Greetings from Houston! Things are very quickly coming along here in our new home. My dad is here turning our totally awesome house into a TOTALLY AWESOME house with all of his remodeling and painting expertise along side a seemingly endless amount of grueling work. I am so grateful for him. The yellow you see in the above photo is my favorite piece of furniture right now. I should have taken some before and after pictures for super dramatic effect, but in its other life it was a dark burgundy. Now it’s a bumble bee cabinet since I spray painted the hardware black. More home updates will be coming soon if anyone is interested in reading about my psychedelic epiphanies while under the influence of epoxy. Am I am turning into a blogger mommy? I promise not to post videos of my shopping trips to Ikea. Actually, I pledge not to even make videos of my shopping trips to Ikea.

Speaking of trips I have made so many sojourns to Home Depot this past week that I feel like Harold Ramis.  I also am debating buying stock in Rust-Oleum. All this pimping out of the casa is swell but what I really want is to sit down and read for one month straight. I started Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin on the drive to Texas and it was extraordinary from page one. Word association compels me to inform you that Page One is the name of an amazing documentary you should watch. Here’s the trailer: http://youtu.be/rwTMFXgf95c

Samir and I both love traditional watercress soups but the only ones I’ve ever made call for heavy cream. Tonight we wanted something lighter but with a similarly smooth texture as dairy based recipes. If you’re never had watercress, be forewarned that it’s slightly tart. If you eat it alone you might find it bitter, but when combined with other veggies the flavor is recognizable without being overwhelming. It’s also extremely detoxifying. I decided to keep track of everything while I was cooking in case it turned out yummy enough for future replication. I am happy to report my culinary concoction was definitely nom worthy.

Completely Nomable Watercress Soup, serves 6-8 depending on bowl size

ingredients:

1 bunch water cress, destemmed

2 c. Yukon Gold potatoes, cubed

1 c. cauliflower flourets

1 yellow onion coarsely chopped

3 cloves of garlic

2 tbl. extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp. thyme

salt to taste

pepper to taste

fat free sour cream

fresh basil

8 cups of water

 directions:

Sautee onion in EVOO over medium heat in a large soup pot. When the onions turn translucent (about 10 minutes) add in the garlic, potatoes and cauliflower. Continue to sautee for another 5  minutes or so, then add in water, salt (I used about 1.5 tsp), and thyme. Bring to a boil, cover, and simmer for 25-30 minutes or until potatoes and cauliflower are tender. While this is boiling, de stem your watercress (it is quite tedious) and set aside. Puree what’s in the soup pot with the  watercress. You will need to do this in batches using a blender. I have a vitamix that works perfectly, but any blender with a high speed setting should do. Transfer soup back into pot and allow to cool. If there is any foam from blending, scoop off and discard. Garnish with 1 or 2 dollops of fat free sour cream, freshly cracked black pepper, and slivers of basil. If you’re not digging the basil, any fresh herb or just some extra watercress leaves would work nicely.

I made a simple salad and some garlic bread to go with the soup. For the salad, combine baby spinach, feta cheese and walnuts with either EVOO or a light balsamic vinaigrette. I also used the vinaigrette to saute a sliced up Bartlett pear over low to medium heat for about 8 minutes until it browned and caramelize a bit.

My guess is this would be really refreshing if served with white wine but since my knowledge of wine pairing is primitive and there was already some red open, we had a Cabernet. Where there is vino there is generally happiness. I think the best match would be a Pinot Grigio or a Chardonnay. I guess my wine knowledge isn’t completely pedestrian after all.

It was a mellow night here so I put on some old school Cat Stevens, you know, when Cat Stevens was still Cat Stevens. I may not instill you with confidence regarding my wine selections, but rest assured, Cat Stevens and watercress are fully compatible dinner pairings.

Good night and good eats!

xo,

j.

Hands down, salads are one of my favorite dishes. In the winter months, though, it’s far more difficult for me to eat my greens. Less variety at the grocery store, lack of a farmer’s market, and the chilling temperatures leave me craving hot toddies, creamy bisques and grilled goat cheese sandwiches. Basically, everything that’s not salad. Today I made an incredible salad that addresses most of the problems I have with eating healthy during off season. First of all, it’s made with ingredients that are available year round and secondly its spicy kick creates heat that’s excellent for feeling the warm holiday fuzzies or clearing up a stuffy head cold. The salad is inspired by my favorite winter veggies and the dressing is a spin off of Natalia Rose’s Amazing Raw Peanut Sauce. Enjoy!

(salad) 

ingredients needed:  cabbage, carrots, cilantro, eggplant, black mustard seeds

directions: 

First, chop/shred 2 cups of green or napa cabbage. Then grate 2 cups worth of carrots. Next take one bunch of cilantro and destem it and chop the leaves. Mix together in a large bowl and set aside.

