A break
Other Guy is having surgery again tomorrow and the rest of the week is filled with people and places and things to do.
I’ll see you again probably by Friday. Have a good week!
5 comments June 10th, 2007
Archive for June, 2007
The night visitor
Moth 2
Originally uploaded by Decobabe.
Thursday night I saw her arrive from the corner of my left eye. She was dressed in brand new clothes and decorated for an evening out.
I was so excited that my hands trembled while I was taking this photo, so this is as sharp as it gets. Sorry.
Is she not just lovely? Did she not deserve a better fate than trapping herself inside a house on her first flight of her life?
I thought so, too, so I collected her on a piece of paper and tossed her out of the kitchen window. That’s the opposite side of the house from where the bats circle under a street light picking off mosquitos and moths.
1 comment June 9th, 2007
The lady of Florence
Fiorentina 2
Originally uploaded by Decobabe.
This is la Fiorentina, a very famous beefsteak. She weighed in at 750 grams, about a pound and a half, and was cooked in my kitchen.
“How can that be?” you cry, ” A Fiorentina must be cooked over woodcoals!” Yah, yah. I have enough going on here without building a fire on the floor. Here are the rules.
The Chianina is a white cow. She happily eats grass and wanders the pastures and hills of Italy. Like most Italian girls, she doesn’t get very fat. Therefore, when she at last gives herself up to you after this sweet and bucolic life, she must be cooked rare. If you don’t like rare meat, leave her alone.
To be sure she stays rare, she must be cooked from room temperature and she must be cut into thick steaks. La Fiorentina should be at least two fingers tall.
What’s the secret of cooking her without wood? My dad. Warning: your house will be filled with a blue haze after this lunch.
My dad swore by this process. Heat a heavy iron skillet on a high fire until it almost glows. Sprinkle a good bit of salt in the pan across the bottom. Throw her onto that smoking salt. Let her brown about the color you are looking at, and using tongs, turn her once and cook the other side. Do not wait to see juices appear, that’s already too cooked. When you press with a finger on the meat, it should feel about like pressing your finger on the thick pad below your thumb when your hand is relaxed.
Immediately remove the steak and place her on a bed of rucola/arugola, then drizzle your best oil over her. Some like a wedge of lemon, too, but I’d save that for the rucola which has wilted among the beef juices.
Having now given the Fiorentina the respect she deserves, use a sharp knife to debone her and slice her nicely and serve from 2 to 4 people with this steak. I saw one twice her size, but there are just so many steak salads a girl can eat.
Other Guy got the tail cut into slivers.
By the way, this is post number 201.
8 comments June 9th, 2007
Because I do like sequins
I just never saw any this size before. Should keep off rain and hail, though.
And then there is this very sober look. I could wear this. Would I? I will have to think on it.
Both are from Telegraph UK coverage of graduation shows from UK design schools.
4 comments June 6th, 2007
One of those days?
If you’ve the figure for it, wear this.
Again, the Telegraph UK delivers all the new graduating class designs. This is Essex.
14 comments June 5th, 2007
Another triumph for classic modern design
The first time I saw a photograph of this house, I thought, “Well, yes, of course.” It seemed perfect. The only enclosed place was the bathroom, which seemed correct to me. It was never built to be the one and only house in which you did everything that makes part of your life. Here you do the things anybody might see, because they can.
It doesn’t even now so many decades later have a huge future, because it must be built in acreage. Otherwise it would be like living with a webcam permanently registering your life at home– or like living in Great Britain, where there are apparently CCTV watching you and now even talking to you if it doesn’t like what you’re doing.
Enormous acreage can’t be our future, unless you are willing to farm it all right up to your patio.
Think on this: this house was designed in 1949. It encompasses a purity that has hardly ever been matched since and certainly not before, unless we drag Brancusi’s sculptures into architectural discourse. It is exactly what it must be and not one thing more. You live in nature. Nature can come up to your wall and press it’s moist noise against it and stare at you doing whatever it is you do. Nature could use it’s muddy paws to leave a frieze along the bottom of your walls.
From the inside, if you cook steamy and greasy foods you will obscure the view. The job of keeping those glass walls sparkling could both improve your diet and make you hate nature.
All that considered, I still love this house and the purist view of living that it requires. I so disliked Johnson’s Chippendale frilled ATT building of the latter 20th century
that it seems impossible that the same man was responsible for both buildings. How can anything be post-modern? Are we not, even those most tradition bound of us, modern by default?
The images are linked from IHT.com and http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/att/ which are both sites worth exploring.
8 comments June 5th, 2007
A month gone wrong
This is a story of a month gone all wrong.
