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The First Copley Square Market
Atlas Farm had pints of organic strawberries, stacked on shelves like the new bestselling novel, for $4.50 each.
The Siena Farm stand had bags of every green the fields could possibly muster right now–bok choy, young garlic, fava bean greens. And a basket strewn with oyster mushrooms, gold and brown. I picked a bag bursting with “braising greens” a mix to be tossed in a pan with olive oil and garlic. That, I can do.
Hamilton Orchards was back with their stacks of cider doughnuts, unbelievably fresh and cinnamon scented. There is no season (especially a rainy early summer) that doesn’t ask for cider doughnuts.
Burdicks, (on the way to Copley Square, of course) has their serving license at last and is serving iced chocolates, but I couldn’t resist a tiny cup of dark hot chocolate to cheer their new location.
True story: it all came out with Oxyclean.
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in the cupboards lately
A few things I love to see in the kitchen lately..
I like how it says “Ready to Eat.” I keep it in the front of my cupboard for encouragement. “There’s always me, if you can’t find anything else in here. And I don’t have any bpa to worry about either!” it says.
This is the mustardiest mustard you’ve ever had. For real. If you like mustard, you have to try this.
One of those things I always ponder in the grocery aisle, and then decide it’s too expensive. But really, $6 for organic peanut butter with real chocolate and vanilla? Happy Mother’s Day to me.
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My Skillshare workshop!
Have you heard of Skillshare.com? It’s a super website operating with the goal of encouraging everyone to teach anyone about anything. It’s well designed, in all sorts of cities, and is connecting passionate folks to curious topics all the time.
I love this idea. I frequently find myself hunting for people’s secret passions and expertise in conversation, but it can take forever to discover, even from your good friends! However when skillshare finally came to Boston, I was a little disappointed that none of the classes interested me. What could I teach and be excited about?, I asked myself.
and I realized: all the little lists of things I’d wished I known before Lux came, the discoveries I made in the first few months, the many tips I’ve learned from my fellow moms, the useless baby stuff I gave away, the I-wished-I-woulda’s….that could be a class!
And so:
A one night workshop for expecting moms in Boston! Obviously I’m a little nervous about it, but I’m also excited! I would have loved something like this when I was pregnant, it will be a good way for expecting moms to meet each other (which is so important!), and (inspired by the methodology of the fabulous blogshop) I will have yummy snacks and delicious mocktails to make the class even more festive. If it’s as fun as I hope it will be, I’ll do another!
Can I ask you a Twitter favor, dear readers? Would you minding tweeting about it (link: http://skl.sh/JP6pUr) even if you’re not in Boston? I have my postcards to pin around the neighborhood, the strangers I will ask to retweet, and other news-spreading ideas, but I’m firm believer in the serendipitous power of Twitter. I’d be so grateful!
And what about you? What topic do you love to talk about with interested listeners? What would you like to talk a class in? If Skillshare isn’t in your city, you can still sign up and suggest your city next!
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product geek: floss
You know how some products are name brand scams? Like, the product is exactly the same, no matter which brand you buy?
Well. This is apparently not true for floss.
My mom put Reach “woven” floss (the pink package) in our stockings at Christmas. I loved it and used it all up. Then I went to the store, and thought, “oh they don’t have it. I’ll just get this Market Basket floss instead.” So much worse! Awful. I’m putting it in the toolbox for craft projects.
Friends, advancements have been made in the floss arena. Reach for Reach. Seriously.
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happy girls are the prettiest girls
Guess what’s on my desktop right now?
This pretty little number, designed by my friend Kellyn. I love the green wood frame and the graph paper.
She was inspired by The Happy Show, a free show in Philadelphia right now. We stopped by when we were there two weeks ago. I highly recommend. It’s on until August 12th. Everything about it was unlike any art show I’d ever been to.
If you click on the image, it will give you a bigger size for closer examination.
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I have never flown…
So far I’ve watched this Japanese motocycle crafter video 3x. It takes my breath away.
I first saw it on Seesalt, a beautifully simple website for encountering little moments of art.
This quote helps me understand motocycle drivers, as I never have before:
It feels nothing like how violent it looks from the outside
It’s very serene
The ground and the sky are so white, there is no boundary between them
I have never flown, but it feels like flying in an airplane using a reciprocating engine
I can’t tell you how peaceful it is.
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/13159991]
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Watch your cardamom pods
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/37876758]
I’ve been using tips from this video to make my chai lately. I’m not grating my own ginger and peeling cardamom pods, oh no. I have chai mixes from Cafe Luxxe and Bellocq Tea Atelier for that.
But I am letting my milk and water rise and fall three times, and putting in a good spoonful of hearty raw sugar. My nineteen year old brother Wilson is living in India this spring. When we talk on Skype, I like to relate to his life on food levels. How the naan tastes, how much the mangos cost, how he and his roommate get really confused about how to make good chai.
