Bande à part

Garance Doré lives out my Band of Outsiders fantasy by getting a chance to dance the Madison in a Paris café. And just to add a glossy finish to this fantasy, it was all done as an advertisement for the classically hip brand Petite Bateau and filmed by cinematic royalty Zoé Cassavetes. Some girls have all the luck.

Hibernation

Ray LaMontagne in his very own fall farmhouse. With a motorcycle, of course.

After a long, lovey, and sort of spring-like fall, winter seems to be settling in for real in New England... not completely unexpected. But it's cold enough that you actually do need to wear proper boots (instead of all those ballet flats that I live in) and it's been getting dark so early that I'm ready for bed by 8 in the evening. All of this clearly means that it's time for a solid hibernation plan. I mean, there are months of this ahead, might as well cozy up and hunker down. All of this hunkering requires a multi-pronged strategy* and one of those prongs is music (this might be under an even bigger umbrella/prong of atmosphere, but let's keep it simple for now).

Though I still have piles and piles of cds, for years now I've just listened to a series of playlists made up of whatever is on my ipod of the moment. But lately I've become hooked on the sort of thing that I don't usually get hooked on: a multi-layered, somewhat ad-filled, super integrated music application called Spotify. You've probably heard of it. You're probably already using it. Or maybe you're a bit like me and have heard about it but are not so sure that you want to get into all of that 'cause once you do, like me, you'll be hooked. And it is sort of great: you can find just about any song that you want to hear and compile an endless amount of playlists. And then (and for me this is the best part) you can share those playlists, via facebook, with friends and they can share theirs with you. They can send you songs and write little comments about them. You can make a special playlist just for them. It's social! You know, in a digital, not actually together togetherness sort of way. And possibly just what you need when you're snowed in and wish that you could be spending time with far away friends listening to your favorite song.


Lisa Hannigan braving the elements

In a hibernating mood, I compiled a playlist dubbed 'Fall Farmhouse', which is what will have to suffice for cozy atmosphere in lieu of having an actual fireplace. Here are a few of my favorites to listen to while drinking mulled wine and knitting a scarf to give to my brother for Christmas...

Lisa Hannigan launched a solo career a few years ago after singing back-up for Damien Rice.
I love her new album, Passenger, especially:
A Sail, O Sleep, and What'll I Do
And from Sea Sew:
I Don't Know, An Ocean and a Rock, Sea Song

Feist's new album, Metals, (with back up vocals by Mountain Man) feels like a cold Maine coastline... is that just me?
How Come You Never Go There, The Bad In Each Other, Cicadas and Gulls

Ray LaMontagne doesn't have something new out, but his music always makes me long for a farmhouse in the Berkshires (just the sort of place where he lives and records a lot of his songs). A few favorites:
Hey Me, Hey Mama, Lead Me On, Shelter

Iron and Wine have more than a few sweet and lovely cozy-ing up songs:
Bird Stealing Bread, Someday the Waves

And this one from Bon Iver's latest album sounds, to me, like snow falling:
Wash.


What songs are keeping you warm this wintertime?

Feist, looking all lovelorn and winter-y


*Other prongs of the hibernation strategy include food, films, and fiction... more on that later.

The Yeh-Yeh Girl from Paris

TRADE secrets

Food lovers (and Food Network fans) all know that Jody Adams has long had a very popular little place in Cambridge called Rialto... one of my favorite places for small plates, a glass of Sancerre and a platter of oysters on a Monday night. Well, now she's got a new spot, right in my neighborhood and just off the Greenway, called Trade.

Lucky me, I was invited by a friend to join him at a tasting lunch there just last week for a very delicious preview. We tried a trio of small plates and love-loved the curried carrots with yogurt cheese and the chicken livers on sesame crackers (with kumquat jam!). I also tried one of the flatbreads, fired up right there in front of you in the brick oven behind the bar, a lamb sausage with eggplant puree, Manchego, peppers and garlic yogurt combo that was a perfect balance of sweet and savory. But my hands-down favorite thing was the dessert: a Taza chocolate budino with sea salt, rosemary and hazelnut wafer... nothing short of fantastic!

It gets even better: the space is lovely, too. Designed by (my master's thesis adviser) Maryann Thompson, the interiors are crisp & clean, with a warmed up relax-and-settle-in feeling and storefront windows looking out onto the Greenway. I'm looking forward to plenty of after work meet-ups there this winter with friends for drinks, a bite to eat, and that budino for dessert!

Curious? They opened this week... you can make a reservation here.
Have a delicious weekend!

