AMSTERDAM’S RIJKSMUSEUM is a place none of us is going to be able to visit for a while, even if we happen to be quarantined in The Netherlands. Yes, it’s shuttered, but the museum has a novel online feature.
Sign up and you can create your own collection of art, a “route” you can suggest through the vast museum. Called Rijks Studios, these small collections of paintings, drawings and other art objects have clearly been assembled by lovers of the visual. And some of the collections, or “sets,” are a lot of fun.
Take, for instance, an enthusiast calling himself or herself “Inner Beauty,” who has assembled some two dozen collections, including “Textures” (closeup details of sumptuous fabrics in paintings mostly by Northern Renaissance artists, who knew a fine lace overlay when they saw one), “Cats” (as advertised) and “The Smallest Things” (incidental seeds and insects that enliven those timeless Dutch still lifes).
Inner Beauty’s “Fancy Headgear” collection caught my eye. It zooms in on some fabulous turbans, lace caps, plumed headgear and other extravagant toppers, often worn not by the principal subject of the painting but by a figure in the background. The collection contains 113 images, all culled from the Rijks Museum’s holdings.
An amateur curator called “Inner Beauty” included this image in a set of “Fancy Headgear.” The painting is “The Temptation of St. Anthony” in the manner of Hieronymous Bosch, circa 1550-1600. I don’t know who the woman in the picture is, but someone should tell her she has a birdhouse, or maybe a cupola, on her head. / From the Rijksmuseum collection.
Someone named Ocarine decided “Flowers” would be one of her collections, and the paintings of Holland’s Golden Age are certainly lush with flora. We know that many flowers are symbolic (of eternal love, chastity, etc.), and Ocarine has isolated some images from religious paintings. But she also has plucked, as it were, flowers from the extravagant still lifes of the period, the better to appreciate the mastery of the painter’s brush.
The set of “Flowers” compiled by Ocarine includes “The Virgin and Child With Four Holy VIrgins” by the Master of the Virgo Inter Virgines, circa 1495-1500. / From the Rijksmuseum collection.
The panel “The Virgin and Child With Four Holy Virgins” finds one of the virgins holding a red carnation, whose Greek name, dianthos, means “flower of God.” Even though the flower isn’t rendered in the crisp manner of later Northern Renaissance works (the panel dates from 1495-1500), viewers of the time would know that the painting was of not just any woman with her baby.
“Flowers” contains 87 images.
The “Portrait of Jan Pranger” by Frans van der Mijn, 1742. / From the Rijksmuseum collection.
A set of “Fashion Details,” compiled by Patty Struik, closes in on some incredible examples of finery. In the “Portrait of Jan Pranger,” by Frans van der Mijn, 1742, the cuff of the subject’s jacket is rendered so skillfully that it practically glows. Never mind “practically”: The silk embroidery does glow. If Pranger commissioned the painting to prove to the world that he was rich and important, he accomplished his goal, even to 21st-century eyes. (And as director-general of the West Indies Company for the Gold Coast, now Ghana, he certainly was rich and important.)
We think the sleeves are having a fashion moment in 2020. Ha! One look at the portrait of Elisabeth van Kessel in Struik’s collection will supply some perspective—in the most genial way.
Portrait of Elisabeth van Kessel by Caesar Boetius van Everdingen, 1671. / From the Rijksmuseum collection.
It’s exhausting to try to see all of an enormous museum in one visit; ditto the vast offerings on the Rijksmuseum site. But even beyond these collections by amateur curators, the museum offers a whole array of ways to drill down into its masterworks, enough to keep anyone engrossed and maybe forget about self-isolation for a while.
IT’S PART of urban mythology that nine months after the New York City blackout of 1965 there was a mini baby boom in the city. Turned out it wasn’t true, just a normal fluctuation in the birth rate. Similar speculation followed 2010’s Snowmageddon (also known as Snowpocalypse and Snowzilla) that blanketed the Northeast US and kept us all indoors.
But this time around, I think I know how Americans are busying themselves during the Coronavirus Quarantine: They’re baking!
I know this because on Tuesday the King Arthur Flour website said its all-purpose flour was “unavailable.” Ditto its bread flour, whole wheat flour and yeast. Today it allows you to order these items but warns it could be seven to 10 days before they arrive. And there’s a limit of two of each item per person. Even of the $16.95 candy thermometer!
King Arthur isn’t alone: Local supermarkets seem to be out of flour (King Arthur, Gold Medal, etc.), also local direct-delivery grocery operations (though this morning I was able to score a 4-pound sack of sugar, another hot commodity). Last week, I found a small carton of yeast packets seemingly orphaned in the rear of my little corner greengrocer. I bought the usual strip of three packets and now wish I had bought more: This morning they were totally out. Maybe next week, the manager said as he feverishly unpacked box after box of other packaged goods that are moving fast.
Part of the problem is a run on the products themselves and the amount the mills and manufacturers can crank out. Part is because USPS, UPS and Fedex are simply overwhelmed by the volume of general shopping and shipping that are going on.
My new best friend Danny the Doorman assures me there’s no real run on food in Manhattan; it’s that instead of going out to restaurants or even doing takeout, a lot of people are actually cooking and eating at home, for goodness’ sake.
Thursday? I made nothing. I bought a loaf of pumpernickel bread. Not much fun in that.
So here’s what I want: all-purpose flour, some bread flour, dry active yeast (or fresh yeast if you have it), table salt (what a time to run low!), plus butter—I’m out of butter! And a nice plump red bell pepper; that has nothing to do with baking, but it will help my salads quite a bit.
If you can deliver, all the better.
—Nancy McKeon
MyLittleBird often includes links to products we write about. Our editorial choices are made independently; nonetheless, a purchase made through such a link can sometimes result in MyLittleBird receiving a commission on the sale, whether through a retailer, an online store or Amazon.com.
Call them spring onions, green onions or scallions, these mild young onions are, it turns out, easy to root and regrow. / iStock photo.
I’VE BECOME newly creative in the kitchen. Living in the city, surrounded by markets and specialty food shops, whatever substance my stomach craves at any particular moment is usually within a 10-minute walk from home. I stop at one place for spices, another for bread, another for meat, the supermarket for basics, and so forth.
It makes little sense to drive anywhere since it takes as long to park as to walk, and I’ve been trapped one too many times in the Whole Foods garage, screaming for help with a stamped parking ticket that the machine can’t read. But that’s another story.
I never keep more than a couple of days’ worth of food in the house, it’s so easy to buy fresh. When we remodeled our small, galley kitchen we didn’t hang upper cabinets on one wall, installing a giant mirror behind the stove instead to increase the feeling of space. This worked just fine over the decades. And then, we have this corona business, and I have approximately no storage space.
I also suddenly found out that I AM OLD, really—who knew? Between worrying about who coughed on the broccoli and keeping social distance, marketing has become a perilous proposition. One I now try to avoid as much as possible.
