College Night

Buffalo Wins (homemade)

Ranch Dip (homemade)

Carrots & Celery

Black Bean Dip (homemade) & Salsa (not)

Chips

Beer

Vespa Ride, Nighttime NYC

Arcade

Brazilian Feast (OMG)

Great people, great music, celebrations. 

Caipirinhas

Arroz com feijao

Lombo com farofa

Churrasco

Salada de Palmito

Tribute to Cy Twombly (1928-2011)

Perfect summer evening

Our neighbor gave me a eggplant from her lush summer garden, and I prepared this gorgeous recipe from the NY Times. Served with oven-warmed pita, and thick, tangy Greek yogurt, it made a delish veg meal - perfectly accompanied by a nice glass of Spanish red for mom and seltzer with lingonberry syrup for Dear Daughter.

Later, we took our bikes to the new gelato place near Eastern Market, where I had a mix of Sicilian almond and chocolat noir, while she chose chocolate chip and strawberry.

Just about every part of this post has something I love about my life. Neighbors, garden vegetables, good food, Turkish-style braised eggplant, anything from Turkey, yogurt, anything from Greece, the New York Times, eating well, red wine, anything from Spain, lingonberry syrup, anything from Sweden, Dear Daughter, bikes, Capitol Hill, cities, ice cream, gelato, anything from Italy, almonds, chocolate, local, community, summer light,  and summer evenings.  Bliss.

Desert Design Nirvana

Sigh...I love the desert.  While I generally thrive in the urban habitat, I think the desert might be my favorite landscape.  I find total beauty in its starkness.  I love the big sky, the limitless terrain, and its muted colors.   I love that it is quiet and empty, and the way life springs up in such inhospitable conditions.  Some of my favorite outdoor moments among a long and wonderful lifetime have been hiking in Red Rocks (Nevada);  exploring in and around Santa Fe, New Mexico; marveling at the striated hues of time - thousands of years of it - in the Painted Desert (Arizona); making day trips to Joshua Tree National Park, and riding on the back of those cute Peace Corps boys' motorcycles to the top of the buttes in Niger's moonscape.

And this amazing house built in the middle of the desertscape somewhere in Nevada featured in the New York Times.  Somewhere in Nevada is actually Scotty's Junction, about 125 miles north of Las Vegas on the edge of Death Valley.  But even with all that orienting, it's still Somewhere, Nevada to me.  At 1200 square feet, its relatively small footprint is sparse, simple, and efficient. It reminds me of some of the fabulous pre-fab, eco houses built and highligted in the Solar Decathalon,  This one, Lumenhaus,  I wrote about in a previous blogpost.


The NYTimes slideshow is gorgeous.  I can walk into every picture, and imagine myself writing by the window...soaking in the spring fed hot tub...sitting on the porch looking at the sky change....cooking in the kitchen (or just getting lost in my thoughts while gazing out its window)...taking a shower in the sage-green tiled bathroom....or watching the planetarium spin its show outside the corner bedroom windows while drifting off to sleep...x

The owner and family is Italian, and the design aesthetic shows.  Their personal style sense shows, too, here in the family shot (hello, Grandma!)  But the furniture is functional and affordable from Ikea and CB2.  In fact, the overall house is affordable, custom built for $290,000.  With a bordello and an abandoned chapel as the nearest neighbors, I'm imagining that it is not prime real estate either...yet.  My increasingly green sensibilities are offended by the energy it must take to drive in and out of here - car-dependent to the max.  But I'm comforted by the fact that there is no air con, just ceiling fans, and presumably smart window placement and indoor and outdoor shades.

I do wonder what all that space and closeness means when I take the romanticism away.  Would I go stir crazy there?  Alone?  While often an introvert, too much time with myself makes me batty.  Together, would we drive each other crazy?  Would it be disturbing at first, only to turn more blissful with each passing day?  Or the other way around?  I'm willing to try it...are you?

Composing a great meal of good food

One of my favorite summer diversions has become composing delicious, usually cool, more-veg-than-not,  meals made with local summer bounty.  All the better if it is inspired by and can evoke a place, time, and mood.  Someplace we'd rather be...anywhere, but here.

Here are some recent menus for Summer 2011:

Ciao Italia:  Tonight's dinner included roasted red peppers; farm tomatoes & garden basil; fresh buffalo mozzarella; sliced pepperoni; white bean salad with garden sage; spinach wilted in olive oil, garlic and a squeeze of lemon; crusty bread; and a bottle of wine.  Later, we enjoyed homemade cherry-vanilla ice pops.  Yummy, cool, and so easy!

