Door Sixteen

Soba noodles and veggies with spicy peanut sauce.

Jun 10, 2012

Daniel and Max came over for dinner last night, and I used the meal I prepared as an excuse to try this crazy spicy peanut butter I’ve been fantasizing about. I also wanted to try out one of the recipes in the Teany Book. (I’ve written before about my intense love for Teany and their vegan turkey club sandwich in particular, as well as my goofball appearance in the book!)

Here’s what I put together combining the two…

Soba noodles and veggies with spicy peanut sauce (vegan & gluten-free*)
Serves 4

Spicy peanut sauce
2 tbsp The Heat Is On peanut butter from Peanut Butter & Co.**
2 tbsp grated ginger
2 tbsp sesame oil
4 tsp liquid amino acids***
2 tsp brown rice vinegar
2 cloves minced garlic

Veggies
4 large carrots, cut into thin strips (I used a peeler to make ribbons)
1 cup sugar snap peas, julienned
2 cups red cabbage, shredded
1 tbsp green onions, chopped

Noodles
9 oz dried buckwheat soba noodles*
2 tbsp sesame oil

4 tbsp crushed peanuts
lime wedges

Prepare the peanut sauce first in a big bowl. You can just whisk all of the ingredients together by hand, no need for a food processor or anything like that. When all of the veggies are prepped, put them in the bowl with the peanut sauce and stir everything up.

Follow the directions on the soba noodle package, taking care to not overcook them. With buckwheat soba, it’s important to rinse them very well in cold water as soon as they’ve finished cooking, otherwise you’ll wind up with something mushy and gross and unappealing. It’s OK that the noodles will be cold after rinsing! This dish actually tastes best cool/room temperature rather than hot. Toss the noodles with sesame oil.

Divide the noodles into bowls, put the veggies/sauce combination on top, and sprinkle with crushed peanuts. Serve with lime wedges, and enjoy with good friends and a nice view! We ate up on the roof of my apartment building, a spot I will never cease being grateful to have access to.

*Soba noodles are gluten-free IF they are 100% buckwheat, so check the package to make sure if this kind of thing matters to you. I use Eden brand. People with true gluten allergies should make sure the brand they buy is certified gluten-free, since contaminants can always be an issue.
**If you can’t find this fancy peanut butter, just use regular peanut butter with some chili sauce mixed in to taste.
***You can use gluten-free tamari instead of aminos, or soy sauce if you don’t need it to be gluten-free.

Deleted scenes from Blue Velvet.

Jun 10, 2012

Music + Movies + Books

8 comments

I grew up in a very small town with an incredible independent movie theater, and as a result I went to see a lot of cool stuff back then that I probably wouldn’t have heard of otherwise. There wasn’t a whole lot for a teenager to do in Rhinebeck other than walk to Upstate Films to see whatever was playing, and thankfully they never checked me or my friends for proof of age. In the summer of 1990 they were showing Wild At Heart, and I went to see it without knowing anything about it other than that it was directed by the guy responsible for Twin Peaks, the new TV show I’d been slowly growing obsessed with over the previous few months.

I loved Wild At Heart, and it got me curious about other movies David Lynch had made. I remember renting Blue Velvet with my friend Paul and just being totally entranced. It immediately became one of my favorite movies, and 22 years later, it still is. I’ve seen it so many times, and it never gets old. Like every David Lynch movie, the casting is absolutely perfect. This was my first real exposure to Isabella Rossellini outside of the context of being cover model (yes, she was in Wild At Heart, but her role in that film is very different and far less direct/personal—the affectations and appearance of the character are more compelling than the actor, if that makes sense), and her performance had an enormous effect on me. She has remained a constant source of inspiration in my life, and it all stems from the way that she portrayed Dorothy Vallens.

About ten years ago, I finally got to see Blue Velvet on a big screen. BAM did a special showing, and Isabella Rossellini was there to watch with us and to answer questions from the audience after. That was a wonderful experience.

Anyway, there is actually a point to this post! From Dangerous Minds:

Blue Velvet’s original shooting script is reputed to have been over four hours long. The theatrical release came in at 120 minutes. An additional hour of deleted footage was thought to have been lost when the producer of the film, Dino De Laurentis, sold his company. Fortunately, the footage was located and was released as an extra on the Blu-ray edition of Blue Velvet.