I took stock as things became more heated, packing the freezer, the cabinets and the space under the basement steps with things to make and ingredients to make something from the leftovers. Dried pasta, beans, bags of coffee, big packs of frozen chicken thighs, ground beef, ribs, potatoes, canned and frozen vegetables (don’t raw vegetables terrify you? LIKE SALAD?? Talk about a death trap).
We’ve got about two weeks of eating before we’re down to the Christmas-gift jars of tapenade, olives and mustard. Meanwhile, I’m busily making casseroles and pot pies, and saving bones for soup like some Depression-era housewife. (My Prince, poor boy, gets to clean up).
The site VeggieGardener.com explains how vegetables such as spring onions can be rooted and grown using an initial supermarket purchase. / VeggieGardener.com photo.
For dinner on Saturday night, when we normally would go out to eat, I invented a lasagne out of two chicken thighs ground with half a pound of mushrooms and layered with cream sauce and an alarming assortment of half-dried-up, unidentifiable cheeses grated on top (since I’m too lazy to figure out what these nubbins are). On any other day I’d have gone out for fresh.
On Sunday morning, pouring over all the gloom and doom in the Washington Post and the New York Times, I found a single bright spot: growing spring onions in water. You take a bunch of spring onions, rim off the tops, and stick the bulbs’ hairy bottoms in water. You can keep cutting the tops off until kingdom come, or so they said.
I cannot express how unlikely it would be for me to do any such thing at any other time. But there I was, hunting for a vessel and planting me some onions.
Tootling around the Internet I find you can grow quite a number of veggies in water—without getting involved in a full hydroponic rig. If there are roots showing at the bottom—as with celery, fennel, cabbage, lettuce and leeks—trim the stalks or heads down to a few inches and put them in a bowl with water and shoots will shortly appear. Garlic that has sprouted can be put in water and will produce garlic chives. Carrot tops will also grow in water (though I’d normally be more inclined to stick them in a window box: The foliage is so nice and frothy). Just add a little sun and . . .
OH Please, may this be over soon.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” finds solace in growing things.
MyLittleBird often includes links to products we write about. Our editorial choices are made independently; nonetheless, a purchase made through such a link can sometimes result in MyLittleBird receiving a commission on the sale, whether through a retailer, an online store or Amazon.com.
This 1947 confection by Christian Dior, with its tulle skirt, extravagant ribbon and cascade of (probably silk) roses, epitomizes the romance that ballet has lent to fashion. / Photo by Louise Dahl Wolfe, The Museum at FIT.
RIGHT NOW you can’t get in to see the “Ballerina: Fashion’s Modern Muse” exhibit at the Museum at FIT, New York’s fabled Fashion Institute of Technology. Neither can we, because the museum is temporarily closed, along with so much else in this Age of Corona.
But Valerie Steele, fashion historian and the museum’s director, has invited all of us to see this examination of ballet as a fashion muse . .. virtually.
Even though many of us call our flat shoes “ballerinas,” we don’t necessarily linger on their dance origins. And how many of us have it top of mind that our leggings and tights had their origins on the ballet stage? Ballet, in short, has made such inroads into our daily dress that we no longer think about it—although over the decades Danskin ads for leotards and tights tried to remind us: “Danskin: Not Just for Dancing.”
FIT’s exhibit drills much deeper than that, of course. Shown here are some of the tastier images, of glamour and daring, all tied back to the dance stage. There are many more, with great explanations, at the Museum at FIT website.
Christian Dior’s “Debussy” gown was worthy of a fantasy ballerina (though rather impossible to dance in). In fact, the sequined evening gown was worn by prima ballerina Margot Fonteyn and came from the spring/summer 1950 collection. Lent by Fashion Museum Bath. / Photo by William Palmer.
Good in a pinch, or a poop: from left, leaves of woolly lamb’s ear, mallow and mullein.
YOU THINK you have toilet paper trauma?
“It’s been a while since I thought about wiping my ass with leaves,” an ex-military pilot mused the other day.
He’s been through SERE training—an acronym for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape—a course offered to high-risk soldiers, much of it hush-hush, top secret.
Therefore, we shall call him Adam. As in: You think there was toilet paper in the Garden of Eden?
During SERE training, pilots, who are among those most likely to be shot down and captured by whichever enemy we might have at the moment, are sent into the woods with a meager backpack of essentials. They spend two weeks on their own, sleeping outdoors and foraging for food—which includes killing bunnies, which is neither here nor there, but Adam is a first-rate grill chef.
As what goes in must come out, “we were in the field with a pack of wipes, which were gone in a night or two,” he told me. They were advised to use whatever came to hand, plants being an obvious choice, but with a caveat. “We had been shown a PowerPoint with pictures of what not to use, poison ivy being the big one. But inevitably plenty of soldiers who wiped with the wrong leaves ended up in the sick bay.”
Luckily, they were sent off with plenty of panties and socks, which Adam used for his toilette and then discarded. Lightening his load in more ways than one.
Unless you’ve been in SERE training for the last few weeks, you’re probably aware of the toilet-paper-hoarding pandemic—and yes, it is an international crisis.
My British friend Maggie sent me a link to an article in the UK’s Daily Mail which reported on a woman so frustrated at not being able to find toilet paper that she made her own.
A variation on the socks and panties method, she cuts microfiber cloths into quarters, which are deposited in a bucket after use and then washed in something called Napisan, which presumably has something to do with dirty diapers.
Meanwhile, another UK newspaper, The Guardian, reported that “consumers have been warned of the dangers of substituting kitchen roll and wet wipes for toilet paper which—if flushed down the loo—could overwhelm the UK’s sewers.”
The corona-related TP shortage in Australia is so bad that NT News, a tabloid in the country’s Northern Territory, added extra blank sheets for use if readers run dry.
Now. A brief history of toilet paper.
All sorts of stuffs have been used over the millennia for cleaning oneself. The website mentalfloss.com says, “The most common solution was simply to grab what was [available]: coconuts, shells, snow, moss, hay, leaves, grass, corncobs, sheep’s wool, and later—thanks to the printing press—newspapers, magazines, and pages of books.”
The Sears Roebuck catalogue, as you probably know, was extremely popular in the outhouse.
The first commercially available toilet paper, or in this case papers, were flat, aloe-infused hemp sheets invented in 1857 by Joseph Gayetty. Clearly ahead of his time with the logo trend, each sheet was watermarked with his name.
They were not widely distributed.
The Scott brothers’ TP on a roll came along in 1890, around the time that indoor plumbing become more common, as coconuts and corncobs do not flush well.
Marketed as a medicinal item, and an embarrassing one to purchase, toilet paper didn’t become a bathroom fixture for another 40 years. In 1928, Charmin started selling four-packs of “toilet tissue” with the silhouette of a glamorous woman’s face above the words “so very soft.”
That the packages also mentioned you could use the paper to remove cold cream was a helpful salve for the shy.
Thus, toilet paper took off.
Back to the present.
