After a summer of cooking avoidance (save the grill), fall always lures me back into the kitchen, with visions of shopping, baking, and cooking. My Martha Stewart fantasies run amok. Yesterday, to get the ball rolling, I eased back into it by practicing some “almost” cooking. For an after-school snack, I made Barefoot Contessa’s chocolate chunk blondies. The mix is pricey, but they taste like homemade. (and the dough is good, too …..) Later, for dinner, I made Real Simple’s shepherd’s pie. Oops, it’s actually easy shepherd’s pie. While I loved the idea of cramming lots of veggies into the potato/meat mixture, I found the sauce mixture (mostly ketchup) to be quite bland. However, if you’re ten, you may find this to be the perfect meal, as my son loved it. Prepare at your own (tastebuds) risk. Things are looking up, however. Tomorrow’s dinner will be orecchiette with sausage and roasted peppers, from my Everyday Food cookbook. Why not tonight? Tonight is soccer practice, served with a side of leftovers.For dessert, if you’re as crazy for Mad Men as I am, read Maureen Ryan’s (lengthy) article, part of which ran in today’s Chicago Tribune. I have to get caught up with last week’s episode “the Wheel” before I watch the finale tomorrow night. Hope that iTunes makes it available!
totally unrelated addenda:
Today’s Daily Candy:Everywhere got it so, so right. Click on over to Three Potato Four right now and check out their wide variety of uniqueness. This site has holiday gifts written all over it. (isn’t the pinocchio mug set adorable?) I’m going back to shop ….
Well, after a very dry September, it’s back to rain in these parts. Which is great for our newly planted French pussy willows, part of our long-unfulfilled plan to block our view of the alley. Here’s hoping that the plan b willows do the job!Sitting at soccer practice last night (the rain held off for that, of course) I went through piles of magazines and print outs and tried-to corral it into some semblance of organization. Lots of things that I rip out, or print out, are places I probably won’t visit, but love the design. You know, compiling my own Design Annual. While reading November’s Food & Wine (which for the most part was way above my level of cooking skill), I noticed a snippet about Franklin Fountain, located in Philadelphia. Naturally, went online to check it out. Such a cute website! Full of factoids, photos, and other ephemera, I am very curious to see the clear-toy candies. Sounds like they have “stocking stuffer” potential. Perusing their menu, I’m trying to decide whether I’d order the “lightning rod”, or the “ice cream waffle sandwich”. Like I’m headed to Philadelphia any time soon. Frequent flier I am not. Still, it’s fun to look.As for the link, once again, my cousin (hi, tt!) has passed along another fab photographer. Ann e. cutting has a great online portfolio to click through. My favorites are this (reminds me of Mav), this, and this of course. Love it! Find your own favorites at her new site.
See you tomorrow! It’s orchestra drop-off and yoga for me …… oh yeah, and checking out Jennifer Murphy’s site at noon. But you knew that.
After a weekend of weather that looked like November, even if it felt warmer, I plowed through a lot of reading ….. which means I have info to pass along.
i.} Today, Jennifer Murphy is on the Martha show making a sweet pumpkin man. Gotta see that! and tomorrow, she updates the shop with Halloween pieces at noon, CDT. If you’re lucky enough to live in NYC, next Monday, 10/22, she’ll be at Tinsel Trading as well. Jenny’s work is so charming. I hope that I find something tomorrow in the shop update, because I’ve been focused on her eBay auctions of late, and they’ve ended up going for more than I’m authorized to spend.
ii.} Speaking of money, Deborah Solomon at the New York Times has an interesting video (The Power of the Purse) about expensive handbags. Why do they cost so much? Why do we pay it? She visits Chanel, Prada, and Gucci (among others) and asks random people their opinions on handbag prices. Check it out online.
iii.} Good thing I went to the NYTimes online magazine, because otherwise, I would not have known that Martha Stewart clued a special online crossword puzzle. Crossword freak that I am, I downloaded it and am working diligently on finishing it without having to “cheat”, which involves a fair amount of google-ing. So far, I’m google free, but then again, there are blank spaces taunting me.
iv.} As soon as I’m able to upload pictures to blogger (!?!) you’ll probably say to yourself, “Hey, isn’t that the photo from last Thursday?” Answer? No. It’s the same rosehip, but I went out again to take its picture after watching “The Whole Picture” on HGTV-hd. The show is geared toward total digital photography novices (like myself) who run around and shoot in “auto” 24/7. Guilty, although I do keep the flash off most of the time ….. The episode was about shooting fall foliage, and I missed a good chunk of it, so next week, I’m going to try to catch an entire episode. Thanks to my husband for fetching me while he clearly was scrolling through the channels and happened upon it. There are so many episodes I could benefit from seeing …..And now, I’m off for house cleaning, grocery shopping, and the like. It is Monday, after all.
Friday, again. But this week, it feels like fall instead of summer. (I’ll be the parent shivering in fleece during this week’s set of soccer games.)On with the Five:
- Greed
- well good morning to ewe too
- fish and lobster
- the furnace kicked on this morning [365.18]
- autumn
If you’d like more of fall, and you feel like a good cry, rent Fly Away Home. It was on some random cable channel last weekend. Even though it was one hour in, I stayed with it ’til the end. It’s one of those movies I could watch over and over again. And I cry every time, on cue. The cinematography and the soundtrack are especially spectacular.
Have a great weekend!
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I love Kate Spade’s “behind the curtain” site. It’s so beautifully done, and full of things that I love obsessing over, like the desktop profiles, mix tapes, or just scrolling through the “things we love” to find something new. Yesterday, while clicking around to sites I haven’t visited in a while, I noticed that there was a new feature: “i’ve always wanted to ……” Brilliant! I think that at some point, I’d like to take up birdwatching, or perhaps learn to knit. Not sure about reading the entire dictionary, though. Is that your secret goal? The instructions on how to achieve your goal are awfully sweet.I’ve always wanted to have my own little card shop. Did that information knock you over? What’s stopping me? That would be reality. I worked in a couple of gift shops back in the day, and the all-consuming time demands, (plus hiring people so you wouldn’t have the all-consuming time demands) are the big entries in the “con” column. Finding a charming location, selecting the “best” cards to carry, making business cards, and doing the advertising are all big “pro”s. By the way, that’s how I came up with “The Speckled Egg” a few years ago. It’s what I thought I’d name the shop.What have you “always wanted to …..”?
