Month: January 2012

Broke-Ass Emily Post

“When Mrs. Worldly gives a dinner… She  looks through her “dinner list” and orders her secretary to invite the Oldworlds, the Eminents, the Learneds, the Wellborns, the Highbrows, and the Onceweres” –Emily Post in Etiquette

Hmmm. I don’t know about this, Madame Emily. This begs a question of the leisure class: what about the charming Uninsureds, the young Mr and Miss Starving, and that sweet French/Indian/Jewish couple les Petit-Brokes? If they get the invite what are they to do?I ask this question in light of a recent slew of what I’ll call simply: The $100 Dinner. Since the dawn of the new year alone Sweetheart and I have gotten the invite to go to three such marvelous sounding dinners, each one at the kind of shiny dinner places where, as taxidermy is my witness, there is certain to be a $36 steak frite on the menu and a $15 rye cocktail named after Dutch Schultz, as well as some sort of great sounding $12 small plate that Sweetheart and I would be more than happy to share. We are invited to celebrate a birthday, a reunion, a friend in town… and so, because we love, we go. We split our small plate brussels sprout lardon jammer, have two glasses of wine, and the bill comes while you’re in the bathroom and it’s broken down… $100. Per person. What the What? Emily Post, despite passing her prime dinner throwing years during the great depression, must have been rich. Otherwise how could she afford so many correct napkins and forks? How could she have left us so bereft of guidance at a time when it’s totally ok for the Wellborns and the Highbrows to blow $100 each on a single meal, but some of us would really rather buy a bridesmaids dress with that money (HAHA JUST KIDDING! We’d rather pay for our HEALTHCARE with that money… or rather, we’d rather pay for 1/6 of our healthcare for one month with that money! Ha ha. ha. [sound of sobbing]).But- I digress. I’m loathe to write any of this down for the same reason I’m loathe to snatch the check up from the table and break out my abacus the moment it arrives. I feel like I sound like a jerk. A petulant, broke jerk. Even though my fellow Americans are supposedly in such an economic slump that double dipping will never again sound like something awesome to do with chips, that doesn’t stop some people from looking at you aghast when you talk about healthcare, ask for a doggy bag, or try to suggest itemizing the bill. No one wants to think about how broke anyone else is. Especially not the broke-asses in question. Sigh. So. Maybe we don’t need you, Miss Post, maybe we need a new you, a Miss Broke-Ass Emily Post for the modern era to tell us what a girl’s to do?

Any guidance, dear readers?

I’m going tonight to my fourth potential $100 dinner tonight, bidding my dear yogi Sara adieu as she departs for India to polish her sanskrit and eat coconuts, and I’m going to try out a few diversionary recessionary tactics. I’ll let you know how it works out.

 

Emily Post quote and image from here.

The Brooklyn Endorsement: Fairway Lobster Roll

One of my New Years Resolutions was to eat more lobster rolls. I like to make realistic goals. To this point, I must give my ringing endorsement of the stellar roll from Fairway Market. It’s no secret that I love Fairway, in part due to their generous burlap sack policy, but the Fairway cafe- tucked in the very back corner of the Red Hook compound, seems like my little secret. It feels especially very special on lone weekday afternoons when it’s all but deserted. The Fairway lobster roll is served on a warm griddled bun, with chips, pickle, and slaw- all for $9. It’s big enough to share (or not) And you get to eat it looking at this:

Happy Weekend, Happy Chinese New Year!

This week marks Chinese Lunar New Year, officially kicking off the year of the dragon! This year there are two parades in Manhattan’s Chinatown, one happened this past Monday, January 23rd DRAGONYEAR, and the second is coming up this Sunday the 29th. On Monday we started the celebration by getting down to Mott street early enough to stake our claim to a prime dim sum and dragon-dance-watching spot, eating pork buns, chicken feet, and delightful garlicky greens while the clatter of drums and the din of cymbals made sure that any evil omens and bad spirits lurking around got the hell out of there. The dragons dance up and down the streets, coming into open businesses to collect money to ensure luck and well-being. This one was wearing a shower cap because it was drizzling and, I guess, like me, dragons are sensitive to humidity ruining their hair. I think he looks pretty great.This paper represents what we ordered over three hours for lunch. Somewhere in those hieroglyphics are the aforementioned pork buns and chicken feet, shrimp dumplings, pork dumplings, vegetable dumplings, scallion dumplings, doughnut noodles (!), spicy squid, Chinese broccoli, garlicky bok choi, bean curd wraps, chili oil, Chinese winter sausage, fried shrimp with bacon, fish balls, sweet custards, sticky rice in lotus leaves, multiple coke classics, and eleven pots of tea- all ordered in Aunt Sheila’s perfectly wonderful Upper-East-by-way-of-Bensonhurst accented cantonese. She’ll tell you “I don’t speak cantonese, I only speak Dim Sum”. Repeat after me: Josh-eeuw-Baow (BBQ pork bun). That’s all you need to know.
And, of course, it was only $15 per person for the feast.Join in the festivities for yourselves this coming Sunday, January 29th, here’s the info:

13th Annual Chinatown Lunar New Year Parade & Festival
11:30 a.m. – 4 pm, Sunday, January 29, 2012
Place: Canal Street South

The parade usually winds throughout Chinatown along Mott, Canal, and Bayard streets, and along East Broadway. Gung hay fat choy!

Divine Lemony Roasted Broccoli

Broccoli gets a bad rap. Relegated to rubbery-ranch dressing ignominy on crudite plates or as the lesser half of Beef’n’ at bad chinese restaurants, humble broccoli doesn’t often get the cruciferous credit it deserves. Mama sent me this recipe, and holy wow- it is delicious! It came out like broccoli candy- and you use the whole head of the broccoli, even the stems. Which, in these recessionary times, is pretty great.

Lemony Roasted Broccoli
Serves 2-4 as a side

Ingredients
* 1 large bunch of broccoli, cleaned, trimmed and cut into florets and chunks of a similar size
* Zest of two lemons (get organic since you’ll be using the skin) and the juice of one of them
* 3-4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
* 3-4 Tbsps olive oil for roasting
* Sea salt
* Freshly ground black pepper

Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Place the broccoli florets on a heavy baking sheet large enough to hold them in a single layer.
2. Toss the garlic with half the lemon zest, all of the garlic, sea salt, pepper, and the olive oil. Roast for 20 to 25 minutes, flipping once to ensure even roasting, until the pieces are crisp-tender and browned at the tips.
3. Remove the broccoli from the oven and toss with other half of the lemon zest and the juice from one lemon. Serve hot.

 

Perfect for V-to-the-egetarians.

Ah-mazing! Recipe and image from here.

Hall and Oates Emergency Hotline

It’s happened to me too many times to count: riding with the windows down, wind in my hair… no Hall and Oates to be found on any radio station. I can’t go for that, no, no can do. In this bright age of new discoveries there’s a fix for similar Hall and Oates based emergencies, and I’ve found it. If you insist on knowing my bliss, I’ll tell you this: 24 hours a day, just dial 719-266-2837 (1-719-26-OATES), follow the instructions, and get your fix. Serious.

 

bizarrely mesmerizing Hall and Oates image from here.

In Defense of Fritos

I once was of the opinion that the simple Frito, an incredibly delicious and copiously fatty corn chip that has starred equally in the boat-ride-adventures of my youth and the roadside-frito-pie-exploits of my recent adulthood, was the devil’s handiwork. Something so delicious must be wrought of the nasties: acesulfame-k, monosodium glucanazoleium, or- at least- yellow 5.

Until today. Today I learned that the humble Frito has but three ingredients: Whole Corn, Corn Oil, and Salt. Heavens to betsy! It’s practically as natural as a home-made tortilla on the open range! Praise the lord and pass the sour cream.

You’re welcome.

frito image from here.

Mondays at Mona’s

When Banjo Jim’s closed down (teardrops in my ears as I lay on my back crying over you, Banjo Jim’s), I thought two things: a) I left the East Village right on time and b) there will never be another place where a girl could go see some great live music for free in an impossibly tiny room festooned with Christmas lights where the bartender does the sound, there’s a honky-tonk piano in the corner, the beers are $3, and the regulars with their chambray suits and silver pony tails will share their cheez-its. Never again, I thought. Well, thank goodness and bless my mess, I was wrong. A mere five blocks from the old Banjo Jim’s site is Mona’s- a marvelous hole in the wall that every Monday hosts a great bluegrass jam. A fabulous band of bearded consorts weave in and around an updated Roosevelt microphone, everyone trading fours and singing high lonesome in the way that’s just loose enough to be great. The best part? Anyone can gather round to play, if you think you have the chops, bring your instrument. And if not, it’s totally acceptable to croon whiskily from your bar seat. Perfection. Oh, and they have skee ball.

