Like me, David van Alphen liked prefab modern sheds like these for his backyard, but couldn’t stomach the $11,000 price tag. So, as he explains on Design Milk, he decided to make one himself by converting this old barn in his backyard:
To this modern studio:
He even drywalled the inside and added windows, air conditioner, and other touches. The end result looks great! And all for $3,000–much cheaper than the $11,000 prefab version.
I love these Helvetica cookie cutters from Beverly Hsu. They are very cool.
Beverly is looking into making the cookie cutter to sell–you can get on her mailing list if you are interested. (Via Sunset.)
As you can see, my Valentine’s Day roses are getting a bit peaked. I could throw them out, of course, but why would I do that when rose petals are so useful? So I will try rooting one of the white roses and then I will turn the rest of the roses into rose water.
Rose water is an insanely simple thing to make, and a great way to recycle the Valentine’s bouquet when it’s done. You end up with a great smelling, edible, soothing liquid that has all kinds of great uses. For example, you rose water can be used:
1. As A Skin Toner. Rose water is a natural, gentle, and free skin toner, great for sensitive skin.
2. To Make Linens Smell Nice. A spritz of rose water on lingerie, sheets, etc. can add an extra sweet-smelling touch. I have also heard of people ironing with rose water, although I have never tried it.
3. In The Bath. Put rose water directly in the bath or add it to bath salts.
4. In Desserts. Rose water is used in a lot of different desserts, from Rose Water Panna Cotta to Poached Pears in Rose Water to ice cream.
5. As A Drink. You can put it in cocktails (recipe coming soon) or put it in non-alcoholic drinks like lemonade.
OK, so how do you make rose water? Here’s the recipe:
Rose Water:
Ingredients:
Directions:
Put water and petals in a pot. Turn the stovetop to medium low heat and bring to a simmer. Continue to simmer the water on low heat, making sure to keep it under a boil, until the water has reduced by half and ther is a sweet rosey smell coming from the water.
Strain the petals from the water. Let the rose water cool and then transfer to an appropriate bottle for safe keeping. That’s it!
How do you use rose water?
ETA: It is possible there are pesticides on the roses, especially if they come from a florist. If this concerns you, do not eat the rose water.
Kristin from Pomme Frites has a clever way to enhance photography–make your own reflective umbrella light.
To do so, she “took a dollar store umbrella and sprayed the underside with white spray paint, then clipped the umbrella and a lamp onto Tom’s mic stand.” The light points up at the umbrella, and that in turn reflects the light evenly over the object being photographed. Not bad! (Via Craft)
I saw this in the grocery store and had to buy it. It is flowering kale and it is lovely. Here it is from the side:
As far as ornamental greens go, this one is both a pretty border for the garden and a practical vegetable to grow. Kale is very versatile. You can fry it, roast it, boil it, or–in this case, at least, since it is unusually tender for kale–eat it raw. This particular kale tastes like cabbage, which makes sense because kale is closely related to cabbage.
Here’s a great recipe for kale from Orangette: Boiled Kale with a Fried Egg and Toast.
I haven’t done any cross-stitch in years, but I might come out of retirement for this Mr. Darcy Cross-stitch Pattern from The Time Is Now. Mr. Darcy, as you literary nerds out there know, is the love interest from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. A description from the book:
“Mr Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien; and the report which was in general circulation within five minutes after his entrance, of his having ten thousand a year.”
As the site says, “now you can stitch him onto your pillows, your laptop sleeves, or your wall coverings! A DIY gentleman.” $7. (Via Rare Bird Finds)
If you have watched any cooking programs on TV lately, you have probably noticed sous vide even if you didn’t know that was what it was called. Sous vide is a slow cooking method that combines vacuum sealing with a kind of low-temperature water poaching. The idea is that the food is cooked for a long time at the exact right temperature, leading to two advantages:
1. Accuracy. The reason food gets overcooked is because we’re cooking it at temperatures much hotter than we want the food to get to, and sometimes we lose control and the food gets too hot. With sous vide, this is impossible. You set the temperature where you want the food to go, and it stays there for as long as you need it to.
2. Tenderness. The food, especially meat, comes out extremely tender with sous vide cooking. Why? Low temperature and long cooking times always mean tenderness, but in addition, the meat is sealed in a plastic bag, so there’s no oxidation occurring during cooking. The meat holds in its juices.
Chefs also love sous vide because, although the temperature has to be maintained, the cooking time doesn’t have to be exact. You can leave food in a sous vide oven for hours and it will stay the same. So if you are in a busy kitchen and someone orders a steak, you simply pull a perfectly done filet out of the machine, pan sear it for texture, and bam, you’re done.
To do sous vide at home, you can either buy a $449 machine or you can make one yourself. We tried DIY sous vide this weekend, and it worked out wonderfully. It turns out that home sous vide is easy and well worth the effort.
However, you do need some equipment, as follows:
For the food itself, we needed:
We wanted the steaks to be cooked medium, which is 135 degrees. How did we know that? A chart telling cooking temperatures came with our thermometer, but you can also look it up online or in cookbooks or just ask someone. Meat cooking temperatures are common knowledge.
So we had our target temperature. Now it was time to try sous vide.