Make New Things

'The Paint Doctor Is In' from this week's New York Times

Highway Romance

I'm certain that it's not just me... don't we all have a bit of romantic attachment to our first car? It's just such a significant teenage time of life anyway and then you add to the mix all that freedom of being able to get yourself from here to there and... the heart soars, the mind reels. The possibilities are endless even if, as in my case, you were just driving around in circles on an smallish Big Island! The proof is in the little bit of lightness and footloose freedom that I feel just seeing pictures of the roadway romances of my past...

Something like my mom's 1968 Ghia... she drove it all over California and Washington and cared for it so lovingly that I was driving it around the Big Island in the early 90s. So low and so sporty... and so loud with the top down and the radio up!

Nearly just like my 'first car'... and a perfect Hawaii vehicle. I drove it across lava fields and into taro valleys with black sand beaches for overnight camping trips. Well used when purchased, but tricked out with pipe bumpers, a fancy stereo system and a huge custom sub-woofer in the back!

Boxy but good: my college-in-New England transportation was bought off a small used car lot near Providence. It came with the extra way-back seat, which meant that I could pack 6 friends and myself into the thing for trips to amusement parks and ski mountains. I covered the back bumpers and windows with typical college-y bumper stickers ('mean people suck', 'visualize whirled peas' and, for a reason that escapes me now, the UC San Diego logo). A very happy Happy Valley vehicle.

To keep the car romance fires burning, Chance has a few covet-able cars in their blog archives ... my heart is all a-flutter over that Mercedes 190SL from their October post!

Brimfield

Well, I made it out to the final Brimfield weekend of the year and it couldn't have been a more beautiful day for it! After a rainy week, the sky was clear as a bell and the sun was shining... perfect. And I didn't buy a single thing, which was fine by me. It's just so much fun (and then, eventually, sort of exhausting) to stroll through the stalls just looking. And getting inspired for all of the projects that you could do if you would do them... someday. But when you do, you know that you can find the right bits & pieces at Brimfield! And it was such a nice way to spend a day with friends, the youngest of which, at only 2 months old, is already a natural at this sort of thing.

Tomorrow is the very last day for the season and the forecast is sunny & cool. Take a little drive out there for a lot of inspiration.

We used to wait

I know that this is going to sound all so nostalgic, and it probably is, but I really miss getting letters in the mail. And even sending real letters, because I don't do much of that either. I used to... all the time... with little scraps of images and drawings and bits of whatever taped to the pages. It was like being with the person you were sending it to, really thinking of them reading it... a connecting thread along a time line. Now I spend quite a lot of time g-chatting with far away friends, and that's great too: immediate and spontaneous and totally informal. But an actual letter: the weight of the paper, the sender's handwriting and pen choice, even the indentations of typewriter keys... it's like a touch, like something to hold on to in a way that you never would or could, even if you printed and bound all of your most lovely emails.

Just knowing how excited I always am to see a letter in my mailbox, slipped in between the coupon fliers and the magazines, makes me want sit down and write a few myself, for old times' sake...


Fruity embossed rhymes

Joe ♡s Jane
Someone found this in a book. A (non-digital) happy accident.

Some other Sunday...

About a month ago (nearly goodbye to August already?) a friend was in town and a few of us made a little pilgrimage to Neptune Oyster in the North End. About the same time last year, on a very hot day, we'd wandered over for a birthday celebration and I am all for making this an (at the very least) annual tradition of feasting and friend-gathering.

It's a tiny & very popular spot, not great for tables of more than 4 or 6, and even if you go at odd hours (say, 3 pm, for example) there is still typically quite a wait on the weekend. But with it's food, great wine selection and white-tiled bistro decor, it's really worth it. And there are plenty of shops and scenic streets to stroll while you wait.

I always order the hot lobster roll: always delicious. If you go, taste test both and have your own debate over the merits of the hot or cold options. We ordered about a dozen oysters, bellinis all around, and settled in to our marble-topped table for a couple of hours of good laughs over good food.

Neptune Oyster
63 Salem Street
Boston, Massachusetts
617.742.3474

'As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.'

- Hemingway

Once more to the lake

Heading up to Maine this weekend for a quiet (and most likely rainy) summer get away. I'm prepared to hunker down with a good book, if that's what the weather dictates: I'm bringing an E.B. White biography that I picked up at a used bookstore in Bath last summer. White & his wife, Katherine, (and, often, one of their dachshunds, which White wrote lovingly and hilariously of) spent many years living in a farm house in Brooklin, Maine and I can't help but enjoy the idea of beginning his biography with such geographical tidiness. Looking forward to a little reading & relaxation (with my own comedic hound) up north... the way life should be.


'If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.'

- E.B. White

Love is awkward...

