Easy Bake

As I mentioned the other day, I was attending a dinner for master pastry chef, Nick Malgieri, in the spectacular kitchen of my dear friend, Julie. Well, it was quite an event. At the risk of sounding like the food blogger that I was, I have to tell you that all of the food bloggers who attended the dinner pulled out their best recipes to share with Chef Nick and the group! There were beautiful salads with grains like faro and couscous, and a pasta and greens salad with freshly grilled tuna fish, delicious broccoli with sesame seed oil and pepper, a huge assortment of gorgeous cheeses and for dessert, an incredible selection! There were black and white pepper cookies with a bourbon buttercream filling, chocolate cookies with chocolate nibs, puffy heart cookies, a pumpkin, ginger and pecan cheese cake, and of course, some offerings from Chef Nick – a bourbon chocolate cake, and some hazlenut biscotti with a touch of anise.Each guest received a signed copy of Chef Nick’s newest book - Bake! Essential Techniques for Perfect Baking. This is a great book for both the beginning and experienced baker, with photographs illustrating the techniques used to make most of the recipes. I always find it a huge help to have the steps shown one-by-one. I am going to give my copy of Bake! to one lucky reader. All you have to do is leave a comment and tell me what your favourite baked good is by Friday, February 25th. It can be bread or biscuits, cookies or cake, pies or pizza. If you want to link a recipe in your comment, I am sure other readers would appreciate that.

Oh, you want to know what I took to the party? Ice.

Bits and Bobs

I always loved this expression when I lived in Wales and people would talk about little bits and bobs… It’s sort of like odds and ends here in the States.

Thanks to everyone for their great stories about having their dogs sleeping with them. I am so glad I am not alone in this!  Connor is also grateful that he’s got such good company keeping parents cuddled up!Today was the first day that we got a glimpse of spring here in the mid-Atlantic region! It was just a stunner of a day, and I am so glad I was out and about to enjoy it. The warmth of the sun, and the full moon tonight mean that spring’s just around the corner. This time last year, we were still digging out from the massive snowstorms that had dumped 50+ inches of snow on Baltimore!

I am guessing that in a few weeks, the peonies will start arriving in the stores and that will be a happy time for me! I try to pick up fresh flowers once a week a the local market, and sometimes the pickins are slim and none and slim’s outta town! On Saturday evening, I am going to a party with Chef Nick Malgieri, author of the cookbook “BAKE! Essential Techniques for Perfect Baking”.  He’s an internationally-known pastry chef, and a number of the food bloggers in the area will be cooking along with him. I, however, will be drinking and eating, not cooking!  I will be reporting back to you on this event!

Puppy Love

There’s a fascinating article in the New York Times today about people who sleep with their dogs. When I had my old dog, Frank, he never, ever, ever got in my bed. He slept on the side of my bed, protecting me. When I got Connor, he was between four and six years old. He already had his habits, good and bad. The very first night, he jumped up on my bed. I shoved him off. He jumped back up. I shoved him off. This went on for a while, until I fell asleep. When I woke up, there was Connor. I figured it was a battle I wasn’t going to win. While some doctors strongly advise against having your pet sleep with you, I figure that at least I am not like the woman in the NYT article, who sleeps with her pot-bellied pig.What are your thoughts on sleeping with pets?

Rasta Pasta

I used to write a food blog, but I gave it up. And since I never cook, it was pretty comical for me to even have a food blog. But I do like to eat!

Tonight, for dinner I had something I call Rasta Pasta. It’s not a recipe, but a shape of pasta, which got me to thinking about all of the amazing shapes of pasta. When I was in Italy a few years ago, I saw shapes and sizes that I’d never seen in the States, and I brought a number of bags of pasta home. My Rasta Pasta is really fusilli col buco, which is a 16-inch long spiral shape, with a hole down the center, so it can cook evenly. (Click the picture below for the recipe)My recipe is super simple: fusilli col buco pasta + a dab of very good butter + parmigiano reggiano, shaved on top with a Microplane grater + a sprinkle of good sea salt.

Damn! Looking at some of the recipes with the pictures of fusilli col buco, I might just have to start cooking. Too bad the recipe for this is in Italian! (Click the picture for the recipe.)

WSJ Magazine Publication Schedule

If you’re like me, and are a big fan of the WSJ Weekend, and especially their “Off Duty” section and the WSJ. Magazine, you’ve been frustrated by their erratic publication schedule. Is it monthly? Is it seasonal? There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to when it’s published.But, a little Molly-bird at the WSJ’s PR firm told me that the next issue is due out on February 26th, as the March issue, and then monthly after that, except in July/August. So we can look forward to 10 issues of WSJ. Magazine each year!Any magazine that publishes an article about Bryan Ferry’s London digs, has me for a big fan! I can’t wait to see what’s in store in the next issue!

I {Heart} This!

I was looking through some old photographs at my mum’s house today and came across this picture of the dining room at St. John’s, the house where I was raised. I loved this room so much. It was classic and elegant and it held so many happy memories of huge Christmas parties, small birthday parties, regular dinners with silver and linen and lots and lots of lively conversation. But there were also some unhappy memories of sitting at the table for hours while refusing with all of my might and main to eat Brussels sprouts, which I do eat nowadays!There were three large windows in this room – the two that you can see, and one to your right. There were large pocket doors, which we rarely closed because they stuck. The paneling around the room was about five feet high and there were channels on the top to hold plates. At Christmas, we lined up all of the cards along the rail.