Mona’s
Every Monday starting at 9 and going til late
224 Avenue B
(between 13th St & 14th St)

Fight the Fierce Melancholy

Sometimes it’s the thick of long cold January and it just starts to set in without you even realizing it. Meags pulls the words out of Holly Golightly and names it the “mean reds”, and it just seems like your bones feel cold and heavy and your face hurts from the wind and from being in the same expression for too long and you are desirous of everything and nothing all at the same time and you have nothing to offer anybody except your own confusion and, and, and…. The Fierce Melancholy.

Then I went to a dinner this week where the table looked like this. There was a roasted bird and a chestnut soup and there was a lot (a.lot.) of wine and more laughter and music and some people were wearing tinfoil crowns and paper moustaches and we were high above the city with all of its glory spread out like a hot breakfast below us.And there it was: the best way to fight the fierce melancholy. Go to the music, bring wine to the dinner, stay home and make tortillas, soup, anything, be gentle to yourself, put your head in a lap, have the small adventure, let that be enough, or not, see how beautiful the paper flowers are, notice that you are breathing, be quiet, say yes, valhalla, call when you can, and just keep on keeping on all day every day and bring everyone who can handle you along with you forever. Because, bless them. So much love to everyone who has held our hearts this week and all weeks.

 

Thanks to Anna Davis for the beautiful photos, even though she doesn’t know it.

Home Sweeter Home: Part 3 and 4 AFTER!

Alright, dear readers, lest ye forget where we left off, the plan was to re-decorate the bedroom in our sweet little brownstone to create a space that belongs to Sweetheart and I equally, a space that is uncluttered, calming, functional, unified, and interesting. A good place to sleep, but also a lovely place to be. A place that is as bright as possible during the daytime while also being private at night… on the extreme cheap. Whew. Looking around the room (and spending a fair portion of wine-soaked cocktail hours during our recent vacation discussing nothing but this particular undertaking with Mama) I could break down the necessary changes into this list:

1) A window treatment solution that a) lets in as much light as possible while still maintaining privacy at night and b) addresses the many sins of the odd shaped and uneven windows that make that whole wall look choppy and disjointed.
2) A headboard for the bed that sets it apart as a separate entity in the room, encroaching windows be damned.
3) Cover up the shoe-shrine.
4) Edit everything else down to things of heart, beauty, and import.

Soooo… here are the results!

Mama made the curtains to cover the shoe shrine out of a flat sheet from Wal Mart (and also surprised us with a bunch crazy soft and lovely new bedding for Christmas/Hannukah), including the awesome pillow shams that she made and the little bolster that really ties the room together. Mama=Awesome.

For the window treatments, I used the divine Jenny’s amazing pelmet box tutorial, which may be the most inspiring DIY thing I’ve ever seen (it inspired tons of other people too… check out Jenny’s post on reader submitted pelmets here).

The pelmet boxes are deep enough to hide the unsightly privacy shades I installed while still leaving most of the window open to the light. Just what I needed! I also figured that if I had my pelmet boxes go all the way up to the ceiling, and by stretching them across both windows, they’d cover up the gap between the one window and the ceiling, mask the fact that one window is several inches wider than the other, and would create a unified visual line encompassing the bed area (and, hope against hope, make the room look larger??) on an otherwise choppy and weird wall.

Jenny’s tutorial calls for the sort of foam board that you would make a science fair project out of, but I couldn’t find any of that in my neighborhood (what is WITH that, New York?), so when I went to get the plywood for the headboard cut I had the epiphany to look in the insulation section of the Home Depot. I found this pack of Poly Panel foam boards designed to fit in between 2×4’s, each one 14″ by 5′ feet. Since I wanted the pelmet boxes to go flush to the ceiling to mask the window’s unevenness, 14″ was the exact right height. And since the pattern on the (crazy) fabric I chose, Iman’s Punjabi Peacock (which we got at Mood for way cheaper than on Calico Corners) repeated directionally (ie: the feathers face a certain way on the fabric, and that way is across the fabric, 60″ selvage to selvage, instead of longways) I’d need to make three short boxes instead of one long one anyway, so this weird foam insulation pack ($6 for a pack of 6) was the exact right thing.

