All About Me Archives - Page 12 of 51

101 Things – Learning Thai Cooking

November 1, 2010 By Paola 3 Comments

One thing I’ve added to my 101 List is to learn Thai cookery. It’s so thoroughly and deliciously complex, looks so very beautiful and is a wonderful vehicle for consuming tons of healthy vegetables and lots of yummy seafood.

It’s also a cuisine about which I am almost completely ignorant. I love it, but rarely stray from Pad Thai, Tom Yum Soup and Red Curries on the menus; never cook authentic Thai at home (though here’s a stab at inauthentic Thai) and have never been to Thailand.

For the purposes of the list I defined my goal as completing six workshops or classes on the subject over the next three years. I know that Thai cooking is as complex, if not more so, than French cuisine, but I figured that six workshops would be enough to give me a somewhat reasonable grounding.

The class in Thai Comfort Cooking I took at PCC in Greenlake was perfect for a beginner like me. The amazing teacher Pranee Halvorsen, is a lovely Thai lady from Phuket, despite the Norwegian married name. She took us through four courses of a Thai comfort food feast, with detailed recipes and wonderful stories, chopping and stir frying all the while and patiently answering all our questions.

She showed us her favourite products, talked about specific Thai techniques and ingredients, offered substitutions for difficult to get items and demonstrated how to make garnishes and ingredients such as sauteed shallots, crushed chilli peppers, vinegar and jalapeno condiment and dark soy sauce, and then served out each dish to eighteen people, so we got a fabulous lunch along the way.

By a huge coincidence Pranee had been a student with me at Jackie Baisa’s photography workshop, so she very kindly let me take photographs throughout the class. Again the overhead lighting was flat and unforgiving, but the dishes were too exquisite (and exquisitely delicious) not to look amazing whatever the photography.

I’ll be attempting to cook all of these dishes over the next few weeks so there will be recipes and more pics coming. In the meantime feast your eyes on these pics.

Food Ninja Competition – Vote for ME!

October 28, 2010 By Paola 1 Comment

Pretty please?

So voting has opened in the Food Ninja competition. If you’d like to see me tick the item ‘Win Something – Anything’ off my 101 Things list then please go here and vote, vote, VOTE. (Actually you should go there anyway, because there are some fabulous blog posts, recipes and photos to browse).

My ‘Peperoncini and Melanzane’ blogpost is entered in the blog post category. If you don’t vote, you know I’ll be bugging you again and again for some competition or other over the next three years until I finally win something, so why not get it over and done with now? You know it makes sense.

And yes, I hugely appreciate it. I’ll try and come up with some special celebratory recipe by way of a thank you.

Food Ninja – Peperoncini e Melanzane Sott’olio

October 21, 2010 By Paola 10 Comments

Or peppers and aubergines (I’m sorry but I really cannot bring myself to say ‘eggplants’) preserved in oil the Italian way.

I’ve been following ace Seattle foodie Salty Seattle, whom I first met at the Ice Cream Social, on Twitter where she’s recently been having a lot of fun with the #foodninja hashtag. So much so that she, Salty Ninja, and her foodie friends Fujimama (Fuji Ninja) and Bell’Alimento (Bella Ninja) have recently set up a Food Ninja competition with some quite fabulous prizes.

Unfortunately it is not entirely clear to me what a ‘food ninja’ actually is, although it appears to involve badass cooking skills (or indeed ‘skillz’), doing death-defying things with knives, high kicks and possibly flying through the air, all while wearing stiletto heels.

So what’s a girl to do when her knife skills are pedestrian, she can’t wear stilettos due to acute plantar fasciitis and she looks ridiculous in a bandanna? After much thought, I decided to do death-defying things with red hot peppers instead. The good news is that this recipe doesn’t even require badass cooking skills or even skillz, just a bit of care and patience (though don’t mention this to the ninja ladies).

I’ve been wanting to write this post for quite literally years. When I was living in Europe and after my parents died, I would often spend Christmas with my Italian relatives in Piemonte. And let me tell you, Italy is a very good place to be at Christmas. The cuisine of Piemonte is rightly famous for its antipasti or appetisers. On the night of Christmas Eve my aunt (a true food ninja if ever I met one) would serve a twenty course feast – a parade of seventeen varied and delicious antipasti which would leave you groaning on the floor before the pasta, meat and dessert courses even made an appearance.