As this is a gardening column, we have some plant materials that make excellent substitutes. Baby sent me a graphic the other day labeled Leaves to Use in a Toilet Paper Crises. Sadly, I can’t give credit to the great mind that came up with this as it’s one of those viral messages that turn up everywhere.
There’s Mullen, which is said to be “absorbent, soft, thick and durable,” and is also useful as a lung tonic; Mallow, which is “durable, soft, and pliable, and has, it’s said, erotic uses; and Lamb’s Ear, which is “silky soft, durable, and luxurious.”
Lamb’s Ear, which I personally felt yesterday in a neighbor’s garden, has lovely soft and spongy leaves that reminded me of Ultra Soft Charmin, truly the caviar of toilet tissue.
Any of these can be grown in a pot beside the “pot,” though a grow light might be helpful. I’m not sure about the flushability, but we need to support plumbers in this time of crisis.
At the moment, you can also buy them online, along with containers and soil, thereby avoiding contamination by, you know, strangers.
But then, you could permanently avoid the entire tissue issue and install one of architect Philippe Starck’s SensoWash1 toilets, which combine washing and drying, have heated seats, and are controlled by smartphones.
At $6,700 it’s like buying a $120,000 Tesla S to save on gas, but no toilet paper is needed at all.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” acknowledges a preference for paper over greenery.
The older male celebs featured in the Wall Street Journal article on tinted lenses look to be having a fine old time, though Mahershala Ali, left, is only 46, and Robert Downey Jr., right, registers as 54, in contrast to Elton John, who will turn 73 later this month. / From the Wall Street Journal.
LAST MONTH I read a piece in the Wall Street Journal’s Off-Duty section (a/k/a the Saturday Bible) about tinted eyeglass lenses and how so many celebs were sporting them. So many, ahem, aging celebs. Bono, Jeff Goldblum, Elton John (of course), Johnny Depp. The list was long and deep.
The men’s fashion columnist Jacob Gallagher wondered if it had anything to do with hiding bags under the eyes and crow’s feet around them.
I love wearing silly colors of eyeglass frames; they seem like an of-the-moment style decision, easy to reverse. And I’m not particularly bothered by the state of my eyes and their immediate terrain: The ravages of time have concentrated on
It’s probably true that any eyeglasses would be reflective, but blue-light specs offer a weird glow. / MyLittleBird photo.
geography to the north (a bumpy forehead) and the south (horrid lip lines and patches of pathetic wrinkling where dimples once reigned). Sigh. Nonetheless, tinted lenses seemed like something to consider, though I wouldn’t even contemplate going the custom route of having eyeglasses (readers, in my case, usually from the drugstore) hand-dyed; it would simply be a case of choosing sunglasses in a more inventive palette.
Browsing through the Zenni Optical and Specs Collective sites, I immediately nixed a few ideas. No yellowish tint. Why give a jaundiced “glow” to the area around my eyes? Pale blue? They looked kinda pale, and what’s the point? Gray was subtle, maybe too subtle. Pink? Sure. Orange? Maybe (it looked jaunty). Jeff Goldblum can carry off orange, but he’s Jeff Goldblum and I’m not.
These folks on the Zenni Optical website, staff presumably, look cheerfully tinted in T-shirt and glasses, but I’m bothered by the weird yellow glow around the eyes of the woman in the center, the rabbity-pink-eye look next to her, and the purple bruise look at right. Shown on the front, also from the Zenni Optical site, are three of the colors offered: blue, pink and yellow. Zenni frames start at $6.95.
Then two things happened. One: I had bought blue-light reading glasses from Privé Revaux (“The Maestro,” $29.95) because, well, because I kept reading that the blue light from my computer and phone and Kindle screens (meaning about
These look like fun! The gutsy “Monopoly” sunglasses by Thierry Lasry are $395 at SpecsCollective.com. The style can also be had in 11 other color combos (yellow with red lenses shown here).
80% of my day) was screwing up my sleep patterns. Now I was standing at a mirror doing . . . something (who knows?) . . . and I noticed this odd iridescent shadow showing through the lenses, under my eyes. It was a weird blueish reflection off the blue-light readers. I made a mental note to switch to normal readers when going out.
The second thing: Next day I saw a young woman walking toward me; she seemed to have a black eye. Wrong again. No bruise. She was wearing gray-tinted lenses.
That’s it: My tinted idyll is over before it begins. Maybe. The pink still looks perky, the orange like fun. yellow if I were feeling brave. Most days, though, it’s going to be la vie en . . . clear.
—Nancy McKeon
MyLittleBird often includes links to products we write about. Our editorial choices are made independently; nonetheless, a purchase made through such a link can sometimes result in MyLittleBird receiving a commission on the sale, whether through a retailer, an online store or Amazon.com.
It’s alive! It’s alive! Well, almost, or not really, but spray paint neatly spans the gap. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
THE WASHINGTON POST’S Capital Weather Gang just announced that peak bloom for the Tidal Basin cherry blossoms has now been moved back five days to March 22nd—with one tree already fully flush with blossoms. If there’s anything positive to be said for the coronavirus it’s that tourists might stay away and those of us who live in and around Washington DC might get to enjoy the show all by our lonesomes, pretty much a once-in-a-lifetime event—should we live another few weeks.
That said, it’s still too early to spread summer seeds, plant tender plants, and so forth, but some of the hardier house plants would be thrilled at a little fresh air—just keep them close to the house in case you have to snatch them in if a frost threatens.
I am, in fact, about to instruct My Prince to schlep the sago palm out from the foyer, where it perches for the winter in a cast-iron pot, to the front porch, where it summers on a pedestal between the front windows.
I just did.
“Okay. You’re the boss,” he said, then ignored me.
While the winter has been absurdly mild, things are still looking a bit ratty and neglected, making one itchy to do something . . .
A few suggestions from my book of instant garden repairs . . . *
When in doubt, go to Michaels and . . . spray, baby, spray. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
In summer, the camellia in the planter beside the front door is nestled in various flowers and greens, most of them pulled for the winter and happily ensconced in the greenhouse waiting for more permanent warmth. I left a plug of asparagus fern —just to see—and miraculously it more or less survived. The “less” part being that half of it was a wheaty-pale frizzle as of last Sunday. This sat alongside what could only be called a patch of dirt, a sight not particularly cheery or welcoming.
I could have cut it back, the frizzle, but I like the frothiness of the fern. This is where spray paint comes in handy, specifically Design Master’s Colortool Spray in a shade called Basil, which has a particularly springy air, pale and fresh and amazingly natural. A spritz here and there and the fern looks entirely revived. A few pansies popped in and it’s a jolly sight—a five-minute fix, just the way I like it. I have no patience, you know.
When I knit, which is rarely, it is always a scarf on extra-large needles using super-bulky yarn. If I can’t do six feet in an evening I lose interest. That is neither here nor there, just illustrative.