For the headboard, I chose a really dark blue velvet, which pulled in the same blue that was in the center of the Punjabi Peacock fabric.I rounded off the corners of a pre-cut piece of plywood (thanks again, Home Depot), using a bowl for an outline, a small hand saw and a few beers (not recommended if you can afford power tools), and then wrapped the thing in velvet, batting, a cut up foam mattress pad and staple gunned the whole shebang. It was surprisingly easy and utterly satisfying.I love velvet, and really wanted to try Jenny’s post on tufting, but the amount of velvet that would require was, alas, not in the budget. I also didn’t want it to be too girly, for Sweetheart’s sake, so I ended up going with almost the very simplest silhouette possible.Another late-breaking epiphany occurred shortly after finishing the headboard. Sweetheart and I were out at the amazing Fairway grocery store in Red Hook and the awesome dudes who stock the coffee department happened to be re-stocking the coffee barrels from huge burlap sacks full of coffee. I asked them what they were planning on doing with the sacks when they were done, and they guy said “Giving them to you, if you want them!”. Things like this make me want to kiss New York on the mouth. So, after a giddy trip back home, I opened up the coffee sack with a seam ripper, ironed it, and tacked it up on the wall between the headboard and the pelmet boxes. Unlike a more expensive/labor intensive/semi-permanent wallpaper or paint solution that would cover the entire disjointed wall floor to ceiling, the burlap panel only covers about 5 square feet over that one section of the wall, but because the room is so chopped up (and the pelmet boxes and windows trick your eye to go there) just that small change makes the room look much, much warmer with no money and a few tacks. The antlers? We’re trying them out. So far I think we like them.

Fairway Coffee image from here.

Home Sweeter Home: Parts 3 and 4, Before

After Mama and I tackled DAS NORDEN and made my kitchen ship-shape, and after we un-antiqued the gnarly old secretary to turn it into a sweet desk fit for inspirational working, I turned my eye upon the bedroom Sauron-like. Wow. Looks sad. Not at all the kind of calm, adult space that feels like a respite from the madding crowd. Instead, it’s guilty of that kind of spatial inertia that grips a space after you move into an apartment and then… it just never changes. This was all compounded by the fact that I lived here for a year solo before Sweetheart moved in, so not only is the bedroom sort of tired, it’s also been sort of cobbled together out of necessity. The mandate: create a space that belongs to Sweetheart and I equally that is uncluttered, calming, functional, unified, and interesting. A good place to sleep, but also a lovely place to be. A place that is as bright as possible during the daytime while also being private at night… on the extreme cheap. That’s a tall order. The Bedroom, like the rest of the apartment, has a bizarre list of issues and perks all sort of stemming from the layout (I used this cool tool to make this little mockup on Apartment therapy): The major layout issues are: the decorative fireplace, the placement of the windows and the doors, and the existence of the radiator at all. This room was originally the main kitchen for the rest of the brownstone, so this fireplace is essentially one of those epic kitchen hearths large enough to hold an entire spitted pig. There are marks where the spit used to be. If only we could still use it to roast a whole hog. That sounds like a romantic bedroom activity. Unfortunately, the fireplace is now simply “decorative”, so when I first moved in the obvious function of this weird obsolete fire-hole was as a Carrie-Bradshaw-style shoe shrine, which was great. Over the past few years, though, I’ve acquired a) many, many more shoes and b) Sweetheart (and all of his shoes), so it’s gone from glorious to sort of gross.

It also means that the layout of this wall is sort of fixed/the only logical place for dressers/clothing storage are via two tall dressers on either side. And that means that the bed has nowhere to go but between the windows.This picture, as funky as it is, isn’t even the “before” at its worst as I already took down a set of too-long embroidered turquoise curtains (and have just installed custom cut blackout/privacy shades into the windows- notice the drill on the bed, not usually where I keep it) and swapped out the awful Ikea dresser Sweetheart got stuck with when he moved in for a dark wood piece with nice bones FREE from craigslist (pictured already above with Edison Radio). You can also see that the windows a) aren’t the same width b) one is flush with the ceiling and the other is 3″ below the ceiling c) they don’t match- one has old mullions and the other is “new”.

So. What can we do with this space? The windows are crazy, there are shoes everywhere, we can’t paint it, the bed backs up on the windows, it’s dark as a dungeon, and there’s only one plug. Even the pillows look unhappy to be there. What’s a girl to do? We’ll get to that tomorrow… but in the meantime, here’s a hint: