We went and saw Richard III last night at BAM and it was every bit as incredibly, brutally, bloodily, hilariously, terrifyingly relevantly awesome as we could have hoped. Lots of people have said this very same thing but: Kevin Spacey is frightfully wonderful and awefully magnetic, and, 10 things I hate about You not withstanding, like so many productions of Shakespeare, eerie parallels between now and then are as unsettling as watching the Republican primaries. The best part? The show runs through March 4, 2012. Run, don’t walk (with a limp).
Category: Living
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: Part I
After seeing Jenny’s Mom’s sideboard looking so fresh and so clean (almost as an aside in this post about the lovely green wallpaper), I decided to tackle our identical Ikea NORDEN for my first project. I capitalize NORDEN because anytime I say any Ikea name I say it loud and in a bad/deep Swedish accent. Here is the naked NORDEN:
First, let me tell you a few things about our apartment. It is the whole bottom (read: basement) floor of a classic Brooklyn Brownstone. The kitchen is HUGE by New York standards (110 sqare feet) and our landlords re-did it a few years ago, choosing the marble-and-cherry wood finish and stainless steel appliances that were so very popular at that time. All the nitty gritty kitchen functiony things about it are pretty great (storage, counter space, big sink, dishwasher [!!!!!], large gas range with griddle etc.) and we cook in it ALL the time. But… it will never look like this:
It will never look like this for a few reasons: a) I am not Julia Child (sigh) b) our kitchen has no windows, it is, in fact, in the very middle of our apartment which is in the very bottomest darkest basement and c) there are no plugs in the kitchen into which to plug such a thing as a standing mixer and/or a lamp so- no-knead bread and overhead lighting it is. But I digress. Since I couldn’t just up and move to France, it was time to paint my NORDEN. For that I needed my Mama. We had ingeniously scheduled for her to come and visit at the exact time when the need to revamp was reaching a critical fever. With her help and guidance, we had two major projects lined up, first take care of das Norden and second, to paint the old secretary that I use for my desk (spoiler: you will be seeing some pictures of this very soon).
We went together to pick out paint and decided on these two colors. Martha Stewart Oolong Tea- a sandy celadon we hoped would read less yellow- for the NORDEN, and Gabardine- a blue-green-grey color equal parts “stormy sea” and “I think the man in this suit is a spy”- for the secretary. Even after many inspiration based e-mails on the subject and lots of in-person discussion spent contrasting the colors of my pots and pans, we still probably talked about it for, like, an hour at the Home Depot on Nostrand Avenue next to the Sugar Hill club. We got our paints mixed, bought a few tools and a fair amount of wine and got to work sanding and priming. We had help the whole time:
After our first round of sanding and priming, we had to leave the NORDEN in the middle of the kitchen overnight, so we ordered takeout and started in on the wine. About a bottle into it we looked at each other and said: We’ve got the colors backwards! NORDEN must be GABARDINE not OOLONG! In vino veritas. The next morning we started in on the gabardine, and spent most of the day on the floor. We had a very good time down there:
When all was said and done, we loved it. We kept looking at it and saying “It looks more blue than green!”, then “it looks more green than blue”:
Do I wish my kitchen were different? Yes. Do I wish it was brighter, airier, and not lit by four recessed floods? Yes. But, honestly, I can’t realistically change those things, so instead of maintaining some sort of bitter renters inertia, the simple act of just painting the NORDEN made our kitchen feel absolutely marvelous. Now the cast iron wok and the red dutch oven are friends, the fruits and strange amaros are close at hand, and we feel a bit more human.
More ever-loving thanks to Mama, who- as we’ve already established– never does anything half assed.
Julia Child’s marvelous kitchen from here.
Forteana
Today on Design Sponge, a little nugget about printmaker Michelle Butler described her prints as being influenced by “folk traditions, dark tales, mid-century design and Forteana”. Hmmm. As someone who loves words, who loves bizarre pockets of arcana, and who loves folk traditions, dark tales and mid-century design, I couldn’t help but wonder wha wha what is Forteana and why don’t I know about it?
Oh, the power of the internet. The multitude of sites based on Forteana tell me that it is a pseudo scientific collection of knowledge based on the writings of an American named Charles Hoy Fort, a man obsessed with inexplicable phenomena and human weirdnesses such as bio-luminescence, exploding animals, biblical miracles, Atlantis, levitation, mysteries of ancient civilizations, strange clockworks, alchemical formulas, trances, crystals and runes, dreamwine, trepanning, fortunes and portents, harbingers and lunar eclipses, satyrs, fawns, and dog-faced-boys, specters, ghosts, subtle knives, mermaids, and magic. Holy Moly.
