I love good writing about food, and Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton ticks all the boxes. Hamilton is not only the chef/owner of Prune restaurant in New York’s East Village, she also has an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Michigan.
“I wanted a place with a Velvet Underground CD that made you nod your head and feel warm with recognition. I wanted the lettuce and the eggs at room temperature … I wanted the tarnished silverware and chipped wedding china from a paladar in Havana, and the canned sardines I ate in that little apartment on Twenty-Ninth Street. The marrow bones my mother made us eat as kids that I grew to crave as an adult. We would have brown butcher paper on the tables, not linen tablecloths, and when you finished your meal, the server would just pull the pen from behind her ear and scribble the bill directly on the paper like [the waitresses in France] had done. We would use jelly jars for wine glasses. There would be no foam and no ‘conceptual’ or ‘intellectual’ food; just the salty, sweet, starchy, brothy, crispy things that one craves when one is actually hungry.”
Other people are FASCINATING. The Makers is a photography project by Jennifer Causey that documents the lives of makers. In particular I like the shots of kitchens, and food being made. I love seeing process and tools as much as the final product. (As an aside, did I tell you this year I’ve vowed only to give tools, ingredients and experiences as gifts?)
The Jewels of New York are food stylists. Look how they have repurposed a Bulliet Burboun bottle. Simple but pretty.
Morris Kitchen are a brother-sister run company who supply ginger syrup to mixologists. Yum. Wish I could try one of their conncoctions.
Gorgeous. Be sure to check out the rest of the photographs and the other Makers.
New York has invaded by 8-bit video game creatures. Shot in New York City (oh how I aprreciate everything so much more after visiting), ‘Pixels’ was directed by Patrick Jean. Bleep-bleep’n awesome.
Touchdown to the greatest city on earth. After finding our sweet little apartment and snoozing for 12 hours Emma and I headed to Times Square. The very first thing that happened? A woman gave us free cupcakes!
From there we headed to Union Square and schlepped around a giant (to my teeny Kiwi eyes) Barnes & Noble. Novel. There I found Domo, preparing for Halloween:
Talk about making friends with the subway maps. A + E + 1 + W + ? I adore all the station mosaics. They’re like Pokemon, I want to capture them all…
Food summary of the day: Ordered an amazing pizza and sipped some truly disgusting “coffee”. Desperate for a good one, I have been coffee free for about a week – this is truly abnormal. If you know where to find some let me know! xx
<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/teststrip/4029365063/” title=”subway by Amber P., on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3533/4029365063_384405a666.jpg” width=”500″ height=”334″ alt=”subway” /></a>
Monday, August 17, 2009 – m4w – (greenpoint)
asked myself why the letter ‘n’ all night long, then you were gone before i got a chance to ask. also, i saved you a piece of cake. do you always sit in a circle of asian girls? and sit at the top of the stairs so everyone gets a crush on you when they get to the roof?
So many questions -will they be answered? Will the sweet scrabble gal get in touch after reading this missed New York connection? Will the buds of attraction blossom into love? No matter, Brooklyn illustrator Sophie Blackall has given life to the sentiment at least. She takes fascinating missed connections and immortalizes the words in a very clever drawing. Once she’s done, she posts her illustrations on her blog. The results are so precious and heart melting.
The NYTimes have published a great piece on Sophie, where she details how and why she started drawing these beautiful, fleeting moments. “These illustrations have recurring themes of love, loss, regret and hope. Even the most grim postings have this little kernel of unflagging hope which is just so lovely and optimistic. I think that is what appeals to other people, too,” she said.
I love watching films that make me uncomfortable. Cinema of unease that leads to a slight clenching of my jaw as I study the screen. A painful conversation or two that makes me twist my toes into knots as I listen. That was the Squid and the Whale… a brilliant movie that I waited far too long to watch. It’s the story of the Berkmans and divorce, the separation of an entire family.
Here are a selection of stills from the film.. It was set in Brooklyn, 1986 – so it was interesting to see how the costuming was rather neutral – except for Anna Paquin’s scarf! Or rather has fashion come around enough to declare brown corduroy jackets fashionable? Check out the hot typewriter shirt in the last still.
And this is the movie’s namesake; the squid and the whale at the Natural History Museum in NYC. I hope to go see it some time very soon! Just like I hope you get to see the Squid and the Whale film soon if you haven’t already.
PS. The soundtrack is awesome. I rank it up there with the Risky Business soundtrack – 1980′s aural pleasure ❤
Hello! My name is Amber Parkin. I'm a New Zealander living in London. I'm a writer obsessed with fondue, chesterfield sofas, vintage dresses, foxes, and 35mm.
