“You have a blog for your dog.”

“You have a blog for your dog,” my brother observed via a chat conversation a while ago. To which I say, well, yeah, maybe. But if your dog looked like this, wouldn’t you? Anyway, I write about other things too; this has even been accused of being a food blog. (And we did make some delicious cornmeal scones from one of my Moosewood recipe books lately, but I didn’t even post about those, did I?)

But without further ado:

Roller Derby Sudo! (That’s a human knee pad, but it works as a greyhound helmet, because greyhounds have tiny heads.)

This toy? This toy is mine. “Sharing”? What’s “sharing”?

You are going to have to help me untangle my legs later.

I really quite like this chair.

Woe is me! My toy fell and I have no thumbs with which to pick it up. I request your assistance.

This is a totally normal way to sleep, right? Why are you laughing? (She was in this position for hours. Seriously.)

Okay, brother, you win. This is a dog blog.

Craft Boston

A few weekends ago I went with some friends to Craft Boston, “a show of contemporary Art, Craft & Design presented by the Society of Arts and Crafts” down at the Seaport World Trade Center. It reminded me a little bit of the holiday fair in Union Square in New York, except it was (1) indoors, (2) much quieter, (3) higher quality things, and (4)  much more expensive.

So we window-shopped, or whatever the equivalent is where there aren’t any windows. A few of my favorite things:

From Purple Sage Pottery, a mug in a beautiful deep blue glaze:

From Liz Proffetty Ceramics, more mugs (and other pieces) with glazes reminiscent of landscapes. I had to go back and have a last lingering look at these before we left; I think they were my favorite pieces we saw all day, and the only thing that kept me from buying even just one mug is how many mugs we already have in the house. (They’re a good thing to collect…up to a point.) Beautiful, though:

From Stephanie Young at Calmwater Designs, these glowing lamps:

From Michael Michaud Designs, delicate jewelry fashioned to resemble berries, flowers, and leaves. The dogwood, cherry blossom, and pussy willow designs are beautiful, but what first caught my eye were these raspberry earrings:

I also took a card from Liz Norkus Design, but couldn’t find on her site the piece I thought I saw in her booth: a necklace that looked like it was made from joined twigs sprouting tiny pearl buds. However, on the Craft Boston site, there are photos of a few of her pieces, and these earrings are closest to the necklace I saw:

I saw similar designs by Elise Moran:

 

The Steampunk Industrial booth was fun to explore – it can perhaps best be described as rusty, whimsical, glowing, and giving off something of a mad genius/time travel vibe:

We were also all very taken with the creations from ArtHead Studio, from the “JunkYard Dogs” made of scrap metal to the “reTweets” to “The Odd World of the Littles,” which reminded me a little bit of Joseph Cornell, if he had been a bit more humorous.

All in all, it was a really nice afternoon out. I rarely go into Boston even though it’s so close, and it was nice to see physical, tactile art in so many forms: wood, fabric, glass, metal, and more.

Shelter in Place

She doesn’t understand why we can’t go outside.

#LockedDownInBoston

 

 

Spring gardening

Despite persistently cold gray weather, it IS spring, and therefore time for planting! From left to right: mint (from last year), mint (new), raspberry canes (two varieties, to go in the ground tomorrow), cherry tomatoes.

Cherry tomatoes (2), Ozark Beauty strawberries, rosemary, strawberries/basil/onion chives, Quinault strawberries.

More strawberries (Quinault on the left, Sequoia on the right). You can see I started to run out of proper pots (see the saucepan, second from right), but I’ll need to repot all the strawberries soon anyway into a 5- (minimum) or 10- (acceptable) or 15- (best) gallon bucket, according to my mother the gardener, so it’s back out again tomorrow. I hope it is sunnier!

What I’m reading: Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler; Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon; The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, read by Jim Dale

Occupy Papasan

With the exception of the kitchen chairs, the rocking chair, the coffee table, and the kitchen table, I think that the dog has now slept on all the furniture in the house.

The papasan chair is her most recent conquest.

“What? It’s comfy. You know how I like comfy things.”

Mission: Sleep On All The Things accomplished.

 

Sudo gets a bath

For a dog who hates rain, she did okay in the bath. Still, her attitude could best be summed up as “I would prefer not to.”

I think she somehow made her eyes bigger so she could look even more pathetic.

“It’s okay, I forgive you.”

“Or do I?”

She was only somewhat consoled when we dried her off with every towel in the house and covered her with a fleece blanket.

“Never make me do that again.”

 

 

 

 

 

More from Smitten Kitchen

There are hundreds upon hundreds of food blogs, but one of the only ones I follow is Smitten Kitchen. Part of the reason is because her recipes are reliable and delicious, and her writing is funny and good, but another part of the reason is that I can keep up with it; she publishes one or two recipes a week. (I subscribe to all of the blogs and webcomics I read via Google Reader; for a while I was subscribed to Food52, but they actually produced too much content for me to deal with. I would go a day or three without reading, and the number of unread posts became overwhelming. That said, the Food52 website is an excellent resource for recipes and kitchen/cooking/baking tips.)

In the past three days, we’ve made two recipes from Smitten Kitchen: the French Onion Tart and the buttermilk biscuits. Both of them were heavenly, and I encourage you to make them posthaste. The onion tart requires gruyere cheese, which is a little pricey, but since the rest of the ingredients are basically onions and flour, it’s worth the splurge – the flavors are amazing. A note on the crust: SK gives the Larousse Gastronomique proportions (approximately), but I found that the dough didn’t come together at all; I had to use 3 extra tablespoons of butter and another 1-2 tablespoons of cold water, and it was still pretty crumbly. However, that was only a little hiccup (problems that can be solved by adding more butter aren’t really problems) and the tart was so delicious that it disappeared before I had a chance to take a photo.

The biscuit dough, on the other hand, was a dream to work with. (We used just 1 tablespoon of sugar and could have used even less.) We don’t own a biscuit cutter, but we do own a straight-walled drinking glass, which works just as well. We baked the biscuits on parchment paper, as instructed, and they came out perfectly. Egg sandwiches for breakfast! Plus, they really are best the day they’re baked, so you don’t need to feel as guilty for eating several in one day. It’s for the best, really.