Spray paint is great for all sorts of dead- and deadish-looking plants, like boxwood, which you don’t want to replace for a few more weeks. Also astilbe, which has that nice feathery plume that waves at you for a bit then gradually and unpleasantly browns. Pick a color, any color, spray, and you have what appears to be a living flower that lasts until frost. A gloss paint gives them a spritely ceramic look that glints in the sunlight.
You can plant a few things now—those charming flowers of spring: pansies, ranunculus, hardy cyclamen, hyacinth, primrose. All of which are often hardly worth the price or effort in the DC climate, frying as they do when our usual three days of spring is replaced by summer swelter. Planting them this year should be worth it—we might get weeks of pleasure from them. For once.
You could also amuse yourself looking for pots. Cast iron, ceramic, something wonderful. If I had money I’d check out MacKenzie-Childs, since I love their play with black and white, pattern mix, and splashes of color. If I were talented, I’d paint my own pots. Being neither wealthy nor artistic, I watch the curbs, thrift shops and junque shops for the rare.
Speaking of junque shops.
There’s a fine one outside of Culpeper, Virginia, called Slindy’s, which specializes in items like dusty oil paintings on velvet and gently used Swedish military uniforms, but sometimes there’s a real find. One day a few years ago, I picked up a plaster pedestal, about three and a half feet tall, shaped like an ionic column, all fluted sides, you know. I believe it was three bucks.
I carried it to the car trunk and set it down on the concrete parking surface where it immediately cracked into two pieces, top and bottom. There was some fuss about my being too rough with things, which I denied, and we took it home, where I sat and contemplated it for a bit. The two halves didn’t appear useful for anything since each had a base to sit on but a jagged top where nothing would rest easily, and they wouldn’t hold water . . .
And then, a eureka moment. If I stuffed something in the jagged opening of one of them, a beaker perhaps, I could use it as a vase. Which is what I did. A slender plastic water bottle with the top sawed off was the perfect size. One half of the column now sits behind the living room sofa, stuffed with palm fronds or Queen Anne’s lace, so airy in summer even though it tends to shed.
The other half I gave to Baby, who uses it similarly.
The funny part of this story is that, shortly after this find, I came across a similarly broken pedestal at an antiques shop in Georgetown, hung with a fancy parchment tag with $350 handwritten in a scrolling script the color of faded blood. I’d love to know who bought it.
That bottle business, by the way, is a neat way to turn anything into a vase, or put one that leaks back into use. Measure the opening and the depth, head for the grocery store, and you’ll find a jar, a tube, or a bottle of something that fits. With any luck, you’ll enjoy eating or drinking the contents too.
But returning to pots, which was the subject at hand.
I’ve finally given a rhododendron a shot, 35 years late. The large green ceramic pot in the front yard was looking sad, filled as it was with some straggly foliage of Something That Did Not Work. This one, a flashy pink number called Holden, now sits in front of the forsythia, which is blooming splendidly but will fade as Holden’s flowers open. At least I hope so. The idea of pink and yellow together makes my flesh crawl.
We shouldn’t have planted the forsythia in the first place, but I was in a rush (see knitting, above) to have a garden in my new home and they were cheap and big and so forth. And they do screen the front porch from passersby, so I can sit and read and sneak peaks, popping up to scream if they let their pups lift a leg in the wrong spot.
I never said I was nice. Did I.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” knows spray paint to be the secret gardening tool.
*Another of the books I haven’t written but mean to, should I live.
MyLittleBird often includes links to products we write about. Our editorial choices are made independently; nonetheless, a purchase made through such a link can sometimes result in MyLittleBird receiving a commission on the sale, whether through a retailer, an online store or Amazon.com.
Za’atar bread made with the commercial spread from Zesty Z. / MyLittleBird photo.
I WAS SUPPOSED to write about something else this week, then I got sidetracked. The culprit? The Middle East. Yes, of course I can explain.
Inviting a few old friends to lunch isn’t supposed to be stressful. Sensing that the opposite was the case, one friend suggested that I put my faith in a good Middle Eastern restaurant and have it deliver some mezze, a selection of hummus and tabbouleh and pita and feta cheese, etcetera—the quintessential Mediterranean nosh. But which restaurant? Ack! So instead, I lit on something easy: baked salmon and a green salad and . . . and . . . what? Those two menu items are somewhat lacking in zip without loading one or both with some kind of dressing or sauce.
And so began my search for za’atar bread. The mention of mezze had rolled my mind’s taste buds back years to the tasty pita bread I used to buy at Mediterranean Bakery in Alexandria, Virginia. Atop the bread was a lovely, almost dusty coating of toasted sesame seeds and dried thyme and oregano and sumac, that last with its rich, lemony tang.
With no za’atar bread locally (“locally” being defined by me as within five blocks of my apartment), I scouted around for the za’atar spice. No go there either.
Long story even longer, I found Zesty Z, the Middle Eastern spice combo (Lebanese in this iteration) in an olive oil suspension, made in Brooklyn and sold in supermarkets and online. And, to prove that once you’ve seen something once you will see it everywhere, Amazon (of course) offered an almost endless array of za’atar spice blends, plus individual jars of the ingredients to make my own, including the elusive sumac (pronounced SHOO-mock).
Made with my own spice blend and quite a bit less olive oil, this za’atar bread is less unctuous but still quite tasty. / MyLittleBird photo.
For that lunch, I used the Zesty Z za’atar spread, toasting the pita after slathering the oily substance atop the little loaves and cutting them in quarters. (Yum!) Next day, I launched an assault on my own za’atar blend. Judging by the myriad recipes out there, the exact ingredients and their proportions vary by country, even city, and are limited by your own palate, to a certain extent. Some of the recipes call for starting with za’atar leaves, but to be honest, it’s not clear to me whether a za’atar plant is simply a variant on oregano. No matter. With what I had in the pantry, here’s what I wound up with.
No-Nonsense Za’atar Bread
2 tablespoons of sesame seeds
2 tablespoons of dried oregano
1 tablespoon of ground sumac
Olive oil
Pita bread (commercial or, if you’re really into it, your own)
NOTE: Most recipes seem to call for adding a little salt, but I didn’t discern the need for any. Also, using dried thyme instead of oregano will shift the flavor profile, probably making it closer to the Mediterranean Bakery version. Additionally, some recipes call for ground cumin and coriander, triggering much back-and-forth among online recipe readers about authenticity; it seems to be of the Minsk-versus-Pinsk variety, meaning where in the wide expanse of the Middle East each reader’s taste buds and traditions were formed. This all suggests delightful future experimentation.
In one or two batches, toast the sesame seeds in a dry skillet over a medium flame until they’re medium brown (you can also use a toaster oven, laying the seeds out on a toaster-oven tray). Remove to a medium-size bowl and allow to cool.
When the sesame seeds are cool, mix in the oregano and sumac and grind the three ingredients together (you may want to use a mortar and pestle, but just bruising them together works well enough).
