Author: loiseaufait

Little by little the bird feathers its nest, and object by heart burnished object we surround ourselves with lovely necessities of memory and function. It is these things that make a silly Apartment a Home or a silly Wednesday an Occasion. Whether my nest is an old farmhouse, a sixth floor tenement walk up, or a brownstone basement... whether I share it with family, vagabonds, women of heart and mind, or a little brown cat and a sweet ginger banjo, my principal joy is filling it with light and laughter (and corralling).

We Jam

I’m a sucker for good packaging. When I went to the co-op this week, these concord grapes were laid out like a hot breakfast in their own specially designed little cardstock bag, a squatter version of an apple sack, with a long white stitched handle and perfect Manischewitz-y purple font extolling their delicious and organic status. And, they smelled so very grapey, an olfactory punch powerful enough to create lush sense memories on the spot. I bought a bag and carried them home. By the time I got them back to the apartment, the bag was a crumplety mess, and when I liberated them from their 4x6x4 home it was like a grape clown-car. They just kept coming and I realized I had way more grapes on my hands than I could reasonably eat. Sharp-sweet, tannic, and full of seeds, what to do? Obviously, make Grape Jam. I got out my laminated “making jam without added pectin” chart from the very back of my recipe binder, and went to work. Skinning, seeding, boiling, sugaring, boiling, pouring into jars, putting hot hot hot on toast. Sweet, simple, at once fresh and old fashioned, this jam turned out fantastically, and it’s the most glorious rich dark purple color. Oh boy!Quick jams like this are sort of just about the easiest thing you can make. Have a pot? Can you stir? Good. You’ve got what it takes. If you’ve never made jam before, this tutorial is ah-mazing and has great pictures of each step. This kind of lazy-man’s jam plays fast and loose with canning/preserving requirements, so it will only keep for a few weeks in your fridge (add “the space to store a pot large enough for water bath canning” to my “homesickness vs. wanderlust” chart) but with enough crusty bread and one or two friends who should be gifted a sweet little pick-me-up-in-a-jar and you’ll go through it in no time.

Rainy Day in Brooklyn

It’s a rainy chill day in Brooklyn. This and the pending expiration of a big coupon to our favorite restaurant has Sweetheart and I playing hooky for an impromptu movie-lunch-day-date. Brooklyn, we love you, even when you’re damp.

 

rainy brooklyn image from here

Not Write Notes

Right on the heels of yesterday’s inspiring daily regimen from Henry Miller, my dear Maman sent me this to-do list from the man in black, Johnny Cash. I particularly like #2 and #3, and in light of the source, #9.

 

image from here.

Keep Human!

It seems like everyone I know is searching for a way to make sense of how we live within our days. Remember Ben Franklin? The 8 hour day? We’re all looking to balance work and life and love and living and adventure, to find time to do good honest labor without sacrificing life for livelihood. I think that’s why I love this sort of schedule making, list keeping, trying to order genius and justify humanity. I also love how this particular list from Henry Miller is a bit contradictory (go drink if you feel like it/write first and always, write with pleasure only/work according to program and not according to mood). The contradictions sort of get down to the basics of the thing: do the best that you can with what you have. And if only: Work calmly, joyously, recklessly at what is at hand.

And now, off to work.

 

from The (divine) Littlest.

 

Jamestown: Reserved Parking

En route to a dear friend’s wedding, I came down to south early this week in the name of TCB: seeing Miss Ann Marie’s new digs in DC and handling some doctor’s visit nitty gritty (did you know that under the small provisions of Obamacare that have already been enacted my insurance is required to cover my lady-doctor checkups!? Pretty stellar considering how essential these things are. But I digress.). It has been glorious Indian Summer in Virginia, maples just starting to change, the last yellow wildflowers and British Soldiers brimming over well kept yards and highway medians alike, beautyberries shining purple, zero humidity (!), and glorious sunsets. Last night we went out to the original Jamestown landing site for a party. Bluegrass (played by my dad’s band, featuring the head archeologist for the active Jamestown dig on banjo), BBQ, and this view through the magnolias. This 1607 landing spot was the place of the first permanent English settlement in America, where the first vote was cast, the first beads traded, the first oyster eaten. Yesterday it seemed as if they may have picked this location for its beauty, its softness and light. But, then you’ve gotta think they picked this spot essentially because this island is the only place on the James river between the Chesapeake and the impassible fall line at Richmond where they could pull their boats right up to the land, tie their bowlines to the trees, and hop ashore. In essence, and perhaps with the most American impulse of all, they stopped here because it had the best parking. In fact, I think that’s why New York wasn’t settled until 1625, those guys had to keep circling the block looking for a spot.

Working on a Building

Sweetheart and I had the distinct pleasure of going to this benefit concert yesterday. It wasn’t just an afternoon of fabulous music (though the Aoifa O’Donovan-Noam Pikelny-Chris Eldridge-fueled cover of “Don’t let it Bring You Down” really made my day), it felt like the Gowanus equivalent of a barn-raising. Put together by our late-night favorite high-lonesome crooner (and good god-fearing man) Michael Daves, the concert was put on to raise money to replace the coffered plaster ceiling at the Old First Reform Church in Park Slope. The church was founded by our favorite high-lonesome (and good-godfearing-pegleg) Peter Stuyvessant in the 1650’s (around the same time as the Elmendorf Reform Church up in Harlem), and moved around Brooklyn as the congregation grew, landing in its current location in 1891. Loosened over time by the rumbling of the yellow line under its buttresses, the plaster ceiling of the old church started falling, Chicken Little style, just last year:
The whole story- of how the ceiling fell and how it’s being fixed (a little bit at a time) is poetic and human and beautiful. Learn more here, and if you have a few bucks, put ’em in. We’re working on a building.

Basil

In anticipation of the frost, we pulled up all of our flourishing basil and made a huuuuuuge batch of pesto. We’ve now got at least 15 summer-bombs in our freezer to make it through the long winter. I continue to be wowed by the perseverance and successes of our little backyard garden. The last basil plant I kept in the city committed herbicide by jumping out of our 6th floor window and landing, crime scene style, at the bottom of the airshaft. I bet it’s still down there. Are my snack-sized frozen zip-locs a glorious root cellar full of pickles and preserves? Not quite, but, hey, baby steps. Have a wonderful weekend!

Breakfast of Champions

I love New York. Today: on our way to Ping’s in Chinatown for a traditional Dim Sum breakfast to undtraditionally celebrate Rosh Hashanah with Sweetheart’s family. Shanah Tovah, Cha siu bao!