried than I am, and part of the reason I’ve been feeling artificially insulated from the precariousness of unemployment (!) is that I’m enjoying staying at home shamefully well. My place is beautiful in daylight, and I’m experiencing all sorts of little nuances of light and color and stillness I missed previously.
Filed under: in the garden
I started these from a freebie seed packet earlier in the year and transplanted them outside at roughly the same time as I planted the daylilies. They’re growing up the railing of the raised front porch (this pic is looking over the railing down at the ground) and I see them each time I leave in the morning. They are the most amazing blue.
Lovely, lovely.
Filed under: life in general
National landmarks
First you have to park. Then you have to pay. Then you have to stand around with a lot of other fat Americans and their stupid children and their mewling old folk. Do so.
I lived a childhood with parents who were too groovy to do those square tourist things (Gen X had not yet invented irony), and so I never knew just how important Mount Rushmore is. Or the mile-high statue of Crazy Horse carved into the other side of the hills. Or Devil’s Tower, in a hideous corner of Wyoming. Well, my son and I experienced those three magnificent places in 24 hours (with a stint at a Flintstones theme park along the way), and still had time to stop and burgle some doubtless-protected wildflowers for the water bottle in my lousy VW cupholder.
There’s a reason we protect certain places, a reason the Parks Service takes the trouble to put up bathrooms and water fountains and collect your toll: because these places are treasures, every one, and if you’re within an hour of one, you must really stop and see it. We’ve been to national parks up and down the Sierra Nevada; we’ve been to Niagara Falls. We’ve seen Arches in Utah, and Zion National Park. We’ve roamed the gilded halls of Breakers (the Vanderbilt family home) in Newport, R.I. We’ve been everywhere, man.
Plus, the Park Service could really use the dough.
-Rebecca Schoenkopf
My thoughts exactly. If there’s something amazing within a few hours drive of you, why not go see it this summer? The park service really could use the dough, and we all need to feel awe (and perspective!) every once in a while.
Filed under: in the kitchen
There’s so much life to live in the summer that it’s hard to sit still long enough to make blog posts. But continuing experiences with new-to-me vegetables are worth documenting, so here we go!
Beets? They were around when I was growing up, usually pickled. Never touched the stuff, personally. But an eeny-meeny-miny-moe menu encounter in a local Russian deli revealed to me I like borscht. I like it a lot! So when the CSA foisted beets on me, this was first choice.
I found the process of boiling and peeling the beets fascinating. I walked away from the kitchen, forgot I’d a pan on the stove, and ended up over-boiling by a good deal of time, yet it doesn’t seem to have mattered.
Filed under: in the kitchen
Family sized bunches of scallions were delivered two weeks in a row this month. I cut one bunch up and stashed it in the freezer, predominately for future dips and garnishes. The other bunch I decided to experiment with.
Filed under: in the kitchen
I’ve been posting a running tally of CSA vegetables received in my Flickr account. Thanks to the Green Bags I’ve been using, I don’t have to use them up right away – but as a result I was reaching a critical mass with the root vegetables. I needed a recipe that would use up mass quantities of everything, and clear out the fridge for the new batch of goods. I also got my first “I’ve never eaten that!” veggie: turnips. It was clear, despite the afternoon heat in my west facing kitchen, some kind of roasting was in order. So in the pan went all the root veggies I had, along with a generous helping of olive oil, sea salt, and several springs of fresh rosemary.
Filed under: in the garden
To follow up on The Daylilies Don’t Mind. I’ve got five blooms so far, and they’re all beautiful pale lemon.
This was super interesting. Apparently the ‘micro-beads’ that swirl down your drain as you rinse off are often microplastics (unless noted as ‘natural’). Sewage treatment systems aren’t designed to remove microplastics, and they end up washing downstream into the ocean, where they end up in the digestive systems of aquatic life.
Food for thought.
Filed under: in the kitchen
The CSA box isn’t quite keeping me stocked in fruit (although the strawberries are wonderful) so I went trawling for fruit this weekend. What I came back with was a splurge (fresh blueberries) and an oddity – Saturn peaches. I’d never seen one before.
They’re short, squat little things, but they’re oh so sweet and because of their size, less messy to eat.
Looks a lot prettier than a fly strip, doesn’t it? It’s also greener: nothing to throw away, and infinitely reusable. Target is selling them in clear, purple, and teal, Smith and Hawken brand, for a little under eight dollars apiece. At my local store the lids had been lost for all of the ones left in this size, but a wine cork does nicely in a pinch.
I’m also a big fan of the red biodegradable plant pots they’re selling right now. I bought three!
I have a favorite ancho/pasilla chili sauce which unfortunately requires a certain amount of tedious work that keeps me from indulging as often as I’d like. It’s not a fast sauce – you first have to cook the ingredients, then puree them, then cook them even more to bring the flavors into balance (it’s bitter before the last cooking). But the tediousness of it makes it a perfect candidate for split preparation: do the first half of the work in a big batch, and then do the second half as needed, when needed.
A month or so back, I made a double recipe of that lovely sauce. But I didn’t do the final round of cooking. I put it, mid-recipe, into ice cube trays. Once frozen, the cubes of sauce were dumped into ziploc freezer bags and stashed.
Now whenever I want delicious homemade sauce for a Mexican dish, I pull a few cubes out of the freezer and toss them in my crockpot over the chicken I’m stewing, or in the oven over the chicken I’m baking. They melt and finish cooking with the chicken, and I get a delicious, flavorful meal that would have normally taken a lot longer and a lot more dirty pans. Figuring this out has saved me from the lure of quick, store-bought sauces out of a jar. (Yes, Trader Joe’s Simmering Sauce, I’m talking about you.) I know exactly what’s in my sauce, I have the quiet contentment that comes from knowing I made it myself, and it didn’t cost me two bucks or more a pop.
Being able to portion out the cubes is a perfect tactic for someone who eats alone. Just take what you need and save the rest for later. It’s also nice simply for someone who doesn’t want to do a lot of prep every night when they come home from work. Get all the flavor of the long preparation, but much quicker and with less hassle. Take the half hour you saved and spend it with the newspaper, your pet, or your mate.
It doesn’t always have to be sauce (or the ubiquitous fresh herbs) that you put in your ice cube trays. I recently froze a carafe of coffee that didn’t get finished at one of my previous dinner parties. I don’t drink coffee, I’d merely had it on hand for the guests, but I couldn’t bear to throw it all out. I froze it, same as above, and plan to put it in the blender with a little milk and sugar syrup to make iced coffee drinks for a future summer event. The point is to be mindful – can you do something now that would make your life better later? Can you save something that would otherwise be wasted?
I love to think about and do things like this; it economizes your time, improves the quality of your daily meals, stretches your money, and minimizes waste. Plus you get to feel clever!
Filed under: photography
This is how I like my color – supersaturated without the help of Photoshop. Makes me want to rearrange the house this weekend and pull out every bright thing I have. So I think I will. :)
(Took this photo years ago on film and wish I could find the negative!)
