Search results for 'Maria Robledo'
Maria Robledo
Maria’s Robledo‘s instagram of ramps reminds us that the wild leek that grows throughout the Appalachian and Catsill mountains in spring won’t be around much longer. Like many truly wild foods, they possess mighty powers to fortify the body and lift the spirit. Buy ‘em while you can get them. If they’re in good shape, they’ll keep a couple of weeks in the fridge with their roots in a jar of water, and the whole bunch covered loosely with a plastic bag.
We’re heading to the farmer’s market Saturday morning to get a mess, to braise them with olive oil or bacon or pancetta fat to serve as a side dish or with pasta OR to whip up a huge batch of Ramp Butter, which we’ll eat now on great bread, or throw on peas, asparagus, pasta, eggs, mashed potatoes or… We’ll freeze the rest, rolled into logs and wrapped in plastic wrap, to enjoy for months to come.
If you don’t know about the wild West Virginia ramps festivals, check out our post here. At one many years ago, a ramp-intoxicated friend was inspired to throw a ramp into a bottle of good bourbon. He brought the ramp-infused bourban back the following year. Under the Appalachian stars, we swigged a strange new moonshine that tasted of onion, chocolate, caramel, earth.
Related posts: artichokes = spring is here! (revised) with recipe
the appalachian trail (2200 miles in 5 mins) + we’re gone!
foraging for ‘REAL’: ramps etc with recipe
a (mind) game for cultivating resourcefulness
05.24.13 |
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in food, Maria Robledo's Instagrams, recipes, strategies
Sally Schneider
While walking in the park across the way, I passed a tree stump left behind after Hurricane Sandy. Overwhelmed with fallen trees, the Parks Department had done their best to remove the huge tree bodies with chain saws that struggled against massive trunks; the cuts were often roughly-made or incomplete like this one: a tusk was left protruding from the akimbo trunk. I’d walked by it dozens of times and never seen the possibility that had been right in front of me all the time. I had only to turn our head at an angle to see, ready-made, a chair. read more…
05.23.13 |
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in garden, nature, outside, paths + processes, sightings
Maria Robledo
We’ve just discovered photographer Maria’s Robledo’s crazy-beautiful Instagram, a trove of images that will make you SEE the everyday differently and put you right in the moment. Only Maria could have come up with this simple, curiously moving arrangements of pussy willow blossoms (which people usually just throw away once they’ve been knocked off their stem). The image shouts SPRING. It seems the perfect accompaniment to this 4-line gem of a poem by Su Tung-p’o written over a thousand years ago:
Pear blossoms pale white, willows deep green –
when willow fluff scatters, falling blossoms will fill the town.
Snowy boughs by the eastern palisade set me pondering –
in a lifetime how many springs do we see? read more…
05.16.13 |
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in art, garden, inspiration blogs + sites, nature, people, quotes
insideinside.tumblr.com
Dig this wondrous display of succulents on an unused staircase (well, er, we assume it’s not used, otherwise it would quite an unusual challenge to navigate)!
It shouts JOY and a kind of uninhibited artfulness.
Succulents are in the wind…or are we just SEEING them now?
Maria Robledo brought us one as a house gift. We lifted it out of its plastic pot and plunked it into a jar. It looks like a sculpture… read more…
05.15.13 |
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in garden, outside, sightings
photo: maria robledo
This weekend when we go to the farmer’s market, we will have Tubetti Pasta with Asparagus, Morels and Fava Beans from Sally’s award-winning cookbook A New Way to Cook 
in mind. It the perfect spring-into-summer pasta recipe because it lends itself to endless improvisation, depending on what look’s best in the market, or how much energy we have.
It plays on an essential principle of improvisational cooking: most foods harvested in the same season — in this case asparagus, morel mushrooms, and various members of the pea family— have an affinity for one another.
The recipe is built on a basic technique: braising the vegetables in a flavorful fat and a little water, then tossing them together with small tubetti pasta and fresh herbs. If you’re pressed for time, use the essential method as a foundation and use only one or two of the vegetables or whatever else looks good in the market. Or swap out like vegetables: use other firm mushrooms like maitake instead of morels.
Shucking fava beans or peas can be a delight when done with friends, but if you’re pressed for time, frozen peas are a fine stand-in.
For those who want to improvise, here’s the basic approach: read more…
05.03.13 |
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in eating, entertaining, family + friends, food, recipes, resources books + zines
We love the possibilities inherent in the great valentine DIY we found at Mineco Co UK, made of woven paper. All you need is an exactto knife and straight edge and some nice paper. Mineco’s site tells how-to, but there’s lots of room for improvising (were thinking cut up photographs, magazines, ribbon…)
read more…
02.13.13 |
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in celebrations, copy this!, d-i-y, family + friends, gifts, how-to, materials, strategies
photo © melissa catanese,
We stumbled on some compelling photo placemats done as a public art project for Atlanta Celebrates Photography: photos printed onto large size paper, perfect IF you have a big color printer. The standard size of a placemat is 12″ x 18″, bigger we can print, although we suppose, we could have them done at Kinko’s.
