This weekend on public radio stations across the country, The Splendid Table, Lynne Rosetto Kasper’s wonderful food radio show, will be airing an interview with Sally about ‘the improvised life’ approach to Homemade Holiday Food Gifts. Check out Splendid Table’s website for show times in your area, download podcasts or stream the show. You’ll find Sally’s…
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We are beside ourselves. Corby Kummer, editor and journalist par excellence of The Atlantic wrote a big, generous RAVE of ‘the improvised life’ in his column Fresh Feeds. So we’re printing the whole thing here, because we’re so proud and thrilled, and honored: Who really wants to go shopping at the holidays? Okay, it can…
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This short clip is from a film called Medicine Fiddle, about a unique hybrid music and dance form created by the convergence of French, Scotch and Irish fur traders and trappers, with Native American tribes in Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana and Canada in the 1700 and 1800’s. These mixed-blood people are often called Metis. Their music is rural American…
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‘the improvised life’ is proud to be included in NYC Bloggers Do the Holidays, a group blog by “the city’s coolest bloggers”*. If you haven’t already, I recommend checking out the sites below for all the fun and illuminating holiday ideas they’ve come up with… I found a lot of great non-New York-centric links while poking around…
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Do you ever feel like you just can’t figure out what colors go with what? Being great at color is clearly a special gift, but we mortals can learn to find our way with a little help. Consciously looking at wonderful combinations of color is a way of training the eye: a practice. And an…
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One of my favorite recipes is called Fried Water: Melt one ice cube in a skillet by placing it in the sun. When melted, add 1 cup water and saute slowly — until water is transparent. Serve small portions, because this dish is rich as well as mouth-watering. It’s from a book I had as…
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Sometimes when I need a diversion from writing, I poke around location scout Andrea Raisfeld’s website of interesting spaces for rent for photography locations. You can browse by type (apartment, barn, log cabin…), or description (contemporary, Modernist, Swedish…), or even by a feature (bunk bed, river, treehouse), and so on. I always find unexpected ideas there, like…
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Urawaza means “secret tricks” or “unmapped short-cuts” in Japanese. These are innovations and solutions to life’s little problems that humble people figure out for themselves, like How to Give Yourself a Steam Facial in the Tub (sit in the tub with an umbrella open over your head)…or How to Soothe an Itchy Mosquito Bite (put…
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Occasionally, I retreat to a friend’s cabin in the West Virginia Appalachians to rest and cook with what is there: a rudimentary kitchen and what the local store offers me. These constraints are a pleasing challenge that deconstruct my city self. I’ve improvised roasting pans out of tin foil, and made a soufflé with local cheese…
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This lovely time-lapse video is a reminder that the world is going on around us, doing its own creative thing, that the constant is change.
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If you start with the idea that the holidays are about really giving a part of yourself rather than STUFF, and spreading joy, and celebrating what we have, you instantly start to eliminate the nonessential and stressful. These are the things that are more obligation than fun – too exhausting, too expensive, or just TOO…
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A few years ago, I discovered that the holiday gift my friends treasured most was a simple card telling them that I’d given a donation in their name to a charity. They were happy NOT to get more stuff, and be given something that was helping someone else. It was a way I could give…
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‘the improvised life’ was going to be dark today, while we move a tiny bit slower AND work on a post for next Tuesday’s special Manhattan User’s Guide 2009 New York Blogger’s Holiday Guide. But while reading Kottke yesterday morning, I came across this swell little video essay by Matt Zoller Seitz from Moving Image Source.…
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Nearly a year ago at the Thanksgiving dinner of friends, Louise Randolph brought me a handmade pot she’d had for many years. The rough-hewn pot, improvised out of a coffee can, some wire and a piece of wood, had belonged to her late great aunt Eva Dahlgren. Eva grew up in a privileged home, and…
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Some time ago in the New York Sunday Times Style Magazine, Alexi Worth wrote about El Anatsui, an African artist who uses twist-off bottle caps to make shimmering sculptures that look like liquid mosaics. The story of how El Anatsui discovered his unlikely material for art is compelling. It is a fine example of the…
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I started thinking about using my hand as a notepad, as I did when I was a kid, and began noticing people with notes scrawled and scribbled on their hands. The manager of the local fish market had phone numbers running up the back of his hand in blue ball point. At the Bauhaus show…
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Years ago my family stopped being nuclear and evolved into an extended and very eclectic family of friends. My Thanksgiving dinners have evolved too, from the traditional menu of my childhood to the wondrous offerings of many cooks who come together yearly, each bringing a different dish, to form a collective feast. In this way…
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A rich chestnut puree, fragrant with bay leaf and fennel seed, is a wonderful alternative to mashed potatoes in the traditional Thanksgiving feast. But roasting enough chestnuts to make a puree for ten or twelve is laborious work. Instead I often use bottled vacuum-packed chestnuts (available in gourmet shops and many supermarkets), or frozen peeled…
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In my Inbox this morning, the ever-illuminating Manhattan User’s Guide alerted me to a new blog called Pop-Up Lunch. It explores ways New York’s nontraditional public spaces, like sidewalks, steps, and fire hydrants can be transformed into places to eat lunch. Writes blogger AP: “This blog follows a series of Pop Up Lunches I have staged…
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