Because 2 days is never enough.

Not only did I have a birthday this month, but so did Karl.

So, we decided to have a party. I stayed home yet another Friday night, this time hunched over my food processor, basically pureeing my brains out. Deborah Madison was my constant companion. The result, bowls and bowls of tasty dips and crostini spreads.
On the menu:

Spreads:

• White bean, sage and roasted garlic
• Artichoke pesto
• Roasted red pepper

Dips:

• Spicy chick pea
• Guacamole
• Yogurt dip, with cucumber, cumin and mint
• Artichoke and olive tapenade (from the Moosewood New Classics)

I felt like eating them all with a spoon on Friday night and skipping the party (which was fun, so I’m glad I didn’t actually do that).

Photos to come

I became another year older earlier this month. Karl asked me where I wanted to go for dinner and I realized that our urban lifestyle includes meals out so frequently that it doesn’t feel that special. But what sounded really special was for Karl to cook me dinner.

He’s a good cook (secret ingredient = butter), but his specialty is breakfast. He’s not use to preparing a full meal, but he threw himself into the challenge in earnest. He shopped, prepped and cooked the whole thing on his own. I had the sense he was staving off a stress meltdown, mostly because of timing and the crunch of getting things all out together. But, it came out great and was a lovely birthday treat.

The menu:

Fresh foccacia (from the farmer’s market)

Fennel, beet and orange salad with olives

Winter vegetable soup

Sautéed spinach and mushrooms

Dessert: My favorite yogurt

Well done Karl.

(photos to come)

You know you’ve reached maximum craft-dorkdom when, upon getting stuck home on Friday night, you think to yourself, “cool, now I can make that potholder I’ve been thinking about!”

Yes, friends, this is how I spent my evening. And, yes, it was glorious.

I used some leftover quilt batting (from that quilt I still haven’t finished) and some fabric I had lying around from various other projects to craft a really fantastic potholder. If I do say so myself.

The only bad news is that in drawing my own pattern, I didn’t leave enough room for a seam allowance and, consequently, the thumb area is a bit constricting. It kind of cramps that opposable thumb style that humans rock so smoothly. Well, Karl and I have been practicing and I think we can still accomplish all our the basic pot-holding functions required. And I’ll just correct the pattern next time around.

I recently went to visit my family in Santa Barbara. I had my usual, “why in the world am I living in New York???” meltdown. It’s hard not to when I’m out there enjoying 75 degree weather, eating my dad’s yummy cooking, visiting the endless stalls of beautiful fresh fruit and veggies (strawberries, avocados, artichokes!), eating brunch in the yard with my mom, taking long walks on the beach with my best friend, gobbling up delicious homemade Mexican food, etc… And all this in March.

Needless to say, I spent the week of my return feeling very grumpy with the cold weather, and the crowded subways, and my general lack of a back yard full of fruit trees. And I missed my mom, and my dad, and my step-mom, and my friends, and my town in general. Luckily for me, my mom made sure that a bit of Santa Barbara came back to New York with me.

The day before I left, my mom took me around the yard and collected cuttings from her expansive succulent garden. Okay, so, in the interest of full disclosure, I did have a moment where I realized that my mom is on the verge of being a crazy plant lady. She seemed to have what can only be described as unique friendships with each of her plants. But, regardless, it was really nice of her. She wrapped them all up in newspaper and sealed them in a big ziploc bag.

This weekend, after wandering all over Brooklyn on foot trying to find some simple terracotta pots, I found what I was looking for at Home Depot. I came home and gave all the cuttings a new home. And, honestly, they really do bring a little bit of cheer to my day each morning when I see them.

Let’s just hope I keep them alive until my mom gets here in May for some plant rehab.

Once upon a time, a girl bought some beautiful steel grey alpaca yarn at The Yarn Tree on Bedford. And from it, she made a fantastic cable-knit hat. Which she lost on an airplane. Then, to console herself, she made a matching shorty cable knit scarf with a cloth covered turquoise button that her boyfriend bought for her. This scarf was the best thing she ever knitted. People complimented her on it constantly, expressed amazement when they discovered she made it herself. She was in love. She tried to get more of the grey alpaca wool to make another matching hat, but found out it was discontinued. This only intensified her bond to the scarf.

Then, one terrible day, it was gone. It was torn brutally from her life at a high school where the girl was visiting for work. (okay, not that brutally, since she just left it in the office, but still)
This weekend, the girl tried to recreate another shorty scarf. It was so ugly that it’s picture won’t grace this blog and it will promptly be unraveled. This only served to remind her how much she loved the first scarf.

