New critters at fivetrees. . .

City buildings juxtaposed against one another, tell stories. . .




City buildings taken by themselves, speak in poetry.

Xoco

Dan and I had dinner at Rick Bayless's Xoco last night after taking the train into town and walking through the snowy city. It's a funny little shotgun restaurant where you either squeeze in next to other patrons at shared tables or sit on high chairs at narrow bars throughout the joint. Casual street food eatins. . .

I had Chicken Tortas.


Dan had Carnitas Caldos (the broth? consomme? was awesome).


Both were really good. . . but the thing I'd go back for were the churros:


The churros were hot out of the fryer and came with their own little mug of Mexican chocolate dipping sauce. Is there a better dessert with snow laying a few inches thick outside?

Volcanic Engagement

When my romantic friend Dimitri fell in love with the perfect girl who loves volcanoes, I knew it was only a matter of time before he popped the question (and that's why Kari and I pushed and pushed and pushed him to do it every chance we got). D and Naomi are both proper forces of nature so perfectly suited for one another that everybody knew it was destined to be.

Well, folks, he finally popped the question this weekend, and she said yes! . . . and true to form, it all happened in the land of volcanoes (Hawaii) with the perfect ring:


That's right. That's a ring shaped like Naomi's favorite Costa Rican volcano. And my understanding is that the gemstone is peridot. . . a gemstone created by volcanoes.

Congratulations you two! We're all incredibly happy for the both of you!

Address Is Approximate

Holy cow. A friend (the incomparable Jill Huntsberger) showed me this video.

Completely beautiful.

Address Is Approximate from The Theory on Vimeo.

Created by the U.K.'s Tom Jenkins of the The Theory. Thanks so much for this uplift today, Mr. Jenkins.

Snow

There was snow in Chicago this week. . . a scant six inches. But it still made everything blue and hush and dreamy.

Fabric

A friend (Jill) gave me fabric remnants--some from her own stash, some from a friend's stash who was leaving town and moving to Oregon (Ann).

And now I'm having to imagine far fancier critters. The black fabric below would make several collars for fancy jackets and capes. And the brown wool will turn someone into British landed gentry.


As for this fabric, though. . . I don't know what to do. It's gorgeous and I might just want to immediately turn this into a pillow to keep it forever.

The Secret Lives of Inanimate Objects

As a kid, I had loads of stuffed animals. And they made me kind of nervous. Anyone else? You know, I sort of had the feeling that if I kicked them off the bed because they were taking up too much room that maybe they didn't take that too kindly. I thought that maybe they could plot against me if I didn't treat them well. That maybe when I wasn't around, they would talk with one another and hatch plans.

Truly. The Velveteen Rabbit probably had something to do with that.

So this video is reassuring. This video makes me happy, because no inanimate objects are planning evil things. They dance. They do the wave. They're filled with joy.

What Possessed Me

So, I think this is my new favorite blog: What Possessed Me.

That is all. . .

Eggplant!

I have never been a fan of the eggplant. I want to be--well and truly. It's one of the most beautiful vegetables, but I have never successfully tasted anything made of eggplant with enjoyment.

However, as such attractive veggies, they do make an excellent shape for crocheting and having as a toy.

Photo Evidence #1:


Photo Evidence #2:


Now available at fivetrees on etsy.

So, I've just finished reading Simon Van Booy's Everything Beautiful Began After. And I would like to say right up top that I hate the cover art. Hate it. The only thing worse would be any picture or illustration that shows a solitary woman from behind doing something--walking through a field alone, trailing her feet in the water off a dock alone, cooking alone, shopping alone. It's as if there is some book jacket illustrating company that has done market research and has determined that a faceless woman doing anything alone on the front of a book sells big. It kills me. So, this book's cover art isn't that bad, but it does make it look like the book is a romance. . . and it's not and so, boo.

But otherwise, this is a gorgeous, sad, hopeful, thoughtful book. Three people in love in Greece. There's a tragedy (it's Greece, no?), leaving two broken people, thankfully still in love, though not the way you would imagine. "Thankfully", because sad people need tethers or they float away. Because sad people need someone to tie them here or they might never be able to find their way back.

But Everything Beautiful Began After is about hope and where joy or beauty comes from. It's about fate without actually believing in it. And reading it and finishing it made me cry--in a good way--and then it made me think about two things:

One.

When I was four, my parents took my brother and me to Europe for three weeks. It's the only time I have been overseas, and I usually only remember really random kid things from the trip in a lot of detail--scary fountains, specific popsicles, angry swans in Vienna, a weird street play in Munich, toys in a window in Bern. But something I have not thought about for years. . . As the trip was winding down and exhaustion was setting in, I remember really clearly riding on the Eurail and thinking I was tired and that my parents looked tired and that the trip had to end. And we were sharing a compartment with a young Japanese woman who made us origami birds. She may not have been Japanese. She could have been Russian or Portugese or African. In my memory she's Japanese because she gave us origami. But she knew a very small amount of German and my parents knew a very small amount of German and so their conversation couldn't last long. And then when conversation faded, she folded delicate little cranes for my brother and for me to fill the silence. And then a day or two later, me throwing mine off our back porch back in Cincinnati and being a little disappointed that it couldn't actually fly.

But I think of that, that smaller younger version of me with a small paper bird that had crossed an ocean, that had been made by a person that we knew in that train car. . . not knew, maybe, but had shared a portion of our lives with. Who is she now? Where was she during the tsunami in Japan? Is she happy? And thinking about the way strangers come in and out of our lives, are known briefly and then become strangers again. It's beautiful.

And then. . .

Two.

My husband and I are in love and married because a young man he knew said "palindrome" to a young woman I knew. . .on a train. Everything beautiful began after that. . . Such luck.

