the idea book: decorating

Anyone who’s talked to me in the past few weeks knows I’m cuckoo over my new place. Not that I know where I’ll be living, what it’ll look like, and whether I’ll be thrilled or compromised, but it’s a blank slate to create the apartment-in-my-head. This decorating kick is something that occurs every time I move, and I dream of color, balance and, most of all, a haven.

You’ll find me oogling over books at the bookstore, or pouring over a few copies of Blueprint a friend gave me. I have to say I like the mag over all other mags with a design element: not too pretentious, not too pricey, not too old, and not too much decorating masturbation. I like the recipes and lifestyle features, too.

But like all great ideas, many of them are forgotten in the midst of things, forever shelved on the to-try list, waiting for my attention and courage. Recognizing them here may remind me I once had a vision for my home life and maybe y’all can give me some ideas too. When I started sewing, I kept an “idea book” of clothes I liked, often small flourishes that added a lot of style to standby wear (i.e. Anthropologie) that I could replicate. That’s exactly what I’m looking for in my next home.

How about a rotating exhibit? Vinyl sleeves make hanging easy and versatile. I have a Josephine Baker print from Paris, or perhaps Bonny Doon wine labels?

Yes, I desperately want to paint (like this color, especially if I’m living in a box), but for some quick vibrant color and simple design, I could stretch bright fabric over square painters’ canvases. A friend did this with some beautiful fabric. I could also personalize some fabric with sketches and photographs. Watch out, Warhol.

I loved these versatile boxes because I can envision a dozen uses outside of the closet. A makeshift coffee table, side tables, or bed stands? The color contrast is fun, too.

Since Buggah and I have rejected the metal bed frame, maybe some sort of decorative board beneath the mattresses will liven up the drabness of the bed skirt? Or how about a bit of fabric as a makeshift headboard?

Our apartment now is 600 square feet, an upgrade from our last place, 504 square feet. I imagine I’ll be lucky to go up another 100 square feet, so I’ve been thinking of ways to make the place feel open and breezy. How about open cupboards and floating shelves?

Now, I’m no clean freak. If anything, the crap just piles up and the bane of my existence is my entryway. There’s always shoes and books and coats and bags competing for attention. But with inboxes for Buggah and I, a trash for the junk mail, a table for our bags, and idiot-proof places for our keys and cell phones, maybe all the knick-knacks won’t make it onto the dining table instead. Make coming home more peaceful.

I’ve always had furniture that I thought could be stunning with just a hint of paint, but I’m too lazy to sand. This might be my savior.

Oooh, pretty paper. Doors and headboards.

I’ve got a few old, old books. This may put new meaning to book shelf.

Finally, outdoors there may be more to burning mosquito punks: Natural insect repellant.

A bit unrelated, but useful for moving is Walk Score, ranking addresses from 1-100 based on the amount of walkable places like parks, grocery stores, etc. Where I live now is a 62, and where my sis lives in the ‘burbs is a 15. Given we’re a one-car family, I’m gonna aim to live in a place more walker-friendly.

book rats beware: it’s time to let go

Our bookshelf is a frightful thing to behold. Only our frequent moves have kept things a bit in line. Buggah won’t let go of any book in his library and I enjoy book shopping at second hand shops. Needless to say, they pile up. Sure there’s some I never got through (Middlemarch) and others you couldn’t pry out of my cold, dead hands (The God of Small Things). Some I’ve been meaning to get to (two years ago).

Anticipating our move, we’ve probably rid ourselves of 60 books. But they’re still there, like those ghost Mario Bros. characters that never die. We just packed six large boxes and there’s more. The truth is, I do want more. But what I want is more books I really want to own and really want to read and some premium shelf space to house them.

