Exciting times in these parts!

Here’s two crafty, cook-y things you need to know today:

1) First Online Sample Sale Site For Cookware To Launch In April

Snappy Tuna promises to work in the same way online fashion sample-sale sites do, by offering top-name kitchen tools and gadgets at 70% off. When I heard about it from my boss at work, I hunted down the article on the NY Times website that alerted her to this cool, new thing on the net:

Snappy Tuna covers “the whole experience, from prepping a meal to getting it out the door,” said Marcus Greinke of his new Web site, the latest in a growing number built on the sample-sale model. Snappy Tuna specializes in well-known kitchenware and tabletop brands that are discounted up to 60 percent off retail prices, for three days only. Items for sale will include specialty foods, espresso machines and Le Creuset cookware…”

You can sign up on their site right now without an invite (you can go through my Snappy Tuna link HERE). After March 20 or so, the site will be invite-only. I’m SO excited for this!

Now if only they had something similar for fabric…ok, well, let’s not go there. Money doesn’t grow on curls, you know!

2) The First-Ever Crafty Con

YES. You read that right.

Faythe Levine, author of Handmade Nation, tweeted about this. IF money grew on curls I would go in a heartbeat! Early-bird registration is currently $699, and increases by $100 the closer it gets to the show. Plus, it’s in Chicago—home of the Joffrey Ballet and a city I’d LOVE to revisit. Sigh. Can someone out there who plans to go just stuff me into their suitcase? I’ll bring my own snacks for the plane ride! Go HERE if you can take this trip for me!

The Pillsbury Doughboy sent me a Valentine over the weekend!

I LOVE the Doughboy! I was kind of squealing when I saw the e-card in my inbox. Haha.

Hope your weekend was sweet! More posts to come about mine—I made my first roast chicken and it was EPIC.

At 8-ish o’clock in the evening, I was in my jammies heckling at the TV as I watched the historic Iron Chef battle between Team Flay/Comerford and Team Batali/Lagasse. It was an event of gastronomic proportions that I couldn’t miss.

I had been waiting for that episode for months. Even if I was sure I’d catch it in real time on the West Coast, I made backup plans and asked E. to record it on TiVO. And thinking about it now, I would watch the episode again!

I took special interest in the episode because of Cristeta Comerford, the Filipino head chef at the White House who has cooked meals for two administrations now (the Obamas kept her on after she served the Bush family for many years).  She was such an inspiration, this tiny thing moving around among the towering figures of her male counterparts, confident, quick and intelligent. I was very proud of her. She didn’t just hold her own, but she took the win with Bobby Flay.

Michelle Obama announced the secret ingredient: the White House garden. The chefs had their pick of the freshest herbs and vegetables from the garden (and its own honey farm) and, with local ingredients, inspired a mouthwatering menu that made me swoon. And they made the judges swoon, too. The event’s critical palates were those of celebrity chef Nigella Lawson, actress Jane Seymour and Olympic gold medalist Natalie Coughlin. (I love how Emeril seems to be having a philisophical discussion with those radishes!)

The menus focused on local and sustainable ingredients and included Blue Point oysters, bay scallops, clams, lobster, heritage turkey and quail, pork, artisanal cheeses and fresh dairy. Here are the prize dishes that took the win for Comerford and Flay:

Fennel and Apple Salad with Blue Point Oysters
Eggplant and Carrot Salad with Crispy Lobster and Squid, with White House Honey
A fresh twist to the Manhattan Clam Chowder with broccoli and broccoli raab, local clams and crab mixed with fingerling potatoes, chorizo, lemongrass, garlic and ginger
BBQ pork accompanied by vegetables
Sweet Potato Tart Topped With Meringue, and a side of ginger ice cream

THIS blog has a great summary of the episode, including the recipe for the prize-winning Cauliflower Gratin that Nigella Lawson spooned with a big smile into her mouth, because she says cauliflower and cheese is very British comfort food. I can’t wait to make it myself, it should be perfect for winter.

After the show, I was warm and happy with thoughts of food, so I ended the night curled up in bed with a new cookbook I got for Christmas. An awesome start to a New Year; I can’t wait to make this year into a delicious one. And I hope yours is just as yummy!

*All photos courtesy of Food Network

Moreover, I always take home new tastes and new challenges, so my table for one is constantly changing. And friends and family who partake of my fare are, I hope, never bored. There is an old Italian saying, A tavola non s’invecchia — “At the table one never grows old.” Isn’t that reason enough to come home at the end of the day, roll up one’s sleeves, fire up the stove, and start smashing the garlic?