And that's beautiful, too.

What's up with the Vampires?

And that's not even the right question. The question is really what's up with the ladies in modern day literature falling in love with them? Or worse, the lady authors who are writing about modern day ladies falling in love with them?

I need to rant for just a sec and then I promise I will go back to crafts and cooking and the whole shebang tomorrow.

I'm hip deep in the novel "A Discovery of Witches" and jeezle pete! It's like Twilight for grown-ups (though, I guess considering the Twilight series's readership, plenty of people thought that was for adults, too). The main differences between it and Twilight is that the characters spend loooooooots of time in libraries, and smelling and tasting wine, and discussing(shallowly) lesser known authors and poets from centuries long past.

But here's the thing that bugs me. The heroine falls in love with a total alpha male who is possessive, controlling, and constantly threatening the potential of violence he "might not be able to control" if she keeps pushing him--and it's all understandable and okay because he's a vampire. She knows he's a vampire. He's an instinctual creature. He is what he is. Blech. Puke. Choke. Cough. Cough.

Holy moly. It's all so insulting. If a teenager in Twilight wants to fall in love with a bad boy at just the perfect age for that kind of stupidity, I get it. But a grown 30+ year old woman with a PhD and tenure track position at Yale who has time off to study at Oxford for the year. The "Discovery of Witches" makes sure that she gets across the notion that having that level of education and working at those institutions makes her character a cut above the rest, but how am I to read the book as saying anything other than "really smart women can be ridiculously stupid too?"

And another thing, I'm half way through the book, and when her aunt's girlfriend/partner hints that it might be hard for them to maintain a relationship with her while she's dating something as dangerous as a vampire, her good aunt steps in and reminds her lover that plenty of people threatened to disown them when they came out and they won't do the same to her niece. Because being a lesbian and falling in love with a woman is totally equivalent to dating a guy who murders people. . . for food.

This vampire thing has got to hurry up, run its course, and then end for poo-sake. It's making us ladies look like victims. . . and willing ones at that.

Best Brussel Sprouts Ever

So, I found a recipe on Poppytalk that sounded good. But I had to change it. I don't know if I have difficulty with authority or just following recipes in general, but I can rarely leave them just as is. . . except in baking which feels like chemistry I don't understand and thus don't want to monkey with.

But these sprouts were amazing.


Preheat Oven to 400 degrees.

serves 2-3

2-3 handfuls of sprouts
2-3 T Olive oil
Ground Sea Salt to taste
Garlic Powder to taste
Ground Red Chipotle Pepper to taste (or Cayenne, if you prefer)
Ground Black Pepper to taste
(I put the dry seasonings in order of which you should use the most to least of. You can use the sea salt pretty liberally. But the idea with the red pepper isn't to make these little buggers incredibly spicy. . . just to give them a little pleasant heat.)
Honey to finish

Directions--clean sprouts as usual, cutting off tough ends and stripping a few outer leaves. Cut all but the tiny-tiniest in half, then soak in cold water for 15 minutes. Drain the sprouts and lay them out on paper towels--you have to do this with the cut side down or they will retain a lot of water.

Scatter sprouts over a metal baking tray. Pour olive oil over all sprouts, then sprinkle all dry seasonings over sprouts. Use hands to shuffle and mix sprouts on tray until they are evenly covered with oil.

Put in oven for twelve minutes. At end of twelve minutes, use a spatula to stir them around, flip them over, then put them in for another twelve minutes. (24 minutes total will carmelize them nicely--much more than that and they will burn.)

Pull them out of the oven and while still on tray, salt them a tiny bit more and dribble a little bit of honey over them. The honey--like the hot pepper--is not meant to overwhelm them or make them intensely sweet. It's just an additional flavor to round them out.

These are ridiculously good. It's like healthy comfort food.

It's Like All He Does Is Sleep

. . . and I pretend not to be jealous

Stewart Phillips Traditional New Years Day Brunch

Every year. First day of the year. Tea (me), coffee (Dan), orange juice, scrambled eggs, maple sausage, and warm out of the oven Danish puff pastry.

You have to start the year out right, doncha know.

Danish Puff Pastry Recipe

As part of a brunch, this will serve 6-10 people.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

First Part:
1 C. flour
1/2 C. softened butter
2 T. cold water

Second Part:
1 C. water
1 C. flour
1/2 C. butter
1 t. almond extract
3 eggs

Icing: 2 C powered sugar and enough warmed milk (1/3 cup?) to make a fairly runny, but still opaque, simple icing.

Plus: 1/2 C walnuts, finely chopped

Directions:
Mix first part. Divide into two even halves and pat each part out on an ungreased baking sheet. Both should be @ a 10"x4' rectangle. Both should fit on one large baking sheet.

Second Part: bring water and butter to boil. Take off heat. Add Almond extract and flour immediately. Stir until smooth, then add eggs, one at a time, mixing until smooth and full combined between each egg addition. Divide second part into two equal halves and spread evenly on top of the two strips of dough on baking sheet. Pat smooth.

Then cook for 60 minutes until lightly browned.

While still hot, drizzle liberally with icing and nuts. The icing is the only source of sweetness for this pastry, so don't be shy with your application. Best the 1st day, but also yummy as a leftover one day later.

2012. Girls.

2012. Hey everybody, we successfully got through 2011 and have come out the other side.

It's nice to be here with you.

I don't know how your year is shaping up, but I have pastries cooking in the oven for a quiet brunch with the d-o-g and the man. And then we're going to organize and clean and lay around. . .likely not all in even distribution. . . and think good thoughts about the coming year.

Girls | FOR NO ONE from FOR NO ONE on Vimeo.