James Beard: Beard On Bread
The unassuming, tried-and-true, still I rise, sweet little compendium of breads and how to bake them book.
Laurie Colwin: Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen
I first read the late Laurie Colwin's writings more than 10 years ago, when I was in my early twenties and having frequent mishaps with my forays into the domestic arts. Her comforting, encouraging, homespun sophistication is the culinary equivalent of Anne Lamott's writings on writing.
Elisabeth Prueitt: Tartine
There is nothing like being on line at Tartine in the morning, bleary eyed and defenseless before coffee, watching the bakers slot fresh trays of morning buns and pain au chocolate into the pastry case. How can the world not be yours with such a beginning to the day? If I could leap back into line via the book's lovely and inviting pages, I would!
Max Mccalman: Cheese: A Connoisseur's Guide to the World's Best
Miranda July: No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories
See June 6 post. I loved her film "Me and You and Everyone We Know," and can't wait to start reading these stories. Some would say she has a childlike sense of curiosity. I would say that unlike most adults, she seems to always start from a place of tabula rasa, and therefore how she captures relationships and moments always begins with that same lack of assumption that enables us to see things differently, too.
Matt Lee and Ted Lee: The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook
I first became enamored with the Lee brothers while living in San Francisco, after ordering their sweet little hand-stitched Southern foods catalogue for $1 from their web site, www.boiledpeanuts.com. They've come into their quirky own in a lovely way, and now chronicle Southern (and other) foodways for the likes of The New York Times and Travel & Leisure.
Seth Godin: All Marketers Are Liars
Godin wrote an essay called "Stories that Shake the World" for Ode magazine that gave me the push I needed to leave my nine to five. His basic thesis is that marketing is a powerful tool for change, and the way to achieve it is through authentic stories that move people to action.
The Proust Questionnaire
This is an inspiring resource for anyone needing a creative way to think about building an authentic brand.
David Kamp: The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation
I particularly heart this book for how it reminds of Julia Child and James Beard as lovely examples of square peg late bloomers who fashioned careers in food when it was anything but fashionable.
Did you know that you can create your own word cloud from words on your blog or website? You can even change the layout, font, and color of your Wordle. It's kind of like the new pet rock. Above is Kitchen''s Wordle from Wordle.net
Nice piece on John Updike in The New York Times this weekend. I found this passage particularly poignant, and by that I do not mean quaint, at this moment in time:
"Every now and then, if something in a magazine caught Mr. Updike’s eye, he would send the author a little fan note, often typed on a postcard with his name and address hand-stamped in blue ink. He also had a stamp he used to address all his correspondence to Alfred A. Knopf, his publisher. There was something endearingly quaint about these little inky imprints — a legacy perhaps of a Depression boyhood and a lifetime habit of efficiency — but they also reflected his enduring fascination with the magic of print."
-From "John Updike's Mighty Pen," by Charles McGrath
This was one of the more alarming climate change stories in recent months. What a difference a degree can make. In a study published in the journal Science, researchers pointed to a global temperature increase of just one degree as the cause for a doubled rate of death among mature trees in the Western U.S. So, sparser forests means fewer trees to absorb carbon dioxide, and decomposing trees means the carbon locked within them is released into the environment. This doubling up means a spike in greenhouse gases, which perpetuates the rise in global temperatures, which then exacerbates droughts, rising sea levels, extreme weather, and hungry and parched populations (especially in poor and developing countries) fighting each other for diminishing food and water supplies. I was listening to an NPR interview with climate change experts this week and one of them aptly pointed out how slight increases in body temperatures can throw everything dangerously out of whack in the human body. I'm hopeful that a new administration that at the very least respects science will be able to begin the slow process of mitigating some of the damage our excesses have caused. You can see their agenda, which includes reducing greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050, here.
