Sally Schneider
When Ellen Silverman was over photographing Prunes in Armagnac for our holiday food gift post, we were hunting through our collection of tablecloths to use as a background. Nothing seemed right. It was the end of the day and the light was waning. In desperation, she threw a big linen apron of Sally’s onto the table and set the jar of prunes on it. Perfect! read more…
Alessandro Castiglioni
Big Think recently filmed a series of interviews with Wylie Dufresne, inspired chef of WD-50 in New York City; our favorite segment is called “Why You Should Play With Your Food” .
We’ve followed Wylie for years, delighting in the products of his rigorous experimenting in molecular gastronomy, like freeze-dried polenta, deep-fried mayonnaise and hollandaise, smoked lettuce* and his ground-breaking eggs benedict. Here’s how The New York Times critic Frank Bruni described it: “On the finished plate, a column of egg yolk and a muffin-encrusted cube of fudgy hollandaise prop up an ultrathin, ultracrispy chip of Canadian bacon…perhaps the tidiest eggs benedict the egg-loving world has ever known.” (There’s a photo of it after the jump.)
As usual, Big Think’s interviewer asked some really good questions. And also as usual, the site is so glitchy, we couldn’t embed the video into ‘the improvised life’. But we did manage to paste the text of the interview, which is even better, because we could bold face the important stuff, below, which are Wylie’s seriously great words-of-wisdom. read more…
John Merkl/Remodelista
At Mill Valley Beerworks in California, they use .49 red-striped cotton Tekla dishtowels from Ikea as cloth napkins. They are reminiscent of classic French provincial tea towels. You can’t get any cheaper than that for a good-looking resource that invites improvisation: placemats, gift wrapping…stitched-together to become a pillow cover or… mapped with stripes going horizontally and vertically to make a curtain or tablecloth…. read more…
Todd Selby/The Selby
We were scrolling through The Selby when we spotted these round magnet knife holders in a house in Connecticut. They are a nice sculptural change from the usual foot-long-or-so bar knife holder – the knives look like they’re floating. We hunted them down online here
And then almost immediately we came across this re-thinking of a dish drainer by Paulina Deltour for Alessi: another round tool that has traditionally been a rectangle. read more…
Tara Mann
We were trying to figure out what to bring back from a trip to a place we loved, something that would be able to remind us in a FLASH what it was like. Pamela Hovland suggested we bring back a jar full of its beautiful air, so we did, capturing it in a small canning jar. Back at home, we find that jar hold holds more than the air; it seems to hold the very place in our hearts. read more…
Maria Robledo
One day, I devised a coarse olive paste as a way of using up several kinds of olives that were a little past their prime. I spread them on the counter and pitted them by tapping them lightly with a rock, one of the many pounding devices I’ve collected over the years to mash garlic, make pestos and aiolis, crush spices…The olives’ flesh broke open making the pit easy to remove. Then I kept gently pounding to smash the olives further and worked in a scrap of mashed garlic and some fresh herbs and orange zest. I use this versatile olivada as a topping for rustic bread, pizzas, and focaccias, as a sauce for pasta, even stirred into mashed potatoes When heated, the flavor of the olives becomes more complex and aromatic.
To pit the olives,tap them with something heavy-ish that has one flatish side: a pestle, a stone, a tin can, a hammer, rolling pin… read more…
We’ve long advocated the pleasure that comes from cooking in a well-made pot: one with good balance when lifted or moved it around the stove, made of material that conducts heat evenly, that feels right to whatever your particular style of cooking is. Some pots actually shift the experience of cooking altogether – for us that happens often with French copper. Heavily made, with beautiful lines, they have a certain something about them: they are both ancienne and modern, and make you feel you are part of a tradition, of artisan cooks and chefs, cooking with the seasons, with inventiveness.
Then we saw Dutch designer Aldo Bakker‘s new collection of copper. His saucepan instantly changed the way we looked at cooking vessels. We imagined cooking in this beautiful piece of sculpture that makes us think like an alchemist…what rarefied little concoction could we make?…the completely OTHER experience handling it would be. Which is, of course, what Bakkers copper is meant to do. Writes Dezeen:
“Bakker allows his products to take shape on the basis of analysis so that they can question their usage and, where necessary, give rise to new rituals or break existing patterns. The almost endless process of their realisation give them a sense of ‘inhuman’ belonging, questioning their own existence.”
“questioning usage, giving rise to new rituals, breaking existing patterns” are such amazing qualities for a pot – or anything – to have, if only Bakker had taken them a step further… read more…
Tara Mann
At a dinner party at wine writer Anthony Giglio’s house one evening, we saw him scribble the name of each guest on their wine glass with a white marker: a chic way of helping guests keep tab of their glass in a crowd (and avoiding unnecessary pours – and washing – of fresh glasses).
There’s a brilliant idea, we thought. So we asked Anthony what that marker was and where to get it.
Here is the story of his big fat improvisation, and the many ways you can use it :
“The China Marker is my secret weapon: I bring them to dinner parties as host gifts.
It is not really a marker; it’s a wax or grease pencil - sort of tacky when you write on paper with it – and writes perfectly on glass or china.