Of these, my very favourites were the piquant ‘sott’olio’ vegetable preserves she would bring up from her cellar – zucchini, artichokes, aubergines and teensy hot peppers stuffed with tuna, all silky smooth and dripping with flavoured oil, just begging to be mopped up with some good crusty bread.

She gave me her recipe but I’ve never made them before – I even added ‘Make Italian Sott’Olio Preserves’ to my list of 101 Things – so it seemed like a sign when I was casting around for something ninja-like to make and I saw precisely the right tiny round bottomed peppers I needed at the farmers’ market (does anyone happen to know what variety these are by the way?)

Ingredients

Peperoncini Ripieni Sott’Olio
(Stuffed Peppers in Oil)

Makes 2 jars
20-30 little round bottomed hot peppers
1 cup (8fl oz) water
1 cup (8fl oz) white wine vinegar
1 can good quality tuna packed in oil
3-4 anchovies packed in oil, rinsed and patted dry
1 tbsp capers packed in vinegar or salt, rinsed and patted dry
2-3 cloves garlic (optional)
Extra virgin olive oil

Melanzane Sott’Olio
(Aubergines in Oil)

Makes 2 jars
Some beautiful firm aubergines (I used three)
Salt
1 cup (8fl oz) water
1 cup (8fl oz) white wine vinegar
6-7 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
dried oregano
dried chili flakes/crushed dried chili
Extra virgin olive oil

Method

First up prepare your vegetables.

Peppers: Cut out the tops of the peppers and scoop out all the seeds with a knife and small spoon. This is pretty time-consuming which is why I only ended up making 28 peppers. I shall regret this later.

Could this get any more ninja? Red hot chilis AND knives.

Aubergines: Thinly slice your aubergines lengthwise. If you were a true ninja you’d probably use a ninja star for this, but I used a knife.

Layer the aubergines in a colander with plenty of salt. Put a plate on top and add a heavy weight such as a big bag of flour to squish out all the bitter brown juices. Leave the aubergines for at least one hour and preferably several.

When the aubergines are ready, rinse off the salt and brown juices and pat off as much excess moisture as you can. Cut the aubergine slices into strips about an inch or so wide with kitchen scissors.

Aubergines and Peppers: Heat the water and vinegar together until boiling. This recip e is easily scalable so just use as much water and vinegar as you need, remembering to keep a ratio of 1/2 water and 1/2 vinegar. Two cups of liquid is fine for the quantities of vegetables I have here.

Scald the vegetables in the boiling vinegar solution for 2-3 minutes. I did my peppers and aubergines in separate batches so as not to mix the flavours.

When the vegetables are blanched, scoop them out with a slotted spoon and leave them to dry – the aubergines pressed between clean dry teatowels or kitchen towel, and the peppers placed upside down with their bottoms in the air on kitchen towel.

It is very important at this stage to dry the vegetables as much a possible as wet vegetables will go mouldy. Leave them for several hours – my aunt suggests putting them outside in the sunshine, but then she lives in Italy.

Aubergines: Sterilise your jars in boiling water. When the aubergines are very dry, add a layer of oil to the jar, then a layer of aubergine and then a few slices of garlic, a pinch of chili flakes and some sprinkles of oregano. Continue layering the jar in this way until you’ve reached the top, making sure that the aubergine is completely covered with oil. This is again important for the preserving process.

Peppers: Sterilise your jars in boiling water. Prepare your stuffing by breaking up the anchovies with your fingers and stirring them and the capers into the tuna. If possible, gently pulse the mix in food processor until thoroughly amalgamated but stop before it becomes a sloppy puree. Filled the dry, hollow peppers with the mix.

Layer the stuffed peppers, slices of garlic and oil in your prepared jars as before, again covering the peppers completely with oil.

Store everything for several months in a dark, cool, dry place. It’s important to leave them for a little time if you can so that flavours meld and the oil becomes especially delicious. This is easier said than done.

Serve with good bread, some prosciutto, some delicious tomatoes and a glass of chilled white wine for a taste of the Italian summer all year round.

And so, it was not what I was planning, but the first thing I can fully cross off my 101 Things list is ‘Prepare Italian Sott’Olio Preserves’. Only another 100 things to go. I’ll do an update post when we finally get to open them, probably around Christmas time.

And if you want to me help me cross ‘Win Something, Anything’ off my list too, then I’ll be posting details of how to vote for this post in the next few days.

Oh and apologies for light posting recently. I managed to lose a bunch of posts I’d prepared, so I’m now having a ton of fun recreating posts I’ve already written up once. So much my favourite thing to do as I’m sure you can imagine.

101 Things – Photographing Kids

October 14, 2010 By Paola Leave a Comment

I did another photography workshop at the weekend. They seem to be one if the easiest things to tick off my list of 101 Things – getting all the fun things out of the way before I start tackling the hard stuff I suppose.

I’ve noticed that I don’t very often photograph people – I prefer the still-life composition of food or interiors shots, or the drama of landscapes. Portraiture, particularly of strangers, doesn’t do much for me, which is weird, because I’d consider myself to be quite an extrovert ‘people’ person.

There is of course one notable exception and that is the Minx and she is horribly difficult to photograph – usually in perpetual motion and either pulling funny faces or smiling in a horrendously false and sickly way every time she sees the camera pointing in her direction.

So it seemed a good idea to take a workshop in Photographing Kids – both to take me out of my comfort zone and to improve my photography of the Minx. This time I was working with the wonderful Clare Barboza, who is both an astonishing food photographer and does amazing portraiture. She shares the gorgeous and inspiring Spare Room studio with Lara Ferroni.

We talked about appropriate shutter speeds, using a bounce to soften the light, focusing on the eyes, composition, capturing details and using props, with the help of two beautiful models, just-turned-four Meilee and three-month old Kate.

One of the things I love about doing workshops with different photographers is that each one focuses on different things to create their pictures and has different compositional and lighting tricks they prefer, so I always learn a ton of stuff about photography in general whatever the subject. If you’re in Seattle I can’t recommend Clare’s workshops highly enough.

Here are a few of my favourite shots from the day. They’re not the usual stuff I post about on this blog, but what the heck, enjoy the cute.

It does make me a little sad that I didn’t have the skills to take photos like these of the Minx when she was a baby and toddler, though I suppose it’s better late than never. Must schedule a photo shoot with her soon.

Go Love Your Office – Etsy HQ

October 14, 2010 By Paola 2 Comments

Once upon a time when the Internet was still young and I was working as a management consultant, I remember musing with a few folks that it would be a great idea to set up a ‘shopping engine’ for craftspeople and artists to give them a standard template shop under one umbrella and save them the hassle of setting up their own websites and doing their own independent marketing.

Yes, things would be very different round here if I’d held that thought and founded Etsy, rather than just sitting on my arse.

Perhaps I would be working in gorgeous offices such as these. Etsy’s HQ in Brooklyn has been designed by Hangar Design Group to reflect the quirky, colourful, handmade nature of the brand and decorated using many pieces commissioned or bought from Etsy sellers.

Those lamps are incredible, does anyone know where they were sourced? I’ve been searching everywhere. And I love the crochet granny blankets on the wall.

The combination of geeks and gingham is such a winner I find.

Junkprints installed the record wall

The desks are all handmade. And see the ‘Craft’ area to the left below? Every office should have one.

Plush toy makers Zooguu designed the individual phone rooms. This has made the Husband and I are consider installing a British phone booth door chez nous, though for the full authentic touch I hope the room beyond stinks of stale urine and cigarettes.

Seriously, there are about a thousand fabulous ideas to steal in all this, though I am left wondering whether all the geeky programmers feel comfortable in this space – in the startups I’ve worked at, the geek squad seemed to think pizza boxes and beer cans were decorative objects.

{via SwissMiss}

Recipe of the Week – A Traditionally English Bramley Apple Pie

October 1, 2010 By Paola 7 Comments

One of the challenges on my 101 List is to ‘Win something – anything’, which means I actually need to enter competitions.

Cue the 2nd Annual Queen Anne Farmers’ Market Blue Ribbon Pie Contest, which I decided to enter on a whim, despite the fact that I haven’t actually baked a pie for about ten years – crumble always seems so much quicker, easier and less daunting – and that Seattle is home to some fiendishly expert piemakers.

This year I’ve been able, through extensive excitable Twittering and emailing, to locate a local source of Bramley apples. Despite being home to more fabulous apple varieties than you can shake a stick at, America appears to be almost entirely ignorant of Bramleys, which I’ve missed horribly over the past couple of years.

For those of you who don’t know, Bramleys are a large knobbly British heirloom ‘cooking’ apple – too tart to eat raw, but which, thanks to the extra acidity, have a uniquely wonderful flavour and soft fluffy texture when cooked. It’s funny the things you miss, but I am not the only Brit to nearly wet my knickers with excitement at finding them.

So, I decided to make a traditionally English Bramley Apple Pie for the competition and show Americans what they’re missing out on.

And here’s my finished pie literally seconds before it slipped out of my hands as I was putting it in the oven and it crashed to the oven floor. Fortunately I was able to perform extensive reconstructive surgery using leftover scraps of pastry and make it look like a pie again, but it certainly wasn’t going to win any beauty competitions.

So you can imagine that I wasn’t holding out much hope of a prize when I was greeted by a veritable masterclass in the piemaker’s art on arriving at the market. (My poor battered pie is at top right in the red pie dish, I didn’t even bother to take a proper close up photo of it).

Here it is after the judges had tucked into it.

And here it is sporting its ribbon for 3rd Prize! You could have knocked me down with a feather, quite literally. They clearly weren’t judging on looks.

Anyway, it was a lovely and very unexpected surprise to end to what has been a fairly shitty week, so many thanks to all at Queen Anne Farmers’ Market, to Jones Creek farms for their wonderful Bramley apples, to my lovely friend M for coming to my rescue with lard, and to my fellow competitors who made some SERIOUSLY delicious pies (enough already, it’s getting like the Oscars round here :- the Ed)

And it’s made me think that maybe I should make pie more often.

Ingredients

Shortcrust Pastry

250g/2cups flour

75g/5 tbsps butter*

75g/5tbsps lard or vegetable shortening**

Iced water + lemon juice

Filling

1-2 tbsps of butter

5 Bramley apples – peeled, cored and sliced***

1 tbsp lemon juice

3 tbsps raisins soaked in Madeira****

6 tbsps bakers/caster sugar

½ tsp cinnamon

½ tsp ground cloves

A few grindings of nutmeg

1 tbsp cornstarch/cornflour/plain flour

* I used an imported European butter as the fat content is higher and it apparently works better for pastry. You can get Kerrygold and Lurpak reasonably easily in the US. I also used salted butter as Il like the whole salty /sweet thing in my desserts.

**It appears that good quality lard is also very difficult to get hold of in the US. It’s available as ‘manteca’ and extensively used for Mexican cuisine but the brands I’ve found seem to be full of partially hydrogenated fats. Or else you need to track down ‘leaf lard’ from a good butcher or farmer. I was lucky enough to be given some by a friend. Brits, treasure that pack of Tesco’s lard you’ve had squashed in the back of the fridge since time immemorial.

*** Bramleys are unique in my experience. If you can’t get hold of them, Granny Smiths have a similar tart taste, but very different texture and I’ve heard that Gravensteins and Belle de Boskoop are other good cooking varieties. You may need to adjust cooking method (below) accordingly.

**** Madeira is yet another very English thing. If you don’t have madeira, rum, whisky or Calvados would be great. If kids are going to eat the pie use apple or oran ge juice.

Method

Pastry

Soak your raisins in your booze of choice a few hours before starting.

Chop your fats into small dice and put the flour and fats into the freezer for around 15 minutes. If you didn’t use salted butter, you could maybe add a pinch of salt.

Prepare a cup of iced water and add a squeeze of lemon.

Put your flour and fats into a food processor and pulse process until the fats are fully incorporated and the mixture looks like coarse sand or oatmeal.

Add iced water to the mix a teaspoon at a time and keep pulsing until everything has almost clumped together. Fish it out and knead it into a smooth dough by hand. (You can of course use the traditional ‘rubbing in’ method. I like the above, courtesy of Nigella Lawson – God love that despicable woman – because it’s quick, easy and means you don’t have to handle the pastry more than is strictly necessary).

Put the pastry in the fridge for at least 30 mins to relax.

Filling

Core, peel and slice your apples and place the slices in a bowl of cold water with a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice to stop them browning. Americans seem to prefer more discernible lumps of apple in their pies, so may want to slice them more thickly.

Melt a tablespoon or two of butter in a large frying pan and then turn off the heat and add your apples, drained raisins, approximately 6 tablespoons of caster sugar depending on how sweet your apples are (if you’re not using tart Bramleys you may want to use a bit less), the spices and the cornflour. I also added a little lemon juice, and you can adjust this according to the tartness or otherwise of your apples. If you’re using very sweet dessert apples go for more.

