Happy

As they say in Hollywood, I am humbled.

No, what I mean is that I am honored and touched to be included in such fine company by Jude, whose blog I love reading -- I know I have a smile in store for me when I see that she has a new post up, whether it's a musing, a picture of Hawaii, or a recipe...

I am supposed to write about 10 things that I love. I'm not sure which way this list will go, but let's start and see:

1
Over the last few years I have developed a (small) obsession with (veggie) burgers. It might seem strange for a vegetarian to obsessed with burgers, but really I have my mother to credit or blame. She makes the tastiest veggie burgers: a potato, carrot, and pea patty filled with delicious Indian spices, and served on a bun with onion and green chutney. (A good reminder -- I've got to ask my mother for the recipe.) It's gotten to the point that I'll even eat the bland oat and who-knows-what veggie burgers you get in bars.

2
Over the last two months I have fallen for Toscanini's Ice Cream in Cambridge. Toscanini has been in Cambridge as long and longer than I've been here. But when I first moved here I was very much a gelato person. I still am. But recently I came to realize that American ice cream, if made by mad geniuses, can be a wonderful thing in its own distinct way. I don't go for the traditional flavors here, but their kulfi (which is Indian ice cream - somehow they transform it into ice cream exploding with cardamom flavor), green tea, black sesame, and salty caramel would probably make my top-10 list of best ice creams I've had.

3
Wine -- why deny it? -- is a happy part of my well-balanced diet. But let me narrow it down more. The love of the moment is German Riesling.  Somehow as one grows in sophistication as a wine drinker, one tends to gravitate toward drier wines, but I've been on the opposite swing recently , recognizing that some sweeter wines are exploding with flavor, subtlety, and joy. German Rieslings make almost everyone happy. Initially people ask themselves, should I confess to loving a wine that tastes (varyingly) sweet? The answer for me is yes.

4
In keeping with the food theme...

 

5
Well, the next confession is a big one. Mad Men. Yes, it's the first television show I've allowed myself to be pulled into in years. The characters, the story, the epoch, and the visual integrity -- it is difficult to resist the combination. And speaking of the visuals, each episode is like a game of hide and seek for people who love post-war design. There's always some contemporary piece of design hiding in the frame.

6
This is quite a leap, or perhaps not, but opera is something I have loved since... well, shall I confess?... 1984. How do I remember the year? Because my brother and I became obsessed with the scene from Don Giovanni in Amadeus, which came out in the 1984 (apparently -- I would have guessed 1982...)

7
Perhaps this then is exactly the right moment to confess that about 10 years after everyone else I've finally discovered Norman Quentin Cook, aka Fatboy Slim, or more precisely discovered that I already knew his music, which is the kind of thing that you would have had to live in a cave not to know to some degree. There's something bizarre and fun in being out of cycle with everyone else (at least sometimes).  (I wonder what my contemporary music adviser will make of this self-directed discovery? Mia, I hope I have not gone astray!)

8
I love 3-legged chairs. I have two sets of them. One that looks like this:

(indeed, this is my dining table in New York). And the other like this

I have been told they are a little impractical, especially by guests who tip over while seated on them... But that's why I love them (the impracticality I mean, not specifically the tipping over part). They are outside nature and just from the human imagination.

9
While I'm on the acquisitive wavelength, I recently acquired one of these:

And it's instant love. I remember as a child my father would tell my brother and me stories in which the municipal water supply was suddenly transformed into coke, or milk, or juice. Well, this machine has the same element of magic to it. I've concluded that my one true addiction is bubbly water. And I've been carting those bottles home from the grocery for years now. Forget the environmental damage, it's my back (and hands) that I'm worried about... Now I filter and chill the water and have bubbly water on tap. Magic.

10
Finally I love the Sunday New York Times. In New York, you actually get most of it on Saturday, but I am disciplined and don't read any of it until Sunday morning. My Sunday habits have changed over the years, but right now it's this. I get up, walk out in search of the weekend brekkie (usually a croissant, but having failed to find good ones recently I've switched to a brioche). Back home, I make cappuccino, climb back into bed, and the paper for a few hours.

Now there are a few good thoughts to tide me over till the weekend!

xo

bb

It is an honour

I was lucky enough to be given this token of recognition from the inimitable, stylish, eclectic, and always-has-such-good-taste blogger Jane on the Nearness of Distance. I am touch, honored, and thrilled.

I am supposed to - and will - tell you seven things about myself. I am never sure whether to go toward the big and important or toward the small, irrelevant, but in fact utterly essential. But of course this indecision is very much part of the award ritual since I always eventually decide on the latter. So here we go:

1. I am prone to food obsessions. I once ate ravioli with butter and sage four nights a week for about six months. It was delicious. Why eat anything else? Like many people (?), my breakfast is unvarying for 5-year stretches or longer.
2. I believe fervently in a concept known as the "fun breakfast". During the week, my breakfast is always the same: yogurt and tea. But on the weekends, I get to have the fun breakfast. The fun breakfast varies by local conditions. I think this goes back to my childhood: on weekdays we ate healthy breakfast cereals but on weekends we were allowed to eat the sweet ones. And this is important: travel breakfast=fun breakfast.
   
3. I am currently obsessed with Ricola. Not just any old Ricola. The the ones that come in a box and that are lozenge shaped (not the chewy ones that come in a small box, or the individually wrapped ones, or the small cube shaped ones).
   