Simplemente Mexico:  Last week, I used up a host of leftovers and re-created them into something totally new and easy.  I sprinkled a mild, white mexican cheese on corn tortillas and broiled them to just enough to crisp the tortilla and melt the cheese; a light pico de gallo sauce on the side; and served with a black bean, fresh corn kernel, avocado, cilantro salad with a squeeze of lime.  Cold beer made it lively.

Grilling in Greece:  One recent warm night, I grilled some lamb rubbed with garlic and rosemary, and served it with homemade cucumber tsatsiki, crumbled feta, olives, and flat bread.  The charred lamb was such a lovely accompaniment to the simple sides.

One Night in Nice:  Dear Daughter will tell just about anyone her favorite food is a Nicoise salad - much to my chagrin - it sounds so precocious!  What she really means is she loves La Nouvelle Observatrice's composed Nicoise with lightly steamed green beans, fresh garden tomatoes, boiled eggs, some briny olives, boiled new potatoes tossed with olive oil and chives, and tuna (if it's in a tin, I use the Italian brand packed in oil, and mix in some fresh parsley).  I usually whip up a lemon-dijon vinaigrette, and drizzle it over the colorful platters.

Crunchy-punchy Caesar:  This one is an American classic - originating, they say, from the Brown Derby in Hollywood, also ubiquitous at steakhouse menus - actually pretty ubiquitous on any American menu!  I do love the effect of the crisp cool hearts of romaine on a summer day.  The weekend's stale bread makes the homemade crusty croutons.  The aged parmesan reggiano is nutty, and procured during a weekend outing at Eastern Market.  I make my vinaigrette with extra punch - lots of lemon, lots of garlic, lots of dijon (extra forte).  Grilling even just one or two chicken breasts gives us enough protein for a few people - more people than breasts can - for once - work out here.

More Inspiration than Perspiration:  Salmon burgers have become a regular go-to meal around here.  Being pressed for time, a little lazy, and taking more credit for the inspiration to eat fresh and healthy, than the actually making of it, I buy pre-made salmon patties at the fish store or Whole Foods Market, grill them up, and serve on whole wheat burger buns, with a spoonful of 1000 Island dressing, some romaine (See Caesar - regularly in my fridge in the summer months), and a slice or two of tomato (see other recipes - perfect in July and August)

Late July Harvest Show-off:  Pasta primavera was featured recently on this blog.  A quick sautee of  summer squash, sweet onion, corn, tomato and basil - no need to be saucy about it.  I serve it over a small portion of pasta - the pasta-veg/sauce ratio is no more than 1-to-1.  Aged parmesan is grated over our bright yellow-red-green dishes right at the table.  Yum.

Don't forget the power of good, cold craft beer, chilled white (or even pink) wine, bubbly seltzer (add a dash of cranberry juice or a flavored syrup for fanciness), lemonade (with or without pureed raspberries), and homemade ice cream (just 20 minutes, plus freezetime in the ice cream maker) to get credit for being a domestic goddess.  Nigella, my luscious, eat your heart out!

Pasta Primavera

Summer Vegetables: zucchini, tomatoes, corn, basil over rotini, sprinkled with parmesan

Sauvignon Blanc

Weekend

Summertime, and the living is easy.

I'm not sure if it's because of the season.  Or because things at work are at a slower pace.   Or because even though my new boss is super-charging our workload and raising the bar big-time, I feel motivated at work and able to define my life and my schedule (which in June meant, I took every Friday off, and today meant that I worked from home in the morning, ducked out for G's performance, and then headed to the office at 1:30, but proceed to work 'til 7pm...on a Friday,...in the summer).  But at any rate, I'm feeling pretty chillax.  And I'm looking forward to a weekend that is mixed with lazing about, doing chores, and being lightly social - or "social-lite."

Tonight was "Book" Club - hardly about books, and hardly a club - but a bunch of irreverent urban moms who like to host good friends, cook great food, eat it well, accompanied by choice beer and wine, and proceed to talk and laugh until midnight or so.  Our bike commutes converge as the blocks get closer in, so one biker, turned to two at my place, where we caught up with two others a few blocks away, and half a block from our host's house found the other three biker contingent coming from the north end of our neighborhood.  I'll spare you the (delicious) menu (there are so many damn food blogs out there these days) and the topics of conversation (to protect the innocent, and because you had to be there), and skip to the end, when my ride home with two others took us the long way to better revel in the cool (in  DC July!) air, the clear black sky, the round bright silver moon,  and the car-free city streets.

