It took us a while to understand just what exactly “Occupy Wall Street” is. The ongoing demonstrations and occupation of various sites around the country seem to have no agenda or demands, but the movement is enduring and growing. It was unlike anything we had ever seen before. Who are these people and what do they want? we wondered. We got an immediate and powerful answer when we logged onto the moving Tumblr We are The 99%” Percent with posts by members of “the ninety-nine percent who are suffering economically while 1 percent of the nation’s wealthiest get everything.” On Tumblr they hold up handwritten signs with their story (which you can read in more depth if you like.) These are not hippies staging a nostalgic ‘be-in’. These are people with very real and painful stories trying to survive 2011 America. Many are young people with huge student loans to pay and no prospect of a job; others are people who dutifully saved and toed the line, only to have their retirement fund wiped out by health care costs. They cannot find work, so Occupy Wall Street has become their mission.
We were poking around food editor and writer Jane Lear‘s website, when we came across a trove of great articles, including one of her pieces for Gourmet Magazine, where she was its Senior Articles Editor for many years. Called Transformers, the premise is that with 3 eggs and two lemons on hand, you can make 5 terrific desserts. Right up our alley. The recipe that caught our eye was a Dutch Baby with Lemon Sugar, basically a giant popover with pancake overtones cooked in an iron skillet, onto which you sprinkle lemon sugar for a bit of crackle at the last minute. It’s GREAT, easy and made with ordinary ingredients, our favorite combo. (On our second try, we monkeyed with the recipe slightly; see the Note below).
As we were gobbling it, we thought: Couldn’t this also be great savory instead of sweet? We imagined it baked with grated Parmigiano Reggiano, to make something akin to a giant gougere, an eggy, crispy cheese puff usually made in bite-size portions. We we tried our idea out then-and-there. read more…
(Video link here.) I tend to have mixed feelings about the growing number of options for social networking. I’ve definitely noticed my own reliance on social networks making me a little more self-indulgent and a little less personal in my communications with friends. But the power of social networking sites to create communities for people greatly in need of them never ceases to amaze me. Case in point: I Had Cancer, a social networking site for folks who have been diagnosed with or survived cancer and their loved ones. It was created/improvised by a cancer survivor, responding to the need she saw around her, and that she herself had experienced. And because everyone is touched in some way by cancer, dealing with it themselves, or knowing someone who is. read more…
This old pair of headphones still worked but one stem had broken. Rather than toss them, we asked our friend and sometimes assistant Tara Mann if she would do a visually-pleasing repair. Which she did, using colored electrician’s tape. We keep these old phones as back-ups to our regular ones, and find ourselves pulling them out surprisingly often, for one reason or another…as we do pairs of old glasses. We rely on a selection of colored tapes – electricians and masking – black and white gaffer’s tape, and lately, zebra duct tape not to mention Sugru and various glues to make our repairs, always keeping visuals in mind, an interesting challenge. It gives damaged goods new life and a subtle message: REPAIRS ARE COOL…
and illuminating, as we are reminded by the late great Platform 21‘s spot-on Repair Manifesto… read more…
Two years ago, I started ‘the improvised life’ based entirely on the feeling that it needed to exist. Many people I knew were in critical transitions in their lives and facing the risk involved in new endeavors. A website about improvising as a daily practice—living more resourcefully and thinking outside-the-box—seemed timely.
Creating this site was a risk for me as well: using savings to fund an unproven project in the unfamiliar medium of the blogosphere. But since its start, ’the improvised life’ has gotten a wonderful response, and to my surprise, an amazing community has grown up around it. Readers write daily to say how much the posts inspire them to take small (or big!) steps toward new ways of doing things. read more…
(Video link here.) “Don’t sweat the small stuff ”has become a self-help mantra that we often tend to agree with. It’s easy to get caught up in unnecessary details or minor challenges and lose sight of the big picture. However, occasionally we’re reminded that every piece of conventional wisdom has its foil. The above video from Good and the great Andrew Sloat illustrates why sometimes sweating the small stuff is not only important, but deeply related to the big picture. (It also provides a really clear visual of a few simple ways to be kinder to the environment).
Practically every wine-loving American I meet – even those who say they don’t know much about wine – is sure of one universal “truth” that couldn’t be farther from it: Red wine should be served “room temperature.” What does that mean? And who said so?
Poking around in old British wine books from the Victorian era, I can only imagine that our wine-loving forefathers, taking every viticultural word from Europe as Gospel, embraced the idea of “room temperature” from men wearing wigs and capes in freezing-cold London. Before modern heating, few homes reached today’s “average” room temp of 72°, except during summer months. Especially in London.
But ask any sommelier worth his or her spittoon what the proper serving temperature is for red wines, and they’ll tell you between 55° and 65°. Where’s the disconnect? It seems to be a translation error: somewhere along the line, “cellar temperature” morphed into “room temperature.” Proper wine storage is around 55° -“cellar temperature” – which also happens to be a great temperature to serve light-bodied reds, like Pinot Noir, Gamay/Beaujolais and Cotes-du-Rhone. The maximum serving temperature for the most full-bodied reds is 65’, well below modern-day room temperature. All red wines of all body weights taste best when served in between those two numbers.
