List 94

Love: My friend Lisa's idea, from her blog Picnic, for inexpensive, stylish present wrapping:  brown paper bag + binder clip + any wintery Instagram picture. This is especially brilliant for people like myself whose presents tend to look like they were wrapped by a small child, or perhaps even an animal lacking opposable thumbs. 

Like: This always reliable, always delicious Smoked Salmon Dip from Bon Appetit, for any holiday cocktail party.

Smoked Salmon Dip Recipe

Discovery: Some of my favorite gift ideas for the year...

For the geek, any (all?) of these Star Wars prints from etsy's CONCEPCIONSTUDIOS. 

For ladies/readers, these lovely versions of the chick canon, sold at Anthropologie.

For the entertainer, monogrammed cocktail napkins from Mark & Graham, in the typewriter font.

For me (hopefully), some new rain gear: a Pendleton umbrella and L.L. Bean Maine hunting boots, based on their original 1912 model.

Obsession: My new favorite weeknight dinner - Eggs with Chickpeas, Spinach and Tomato - which is as easy as it is comforting during this hectic holiday month. Bonus: it's healthy too.

Recipe here.

Complaint: Stella's, not mine: that we only have "totally, completely not-exciting" strands of white lights decorating the trees in front of our house.  She is deeply disappointed that we haven't gone full Christmas Wonderland like the houses on Alameda's Thompson Ave, who've been putting on a show every December since 1938 (save for during World War II mandatory blackouts), and where we went to walk around and mail her Santa letter last weekend.  For my part, I'm glad that other people go for it, so I don't have to.

List 93

Love: The Meatball Shop in New York - and especially their terrific cookbook that lets you easily recreate their many different kinds of balls at home. For a birthday dinner for Erich this past Friday, I was feeling ambitious and made three different balls (classic beef, spicy pork, and chicken) and three different sauces (classic tomato, mushroom gravy, and parmesan cream) for a group of friends.  I'm tempted to compare my efforts with the real thing by attending The Meatball Shop's pop up at Oakland's Hopscotch tonight, but have a bit of a meatball hangover still. 

Like: Speaking of meatballs, a meatball shaper is one of those kitchen gadgets that could prove to be a lame waste of money (I'm thinking about you, mango slicer) but is actually massively useful, letting you create consistent, perfectly shaped balls.

Discovery: West Elm MARKET which sells well-designed utilitarian goods.  Almost makes me want to iron.

Obsession: Friends turned us onto early 1970s Detroit musician Rodriguez, subject of the well-reviewed documentary Searching for Sugar Man, which is about how some obsessed fans from South Africa (where Rodriguez had become a cult favorite) tried to determine if he was still alive and track him down. His song "I Think of You" is stuck in my head like crazy.

Complaint: That Syfy didn't order a full series of Battlestar Galactica prequel Blood and Chrome, which focuses on young Bill Adama during the first cylon war.  I'm watching the webisodes - new ones are released every Friday - and will tune in for the full movie when it airs in February, but think it had potential to be more.

List 92

Love: I ♥ NY. What a crazy time to be there for a vacation.

There were the expected highs, like spending a wonderful Saturday in Brooklyn, perusing the flea market and ogling brownstones in Fort Greene and Carroll Gardens.  

There were the silver linings, like riding out Hurricane Sandy in the cozy Bowery Hotel, where strangers bonded and the staff kept us all safe, warm and well-looked after, even pouring champagne for everyone when the power failed as the storm raged outside. And getting to spend quality time with friends David and Tia in Brooklyn, who took us in when we were forced to leave Lower Manhattan, as well as with my brother. 

And, of course, there were the lows: seeing such a great city brought to its knees, dark, flooded, and scarred by destruction, and seeing so many peoples' lives upended. New York City will come back - and so will we. 

Blackout as seen from our 12th floor room at The Bowery

Like: Perla's calamari - narrow winner of this trip's best bite food bracket.  No picture (when you eat dinner at 11 pm you're too hungry to pause for photos) but it was delicious, pan fried in much larger pieces than you normally see, and served atop a bright lemon-basil sauce.

Discovery: ISH Premium Horseradish, sold at various green markets and food fairs around New York, as well as a handful of shops.  They make a citrus variety with fresh oranges and lemons that is to die for, and unexpectedly perfect on a cracker spread with blue cheese.

Obsession: Making my own punch, after having a glass of the daily special at Prime Meats.  It was so good I was inspired to track down this vintage mid-century Dorothy Thorpe-style punch bowl set on Etsy, and to find a few recipes, like Prime Meat's "Rosemary, Baby", to try out at our holiday party this year.

Complaint: Depressing but true: sometimes even the restaurant bathrooms in NYC restaurants have cooler interior designs than 98% of the restaurants in the Bay Area. Every place we went to had me pea green with envy that it's not in my town.  The manager of Perla gave me his theory: in general, restaurants here are dealing with smaller but more expensive spaces, and that forces them to be creative in a resourceful way (versus a hire-a-fancy-designer-to-come-up-with-a-theme way), plus they have the benefit of great bones and character to build upon - tin ceilings, brick walls, old mouldings, etc.  And, even when their interiors are the result of more effort and study, ala Keith McNally, they just look damn good, like they've been around forever.

Walter Foods:

Flatbush Farm and BarN:

Prime Meats:

Peels:

Perla:

Pulino's - including their bathroom

List 91

Love: Zombies, which pop up in Fall like cherry blossoms in Spring, these three sightings in particular...

(1) The Walking Dead, which returned for a third bloody season this Sunday. Bring on Michonne and the Prison.

(2) The Twelve, sequel to The Passage which I went crazy for when it came out two years ago (it was on List 1), and whose monsters are essentially vampires channeled through a zombie filter - i.e. mindless, blood-thirsty hordes who've lost any sense of the people they once were. It downloaded at 9:01pm PST yesterday and I was reading it within minutes. Thankfully two long flights for a work trip are on the schedule this week, luxurious hours to dive into the book. 

(3) When we're in New York for a pleasure trip later this month, I'm highly tempted to join my brother on this Zombie-themed "fun run" on Roosevelt Island October 27th, in which you can sign up to play a human, wearing flag football-style strips which represent your brains, or be one of the pursuing Zombies.   

Like: New York's Beauty and Essex's take on a classic cozy and simple meal that always feels Fall-like: grilled cheese and tomato soup. Their version is called a dumpling, and it's actually a small pool of tomato soup topped with a tiny bacon-crowned coin of grilled cheese you can eat in one bite.

Discovery: This Pendleton Camp Blanket, the perfect thing to Fall-up your bed.

Obsession: These deadly good warm pumpkin donut-muffin hybrid thingies that I saw on Pinterest (which, when clicked, on takes you to a military housewife's blog for the recipe - ah, the random connections of the interweb). They make the perfect Fall weekend morning indulgence.

Recipe here.

Complaint: The Bay Area's Fall is in full swing, but I miss, for myself and for Stella, seeing and jumping in the Midwest's epic Fall leaf piles.

Stella at my parents' house a couple of years ago