It started with noticing that my beloved cat, Other Guy, was losing a lot of weight. We went to our excellent vet, who said that he had a blocked saliva gland that was causing swelling in his mouth so that he couldn’t swallow. She started him on antibiotics and an anti-inflammatory.
Then wild pigs, or cinghiale, came into my garden one night and uprooted one–third of it.
Then the rain we expect in April came in May, so I couldn’t tackle the destruction and weeds started to grow in the plowed up areas.
Still Other Guy couldn’t eat or drink much, so back we went to the vet. He needed to have a saliva gland removed, but he needed to gain some weight first for the surgery to be safe. I hand fed him and cooked for him and managed to get almost a pound of weight back on in a week. So he had surgery, and while he was under anesthetic, she felt it was a good time to take a benign tumor he’s had for ten years off his back as well.
From the first moment of being really awake he started pulling the stitches out of his back incision. Because he had another incision on his neck, he couldn’t wear the Elizabethan collar that would be a normal response to that. Instead, every single night he would worry at those stitches and then stand up in total satisfaction and shake blood everywhere. Drops hitting my face were my wakeup call. Four times he did that and four times he removed enough stitches for the wound to be potentially deadly and he had to be re-sewn. He found metal staples were the easiest to remove, done with a single whip of the neck.
So we finally used an Elizabethan collar, because his neck was healed. And at breakfast one day, the collar had to be removed for eating, instead of attacking breakfast he whipped out 3 inches worth of stitches. Then I tugged on to him a really ugly leg warmer to protect the incision area. He looks like a badly trained monkey.
Yesterday he could no longer eat or drink anything. I was reduced this morning to making tiny bits of smoked salmon and offering them on my finger tips. He greedily took them and then they fell out of his mouth. So back to the vet we went. The swelling in his mouth had increased to fill his mouth, because in chewing his food, he was biting the swelling.
More shots to reduce the swelling, and once more I have to get water and special recovery foods into him, using a syringe. Every hour or two, around the clock, I wrap him tightly into a towel, and using the syringe, insert liquid food and water into the 1/8 inch space that remains on the left side of his mouth. One tablespoon at a time, I have to save his life by forcing it into him.
Small wonder, then, that the normal parts of life are slipping and that sometimes food for a day is French toast at midnight.
I can hear the cinghiale across the river grunting their plans to wreak more havoc in my garden. If I had the energy I’d wait with a knife. If there weren’t cat food bits glued to the floors, I’d vacuum them. If there were anywhere but my knee or draped over my sleeping head that comforted Other Guy, I might get the bathroom sparkling. Or the ironing pressed. Or the guest beds made up. Or, or, or… but in the end, the life of my loyal friend of eleven years, as careless as he is of it, means more to me.
I’m hungry right now, but for what? Even the bacon, tomato and cheese solution seems too much. It’s easier to ignore it. These are only the highlights of this month-long slog. There is more, as is there not always?
One day I expect to laugh about this month, but not today.
23 comments June 4th, 2007
This is June
Peas pasta June
Originally uploaded by Decobabe.
Peas. Peas just the amount of time that it takes to shell them between the garden and your mouth. Peas so sweet it seems the bees must have made them. Peas in any and every way man ever invented. Such a short season, peas everyday.
Day before Yesterday I had old fashioned pea salad, which I learned about as my old friend George talked about his favorite dishes ever. Simple as could be, but the three ingredients all transformed themselves when together and the taste was sophisticated beyond the idea.
Or take this dish of varied things all cut to be in about the same size. Is it a first course although it is more vegetable than pasta? Is it a side dish, or contorno even though it contains pasta? Who cares? It’s good!
For two servings:
1/3 cup diced onion
1/3 cup diced ham
1/3 cup diced sweet red pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup fresh peas
1/2 cup diced tomato flesh with all the seeds removed
Salt and pepper to taste.
1/2 cup ditalini (short macaroni) cooked in abundant salted water
Heat a frying pan and sauté the onions in the oil until they are transparent. Add the pepper and the ham and sauté briefly. Add the peas and about 1/2 cup of the pasta water. Cook a few minutes and just before the pasta is al dente, add the tomato bits. Taste for salt and correct it.
Drain the pasta and stir it into the pan, cooking for a minute or less.
Serve it hot as can be with a thread of raw oil .
Hey, this has pasta in it, let’s send it to Presto Pasta Night. If you aren’t all going to that page, you should. Pasta from every culture gets posted there every single week. Some of the Asian ones are really thrilling, too, to an Italian denizen.
11 comments June 2nd, 2007