What does all this mean? You can, and should, chill your wines read more…
Our friend Anthony Giglio is a journalist, sommelier, and the author of many acclaimed books on wine and cocktails, including the Food & Wine Magazine’s Wine Guide 2011. He travels around the country leading wine tastings and helping people navigate the vast world of wine, cocktails, and “what goes with what”. He does all of this with a sense of humor that borders on irreverent, often shocking connoisseurs with his candor. A great cook, he is also one of the best dinner party hosts we know – invitations to his parties are coveted! – largely due to his ability to put himself in his guest’s shoes and think of ways to delight them from the moment they walk in the door. (He taught us Mama Lucia’s Insalata di Pomodoro, THE best approach to real summer tomatoes, which he’s dishing out in the photo above.)
We’ve been so impressed by his smart, simple strategies for entertaining that we’ve asked him to guest blog for ‘the improvised life’, starting with read more…
When we last left our New York City taxi farmers - the car service drivers who plant “crops” in vacant patches of land around the Bronx – they were gamely waiting for their urban garden to grow, even as they waited for calls from the dispatcher.
Well, it’s been a tough harvest in the city, as it has been for farmers everywhere. Last year, as we reported, it was the torrential rains. This year, it’s been the withering heat. Our intrepid drivers lost their first planting, but they didn’t lose heart. read more…
Since we’ve been hanging out with our friend Ana, helping her fix up her place in Harlem (more on that soon), we’ve noticed that people in the neighborhood love to hang out on the street. We see men sitting on folding chairs at card tables playing poker, and families on stoops, and there’s alway a crowd around the bike repair place, where a chess game goes on in the midst of the fixing and conferring.
Recently we spotted these makeshift seats: boards cleverly wedged under the fence along Marcus Garvey Park to create a leverage effect and seats with backs. Someone even thought to bring a pillow. It’s the perfect, impromptu way for two friends to hang out on a summer day.
For a fat, liberating dose of inspiration, check out the long riff on Mondoblogo of chairs Italian Designer Gaetano Pesce painted in the nineties for his kids.
His “Open Sky” chairs are out-there, fun, wild, loose, and awesomely beautiful… read more…
(Video link here.) We recently came across this great talk by Joshua Foer that explores the success of “experts.” The video is 17 minutes, which we know is long, so we’ve culled the gist for you, hoping you’ll listen at some point; we think it’s truly useful and super interesting.
According to Foer and the scientists he draws from, becoming an expert has a whole lot more to do with psychology than innate ability. We generally push ourselves to achieve at a given skill only up to the point at which we can get the job done. Foer uses the example of typing—most of us type for at least an hour a day, yet we don’t get measurably faster…we settle into a speed we think is good enough. We hit an “OK plateau.”
Psychologists who study skill acquisition have found that experts across a wide variety of fields know that you can’t improve at something as long as you’re stuck on the OK plateau, and routinely use the four strategies below to ensure that their minds continue to climb uphill, so to speak. Even if you’re not striving to become an “expert” in your field, we think these strategies are helpful for anyone trying to pick up a new skill or practice, or get better at an old one. Here they are: read more…
In a recent interview on Nowness’ FB page, superstar chef Mario Batali was asked what olive oils he “swears by”. The answer:
“Da Vero from Healdsburg, Primo Olio from Sicilia, Castello di Ama and Capezzana from Toscana.”
We’ve tasted three of the oils he mentioned and they ARE stunning, as well as pricey and not easy to come by, although worth every penny. A good olive oil can MAKE a dish, literally. Along with salt, it can be the only seasoning you need to turn say, a bowl of steamed wax beans from the farmer’s market, or a tomato or a slice of mozzarella, or a piece of grilled or slow-roasted fish into a perfect, ‘complete’ dish.
The problem for many folks we know is that these oils are just too expensive. What to do then? How to find a well-flavored economical olive oil for everyday use? read more…
While we were away, a reader left a Comment in response to our post about Constantino Nivola’s Tinkertoy lamps. She described a trellis she had made out of vintage Tinkertoys bought on Ebay. She devised it to display her tillandsia, which are also known as air plants because they grow without soil and can be placed just about anywhere.
We wrote back asking if she had any photos. In a follow-up Comment, she sent us these photos which knocked us out: Tinkertoy as naturally sculptural, Bauhausian trellis! She also wrote:
Obviously, I’m no master of the Tinkertoy (or the photographic, for that matter) medium. And truth be told, I pretty much lack artistic ability, in general. However, one of the great things about Tinkertoys is that, even despite a complete lack of talent, you can at least count on being able to create something with some structural integrity. And with the size and overall shape you’re looking for. So, that’s good.
We were struck by her opinion of herself has lacking artistic ability and talent. read more…
Ellen Silverman is traveling with her family in Venice, sending us the occasional wonderful photo. First came this one of the Grand Canal – like a teeny vacation for us. Then came a few-line story of the clever idea she learned while visiting friends:
We were invited to an impromptu lunch on our first day in Venice by a Venetian friend. He had set the table out on his terrace. Cleverly he stored his chair cushions on hooks from the roof overhang. read more…
”has become a self-help mantra that we often tend to agree with. It’s easy to get caught up in unnecessary details or minor challenges and lose sight of the big picture. However, occasionally we’re reminded that every piece of conventional wisdom has its foil. The above video from 
. He travels around the country leading wine tastings and helping people navigate the vast world of wine, cocktails, and “what goes with what”. He does all of this with a sense of humor that borders on irreverent, often shocking connoisseurs with his candor. A great cook, he is also one of the best dinner party hosts we know – invitations to his parties are coveted! – largely due to his ability to put himself in his guest’s shoes and think of ways to delight them from the moment they walk in the door. (He taught us 
is a reliable primer.