Stir the apples around until all the buttery juices are amalgamated. If you prefer a softer pie filling or are using dessert apples that don’t disintegrate easily you may want to cook the apples gently at this stage. I didn’t with my Bramleys.

Assembly

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Roll out the one of the pastry circles and line the bottom of your pie dish.

Add the filling.

Roll out the other pastry circle and place over the top of the pie dish, cutting the excess away with a knife.

Paint the edge of the pie with milk and then crimp together the top and bottom layers. Pierce vents in the top layer to let the steam escape and decorate how you like with the pastry scraps, eggwash or milk and lots of sugar. I experimented using different types of sugar – caster, demerara, and large-crystalled ‘sparkling’ sugar to decorate different elements of my design.

Bake for about 45-50 minutes until golden. I covered my pie with foil for the first 20 minutes so it wouldn’t get too brown.

I’m not going to count this as a win for the 101 Things, since it was only a 3rd place. However ask me again when the three years is nearly up. Oh and here’s a gratuitous cute picture of the Minx chatting up a baby at the market.

{Update}

Here’s a link to a write-up about the competition on the Queen Anne Farmers’ Market website, with a rare flattering photo of me (on the far left).

Photo by John Schussler

Thank goodness I didn’t know that professional bakers would be competing and that we would be judged by professional pastry chefs.

Here are links to the three other prize-winning recipes which all looked utterly incredible. Mine was apparently the highest-ranked apple pie (of which there were several) which I attribute entirely to the amazing power of the Bramley apple.

All About Me – 101 Things Update

September 29, 2010 By Paola 3 Comments

Self-portrait taken on my recent Shuttertour (reflected in some broken stainless columns outside the old WaMu building)

I got some bad news yesterday.

One of the key things on my 101 Things in 1001 Days list was to repair the damaged ACL in my right knee, which has been very painful and stiff over the summer.

I first injured my leg skiing when I was a student and didn’t have surgery then because sports’ medicine was in its infancy and the recovery would have been long and traumatic. Maybe I was badly advised then, I don’t know – my current doctor seems to think so – but the upshot is I’ve been living with it for years, getting used to living with the constant dull pain in my knee and thinking that one day, when high-powered jobs, pregnancy, moving to Seattle, having a young child etc. etc. were out of the way I would take the time to have it fixed.

That time was now and I went in for an MRI yesterday, so they could assess the extent of the damage. And it turns out it is much worse than I thought and that the knee joint is so full of arthritis that repairing the ACL would put me in a huge amount of pain. Which is all rather depressing.

My thoughts are turning now to aggressive arthritis management – I’m far too young to have a knee as painful and stiff as it currently is – and wanted to get any advice and help that the Internets have to offer. If you or anyone you know currently suffers from arthritis and has been helped by any sort of therapy, exercise, nutritional change, book, video etc. etc. then I really would LOVE to hear from you.

As a result of the above I’ve had to revise a few things on my list. Instead of ‘repair ACL’ , ‘do a triathlon’ ‘go ice skating’ and ‘run a 5k’, I’m going to ‘learn HTML’, ‘sign up for Pilates’, ‘go on an overnight sea kayaking trip’ and something else I haven’t yet thought of. My revised list is here.

I’ve made progress on some stuff, but haven’t ticked off any one task as completed yet. I’ll blog about stuff as I achieve it – later this week I’ll be blogging about the fabulous Shuttertour I did last Friday with Valentina Vitols, which was the first step in ‘Complete 6 Photography Workshops/Classes’.

All About Me – 101 Things

September 21, 2010 By Paola 12 Comments

Or, welcome to my new life.

Dawn over the I-5

Recently, and rather belatedly, I came across a goal-setting Internet meme called 101 Things in 1001 Days. 1001 days equates to about 2.75 years, which is a more substantial (and less daunting) time frame in which to get stuff done than the usual year of resolutions we set ourselves.

Since it was my birthday this weekend, and since I’ve got rather a big birthday coming up in 3 years time, I spent my birthday eve putting together my own list which I’m going to give myself 3 years to achieve. Putting the list together was fun - the site DayZeroProject is very useful, as it both gives you a place to put your own list and lets you search other peoples’ for ideas (I’m PaolaCT on there). Start Googling and there are also plenty of sites out there with other ideas.