I've been making the same granola for years, from the great cookbook Mark Peel and Nancy Silverton Cook at Home. While the book is out of print, I am posting my slightly adapted version of their recipe here, per my neighbor Jessica's request! The original calls for for dried figs, apricots, golden and black raisins, but I use dried cranberries and dried tart cherries instead, because I think they make granola much more worth getting out of bed on a cold morning. I like having this for breakfast (or, ahem, dinner) with goat's milk yogurt and a swirl of honey. Yum! Here's how to make it:
Great post from Seth Godin on "how to lose" in business. What I love about Godin's way of thinking is that he puts a premium on authentic relationships in evaluating everything marketers do. He takes strategy and tactics down to simply being a generous human being. Building good relationships doesn't begin with what you stand to gain, but too often in our post-Facebook and LinkedIn world, it seems many people forget even the basic social niceties that build goodwill. If someone adds me as a "friend" on Facebook with nary a note of greeting, then immediately begins plastering my inbox with invitations to their events, I'll just say it doesn't make me feel very friendly. The other day, I went to Publix to get a few things I usually get at Whole Foods. I love Whole Foods, and shop there probably 90 percent of the time. But like a lot of people, I am being more regimented than usual with my budget, and I have a hard time exercising restraint at Whole Foods. Who doesn't? So I was at the "regular" grocery store expecting a diminished experience, Cashmiracle rather than cashmere. I needed lemons for a pear crisp, and when I couldn't find them (o.k., it was a particularly scattered Wednesday), I asked the man working in the produce section where they were. He told me, and then he walked me across the section to where they were. And, get this: he was friendly, as if it actually mattered to him that I found the lemons. It was a small thing, but here I am writing about it, because his helpfulness changed my day. I'm not sure if they were out of lemons if he would have sent me to Whole Foods, but his small gesture changed how I feel about Publix, and the marketers didn't have to engineer a thing.
There'd be days like this. Congrats to my clients Lynn and Iris of Mama Says for a great write-up in Daily Candy today.
Interesting news day. Apparently, McDonald's sales are up 11% as consumers are spending less on eating out, while the Victory Garden planted by Slow Food in San Francisco's Civic Center for the Slow Food Nation sustainable foodstravaganza is being guarded round the clock (at a cost of thousands of dollars each week) to prevent the homeless from encroaching on it.
Check out this week's guest blog I just posted on BeeBlog. Some great words and ideas on business from Clif Bar co-CEOs Gary Erickson and Kit Crawford in their recent interview with Grist.
Under the category of shameless self-aggrandizement (actually I do just like to share), I'm linking to a couple of my recent guest blogs over at Beehive Co-op's blog. I'll be writing there on a regular basis and am honored to be in the company of such whip smart, thoroughly talented women entrepreneurs. First, an interview with Natalie Chanin, the incredible designer (pictured above) who celebrates community and craft via her Alabama Chanin clothing and home decor line. Next, some thoughts I've been noodling during this (sorry to be the gazillionth person to utter the phrase) economic downturn on why buy local, anyway?
I am belated in getting pics up from Slow Food Nation, which was slow, but good for the most part. What is not to love about lolling on the green grass in front of San Francisco's City Hall whilst eating organic ice cream sandwiches and cogitating the meaning of life? Or, more accurately, the provenance of the next snack. Does it make it better that I see the Bonfire of the Vanities overtones here? I hope the fact that I still like going to the laundromat redeems me.
I picked up one of Karen Meyers' fabulous cabled sweater bags (made from vintage or thrifted sweaters) last fall at Beehive and then ended up working with her to develop these press kits, which I think are rather pretty in their homespun simplicity. I am all for new media (clearly, given the platform I am using here), but to channel Marty Neumeier's example, I rather fancy the zag of the tangible, the tactile, the construction paper heart unabashedly pinned to the sleeve.
Yesterday was, in the immortal words of Ice Cube, a good day.
