Unnatural Disasters

The Guardian has a feature on Edgar Müller, Master of 3d Pavement Art, today and I was fascinated by the Lava Burst in a German street and this crevasse in Ireland. I couldn't get my head around how it was done. Luckily Mr Müller posted this video on youtube... just to satisfy my curiosity, and yours. Enjoy!

It's a long way to Stamford

Connecticut. That's the faint strip on the horizon way over the other side of Long Island Sound. And that's where the taxi will be coming from if I book it with the Taxi! app I have on the iphone. That's the problem with living in the Incorporated Village - our wireless signals are clearest right across the water. The best radio signal is Connecticut's Kool 96.7 FM, so we know which Chevy dealer to use should we find ourselves in need of a bargain car; if you dial 911 you're likely to get an operator in the Nutmeg State who has no clue where to send the emergency services, and using our GPS location the taxi will have to make a 60 mile trip to pick me up. Technology, still not perfect, then.

Citrus Polenta Cake

Because it's the weekend. Because it's raining. Because I needed to bake a cake. Just because.

Lemon Polenta Cake
Preheat the oven to 350F. Butter and flour a 9" cake pan.
1 stick of unsalted butter
2 tablespoons Italian olive oil
1.5 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup polenta
4 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
zest 1 1/2 lemons

Melt butter. In a separate bowl whisk eggs and sugar until light in color and doubled in volume. Sift flour, polenta, baking powder and salt. Add butter and olive oil to eggs and fold in dry ingredients. Spoon into cake pan and bake 35 to 40 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool for 10 minutes in the pan.

Citrus Syrup
Heat 1/2 cup of water and 1/3 cup sugar with three or four strips of candied orange peel until sugar has dissolved. Add the zest of half a lemon and an optional tablespoon of Cointreau. Bring to a boil, and reduce until slightly thickened. Add the juice of one lemon. Pour over the polenta cake.
Serve the cake with whipped cream and fruit compote.

SIlver Score

Huge and heavy candlesticks. They look more like chrome than silver but they were in the clearout section at Marshall's when I went to buy sheets and so cheap I had to bring them home.

My Life with Cats

With two dogs and four cats it's a constant battle here to keep the animal fur at lower than ankle level. But occasionally, after the surfaces have been dusted, the floors swept or vacuumed and the beds changed, just for a little while it looks like a normal clean house. Yesterday was one of those days, fresh duvet on the bed, flowers in a vase, it looked pretty good. That lasted a few hours until I noticed that a cat (difficult to pin down just which one, but it wasn't Mr Cassis) had thrown up on the bedcover. I sighed, stripped off the cover, threw it in the machine and climbed into bed.
It wasn't until I got up this morning that I realised that the cat had also thrown up on the sheet. The one I'd been wrapped in all night. Luckily, it seemed pretty much contained on The Guy's side and he was away. But still. Yuk, yuk , bloody cats, yuk!

Jefke's Water Fixation

or why the sink is never clean...

The Last Days of the Empire

Hey. how's this for an ironic design statement. As the glory days of the American Empire are waning (more cars were sold in China last month than in the USA for the first time; this will be a marker in the history classes of future generations) Williams-Sonoma is offering a selection of home decorating items in the British Colonial style. Think Caribbean colonial rather than the Raj, with the exception of this elephant table, pineapples and botanical prints, breezy lemon and palm tree greens. I'm not sure if the white ceramic animal trend is over yet, it's here, there and everywhere at the moment, but I have kind of a hankering for a grape-bearing elephant.

President's Day

A little mnemonic sing-a-long to celebrate Washington's birthday


Jonathan Coulton Washy Ad Jeffy

Kohler Save Water America

Do you know how many gallons of water you use every time you flush the toilet? Take the quick quiz on the Kohler website and they will donate $1 in water-saving products to Habitat for Humanity for every household that enters. Save water, build America.

