Lately, we’ve been whipping up quick batches of rhubarb using a recent improvisation/discovery: a thick stew of rhubarb, fragrant with honey and citrus zest, with bit of tart crunch. The trick: Throw chunks of rhubarb into a wide shallow pan slicked with a syrup of honey, white wine and lemon and orange zests. The rhubarb will cook into a fragrant, creamy mass of tender chunks (rather than dissolving completely, as happens when too much liquid is used). Thin slices of raw rhubarb stirred in at the last moment barely cook in the residual heat to add surprising bursts of flavor and texture.
We’d been gobbling this delicious rhubarb stew as is and with vanilla ice cream…Then it occurred to us that it would make a divine rhubarb shortcake, sandwiched with some whipped cream between the foolproof Cream Biscuits we posted a while back.
Rhubarb Shortcake is really the sum of three simple parts that you can prepare well in advance to assemble at the last minute: read more…
We recently came back from our second memorial this year in the town of Helvetia, in the West Virginia Appalachians. It was a party, really, to celebrate the big fat life of our friend Eleanor Mailloux, who passed away recently at the age of 94. Out in the meadow next to her house, two make-shift cookers were going, grilling spatchcocked chickens and corn, and a 20-foot table held huge bowls of Eleanor’s favorite foods. Beer from her grandson Willie’s brewery flowed alongside homemade wine her friends had brought. Music blared at just the right pitch.
Often in Helvetia after a family has buried a loved one, the community puts on a covered-dish supper, and a square dance may follow, as it did for our friend Rogers McAvoy. Dancing and stomping and swinging and drinking out on the porch of the community hall helped Rogers’ friends to find read more…
Ellen Silverman was picnicking with family and friends in Riverside Park in New York City when she saw some folks nearby serenely sitting at a pop-up picnic table, which had they’d unfurled out of a case in just a few moves. From Ellen’s not-terribly-comfortable vantage point sitting on a blanket on the ground (which was a little damp from recent rain), it looked pretty swell.
It’s like having a portable back yard. You could bring a little bunch of herbs: rosemary, lavendar or thyme, or mint for iced tea or lemonade, and arrange it in a paper cup on the table…or decorate it with striped table runner…
…and you could store the flat case under the bed…”
We hunted down the model Ellen saw, and then found other great options: read more…
The best thing we found in the recent New York Times’ Design and Living Magazine was Bud Wise, a story and slideshow about making arrangements out of ordinary deli/supermarket flowers. Having found ourselves many times looking blankly at the mishmash of seemingly uninspired offerings at the corner store for a bit of REAL to perk up our table, and spirits, we found the advice given by Sarah Ryhanen and Nicolette Camille each of whom run floral design studios (Saipua and Nicolette Camille Floral Designs, respectively) in Brooklyn. They also operate the Little Flower School, through which they give classes in various locations. They give some really good advice about choosing and handling flowers, what amounts to a set of four loose principles you can apply to fit your own sensibility and budget; it’s worth reading the reasoning and info they give for each one. read more…
All week long, we’ve been getting Mother’s Day gift ideas in our email box…mostly deals on cornball flower arrangements. Then we got one from Doctors Without Borders, the great international aid organization, about sending one of their e-cards for Mother’s Day, and using that $20/$50/$100 worth of short-lived-flowers money as a donation that will really DO something, in your mom’s name. We’re going with that. (It’s also another way to support Japan Earthquake relief.)
“The act of humanitarianism comes down to one thing: individual human beings reaching out to others who find themselves in the most difficult circumstances…
one bandage, one suture, one vaccination at a time.”
-Dr. James Orbinski, Former President, Doctors Without Borders International Council
We’ve been getting emails from friends who are on their way down to the ramp supper in Helvetia, West Virginia – ramps being the pungent wild leek that grows throughout the Appalachian and Catskill mountains. We wrote about the supper this time last year, when we were headed to Helvetia ourselves, to the feast served family style in the community hall by the Farm Women’s Association – ham, beans, cornbread, slaw, applesauce, hash browns, ramps raw and cooked.
The 2011 ramp supper marks a year of big changes: two of Helvetia’s visionary elders passed away and the unique Swiss culture of the town seemed threatened. But the younger folk there are pulling together to protect and nourish what they realize to be a rare place, carrying on its rich traditions and legacy. In honor of this big transition, we reprise a chunk of the post Sally wrote last year about the spectacular Helvetia Ramp Supper, including a recipe that contains a basic method of preparing ramps that can be used for endless improvising. We offer it despite having recently read the disturbing news of the threat to ramps from over-harvesting reported in the New York Times. We don’t want to stop eating ramps – but we want to know that they were harvested sustainably, and perhaps, buy less this year, just a taste’s worth to remind us of the wild…
Betty Blake Churchill alerted us to this inspired conceptual birthday card by artist/designer Heather Tompkins. It’s the perfect thing for when you need to give a little gift. It seems Tompkins made it for a friend, and is not selling it commercially. Too bad. We just might use our color printer to printing it out on heavy paper, and credit Tompkins on the back. It is so-o-o good.
We’re wishing you a wondrous weekend celebrating Easter, Passover, or just….Spring. Our plan is to totally chill, take Monday OFF, sleep late and then eat some perfect soft-boiled eggs for breakfast, in honor of the season’s great ancient symbol of new life – and ideas- emerging…
Easter is next Sunday, and we’re planning on dyeing Easter Eggs, the holiday’s totally fun, messy activity that invariably yields charming results. Eggs become our blank canvas on which to improvise all sorts of gorgeous colors and designs. We love Ambatalia’s post on making your own plant-derived egg dyes out of ordinary foods, like onion skin for sienna and orange; turmeric for deep golds and pale yellows; blueberries or red cabbage for blues; coffee for browns. We’ve found that beets give lovely shades of pink and red. You can layer the dying process to mix colors: red cabbage dye followed by grape for purple…turmeric followed by red cabbage for lavender.
In his email, Anthony wrote: ”Number 5 being the quote that caught me. It’s not as polished or “literate” or “writerly” as it could be, but the meat is there.”
5) DIY is Just Another Word for Couture. What people with unlimited budget for entertaining have that you don’t have is the ability to buy other people’s labor. That’s all. If you are willing to put the labor in, to do it yourself, you will have the most delicious food, fabulous drinks, and nifty dinner party ever. To buy a luscious cake for 12 people will cost you somewhere near $100 to make it less than $10. It’s that simple. By starting in advance and lavishing love and attention on what you are making (like a couturier) you will have perfection.
DIY is Just Another Word for Couture = right-on perfect!
We’ve been so busy that we almost forgot that it’s MARDI GRAS, until we stumbled on this divine video that Constant Siege posted. Here’s the great Mardi Gras.com site that will bring you in…
We found this compelling image on one of Tara Mann’s blogs, and followed it to photographer Jeanie Choi’s Tumblr. Don’t know what the story is but IMAGINED what a funny thing it would be to have a party and offer guests their choice of glasses (sans lenses, perhaps) as an instant change of identity plus conversation starter. (With lenses, they’d give guests a change of view.) You can find cheap vintage glasses at flea markets and thrift stores.