The wallpaper in the dining room was handprinted,and the curtains had been printed to match, but in a different colourway. The top picture is about 10+ years earlier than the lower picture, and you can see that the dining room table has changed, and a rug has been added. Undoubtedly, the flowers on the table in the top image came from our garden. We had hundreds of daffodils and jonquils on the hills in front of our house and throughout our gardens.

There was a contact sheet of some other pictures of our house and one is the only picture we have of the full fireplace in the living room. The chimney breast was made of mahogany panels, which have since been painted. You can also see a little of the beamed ceiling in this picture. We never found out the story of the carved heads, as the man who built the house disappeared before the house was finished, and was never found. The door to the left of the fireplace leads to the library. It was mahogany on one side, and oak on the other! The final image is looking from the dining room across the hall into the living room. The fireplace shown above would have been to the right. This room was filled with light, as you can see, and a window seat spanned the length of the windows. There was nothing better than curling up with a book there, or taking a little catnap in the sunshine during the winter. Originally, there were valances that matched the beams on the ceiling, but the previous owners took them. Our family lived at St. John’s for nearly 30 years and it was just the most amazing house to spend a good portion of my life in.

Classical Glass

Anyone of a certain age will remember the instrumental song from the 1960’s called Classical Gas by Mason Williams. If not, click here to listen.

For a few years, I have collected classical glass – glassware designed to look like classical Wedgwood Jasperware patterns, right down to the Greek, Roman, Egyptian and even Chinoiserie motifs, as well as the colours and details. It is generally referred to as Hellenic ware, even though it’s not all Greek motifs. This glassware was made by the Jeannette Glass company which was founded in Pennsylvania in the early 1900’s and went out of existence in the late 1980’s.

The colours of the glassware range from a pale bright Wedgwood blue, to a darker blue to the lovely green. All of the pieces have white figures on them, just as the Wedgwood Jasperware pieces do, and much of the glassware has hand-painted gold rims, although many glasses’ rims have faded over time. The Hellenic ware comes in a huge variety of shapes and sizes as you can see here. All of the themes are classic, more than 2000 years old!  You could find a Greek, Roman or Egyptian vase in any museum with nearly the same figures in the same poses.The glassware is very detailed, with the motifs covering nearly the entire piece. I have listed a number of these glasses sets on my Etsy site and they always sell.  This set is Egyptian. This set has an Indochine motif. This set is Chinoiserie. I think these classical glasses are lots of fun. What about you?

David’s New Chair

My über-talented friend David Wiesand bought a chair the other day and when I was visiting him yesterday, I had a chance to test drive it. Zoooooom!McLain-Wiesand already makes some great chairs, and David and I were contemplating what we like and what we don’t about this chair. We thought about getting rid of the rosette on the front and substituting a sunburst in inlaid wood. Maybe a wood that’s a little lighter in colour, and a different upholstery? What would you do to change this chair?

What a Weck!

I’ve just discovered the most amazing jars, if you can believe that! I hate putting my food in plastic when I am storing it or reheating it. It makes me uneasy about what chemicals are leaching into my food. So I have started collecting old Pyrex glass storage containers, and recently, I came across a cache of Weck jars.These jars are made in the US, but were originally German-made. Their shapes are so much more elegant than regular glass jars, and their rubber ring seal and glass lids are pretty much chemical free.  The lids are held on by little metal clamps.

I like the fact that they can go from the fridge to the microwave, and I don’t have to worry about chemicals. They’re available through Heath Ceramics on-line, but if you order through Weck, it’s all via snail-mail. Or you could make light fixtures out of the Weck asparagus jars, like the Delancey Restaurant in Seattle did.

Clogs and Stockinged Feet

My brother sent me the Welsh proverb “bad news goes about in clogs, good news in stockinged feet” or newyddion drwg yn mynd am yn clocsiau, newyddion da yn stocio traed in Welsh, in an e-mail today and I thought how apropos this is in our world of social media, digital news and reviews and certainly blogs.This weekend, I had a horrible experience at a local restaurant, which we’ve always loved. It’s recently changed hands and the service, food and staff have really gone downhill. When I got home, I looked at the restaurant’s Facebook page, and discovered that we were not the only ones unhappy with our recent experience there.

What really surprised me was that the restaurant had not refuted any of the comments nor had they deleted them. It actually looked like they had set up the new FB page when they took over the restaurant, but have never checked it since. So, anyone looking for information on the place only saw very negative comments and no one defending the restaurant - not even the owners.In an age where image and brand are your currency, it is essential to keep control over the message that is getting out about you, your company and your name.

If you don’t do these few things already, you should try them:

• Google yourself every few months. Use different iterations of your name. See what’s out there about you. See what other people have written. Check what information of yours is public knowledge. If you have a blog, check that, too.
• Look for your name on Facebook. There was a recent story on Salon.com about a writer who wanted to start doing some PR for a new book and discovered a fake and offensive profile of herself. The profile had been up for about six months before she discovered it.

If a customer has a great experience, they will tell a handful of people. But if they have a bad experience, they will tell up to 40 people. When you add social media to the mix, the audience potential is impossible to calculate. Even more concerning is the fact that customers (or potential customers) are likely to trust their friends’ Facebook posts more so than any other third-party review.

Customer service is paramount if you own a business, large or small. I am sure the restaurant where we ate the other night will not be open in six months. But it will be their own fault.