Now take 1 medium eggplant and thinly slice it into rounds. Cut the rounds into fourths, creating eggplant wedges. In a skillet, pour a tablespoon or so of sesame oil over low to medium heat. Pour in a few teaspoons of black mustard seeds. Wait for them to start making a “popping” noise. Usually this happens within one minute. Once the oil and mustard seeds are hot, saute the eggplant to a tenderness of your liking. This should take 5-10 minutes on low to medium heat. Turn off heat and set eggplant aside.

(dressing)

ingredients needed:  almond or peanut butter, fresh lemon juice, serrano pepper, garlic, fresh ginger, Nama Shoyu , sesame oil, agave nectar, cayenne peppers

In a high speed blender, add the following:

1/2 cup of almond of peanut butter. Both are delicious but if you are trying to watch your calories, I totally recommend Bell Plantation’s PB2 powder. It only has 45 calories per 2 tablespoons of peanut powder! It’s powdered, so all you do is add the right amount of water to it to thicken it up. It comes in chocolate as well and both are delicious. Great for smoothies and sauces.

Juice from 1 small lemon

1/4 to 1/2 of a seeded serrano pepper (depending on your spice tolerance)

3 cloves of garlic

1 inch of fresh ginger, peeled (add two inches if you like a lot of spice)

1 1/2 tablespoons of Nama Shoyu. You can buy Nama Shoyu at any alternative grocery food store. It’s basically a raw (unpasteurized) soy sauce. If you don’t have it, you can use regular soy sauce but Nama Shoyu is so much better! It has a complex flavor all its own. I much prefer it.

2 tsp sesame oil

about 1/8 to 1/4 cup of agave nectar, depending on your liking. Start with 1/8 and add in more later if you’d like. Honestly, I just squeeze away and watch how much goes in. I’m not one for measurements.

1 pinch of cayenne pepper (only if you like it spicy! otherwise skip this last step)

purified water (use it to slowly thin the dressing down to the consistency you like)

Turn the blender on and slowly add water to help thin if too thick. I like my dressing a little on the thick side so I don’t add too much water.

Fill a bowl with the salad mix, top it with some of the sauteed eggplant and mustard seeds and drizzle the whole thing with dressing. Voila!

This amount of salad will make about 3-4 servings.

One of the exhibits up at the Menil right now is Seeing Stars: Visionary Drawings From the Collection. Apart from the surrealist rooms (which includes a sublime room full of strange objects that either inspired surrealists or were owned by actual painters in the movement), this was my favorite gallery. There are drawings from famous artists such as Jackson Pollock and a beautiful, large Henry Darger piece but also a whole slew of artists I’ve never heard of. One of those artists is now on my worship list: Unica  Zürn. If you want to read up on this uber talented German writer, artist and bonafide schizophrenic there’s a wonderful article found here.

Here are a few images I’m going gaga over. The first one I saw at the exhibit.

Her art reminds me of three things dear to my heart.

Number 1: Birdo, circa Super Mario Brothers 2. The figure in the first image is especially reminiscent of my favorite pink, egg spewing dino.

Number 2: Fantastic Planet. Perhaps one of the strangest and best French movies ever.

Number 3: Renaissance painter Hieronymus Bosch, whose triptych, the Garden of Earthly Delights remains completely and utterly unparalleled to this day.

Oh, and speaking of Birdo. I truly wish I had thought of this. It’s rather mind blowing, don’t you think?

And of course I can’t see a knitted, full body suit without immediately smiling and thinking of Miranda July making weirdly poetic contortions with shirty in her film The Future.

Which reminds me, if you ever get a chance to speak with Miranda July, do not ask her a two-part question. Trust me on this one. I have paved the awkward Q&A path for you and it is a path you’d be best to avoid.

WILL I MEET YOU SOMETIME? by Unica Zürn

After three ways in the rain image
when waking your counterimage: he,
the magician. Angels weave you in
the dragonbody. Rings in the way,
long in the rain I become yours.

During a layover last month I picked up a copy of Steven Martin’s most recent book, An Object of Beauty. I’ve been seriously falling short in the reading department lately. By lately I’m afraid I might be referring to the last five years since I was an English major in college. Armed with an Amazon.com giftcard, a set of magnetic kitty book marks, and the rare gift of free time, I am ready to set things right. I hope the new year finds me finally paying off my atrocious library fines and making the transformation from the girl who has an impressive amount of really cool books to the girl who has an impressive amount of really cool books and has actually read most of them.

My only complaint about reading books is that I love them fiercely and then often forget them. It’s not intentional, of course, just an inevitable consequence of my seemingly defective long term memory. Since consuming large quantities of ginkgo biloba doesn’t sound like the most sustainable plan of action, I figured I might devote some time to book blogging. In addition to providing literary prey for my inner snark, it will also be a nice way to catalogue what I’ve read. I realize there are websites designed exclusively for these things, but it turns out I need help remembering a lot more than just books and one URL is plenty enough for me. Blog = dear diary meets sticky note.