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Boston Embroidery Hoop Art
I
swoonsmile happily over these pretty earrings and elegant embroidery every time I walk past E.R. Butler on Charles Street. I like the varying textures of the tree with the thickly knotted trunk. That texture combined with the steely butterflies and droplet pearls is so lovely.
Recently I learned that the woman who made the embroidery hoops for the shop is on Etsy, and lives in Boston!
She, Mary Louise, says she was inspired by the changing tree colors in the Public Garden, a spot Lux and I escape to regularly. Look at these pretty options!
I would love make something like this someday, but mostly I would love to pay someone else to do it better and more beautifully than me! These are $45 each. Which color are you drawn to?
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Favorite Travel Apps
We spent a long weekend in Philadelphia, meeting up with Joe’s family and several good old friends who have settled there. With just three days, we had lots we wanted to do, eat, and see! Here are my favorite apps that helped make a fantastic weekend:
LevelUp. We all know the future is paying with your phone and leaving that silly wallet behind (except we would still carry our purses because we love them so much, obviously). If you too want card-free transactions, imagine having a baby in your arms and a diaper bag on your shoulder: Suddenly you want it 100x more, right? I love that LevelUp is a pay-with-your phone option at most of my favorite spots in Boston, and it is Philly too. Because they give you credit for your first visit to most places, my afternoon macchiato at the lovely cafe down the street from my hotel was free!
LevelUp is in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Philly, San Diego, Seattle, and lots more cities! It’s a free app, but if you sign up with my code 65582, we both get a $5 credit. bing.
Best Parking. Is there a more confusing nightmare than parking garage signage? I think not. Especially if you’re a deal hunter, a street full of garages all offering different rates is terrifying! I used Best Parking (which is in loads of cities) to sneak out the best overnight rate near our hotel. It’s intuitively designed (it’s owned by a twenty-three year old!), and can use either your address or your location to help you find parking.
Yelp-the Bookmark List. Don’t worry, I too have thoughts about how much therapy most Yelp users need. Especially when they use a restaurant review as a place to complain about their waiter. But! Yelp on your browser and on your phone make it easy to “bookmark” places you want to go. Then you can pull up the app and see where those places are on a map, and hunt them down.
This is super helpful if you’re chatting with someone and they’re like, “oh try this spot! and check in there! and make sure you have oysters over there!” and the names are flying past you and you’re just nodding along, wishing your dictation secretary was around. And, not to be a complete nerd here, but the user experience on Yelp is way better than Google maps. For one thing, it searches businesses more quickly and more accurately. For another, the labels on the map are movable, so they don’t obscure whatever you’re trying to look at (hint hint Google Maps!).
Venmo. Joe and I took advantage of the grandparents in the city and went out to all sorts of fun drinks spots with friends. But then the bill shows up at the end, and turns out everyone ordered different things: a salad here, a water there, three cocktails over here (who could have ordereed those??). Venmo makes it easy to let one person pay the bill and everyone else pay you back on the spot. Because we know those promises of “oh, I’ll get the next one!” never really work out.
What about you? Any apps you’re loving on the go these days?
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April’s Boston Food Swap
Yesterday I packed up my fourteen bags of homemade biscotti (one recipe from Cook’s Illustrated utilizing instant grits, one receipe from Maida Heatter with espresso and lots of chocolate) and headed to the Boston Food Swap. It was my first time attending this monthly event and it was…probably the most fun I’ve ever had at an event in Boston. Serious.
Despite the rain almost forty people showed up, carting their jars of lemon curd, their recycled bottles of kombucha, their tins of cardamum brown sugar simple syrup, their bags of flourless brownies made with dates and coconut, their jars of pickled ramps…
(both Birgit and I are into packaging…obviously. I used some ribbon from Angela Liguori, a wonderful Italian Brookline-based artist.)
I circled the room tasting everything, quizzing people on recipes, asking for advice on where they found certain ingredients, sharing excitement for our summer CSAs to kick in….
It was a local foodie’s dream date, and the best part is you really don’t have to be a “foodie” in any intimidating sense of the word. Some people brought trail mix, or chocolate covered pretzels, or grasshopper brownies—easy things that everyone loves to eat.
Then we scribbled down our offers on each other’s “bidding sheets” and shortly after that, chaos of trading ensued. My favorite part was learning that the person I hoped to trade with, also wanted to trade with me! Foodie kismet!
Here’s everything I came away with:
Rosemary shortbread, homemade chive cheese, cherry & apple chutney, pancetta, basil mozzarella, homemade salsa….wow!
So! You can google and see if there’s one of these in your town, there probably already is! If there isn’t, would you ever want to start one in your area? What would you bring?