I’ve tried to put together a list which includes a mixture of horrid stuff that needs to get done, self-improving stuff, things I’ve always wanted to do, downright treats and pie in the sky fantasies – a combination of ‘quick wins’ and stuff that currently seems totally impossible. Looking at it I feel inspired, excited and somewhat daunted, which I suppose is exactly the right mix of emotions.

I’m writing out the list here and will link to the full list somewhere on the blog in the coming days. I’ll give you periodic updates, especially when I’ve been able to tick something off.

Currently I’m working on the sock monkey challenge (of which more anon), have completed 1 out of 80 cryptic crosswords, did a new thing this month (visted Ballard Locks) and am about to embark on the power walking and peanut butter challenges. This latter one is putting me in a cold sweat already. I am a peanut butter ADDICT.

If anyone else is inspired to make their own 101 list, do let me know, and very many thanks to Lou at Happy Serendipity and Nicole at MakingItLovely for their initial inspiration.

This is going to be fun!

I was hoping to give this list as the first page on a newly-redesigned blog, but unfortunately the mirrormirror technical support team (aka the Husband) has been rather busy with his proper job this week. Which only goes to prove that goal-setting is a dangerous exercise. But whatevs. I’m hoping to be back to daily blogging now. I’ve missed you guys…

101 Things (In No Particular Order)

1. Get a little red dress (I don’t usually do dresses, let alone red ones)

2. Volunteer at a food bank at least once a year (0/3)

3. See Niagara Falls

4. Attend the 2012 London Olympics

5. Lose 50lbs (0/50)

6. FINALLY Get the ACL in my knee repaired (as so many of my fitness/weight loss goals depend on this oneI’ve got an appointment to see the specialist this week).

