A Sequence in Time

Source: Bon Appetit

Last weekend I took a day-trip to visit the Russian River Brewing Company with two friends. I'm not by any means a craft beer aficionado, but it was fun to explore an area outside San Francisco, and I did get a sip of the holy grail: Pliny the Elder. I typically steer away from hop-laden beers, so this was a walk on the wildside, but I nonetheless had fun.

The best part of the day was going to one of my friend's childhood home in Marin for a 'because it's summer and we can' barbecue and dinner party. His parents' house is a beautiful bungalow with lots of California Mission-style sculpture and icons displayed throughout.

My favorite discovery was a small wrought-iron garden table with a tiled surface. I adore decorative tilework and ceramics like this...I could stare at them all day, sinking into the colors and retracing the lines with my eyes. Some people find such abstract motifs cold and disconnected from reality, but I adore how each tile unites color and movement with a Euclidean sense of order and rationality.

Of the figurative tiles, my favorite was one that showed an archer on horseback (below). Even though the horse is partly missing, the blue frame and upward thrust of figures make the scene feel very immediate. If we had arrived one moment later, would they have moved out of frame?

At dinner I thought more about how perfectly the tile captures a specific sequence in time. You can tell what has just happened and what is about to happen, but it's a short-lived perspective, with the broader plot going untold. Who is the rider and what is he or she charging toward? What do they see that we can't see?

These days, I'm anticipating my departure from California and so am more interested in the future than usual. Astrology aside, however, I can't tell what will come next. I can hope and imagine, but I'm also a little scared. I move through each day as though it has its own blue tile frame...each day is an enclosed experience, unlike the prior and unlike the following. Somehow it makes moving forward seem possible. 

Fancy Rolling Pins

Source: Etsy

Isn't this the most delightful thing you've ever seen?! I normally hate ads on Facebook, but I guess they're on to my neurotic patronage of cutesy home stuff, and so this little number popped up in my feed today.

Source: Valek Rolling Pins

It's such a simple concept, but has limitless possibilities and so much whimsy! The rolling pins brighten up not just cookies, but also fondant and even pasta (though the latter would be a little weird for my taste). Somehow 'cute' goes better with sweet than savory, no?

Whatever your fancy, there are tons of ingenious concepts to choose from. In addition to traditional wooden pins, there are acrylic and plastic options, but the wooden ones are easily the prettiest. The majority retail for around $40. I plan on adding them to my wishlist. :)

Sources: Etsy

David Lebovitz's Paris

"We'll always have Paris."

Who hasn't heard or felt that sentiment at one point? Our family went to Paris when I was 10, where we stayed in a teacup-sized hotel off the Champs Elysees. I knew very little about Paris itself, but I found I was tired...tired of eating french fries in a baguette (vegetarian options being non-existent), tired of 3+ hours in the Louvre, tired of the summer heat. In years to come I did a fully 180 and became a die-hard Francophile, but the first impression was bleak. :)

One realization I've had, by virtue of visiting Paris multiple times and having known both locals and expats is that I don't actually want to live there full-time. Yes, it's truly beautiful and cosmopolitan, and I want to buy everything I see, but it's also incredibly bureaucratic and challenging, notwithstanding infinite patience and connections. This is why you'll find a spate of books that lampoon the traditional "I ♥ Paris" ideology, whilst still attesting to the city's charms. It's similar to New York...people tolerate its shortcomings because they have moments of awe and emotion that are inextricably bound up with the city itself--feelings that couldn't be evoked elsewhere. 

Source: davidlebovitz.com

David Lebovitz, of food-writer fame, is that elusive creature: an American who moved to and actually integrated into Paris. His book, The Sweet Life in Paris, is a mocking but loving tribute to Paris and its quirks. What gives him an edge over the rest of us is that he is by trade a chef and a writer--pursuits that are still valorized by the French (unlike the rest of the Western world, apparently!).

Food is the ultimate language of communication in Lebovitz's Paris, where his appetite for madeleines and Muscadet triumph over his bewilderment at the near-constant strikes, shoving from strangers, and undrinkable coffee. He has a witty, conversational tone that is easy to digest, if a little heavy on the Frenchisms--why "qualité exceptionnelle" can't be written as "exceptional quality" is beyond me. But what I really appreciate is that he details a lot of good Parisian merchants for buying hard-to-find food and kitchen wares. What a resource! This was easily my favorite part of the book, and what I'd really love is to put all of his recommended vendors on my itinerary the next time I go a-visiting... 

To conclude at my end, I've pulled out a few places of particular interest to share with you. Everyone has cafe recommendations, so these are foodie or kitchen goods stores, which are harder to discover. 

Source: proparis.fr

BHV 
Note: this one is a given -- it's the great department store of Paris. Sort of like Bloomingdale's, but it has an amazing hardware section to which I can personally attest. It's also very central. 
www.bhv.fr

Source: Le Petit Paris Tours

E. Dehillerin
Note: specializes in copper cookware. "Hang onto your credit card!"
www.e-dehillerin.fr

Source: Foursquare

G. Detou
Note: "Chocolate, nuts, pearl sugar, and tons of other products for professionals and serious cooks, with a special emphasis on baking ingredients."

