Dana Joy Altman of Real Food Rehab blog emailed asking for a couple of recipes she’d heard Sally mention on public radio’s The Splendid Table recently when she was talking about ways to improvise with miso. We’ve come to view recipes as notations of ideas, examples of ways to use an ingredient or a techniques that can…
Read Morestrategy: instant consult via cell phone camera
Our friend Fern Berman told us how she’d gone into a sunglass store and started trying on glasses; like everybody, her mind got boggled by the selection. So she devised a way to get advice from her spouse, Faith Middleton who was in another state preparing to host one of her in-depth interviews on public radio.…
Read Morethe decision of your lifetime (miranda july)
miranda july’s perfect, rule-breaking website
Miranda July is a filmmaker, artist and writer whose work has been presented at many amazing venues like Museum of Modern Art, The Guggenheim Museum and The Whitney Biennale. We’re started to check out her work having been knocked out a really funny, charming, completely unexpected website she made about one of her books, No One Belongs…
Read Moresally talks miso on ‘the splendid table’ + grilled miso-glazed fish recipe
This weekend, Sally talks about improvising with miso, the versatile Japanese seasoning, on The Splendid Table, Lynne Rosetto Kasper’s terrific food show on public radio. She’ll cover the basics of miso, and give ideas for using this essential refrigerator staple. Click here to stream the show or find out when it will be aired in your neighborhood.…
Read Morerecipe: rich porcini miso broth
Miso is most well-known for being the base of the miso soup served in Japanese restaurants (although it is also fabulous transformer of fatty fish…One day, I decided to try taking making a miso soup using a classic flavor mix of western cooking: caramelized shallots, Madeira and dried porcini mushrooms. The result was a rich…
Read Morecool material: rubber paint (+ oscar diaz’ strap bag)
[Photo removed by request of Oscar Diaz. You can check photos out on Design Boom and on Diaz’ website.] The very resourceful designer Oscar Diaz, who once made gorgeous utensils out of plastic bottles, devised a huge shopping tote called “Glueline” made out of a web of ordinary strapping material secured with rubber…
Read Morewhen pretty or cool = a bad idea
A couple of years ago, we started a file called “bad ideas”. These are ideas featured in shelter/style magazines that look really good, but practically speaking, are really bad. They’d come back to haunt you in no time. Stacked magazines seem like a perfect, charming solution for a table leg, but have you ever TRIED…
Read Morevisionary blue tape art work
While visiting Pam Hunter who was in New York starting her sabbatical a few weeks ago, I was spellbound by the blue tape art works on several of the windows of the apartment she was staying in. They were nothing more than rough-torn, inch-or-so pieces of blue painter’s tape arranged as permeable rounds – clouds,…
Read Moregoing from “can’t” to “can”
Last week, we read an amazing post by Anne Herbert at Peace, Love and Noticing the Details. She described the limited view we’ve been stricken with many times – and offered a simple way out. It is so perfectly and succinctly written, we’re quoting the whole thing right here: “I can’t do it. All the times I…
Read Morehappy easter…passover…spring…
With thanks to Nancy Raimondo, who made an egg-decorating table for the children at her Easter dinner last year!
Read More(easter) eggs as blank canvas
We read that the decorating of Easter eggs came about in the 13th century, when the church prohibited eating of eggs during Holy Week. They couldn’t stop chickens from laying however. How to identify those “Holy Week” eggs after the fact? Paint em’! Soon the eggs, which were already an ancient symbol of new life…
Read Moreself-sustainable chair: jooyoun paek’s contagious imagination
We’ve been a fan of the amazingly inventive artist/designer JooYoun Paek since we came across a picture of her pillowig a few months ago. We’re thinking we should just make a practice of stopping into her website periodically to see what she’s up to and GET OUR HEADS CHANGED in a flash. That happened when…
Read Morej.k. rowling on the fringe benefits of failure
One of the big fears (and realities) that can keep us from trying things out, taking them to the next step, or persevering with an idea, has to do with failure. We can judge ourselves like crazy for having failed at something in the past OR be terrified that we will fail in the future;…
Read Mored-i-y “masked” painted tables
Jon at Happy Mundane spotted these cool adaptable dining tables by Muuto (which means “new perspective” in Finnish) that can be ordered with different legs, tops, and colors. They reminded him of the possibilities for painting wooden tables in interesting ways by masking off parts with tape, something he did to wooden chairs a while…
Read More‘the improvised life’ in remodelista!
We were THRILLED to see ‘the improvised life’ blogged today in the renowned home design site Remodelista, as “a favorite recent blog discovery”. They featured our post A Mantle as Furniture (No Hearth). Boy, are we in good company! Thanks, Remodelista! Related posts: A Mantle as Furniture (No Hearth) Remodelista, Expanded (in Beta)
Read Morevacation for a minute
This picture is of the salt flats in the amazing Mojave desert in California. If you didn’t know it, you’d think it was a sparkling sea: a perfect visual antidote to March (which is going on way too long)…. It was taken by Morgan Satterfield, during a road trip/break from her blog The Brick House,…
Read Morejoshua allen harris’ subway air-fueled street art
New York Magazine sponsored this video about Joshua Allen Harris’ and his very cool street sculptures. He creates giant creatures out of taped-together plastic bags and positions them on subway grates; gusts of warm air from passing trains inflate them momentarily, animating them. He’s made a Loch Ness monster and an uncannily life-like polar bear,…
Read Morevaliant make-shift (and spirit) in haiti + a cool way to help
A couple of weeks ago in the New York Times, Lawrence Downes wrote a beautiful report from Haiti called The Kite Makers that painted a vivid picture of the devastated country in a few short paragraphs. He described the resourcefulness at play everywhere for those “with skills, strength and luck”. At the Petionville Club camp – donated tarps forged…
Read Moreduct tape and phone book dress
Jolis Paons beautiful, sublimely imaginative duct tape and phone book dress…. …has completely changed our view…
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