Category Archives: design
Fictitious Dishes
I think that my love of cooking grew out of my love of reading about cooking. When I was a kid, we had a bookcase in the kitchen filled with cookbooks. I would eat all my meals reading about meals … Continue reading
Patisserie at Home
The fine arts are five in number, namely: painting, sculpture, poetry, music, and architecture, the principal branch of the latter being pastry. –Antonin Careme I used to repeat this quote to wind up my architect husband, but now I totally get it. In … Continue reading
Posted in baking, design, desserts, food focus, technique
Tagged Anne Cazor, creme chibouste, Harper, Melanie Dupuis, Patisserie at Home
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Symmetry Breakfast
See if there is any bacon, and if there is, ask the cook which pan to fry it in. Then ask if there are any eggs and if so, try and persuade the cook to poach two of them. It … Continue reading
Posted in cultural, design, food focus, international, recipe
Tagged breakfast, Michael Zee, pastels de nata, powerHouse Books, Symmetry Breakfast
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The Art of the Cheese Plate, Pairings, Recipes, Style, Attitude
A cheese may disappoint. It may be dull, it may be naive, it may be over-sophisticated. Yet it remains cheese, milk’s leap toward immortality. –Clifton Fadiman Every cheese book I’ve ever seen drives me crazy–describing cheeses that I can never … Continue reading
Posted in design, entertaining, food focus, gifts
Tagged Rizzoli, The Art of the Cheese Plate, Tia Keenan
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Cleaning Out the Basement–Jonathan Swift’s Directions to Servants
You know Jonathan Swift as the man who recommended that, during the Potato Famine, starving Irish eat their babies, but this flint-hard satirist also explored power relationships in household employment. To anyone who straightens up before the house cleaner comes or who … Continue reading
Posted in cleaning out the basement, cultural, design, history, literary
Tagged Dirctions to Servants, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Low, Pantheon Books
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Culinary Historians of Washington–Eating Googie Style
Context is everything. A to dog tastes better at the ballpark and the salmon skin you throw away becomes an elegant salad at a pricey Japanese restaurant. Googie made hamburgers and fries exciting food of the new America–linking them to … Continue reading
Posted in Culinary Historians of Washington DC, cultural, design, history
Tagged Alan Hess, googie, Mies vanderRohe, roadside architecture
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Cleaning Out the Basement–Cook Young
Even as I live without a basement, somehow the cleaning continues. I actually came across this book at the St. John’s Opportunity Shop, (my own little slice of heaven). And I couldn’t resist it, for a number of reasons. First, I love … Continue reading
Posted in cleaning out the basement, cultural, design, history, kids
Tagged Cleaning out the Basement, clementine paddleford, Cook Young
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Appetite for Books 