Have you already seen this film, Eagle vs. Shark? It's not new at all... I think that it came out in 2007... it stars Jemaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords and was distributed by Miramax, so it got quite a bit of press for a small New Zealand film. But I still missed it the first time around (blame it on graduate school) and only just saw it recently. So sweet. And sort of painful. And human. That has to be worth a watch, right? Plus, it's got a great soundtrack with songs by the Phoenix Foundation, now a new favorite. Justice is waiting...

Clouds in my coffee...

In spite of my focused & clearly-seduced-by-the-marketing-strategies-of-Starbucks desire for a personalized gold card (hard earned by friends like Joe & Kellyn), I typically make my morning coffee at home. Sometimes (okay, most of the time) I'm in a bit of a rush and fill my travel mug as I head out the door, but lately I've been making a little more time for my addiction of choice and I owe it all to the Bodum battery operated milk frother. It's really a ridiculous little gadget and, in theory, I am opposed to having a bunch of little single task appliances taking up space in the kitchen. But the reality is (and I'm admitting it here for the first time) that I have loads of little, single task, but oh-so-useful kitchen tools. Sometimes they are so magical that it is completely worth the space that they consume, and this is one of those times.

Is it quite clear how much I'm enjoying my homemade hybrid latte-mistos? So much easier and less clean up than busting out the cappuccino maker... just a cup with an engineered lid that quickly foams the milk (I like a combo of low-fat with a splash of Boathouse Farms Vanilla Chai Tea for a little sweetness) to nearly double its volume, radically transforming your morning cuppa in a snap!* This is really going to throw a wrench in my Starbucks gold card aspirations...

The Bodum milk frother, in lime green: my new morning ritual.

The whole Bodum Bistro line is pretty fun, with it's scaled-up logo, LEGO-like texture and pop-y colors.*

* I realize that this is all sounding a bit advertisement-esque, but none of these companies pay me a penny to say anything about any of this!

In search of lost summers: Modernist Memories

For me, nothing says 'dreams of summertime' like a beach house. Preferably a simple little house, with large sliding doors that allow for indoor life to become out door life & vice versa... a very precious seasonal opportunity for us in New England!

Obviously and unsurprisingly this is not my own unique dream... the Northeast coast has a long history of seasonal beach towns and nostalgic summer settlements. But the airy, treading-lightly qualities of modernist architecture seem to result in a perfect romance when it meets the coast. Look for these simple retreats from summers past (still full of life in the present) on Long Island, Rhode Island and Cape Cod, where the Cape Cod Modern House Trust works to document and preserve the houses and their history.*

These beach house dreams have really got me in a
summer-state-of-mind...
Here's to a season of sun-filled days, sandy feet & salty sea air.

Happy Memorial Day!

*For more on Cape Cod modernist summers past & how they've survived into the present: a recent article on the Wellfleet Colony from the New York Times Magazine.

Hatch Cottage
Wellfleet Massachusetts, 1960

(Maybe a precedent for Steven Holl's Whale House on Martha's Vineyard?)

Images at top & bottom are from the book Weekend Utopia,
a dreamy ode to mid-century modern summer life in the Hamptons.

Listen Up!

I've been listening to the new Danger Mouse album, 'ROME', all afternoon (while CAD-ing interior elevations) and I'm still not sick of it. It's an edgy shout-out to the Sergio Leone soundtracks of yesteryear. For full atmospheric impact, I really think that it's best to do something that I so rarely do these days: sit and listen to the whole album in one go. And thanks to NPR's First Listen, you can! Don't be surprised if it leads to visions of imaginary Spaghetti Westerns in your mind.

Almond Cookies with Chocolate Sea Salt Ganache

Delicate & rich cookie sandwiches*

It's finally spring here in Boston after a very, very long New England winter. You'd think that I'd be switching up the comfort food & baking for lighter, healthier fare but, despite what it says on the calendar, we have been socked in by grey fog and rain for the better part of the past few weeks. The prolonged winter/delayed spring has kept me in baking mode, which is actually sort of fine by me because I still have so many recipes from Joanne Chang's beautiful flour bakery cookbook to test and taste. A couple of my favorites already are the beloved home made oreos (page 134 in the flour cookbook) and the so, so easy brown butter rice crispy treats, worth making if only to prove for yourself that brown butter is a bit of magic!

For a friend's baby shower a couple of weekends ago, I wanted to make something a bit more girl-y & refined and the Almond Macaroons with Bittersweet Chocolate Ganache (a combination of my favorite flavors!) seemed like just the thing. I have to say up front that my results didn't seem quite as 'macaroon-y' as I had hoped: the cookie was more like a thin almond crisp. Still delicious, but different, and the reason why I've renamed the recipe in this post. The only real adaptation that I made was too add sea salt to the ganache simply because I had sea salt on hand and I love the chocolate-sea salt flavor combination. In the end, these cookies were pretty delicious and much easier to make than I would have guessed when first perusing the recipe. So, don't be intimidated by the words 'ganache' or 'macaroon'... bake up a batch and let me know what you think!