Tomorrow's chores include a grocery shop, picking up my computer back-up drive, a trip to the library for returns and pick-up of the books I've reserved online.  It also involves some cooking - a Mexican bean salad and some homemade ice cream (can't decide how I'll top last week's ginger peach, but I'm leaning toward strawberry almond or cinnamon blueberry).  I'll swim in the newly-discovered 50m (Olympic-sized) DC pool that feels simply tremendous in the glorious sun and blue sky and experienced by my working, churning body.  There's a plan with G - perhaps some recreational swimming, and a night in with gameboards (she's learned Sorry!) or cards (Skip-bo, by the makers of Uno).

Sunday will find us at church, followed by brunch with friends...and then we must encamp somewhere for the Women's World Cup (USA!), before heading home at the very last minute for visiting with G's godmoms and kids.

It may very well turn into the Perfect Weekend.

La Nouvelle Observatrice

New York City Food Tour

Mmmmmmm...just back from a delicious four-day trip to New York.  All fun, no work!  Here's a meal-by meal account...

Balthazar - First stop after the train, a quick lunch in SoHo.  This spot is known for the rich and gorgeous, and this Sunday was no exception.  Instead of the sit-down, expensive, tres chic brunch, we opted for the take-away counter - a gorgeous patisserie - where a jambon-fromage sandwich on a crusty baguette and a fresh mint-lemonade on the bench outside while people-watching was simply low-key perfect.

Motorino - Later in the Deep East Village, we had to try to best pizza in New York (at least according to the New York Times).  OMG.  Heaven.  The fennel salad was impeccable. The well-balanced mix of fennel, orange, olives, capers, and parmesan had a lovely fresh, salty, minty, citrus-y pop - perfect for a summer evening.  The Margherita pizza (the true test of the best) met expectations - yeasty crust with just enough black char and a creamy fresh buffalo mozz was delish (though I found the tomato sauce a bit soupy).  A simple glass of Nero d'Avola- my summer favorite in Italian wine was a perfect complement.

Shake Shack - New Yorkers line up for this local chain serving burgers and shakes (now also in Dupont Circle, DC).  I haven't tried either - but I did did a kick out of those stylish hipsters lining up fro them in the summer twilight of Madison Square Park.  We hit the B-line (no hot food, no shakes) where with no line, no waiting, I soon had a sweet corn ice cream cone in my hand.  Another park bench served as a perch for fabulous people-watching and eavesdropping.

Tom's Restaurant - In the morning, it was off to Morningside Heights, my old stomping ground at Columbia, for a little walkabout.  First stop, Tom's - the 24-hour diner institution of Seinfeld and Suzanne Vega fame - for a greasy spoon breakfast.  Sadly, a bit of a disappointment.  The place has been refurbished, and lost it's dive-y charm.  The egg and ham sandwich on an English muffin was lackluster, and the coffee was weak.  I think coffee expectations have changed over the years from Folgers to Brooklyn Roasters...and Tom's is still with the former.

Petrie Cafe at the Metropolitan Museum - The gorgeous summer afternoon hopping between art museums and Central Park beckoned us to the Petrie Cafe at the Met.  The setting was perfect - cooled from the mid-day scorcher, but the wide windows to the courtyard presented the tall green shade trees and the Central Park scenery as if we were immersed in it all.  Here, desperate for vegetables, I had an early summer bounty salad of asparagus, peas and fava beans, and four glasses of NYC tap water.

Eataly - A surprising number of our first choice bistros were closed for the July 4th holiday, but we finally found one good option open.  The Italian food emporium is a huge warehouse of Italian groceries and food purveyors - shelves of pastas, aisles of olive oils, butcher, dairy shop, cheese, incredible espresso, a gelato store...and five sit-down restaurants, each with a specialty - fish, meat, vegetarian, pizza and pasta.  We opted for the pasta - actually the pasta opted us, as all the others were fully booked. A simple antipasti dish - pickled cremini, roasted beets (with crumbled pistachios - yum), shaved asparagus with pecorino, and olives - started us off.  Then, we enjoyed two simple pasta dishes - an earthy, rich ravioli stuffed with prosciutto and gran padano in a brown-butter sage sauce and a lighter, fresher cavatelli with cherry tomatoes and arugula.  All al dente... A good bottle of Italian red - what was it again? - completed the meal and the day.