   It of course happens that this is exactly the shape that is not sold in the United States (though I've heard a rumor - urban legend? - that there is kosher deli in Williamsburg that sells them). And notice all the flavors that we don't get in the US: elderflower and sage. Notice in the picture that the pink box says salbei on it? Proof that they don't export this flavor. It's a conspiracy.
   
4. To wit, I believe in conspiracy theories. No, not the second-shooter, Elvis-lives variety. The conspiracies I see come in two types. Some fantastic product that I find abroad is not sold in the country where I live, and I must (must!) have this product, but there is just no way to get it. The second conspiracy is even more insidious. Have you ever encountered the perfect product in some category? Just to fix ideas, the perfect pair of shoes: comfortable enough to wear every day, stylish enough to wear with fancy outfits. If such a product were invented, they would have to stop selling it, because it would destroy the industry. Well, such conspiracies are real. Believe me.
5. I'm convinced that I've discovered the cure for jet leg. Two glasses of Champagne before every trans-oceanic flight, one glass before a shorter flight. Always follow with a glass of water. Works like a charm.
6. I seem to have an affinity for countries that begin with the letter I.
7. I am a recent but enthusiastic convert to the Kindle. I don't own the reader, but use the app on my iPod touch (which was a recent hand-me-down acquisition). I know people of my vintage (and older) always fret: it's not the same as reading a book. I agree, and in so many ways (touch, smell, heft). I love my relationship with books (indeed, relationship: first you flirt, then you're all over each other, and then there's the long affectionate after glow), but when traveling the Kindle reader is great. You flick through pages with no effort, and you don't end up carrying around two volumes of Proust with you (which is what I in fact have been doing for the last two months)...

I'm not going to tag anyone yet. But I know you're out there, and I'll tag you soon!

xo

bb

Seven of my favorite things

Jane, over at her lovely blog The Nearness of Distance, tagged me to list seven of my favorite things. Oh! so many ways I could with this. Big, broad concepts and categories, or super-micro specifics. I'm enjoying thinking about this list so much, I might do 7 seven lists! But here's a first crack:

1. I love hazelnut ice cream, often accompanied with pistachio. I'm easily swayed by other flavors (had a heady babà-al-rhum over the summer in Italy -- I had to have it every night I was in town...), but I always come back to my true (ice cream) love, hazelnut.
2. I do love Champagne. It's a recent love. Of course, I would always drink it on those special occasions - New Year's, weddings - but in London I discovered as an everyday going-out drink. It's not that I uncork a bottle at home (though I should! and I recently came upon a stash of superbly priced half-bottles...), but if I'm in that situation of having a drink before dinner, rather than a glass of white wine or an American cocktail, I find myself asking for Champagne. I know the French will shudder, but even a Champagne cocktail makes happy.
3. Puris and shrikhand are one of my favorites since I was a child. Puris are a Indian bread, which is deep fried until it puffs up and becomes crispy. And they are incomparable when you get them straight from the frying pan. Well made, they are not too oily. You eat them with whatever is in your plate, but if you happen to have shrikhand, then -- joy! Shrikhand is Maharashtrian and Gujarati dessert made from strained yogurt and flavored with safron. It is the alchemy of simplicity. That's it, but what a combination -- and then if you have the puris you are truly set for bliss.
4. Carnegie Hall is one of my 3 favorite places in New York, and thus by extension the world. This is my way of including classical music -- I was tempted to pick a favorite recording or performer, but next time. Right now I would like to savor the thought of being enveloped in the hall's generous acoustic. It's the kind of place that involves you in the music. There's no sitting back with analytic distance. Even at the back of the hall, the music reaches up to your ear.
   
5. I love Room 56 at the National Gallery in London. When I have only a few hours in London, then I'll stop in here.
6. I love walking in cities. I'm an active person - I used to run, and still do versions of this on the modern torture machines. I drive, a fast car, carefully. But really my favorite method of locomotion is walking. And my favorite place to do it is in a city. Any city will do, but hopefully some place with an interesting street life. It doesn't have to beautiful, but that is fine too.
7. And why not admit..

xo

bb

Six of six -- tagged!

I was tagged by Mette of ungtblod for a six of six: "Open the 6th picture-folder on your computer, open the 6th photo and blog it. Write something about it." Wonderful invite. So here we go:


Many things about this picture. Every weekday at about 6.30 am I would walk from home to work. It was about a 35 minute brisk walk which I enjoyed. It was early and there was rarely anyone on the street for most of the way, even in Central London. After a while, I even began enjoying the moody sky that often greeted me in the morning. In an entire year of commuting to work on foot, I was turned back by rain only twice.

I also enjoyed the sight lines of London, particular these neighborhood with their late 19th Century/ early 20th Century homogenous blocks of buildings (with the occasional modern block punched in to remind us of the bombs of World War II if it was a 1950s building or of the modern boom if it was of 1990s vintage). Compared to New York the sky really opens up. Indeed, as I noticed and as you see above you get these great V-shaped slices of the sky. Early in my stay, I had a plan to take a picture of the sky everyday. It would be my diary of London. It didn't happen, but I still like the idea.

Finally this picture captures another feature of London, at least last year (don't know how it is now): constant construction. Everywhere you looked you could see these great cranes hovering over the city, like an alien invasion tearing away it.

BB