Our Alt-Malted Milk Balls have been featured all week on The Splendid Table, the terrific public radio food show hosted by Lynne Rosetto Kasper. They are a recent improvisation on Homemade Chocolates for Improvising, a really easy method for making shards of chocolate flavored with whatever crosses your mind, from Marcona almonds to curry powder. Mixing malted milk powder into a great, fragrant chocolate like Valhrona makes for a peak malted milk ball experience (even if they are in a radically different form). Click here for the recipe, or listen to Sally’s interview with Lynne.
I often bundle the the charity gift cards I give for Christmas with another teeny-but-potent gift: like this $4 tasting spoon from Branch. It is my idea of the perfect all-purpose cook’s spoon: long and thin, and slightly odd, similar to a treasured spoon a friend bought me from South America many years ago.
This morning in my Inbox, my daily email from Seth Godin‘s blog carried an unexpected gift: a free, downloadable ebook called What Matters Now:
“Here are more than seventy big thinkers, each sharing an idea for you to think about as we head into the new year. From bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert to brilliant tech thinker Kevin Kelly, from publisher Tim O’Reilly to radio host Dave Ramsey, there are some important people riffing about important ideas here.”
And each of it’s 82 pages is, indeed, inspiring and thought-provoking, REAL. There are interesting and useful takes on Fear, Dignity, Meaning, Ease, Strengths, Technology, Enough, (Dis)trust, and Sleep, to name a few. Many are mightily therapeutic. read more…
Shards of chocolate embedded with surprising flavors and crunchy elements make terrific gifts for much less $ than pricey “artisan-made’ chocolates. Here’s an easy, step-by-step method – and a couple of tricks – for making unfussy homemade chocolates: a thin sheet of fine chocolate into which you’ve embedded surprising and delicious elements, like chopped Marcona almonds with a dusting of Pimenton de la Vera; or curry powder and sea salt; or dried cherries and lavender, or roasted pistachios and candied orange zest; the possible improvisations are endless.
Once the sheet of chocolate hardens, you break it into shards and pack it as a gift (and keep some back to serve at your own dinner parties, or as a restorative when your spirits are flagging).
Essential Homemade Chocolates for Improvising in words and pictures follows the jump. (And be sure to check out ‘the improvised life’s take on Holiday Food Gifts at The Splendid Table. You can listen to the show, and download the recipe for Alt-Malted Milk Balls, an improvisation on this homemade chocolate theme.)read more…
‘the improvised life’ is proud to be included in NYC Bloggers Do the Holidays, a group blog by “the city’s coolest bloggers”*. If you haven’t already, I recommend checking out the sites below for all the fun and illuminating holiday ideas they’ve come up with…
I found a lot of great non-New York-centric links while poking around these sites. To check them out, scroll to the second half of this post.
Melt one ice cube in a skillet by placing it in the sun. When melted, add 1 cup water and saute slowly — until water is transparent. Serve small portions, because this dish is rich as well as mouth-watering.
It’s from a book I had as a kid called Mud Pies and Other Recipes by Marjorie Winslow. “This is an outdoor cookbook,” reads the Foreword, “The market place, then, will be a forest or a sand dune or your own back yard.” It’s a cookbook for a kid’s world outdoors, even if the kid, like me, never actually acted out the recipes. Like the best children’s books, it fueled my imagination and painted a world rich with possibilities: read more…
Urawaza means “secret tricks” or “unmapped short-cuts” in Japanese. These are innovations and solutions to life’s little problems that humble people figure out for themselves, like How to Give Yourself a Steam Facial in the Tub (sit in the tub with an umbrella open over your head)…or How to Soothe an Itchy Mosquito Bite (put a piece of adhesive tape on it). I learned about urawaza from a charming book I stumbled on called Urawaza: Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japanby Lisa Katayama.
It lists loads of urawaza, like How to Tell Which Direction You’re Going In, and How to Restore A Shrunken Sweater to It’s Original Size, along with the reason why it works. But my favorite part of the book is a chapter called “How to Discover Your Own Urawaza”, a step-by-step guide that really describes the process – and mindset – of improvising. Here’s a really condensed version: read more…
If you start with the idea that the holidays are about really giving a part of yourself rather than STUFF, and spreading joy, and celebrating what we have, you instantly start to eliminate the nonessential and stressful. These are the things that are more obligation than fun – too exhausting, too expensive, or just TOO MUCH – like shopping for the perfect gift for too many people, or giving the perfect party with a million homemade hors d’oeuvres. Where do we get these notions of how the holidays are supposed to be?