As Brillat-Savarin wrote: “The pleasures of the table are for every man, of every land, and no matter of what place in history or society; they can be part of all his other pleasures, and they last the longest to console him when he has outlived the rest.”

- Judith Jones, The Tenth Muse: My Life In Food

* Judith Jones is the Knopf book editor credited with discovering Julia Child in 1959.

Business was doing well, because all the locals knew that dishes made from the flowers that grew around the apple tree in the Waverley garden could affect the eater in curious ways. The biscuits with lilac jelly, the lavender tea cookies, and the tea cakes made with nasturtium mayonnaise the Ladies Aid ordered for their meetings once a month gave them the ability to keep secrets. The fried dandelion buds over marigold-petal rice, stuffed pumpkin blossoms, and rose-hip soup ensured that your company would notice only the beauty of your home and never the flaws. Anise hyssop honey butter on toast, angelica candy, and cupcakes with crystallized pansies made children thoughtful. Honeysuckle wine served on the Fourth of July gave you the ability to see in the dark. The nutty flavor of the dip made from hyacinth bulbs made you feel moody and think of the past, and the salads made with chicory and mint had you believing that something good was about to happen, whether it was true or not.

- Garden Spells, Sarah Addison Allen

Saturday found us, at the ungodly hour of 7:30 in the morning, northbound on the Amtrak Pacific Surfliner train, up the California coast headed toward Santa Barbara. We spent a full, fun day there. My favorite souvenir of our small adventure is this hardbound Pride & Prejudice comic book by Marvel discovered in a random comic book shop. I love it even more for the fact that the shop was totally unexpected. It was this tiny store stocked to the gills with geekery off of the main street that goes through town, and we sort of half stumbled into it, sloth-like from a delicious brunch, cupping hot drinks in our hands.

I had seen Volume 1 months ago in another comic book shop in Los Angeles, but the one above is the complete series, collected. I haven’t taken the shrink wrap off of it yet. I’m happy to just look at it for now. Below are some of the covers. I love the alliterative, irreverent modern blurbs!

If you want peeks of the stuff inside, Comic Book Resources has some pretty good pages.

And don’t laugh, but I also took home Vols. 1-3 of the “Archie Gets Married” Series. Haha.

On Saturday, I also got to smell Julia Child. Actually, I got the chance to smell the beautiful variety of yellow rose that was named after her. Ms. Julia smelled quite lovely.

This was during our tour of the Rose Garden on wondrous Lotus Land, a 37-acre private estate that was turned into a nonprofit. It used to be owned by an eccentric, extremely rich opera singer who dedicated her life to building this botanical masterpiece. It has 16 beautifully maintained gardens and is a must-see if you ever make your way to Santa Barbara.

So, Saturday may not have been as crafty as my usual Saturdays go, but it was still full of my favorite things. Flowers named after great chefs, Mr. Darcy and oh yes, taffy! (Pumpkin and Candy Corn are two flavors I love that are now in season.)

How was your weekend, world?

I am often asked, “Why is handcraft so popular?” I think that handcraft is popular right now as a reaction against a whole slew of things, including our hyper-fast culture, increasing reliance on digital technology, the proliferation of consumer culture, and even war. …

For some people, sustainability is a part of their handcraft practice. Other people want to see a project through from beginning to end, something they don’t get to do in their daily lives. In their jobs, they do one part of producing something and they don’t do the other parts. In producing a handcraft project, people can see something from start to finish and then have a material product that they can use themselves or give away. Even though we all have frequent access to the internet and are able to communicate with people through digital media, we are still sensual beings. We need to maintain a tactile relationship to the world.

Sabrina Gschwandtner in Handmade Nation: The Rise of DIY, Art, Craft, and Design, Levine/Heimerl

Our meals are rarely transitioned into as easily as soup on a winter day. I’ve begun wondering if this is because when a person eats alone, two eggs go a long way toward a respectable dinner. They’re filling, they don’t cost much, they come individually portioned, they’re actually protein (versus the cheap carbohydrates that fill most cupboards), and they aren’t much trouble to make or clean up afterward. Before we moved in together, I would happily scramble a few eggs, or make an omelet with a bit of cheese in the fold, and eat it alongside a handful of dressed salad greens, a toasted slice of good bread,  and a glass of wine if there was an open bottle in the house. Or, of the greens involved frisée, I might toss them only with vinegar, salt, and pepper, poach the eggs or fry them gently, and put them over the greens, letting their pierced yolks dribble down, acting as the dressing’s silky fat. The cheese could then go over the bread, be shown the inside of the broiler, and could be eaten as a bubbly, open-faced cheese sandwich. Bliss! That all this changes once there’s a second person at the table somehow caught me by surprise.