Nearly a full hour (!!!) of unreleased footage from Blue Velvet—an amazing thing to think about, right? It’s out of context and sequence (and without a full score), of course, and I’m hoping that another Lynch-obsessed person out there will take the time to do a fan edit of the movie with the deleted scenes replaced. In the mean time, it’s very, very cool to add an extra layer of fascination to a movie I’ve loved for so long and seen so many times. The dimension this footage adds to the character of Jeffrey Beaumont in particular is kind of mind-blowing. I almost feel like I didn’t really know who he was until now! I’ll leave my reactions beyond that out of this post, but if you’d like to discuss it further in the comments, I’m game.

(This probably goes without saying if you’ve seen Blue Velvet, but some parts of this video may be NSFW—depending on where you work, of course.)

Pretty things on my Etsy wishlist.

Jun 9, 2012

Greed
Handmade

20 comments

✚ Geometrical Illusion pouch from CORIUMI

I love how delicate this pouch looks despite the geometric print. Big zippered pouches like this are great for organizing stuff inside of larger bags, and I can’t seem to stop buying them! Fancy people who go to fancy events (I’m not one of those people) could even use this one as a clutch, too. Have you ever looked at the CORIUMI shop? There are all kinds of nice things for sale in all different colors.

✚ Collages and prints from Edu Barba

I first spotted Spanish artist Edu Barba’s work hanging in the kitchen at Manhattan Nest. A bunch of them have a Dadaist sensibility that’s really appealing to me. Three is my favorite number and I’m a sucker for soft textures and subtle geometric forms, so this guy is coming home to live with me. I have a feeling more will follow.

✚ Color block iPhone cases from Blissful Case

Yeah, these have Anna written all over them, I know. These two are my favorites, but there are a bunch of cute, reasonably-priced options in the Blissful Case shop. I like having a few “clothing” options for my iPhone—less for protection than for fun, I guess.

✚ Brass himmeli mobile from Veronika Maria

I saved this himmeli mobile for last because I’m completely obsessed with it. Traditionally these Finnish mobiles are made of straw and used as Christmas decorations, but this one is built from thin brass tubing and would really look incredible hanging all year round. It’s not in my budget, alas, but I can still admire it from afar. If you buy it, send me a picture if it in your house so I can feel envious!

p.s. Last year I wrote about himmeli made of stirrer-straws from AMradio over at Honey Kennedy. I love them, too!

All product photos from the respective shops linked beneath them.

A sleepover party at my house.

Jun 4, 2012

Blogs + Tweets
Food + Drink
Friends + Family
Health
The House / Newburgh

42 comments

I know, this post is a bit overdue! Chances are you’ve already heard on Twitter or seen another blog post, but two weekends ago, I hosted a sleepover party at my house with Victoria, Lisa and Jenna. I’ve never had so many overnight guests before! We had such a wonderful time. I wish I had more photos to share, but for some reason I tend to not think about picking up my camera when I’m with friends. I wish that weren’t the case, because it’s so nice to have visual memories of time spent together.

Breakfast on Sunday was exactly how I like it to be: perfect tofu scramble, collard greens, bagels from Beacon Bakery across the river, vegan sausages…and plenty of coffee, of course. There are fewer things that make me feel happier than preparing food for people and feeding them in my home.

On Saturday night, we all made ancho lentil tacos together. It was truly a collaborative effort (FYI, Lisa makes a mean guacamole!), and it felt really good to have a bunch of people in my kitchen. It’s hard for me to let go on control sometimes and allow guests to help me (even with stuff like washing dishes!), but I forced myself to just let it go for the weekend—and it was soooooo worth it.

We ate dessert (coconut milk ice cream and cookies!) in the garden. VERY exciting! We’ve been working on the garden for years now, and a lack of time, budget and resources have meant it’s been very slow going. Until that weekend, I’d never really spent any time in the garden just relaxing and enjoying myself. It’s only been a place for hauling, digging and sweating. The garden is still far from being done, but I’m glad I didn’t label it off-limits—something I tend to do with parts of my house that aren’t “perfect.”

(Hanging up those globe lights helped a lot. They’re just $12 cheapies from Target, but they added so much cozy atmosphere!)

