Just after Christmas I was in Target looking for a new phone, but I also checked out some pawnshops to see if I could find a good deal. I even browsed valuepawnandjewelry.com to compare prices and options. We’re experiencing something of a total electronics breakdown at LivingSmall — the TV (a future blog topic), the phone, the move to the new blog — it’s been a month of wrestling with technology. Anyhow, as I was wandering through Target I came around an end cap and found this, the perfect sewing machine. This is the sewing machine of my childhood —…
-
-
Okay, I admit it, when I saw the news, I got a little weepy. I’ve written before about how the Kentucky Derby kills me every time, and there are times, like watching Barbaro in the Preakness that having grown up surrounded by horses and horse shows, in houses cluttered with boots and tack, having spent most of my childhood in barns with people who live and breathe horses — even if you were a kid like me mostly reading a book over in the viewing room waiting to go home, you wind up with an eye for when something has…
-
Hi folks — welcome to the new and improved LivingSmall. This should be the last move — we went from Blogspot to Typepad, and now we’ve moved to WordPress, which allows one to use blogging software and host it anyplace. There wasn’t anything wrong with Blogger or Typepad, but they were starting to feel restrictive. I haven’t been happy with my template for a while now, nor was I crazy about the idea of all my work being hosted out there in anonymous-land someplace. WordPress requires a little more work on my part, but it’s open-source, and there’s no Big…
-
I had to go to California last week — the Corporate Job was calling. My office in CA is right next to my favorite store in the world, the Ranch 99 Market. The Ranch 99 has many wonderful things including fresh shellfish in little tanks through which fresh water continually flows, a stupendous selection of condiments, and Hong Kong-Style roasted items. The Mighty Hunter wanted a roast duck, so the morning I was leaving I bought one, and with a significant amount of pantomime communicated to the man behind the counter that while I wanted the head and neck cut…
-
I’ve been tinkering with this recipe for weeks, and I’ve come up with a recipe I’m thrilled with. It’s easy, rises beautifully, and gives a loaf that’s got a great shattery crust, and a holey chewy crumb. And it’s so easy — five minutes to mix the dough in the morning, stick it on top of the fridge for 24 hours (my house hovers between 60 and 65 degrees, so a longer rise is necessary), then plop it on a board, shape it, and I’ve been letting it do the last rise wrapped in a floured towel and held in…
-
Christmas is over and the seed catalogues are arriving! I pushed the remains of the Christmas baskets aside, cleared out the last of the cookies (the Pastura were particularly good, although the dogs got into them, and since chocolate is not good for dogs, well, it was a very fragrant Christmas eve around here), and have been happily perusing seed catalogs, dreaming of new varieties of endive and chicory, searching for an insect-resistant bean that won’t get skeletonized, musing over asparagus crowns and the idea of artichokes. Hmm. What to order?
-
I’ve been sort of following this story for the last couple of weeks, and today comes the sad news that they found Charlie Fowler’s body on a peak in China. I didn’t know Charlie well, but for a couple of years, he was my next door neighbor in Telluride. He was a kind, softspoken guy who was a little older than we were and who had climbed a whole bunch of impressive peaks in Asia and South America. I lived next to this big blue house full of climber guys — it was an ever-changing group. This was before Telluride…
-
The holidays are bearing down on LivingSmall like a freight train of fun — unfortunately, not only was I travelling last week (the storm in Denver today makes my 7 hour layover there last week look like a bargain this morning) and not only do I have to work this week for the Big Corporation — I have a whole lot of stuff to get done. And I’m taking next week off then going to California in early January to train my group in the stuff I’ve learned in these seminars I’ve been travelling for, so there’s that low-level anxiety…
-
I was noodling around (okay, wasting time this morning) over on the fabulous new website, Serious Eats, when I found this sweet little piece over on The Ethicurean about farmer’s markets and the way having a good one can encourage you to eat foods you might have thought you didn’t like. It reminded me of when Patrick and I first moved in together in California — I discovered beets. I went a little mad for beets for a while — there were such gorgeous ones in the farmers markets. I too was one of those people who thought I hated…
-
My dear friends Bill and Maryanne lost their beloved (and enormous) golden retriever Moja this weekend. Moja was a very special dog — one hundred and twenty five pounds of big yellow love — and he died quite suddenly of a twisted gut. It was beyond awful. There were big gulping sobs and tears all around. All I could think to do was drive home from the vet’s office and pull the emergency stash of pot roast out of the freezer. I made it ages ago, and there was too much for just the two of us, so I froze…