Lightly coat each pita with a bit of olive oil. Sprinkle on some of the spice blend, as lightly or as densely as you want. A few minutes in a toaster oven brings everything together but is not entirely necessary.
The remainder of the dry spice blend can be stored in a small air-tight container along with your other spices and used on those bereft-looking chicken breasts sitting there begging for flavor, or on vegetables. If you get hooked on the taste of za’atar, the spice blend can be sprinkled on popcorn (perhaps with a quick spray of olive oil to help it adhere) or as a variation on classic Chex party mix. Your Lebanese great-grandmother will be proud . . or horrified, hard to know.
—Nancy McKeon
MyLittleBird often includes links to products we write about. Our editorial choices are made independently; nonetheless, a purchase made through such a link can sometimes result in MyLittleBird receiving a commission on the sale, whether through a retailer, an online store or Amazon.com.
IF THERE’S anything good to say about global warming, it’s probably accountable for the spring we’re about to have (fingers crossed, bang on wood). They come around rarely, though more frequently in recent years, springs that appear endless, like flower shows where unlikely pairings dance into view and linger and linger, meeting up with blossoms of later months, that in turn linger,
There’s an early warmth that retains a cool edge, so the flowers don’t frizzle but hang on. Tulips and lilacs waltz with the roses in a near overwhelming parade for the senses. We hope.
We’re three weeks ahead of schedule, according the USA National Phenology Network, an organization I’d never heard of, and a word I’d never heard of, until 30 seconds ago. In very brief, they study climate change and its effect on plant and animal life.
“Washington DC and New York City are 24 days early,” they say. “Philadelphia, Pa., is 16 days early, and Little Rock, AR, is 9 days early . . . Spring bloom has also arrived in several Southeast and Southwest states. Spring bloom is between 1 day and 3 weeks early.”
You can follow the march of spring on their website.
But you don’t need a website to notice that the crocus and daffodils are out, the forsythia are bursting with buds, as are the hellebores, and winter jasmine. Some of the early cherries are already in bloom.
We won’t, however, match the record for peak bloom of the Yoshino cherry trees, which was March 15, 1990. The Japanese beauties that adorn Washington DC’s Tidal Basin each spring are expected to be in splendid form around March 25, well timed for the annual Cherry Blossom Festival, which is March 20 to April 12 this year.
It’s a fine time to grab the secateurs and snip some flowering branches from your cherries, dogwood, forsythia and such, bringing them into bloom in the dining room or the foyer or on the mantel, should you still have any of these. Cut them tall and let them flair out between towering candlesticks.
Small to minuscule flowers do nicely in squat vessels, nestled in foliage. My five-minute arrangement—which took me no farther afield than my row house steps—involved snipping a few fresh branches from a sidewalk tree, and some ivy and ferns from the backyard, a bit of this and that from house plants. A mix of leaves is nice: The varying textures and shades of green add interest. Since my daffs are just starting to open, I cadged just three for the center.
Daffodils have a particularly short life in the warmth of a house, sometimes lasting only a day or two before shriveling into what seems a sad papery replica. Fresh, though, they’re perfect for a cheery centerpiece; as they droop, pluck them out and replace them with fresh blooms. A few grape hyacinths, and a tulip or two would be lovely. The greens should last for weeks
Making it simple was reusing florist’s foam from an arrangement I was gifted ages ago, I always hang onto that stuff. Even when it’s full of holes it still holds water, and stems. Those plastic flower-holder tubes with the rubber caps are also useful to save for short or weak stemmed flowers like pansies and dandelions (which look rather sweet in such company, like a child’s birthday card—just add glitter).
Spring is here. We hope. On the other hand, keep your blankets handy, we’re still at least six weeks from the last frost date. Ah, the drama.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” is always ready for spring.
Chicken Marbella in all its sweet and savory glory. / iStock photo.
BACK IN the early 1970s, a lot of us were competitively cooking our way through Julia Child’s tomes (Mastering the Art of French Cooking: Volume 2 came out in 1970). Dazzling for sure, but a bit rigorous. (And good luck finding shallots at the Piggly Wiggly in 1972.) But finally came 1979-80 and The Silver Palate Cookbook, brainchild of the tiny Silver Palate food shop on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, which turned us on to imaginative flavor combos (Raspberry Chicken, anyone? Beet and Apple Purée?). Less technique, more fun. Soon that was the book to beat; even Julia had great things to say about authors and business partners Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso.
I recently unearthed my Workman Publishing paperback of the Silver Palate from a dusty carton and find stains (presumably olive oil or wine) all over the page for Chicken Marbella. Which just proves to me how little I’ve changed, in a good way, over the years. I’ve recently made the dish three times in as many weeks; obsessive, I suppose, but I tweak it each time depending on which ingredients I’m suddenly out of.
There are recipes all over the Internet for this easy-bake dish. Many credit Silver Palate before going their own way, as do I. What follows, then, isn’t the original but my variation on the theme. Mind you, the real Chicken Marbella calls for olives; I don’t like olives, never have. I use them when cooking the dish for others, but just for myself I leave them out. I’m planning to add dried apricots next time to cozy up to the succulent prunes in the recipe, but pretty soon I’m going to have to stop calling it Chicken Marbella, maybe Chicken With Prunes and Apricots but No Olives. I’m not wild about capers either, but the pickled quality of the fruit and their juice provides the tartness that keeps the dish from being simply sweet.
The original also calls for marinating the chicken parts overnight; I feel I can get away with less. Before I go completely off the reservation, give this a try—especially if you haven’t done the dish since the ’80s. The Silver Palate Cookbook presented it as a party dish, serving 10 to 12; my more modest needs have me limiting it to four boneless chicken thighs, enough for two meals for one or one meal for two. Of course you can do it with chicken breasts, but the thighs have more density and a meatier flavor. The recipe is eminently expandable and contractable (and my notion of amounts is also quite, shall we say, loose).
—Nancy McKeon
Chicken Marbella
3 or 4 cloves of garlic, or as much garlic as you want, puréed (or as close as you can get) in a food processor
1 or 2 teaspoons of dried oregano
Salt and pepper
1/4 cup of olive oil
1/4 cup of red wine vinegar (yes, white wine vinegar will work too)
4 to 6 pitted prunes
4 large pitted green olives, if you must
2 tablespoons of capers, with a bit of the brine they’re bottled in
1 bay leaf
4 boneless chicken thighs, with or without skin
About 3 tablespoons of brown sugar, preferably light brown
1/2 cup of white or red wine (I use whatever’s open)
Finely chopped Italian parsley, if you have some
Combine the puréed garlic, oregano, salt and pepper, olive oil, vinegar, prunes, olives if using, capers and bay leaf in a bowl or a heavy-duty Zip-Loc bag. Add the chicken thighs and marinate for as along as you can (stirring occasionally or rotating the plastic bag to get all the chicken well covered).
