housewares
Ellen Silverman
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…
11.05.09 |
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in cheap + great, garden, gifts, housewares |
Ellen Silverman
Just about every cook I know has a favorite fork or a spoon that they use for all sorts of purposes in the kitchen; they reach for it before any other tool when they need to toss or stir or shift something in a pan, because it feels right in their hand, makes them feel right in the kitchen, and able to deal with whatever comes up.
Ellen Silverman took a picture of mine. I am certain that each utensil in this odd assortment HELPS me to cook. Each has a unique feel of its own. All are balanced, attuned in some special way that helps me to listen to whatever I am making. These implements are so much a part of my cooking that I am often not aware of all the different things I do with them.
They are the opposite of kitchen catalogue offerings; all except one are cheap and beat-up. They all have stories. read more…
11.03.09 |
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in elements, housewares, resources, solutions, tools |
Ellen Silverman
Hardware stores and art supply stores are great places to inspire your improvisational leanings, using a variation of the children’s game “inventing”: think of uses for things you may not be familiar with.
The other day, as I was browsing through bins of bolts, screws, hunks of pipe and gaskets in my local hardware store, I suddenly flashed on “egg cups!” as I played with a rather moderne-looking 2-inch length of threaded brass pipe. The idea of improvising an egg cup using found stuff became a lens through which I scanned the store. It turns out that egg cups are everywhere, just waiting to be discovered by lovers of perfect soft-boiled eggs (see recipe below). read more…
10.28.09 |
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in copy this!, food, housewares, materials, recipes, strategies |
Sally Schneider
My friends N and O constantly inspire me with their simple, brilliant solutions to the everyday, imbued with their very unique, very personal style. Here N uses a lemon to stopper her carafe of filtered water: perfect. (It would work equally well for iced tea or lemonaid.)
When I asked if I can blog what I see in their home, they said “Okay, but please don’t say who we are; we like our privacy.” It’s a deal! The idea stays the same whether you know who thought it up of not.
More anonymous brilliance to come over the next few weeks…
10.04.09 |
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in copy this!, eating, housewares, repurpose |
I started viewing coriander seed as Instant Flavor Enhancer one day when I was testing a recipe and had a lot of cracked coriander left over. I tasted it on whatever came to mind to discover its slightly lemony-orange peel-herbal flavor and bit of crackle is wonderful on all sorts of foods, sprinkled on before serving, like pepper. It provides the perfect little alt-note on everything from smoked salmon to rice pudding to a cracker spread with crunchy peanut butter). My all-time favorite is on crushed new potatoes with crème fraiche and chives. (See the list and recipe farther down)
I was snooping around the internet hoping to find a coriander photo when I stumbled on this image and the big idea behind it: read more…
10.01.09 |
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in eating, food, housewares, recipes, repurpose, strategies |
When I’m camping in a borrowed or rented house out of town, I love the challenge of cooking in the invariably rudimentary kitchen with whatever is there. It’s fun to devise solutions to small dilemmas: making roasting pans out of tin foil, or rolling pins out of wine bottles. I’ve made cheese souffles in cast-iron skillets, and used the same skillet to smoke trout using dried twigs from a nearby apple tree. These small challenges are somehow gratifying.
The one thing I always bring with me, though, is a good knife – NOT a set of chef’s knives bound in a leather roll – but a simple, inexpensive, picnic knife from France, the Opinel
. read more…
09.15.09 |
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in cheap + great, eating, gifts, housewares, road warrior, tools |
A big part of improvising is imagining possibilities, or “listening” to the possibilities inherent in a situation or a thing. That can mean any thing, even something as ordinary as a hook, though its always easier if it has a simple, rather classic design that can work in a variety of situations. The trick is to ignore what the item was originally designed for. This handmade brass boat hook from the great, bordering-on-fetish website Hook Lady is a fine example. It is at once handsome, understated, and elemental, both modern and rustic. It would work equally well as a bathroom towel hook, a closet hook, key hook, fireplace tool hook…as coat hooks (a row of them on a wall by the door), or, as a “pot rack” (many hooks composed in stacked rows or as a cluster on an entire wall of a kitchen)… read more…
09.02.09 |
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in bath, elements, housewares, inside, reimagine, solutions, stores |
Patchwork was created as a way to make use of scraps of fabric by frugal people who couldn’t afford to waste anything. Though it’s an age-old technique, there’s no rule that it has to look that way. This patchwork tablecloth, a for-sale prop at Rogue’s Gallery in Portland, Maine, is made from stitched-together heavyweight vintage linen grain sacks. It’s totally do-able, and a great example of how “moderne” patchwork can look, simply by choosing the right colors or pattern. read more…
08.27.09 |
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in copy this!, eating, housewares, how-to, repurpose |
Dish racks and kitchen storage systems are among the most disappointing offerings in stores; it’s hard to find one that really functions well and looks great. The design group Studio Matière has designed a kitchen storage system built of pine splints in an irregular, ladder-like grid that can hang from a tree branch, or be free-standing. The tree-thing is definitely out-there (charming…impractical for many), but the shelf part does seem to me to be a design-model that could easily be improvised upon read more…
08.10.09 |
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in copy this!, eating, elements, housewares |
Ellen Silverman
I’m a big fan of rocks, which I haul home from the beach or country to use in various ways around my apartment, for Chicken Under a Brick Rock, or keep the air conditioner from rattling. They make beautiful, rather elemental doorstops. They’re also wonderul to look at with no use at all, piled up somewhere.
I know a guy who piled beautiful smallish round stones in shades of white and gray in the corner of his shower, to remind him the beach every morning…
07.15.09 |
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in elements, housewares, inside, nature, repurpose, solutions |
For years I’ve been buying the same glass and worrying that it would be discontinued. Marta “Cooler” from CB2 is incredibly cheap ($2.50), has a beautiful, classic shape, and feels great in your hand because the glass is so thin (a rarity with cheap glasses). It is almost identical to a glass that chic design stores like Design Within Reach offer for a lot more money. It is truly all-purpose, being not only great as a “drinking glass” for water, sodas and cocktails, but works strangely well for wine. It also makes a pleasing vase for a small bunch of flowers. I once used it to serve individual portions of rice pudding.
07.06.09 |
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in cheap + great, gifts, housewares, inside |
Ellen Silverman
My friend Holton Rower made me a cutting board from a hard wood log called Arbutus that he found on his land in the Pacific NorthWest. He had the board cut by a friend who has a saw mill, then carved “Golly’s Food” into it with a chisel, Golly being my nickname. Holton’s cutting board defies the usual modern thinking about cutting boards that is fearful of any cracks on the theory that they can harbor germs. Holton’s has a knot and a couple of natural cracks in it which is part of it’s beauty; I know this board is from a tree and enjoy that knowledge when I cook, an inspiring piece of REAL in a city kitchen. read more…
03.30.09 |
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in food, free + flea, hard, housewares, how-to, materials, reclaim |
Among Ikea‘s constantly updating home furnishings offerings, are a handful of constants that represent perfect, enduring, truly practical design at a really good price, and that don’t scream Ikea. My favorite is the Frosta stool, a $12.99 birch veneer version of Alvar Aalto’s classic mid-century stool. I have four in my office and they are so useful, I’ve contemplated getting a few for my apartment. read more…
02.19.09 |
comments (3) |
in elements, furniture, housewares, repurpose |
(follow the directions and caveats 
(fine for jars with a flat surface).
