breakfast, lunch, dinner

Breakfast at our favorite spot, Five Leaves: a billowy bowl of homemade ricotta with chestnut honey, thyme and figs, like eating a delicious cloud.





Lunch: photoshoot with the Daily News at Brooklyn Botanic Garden (heeheehee--I'm going to be in the Daily News next Tuesday in an article about local artists inspired by the Cherry Blossoms!)....It was fantastic to be there by ourselves (closed on Mondays)..well, Martha Stewart Weddings was also there, doing a photoshoot under the cherry blossoms--see it back there?


Dinner: tired but obsessed by a recipe in the new issue of Saveur, balancing bags full of groceries and bonbons, got home and made it this way in 20 minutes--it will now be my new go-to recipe:

I used a can of butter beans and heated it up with a clove of garlic and a sprig of thyme until garlic is soft about 10-15 minutes. Take off heat, add a little coarse salt and pepper and a tablespoon of olive oil. Puree with a hand blender or whatever you blend things in at home.
Next, Put some water on the fire with a little salt to blanche the dandelion greens-while water waits to boil, put a small saute pan on with a little olive oil, add about half a thinly (or not so thinly) sliced onion...saute until soft and golden. Now add cleaned dandelion greens to the now boiling water and blanche for a minute until bright green. Drain and immediately add to the pan with onions--sprinkle with a little salt, a crack of pepper, a dash of red pepper flakes and a squeeze of lemon. Serve on top of beans and drizzle your most excellent olive oil on top--it's that good.

oh! and thanks amy...

A Terrarium Story

There's a lot of moss growing around my parent's house

And little plant-lings

The Process: Rocks, Dirt, Moss, Plantlings, Water

Terrariums

I've always loved terrariums -quiet little peaceful places where you can imagine yourself real tiny laying in a perfect tiny mossy forest. I've been wanting to make one for a long while.

The backstory as I remember it: In the 70's, my dad started to subscribe to this series of groovy D.I.Y./How-To books called Family Creative Workshop - he just got the first three volumes, don't know why he stopped getting them but I was in love with those books. I made anything I could from those awesomely hippy-dippy crafty pages: beanbags, beach glass mobiles, bonsais, birdhouses. I decorated birthday cakes, fixed the derailleurs on my bike, poured liquid acrylic into a rubber glove to make a ring stand (that one didn't work out too well) and really wanted to brew my own root beer but I needed too much adult supervision and my own garage so I scrapped that one too.

The chapter I loved the most was the one on Bottle Gardens. It had pictures so enticing, I just wanted to make terrariums all the time.

So last week, when I was out at with my dad, I picked up some glass containers and some river stones and came back to his house, laid out my stuff, went searching for moss and some tiny saplings and plantlings and this is what I came up with. Finally.

(They don't look like these but hey, I fulfilled my own wish. Also, check out my blogger pal over in Sugar Hollow. Her terrariums are lovely and she has some good links!).