Forteana=way up my alley.
As someone who suckled first on the Disney mysticism of leprechauns and banshees of Darby O’Gill and the Little People, the feline reincarnation of Thomasina, and the substitutionary locomotion and general marvelous magic of Bedknobs and Broomsticks, then went on to be weaned on Hogarth, The Royal Academy, Blake and Milton, The National Enquirer and Jonathan Strange I don’t know how I missed Forteana but… isn’t it marvelous when you learn something new?
Here’s to the simple things for the coming year
HiHat’s father Jake infamously once said “I think everyone should do what they want all the time” at their family dinner table (and then got up to watch football). On New Years eve, as we presided over the beautiful kitchen full of wine and recipes, as the boys played music, and as Janelle shucked oysters, I had a conversation with dear Sara (who is my personal guru even if she doesn’t know it). She said: “You know what? When Jake said ‘I think everyone should do what they want all the time’, that’s basically the translation of the chant we do: Om lokah samastah sukhino bhavantu– may all the beings in all the worlds become happy with simplicity and intention”. First of all, any friend who can weave sanskrit interpretation into cocktail conversation and have it come off as moving and relevant is a real keeper. Secondly, living simply with intention focusing on the things that truly make you happy? That seems like a good way to go. I usually don’t make resolutions just for the sake of New Years, but this year I’m going to resolve to continue do what makes me happy with who makes me happy. For Example…
Then you’re set. Promise.
Thanks to my other dear friend Sara, from half a world away, for the first quote.
New Traditions
Our family has always valued tradition. Our Virginia roots stretch down deep in the clay loam of Tidewater back farther than the Whiskey Rebellion. For me, anyway, I’ve never felt as tied to my home as I do at Christmas. We chopped down our own Christmas tree every year (including the year where Daddy had suspect access to an old tree farm out in Charles City County that had been on the market for a few years and he and I went in the old pick-up truck with the Flatt and Scruggs cassette stuck in the tape player and cut a spindly ole tree down with dubious permission and had to skedaddle out of there with a banjo soundtrack when some overseers came out of the trailer on the edge of the property like enraged overalled hornets). We had fires in our fireplace that I would keep going til the last minute until it was time to put it out for the safety of potential Christmas Eve visitors. We had embroidered stockings with our initials on them that, for me, always contained a can of olives (my greatest desire) and a new toothbrush (a two-pronged attack on hygiene maintained by both Santa and the Easter Bunny). Then, when we were older, we had long Christmas day brunches, just us, for hours at the dining room table, totally content, entirely self contained. Our traditions built us up and kept us together.
Though the past made us many things, I have learned that this is not what makes us family. So, this Christmas we tried a few new things, new to us but still rooted deep somewhere. Instead of the pink poinsettias that have been on our kitchen table at home every December for my birthday, this year Mama brought up the pink camellias above- cut from our Virginia garden. My grandfather brought her the plant, started from cuttings from the original- growing at my Great Grandmother’s house- he called them Sophie Davis Camellias after her.
Instead of a long boozy brunch of hash browns and hominy, we went to Pell Street in Chinatown with Sweetheart’s family- in from Rockaway- for the long standing New York Jewish tradition of chinese food (in this case, vegetarian dim sum) on Christmas Day. Instead of the boxwood roping, magnolia leaves, and fresh cut trees of our old roots, we had the entire New York City skyline glittering and bejeweled, new to us but rooting us here just the same.
