Little Handmade Lunch (Some Days it's The Little Things)

I don't like to make closed sandwiches (unless there's bacon involved)--I guess I like to see the little painting that happens before I take a bite out of the thing.
This one was made from left-overs from a little dinner party. Toasted spelt bread spread with butter and a chimichurri, so to speak, of cilantro, garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, topped with boquerones and some parsley.
On the side, warmed-up cranberry bean salad mixed with olive oil, vinegar, spring onions, sage and lots of parsley- a recipe given to me by my friend and beautiful jewelry designer Virginia Galvan (my beans came out a little too toothsome--I'm really no good at beans) topped with a dollop of hot pink beet tsaziki, garlicky and sweet, brought to dinner by sweet Marie. You'll have to ask her for the recipe. It was delicious beyond belief.

bear on one side, little log cabin on the other,
cup by SKT Ceramics (see below)

Served up in my bowls and plates from Asya, which I love love love. Dessert plates are now toast and lunch plates and I could not be more psyched because really-some days it's the little things. Tea for dessert in my new cup from my sweet neighbor at the Brooklyn Flea these last few Saturdays, Suzanne of SKT Ceramics. I want to drink from no other cup.
Some lunches just need a shout out.

Summer's Essence

On a muggy August Tuesday, may I present...

It?

It is the stuff that made my sister-in-law Chrissie (the other one is very sober) slide under the dining room table and disappear, many moons ago. To read more about Its fixin's, please read here, at 66 Square Feet.

I am Marie, and Deb invited me into her blog, asking me not to look in the underwear drawer. Consider my eyes averted. Sort of.

It has been under wraps for something over three weeks, now, ever since I glugged a massive bottle of Stoli over a massive amount of red currants, black currants, gooseberries, raspberries and sugar, and sealed the jars. It is summer, arrested.

Why It? The name evolved slowly in Cape Town, where we first made It: Is It ready? When will you drink It? What's It for? It looks good!

It became It.

The vodka turned gradually crimson. I looked at It longingly, in Its cool spot on the floor. I turned It and admired It in the sunlight.

Last night the Frenchie unscrewed the tops, and we leaned over the jar mouths and inhaled. Hmmmmm. Red fruits.

We decanted It. We nibbled the innocuous-tasting berries. We mixed up some cocktails at once. One third It, two thirds Bombay Sapphire, 1 lime's juice, some sweet Thai basil leaves and zest of the lime. Much shaking with lots of ice.

Yielding...Itself! Pink on pink on the terrace.

It sure is sweet, so a little goes an awfully long way. I see It in sorbet, in sauce for duck, in fruit salad, as a post dinner sipper for sending you to sweet sleep.

And when you get back, Bonbon, a little bottle of It will be waiting for you.

Favorite Snack: the Entire Country of Thailand

beautiful photos of a Miang Kham vendor,above, from Eating Asia

The Story of Miang Kham

We spent about 4 months in Thailand one year, in and out of Bangkok, and that is where we learned how to eat. Anytime of day and everywhere you look, you can find something delicious at every turn, skies the limit of smells and flavors.

See serious food specialists set up in alleyways by day, serving one dish, maybe khao moo, a fat pork leg roasted and braised overnight in sweet soy, served over rice with pickled mustard greens, open-air food courts with different "restaurants" inside delineated only by the color of their plastic chairs in the early evenings, where whole fish are pan-fried and topped with sour green mango and chilies, markets with every imaginable mix of homemade curry paste in the morning. The top floor of shopping malls are filled with food vendors of all sorts, the 7-11 near our guesthouse was filled with Chinese buns and Thai snacks we'd never seen before. At night after the shops were closed, sometimes not until 10pm, tables and stalls would set up, with one shining lamp and the night eating would begin. We ended up spending time in the most unlikely places.

This is one of the snacks I loved to find on the street but the truth is, we probably spent longer than we had planned in Bangkok because of it...we could get it in a little box at the 7-11. We'd eat this in bed and laugh at how good it was. Ridiculously good.

photos of my little take-home treat.

It's called Miang Kham and I'm always happy when they have it in the takeout fridge at my favorite Thai restaurant in Sunnyside, Sripraphai, just like our little addiction in Bangkok: little piles of betel leaves, bits of peanuts, lime, onion, galangal or ginger, toasted coconut and glued together with a sweet sticky sauce of tamarind and nam-pla, DIY, you just wrap it up like a delicious version of paan.
Read a better account of it here on of my favorite blogs, Eating Asia...his photos capture perfectly the joys and triumphs of eating in Asia and he's right: I am a "food-addicted farang who loves miang"!

I suddenly have

Camera envy.

Maybe it's because I've been looking at so many blogs with gorgeous photos. Maybe it's because one of the brides who came over for a consultation last week had a small digital camera with her that could run circles around my little old canon elph.

I guess it had been rolling around in my mind--this feeling of wanting to make my photos better--when I looked deeper into a lovely blog that is new to me called cookworm. I saw she had won a contest on Food + Photography (congratulations!) and when I clicked through it was as if a whole new world had opened up to me...they listed which cameras each photgrapher had used.cookworm's really great photographs and

the winning photo, (third)

Jim, who is an amazing photographer, has a big Canon EOS1D Mark 2 (with a hyper alloy battle chassis and an overhead cam drive). It's always looked big and complicated to me but he was thinking about selling it and now I am thinking about learning to use it and maybe even purchasing a macro lens for it. I'd like to be able to take better pictures of my jewelry, of my food, of all the things that inspire.

May I ask what kinds of cameras do you all use for the kinds of work you do? And what kind of accoutrements do use with it?