(Video link here.) This inspiring TED Talk by Britta Riley recently introduced us to the world of Windowfarms. These vertical hydroponic gardens allow city-dwellers to grow vegetables, herbs and fruits in the windows of their otherwise cramped apartments, all year long. Think ‘strawberries’!
But what’s most intriguing about Windowfarms is the community behind them, constantly refining the product and experimenting with new possibilities. This isn’t a community of traditional scientists or farmers–it’s just a bunch of folks who are passionate about an idea.
Riley describes the process of what goes on at our.Windowfarms–the Windowfarms open source community platform–as “R&D-I-Y” (research-and-develop-it-yourself). read more…
With the holidays soon upon us, I thought I’d post one of my very best cookie recipes. Or perhaps I should say cookie dough recipes: in addition to being able to fashion it into all sorts of cookie shapes and flavors, it also makes a great bake-ahead tart crust. Fleur de Sel Cookies, Earl Grey Tea Cookies, Coffee Vanilla Bean Cookies, Shortbread Pastry Lids and Shells for Tarts, and Brown Sugar Lime Curd Tart are just a few of the creations it easily morphs into. Once you know the basic thinking behind it, you can improvise endlessly with it. read more…
(Video link here –sorry about the commercial). We long been a fan of working subtle smoky-pig flavors into our cooking by using a good wood-smoked bacon – even using it to perfume chocolate cakelets. And we’ve always LOVED Maialino‘s margarita made with guanciale-and-sage-infused reposado tequila. Recently, we came across a recipe we’d bookmarked from New York Magazine some time ago, for PDT Bar’s Bacon-Infused Old Fashioned. It gives the method for infusing spirits – bourbon, tequila, whatever – with bacon. Perfect for making special holiday cocktails (and we just though of eggnog spiked with a slightly smoky dark rum).
In the video, you can see how to infuse spirits with bacon at .55 secs. The recipe for the bacon-infusion AND the Old Fashioned are below, along with our method for rendering bacon fat and notations. read more…
Ever since we learned to drive, we wondered why sideview mirrors couldn’t be adjusted to avoid the blind spot that causes so many accidents, and kept us awkwardly looking over our shoulder to see if any cars were hiding in it. We never actually tried seeing if we could adjust the mirror, testing out possible solutions; we just went with the accepted wisdom. Until recently, when we read the about Society of Automotive Engineers’ simple solution to the blind spot issue, published in Car and Driver, that flies in the face of what has been considered gospel truth for ever:
“The paper advocates adjusting the mirrors so far outward that the viewing angle of the side mirrors just overlaps that of the cabin’s rearview mirror. This can be disorienting for drivers used to seeing the flanks of their own car in the side mirrors. But when correctly positioned, the mirrors negate a car’s blind spots. This obviates the need to glance over your shoulder to safely change lanes as well as the need for an expensive blind-spot warning system.”
The diagram above shows the simple shift.
Our big takeaway is that the experts – and accepted wisdom – ARE NOT always right. We question a lot (making our kitchen cabinets way deeper than the usual, making a “built-in tub” a modernist free-standing one after we saw that it had feet) and that questioning is one of the themes of ‘the improvised life’. We love this spectacular example.
(Video link here.) In his riff on being broke, comedian Louis C.K. vividly echoes the Russian proverb: “A rich man in his fur coat cannot understand why a poor man feels cold”, as he addresses the many people he knows – a whole nation, in fact – who are broke.
Being broke is, in fact, an age-old dilemma which forces one to be creative to survive. The wonderful Chinese poet Su Tung-P’o lived in the eleventh century and made and lost many fortunes during his long life. He wrote this letter to his brother during one of his extended period of down-and-outness, describing his improvised method of budgeting, made all the more interesting by his unique point of view: read more…
We don’t know what we’d do without Cara de Silva, who almost daily sends us something moving and interesting. Even if we don’t post it, we feel like she threw a gift our way: something we would have otherwise missed. This weekend she alerted us to a stunning piece in the New York Times written by novelist Henning Mankell (famous for his dark and beautifully-rendered crime novels). Mankell writes about the art of listening and the importance of story-telling in everyday life, his great lessons from living in Africa for nearly 25 years. It is a quick, essential read: a perfectly written story in itself, rich with images and wisdom Henkell learned…by listening.
“…It struck me as I listened to those two men that a truer nomination for our species than Homo sapiens might be Homo narrans, the storytelling person. What differentiates us from animals is the fact that we can listen to other people’s dreams, fears, joys, sorrows, desires and defeats — and they in turn can listen to ours.
Many people make the mistake of confusing information with knowledge. They are not the same thing. Knowledge involves the interpretation of information. Knowledge involves listening.
So if I am right that we are storytelling creatures, and as long as we permit ourselves to be quiet for a while now and then, the eternal narrative will continue. read more…
(Video link here.) We were very late in posting today…and have been, here and there, for the past couple of weeks. We feel like the white rabbit, RUNNING, as we juggle and handle and make decisions…running ‘the improvised life’ while we work on a mind-boggling project (which we hope to start blogging soon.)