Hornsby Family Egg Nog
For me, Christmas wouldn’t be complete without making a large batch of celebrated Hornsby Family Egg Nog (made from scratch, served with love, fresh nutmeg, and ideally tons of fried chicken and warm biscuits with Smithfield Ham). This year the batch was perhaps the best it’s ever been- which is in no small part due to by the glorious gift of Araucana Blue eggs straight from Jay and Katie Rose’s chickens. Araucanas are a South American breed that lay thick-skinned eggs with yolks the color of setting suns. The shells of their eggs come in a range of beautiful delicate colors: pale aquamarine and celadon, eau de nil, sky, and light dappled ochre. See above. The fact that these chickens have beards, are named after lady blues singers, and are presided over by the Grand Plumed Rooster Alicia Jr. just makes the funfetti toned eggs all the more party ready. Which is a good thing since the nog calls for 30 of them (we triple the recipe for our holiday party, soooo, yeah). Talking about the eggs brings up the antipathy that many people have for egg nog- maybe you’ve only ever had store bought (oof), maybe you went to a party where some poor fool made it with gin (travesty), maybe raw eggs give you the willies (no help or hope for you, my friend), but this version, with its hand-written recipe and various and copious brown liquors is surprisingly, almost unbelievably light and fresh, sweet and smooth, spicy, silky, and secretly very strong. Here’s the recipe, straight out of the Hornsby family cookbook, “From the Kitchen at the Hornsby House”, written out by my Great Aunt Marian.
Our family is one of barrel chested watermen-turned-oilmen-turned-land men, consummate entertainers, gentlemen raconteurs, merry pranksters, bon vivants, music makers and songstresses, and long time intimates of the marvelous stiff southern drink… when it would be Christmas at the Big House, laughter would shake the chandeliers, and instruments would be played until the wee hours. I always hope to have done them proud.
recipe notes:
– I use Benedictine and Brandy (B&B) instead of Brandy and Southern Comfort
– Tripled, the bourbon comes out to a handle, Jim Beam is more than satisfactory (though Maker’s Mark is sweeter).
– You’re left with the whites of the eggs, make a frittata!
Greene Hill Food Co-op: Open for Business!
After a few long years of hard, hard work and inspired perspiration this past weekend the beautiful and brand-spanking-new Greene Hill Food Co-op threw open its doors for the first time. The block itself seemed to roar with kale and a groundswell of happy, hungry humans with pure hearts and canvas bags. The idea of the food co-op is sort of communism-light: anyone can pay an equal, one-time, refundable share to join, everyone shares the work, and everyone enjoys the (literal, abundant) fruits of this labor in the form of gorgeous fresh produce, sweet and light loaves of locally baked bread, and chicken that perhaps wore a cowboy hat as it roamed the open range- all at reasonable prices. In a neighborhood where the food options are limited to the polarizing spectrum of corner bodegas where plantain chips are the only vegetable in sight and fancy-pants specialty food stores that have fresh figs and Humboldt Fog for $16/a quarter pound, this sort of place- where good food isn’t just well curated and lovely, but is sustainable, affordable, and available to all- is a jewel.
There are a few different options for membership plans, based on income: The Avocado Plan (where the well off can pay their share and also the share of someone else), The Lettuce Plan (where the comfortable can support themselves), The Carrot Plan (where the pretty broke can pay their share in installments), and The Apple Plan (where those who qualify pay a reduced fee and can make the membership investment in installments over the next five years- also the co-op takes food stamps). Sweetheart and I are in a weird place with this- being writers and musicians has us hovering essentially at the poverty line (eek)- but- we’re also participants in an active food culture, enthusiastic home cooks, the type of people who watch King Corn streaming on Netflix, have friends farming at Blue Hill and working for The Greenhorns, the type of people who went to Oberlin. In short: we are well armed with the righteous knowledge of food. We know how to provide ourselves with fresh, delicious meals from scratch and prioritize the ability/desire to choose to put a fair portion of our income towards eating (and living) well. Extra money doesn’t go towards physical luxuries, it gets put towards a stoop garden and non-agribusiness meats (and once- dinner at Chez Pannisse). Even though we may not have a cent to pay the rent, but we’re gonna make it, we may have to eat beans every day, but they’re going to be sustainable garbanzos. The Greene Hill Food Co-op is newly open, but the most exciting thing (in addition to a quart of Annie’s Goddess Dressing for $3.50, and the prettiest loaves of rye I’ve seen outside of Orwasher’s) is what this may mean for the future, for the neighborhood. The co-op gives a sense of ownership and personal responsibility over the food we eat, it makes the opportunity to pick healthy options not just readily available to all but totally desirable, and it shares the knowledge and power that comes from making your own food choices with everyone. It’s actually DOING something about it all instead of just reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma and being abstractly horrified at pictures of factory farms. And, of course, we’re still taking members. Sign up here and let’s go grocery shopping.
Images including vegetables from the Greene Hill Co-Op’s Flickr, see more here.
Here’s an interesting, easily digestible article about food equality.
Feather By Feather 