7. Get my missing tooth replaced (I want to get my body as perfect as it can possibly be)

8. Finish a Babette blanket. (Still working on finishing my other blanket first).

9. Go somewhere in South America

10. Visit the Grand Canyon

11. Go to Santa Fe

12. Open ‘mirrormirror’ US

13. Organise all the photos on my computer

14. Do 30 straight days of Bikram yoga

15. Do a triathlon

16. Win something. Anything!

17. Break 5,000 followers on Twitter

18. Sell some photos.

19. Knit a sock monkey (Have plans for that one that I’ll talk about soon).

20. Get a personal wardrobe/shopping consultation

21. Acquire a sewing machine

22. Complete a sewing project

23. Learn to cook Thai food

24. Build raised beds and grow veggies

25. Finish landscaping and planting the front garden

26. Get whole house painted inside and out

27. Go sugar-free for 30 days (0/30)

28. Go to 30 restaurants I’ve never been to before (0/30)

29. Get visible abs (ha ha ha ha ha! my abs don’t exist, I’ve NEVER seen them before)

30. Go to Hawaii

31. Visit Australia

32. Write up and catalogue all of my family tree research

33. Visit my aunt in Southern California

34. Eat 5 foodstuffs I’ve never tried before

35. Knit something in Fair Isle/stranded colourwork

36. Knit a complex lace shawl in silk lace

37. Get my blog professionally redesigned

38. Do one thing a month I’ve never done before (1/36) (yesterday I visited Ballard Locks in Seattle)

39. Organise at least 6 nights away with the Husband and without the Minx (0/6)

40. Get mirrormirror mentioned in at least 30 print (0/30) and 30 online publications (0/30)

41. Visit New England in the Fall

42. Go strawberry and apple picking

43. Continue learning Spanish in the car with the Minx

44. Get a professional photoshoot done of the whole family

45. Clear my email inbox

46. Get a piano or keyboard

47. Take piano lessons

48. Do the Susan B Komen 3 Day Walk for the Cure

49. Go away with just the Minx for 3 ‘Mummy & Daughter’ weekends (0/3)

50. Visit the upcoming Picasso exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum

51. Do the Theo Chocolate Tour

52. Get stock photos up on Getty Images or similar

53. Join a knitting group

54. Go razor clamming

55. Set up a mirrormirror fan page on Facebook and get over 1,000 fans

56. Make a felted handbag

57. Make a piece of jewellery

58. Go to ALT Summit and the International Food Blogger Conference

59. Start a compost bin

60. Go jetskiing

61. Listen to 10 albums by artists I’ve not listened to before (0/10)

62. Complete all 80 cryptic crosswords in the Times Cryptic Crossword Book 14 (1/80)

63. Be a vegan for a week

64. Tidy my office

65. Learn to make Italian ‘sott’olio’ preserves – melanzane and peperoncini

66. Learn a little Mandarin Chinese with the Minx in the car

67. Go the Maison & Objet and the New York International Gift Fair

68. Get eyes checked for feasibility of laser surgery

69. Attend 6 photography workshops (0/6)

70. Make ravioli from scratch without even a pasta machine

71. Take a flying trapeze class

72. Take a day OFF on my birthday every year (0/3)

73. Write a letter for the Minx to open when she’s 18

74. Get signed up with a Primary Care Provider and arrange for an all-over physical

75. See 6 bands live 0/6

76. Read 20 ‘classic’ books I haven’t read before (0/20)

77. Drink only water for one month

78. Watch 5 Oscar winners for Best Documentary (0/5)

79. Get basement finished and fully habitable

80. Don’t complain about anything for a week

81. Have a garage sale

82. Unplug for a whole weekend (not phone, Internet, TV etc.)

83. Go ice skating

84. See 10 ‘classic’ movies I’ve never seen (0/10)

85. Scuba dive/snorkel on the Great Barrier Reef

86. Go white water rafting

87. Go snowmobiling

88. Run a 5k

89. Go for a month without peanut butter

90. Get more of my photos mounted and displayed around the house

91. Workout for an hour a day, 5 days a week, for 4 weeks straight (0/4)

92. Powerwalk for 30 mins a day every day for a month (0/31)

93. Take a photo a day for a month

94. Get one utterly fabulous piece of personal PR (I’ll know it when I see it)

95. Eat at the French Laundry, the Herb Farm and Chez Panisse (0/3)

96. Take the Minx to Disneyland

97. Sign up for a spin class

98. Go swimming once a week for 3 consecutive months (0/12)

99. Get a photo on Flickr’s ‘Explore’ page again.

100. Put aside $50 for every I task I complete to buy myself a fabulous birthday present

101. Donate $50 to charity for every task I don’t complete

Calling All Design Bloggers!

September 17, 2010 By Paola Leave a Comment

I’m working hard behind the scenes at the moment to take things to a higher level round here, with a big focus on the ‘mirrormirror’ shop which has been sadly neglected over the past year or so.

I’m currently working on updating our PR mailing lists and was wondering if any of you design bloggers out there (particularly those in the UK) would like to be added to the ‘Bloggers’ mailing list for news and updates on new products, sales etc.

I promise not to email you THAT often (I’m just not that organised) and any time you mention a mirrormirror product (or this blog) on your blog, you’ll be rewarded with my undying gratitude (ha!) and a reciprocal link on here. Please let me know if you give us a mention, so I can do that.

I’m also in the process of updating my blogroll and want to focus much more on smaller, up-and-coming blogs rather than on the biggies. If you’ve got a blog you think I should know about, particularly if it fits in with the stuff we talk about here – interiors, design, indie products, photography, food, knitting, crafts etc. – then please add a link to your blog below and I’ll take a peek.

Apologies for getting all self-promoting on you, but dangerous times call for dangerous measures. Anything you can do to support small independent shops and businesses, not just mine, at the moment is hugely appreciated I’m sure.

Things I Am Loving – Crochet Covered Stones

August 4, 2010 By Paola 1 Comment

Stones and beaches and kids and summer go together, like well, stones and beaches and kids and summer.

Everytime we hit the beach supposedly ‘beeyootiful’ stones get delivered with regularity to my beach towel. The heaviness of my bag is due not just to the sunscreen and goggles and bags full of cherries I carry everywhere but also to the stones I keep finding in the pockets.

A collection of large stones from French beaches even found their way into the Minx’s little roller suitcase to take back to Seattle, though, since we are cruel parents, these were surreptitiously removed from her bag and left in the hotel room and have remained studiously unmentioned ever since.

So, you can imagine how delighted I was to find a beautiful project requiring smooth round stones – heck, the next time we go to the beach I’m even going to send the Minx off on a stone hunting expedition.

Artist and photographer Margaret Oomen crochets little covers for her stones which make them look like sea urchins reimagined by a Victorian grandma and sells the stones themselves (though they disappear quickly and still-life photographs of them on Etsy.

Now you can make them too as she has put a tutorial up on the Purl Bee to make a basic version of her stones, though I would imagine that any number of doily patterns (Ravelry link) could be adapted for the purpose, once you’ve go the hang of the basic concept.