This is the Dash and Albert Neapolitan rug I must have for my floor. The colors will glow next to my gray walls. Reminds me of a Wayne Thiebaud palette. Sweet, but not sickly.
In Paris, I visited the galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, a museum of contemporary art in the Tuileries. This might be where I became obsessed with marble, but anyway...
Hanging at the time was an exhibition of Wayne Thiebaud's paintings. I had only seen a few reproductions of his work in my 2oth Century Art Book, and I was unprepared for the rapture I found in the canvases full of dense cakes and perky plates of pie. The repetition speaks to me.
Just look at this rug! Dash was Albert's dog, and these Dash and Albert rugs are dog tested, boasting durability to boot. I think I'll get a pooch to match the rug.
We adopted a Meyer lemon tree to mark our first year in our first house. This was one of the first plants I wanted to raise in our new space. I hardly remember how I stumbled on the idea of raising a citrus tree, but it was likely while calculating the chance of cultivating olives, based on my plant hardiness zone. Unlike olive trees, citrus trees can grow and produce fruit in the mid-Atlantic. You just have to treat the plant like a tropical, bringing it indoors during the winter and providing additional light if the sun doesn't pour through the window.
What! Move a tree indoors? Citrus trees can be pruned, like bonsai in a way, to encourage bushy, shorter growth. The Meyer lemon tree can grow 6 to 8 feet high, but it will stay small if kept in a giant pot. Apparently, these trees produce fruit willingly indoors. The thought of walking past lemons ripening on the branch in February makes me squeal.
Homestead Gardens, currently my favorite garden center in the world, sells several varieties of citrus for $40. They have Kaffir lime and Washington Navel orange in addition to Meyer lemon. If your local garden supplier does not carry citrus, go online! Plenty of nurseries will ship you a tree. You can even find Meyer lemon trees here at Amazon. Don't forget to buy Citrus Tone, an essential plant food for your little lollipop, and have the nursery give you a tutorial on caring for your tree.
Meyer lemons are so versatile. Their juice is sweeter and less acidic than a true lemon and the skin is much thinner. Last winter I bought Meyers nearly every week at the grocery, using them in pastas, salads, and desserts. They really brightened my winter. This tree and I are going to be fast friends.
I've been going really crazy over tomatoes, and not just those luscious summer heirloom varieties. Salsa - particularly on scrambled or fried eggs - has been my crave. I have never been a real salsa eating fool, so I was alarmed when I found myself eating it by the spoonful one morning. No, I'm not having puppies.
Gazpacho is cousin to salsa. I always liked the idea of cold soup, but rarely ate gazpacho. Early in the summer when a guest on the Splendid Table described the gazpacho soup in Spain as velvety, I wanted some. He said the secret to a velvet gazpacho is good olive oil and sherry vinegar, stale bread, and a high performing blender. Like most, I don't own a $500 Vitamix, so I used my pedestrian but effective food processor. The gazpacho was triumphant and crisp, perfectly balanced.
I had been meaning to make this Splendid Table recipe again when I saw Chef José Andrés' gazpacho recipe in the September Bon Appetit. Andrés' Spanish tapas restaurant Jaleo serves a fresh, raw gazpacho that pairs beautifully with gambas al ajillo - sauteed shrimp with garlic. At Jaleo, the gazpacho is made with bread, just like the Splendid Table guest suggested. Andrés' version in Bon Appetit left out the bread. It would be a departure, but less steps. Once I got going, I was grateful to see the tomato puree froth and thicken like a pink lemonade gelato. I sip it like morning coffee.
I think a lot about doing things. On my mind especially: planting, sewing, painting, cooking. I have to have a soundtrack for these things. Once, my friend Jay made a mixtape for me called "I'm doing stuff" because, well, it was my mantra one raucous evening. I love when old favorites re-emerge like this Apples In Stereo song...
Oklahoma, it turns out, is no hotter than Washington, D.C. in June. With humidity, it's all relative. What you will only find in Oklahoma, however, is an epic antique/vintage shop called A Treasure In Time. I adore this store, from the old Pyrex percolators to the brassy mirrored perfume trays. The only thing I couldn't find in this two-story shop was a marble bust. Otherwise, I hit the glass dish jackpot.
I made it home from Ada, Oklahoma with these beauties tucked into my bag.
What I had to go without included this pink dream...
Every now and then, something comes around that reminds me that Washington can be fresh, and even lighthearted. The upcoming Seersucker Social promises to be just that kind of afternoon. Hosted by Dandies and Quaintrelles, who brought us the DC Tweed Ride last fall, the Seersucker Social begins with a bike outing, and the parade of foppish bicyclists decked in vintage-minded gardenwear will end their tour at Hillwood Estate for a leisurely afternoon of lawn games and spirits - the drinking kind. Grab your parasols and bow ties and meet me by the fountain.
Since I mentioned that I love the Gorillaz track that features Little Dragon, surely you guessed that I am also listening to Little Dragon's last album Machine Dreams. I was humming this first song all day at work, and the second track just makes me break down and dance every time, no lie.
Some people call it Swedish electro pop, but that makes it sound challenging when it's so lush and funky, like early Goldfrapp.
Speaking of challenging, I am a huge fan of Of Montreal. There is no in-between with Of Montreal. You love it or hate it. I'm listening to this track as I write because my husband is away and it makes him very cranky. In fact, when I went to listen to Of Montreal after hearing their recent collaboration with Janelle Monáe, I discovered that all of their albums had been deleted from our computer and I had to re-download them. What a hater; I would never do that.
Frankly, I should not have been so surprised to see Janelle Monáe and Kevin Barnes collaborate. Both have ties to Georgia, a rogue state when it comes to music. Both are theatrical in dress. Janelle wears tuxedos exclusively, in solidarity with the uniformed underclass (think janitors with generic name patches). Kevin wears his fashion like David Bowie or Adam Ant in their face painting days. Sometimes he doesn't wear clothes. As for creative talent, on the scale these two trying new things, these two are weighing in
Be ready for the first minute of the song because it's choppy and Barnes sings in his most biting voice , but I forgive it all for the reference to Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The song completely shifts at 1:03, so wait for it.
For the last few weeks, I have cooked more veraciously than normal. It started with a dessert party. I wanted to have some friends over for drinks on a Friday, but didn't have time to throw a full-on dinner party. To entertain, I decided to put my new stand mixer (classic Kitchenaid!) to the test, and offer dessert with drinks. Ok, I went berserk and made Mascarpone Chocolate Toffee Bars, Rhubarb Upside-Down Cake, and Peanut Butter Cookies with Blackberry Jam. Served with prosecco and a juicy rosé, I only regret that I forgot to eat a proper dinner.
Most recently, I attempted a savory Cantal cheese tart that was rich and buttery, a perfect compliment to the slightly acidic dilled white bean and grape tomato salad I served alongside. And I cannot get enough harissa these days, that mind-opening North African chili paste! This recipe for carrot salad with harissa, feta, and mint had me chatting up random friends of friends at a Memorial cookout about Tunisia and Parisian grocery stores - pardon me - markets.
With all the recipes I have tried since that dessert party - and I haven't even mentioned half of them, like the cioppino - the one I keep craving, is the one I made up. Know that when I say I made it up, I'm talking about the equivalent of inventing a type of sandwich. I riffed on the classic peanut butter banana smoothie and came up with the PBJ Smoothie!
If you also want to fill goblets with PBJ Smoothie, try this:
PBJ Smoothie, for two Combine the following ingredients, liquid first, in a blender and blend to the brink of smooth
4 oz blueberry juice 4 oz vanilla soy milk 1 frozen banana, sliced 8 oz frozen blueberries 2 tablespoons peanut butter
It won't be so bad. The prep work is minimal - no prime coat needed, just a good soak. And, it will breath fresh life into your backyard while giving crisp, clean lines to the house profile, just like the new roof did. A two-tone paint job will keep it interesting, and the cool hues will keep it understated. Imagine how much pleasure it will bring you when, during the reign of mosquitos, you and your friends spend summer evenings out there, protected by the window-screens you built.
That's me talking myself into painting and screening the back porch over the next week, starting tomorrow after work. Doing a project of that scale after a work day takes willpower, especially when other tempting activities lurk about, like dinner. It helps to break the scope of the work into stages that can be achieved in a few hours, without compromising your entire evening.
Before and after photos of the living room project help me get psyched up for the porch project. Let me share them with you. We even painted the fireplace, after some inspiration from Young House Love.
Listen up glee club, for every Lady Gaga there is a musician out there who is actually clever, innovative, and informed; they just don't sell to the masses. Take YACHT, for example, who I saw open for LCD Soundsystem in 2007 at the 9:30 Club. He was a force, a more approachable and melodic Dan Deacon.
Have you heard the band Girls? They sound like Nirvana on a bunch of Beach Boys pills. Throw in a little audioglam à la The Ronettes. Try it, you'll like it. Rich and sparse all at once, not lo-fi but - dare I say - garage bandish.
If I hadn't listened to the new Gorillaz Plastic Beach so many times already, my summer jam would be this track, featuring Swedish group Little Dragon. Yes, thank you.
It's Tuesday. The weekend blew by, along with Mother's Day, but it's never too late to post in honor of mothers everywhere, especially mine.
