Tonight the Roosevelt Dime boys are playing at Apothéke, an apothecary themed speakeasy behind a secret door in Chinatown. Very 1921/2006… reminds me of my day working at The Box. Regardless of your feelings re: nouveau speakeasies, this should be a lovely time in a beautiful room. Please come, wear something sparkly, and make a nice little Monday out of it.
Roosevelt Dime at Apothéke
Monday, February 27th
9-12
9 Doyers St
(between Bowery & Chatham Sq) 
images from here and here.
I baked this loaf of bread. Yep, I did it. This wonderful, perfectly round, air-bubbly, still warm from the oven, undeniably bread-y to its very essence loaf came out of my oven. I’m no genius, and though I make a mean almond cake and can poach a passable egg, I’ve always thought that bread baking takes cooking beyond the artful science of experimentation and flavor into the ACTUAL science of chemical reactions, margins of error, and precision measurements- not usually my strong suit. My dear friend Kitty (who lives here) passed along this recipe to me with promises and assurances that The Recipe (a revision of the now-infamous no-knead Mark Bittman recipe that took home-ovens by storm in 2006) was, in fact foolproof. I can attest: make this. It is easy, cheap, and utterly, completely satisfying. Do you need a commercial kiln oven and generations of flour covered grandparents to make this? Nope, you only need about $3 worth of ingredients, a (preferably bright red) dutch oven, and 24 hours.
Bread a la Sheila McDuffie.
3 c bread flour
¼ tsp. yeast
1 and ¼ tsp. sea salt
1 and ½ c water at 75 degrees, plus a Tlb. or 2 (well or spring water)
Flour for dusting
Finishing: flour, bran, cornmeal, semolina flour, sesame seeds, flax seeds, or rice flour
Combine flour, yeast, and salt in a glass bowl. Add water and stir with a wooden spoon for 30-60 seconds until a shaggy dough forms and all the flour is incorporated. Add a bit more water if necessary. Cover with plastic wrap and allow it to rest at 70-75 degrees for 12-16 hours or up to 20 hours.
Scrape the dough onto a well floured surface spread slightly into a flattened square, and fold all four sides, one by one, onto the center of the dough. Invert so the seam is down, dust with flour, cover with plastic wrap, and allow to rest for 15 minutes.
Form the final loaf by holding the ball of dough in your hands and gently pulling and tucking under around the edges 8-10 times while rotating it. Be careful not to over-stretch—allow the gluten cloak to form. Generously coat a plate with the desired finishing and place the dough with the crease facing down. Or use parchment paper. Cover with plastic wrap and allow it to rise for 1 hour. Preheat the oven, with your Dutch oven in it at 475 for 30 minutes. Loaf rises for a total of 1 hour and 30 minutes.
Using oven mitts, take Dutch oven out of hot oven, dust with flour, and flip the dough into it or lower the parchment paper in. Cover and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the lid and bake 30 minutes more, until the crust is a dark chestnut color. Interior temp: 180 degrees. Take bread out of the pan and cool on a rack for 1 hour. Do not cut until the hour is up.
Here’s a breakdown of the loaf timing to serve the bread the next day for 7pm dinner:
Mix dough 9:00 p.m.
Fold step 3:30 p.m. the next day (18 hours 30 minutes)
Form loaf 3:45ish
Preheat oven, etc. 4:45
Bread goes in 5:15
Cover comes off 5:45
Bread comes out 6:15
Ready to serve 7:15
Anyone need a raspberry bidet? The kind you get at a secondhand store:
This and more to be found in the amazing “free” section of Craigslist. I stumbled on the pile of gems that is the “free” section a few months ago looking for a “new” dresser for Sweetheart. With some judicious browsing and a few e-mails, we found ourselves in a deserted hallway in an elevator building on East 12th street, picking up a beat up but lovely and manly mahogany bow front dresser, the drawers of which were inexplicably filled with glitter. FOR FREE. Even though (goodness knows) I don’t need any more stuff, I find myself drawn to peruse the “free” section every two weeks or so just to trawl around and see what’s there.