Source: Maison Rigau

Huilerie J. Leblanc
Note: Specialist in cooking oils and mustards. "Ask for a sniff of each; the aromas will knock your socks off."
www.huile-leblanc.com

Source: Fleur du Poirier

MORA
Note: All kinds of pastry molds and supplies. 
www.mora.fr

For more recommendations, check out David Lebovitz's site. And in the meantime, let me know when you want to join me in jaunting off to Paris to explore these stores!! 

Summer Reading: You Are What You Eat

My first bread-making attempt

Lately I've been tearing eagerly through a series of food-writer memoirs. I think it's because I spent most of June having a love affair with my kitchen, and learning how to do a lot of new things: pickling, making jam, and baking bread. My mother is an amazing cook, and I can't hold a candle to her repertoire of Indian food, so I love taking pioneer steps (as far as my experience goes) into different cuisines and techniques.

As an extension of the my physical efforts in the kitchen, I've also taken to reading a lot of food memoirs and autobiographies. I have to credit my close friend, Katy, who has been building her place in the foodie world for several years now. I have spent many happy afternoons in her Berkeley apartment, flicking through her library of 80+ cookbooks (all of which she cooks from), and plying her with questions about spices and equipment. You can follow her personal cooking exploits at Dining With Dostoevsky, as well as her blog dedicated to Jam: Jam Experiments.

As to the foodie memoirs, they have been an utter delight. My family loves to tease me about my "relationship with food," which means to say that I am *not* a functional eater. I have plenty of friends who have a similar appreciation for cooking and dining, but we don't discuss them. It seems too intimate and even embarrassing to rhapsodize about things like grocery shopping or cast-iron skillets. Yet these are everyday delights in my life....which is why reading these books has been so wonderful.

Source: Time Magazine

Ruth Reichl's Garlic and Sapphires is a memoir of her time as the chief food critic at the New York Times. Even before she started the job, Reichl discovered that every restaurant in the city had a pinup and bio of her. To maintain the necessary anonymity of a critic, she cultivated a series of amazing disguises, each of which was really an incarnation of herself. Reichl uses this undercover strategy to experience New York fine dining from the every(wo)man perspective, thereby making the unhappy discovery that status and power dictate one's restaurant experience, from seating to the number of raspberries on a dessert dish. The writing is candid and smart, and even while Reichl struggles with her newfound celebrity, she remains sympathetic, warm, and utterly human.

Source: Elle Magazine

Molly Wizenberg, author of the popular food blog Orangette, strikes a similar note in Delancey, the memoir of her experience opening and running a restaurant with her husband. To be fair, it's really the story of how she came to terms with her husband getting into the restaurant business, and the effect it wrought on both her marriage and relationship with cooking. As with Garlic and Sapphires, the book has a clear narrative arc focused on a specific period in the writer's life. I also love that Wizenberg's relationship with food and cooking inflects her marriage and her livelihood -- it shows that our feelings about food go a long way beyond sustenance, into the realm of emotion and psyche.

Both books have a smattering of recipes, but neither claims to be a cookbook, and the recipes aren't always connected to the narrative. Reichl's has a little more depth and heart to it, but if you've ever considered opening a restaurant, Delancey may be the sanity-check you need. 

The Perils of Perfection (warning: soul-searching ahead)

I am terribly behind on updating Green and Glass, and to be honest, even had thoughts of abandoning it over the past few weeks. This is not a new theme in my life. Lodged in my parents' basement are dozens of journals and diaries, most of which peter out after a few lengthy, largely mournful, entries. Even as a penpal I was always the first to break off communication, and most of my hobbies have been short-lived affairs.

The common theme across these failed voyages is that burning interest whacks up against inevitably amateur results. I embarked on journals with the desire not just to put my thoughts into words, but to create a work of art. Each entry was, in my mind, a Faberge egg, which would continue to mesmerize future readers (of course I anticipated publication!) with its intricacy and charm.

There was also the six-month love affair with knitting, which yielded three extraordinarily mediocre scarves, two of which I foolishly gifted to others. In fact, I was so mortified by one of these gifts that I replaced it within a week with a professional scarf, and advised my friend to use mine as a dog blanket. I still stand by this advice.

The challenge for me is that I hate practice. I want, and expect to achieve, immediate, impeccable results. This would be fine if I were actually a wunderkind, but like most of us, I'm only OK when I start out. Sometimes I'm even terrible. Where some people seek to learn, I seek to master...on the first try. And so they go, my hobbies and interests, collecting in cupboards and boxes in my parents' home.

My blogging efforts have often gone this way...I am slow to create new posts, for fear that achieving a perfect result will take hours that I don't have or want to invest. I collect ideas, but day after day fail to execute on them. It's a big weakness.

Anyway, this soul-searching exercise aside, I recently realized that if I'm going to do anything new or scary in my life, I will have to reconcile myself with imperfect results. This is not to say that in other areas I've achieved perfection; rather, I've achieved comfort and acceptance of where I am. Wouldn't it be lovely to take that approach--acceptance of the process--to everything in our lives?

All this to say that I've decided not to abandon the blog. I do really love design and lifestyle ideas, and hey, this is my space to experiment and share. Hopefully you haven't given up on me and will stick around. :)