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Sharing Moonrise
I was milling around the coffee and snacks table at church a few weeks ago when I heard a woman about my mom’s age discussing Moonrise Kingdom. It was her first Wes Anderson, and she was gushing. “Oh, I just saw it too.” I announced, “So good!” She turned to me.
“Oh! But you’re so young. Did you appreciate it?”
I nearly dropped my coffee. Did I appreciate it? I, who nearly went on a Royal Tenebaums location tour of New York with my friends? I, who have watched his entire oeuvre, most of them twice? Didn’t she just say she hadn’t seen anything else by the director?
But she continued: “It reminded me of my youth. My young love. ”
Ah, she’s right. Perhaps I didn’t totally get it. Perhaps young Sam and Susie’s devoted love seemed cute to me, but not as quite as eternally true as it struck this woman. I noticed when we first watched Moonrise that our completely-packed-theatre was full of people of all ages, perhaps a quarter of them over 65. And it’s been fun having a movie to recommend to adults much older than me—I think everyone would love it but perhaps some might truly wallow in nostalgia more than others.
(fun side note for east coasters: it was filmed in Rhode Island!)
Jessica Hische designed the typeface for Moonrise Kingdom. Meaning the first time Wes Anderson dallied away from his first love of Futura bold, he turned to Jessica (click to see her url for the work. It’s funny). Joe and I briefly discussed what accomplishment Jessica could do next that would possibly impress us more. We couldn’t come up with anything.
Image by Adrian Tomine for the New Yorker.
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fudge brownie + espresso swirl
My friend and I tried the sandwiches from Frozen Hoagies, a food truck parked by Copley Square farmer’s market. I thought their truck might be the cutest one I’ve seen–it looked like an old dry cleaner delivery truck, with pink trim.
this photo mostly featuring Birgit’s cute flats…
The cookies were the best part, we picked fudge brownie. Next time I might ask for half the ice cream. It quickly turned into an emergency situation to keep up with it. (exactly what happened when we had ice cream sandwiches in NYC.) Ideally I’m a leisure ice cream eater, with many contemplative pauses. If Lux hadn’t been seagulling bits of my cookie every minute or so, it might have been calmer.
Whenever I have a chance to food truck hunt, I use the free app Street Food Boston. I love that it lets you click straight through to the food truck’s twitter handle, just so you can double check where they are that day. It’s tough keeping up with these guys without it.
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Pintos with Lux
She still doesn’t speak any words I recognize. But delight is her noisiest emotion and her palette has no expectations. For breakfast we can have oatmeal swirled with grated apple and heavy cream, or cold brown rice sprinkled with sesame seeds, or slices of roasted sweet potato dredged in lime juice and cilantro.
But it’s the lunches that I look forward to: at last they are the lunches I’d read about in my favorite food memoirs: lazy and slow with many plates crowding the table. My fellow diner has no compunction about being served from a pyrex from the fridge; and she loves to watch me trim and chop our food in front of her at the table. New ideas of simple combinations come to me as we eat, and I jump up to try them on the spot.
Inadvertently, it comes in courses. Begin with enormous slices of avocado and move to a plate piled with soft pinto beans doused in olive oil, bits of green onion and topped with a snowy layer of feta. Square of homemade bread, hers spread with olive oil or tahini, mine toasted and slathered with Justin’s chocolate peanut butter. We share gooey bits of camembert, spoonfuls of fig jam folded into greek yogurt, and tiny slices of strawberries, the red juice dying both of our fingers. A small plate of fluffy scrambled eggs and brown bits of potato. A sautéed pile of bitter greens with olive oil and slices of garlic. I chop up spoonfuls for her, wondering if suspicion of green things is inborn. It isn’t, she loves it more than the strawberries. Back to the avocado we go, for a final dessert slice. My kitchen has tripled its former avocado capacity—we eat the whole fruit in one meal, daily. She smears it in her hair as she eats, and why not? She has justified the ritual bath time yet again.
We look out the window, listen to the subway trains coming and going, and sip water. She loves to drink out of the glass. I watch as she eagerly sips and then lets the water trickle back out of her mouth, she looks thrilled with the experience. It’s quiet: our neighbors are at work, and the table in front of her has been stratified with everything we’ve eaten: all of it tasted, smeared, examined, and shared. It was a good lunch.
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watched: Beginners
We finally watched Beginners this week. I got it out of the library after Birgit mentioned it was must see. I relished watching it. You can really sense it was written and directed by the same person. Some of the lines would be so cheesy or typical, but instead come across just perfectly fresh. The female lead, Mélanie Laurent was so charming and her hair was the. awesomest.
I hope we can go see Perks of Being a Wallflower when it comes out next month, though I imagine I’ll be just as sad afterwards as I was when I read the book. Love any movies lately?
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Buying raw milk
Summer goal accomplished! Buying raw milk is something I wish I could do regularly, but had never done until two weeks ago. I’m intrigued that folks who have a hard time with lactose say that raw milk doesn’t bother them a bit. Even more intriguing was the promise of flavor—raw milk fans say the flavor is nothing like the boiled pasteurized stuff. So we slipped a trip to Robinson’s Farm on the way to the Book Mill and Tanglewood to pick up a few gallons.