Bagels - Poppy seed with cream cheese and a coffee from the corner take-out.  It was excellent - and so great to be amidst all the New Yorkers getting the same order as they headed to work.

PJ Clarke's (not worth the link) - Not surprisingly a food disappointment, but we weren't there for the meal, we were there for the New York Harbor view in the Financial District. Some sailboats heading out and Lady Liberty standing watch were five-star all the way!  My Maine lobster roll was bursting with sweet meat...but the iced tea was weak, the coleslaw bland, and the service abhorrent.

Paradou - After a walk on the High Line - my new favorite place in New York, though my recent discovery of Madison Square Park with the luminescent sculpture of a girls' face (Echo, Jaume Plensa) is a close second - we ate dinner in this little bistro in the Meatpacking District,  We ordered our most decadent meal of the trip, and it was hit and miss.  An insanely rich, curated foie gras was incredible - served with macadamia nuts drenched in Lillet! -  started the meal.  This was the highlight of the meal.  A medium rare steak was well cooked, but a poor cut- chewy and fatty.  However, its accompaniment of potato gratin -  finely slivered potatoes, layered with a nutty cheese and a dash of allspice - was heavenly.  The tiny pile of greens on the plate added lightness, but its lackluster flavor was not worth the effort.  A nice bottle of Cote du Rhone kept it all very French in the elegant courtyard garden.  While the overall experience was quite pleasant and warm, the meal itself was merely fair and tepid. Next time, I think I'll go back to exploring the West Village.

Bon appétit!

New York for Marriage Equality

A Marriage Equality vote is going to the State Senate soon - likely next week - as they try to catch up with DC's enlightened ways.  It's close, but it looks like it's just one vote away from passing, and that Senator remains undecided.  And in getting to that threshold, recently, Republican State Senator, Roy McDonald crossed party lines to state he planned to vote for it.   He was quoted as saying:

"You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn't black and white, good and bad, and you try to do the right thing.

"You might not like that. You might be very cynical about that. Well, f**k it, I don't care what you think. I'm trying to do the right thing."  

Way to go, Mc Donald.  Here's to evolving.  Her's to not seeing life in black and white.  Here's to doing the right thing.  And while, I'm at it, here's to TMZ.com, the celebrity gossip site for covering it and standing on the side of love.

Sweet Mango Armpit

Fragrance in body products have always annoyed and amused me.  While I don't always get unscented products, I do seek out the lightest, most natural fragrance for my hair, body, and laundry.  Recently, it seems like the scenting has gotten out of control - "Cherry Mischief" Clear Gel Deodorant by Secret (wow! - that's practically a porn flick) or "Va Va Vanilla" also by Secret. I really don't want my armpit smelling like a bakery.  It seems rather ridiculous.  But while I steer clear of such frou-frou scenting, at least they make some scent sense.

This morning, however, I was shaving in the shower with Skintimate Extra Moisturizing Shave Gel for Sensitive Skin.  I must have bought it on sale - it would not usually jump into my shopping cart from the shelf.  The lather was bright pink, and smelled sickly sweet like strawberry-mango cotton candy.  I looked down at the label to figure out what on earth I had purchased....

"Cashmere Rain" it said on the label.  What?!?!  Is that like a damp sweater or a muggy summer rainstorm?  Is it soft fuzzy raindrops?  Or wet velvet?  At any rate, it's the dumbest marketing I've ever seen in my entire life.  I can't believe no one caught that in the focus group.   Jeesh.

Radio City Music Hall, New York

Cool! Life's lessons in data form

Yet another amazing interactive data graphic at the NYTimes.  This one is a measure of the frequency of key words within this season's commencement speeches.  I am, as usual, particularly enamored with the data presentation.  The list of colleges and universities (organized by private, public, and military) with the commencement speaker name, affiliation, and link to speech on YouTube runs along the left column.  Key word (and by extension themes) run across the top.  And the circle size represents frequency of word use. So much information, so clearly presented at once; it can be looked at as a whole ("world" ran across nearly every speech), or disassembled in its parts (Sheryl Sandberg, COO Facebook sure said "Facebook" a lot, but it was a popular refrain across the board).

The themes tell us something about our times - "world," "economy," "Facebook/Twitter" - but also reflect the grandiose and seemingly limitless horizon that "commencement" provides -"change," "service/responsibility," "joy/happiness,"  and "love/passion."