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Arrange the chicken pieces in a baking dish and pour the marinade over them. Sprinkle the chicken with the brown sugar. Pour the wine around the chicken so as not to dislodge the marinade or sugar. Bake for about an hour, or until juices run clear. Serve on a platter with the juices and marinade poured over. Sprinkle with parsley, if you like.
MyLittleBird often includes links to products we write about. Our editorial choices are made independently; nonetheless, a purchase made through such a link can sometimes result in MyLittleBird receiving a commission on the sale, whether through a retailer, an online store or Amazon.com.
I OPENED my office door this morning and . . . WHOOSH! . . . a billow of orange and jasmine perfume smacked my nose, wafting in from the open door to my little greenhouse, a step away from my desk. It is a most delightful, if distracting, way to work. Though it normally keeps me focused on what I’m supposed to be producing—a garden column, of sorts.
Today it will definitely be a column of sorts because I have just completed the gardening portion (see above).
This morning’s email brought a batch of stories from Domino, the web version of the cult lifestyle magazine, including a treatise on shelves and what to do with them. Is this an issue? You put books on the bookshelves, dishes on the dish shelves, what-nots on the what-not shelves. And so forth.
My books are organized in sections: fiction, mystery, biography, cookbooks, art, gardening, etc., etc. And within sections by author. With a few thousand books weighing down our three-story house, this seems logical. If I’m looking for Vonnegut, which I seem to be more and more, I look under V in the fiction section, and if the book is not under the bed it will be there.
This is apparently not cool, or not cool enough for Domino. There is no art to my bookshelves—though I do mix in the occasional photo or beloved tchotchke. For shame. But Domino will rescue me. The text is brief, the photos large, as befits bookshelves that are not meant for readers.
From Domino, posted February 22, 2020:
From Domino. Photo courtesy of Bespoke Only.
Pick a Color Palette and Stick to It
“Before you even think about curating your odds and ends, select a few complementary hues you want to feature. Not only will this make for a seamless shopping experience, but the resulting collection will look cohesive.”
To illustrate the concept, there’s a sleek walnut bookcase topped with art and artsy stuff in various shades of wood. To get around the pesky issue of book jackets—I never realized how disruptive all those colors can be—the books are lined up here spine-in, so only the white paper edges show. Only five books are shown spine-out, four in tasteful shades of earth and, in a show of witty rebellion, perhaps, one is pale blue. This makes finding a book an adventure. I don’t know why bookstores have never discovered this.
From Domino. Photo by Cody Guilfoyle.
Color-Code Your Books
“Simply reorganize your tomes by color, and you have a bookcase that doubles as an art installation.”
I have seen and hated this idea before. Shelve all your white-jacketed books together, all the black ones together, and all the red ones together. How does one find anything? This artful nook is accented by what appears to be an uncomfortable-looking midcentury-modern bucket chair with brass or copper legs and channel-quilted peacock blue shantung upholstery. You wouldn’t want to sit there and read anyway. So. So.
From Domino. Photo courtesy of Studio McGee.
Add Depth With a Strategically Placed Coat of Paint
“ . . . paint the back wall of your unit black to make the shelves look especially deep. Stick to just a few white accessories to further highlight the contrast.”
Bottom line? Only black and white book jackets need apply.
From Domino. Photo Courtesy of Bespoke Only.
Cluster Similar Objects
“ . . . each ledge seems to have its own theme. One sill is devoted entirely to glazed canisters, while another is exclusively home to coffee-table books.”
A story similar to picking the palette, but here only white books and books covered in what looks like brown paper bag wrapping are permitted on the skeletal metal bookshelves with their industrial vibe. Surrounded by neutral tones, of course: White walls and, for that trendy old/new mix, what appears to be a walnut library table of some vintage under a pressed-tin ceiling. Terribly chic.
Clearly, we’re not supposed to be reading our books, they have devolved into purely decorative items.
My sister Jean used to have three books on display. Two covered in red paper, one in yellow. I believe one was a typing manual from 1955 and the others were Reader’s Digest editions. It lent an air of erudition to the desk, and was very easy to dust, her primary complaint about hoarding books.
Have you noticed all those libraries on British TV, with their floor-to-ceiling books? Who dusts them, I wonder. That’s an aside. Maybe they don’t have dust in England. This is possible. It is a rainy climate—does rain eat dust? Or maybe it damps it down into a firm, unnoticeable crust. That was also an aside. I could keep thinking this way but won’t.
From Domino. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Roberts Architects.
Mix In Greenery
“Not all plants like direct sunlight . . . intersperse your favorite shade-loving botanicals with your standard shelving fare.”
Said standard shelving fare does not include books. A whole wall of white shelving in a white room with neutral-colored this and that interspersed with a few plants.
From Domino. Photo by Jessica Antola.
Go Monochrome
“Sticking to a single hue is the simplest way to make your storage appear intentional.”
The difference between going monochrome, picking a color palette, color-coding and clustering similar objects is so subtle it entirely escapes me. Here’s a free-standing metal bookshelf that has only red-, white- and black-jacketed books; red, white and black art and objects, and white walls—but truly enviable plasterwork.
The design doyennes at Domino really, really like this idea.
Also featured is a book-free (white) kitchen, with open wood shelving, at which I chortle, imagining the aggregation of grease on the white dishes.
In truth, I don’t know why I still hoard books, and compulsively add more. I’m spending less time reading actual volumes with paper and ink and spines and jackets and more time on the Kindle, a device I once scoffed at. Scoff. Scoff. And one might also toss in a sneer. Sneer. Never, I think I distinctly recall myself saying. And then . . .
A Kindle, you know, weighs pretty much nothing. You can hold it in one (arthritic) hand for hours and, with a little practice, flick pages with a single finger. If you forget who a character is at a climactic moment in a murder mystery, stab his or her name with a finger and all references appear. The older I get, the worse I get at keeping track of characters.
Also! I can read in the dark. I fall asleep reading the Paperwhite, it drops out of my hand, and shuts itself down in a minute or two
But the ultimate lure is the dictionary. All my life I’ve fantasized about installing a dictionary in my brain so I could look things up as I’m reading. Instead, I would tell myself to remember and look it up later, which never happened. With the Kindle, I can lie bundled under my quilts and, when I hit an odd word or even a phrase, I can poke it with a finger and the Oxford Dictionary or Wikipedia pops up with a definition or explanation. If that’s not luxury, I don’t know what is.
Come to think of it, blue book jackets do not look good in the living room. Should I turn them spine-in?
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” does indeed garden when she’s not reading or taking exception to the home-decorating suggestions of others.
MyLittleBird often includes links to products we write about. Our editorial choices are made independently; nonetheless, a purchase made through such a link can sometimes result in MyLittleBird receiving a commission on the sale, whether through a retailer, an online store or Amazon.com.
If hydrangeas don’t make you happy–though why not?–maybe another of Facebook’s flower pages will. / iStock photo.
PASSIONATEABOUT hydrangeas? African violets? Bonsai? Orchids? There’s a Facebook group, or 10, for that.