The photo placemats got us mulling what we have around besides our roll of kraft paper for making some impromptu placemats. Our 11″ x 14″ pad of Strathmore Drawing Paper 
makes for nice big sheets with a ruffled edges where they were pulled off the spiral spine, and white space that invites a drawing, collage, quote or…
read more…
02.04.13 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, diy, elements, food, inside, materials, resources, strategies
*digikijo
A few weeks ago, after Susan Dworski mentioned that she carved stamps out of erasers, we started thinking about all the things you could do with home-made stamps. Why not stamp a pattern on sheets or rolls of paper to make your own fab holiday wrapping paper? (It’s easy, you just get yourself some Staedtler Mars Erasers
and start carving, with whatever tools you have…dip in paint and stamp away — check out our how-to here).
Then we remembered some wonderful gift wrap our friend Holton Rower made with his kids one Christmas. He made his stamps out of potatoes. read more…
12.21.12 |
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in celebrations, cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, diy, gifts, how-to, kids, materials, projects + play, resources
photo: maria robledo
After we posted about making wreaths of “just about anything“, Maria Robledo sent us a picture of a wreath that pushes that idea in the most wonderful and surprising way: a real bird’s nest nestled into winter branches whose leaves have dropped. It was a gift from inspired floral designer Emily Thompson, who even left bits of New York City debris that were part of the find.
Maria photographed on story on Thompson’s “wild” wreath-making for Martha Stewart Living Magazine. Wrote Maria: ”Emily’s wreaths are always naturally-shaped. Doesn’t use the pre-wreath gadgets.” We found a slide-show here.
We love that Thompson often uses found and foraged materials. Any of the materials she winds into wreaths could simply be arranged on the holiday table, instead of flowers… read more…
12.18.12 |
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in celebrations, copy this!, d-i-y, diy, elements, entertaining, inside, materials, nature, outside, people, resources
Some time ago, Michael Druzinsky, an acquaintance of mine who is a composer, emailed his friend Mark Bernstein, who created the idea-mapping softwear Tinderbox, to ask if he’d mind talking to me about his very interesting software. Michael forwarded Mark’s reply: “Sally Schneider’s book, A New Way to Cook, changed my life. I’ve given it to lots of people. I’d be delighted to meet her.” Wow. There is NOTHING like a good unsolicited compliment. Then I discovered that Mark had devoted a blog post to the A New Way to Cook, unsolicited. Mark GOT the book so well, I’ve excerpted his post.
I happened across Sally Schneider’s A New Way to Cookin a chain bookstore one day, just about three years ago. It’s very big and very broad, and The Joy of Cooking is clearly not far from its mind.
But while Joy of Cooking is a vast collection of recipes, A New Way to Cook is trying to explain a much smaller core of ideas, expressed in the form of recipes with variations. We have, for example, a core recipe for “braising small fish” or “rustic fruit tart”, and then examine a host of ingredients that we can add or subtract — and the changes that these additions and subtractions will require. In the fruit tart, for example, we might use apples or pears or strawberries (less water, more flour, add rhubarb) or blueberries (try a little thyme) or raspberries (even frozen — add more flour because they’re wet) or reconstituted dried apricots. It’s all the same idea.
And that’s a powerful idea, read more…
12.13.12 |
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in celebrations, entertaining, food, gifts, people, recipes, resources books + zines, strategies
photo: maria robledo
For the past couple of days, we’ve been getting calls from friends asking for recommendations for the Thanksgiving meal: the best way to cook the turkey, what side dishes, what to drink. So for all our readers who may still be at odds with what they are going to make tomorrow, here’s our round-up of favorite Thanksgiving recipes (which, taken together, make a perfect menu). And since we view recipes as rough formulas and idea generators, we encourage your to take them in whatever direction you want. read more…
11.21.12 |
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in celebrations, entertaining, family + friends, kids, recipes, strategies
The wind has picked up in the huge trees in the park across the way. TV news is reporting mandatory evacuations around the city, as the confluence of full moon, the jet stream and hurricane Sandy’s massive size threatens major flooding and power outages. The sky is straight our of a Ghostbuster’s movie; we’re waiting for the storm to hit.
We spent the morning walking around Harlem gathering supplies, as others did…prescriptions, cash, batteries. We stopped to listen to the joyous gospel that spilled from the windows of a church. As we wandered, we planned our supplies and strategy should the power go out. We’re definitely not into Powerbars; but into REAL as long as we can maintain it.
We’ve stocked up on read more…
10.29.12 |
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in d-i-y, eating, food, how-to, inside, kitchen, nature, strategies