The scarf is greatly missed. Not a chilly New York day goes by that she doesn’t think fondly of the scarf and bitterly of her loss. These photos are the only evidence of the scarf that exist in her new, empty world.

Farewell fond scarf! May the high school student who found you in the Principal’s office appreciate your loveliness.

Monsanto, as a large producer of “recombined” milk (the “r” in rBGH), wants to suppress the “rBGH-free” label at the state level so consumers don’t know the milk is recombined.

“Consumption of dairy products from cows treated with rbGH raise a number of health issues,” explained Michael Hansen, a senior scientist for Consumers Union. “That includes increased antibiotic resistance, due to use of antibiotics to treat mastitis and other health problems, as well as increased levels of IGF-1, which has been linked to a range of cancers.”

Canada, Australia, and parts of the EU have already banned Monsanto’s recombined milk outright. In order to stop the same thing from happening in the US, Monstanto aims to change the labels on milk to hide the issue.

“Absolutely nothing good could come from a ban on rBGH-free labeling,” concludes Hansen. “More information is a good thing, and all these state actions are anti-consumer, restrict free speech and interfere with the smooth functioning of free markets.”

Consumers have a right to know what’s in their milk, and dairies have a right to tell them.

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I recently finished a fascinating, alarming book by Elizabeth Royte called, Garbageland. I’m haunted by the book; I can’t think about anything that I buy, chuck, or recycle, without obsessing about the consequences.

For Christmas, my mom gave us a new cover for our sofa and it looks great; I feel like we have a whole new piece of furniture. And I wanted to buy some new throw pillows to gussy it up some. But the old sofa cover filled several trash bags. And I just imagined that something perfectly reusable, some worn fabric, would just hang out, in perpetuity in a leaching, ever growing heap of trash.

I was also thinking about how, for every bag of trash we throw away, there are about 36 bags of trash produced “upstream”, meaning in manufacturing and delivery, so I decided to try to stop buying so much stuff. But, instead of just feeling bad, I hatched a fantastic idea.

I decided to hack up the huge pile of heavy twill from the old cover and sew it into three pillows, stuffing them with the shreds. In the end, I was left with just the seams of the old sofa cover, which were too stiff to use.

Then I went to purlsoho and bought some awesome Japanese fabrics and made some great covers.

I’m so happy with myself, if I do say so myself. I made something pretty, and crafty, averted some trash from the land fill, and kept myself from buying something (the pillows) and bearing the responsibility for all the waste involved with that.
Sure, this won’t save the world, but it made my living room look super cute, guilt free!

I baked two loaves of herb bread yesterday - one for Jess and one for me. We ate half of Jess’ loaf with the celeriac soup she made for dinner last night - it was the perfect way to sop it up.

I knew I wanted to have eggs with the bread this morning for breakfast, and for some reason I felt inspired to make croque madame open face sandwiches even though I’ve never made them before. They were not 100% authentic, however, since I didn’t have any ham or gruyere on hand. I substituted sausage and cheddar, which American-ized it a bit. The best part is the dijon-based sauce that I used from the Food Network.

Dijon Sauce

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 rounded tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 1 cup milk
• Salt and pepper
• 1/8 teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg
• 2 teaspoons Dijon style mustard

Place a small sauce pot over medium low heat and melt butter in it. Whisk in a rounded tablespoon of flour and cook 1 minute or so. Whisk in milk and bring to a bubble then drop heat to low. Season the sauce with salt, pepper, nutmeg and Dijon. When sauce coats back of a spoon, turn off heat.

The New Oxford American Dictionary selected “locavore”, which means someone who eats locally grown food, as the word of the year.

“The word ‘locavore’ shows how food-lovers can enjoy what they eat while still appreciating the impact they have on the environment,” said Ben Zimmer, editor for American dictionaries at Oxford University Press. “It’s significant in that it brings together eating and ecology in a new way.”

The word “locavore” was created two years ago by four women in San Francisco who proposed that people should try to only eat food grown or produced within a 100-mile radius.  It spawned an entire movement that encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or to grow their own food, noting that fresh and local products are more nutritious and taste better.  We couldn’t agree more!
Jess will be pleased to know that the phrase “colony collapse disorder” was one of the runners-up.  (I’m surprised “carbon neutral” wasn’t on the list.)