Just like Papa Hemingway’s famous flash story (“for sale: baby shoes, never worn”), the listings sometimes tell just the edge of a story, as in “wedding dress, brand new, never got used”. Or sometimes there’s a big old chunk of history there behind the words of the listing, as in “FREE wood joists that were just ripped up from the coney island boardwalk”:
Then there are listings for things you see over and over: “Big Screen TV still WORKS! Needs two to lift”, “FREE Couch, making room for crib”, “IKEA (insert name of any item ever sold at Ikea), some scratches, may need to be disassembled, 5th floor walkup”. Toss in listings for free haircuts, free tatoos, free dirt, free comedy, free boats, free shoes, free oil, free puppies, or FREE ONE PASS FOR A HIPHOP LATINO SHOW CASE OPEN MIC IN MANHATTAN and the “Free” section becomes like the flashing repeating reel version of life that gleams from the windows of subway trains passing each other underground. Go look, don’t cost nothin.
My grandfather carried a handkerchief, and I think it’s a special, sweet, old-fashioned, and useful little thing- harkening back to an age of simple and elegant manliness. You can give it to a crying woman on a bench somewhere, entertain a small child, mop your brow, smooth the neck of a guitar, pick up a handgun at a crime scene like it’s 1939, wrap up a sweet treat to go, put it up your sleeve or suit pocket, perform sleight of hand, or (obviously) blow your nose. This Valentine’s Day, I gave Sweetheart a parcel of plain white cotton handkerchiefs that I clumsily embroidered- three with hearts and three each with funny squashed A’s on them (his initial), because I think he’s all of these things- sweet, old fashioned, simple, and manly. This little project was easy and fun- I knocked out the embroidery drinking beer and watching Downton Abbey (reveling in both my emancipation and my needlepoint). If you’re a crewel mistress, you could make these pretty fancy, but you really only need a simple running stitch to keep it manly. Get 100% cotton hankies, wash them and iron them first, double the thread, and just freehand the hearts. And, hey, it’s not 1800, if they turn out a little crookedy, that’s ok.
Well, today I decided I needed a haircut. So, I went on up and got myself one at the American Barber Institute. That’s right: Barber School. When I lived in the East Village I used to get my hair cut at the D&P Barber on 7th street and used to get blowouts at a joint on Avenue C that called it “big porn hair” and fed me cheap white wine, but nothing I’ve seen was quite like this. It was quite a scene. This is no Frederic Fekkai. It’s on a pretty desolate stretch of 29th street off of 9th avenue, neon scissors buzzing in the window, you go in and slide a few singles through the kind of plexiglass slot they have at liquor stores in bad neighborhoods, you get a ticket, and are led into a big room full of barber stations, red vinyl chairs, terrazzo floors, and men. Lots of men. Apparently they don’t usually take girls, but my barber- a sweet 18 year old named Everett Flint- has five older sisters and has been cutting their hair since he was 12… so… since I only needed a trim, I went for it. Did I leave feeling salon-fabulous? Not quite. But did I leave free of split ends feeling like I’d seen something pretty damn good today? Absolutely.
Image from here.
I’ll let you in on my (small, useful) Valentine’s surprise for Sweetheart tomorrow… I don’t want to blow it. In the meantime, I stumbled across this new video by The Shins, September (I found it on a site promoting “Record Store Day 2012“, so this song will actually be the real-live B-Side to their new single). I never fell head over heels for them in the Garden State days, but the more I play it, the more I love it. A love letter to analog and reverb and sweet/silly words, it seems a good heart-day discovery for those who love all of those things and maybe want to rub a little vaseline around the edges of their lenses today. Happy day to you all!
The Shins: “September” (b-side of “Simple Song” 7”) from Record Store Day on Vimeo.