February Fourteenth Fence Fixing and Feasting

Other girls get chocolates and roses on Valentine's Day. I received a roll of poultry fencing and a handful of L brackets*. Well, the fence needed securing, at least until we can re-fence in Spring and I'm not terribly romantically inclined. I'm not too upset.
We're not taking any bets on how long this temporary fix will last but I'm hoping for the end of April. We ended up not using the poultry fencing as The Guy was able to secure the panels to the existing uprights with the L brackets, but we'll keep it just in case.


The newly braced fence. Cat approved.
I am, however, making a French inspired Valentine's supper à quatre tonight:


Salad frisee and Bouillabaisse with Rouille


and Pots de Creme.
Sounds so much more romantic than poached egg salad, fish soup and custard, doesn't it?


Our Valentine's Bears and Chocolate - gifts from the Loyal Blog Reader and Awesome Designer
Happy Valentine's Day to all those who celebrate.
*The Guy would like me to point out that the fence-securing supplies were not my Valentine's present, they were for the dogs. MY gift was the tank of fuel he put in my car this morning. Glad we cleared that up!
UPDATE: Tulips arrived but The Guy insists he bought them for himself.

Things Could Be Worse

OK Homeowners, here's a quick poll for you. What is the worst time to re-roof your house?
a) When it is on the market
b) When it is 15F
c) During the snowiest winter for several years
d) During a "dangerous winds" advisory

If your answer is all of the above, you must be our poor neighbor whose house has been in the process of being re-roofed since last year and still isn't done. Feel better about your renovations now?

Sunny Valentine

Guess what else I'm missing this month? The Valentine's Day coinciding Modernism Week in Palm Springs. We tried to go last year, and the year before. We promised ourselves we'd make it this year. As usual we left it too late. (Oh shut up moaning woman, you have a great life!). Yes but this year the architect William Krisel will be getting his star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars. Quatch. We will go one day. Until then there's always youtube

Blowin' It All Away

The fence that is. I wondered how long it would last and now I know. Despite valiant efforts by The Guy, and later by me, to shore it up, it proved no match for the blustery winds. Polly is wearing the "leash of shame" so she doesn't escape again. We'll have to make do until Saturday when fortress building will recommence.
Anyway, I shot this photo at sunset just to show the internets how beautifully menacing the clouds are. Enjoy.

Floating a Beach House

Well this certainly puts my attempts at restoration into perspective. Imagine the amount of money and the stress for the architect and new owners as the Robert Venturi designed 1969 Lieb House is hoisted from its home on the Jersey Shore, placed on a barge and floated up the East River, around the North Shore of Long Island to Glen Cove, where it will eventually be used as a guest cottage to another Venturi house. All this being dependent on the City of Glen Cove giving the project a permit. At the moment the iconic beach house is stuck in a parking lot. For shame. If it gets the go-ahead I'm going to cheer it as it sails in. Go Lieb House!
The NY Times has a story on the move here. Further background, plus a video of the initial stages of the move, here and from Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates here.

A Happy Ending

A neighbor just called to say the damn dog was running around the Village. Of course when I looked for her I found her in her usual place - guarding the bridge. Either she got out and got back in again or there's a Polly lookalike out there. While I was thanking the neighbor I realised there was a gorgeous sunset and I bolted to take some shots. Who knows how long it will be before we see another? Anyway, added bonus when I downloaded them. Do you see what I see? Buds! Buds on the dogwood tree! Spring is coming. Yay!

The perfect meal

Something unctuous and sexy, satisfying but not heavy, that's what I look for in the perfect Valentine's meal. After some thought I came up with a menu that I thought would be the perfect romantic dinner on Saturday evening. That was until The Guy reminded me that Valentine's Day is another Hallmark tradition we don't celebrate, like Mother's Day or our wedding anniversary. So I made it yesterday, put it on the table with a bottle of Malbec and no fanfare, but by the end we agreed that it was the most enjoyable meal we have had this year, or a long time into last, including our trip to Argentina. (There were better individual dishes in Buenos Aires, lots of them, but not a better meal). Of course our culinary memories could have failed us because we have subsisted on soup and the occasional pasta dish since Solstice, so real food was bound to be a success as long as it wasn't raw, burnt or I didn't confuse salt for sugar.