Enter BookMooch, book karma for bums like me who have attachment issues. Face it, I’m not gonna read Beloved this year. But if someone else wants to read my copy, than who I am to deprive a fellow reader? You just list books you’re willing to part with and if someone wants it, you send it at your expense (a couple bucks). You get a point, allowing you to request a book from anyone in the entire network. I’ve already sent five books to readers across the country and four books for my fall lit class are on their way to me. I’ve got a few extra points to request books on my wishlist. It’s like approaching the register at Borders, and the cashier says, “This one’s on the house.”

The great news is, once you’re done with the book, you can keep it or pass it on. Check out more liberating book ideas here.

a gracious reprieve

I have written recently about memory, and now that I am moving, I feel as if I’m stockpiling details. It is always sad to see the haven you’ve created unravel: the bare walls, the belongings in boxes, the items sold and given away. This is not a passing moment; it’s a chapter closing. Who I was and became here in these three years will influence who I will be in all the years to come, and so on. Will it matter then, what pan I used to cook the pancakes? Will it matter if I don’t remember how big the shower was, or that I bought the outdoor deck lights for Buggah and I’s first dinner in our new home in our new city?

Today, I came across a photo of Buggah, taken five years ago in an attic. It was in those days that I began to realize we should share the rent and our lives. He had to stoop in that cavernous room. We kept each other warm during the winters, drank a lot of wine and huddled home up the creaky, bare stairs. There was a hornet’s nest under the Adirondack chair on the farmhouse porch, and the insects buzzed in through the broken screen in the summer.

We moved onto flooded basements, city apartments that overlooked rooftops, and now, a granny flat with a garden. Each home has represented something important to me, though they’ve all been different stages of maturity, I suppose. Love and courage, failure and disappointment, and faith. In that order.

While packing my desk, I came across a W.S. Merwin poem that I’ve lugged with me all these years, tattered and folded. I can’t manage to throw it away.

Have you seen my memory
minus the fancy words
have you looked in the cases
where I kept my mind

Then I took a break from work and packing, to read in the bare room. Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead is beautiful.

And memory is not strictly mortal in its nature, either. It is a strange thing, after all, to be able to return to a moment when it can hardly be said to have any reality at all, even in its passing. A moment is such a slight thing, I mean, that its abiding is a most gracious reprieve.

my favorite salad

Last year, I visited a community garden and was sent home with the most beautiful Pompei roma tomatoes, some Japanese cucumbers and handfuls of flat-leaf parsley. I hadn’t had any luck growing my own cukes and parsley, so at a loss of what to do I turned to World Vegetarian.

This is Madhur Jaffrey’s Simple Palestinian Salad, though it’s so simple you don’t need a recipe. I don’t eat a lot of leaf-salads, but this always pleases my palate, especially in these dog days of summer. It’s perfect for the tomatoes that are ripening by the handful in the garden, and it’s so simple that every ingredient here shines.

Cube some tomatoes and cucumbers, coat lightly with olive oil and some fresh lemon juice. Throw in some chopped parsley (be generous) and salt to taste. This is the tried-and-true, but there’s always room for some twang (onion) and innovation (sumac). See what I mean with Smitten Kitchen’s recipe for Israeli Salad.

are you puerto rican?

“Arroz con gandules?” Buggah asks, peering into the kitchen. “Are you Puerto Rican?”

No, of course I’m not Puerto Rican, but hey, it’s a multicultural household. Buggah eats my Hawaii/Asian inspired dishes like kalbi, kalua pig and an endless assortment of Chinese stir-fries, and I eat rice and beans, rice with beans, and beans, beans, beans. Sometimes he whips up a chicken fricassee, and on very rare occasions, we fry some tostones. It’s always mouth watering and tummy satisfying, as good as home cooking gets.

Arroz con gandules is an even rarer treat for us out here in California. There’s one measly “Central American” shop we found in San Jose that sells the seasonings for Puerto Rican cookery, such as Adobo and Sazon con Culantro y Achiote. And sofrito? Forget it. We have to make it fresh at home. During my last trip to the market, I saw an overpriced can of gandules, or pigeon peas, on the shelf. It sat in our cupboard for months. Buggah wouldn’t touch the can (he’s a purist and worried about the rice:water ratio), but I took a whack at it.