In Massachusetts raw milk regulations require farmers to sell directly from their farm property. This keeps me from being able to buy it with any frequency, but I like the idea: see for yourself how clean our shop is, and buy if it looks good.Raw milk is $8 a gallon! For the farmers this higher price, paid directly into their money box, makes it possible to make a healthy living wage. Robinson’s also makes amazing aged cheese. One of them was called barn dance; best cheese name ever.
Look at all the reserved gallons! While we were there, multiple people pulled up, hopped out of their cars, picked up a couple gallons and headed on their way. Lucky ducks.
We started drinking it immediately. It was delicious. So creamy it almost looked faintly yellow, you shake up the whole gallon to mix the layer of cream on top. It was satisfying in a way skim milk could only claim on TV, one small cup was enough for me….until five minutes later when I wanted more. I am not exaggerating: I think I could taste the green grass the cows had munched to make the milk. And we had to chase down the cows–a good sign! Their pastures ranged far and wide and they were taking advantage of it.*
We brought home another gallon and made mozzarella from it. It took one gallon to make 3/4 of pound of cheese. It was so delicious, but now I have no problem paying $6 for 1/2 pound of fresh mozzarella–it’s real work to make fresh cheese!What about you? I’d love to be able to buy this regularly, and switch over to drinking all raw. Do you get to buy raw milk? Would you if location allowed?
*I’m curious to see what happens to grassfed dairy products this fall. Typical cornfed products are going way up because of the drought out west—will they soon be comparable to grassfed prices? Or will both go up?
Most raw milk farms are in Western Mass. There are several that sell raw milk, including Upinngil and Codman Farm. Cook Farm also sells ice cream and keeps the cows close by for the kids’ viewing sake. I’d love to go there next time.
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Online photo packaging
Lena Corwin posted about using adorama for printing photos, and just her photo of the glassine envelopes made me want to order! When I go to their website, however, I don’t want to order at all. Funny how that is.
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Handwritten Birth Certificates
These birth certificates by Mr. Boddington’s Studio are so lovely. That shop does the best job of highlighting handwritten elements and making them irresistible. The facts-as-art element, where you can’t help but read all the details, remind me of the personalized wedding prints done by JHill.
Joe and I are going through our ever multiplying pile of art-we-can’t-part-with and trying to decide what to hang up and what to put under the bed. We don’t need something like this, but I love the idea of doing it for a friend.
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Laptops around Boston
To get a little work done on the weekends, I love to go over to the Liberty Hotel and sit in their lobby. They have bloody mary bar with a breathtaking amount of hot sauce options, but they’ll also serve you a cup of coffee elegantly, just like this:
Grand windows, air conditioning, and no one minds if you stay for hours. But I also love the lattes at Voltage, the butter cookies at Tatte, or my very own West End library branch.Where do you get work done in Boston and Cambridge? I’m always looking for new spots that aren’t laptop-adverse. (did anyone else frequent internet cafes while studying abroad in college? So hectic and crowded, but so good for typing out a bunch of emails at million words per minute.)
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Food Revolutions of August
Two food revolutions going on around here.
1/ A girl named Jenny started writing down what she made her family for dinner every night. Then she did that for 4,500 dinners. Now, she has a cookbook and a fantastic dinner-centric blog. I can’t shake the image of her notebook, how viscerally aware she must be, as she pages through it, of those 14 years of living and living well. I want that for myself.
2/ Everyone who loves food is reading An Everlasting Meal, by Tamar Adler. It’s modelled on MFK Fisher’s How to Cook a Wolf, a book she wrote in 1942 to help people through the hungry days of World War II. MFK’s is an amazingly readable and warm book that somehow gives advice on all of life, and I relaxed as soon as I read that Tamar hoped only to be like her. I’ve been jumping around from chapter to chapter, but here’s a quote from Chapter 2, that I loved:
And always buy a few dark, leafy greens. This will seem very pious. Once greens are cooked as they should be, though: hot and lustily, with garlic, in a good amount of olive oil, they lose their moral urgency and become one of the most likable ingredients in your kitchen.
So true. Nothing judges me more as I hunt for maple syrup and heavy cream in my fridge than the bundle of bushy chard nearly forgotten in its foggy ziplock. The very cool company Joe works for would tell you that web video is worth a thousand words, and in the case of Tamar’s tactics, I certainly agree. She made this video to illustrate a few principals of cooking from that chapter, and it’s so great: how to stride ahead.
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podcast love // after the jump
I’ve enjoyed every single episode of Grace Bonney’s After the Jump podcast. She interviews the designers and creators you would typically only encounter via blogs. There’s just something about hearing people’s voices in friendly conversation—it’s the best! I also like that Grace knows so much about the design world because she’s been the boss blogger for so long; listening to her talk you feel like you’re eavesdropping on a dinner party with Brooklyn’s coolest folks.
There’s 12 episodes so far, they come out every Monday.