Maybe it’s the time of year, or maybe it’s the time of mind, but- for whatever reason- it feels like this Valentine’s Day shouldn’t be one of extravagant luxuries. Now, Valentine’s Day is a freighted holiday to begin with ( it’s a hallmark holiday/it’s arbitrary/shouldn’t every day be Valentine’s day, bla bla bla), but I’ll just go ahead and put it out there: I like Valentine’s Day. I’m a romantic at heart, and I’ll take any excuse for small gestures: I like getting fresh flowers delivered, I like surprises, I like love notes, I like champagne. But this year, I’m feeling like I’m in a place where I’m putting more and more value on small, simple pleasures and focusing on things done rather than things bought…I’m pining after objects of use AND beauty. Like the scissors above. Or a sharp little knife. Or a reciprocating saw (just kidding. sort of.). Here are my favorite little objects of love, for any Valentine:
#8 Opinel Knife, with Arrow Design, from Spartan (or without, from Gravel and Gold)
Mixtape dispenser, from ModCloth.
Flashman Hudson Bay Axe, from Best Made.
Map Tacks, or really, anything, from Kiosk
ANY design Custom Stamp from the amazing Casey Rubber Stamps in the East Village.
Compass Necklace, from Redtruckdesigns.
A picnic blanket to recreate this (image from here)
And that’s just off the top of my head. Happy Valentine’s Day, loves.
Don’t feel like braving the hordes on the Lower East Side (ever. again.)? No good music in the hood? Bored to death with “Bored to Death”? I have three words for you, my friend: Minor League Hockey. Did you know that Brooklyn has its own hockey team? Did you know that Minor League Hockey is totally awesome? Did you know that there’s still a place in America where you can get a beer for $3? All of this: amazing and true. Pretty much every Friday night the Brooklyn Aviators take the ice out at Floyd Bennett Field- the oldest airfield in New York City, once a home base for flyboys like Douglas “Wrong Way” Corrigan and aviatrices like Miss Amelia Earhart– the rink is in a converted hangar. The hangar complex has been re-modeled into a fantastical bizarrely/wonderfully suburban feeling sports complex with a climbing wall, middle-school-date-ripe skating rink, basketball courts, gymnastics gear, and a funny, all-nations-food-court where the guy who runs the pizza ovens sort of looks like Robert Deniro in Taxi Driver. The place is great- a departure, an adventure- but the hockey… that’s something else entirely. 
Fast and furious and beautiful and funny and brutally action packed, it’s everything you thought you knew about hockey (the missing teeth, the fights, the French Canadians) writ large and about 8 feet away from you. I think I saw someone’s nose get broken. And it was awesome. Also, I now understand the origin of the phrase “the gloves come off” (see above- ice littered with gloves, nose of dude on right- yeah, the big dude- about to get broken). Also, if the game stops because of a fight, they play the “Rocky” theme song over the loudspeaker. Also, because it’s minor league, at intermission they do hilarious things like “hockey bowling”- slinging a small child across the ice in an inner-tube to knock down huge inflatable pins and stadium employees. Also, zamboni. And if all that weren’t enough, let me reiterate: Beers are $3.
Tonight, February 10th, the Brooklyn Aviators face off against the Danbury Whalers at 7:35 pm sharp. Buy tickets here.
To get to Floyd Bennett Field you can:
a) If you have a car: drive all the way down Flatbush avenue, and turn left just before the Marine Park Bridge. Or, take the Belt Parkway (under the Verrazano Bridge, swinging by Randazzo’s on the way) to exit 11S.
b) Take the 2 or 5 train to the Flatbush Avenue/Brooklyn College station (last stop), Take the Q35 bus one block from the train station – Flatbush Ave. between Nostrand Avenue and Avenue. Request the bus to stop across from Aviator Sports and Recreation at Floyd Bennett Field.
c) Stop one of the dollar buses cruising down Fulton yelling “Utica! Utica!” out of the window. It will cost you $1.
d) charter a helicopter flight and land at Floyd Bennett’s helipad.
Since I can’t figure out how to buy this from the apparently amazing Anna Louise Mould, I’m thinking if I can replicate this amazing banjo-head painting for my Sweetheart in time for Valentine’s day. Since he’s the sweetest kind of karmically-transplanted-mountain-man-reborn-in-the-body-of-a-native-New-Yorker, this would be just his kind of “Pimp my Ride”. Swoon.
props to the stunning Woodsmaiden, for capturing my heart as always.
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).
Feather By Feather 