Plonk the name of your floral or arboreal obsession into the search bar at the top of your Facebook page and the choices mushroom with references, resources, photos and mentions.
(If you don’t have a Facebook page, feel free to stop reading now.)
Let’s take hydrangeas (because I love hydrangeas). Among the numerous groups sharing the love, the two largest are the egregiously named “Hydrangea Happiness,” with 6,795 members, and the more elegant “Hydrangeas,” with 5,900 followers. Both share photos, tips and such—with up to six posts a day.
I got tired of counting the number of FB pages devoted to roses, stopping after 25, though there must be at least 100, with names like “Roses” and “I Love Roses” and “Beautiful Roses,” which are just what they appear to be, pages devoted to photos and comments about the plant.
As you weed through them, the curious emerge, like “Roses . . . Just for You.” Which is devoted to “appreciating the beauty of GOD’s creation,” and cautions that there are “no nude pics and videos.” It seems that 197,086 people appreciate this page, posting photos and comments up to 300 times per day. This does not strike me as a jolly crowd.
Then there’s “Skulls and Roses,” which has lost an alarming number of members since I last checked in, dropping from 13,000 members to 985. The group is just what it says, “a place where you can post pics of Skulls and Roses.” Unfortunately, I can’t describe a typical post because you have to join the page first, something I am reluctant to do, given the rate of attrition.
You do have to weed through these pages to find simpatico content and contributors. It’s as if you’ve arrived at a party with a bunch of strangers who could turn out to be bores, drunks or your new best friends. Don’t sit down until you get the lay of the land, as it were.
To continue.
Some groups have rather marvelous monikers, like “Lawn Care Mafia.” There once were seven groups that shared this name; now there are just two, and between them they have 42,000 members. An upstart called “The Real Lawn Care Mafia” has recently emerged, with just 24 followers. I don’t know what to make of this. All of these sites feature really cool, loud and large equipment and photos of complete irrelevance, such as the pimply-faced kid sitting in a car with what look like 65 acupuncture needles stuck in his forehead who asks, “How would you title this picture?” You think the entire mafia set is a bunch of guys, maybe?
“Container Gardening Gone to Pot” is the first plant FB group I ever joined. This was because of the name, which amused me. Here you can find gorgeous posts such as a recent video of the orchid show at England’s Kew Gardens alongside items like what is clearly a pot of geraniums with some innocent asking, “What is this interesting flower?”
There are frequently a lot of stupid questions on these pages, all of these pages. But if you’re just learning to garden you can forge forth fearlessly and ask away. Everyone is treated with kindness, which is probably because I refrain from commenting.
“Mid-Atlantic Tropics,” another of my favorites, is a non sequiturial* group of fools like me who insist on trying to grow Bird of Paradise among other clearly tropical plants in places where snow is at least occasionally known to fall. There are some amazing tropical gardens in Pittsburgh, by the way.
No matter which state or country you live in, there’s a Facebook gardening group for you—frequently there’ll be several, so you’re covered within any state from mountain to shore.
In Washington DC there’s DC Gardeners, which goes way beyond the cherry blossoms to ferret out special events and garden tours, host a garden book club and book signings—and generally promote public gardens and city gardening, from ponds to vegetables to native plants.
And there’s Washington Gardener, which hosts a lively Facebook page in addition to a gorgeous monthly magazine.
Prefer hands-on, hit-you-right-on-the-nose garden inspiration? A reminder that The Philadelphia Flower Show, the Big Mama of US flower shows, runs from February 29 through March 8, this year featuring a toast to the French Riviera along with the usual extravaganza of garden displays, presentations and demonstrations—plus a drool-worthy assortment of plants and accessories to buy and take home.
The auctioning off of designer Mario Buatta’s thousands of exquisite decorative objects has awakened a taste in some people (ahem) for the more exotic—let’s say anything north of the Pottery Barn catalogue. The auction house Sotheby’s, which of course sold Mario’s stash, has a whole raft of home goods it is selling at retail on its website under the heading “Inspired by the Look of Mario Buatta.” These “CAN” Mandarin side chairs by Red Egg are among the offerings, and there are lots more things available—Staffordshire ceramics, Chinoiserie secretaries, Hollywood Regency chandeliers, and ormolu and japanned pieces for days.
I’m sucker for anything croc, and the “Stalk” Gold Platter fills the bill. Note the “alligator” scales hammered by hand onto the aluminum body—and those teeny tiny feet! Twelve inches long, the Stalk tray is perfect for your bar cart (you do have one, don’t you?) and is $44.95 at Crate and Barrel’s little sister, cb2.com.
I didn’t want my croc to be lonely so I got him a fellow critter, the Vlad Beetle Bottle Opener, on sale for $12.99, also from cb2.com. He’s cast brass and stainless steel with a matte silver finish. And he’s a big guy: 4½ inches long.
There are certainly lots of table lanterns out there, but this Frosted Glass Lantern from Terrain is as dreamy as seaglass and has me mooning over nice weather to come. With brass fittings, the lantern comes in this frosted version in green or white. The small version, 5½ inches tall, is $28; the large, 9½ inches tall, is $48. A Bubble Glass Lantern in the same shape comes in a mellow yellow or rosy pink and can be had for $28 (small) or $52 (large).
Some of us thought we were over candles. Not so fast: These Geo pillar candles from Terrain are a fresh take in interesting colors and shapes. They range in size from 3½ inches tall to 9 inches and in price from $8 to $24. A whole flock of them (is there any such thing as a flock of candles?) would make for a novel dinner-table centerpiece.
—Nancy McKeon
MyLittleBird often includes links to products we write about. Our editorial choices are made independently; nonetheless, a purchase made through such a link can sometimes result in MyLittleBird receiving a commission on the sale, whether through a retailer, an online store or Amazon.com.
It’s not frosty out there now, but who knows what’s to come? / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
MILD PANIC is setting in.
(Cue ominous music)
Last week was the 10th anniversary of Snowmageddon, Snowpocalypse, or Snowzilla: However you wish to remember it, that blizzard piled 35 inches or so on the Northeast, burying cars and small dogs, and stopping trains, planes and the less stable of foot. Washington DC had a potato crisis, which I’ve discussed before and won’t again.
It was pushing 70 on the same date last week in DC and I said to My Prince that we might want to be more conservative with our firewood consumption. “Why?” he asked. “The flowers are coming out already.”
I gathered myself up into full preachy mode (a stunning thing to see, I say) and reminded him that the last frost date in our area is April 21. Usually this lecture takes place sometime in March, when the air grows mild for a day or six and he is nudging to move the jasmines and such from the greenhouse to the garden.
We took a perambulation around Capitol Hill on Sunday, light jackets flapping open, taking pictures of the absurd signs of spring. Some were the usual February suspects, the witch hazels, daffodils, and camellias. All were particularly perky.