Buggah says its typical Christmas fare to eat Arroz con Gandules alongside pasteles. Even in Hawaii, those are the enduring Puerto Rican dishes. There’s a million ways to make this, but this is how I did it. Not bad for a non-Puerto Rican. Buggah says, “You’re ready to go to Puerto Rico.”

Arroz con Gandules
-Oil
-1-2 T sofrito (see recipe below)
-1/2 8 oz can tomato sauce
-1 packet Sazon con Culantro y Achiote
-1 can gandules, drained
-1 1/2 cups medium grain rice
-1 1/2 cups water
-Half handful green manzanilla olives
-Adobo, to taste (can substitute garlic salt in a pinch)

Make the sofrito base: Heat oil over medium and add sofrito until you smell all that Puerto Rican goodness (more is always better, as far as I’m concerned). Add tomato sauce and sazon and let the flavors meld a minute or two. Some adobo here, too.

Add the drained gandules and rice (olives, if you’re using them) and coat with the sofrito base. Add water and some adobo. Boil until the water nears the rice, cover firmly with a lid and let cook on low-medium for about 20-30 minutes.

We ate this with pasteles from Buggah’s-auntie’s-boyfriend’s illegal backyard catering operation. Like all our Puerto Rican dishes, we served it with fresh slices of avocado, tomato and lemon.

Note: Make as much rice as you want, just keep the water ratio 1:1 if using medium grain rice

Sofrito

Again, there’s a million ways to make this. We don’t have culantro or aji dulce out here so this is the bare bones version for a small processor. We typically make a ton and freeze it in pint-size bags a few times a year.

1 green pepper, stemmed and seeded
Half an onion, peeled
1-2 cloves garlic, peeled
A few T cilantro

Whir it up in the food processor. If it’s too chunky, add some water so the mixture becomes a puree.

not so sad

I am not so sad as it may seem in these non-kitchen posts. In fact, this morning I had a The Hours moment, a passing instance of satisfaction: I felt good about San Diego, my next apartment and the color I will paint it, the next phase of my life and all the books it will entail. I felt good about all the people in my life, bright moments in ordinary days. And I feel grateful that I have the time for so many moments I would have missed.

Emotions are such lonely endeavors, though I always feel the need to share them. Forgive me my introspection. Lets laugh together sometime, catch moments like butterflies.

It had seemed like the beginning of happiness … and [she] is still sometimes shocked, more than 30 years later, to realize that it was happiness. . . . There is still that singular perfection, and it’s perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: That was the moment, right then. There has been no other.

-From Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, as printed in the New York Times

working the magic

My stepdad bought a buy-one-get-one-free Magic Bullet, so I got to lug one of those bad boys home with me. I’ve been waking up early to juice the oranges and have been dreaming of banana lassis and hummus. Most recently, I put on the blender attachment to whip up Romesco sauce, which has become a table fave. We ate it beside Buggah’s barbecued burgers and vine-picked tomatoes from my garden.

This is another World Vegetarian find, and Madhur Jaffrey describes it as “a sauce that I cannot live without.” Goes well with grilled vegetables and meats, and I imagine would work well as a sandwich spread.

In the book, there’s a classic recipe and a simple version of this Spanish sauce. Here’s the pared-down Alicia version. It’s a delicious way to clear the pantry.

Romesco Sauce

-1 dried ancho chile, stemmed, seeded and soaked in hot water for 15 minutes
-3 large bell peppers, roasted (also stemmed and seeded, jarred OK)
-1/4 c olive oil
-2 T red wine vinegar
-1/8 t cayenne
-2 peeled garlic cloves
-1 t salt

Place chile and 2 T soaking liquid with everything else in the blender/food processor. Blend until sauce is thick (mine turns out a bit lumpy). Makes about 1 1/2 cups, and can be frozen.