The Splendid Table, a public radio program I love, was devoted to mothers this weekend. The first segment featured cookbook author and mother Emily Franklin. As only a mother could, Emily relates her young son Daniel's disdain for peas, using the 5 Stages of Grief as a framework and sending me into fits of laughter and grave compassion for my own mother, who fielded more than her fair share of fits while raising me and my two brothers. Maybe you will recall a similar scene from your own home. Have a listen...
I'm pretty sure that my mom's salmon cakes had the same affect on me as peas do for Daniel, but on the whole, we were very well-fed. My brother Miles was known to shake and quiver in anticipation of Mom's oven-fried chicken. I also have some fairly incriminating family photos that demonstrate just how much my brother Nathan loved Mom's spaghetti and meatballs. For me, I would do cartwheels for her chicken rice pilaf. And blessed were the days when we came home from school to find fresh, buttery oatmeal cookies waiting for us.
When I moved into my first apartment, I called my mom to request her oatmeal cookie recipe and learned that they are really called Aggression cookies, because you can work out any tension or stress while kneading the dough. Maybe this explains why they were a common treat in our house. Raising three children must come with a little bit of stress, but you would never know it with our mom. Try her recipe for yourself and conjure up your own fun childhood memories...
Deanna's Aggression Cookies
1 1/2 cup brown sugar 1 1/2 cup (3 sticks) butter 3 cups oatmeal, uncooked 1 1/2 cup flour 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
Knead everything with your hands until no lumps of butter remain. Roll dough into small balls and place on ungreased cookie sheet. Flatten gently with a small fork.
Bake for 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees. Cool before removing from cookie sheet.
Sometime during all that snow we got in late winter, I started craving a garden. Much of my desire was wrapped up in a general craving for spring. Having tired of winter stews and root vegetables, the promise of cool salads and iced tea led me straight to seed catalogues. Normally at this time, I would have focused almost entirely on cultivating varieties of tomatoes, plus some other summer fare. This year, there were too many unknown environmental factors to confidently move forward on a strictly tomato regimen. Namely, sunlight. We moved into our house in September, just as all of the shade trees began to think about turning. Even then, I noticed the yard was heavily shaded for most of the day. Now that May is here and the trees are in full force, I can tell you that tomato plants will not live a happy life in my yard.
So with this assumption in tow, and a newfound interest in greens, I found another outlet: I built a salad table and planted lettuces in it.
The table, which I built with Sam on a Saturday morning, is portable and waist-high and features three shallow beds lined with screen for adequate drainage. I found out about this simple and practical design via the Maryland Cooperative Extension, a must-try resource for gardening information.
This Saturday I am going to Homestead Gardens, the biggest independent garden center in the United States: or at least one of biggest. That means tonight I must draw up a rough landscape plan to fill the beds we prepared earlier this month.
I made glamour/mugshots of some plants that I photographed at the Patuxent Nursery. Top contenders for the beds include...
pieris flaming silver
cypress gold mop
nandina firepower
camellia
and I would really like some ornamental grass clumps and DEFINITELY euonymus green spire. It's so aquatic.
Each plant has a different texture and color, which will provide lovely variation. We are also having a Yoshino cherry blossom tree planted in the front yard, but I need to decide on a small tree or two to break up the shrubs around the house that I mentioned above. I desperately want a Japanese maple, but I think they need more sun than our very shady-in-summer yard can offer. Boo! Any ideas?
Despite the allure of the internet, I keep finding inspiration in magazines. It's like I'm being reintroduced to the medium. In the last year I've started reading outside of my typical magazine loop, and I've found new enthusiasm for taking them in. The magazine has been part of culture for a long time, now. (Well, at least since 1731, when The Gentleman's Magazine made its debut.) There is a reason so many of us love the glossies...
Apart from the design and imagery of magazines (how is strolling through a gallery all that different from thumbing through a magazine?) and the informative content, the magazines I am drawn to know how to teach me things. For example, cooking magazines offer recipes and techniques to readers. Many of you are like me - we recreate those recipes and oh, what tangible results they yield! Yesterday, I made this Moroccan carrot soup from Bon Appetit, substitute red onion for white. That's just one example, though. A quick jaunt to Popular Mechanics gave me this little gem on how to build a garden shed, which brings me to the online world of magazines...
Many fabulous magazines have never-ending online content. Sunset magazine is a great resource. And then there are the pioneers of the day, like LONNY magazine - digital publications with a hands-on, flip the page format. And they are interactive because they are totally digital! Oh brave day!
LONNY magazine uses a digital publishing platform powered by Issuu. Through Issuu, I can even include LONNY's entire magazine right here on my blog!
I am amazed at how accessible publishing has become, and now I'm dreaming of producing my own magazine. Now where can I find some writers, photographers, and so forth?