First, we put salt and pepper on each side of the steaks, just like you normally would. Then we put the steaks beside each other–but not touching–in a vacuum sealer bag and sealed them up.
Next, we set up our “high-tech” sous vide water oven. We filled a pot with warm water. Then we hooked the digital thermometer to the side of the pot so that the temperature gauge was sitting in the water but not touching the pan. We did this by extending it with a clip that comes with the thermometer. You can also use a black metal paper clip.
We put the stovetop on medium low and set the temperature on the thermometer at 135 degrees. Then we waited for the water to reach that temperature. It took about 10 minutes. When the temperature had reached 135 degrees, we put the vacuum-sealed steaks in the water.
Of course, they floated. That wasn’t good because the meat has to be immersed in the water and yet not touching the bottom of the pan (the bottom is hotter than 135 degrees). So, I took a vegetable steamer and put it on top of the pot. It pushed the steaks down so that they were immersed in the water. You can also use a pot lid flipped upside down.
Sous vide takes a long time. There’s no exact time table here because, as I said before, you can have the steaks in the water for hours and they will stay at your required temperature. We waited an hour, which turned out to be fine.
The only tricky part of DIY sous vide is monitoring the temperature. We wanted to keep the meat between 134-135 degrees. To do this, we set the stovetop on the lowest temperature and the alarm on the thermometer at 136 degrees. When the temperature got that high, the alarm went off and we added 1 cup cold water to the pot. This brought the temperature down to 134 degrees. It took the water 10 minutes to raise the two degrees again, the alarm went off at 136 degrees, and we added another cup of cold water. We did this every ten minutes and it kept the steaks right around 135 degrees.
After an hour, we took out the steaks. They looked exactly like boiled meat. It was time to sear them to get a good crust.
Why sear at the end of the cooking process and not the beginning? If you seared the steak at the beginning, the crust would get soft and weird in the vacuum-sealed bag. With sous vide, you cook the meat from the inside out.
To sear, we put approximately three tablespoons of oil in the frying pan, heated it up, and dropped in the steaks. We cooked each side for about 30 seconds to 1 minute, or until there was a nice brown crust. The end results?
This was one of the tenderest steaks I have ever eaten. It was perfect. I would absolutely do this again, maybe even this week with another easy-to-overcook meat: pork chops.
So in summary: Vacuum seal, get the water to the temperature you want the meat to be at, stick the meat in, monitor the temperature, and sear. The end result? Perfectly cooked meat.
ETA: There is some concern in the comments about this giving you botulism. As I said in the comments, I do not think this is an issue for the following three reasons:
1. Botulism spores take at least 8 hours to germinate into the bacteria that kills you. For this to happen, you would have to cook the meat sous vide and then leave it sitting in the bag in lukewarm conditions for at least a half a day. Since you are going to take the meat right out of the bag and eat it, you don’t need to worry about it.
2. Botulism cannot penetrate a dense muscle like a steak or pork chop. As such, even if there WERE bacteria on your meat, it would be on the surface of the meat and so pan searing it would kill it.
3. If you are still concerned, cook the meat to 145 degrees. That is the magic number that kills all bacteria and will ensure that there is nothing in the bag that can hurt you. Of course, it won’t taste as good, but that’s the price of peace of mind, I guess.
If you are still concerned, please don’t use this method.
Having grown up in a rural area, I have heard about mushroom foraging all my life. The consensus: you have to know what you are doing–some mushrooms are deadly poison–but if you do, you can get a good haul of wild mushrooms to eat.
Yes, but I never realized just how big a haul until I read Justin’s account of mushroom foraging. He and a friend ended up with nine pounds of mushrooms from just one trip:
I see mushroom ragu in his future.
This Valentine’s Day, I’m thinking of foregoing the usual red wine and champagne and go for the chocolate martini instead.
Ah the chocolate martini. Is there anything more decadent? Dessert and a drink rolled into one. Which, of course, is completely awesome.
I took a look around the internet for good chocolate martini recipes and found two I’m pretty sure are delicious.
The first one is from Julie Swank’s blog:
Heart of Dark Chocolate Martini
Ingredients (makes 2 cocktails):
Directions:
Stir milk, coco and sugar in a sauce pan over medium heat, using a whisk to combine.
Remove from heat, and let cool. You can pour mixture into a heat proof measuring cup and set over an ice bath to quicken cooling.
Pour cooled mixture into a Martini shaker filled with ice. Shake, shake, shake. Strain into two Martini glasses.
And then the other is from GarnishBar’s Flickr Stream:
Mint Bailey’s Chocolate Martini
Ingredients (makes one cocktail):
Chill martini glass by placing ice in empty glass and let stand. Mix mint Baileys irish cream, vodka, and Godiva white chocolate liqueur over ice in a shaker. Shake well or until frost develops on outside of metal shaker.
Remove ice from chilled martini glass. Drizzle chocolate syrup along the inside edges of the chilled martini glass. Strain cocktail from shaker into chilled martini glass and garnish with a mint leaf. Enjoy.
There will be no entry tomorrow–taking the day off–so have a great Valentine’s Day.
This is just too awesome for words: The BookBook. It is a laptop case for your MacBook made out of a hardback leather book. I love this. Too bad I don’t have a MacBook and my laptop would never fit.
$80 from Twelve South.