I’m all for deconstructing any part of the holidays that drives you crazy, to strip it down to its heart. read more…
A few years ago, I discovered that the holiday gift my friends treasured most was a simple card telling them that I’d given a donation in their name to a charity. They were happy NOT to get more stuff, and be given something that was helping someone else. It was a way I could give to people who really need it AND the people I care about, without getting into the crazy shopping thing, and spending more money than I have.
It’s really easy: you choose a charity, send them money (via charge card online, or check), select the card you like and fill out a form; they send you the cards. read more…
‘the improvised life’ was going to be dark today, while we move a tiny bit slower AND work on a post for next Tuesday’s special Manhattan User’s Guide 2009 New York Blogger’s Holiday Guide. But while reading Kottke yesterday morning, I came across this swell little video essay by Matt Zoller Seitz from Moving Image Source. It’s called Feast: A Thanksgiving tribute to images of food on film. It’s a perfect apres-Thanksgiving, lazy-dog, savoring-the-day pleasure.
“Food is a uniter, not a divider. Read a political manifesto on the bus or the train and people tune out. Read a list of ingredients for timpano or green bean casserole or quail in rose petal sauce and they don’t just listen, they nod their appreciation and let out subtle little mutterings of pleasure. Recipes are family-friendly erotica. Who doesn’t love to eat?”
Photographer Maria Robledo emailed me this picture of a winter crocus taken with her i-Phone, with the message: “Needs nothing but light to illuminate us.”
She was given crocus bulbs bought from the local farmer’s market as a house-warming present. She had only to place one root-side down in a bowl and expose it to light to awaken the flower within.
Several kinds of bulbs hold the potential to valiantly bloom in winter; the easiest are those that do not need a period of cold before exposure to sun. These include crocuses, hyacinths, paperwhites and daffodils. Here’s the simple method from Ed Hume Seeds: read more…
Over the years, I’ve collected a disparate assortment of glassware that I use as makeshift vases: tiny odd-shaped beakers (whatever were they originally used for??!!), little bottles, and squat stemware from decades ago. They are perfect displays for inexpensive branchy flowers whose stems I cut way down. Grouped together, they take the place of a larger arrangement, in a charming way.
They are mostly the treasure of flea markets, yard sales and junk stores; Ebay always has good offerings if you’re willing to wade through the listings. CB2 often has good selection of handblown beakers and odd vases, for a few dollars apiece, read more…
This morning Andrea Raisfeld alerted me to a perfect little film created by designer Susan Hochbaum. It’s called The Pastry Project and it begins:
“I came to Paris middle-aged, divorced, and newly in love. Granting myself a sabbatical and renting out my suburban home, I moved with my beau to this romantic city for a year of living shamelessly…Abandoning restraint, and with the appetite of a teenager, I’ve found my muse…”
What follows will change the way you view Paris forever…(click here to watch)Ed note 9/30/11: unfortunately, the perfect video has been swapped for a slideshow…And now a new book tells the story. read more…
After reading ‘ted muehling and the inspiration journal’, designer Pamela Hovland wrote about the many kinds of visual journals she’s kept over the years: “one for my garden, one for my house, one for my summer cabin in Minnesota (all of which are ongoing projects). I keep a visual journal for art and design inspiration, another for wardrobe inspiration (as sometimes I’ll attempt to make a skirt I’ve seen or ask a tailor to do the same). I even have a journal devoted to all things black and white.”
Pamela mentioned Jessica Helfand’s wonderful book Scrapbooks: An American History. That sent me on a path that expanded my view of what journals and scrapbooks can be. One of Helfand’s own scrapbooks commemorates the ritual cleaning of her graphic design studio; it includes bits of dead insect, chicken meat, angel hair pasta, a Prednisone prescription, and Clementine peel into glassine envelope. read more…
by Lisa Katayama.
. That sent me on a path that expanded my view of what journals and scrapbooks can be. One of Helfand’s own 