First, I had my bathroom painted. This was a leap for me because I am actually a good painter. It's one of those activities calling for precision that seem to suit my, ahem, somewhat "structured" personality. But honestly, in recent months I barely have time to feed myself, let alone perform home renovations that require more from me than picking out new throw pillows for the sofa (which also hasn't taken place yet. Hello, has anyone looked at the price tag of one quality throw pillow, let alone five? Which of course is what I've deemed the perfect number to make my sofa a vision of aesthetic correctness).
Second, I got my Slow Food Nation tickets. Everyone cool and interesting, known and unknown, in the sustainable agriculture and artisanal food world will be converging on San Francisco at Alice Waters' behest over Labor Day weekend next month for a four-day celebration of local, sustainable, good, clean and fair at Fort Mason and the Civic Center. Reviewing the lineup of workshops and dinners alone makes me feel sated. It is looking like a really extraordinary event and I am grateful I'll get to experience it.
Third, I went to another fabulous event at Beehive Co-op last night. Beehive was one of my first clients when I went out on my own and its mission (to nurture emerging independent designers) and its people are near and dear to my heart. Beehive is unusual for Atlanta in that it stocks clothing, jewelry, and home accessories that are often handmade and one-of-a-kind, but the design aesthetic is sophisticated and everything is beautifully crafted by professional designers. I have picked up so many gorgeous, unique pieces there over the years that mean more because often you get to meet the designer who made your handbag or ring.
Last night, Beehive hosted Kelleigh Bannen, another of my clients who has just released a stunning debut album, "Radio Skies." Kelleigh is only 27 but her talent belies her years. She came down to Atlanta do a special in-store live performance from the album, and the event was also a benefit for The Butler Center for Research at Hazelden. As if being an immensely talented singer-songwriter weren't enough, Kelleigh is also an accomplished jewelry designer and sells her designs at Beehive, including the "Clean" necklace she was selling at the event last night. The necklace was designed in tribute to her brother Grant, who lost his battle with substance abuse earlier this year.
Her performance was stellar (you know when you see a new band and you know you are going to be able to say you saw them when?) and a good crowd turned out to see her play and to shop the event. So much fun! I also met Amy Leff, who recently brought her Throwing Stars jewelry line to Beehive. I had to have her adorable Peace & Love bangle duo, but she has many lovely and simple pieces on display at the store. Because apparently the paint fumes from my freshly re-hued bathroom had messed with my brain's ability to practice self-control, I also just had to have one of Dawn Ramu's impeccably constructed and ever-so-feminine tops.
I don't normally indulge in two such purchases on one night, and blanch at the superficial PR chick stereotype this may conjure up in my 12 readers' minds (anyone who knows me knows what a laugh riot that is). But this shop just does that to me, and quite honestly it is worth eating peanut butter and jelly for a spell. This is what buying local can be. When you meet people who are passionately dedicated to their craft and who make beautiful things with love and care, you just naturally want to support them. It is the kind of personal connection you just don't make at BCBG. And, on a more selfish level, you want these products in your life. It is the same dynamic as going to a farmer's market and buying strawberries that were actually picked that morning and have not sat in cold storage in another state or country for a month. There is not an unlimited supply, and work and care have gone into making something of quality for others to savor.
Great piece by Kim Severson in today's NYT on "lazy locavores."
These sandals by Terra Plana are on officially on my list. I fear red is a cliche (like the stereotypical red flag of a middle aged man in a red convertible), so I am also thinking about them in baby blue, black, and brown. I like to overthink my fashion as much as possible. The cool part is that Terra Plana crafts its footwear from sustainable materials: think non-toxic, recycled, and something they call "e-leather," leather and textile fibers that are re-woven to make less ethically and ecologically taxing footwear. They design and produce according to the life cycle of a product, meaning that they don't stop at considering what a shoe is made with, they think about things like durability and fashioning a production process that conserves water and limits waste and pollution. They make their shoes in China, so if shoe miles are a concern, these are not the strappy sandals for you. But let's be honest, those equations are thorny, at best, for the average consumer to calculate, and if we are basing things purely on human rights issues, Terra Plana states that it is dedicated to ethical business practices across the board, which includes forging good relationships with its designers and vendors in China and working directly with the factories it engages. Those are practices that should be encouraged anywhere in the world, especially in a country that is undergoing such rampant economic development. And besides, until or unless the village cobbler makes a (more fashion forward, read: I don't want my feet to harken back to Ben Franklin's cobblestone clod hoppers) comeback, it is up to would-be ethical consumers to do the, er, legwork on the companies from whom we buy.