- The Gastronomy Of Marriage: A Memoir Of Food And Love, Michelle Maisto

There are a few things I know my cousin Kara loves: Meiji chocolate, sashimi and anime. See the common thread? I often think she was Japanese in her past life, so when her manga-esque doodles started showing up on her Twitter feed and her Facebook page, I wasn’t suprised. I was bowled over, though, when I asked her to create a manga-ized version of me for my upcoming birthday. When I got the caricature you see above via Twitter this morning, I was seriously amazed. Isn’t it awesome? Some of you who know me personally will see how it’s just like me, only, er, as a Japanese cartoon character. I was so happy and proud I swear I forgot I was getting over the flu. Kara, you are truly talented! (I promise I’ll try to stop teasing you about going to the Other School for college. Hehe.)

To see more of her awesome work, visit her DA page, HERE.

And oh, konnichiwa, everyone! I’m back!

Waiters wait for their cue to serve breakfast for a meeting between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at Putin’s dacha outside Moscow, Russia, July 7, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

For months now, I’ve been trying to write a blog post about my fascination with presidential china. It would have been perfect as a fourth of July post, but that holiday found me up to my curls in cupcakes and picnic baskets, so it flew by in a blur of fireworks without me getting the time to cobble anything together.

The idea for this post came from discovering these beautiful images from the White House’s official Flickr photostream. Politcal beliefs aside, anyone can appreciate the elegance of these place settings. (Well, that is if you’re as strange as I am.)

Photo credits: Left column—Samantha Appleton; Right column—Pete Souza

Plates intrigue me. For someone who cooks, they’re like the canvas to the “painting” of a good meal. At a restaurant, I take note of the plate my food comes on—any plate, even the ones at Maxwell’s, a tiny café in Culver City we like to brunch in on Sundays, where plain white diner ceramic plates are used.

So as I was going through the stream of photos, my foodie’s sense tingled every time I spied a place setting. The photos made me curious: If the president asked you for a snack of his favorite cheese and crackers, what plate would you serve it on?

Photo credit: Pete Souza

Maybe you political junkies already knew this, but I only recently found out that it’s a time-honored tradition for First Ladies to commission the design and production of china for their respective husbands’ terms. Not all administrations have done so and sometimes use those of the previous one’s, but whenever the new sets come in, they’re used for state dinners and the like. A sample of the set is also showcased in the White House’s China Room. (I’ve never had the desire to see The White House before, but now that I know there’s a room full of PLATES in it, I really want to go! Haha.)

Early White House china that was chipped or broken used to be given away, or auctioned off to raise money for the creation of the next set. Congress later passed a law requiring for all presidential china to be kept or destroyed. In fact, when designs for new dessert plates for the Johnson administration didn’t turn out as well as planned, the White House staff dealt with the situation by smashing the plates against a basement wall painted with caricatures of the president’s assistants!

Michelle Obama has yet to move forward with the present administration’s china patterns. She has many beautiful sets to pick from in the meantime, especially because Laura Bush commissioned both informal and formal china sets during her husband’s terms.

Formal Set—”George W. Bush State China”

Photo credit: Ron Edmonds, Associated Press

Informal set—”Magnolia Residence China,” inspired by a magnolia tree on the White House grounds believed to be the oldest botanical resident on the White House grounds

Photo credit: Ron Edmonds, Associated Press

And these are my favorite plates from previous administrations. (Photos courtesy of Whitehousemuseum.org.)

Clockwise, these plates were from the administrations of: Franklin Pierce, John Quincy Adams, Ronald Reagan and Thomas Jefferson

And so, after going through tons of online resources and researching White House history, I’ve finally written my presidential plates post (alliterate much?)! Did I bore you? Are you snoozing? Haha. I feel that this obsession of mine is highly specialized (read: odd), but I’ve always been fascinated with how much food is a part of a country’s history, and that naturally extends to the story behind the vessels the food was served in. Who knows what kinds of conversations these plates have heard and seen?

I hope your own plates, even if they don’t have the presidential seal emblazoned on them, are filled with good food that inspire great memories every day.