The back cover of An Object of Beauty says that with twenty-two lush, four-color art reproductions throughout, the book is “both a primer on the business of fine art collecting and a close study of the personalities that make it run.” Now, few people can argue with the intrigue of four-color art reproductions, but having finished the novel last week, I’d say it was more collegiate art history class than a collecting primer and that the personalities that make the business run rather made the book lag.

An Object of Beauty is narrated by Daniel Franks and follows the story of Lacey Yeager, chronicling her successes and failures in the New York art scene. Daniel is mostly an admirable narrator. He’s a smart, art critic whose slightly sullen and reserved personality costs him a lasting romantic relationship and makes him seem just a little too stereotypical “quiet nerdy guy who never gets the girl” for my liking. He reminds me of a downgraded John Cusack in one of his High Fidelty-esque romantic roles. His ho hum lack of initiative is in stark contrast to Lacey, who is the quintessential Gemini. It would seem Lacey, herself, is an object of beauty– young, ambitious and charming. Her restless personality keeps her flitting around from one project to the next, be that project a painting or a boyfriend.

As a Steve Martin fan, I had high hopes for the book when I started reading. Lacey, it turns out, is really a subpar protagonist and the one dimensional descriptions of her left me frequently dettached. Daniel, who tells his readers he had sex with Lacey “exactly once,”  is always describing how when Lacey walks into a room, heads turn. Lacey rides her bicycle, heads turn. Lacey enters the gallery, heads turn. Lacey goes to dinner, heads turn. Etc. and etc. There are many chapters that open or close with such depictions of Lacey’s physical prowess and it all becomes super redundant super fast. Being the “carpe diem” hottie that she is, her unpredictable take-life-by-the-reins attitude actually renders her a completely predictable character. With the exception of one minor “twist” near the end of the book, Lacey’s actions leave much to be desired as far as a plot.

In an NPR interview Martin said: “the artistic side of the world has people with more flamboyant personalities, or more uncategorizable personalities, and Lacey is certainly one of those people.” Lacey is about as uncategorizable as a Sex in the City episode. And I mean that with insult only to Lacey, and not to Carrie, because I adore Sexy in the City.

If Martin conceived Lacey as some sort genre-defying  anti-heroine, he had a fetching idea. Somewhere along the production line, however, the execution of this idea got botched. As a cunning and cruel heartbreaker, Lacey’s not designed to elicit empathy from readers. Under the influence of X she tells her friend she loves him and then doesn’t return his call for three years. Upon learning he is the identity behind the elusive up and coming artist, she nabs him for a show with a little sweet talk. Lacey’s an opportunist and a lush– two desirable qualities, if you ask me. She exhibits minor complexities here and there but over all, she is flat out boring. As a Gemini, myself, I feel I must apologize on her behalf.

You’ll be pleased to know there is a character I fell in love with, so before I start going all cray cray on Steve Martin I will say that Patrice Claire was the jewel of the book. Patrice is a middle aged, European, millionaire with an insatiable appetite for two things: art and Lacey. He has some of the most poignant lines in the novel and a sweetness to him despite the fact that he’s kind of skeezy which makes him kind of hot. I also really enjoyed the conversation Lacey has with John Updike on the train.

I found the book to be fairly funny overall, with its descriptions of exhibition trends and jesting attitude toward art snobbery and avaricious dealers. However, there was a lot of superfluity. At times, I definitely felt like I was wading through a litany of artists, hoping to past through the didactic illuminations about modernism and move into something more interesting. You know, like, a better storyline.

I suppose I could have ended the book thinking about what drives rich art collectors and if it’s possible for something to be beautiful and famous if it doesn’t come with the appropriate price tag that signifies its cultural worth. What is the intersection between art as a commodity and art as aesthetics? Or maybe I should have finished the novel mulling over the fine line between passion and obsession. Or I could have been thinking long and hard about Lacey, questioning the intent of her cool and calculated rise to the top, wondering what she was really thinking all those years she climbed the ladder. Will she every truly be happy? Did she finally find love? Does she even believe in love? Do I believe in love? What is happiness? Why are Warhols so fucking expensive?

But no. I just felt a little annoyed after the last page. Actually, I felt a little annoyed on the last page. I didn’t so much care for the ending.

Martin is a fab and skillful writer and some of his passages are very eloquent and moving, but those passages are isolated patches of brilliance. They work stunningly as a paragraph but not as impressive when woven together into a novel. Whatever its flaws, I still think An Object of Beauty is worth reading, and hey, it will look damn good on your bookshelf. You know, with those twenty-two four color illustrations and all.