I can’t say enough how much I love my friends. Having so much time together just felt right. I’d met all of them before, but being all in one place at the same time was very special. It wasn’t about networking or blogging or work or any of that stuff. It was just about talking, relaxing, watching movies, eating, staying up late and being friends. I didn’t want to say goodbye.

It’s funny, people are so critical of Twitter and blogs and how the internet supposedly takes us out of “real life,” but if I’m speaking truthfully, the internet (Twitter in particular) is the reason I actually have any semblance of a real-world social life. I’ve made a lot of friends online over the past 15 years, and a great many of them have become very real parts of my life—online and off. (And before the internet, I made lots of friends through writing letters with penpals.) Some of us just aren’t good at getting to know new people face-to-face. I’m one of those people. And that’s OK. Most of my friends are like that, too.

Lisa, Jenna and Victoria each wrote a post with pictures about our weekend together. They’re all much better photographers than me!

1. New York weekend at Lisa Congdon’s blog, Today is Going to Be Awesome.

2. Slumber party weekend at Jenna Park’s blog, Sweet Fine Day.

3. Unexpected guests at Victoria Smith’s blog, sfgirlbybay.*

*Victoria actually took a WHOLE BUNCH of photos from all over my house, so it’s sort of like an updated house tour. I know I’m kind of stingy with photos of my house lately (I guess because I haven’t been working on many projects), so if you’d like to see how it looks these days, head over! This is the first time anyone other than me has photographed my house, and I’m honored that Victoria found my home worthy of sharing on her beautiful blog.

Thinking about kitchen lighting.

Jun 4, 2012

Inspiration
The House / Newburgh

28 comments

I always think it’s funny when people comment on how “fast” I am about completing renovation projects in our house. Maybe it’s because I don’t post very often, or because I tend to not show a lot of in-progress shots? Whatever it is, it’s a big, fat illusion. We are the slowest renovators ever. Case in point, we’ve now been living with our “temporary” kitchen for more than SIX YEARS. In fact, it’s been a whole year and a half since I last wrote about how I should probably start getting to work on fixing up the kitchen for real. How much have I done since then? Zilch. I mean, unless you count complaining about it. I never procrastinate when it comes to complaining.

Photo by Karl Anderson & Anna Kern for Sköna hem nr 4, 2012

I like this solution a lot. My kitchen is actually a decent size (maybe 15′x15′?), but it’s a difficult space—it has three doorways, two tall windows that reach well below counter height, and a big hearth. There’s very little continuous wall space, so it seems small. The ceilings are high, though (about 10′), so having a bunch of dangling pendant lamps isn’t as precarious as it might seem. It would be easy to hang them high enough that the average person wouldn’t be smacking skull to bulb. Even a 3′ dangle would accommodate a 7′ person. (I’m over-thinking this, yes.) The height of the bulbs is adjustable by simply wrapping or unwrapping the cord. Nice. Plumen CFL bulbs would look great and be more efficient than incandescents.

The other good thing about this solution is that it provides an easy way to run lights across a wide distance without having to install additional electrical boxes in the ceiling (those of you who live in old houses with original ceilings understand why adding/moving boxes is a pain), since all of the cords run from the same source. Yes, track lighting would also be an option, and I’m not writing it off completely…but it can get expensive once you you enter the world of the non-ugly. (IKEA used to have a really nice and affordable track system called SÄNDA, but it was just discontinued. Sigh.)

Most importantly, this fits into my “unfancy” approach to kitchen renovation. It doesn’t alter the original structure of the house, it’s inexpensive, it’s simple to execute, easily reversible, and the materials are honest.

Photos from the Moormann-Berge Gästehaus // Interiors designed by Nils Holger Moormann

I think I might have posted these photos already ages ago, but I thought it was worth adding them to this post since this is essentially the same idea but with a branch instead of metal rod. I like this, too, but I think it’s better for over a dining table than for general kitchen lighting. I also love that built-in bench. All of the windows and doors in my kitchen make it impossible to do anything like that, but I would if I could.

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Soba noodles and veggies with spicy peanut sauce.

Deleted scenes from Blue Velvet.

Pretty things on my Etsy wishlist.

A sleepover party at my house.

Thinking about kitchen lighting.

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