Flavors 518

I had a real Smallbany moment at The Point on Thursday night. It was really funny. It turned out that our server Lauryn (the best), who had been our server starting 5 years ago at Provence , was the babysitter when she was a little kid of a server we know from the Pourhouse who was there at The Point as a customer and came over to talk to us. It was the funniest thing because they hadn't seen each other since Lauryn was the babysitter.  I never get tired of weird coincidental connections between people, so much that it gets hard to explain sometimes or so far removed its not even interesting. Like... my new coworker's husband is in the Albany Symphony Orchestra, and I have a friend (who I met at the All Over Albany party 3 years ago) who also is in the ASO and so they know each other... my new worker's daughter is friends with a friend of someone who did a reading at my wedding, who I was introduced to by someone I went to grad school with in NY. Is it interesting? Are we...

I have just finished reading Homeward Bound: Why Women are Embracing the New Domesticity by Emily Matchar. I thought it was a really interesting book, and during the time I was reading it I would talk about it to anyone who would listen. Basically, it explores trends and attitudes as far back as the 1880s regarding homemaking, and she interviews a lot of individuals currently involved in urban homesteading, attachment parenting, blogging about cupcakes, and selling scarves on Etsy. I definitely find myself very low on the spectrum of DIY compared to most of these people, and I have to say right now that I think reusable toilet paper is gross. A big part of the desire to return to the home as the author lays it out, is that the workplace hasn't really been that great for women, especially mothers. When you're unsatisfied with your job, it is a lot easier to glorify ways of doing things that were left behind decades ago for good reasons. I don't really fanta...

I love the Gardner Museum Cafe Cookbook , because who doesn't want to cook luncheon pies and party like its 1890? I also love the photos in the book from the archives at the museum taken during many of Gardner's fancy dinner parties. Everyone looks so relaxed in their tight-fitting Victorian outfits. I made the ratatouille pie recipe last night from this cookbook. I have to admit to having felt a bit stressed. I remember when I was in college and reading in the bath a short story in The Atlantic about a doctor who got to Friday night and collapsed and thought to himself "This is professional life?" I remember thinking "That can't be right, clearly you finish all your school assignments and the whole rest of life is easy." Where I got this idea I can't ever recall. When I was a kid it was always all this pressure to do well at each thing so that you could get onto the next thing ("You better be perfect in high school so that you can go to co...

I was in Michigan last week on my way to a work errand in Chicago, and my grandfather said to me at his 90th birthday party "How can you stand to live in a place you aren't from?" It was an interesting question. He was asking me about my new-ish job and Saratoga, and I said to him "I think you can like many places".  I've taken to this new theory nowadays that there can be several happy endings to everyone's stories, instead of only one. Perhaps life is less fated, and more "Choose Your Own Adventure".  I went to Chicago where I met up with some friends of ours who are originally from the San Francisco area and moved to Albany around the same time we did. We went to a Starbucks that serves wine (what? what? see for yourself below! It was great fun actually!) They talked about the difficulty of moving to a new area, the difficulty of making friends, finding work, and fostering a sense of community. They didn't seem to like Chicago...

Where does summer go? When you are a kid, it stretches on with no end in sight.  Below is a photo from my teenage lifeguarding days. Is that Sun-in ? You mean like the disgusting comb-in hair lightener/fryer? Why, yes it is! Just awful! But as an adult with brunches, BBQs, business trips, and countless hours spent working in an office in front of a computer screen (not sunbathing while reading a book), it seems like you eat a few amazing tomatoes and it is gone. Its hot. It can be sticky. You can forget why you are doing what you are doing, and why you were so enthusiastic about it in the first place. (As a side note - if you lose your faith in food blogging , this post alone can restore it almost completely .) A day can end with a coworker calling you, you both recalling something so frustrating that you both just end up laughing until you are almost crying out of crazy satire. Then, when you think of it later while walking down the street, you crack up laughing again becau...

This sounds like a really interesting event as part of the Berkshire Women Writer's Festival 2012 . I have plans that evening, and as I have mentioned a few times Ruth Reichl was once sort of rude to me , but I'm sure it will be a great event. 

I previously mentioned that I am auditing a class at the art conservation lab. Last week we took a field trip to the Empire State Plaza Art collection. I had never been down there before. Another blogger discussed the collection here . The conservator told us about all the awful things that have happened to these paintings, including vandalism in the 1980s. You can read an article about that event here . A man took a serrated steak knife to eight different paintings, sawed at them, pulled the canvas forward, and wrote on them in magic marker. It was at three a.m., the plaza police were off somewhere, and the only reason the man got caught was that he turned himself in the next morning. There were other incidences over the years with these paintings - kids lodging spitballs on them with straws from the nearby McDonald's, coffee spills, soy sauce packets sprayed on the Jackson Pollock , a Jazzercise instructor using a painting as the jumping off point for her exercise, kids climb...

 I have previously made art history cookies. I even mentioned to my boss about making art history inspired cake pops for when our new director starts ( she suggested something more like this ). But now, check out these art history sandwiches! Very cool.

Sometimes my boss and I sit around and try to come up with ways to make more money. Yesterday we thought Etsy was a good idea. Today we started talking about all these parties you can have where you sell things. I never knew about half of these. Pampered Chef Tastefully Simple Even Dove Chocolates There are custom handbags .  ( Made nearby in Troy) And the idea that started them all: Tupperware . The only one that actually seems like a good idea to me is Avon , because that is actually not a party and just a catalog. Still, there is something a little wrong about "Hi, I'm your friend - buy some eyeliner?!" Anyone have any thoughts on these? Does anyone actually make money or is it all a way for these companies to infiltrate your social circles and make your friends guilted into buying things from you? 

This week I am dogsitting in North Adams, MA. ( Last time I was dogsitting I took myself out to breakfast at the Blue Benn in VT. )  I love the Berkshires, and it is not just because three different museums out here have employed me, compared to none in Albany. I love the Berkshires for a lot of the same reasons I love the Napa Valley . Sure it is very rural, and you often feel like you are in the middle of nowhere, but it is still relatively culturally sophisticated. James Taylor lives here. What is often ranked as the number one liberal arts school in the country is here . Emily Dickinson, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Herman Melville are all from western Massachusetts. The scenery is incredibly beautiful, and yet the one movie playing in town is likely the same artsy movie you saw at the Spectrum last week. Our friends who live in Seattle and Boston talk about how they want to go to MassMoca . People who hear about me having an hour commute always feel really bad for me, but it is ver...

This year I decided to take on a part-time job during the weekends throughout the holidays to make some extra cash (because weddings , no matter how much you try not to spend a lot of money and make everything yourself are freakin' expensive). Back when I was an unpaid intern at the American Museum of Natural History , the archivist told me as I was taking on tons of debt to basically hope to be like her one day, that it would be a long while until I made a lot of money. Of course, it is also really satisfying work, and I knew what I was getting into. One main reason that I went to graduate school was so that I didn't have to be a waitress anymore . So when I came up with the idea of working weekends during the holidays, I really didn't want to go back to that. So I showed up at a craft store, let's call it Mary Jo's Crafts, which is next to Emperor's Wine and Spirits . To their credit they hired me, since most places like that see that you have a Master...