Beef en Daube
1 lb cubed beef chuck
1 tbl olive oil
3 cloves garlic, sliced (I used one huge clove of elephant garlic)
1 cup red wine (I used Malbec)
1 cup good beef broth or stock
1 14 oz can of tomatoes
1 tbl tomato paste
1 carrot, peeled, cut into chunks
1 stick celery, cut into chunks
1/2 onion, quartered
1 tbl Herbes de Provence
Bay leaf
Pinch of powdered cloves
1 strip orange peel
1 tsp capers

Method
Heat olive oil in a casserole. Add garlic and cook gently for 5 minutes. Remove garlic and set aside. Turn the heat up to medium-high and add beef, sprinkling it beef with salt and pepper. Cook until browned. Add the chopped vegetables, garlic wine, broth, tomatoes and tomato paste. Sprinkle over the herbs, spices. Bring to a boil. Turn the heat off, stir in capers, orange peel and bay leaf and place in a 300F oven for 2.5 hours. Take out of oven, adjust seasonings and if desired place in a lower temperature oven until ready to serve. It will be silky, the beef will have almost dissolved and the smell will be rich and full of promise.


Serve with bread or pasta or these baby Yukon potatoes, baked in the oven with butter, salt and rosemary. Mmm.


And for dessert, a variation on drunken fruit salad: red fruits steeped in St Germain liqueur with a couple of crunched sugar cubes. Hit the sugar cubes with the back of a spoon, sprinkle over the fruit, then pour over the elderflower eau de vie. That's the elegant way to do it. A lazier more sensual way is to allow the whole sugar cubes to soak up some of the alcohol and then suck the cubes.
So, for Valentine's Day, what do you think I should serve The Guy? Peanut Butter and Marmite sandwiches or just plain bread and butter?

Froggin' Winter Colds

I have a frog in my throat. I felt so good yesterday, cooked a damn fine meal, only had one bad coughing attack all day - I thought I was cured. Hah, little did I know this guy was waiting to ambush me at 1 AM


and his buddies are all hiding in the closet ready to jump out at a moment's notice.
Even if a feel like a wreck, at least I look better than The Guy who has a nasty case of conjunctivitis and should be wearing a patch so we don't have to look at (warning, not for the faint of heart, or stomach) this.
I'm absolutely, positively, completely done with winter and the viruses it brings. We've all had enough now. Move on.

My stimulus plan

Pay workers to dig trenches for power lines.

I could take a really good shot of the house's unique roof if it weren't for the damn wires blocking the view. If that's not bad enough, look at this photo of the electricity, cable and telephone (which we don't use because we have VOiP through the cable) wires going to the house. It's ugly and potentially dangerous. If a tree branch hits the wire and sparks an electrical fire we'd be re-naming this blog The Cool House Ashes. Think I exaggerate? This was actually my Welcome to America moment: driving to look at real estate eight years ago in a thunderstorm we were stopped at the main road into one village where a lightening strike had caused the electricity cable to catch fire, which melted the road surface and spread to connected houses. Yip, I felt safe.

My job creation scheme has the added benefits. Not only will it beautify America but we're less likely to suffer power outages - after all it's difficult for a falling branch to take out a power line if the cable is buried underground. It may also have a positive effect on the accident rate - fewer people running their cars into telephone poles. Potentially it could be wildlife-friendly, too - fewer fried squirrels falling off the lines. Infrastructure, public (and wildlife) safety, landscape improvement and jobs, that's a great stimulus package.

Dried Bull Penises Done Up In A Braid

I have to go see if they have Steer Pizzle at a Trader Joe's on Long Island.

Dreaming of Down Under

This Dwelling print (available on etsy) by 11 year old Sydney resident Moofus was commissioned for the Theme Attic feature in Dwell Magazine. I want to live in this eco-friendly modern house full of colour in the middle of an Australian summer. I'd also like to be as talented as this kid or his mom artist Kate Banazi. Check out her silkscreen prints, too.