The idea was born at our office for the Food & Wine Magazine’s Wine Guide 
Tobias Wong
A couple of years ago (when ‘the improvised life’ was just an idea), we stumbled on this picture of Tobias Wong‘s file cabinet bed in Reference Library, and bookmarked it, thinking we’d write a post about it someday. It is such a great, direct idea, with many possibilities for implementing in different ways. But we didn’t think then to follow the little link below the photo, to Wong’s website, brokenoff.com where we would have seen just what a gifted designer and conceptual artist he was. We discovered this in the saddest way possible: reading in the New York Times of Wong’s recent death at thirty-five.
Wong’s work was very much about mocking the pretensions of “great design” in thoughtful, clever, often angry ways. He famously hacked – and mocked – the work of other designers – to their outrage – for his creations. He coined the word “paraconceptual” to describe his work. “When I do pull a prank, it’s my means of sending out a conceptual idea. It’s not just laughing at them.” Although he didn’t like being called a designer, all of his work had the grace and harmony of good design, while pushing you to think or experience things in a new way, like his Stoop Installation: read more…
Maria Robledo
Whenever I go my artist friends Holton Rower and Maria Robledo‘s house, I see “everyday” things turned on their ear. Like this square bar of soap placed in a too-small bowl in such a way as to shift the usual view AND be a practical way to not have soap sit in water. It reminded me of a “soap dish” Holton made for his studio’s shop years ago: a block of wood with parallel saw cuts that allows the soap to drain. read more…
We find ourselves inadvertently collecting images of fabulous dresses made out of unlikely materials, like this beauty made by Cristina Liedtke from discarded peanut M&M wrappers. It’s on display at TerraCycle’s Green Up Shop, a pop-up shop set up in empty retail space in Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City.
“To create the gown, more than 1,800 flowers were individually cut and sewn from 600 Peanut M&M wrappers, a time-consuming process that took over 100 hours of labor. (Five yards of silk charmeuse and silk shantung were used for the lining.)
Liedtke’s wearable artwork depicts flowers in bloom: The top of the dress displays the initial budding, while the middle portrays a ‘landscape of blooming vibrant poppies,’ according to the designer. ‘Finally, the bottom of the dress expresses a collage of fully bloomed mature flowers,’ she adds.
Terracycle is a company who makes useful products out of garbage, like an Oreo Wrapper Kite and planters made out of crushed computers and fax machines. They package the products in “garbage” as well: used/recycled bottles, boxes etc. Terracycle seems to have figured out ways of recycling that have stymied city governments.
Says CEO Tom Szaky: “Garbage is opportunity.”
Check out this video about Terracycle: read more…
Oven mitts are an example of a good idea with serious design flaws: shaped like a giant mitten, they are unwieldy and stiff, and don’t really allow for grasping hot things securely with one hand. But it never occurred to us to envision an alternative, other than ordinary pot holders. That is, until we got an email from Stephen Peters who wrote:
“Why do people use oven mitts when there are perfectly good inexpensive welding gloves with FOUR fingers per hand available?”
…my wife uses welding gloves I gave her, and loves them… The simple thin leather or goatskin style work fine. “
Stephen is an electrical field service technician who travels around Pennsylvania, Maryland, the Virginias and the Carolinas installing and repairing battery backup systems…and who obviously thinks outside-the-box.
We poked around welding glove possibilities. On the whole, they are way more stylish than oven mitts, and make grasping searing-hot pots and casseroles, or odd pieces like baking stones oven racks, MUCH easier. Stephen recommends read more…
Pascal Anson
Here’s another Pascal Anson innovation: disparate forks, knives and spoons, all painted the same way, are transformed into new collections of “silverware”. Such a simple design principle makes a cool unified set.
Here’s what Design Museum had to say about Pascal’s “Reunification Project”:
“One of the new generation of British product designers for whom narrative is an increasingly important element in their work, PASCAL ANSON (1973-) combines industrial production and improvisation to create products and furniture that tell a story while fulfilling their function.
Each object in Pascal Anson’s Reunification Project not only has a story to tell from its old life, but is starting to tell a new one. By unearthing orphaned objects – such as cutlery, tea cups and saucers, tables, chairs and tailored suits – that once belonged to a set but have since become separated from it, and by changing their appearance, Anson unifies them into new sets and imbues them with new purpose and meaning.”
Anson’s “silverware” got me trying to figure out ways to coat/paint metal – stainless steel, silver plate – so that the new surface will hold up to really being used… read more…
Sally Schneider
When my trusty lemon squeezer broke, I toyed with the idea of buying a new one
The process was a simple one, really, once I finally focused on it (the broken squeezer sat on the counter for a couple of weeks while I mulled): I’d ask myself “What if I tried THIS? and then I tried the idea out, fiddled, failed a few times: a heavy-duty paper clip couldn’t take the pressure…I had no nut to secure a screw, which I suspected would rust anyway…Wire was reactive and would keep the hinge from moving properly. I found the solution in my office. read more…
My friend Peggy Markel, who designs unique food and culture adventures, recently went on a scouting trip in Rajasthan India. She traveled from luxurious palaces to rustic countryside, taking in its monumental contrasts.
For Peggy, food is always about context, and this little film shows a fragment of the culture she was exploring, as revealing as its food, and as essential to understanding it.
Here is the story Peggy told me of how she stumbled on these street musicians and their improvised instrument made of bowls of water. read more…