When Gourmet magazine folded, I was heartbroken. After their final issue, the remainder of my subscription rolled over to Bon Appétit, so it seems they inherited the Gourmet throne. I didn't have high expectations, based on my initial exposure to the magazine, circa 2004. I viewed it as a less sophisticated version of the iconic Gourmet. To my surprise, I have devoured each issue, prepared multiple recipes, and learned new things about food. I realized that for me, Gourmet was about food photography and clean, attractive design. Oh, and travel. I can map out half of the food world thanks to Gourmet's little trips into places like Trinidad and Tobago. Somehow, though, Bon Appétit's recipes appeal more to my everyday taste and are proving to be more accessible.
Bon Appétit now features a column called Cooking Life with Molly Wizenberg, who also has a popular blog called Orangette. Upon discovering this, I knew the magazine and I were on the same page, so to speak. For Christmas, my mom gave me a fabulous book by Molly W. called A Homemade Life. I was so taken by the stories and recipes that I made her chocolate cake recipe for my birthday, trusting it would make me proud. It was a hit with the friends - the perfect balance of moisture and crumb with a robust, smooth chocolate flavor. Molly's articles for Bon Appétit are like an extension of her book.
Bon Appétit does a great job of covering food trends, as well. The May issue features a piece on the NYC beer scene, highlighting German-style beer gardens, which seem to be popping up everywhere. Even D.C. has a Biergarten Haus opening in May!
Saying goodbye to Gourmet was tough, but I'm extending a big warm HELLO! to Bon Appétit.
One feature of my house that I love is the back porch, but it isn't quite ready to enjoy. My porch is all bones. It needs to be scrubbed, painted, and screened in. While I was inspecting the porch this morning to get a sense for the work I need to do in the coming weeks, I found about a dozen spider nests tucked into the corners of the porch. Oh horror! They are ready to burst.
In theory, I like spiders. They catch other jerks like mosquitos. But I don't want to find them in my house. Ask my husband Sam - he will tell you that I like my fair share of bugs, especially earthworms. It's not me, it's the spiders. My dad tells this story about stomping on a spider nest on his back porch when he was a boy. Hundreds of baby spiders went running up his legs. He might exaggerate a bit, but needless to say I have never wanted to find out by experience.
Maybe the spiders have already hatched and the problem is moot, but for now I assume they are planning to emerge and I am trying to work up the courage to remove these babies. The nests are creepier than the spiders!
Good Stuff Eatery has captured a flavor everyone knows and loves, and put it in a blessed milkshake. Toasted Marshmallow. It is unreal how straight out of the campfire this shake is. Probably my favorite sweet in D.C.
Today I learned about information design from Edward Tufte in a seminar called Presenting Data and Information. Tufte is much better on paper than on stage, but I enjoyed his ideas. More than anything, I was envious of Tufte's extensive knowledge of culturally significant works of art and his ability to integrate them into his research.
Some highlights include 1) watching his white-gloved assistant walk a 17th century book of Galileo's around the room, 2) discovering, thanks to the tea and coffee service, that "green jasmine" tea is the name of the mystery tea served at my favorite dim sum place, 3) receiving four gorgeous books by Tufte to dig into, and finally, 4) learning about Chopin's Op. 57 and the Music Animation Machine, see below
The house we moved into in September looks naked from the outside because there aren't any foundation plants around the exterior. I suppose I'm happy about that, since we can dress it up according to our taste without having to rip out existing shrubs and trees, but learning to landscape a yard from scratch has its challenges. In my dreams, my yard looks like a Henri Rousseau painting...
Take away the naked lady and strange animals, and you might have something like this...
Too bad I live in the Mid-Atlantic, where the climate won't support my dreamscape. I borrowed a pretty fabulous book from the public library that I'm using as a resource, and while the plants that thrive in my region are more traditional and conservative, at least I have the following to look forward to...
Bee Balm attracts hummingbirds, which are so small and incredible to watch. And I can also grow peonies, herbaceous perennials that I discovered during an architectural tour of a cemetery in Amiens, France. This is the Sarah Bernhardt peony.
And I plan to work in a few dahlias, because they are completely irresistible.
None of these plants address our lack of foundation plants, but I always start with the icing.
I've been buying a 5lb bag of clementines every week at Whole Foods for months. I think their run is coming to an end, as the fruit is less sweet and the store's stock is waning. What will I do? I know, summer has a lot to be excited about. Melons and stone fruits, but I want my citrus!
![Neapolitan_ST32646718_BW_2010[9073]](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4108/5040659482_f9b1815fc1.jpg)
![Adobe2'x3'[7157]](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4133/5040781456_3a15b32a61.jpg)
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