And all the while, we wonder if there’s something we’re doing wrong…all this rushing. Is there another way to manage all that we have taken on without letting something slip OR have our expectations become so unrealistic that we are just asking too much of ourselves? We can think of a lot of reasons for our busyness: perfectionism, ambition, hyper-focus on details…being a blogger (ha). We know so many people asking the same questions, we’re beginning to view busy-ness as the bane (or delusion) of our era.
We’ve loved Canal House Cooking since it launched in 2009. Created and self-published by two home chefs, each book in this cookbook series is made with care, beautifully presented with unique (and do-able) recipes. We treasure our copies, but we also like to give subscriptions as gifts–new books are released three times a year, but every little book is full of enough surprises to last throughout the months in-between. (Single books can also be purchased on amazon.) read more…
We recently came across a compelling blog post about letters sent home by Russian soldiers during World War II. Without access to envelopes and postcards, the soldiers folded up triangular letters that were their own package–”letter and envelope in one.” The folded format was necessary since mail needed to be reviewed by censors and couldn’t be sealed.
Although the letters are a great example of historical improvisation, we love the simple little how-to that accompanies the story – an origami-ish illustration for folding up your own triangular letter. It’s a fun, out-of-the-ordinary way to send a gift or holiday card, or just pass along a note to a friend. There’s something really satisfying about unfolding the paper and finding the letter inside; like having a friend in grade-school passing you a folded-up secret in the hallways between classes. read more…
A clear sign of our economic times, the Wall Street Journal recently published an article about the growing trend of folks who attempt home repairs before throwing out a broken appliance. The article cites notable increases in customer service calls for help with do-it-yourself home repairs, and increases in the sales of replacement parts.
We love that “fixing” is trend now, since we’re advocates for creative home repairs (you might recall our taped-up headphones, or the floss-mended sneakers). It also cools out the part of us that cringes at waste and the endless buying of more and more things.
But we also know that home fixes can be overwhelming, read more…
We always love hearing about where artists find their inspiration, and though this video of Leonard Cohen runs a little long, he has much to say about the process of cultivating an authentic “voice”. At about 5:26, he tells the story of how he went from fumbling around on the guitar to really “finding his song.” (You can also simply read the transcript here; start about 6 paragraphs down when he talks about Garcia Lorca.) Cohen recalls visiting his mother in Montreal and happening upon a young Spanish flamenco guitar player. He convinced the guitarist to give him lessons, and the young man showed up at Cohen’s home for three consecutive days. For three days they worked on the same six-chord progression, and Cohen, though he still couldn’t play as beautifully as the guitarist, finally had the building blocks of a song.
The story ends with tragedy, when the guitar player did not show up on the fourth day and Cohen learned that the young man had committed suicide. The guitarist’s few lessons would prove to have great impact on Cohen: the six chords he was taught that summer went on to be the foundation of all of his songs. (And there are many songs.)
For us, it is a key lesson in improvising: read more…
Recently, Manhattan User’s Guide featured a chic cast iron book bar from Beekman 1802 in a round-up of gifts under $21. It’s designed to hold open the pages of a book, while providing a horizontal guide for reading. It is 7 inches long by 1/4 inch square and weighs 4.4 ounces; with shipping, it costs $23.
We thought it was a great idea, being non-fru-fru, elemental and totally utilitarian, qualities we value in our attempts to keep things minimal. We wondered if we could fashion one ourselves out of a softer metal – say copper, which would oxidize nicely but presented no danger of rusting. read more…
We never cease to be amazed at the uses people have come up for shipping pallets. Their boxy form naturally allows for building block type constructions of all kinds. DE-constructed, they afford an unpredictable variety of rustic, often beat-up woods, in roughly 2 or 3-foot lengths. The chicest application we’ve seen lately are these floors made by Arctic Plank.
Arctic Plank “upcycles” the salvaged wood boards, though doesn’t say exactly what that process entails. It looks to us like they sand, stain and finish the boards to create a unique patina. To deal with the short lengths of wood, they smartly cut the planks to make in zigzag, herringbone or parquet patterns. These look much more finished than aligning boards vertically, which makes for a rag-tag look that has a completely different kind of charm. Arctic Plank‘s floors got us thinking about just what the possibilities for shipping pallet floors might be… read more…
As much as we love the vertical shipping pallet garden we wrote about in May, it’s flaw is that if you needed to move it off your balcony, you might be in some trouble. Enter the milk crate farm! When the bad economy stalled construction at New York City’s Alexandria Center for Life Science, Chef Sisha Ortuzar and business partner Jeffrey Zurofsky had a brilliant idea: use the stalled site as a farm. There they grow fresh veggies to use at Riverpark, the restaurant next door.
While rooftop gardens are popping up all over the city (see the Brooklyn Grange for example), this one presented a special challenge: it needed to be portable read more…
. 
.) 