ALMOND COOKIES

3 1/4 cups (520 grams) blanched almonds**
2 2/3 cups (540 grams) sugar
6 egg whites***
2 teaspoons almond extract
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

CHOCOLATE GANACHE

8 ounces (228 grams) bittersweet chocolate (about 70% cacao), chopped
1 cup heavy cream
2 teaspoons sea salt (or more, to taste)


Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or Silpat liners.

In a food processor, pulse the almonds until ground to a fine powder. Stop grinding once they are powdery but before they start to clump together and become more of a paste. Remove about 1 cup of the ground almonds from the food processor and set aside. Add the sugar to the almonds left in the food processor and process for 10 to 15 seconds, or until the sugar is completely incorporated. Add the egg whites and continue processing for about 30 seconds or until well combined.

Transfer the almond paste to a medium bowl, and fold in the reserved ground almonds. Fold in the almond extract and salt.

Use a small spoon to make walnut-sized rounds of batter to the baking sheet. It's a bit tricky to get such small rounds, but it's important to keep them small and spread out (about 2 inches apart), because the batter flattens and spreads quickly!

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes (keep an eye on them... timing can really vary!) until the cookies are a light golden brown around the edges. Let cool completely on the baking sheet. They are very sugary, and it is much easier to transfer them from the pan to the rack if they are cooled.


For the ganache:
While the cookies are cooling, place the chocolate in a medium heat-proof bowl. In a small saucepan, scald (bubbling around the edges, but not boiling) the cream over medium-high heat
and pour over the chocolate. Let sit for 30 seconds, then slowly whisk the chocolate and cream together until it is completely mixed and the mixture is smooth. At this point, I stirred in about 2 teaspoons of seasalt. It's important to taste test, as sea salt intensity can really vary! Let cool at room temperature or in the refrigerator for at least an hour... the ganache should be thick and spreadable. The ganache can be made ahead of time and stored in the fridge for up to two weeks (and probably would be delicious melted over ice-cream!).

Remove the cookies from the rack. Spread about 1 tablespoon of the ganache on the flat side of one cookie. Top with a second cookie, flat side down, to make a cookie sandwich. You should have over 20 cookie sandwiches, total.

The cookies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.

Enjoy!


* The grey weather is not helping to get an appetizing image of these cookies... trust me: they taste better than they look!
** I didn't have enough blanched almonds, but I did have raw and so I googled methods to blanch my own: easier than I would have imagined!
***You can use the left over egg yolks to make ice-cream to serve with the delicious little cookies!

On the bookshelf...

Though my post-grad school reading pace is not exactly what I would like it to be, I live with quite a lot of books and, occasionally, I actually read them! I also like to know what others are reading and what you've loved & devoured or couldn't put down or couldn't get through and what you've thought about what you've actually made time to read. So I've added an 'On the bookshelf...' column just over there to the right, with a list of what I've been reading and links that are somewhat related to those books. What's on your bookshelf these days?


The library above is from the blog Bookshelf Porn, a great site if you're someone who loves to live surrounded by books.

Dame Liz

Goodbye to one of the last grande dames. Her appeal, beyond the obvious beauty & glamor? A tenacity like you just don't see anymore and a tendency to dive head first into the messy passion of it all... "You might as well live" was one of her favorite sayings. And live she did: a life of big loves, big roles & big rocks.

Words, to live by...

Some friends and I recently had a conversation about writing, the internet and, more specifically, thoughtful content. With all of the blogs and online news outlets that we're reading daily we have found ourselves craving carefully edited writing that isn't just sent out into the world willy-nilly to be quickly digested, words that are thoroughly considered and, occasionally, painstakingly chosen. As wonderful as the all-info-all-the-time world wide web is, it can tend to be short on the well-chosen word. To balance all of that free flowing information out, I've felt a gravitational pull toward poetry. It began, innocently enough, by listening to Garrison Keillor's daily podcast The Writer's Almanac, a lovely full five minutes a day to consider a writer's life and to listen to Keillor read a single poem. But wait, there's more...

If you're feeling a similar pull toward a bit of old-school word play, turns out there's an app for that. The Poetry Foundation has it's own iPhone app that is a perfect marriage of technology and text. You can select a hybrid of subjects manually or via a roulette wheel-like spin, bringing together such classic combos as passion & love or the less expected optimism & aging. And so, after scanning through an endless stream of new posts and status updates and tweets, via the very same gadget, you can enjoy a few quiet moments of good, old-fashioned written words. Ain't modern life grand?

Happy Valentine's Day ♡

Happy New Year

Joanne Woodward & Paul Newman share a New Year's eve kiss.