I think I would enjoy Jonathan Franzen's address about the importance of going beyond "Liking" a la Facebook, but to take a boldder, braver, more purposeful step of "loving" and embracing.  And I find it interesting that Bill Clinton, the world's statesman, told NYU's graduates, "You should strive to find happiness every day and not believe that it comes at the end of the journey." - a lesson he surely learned on a visit with the Dalai Lama.

And back to Sheryl Sandberg - a woman who has made more money than God paving our new roads of human interaction through social networks and digital media.  She wisely told the group of undergraduates at Barnard College, a women's college in New York City:

Women almost never make one decision to leave the work force. It doesn’t happen that way. They make small little decisions along the way that eventually lead them there. Maybe it’s the last year of med school when they say, “I’ll take a slightly less interesting specialty because I’m going to want more balance one day.” Maybe it’s the fifth year in a law firm when they say, “I’m not even sure I should go for partner, because I know I’m going to want kids eventually.” These women don’t even have relationships, and already they’re finding balance, balance for responsibilities they don’t yet have. And from that moment, they start quietly leaning back.

So, my heartfelt message to all of you is, and start thinking about this now, do not leave before you leave. Do not lean back; lean in. Put your foot on that gas pedal and keep it there until the day you have to make a decision, and then make a decision. That’s the only way, when that day comes, you’ll even have a decision to make.

Wise words, indeed! 

Take this evilsayers...

Here's one of those feel-good stories when all that evil hate is deflected to good. Lisa Lampanelli * told the nasty homophobic Westboro Baptist Church that for every one of their protesters at her KS show she would donate $1000 to a gay charity.

Now, Gay Men's Health Crisis (NY) is $50k richer.


* Who is she? Not sure, but she must be famous-ish because I found this story on the celebrity gossip blog TMZ.com, that I indulge in on a regular basis despite having no idea who they are talking about.

The struggle

I'm struggling these days, weeks, months to keep my perspective.  For whatever reasons, it feels like the wind in my sails has died, and I am dealing with all sorts of self-doubt, second guessing, and a massive crisis of confidence.  I'm not sure exactly where I left my mojo, or who took it from me.  But I do know that I was in a much better place 6 months ago.  I know I am the same person, living the same beautiful life, in the same enviable circumstance.  I'm not ungrateful, far from it, in fact.  And yet, I can't seem to shake the feeling that I am less.  Sometimes it feels like loss.  Sometimes it feels like disappointment.  Sometimes it's a feeling of being overwhelmed by my current circumstances, while underwhelmed by the alternative.   My inner peace suffers discontent.  My creative spark is gone; and my energy is zapped; my optimism is crowded out by resignation; my passion, by apathy.

There are many things that lead me to believe that this is a temporary condition.  I have my faith that this, too, shall pass.  I'm aware that in some ways my time feels so dreadfully slow and stagnant, but so much happens over the course of a day, a week, a month, a year that I both don't see the progress, or recognize the inflection points until they become retrospective.  I know that a good swim can clear my head in 20 minutes (though these 20 minutes are few and farther between these days.  I know that my church can fill my soul with exuberant  joy, profound peace, and deep aches simultaneously in the best of all possible ways.  I know the best thing for me would be to let go, and let it be.  That my self-loving voice will serve me better than my self-critical one, but that ironically, that self-love must includes self-acceptance that embraces that inner critic.  I know that happiness is a practice.

But for now, all that shit is not kicking in and here I am...struggling...  

Old Boyfriend Tour

Yesterday morning, I had to drive from someplace to somewhere on I-495 - the 10-lane ring road that surrounds Washington, DC and connects its first-tier suburbs. As I whizzed passed the exits - Takoma Park...Silver Spring...Kensington...Bethesda - at nearly 80 mph, I thought of the once-boyfriend who lived there.  Our good times and our endings flashed through my mind; some sour feelings, but mostly warm ones washed over me.

And then a nerdy, bad pun entered my head, and the Old Boyfriend Tour screeched to a halt with a groan..."Notches in my Beltway"

OBL - Metrics

Osama bin Laden was killed this week by US forces.  I have many thoughts about this and other things - some blog posts rattling around my head that may never find this outlet because I'm busy and living life fully!  But I did appreciate this interactive, graphic, polling tool from the NYTimes that plots both significance of his death in the war on terror and emotional response response of the event.  Neither scientific, nor representative - it does allow for some additional insight of the pulse of readers.

Cool tool!