"Kathy," I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburg
"Michigan seems like a dream to me now."
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I've come to look for America.
-From "America," by Simon & Garfunkel
Pics from this summer's road trip to Memphis and Clarksdale, Mississippi. Good lord this doesn't even begin to convey how much I ate. I'll be running every day for the rest of the summer and into the fall. And it was so worth it!
Is nothing sacred? I've been meaning to post this article for weeks about White Lily, the iconic Southern flour that is the cult favorite of bakers everywhere (before I lived in the South, I once packed a weighty stash of it home from Chapel Hill to San Francisco), being cruelly uprooted from Knoxville, Tennessee, where it has been milled since 1883. Biscuits, pie crusts, and cakes may never be the same.
When I was growing up in rural Northeastern Washington, very near the north and easternmost reaches of the state near Canada and Idaho, home to Neo Nazis and other groups with interestingly purist ideas, we had gardens. My mother was an early devotee of organics and a great cook. She helped my grandparents tend their large garden in town, and she and my grandmother canned peaches from orchards along the Columbia River and cherries and pears and sweet pickles and dill pickles. It was called "putting food by" (great article in The San Francisco Chronicle on canning today), and people actually ate this food throughout the year. We ate this food throughout the year. It wasn't an ironic gesture.
My mom also had a garden at our house, a two-story turn-of-the-century white frame farmhouse out in the country that she largely restored by herself while her second husband fixed cars around the clock for his livelihood. Which was better because his personality had the overall and ongoing impact of a cluster of cockleburrs under a saddle.
Our garden wasn't as big or as well-oiled of an operation as my grandparents', but every year it yielded perhaps the tartest, most bracingly Dorothy Parker-esque berries ever, gooseberries, as well as strawberries and rhubarb, among other fruits and vegetables. Next to huckleberries (which we would pick on trips to the mountains that felt to me, at that age, interminable and frightening - a bear with cubs could be lurking around every next corner! Two cougars attacked someone just over the hill last month!), rhubarb was my favorite protagonist for baked goods. Unlike the more cloying, please-love-me pie fillings, its sweetness had to be coaxed.
These days, I don't have much time to cook. If I made my mother's recipe for Rhubarb Cake, my self-imposed training regimen might be destroyed in an afternoon, in a half-hour as I devoured half of the buttermilk (in my little petty authoritarian baking world, buttermilk is so often what delivers the swoon worthy) cake by myself, reminded that a life sans fat is not a life worth living. I could make a rhubarb fool or flummery, but that would be equally fraught with peril. I did splurge recently and have the amazing rhubarb crisp made crazily, diet-be-damned, tomorrow-is-another-day good by Cynthia Wong at one of my favorite new restaurants, Cakes & Ale. But for home I like ease and I like to keep caloric temptation in the world without.
So this week instead of poring over show stopping recipes for bavarians and flummeries and trifles within Tartine or Classic Home Desserts, I turned to the red and white checked goodness of the Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook, and made Rhubarb Sauce (which is really more like stewed rhubarb), perfect for swirling into my morning Wallaby yogurt with a few sprinkles of homemade granola on top. Here's all you do:
1/2 to 2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1 strip orange peel (optional - I left it out)
3 cups sliced rhubarb
In a medium saucepan, stir together sugar, water, and, if desired, orange peel. Bring to boiling; stir in rhubarb. Return to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and simmer about 5 minutes or until rhubarb is tender. Remove the orange peel, if using. Serve warm over cake or ice cream. Cover and chill any leftovers for up to 3 days.