And the forsythia? The iris? The hellebores? Busting out a month early—at least. Our kumquat, basking in the warmth of a brick wall, appeared positively thrilled, stupid thing.
And I saw an actual blooming rose. A very tiny rose, but! And while that may be the only one I saw in bloom, every bush or climber we passed has sprouted new growth, such tender green leaves. The hydrangeas are sprouting; even the kwanzan cherry trees, which flower weeks after the Tidal Basin display, are showing buds.
It’s supposed to be rainy and mild this week, furthering this unseasonable show. But a powerful cold blast is due Friday. The temperature is to plunge to the low 20s, even in the city, where building density keeps the air degrees warmer than in the suburbs. This could be a disaster. While some plants will revive after an arctic night blasts fresh buds, others could be devastated. We’ll be lucky to see a flower this year.
We’re getting covers ready. One thing to be thankful about, with a tiny yard such as ours, you can lay out a few blankets and muffle the borders into sleeping bags. Saturday it will be 50 degrees again.
And so, we consult the Earthman, Henry Mitchell. The late, great Washington Post gardening columnist brings perennial solace in troubling times:
“One thinks, ‘Well, at least the lilacs are always on time and always good’ but then there are years they all freeze. There are years when irises do not bloom at all, There are years when roses are blown right off their stems, and years the chrysanthemums are frozen dead just as they come into bloom. . . . Within a few years, however the gardener begins to realize there has never yet been a single year in which everything did well. And usually (after 40 years or so) he notices that no year is without some special splendor.”
The Philadelphia Flower Show, the oldest in the country, opens on February 29, 2020. No matter what the theme of any given year, the show is always an extravaganza. The image above is from 2017. / Photo from the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society.
STEP RIGHT up! The Philadelphia Flower Show, the oldest and most fabulous garden exposition in the nation, opens on February 29 and runs through March 8 at the Philadelphia Convention Center.
This year the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, which produces the annual extravaganza, presents a whiff of the French Riviera, with citrus groves lining the entry, flowering arches, and drifts of lavender, geraniums, roses, rosemary and sage, which sounds like a total olfactory overdose. Those splendidly scented flowers will be punctuated by enough fountains, tiles and pottery to inspire a Mediterranean garden of your own.
Oh, and there’ll be 4,000 butterflies.
The center court display, a floral version of 4th of July fireworks, and surrounding exhibitions are created by the best of the best floral and landscape designers; among them, this year, James and Helen Basson of Scape Design, and Laurélie de la Salle of Laurélie Paysages, both firms imported from Nice, France.
Princess Charlene de Monaco Hybrid Tea Rose. / Photo from Edmunds’ Roses.
Beyond the main court will be a joint effort with Monaco, with a replica of Princess Grace’s Rose Garden— not quite the principality’s nine-acre spread with its 4,000 varieties of roses, but still a grand sight, they promise.Grace Kelly, as you may remember, was born in Philadelphia. She was also just 26 when she retired from films to marry Prince Rainier, which is neither here nor there, just interesting. I think.
The rose garden will also feature a new flower, the Princess Charlene de Monaco rose, a very fragrant, double-flowered Hybrid Tea with petals of light apricot to shell pink, named for Prince Albert’s wife. Presumably, you’ll be able to buy one in the show’s marketplace, where there will be aisle upon aisle of plants and garden tchotchkes.
Throughout the week there will also be gardening lectures, events such as jewelry-making from plant materials, and hundreds of competitions for flower arranging, photography, jewelry and individual plants.
Philadelphia really knows how to do this show, with package deals for hotels and easy access from Amtrak via subway, directly to the Convention Center with blessedly clear signs. Make sure to leave room for lunch. The Farmer’s Market, worth a trip on its own, is right across the street. If you’re traveling to the show, you might bring a cooler.
Tickets purchased online before February 28 are $42 for adults, $26 for those aged 18 to 29 and $17 for those aged 5 to 17. That’s a few bucks cheaper than at the gate. You can also reserve parking, get directions and the full scoop on daily activities at https://theflowershow.com/.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” is a Philly fan even when there’s no flower show.
IN THE MIDST of winter there’s nothing like a cozy brunch or dinner to celebrate something—or nothing. But even if you dish up naught but a bowl of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich, the setting should be spectacular. Or, at least, nice.
There’s layer upon layer of pink and white and green whimsy on the dining table at J. Brown & Co. in Old Town, Alexandria, Virginia. Begin with the faux Granny Smith apples propping up the heavy round glass tabletop, add lacy linen placemats topped with gilded wood chargers topped with rose-and-gold plates with scalloped rims topped with gold-bordered salad plates. Centered on the top, custom-embroidered napkins gathered with silvery rings. (The napkins can be special-ordered with your own heraldic hoo-ha).
The intricately embroidered napkins can be custom-ordered at J, Brown & Co. in Alexandria, Virginia, using your own monogram or other design. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
The settings change frequently, with accessories culled from Brown’s exquisite stock by designers such as William Yeoward and MacKenzie-Childs, plus beeswax candles of extraordinary length, and masses of fabulous silk flowers.
Somewhat surprisingly, my Prince—who’s intimately acquainted with power tools and grout—loved the table setting. “It’s so Alice in Wonderland,” he said, though I wouldn’t attempt a setting like this at home unless he puts down his wrench. There was once an incident with a Waterford goblet, but that is neither here nor there.
Some say floral arrangements should be kept low, so you can see your dining companions (though there are some I’d rather ignore, in which case a high and wide arrangement would suit me fine). Brown’s display would present a problem, with those extravagant sprays of lilies tangling with the chandelier overhead. But picture a tall glass vase that doesn’t hide your tablemates —or set any vase on a pedestal of some sort—and add branches of cherry blossoms or those curly willows I keep harping on about. Let the branches unfurl above eye level, like a magical umbrella or a little dining forest.
The floral extravaganza topping J. Brown & Co.’s table celebrates flora perhaps at the expense of the company at your table, not always an unfortunate thing. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
Baby and I did something like this for her wedding a few years back—after getting the florist’s estimate. We ordered tall glass cylinders on Amazon and bought out Harris Teeter’s stock of potted palms. The bridesmaids clipped off the fronds, plonked them in the vases, and turned the hotel’s dining room into a swank supper club. I think we spent about $150 on the whole shebang—and the palms themselves revived quite nicely. I have two in the living room, she has several others. Nice mementos.
There’s plenty more inspiration among the fabulous tablescapes on Flower Magazine’s website, including a so-fabulous-I-could-plotz rose-covered dining pavilion at the Baccarat Museum in Paris. I don’t spend much time on Twitter but happened upon a chirp from them the other day that got me curious, and I ended up spending a pleasurable hour or so (meaning way too much of my work day) mesmerized by their settings. The china and silver, layers of mats and plates, chargers, multiple colorways and moods. The photos serve as tutorials on how to organize a tablescape, and punctuate it with flowers, of course.
Shamefully, I’ve just discovered this gorgeous magazine, and immediately subscribed. With luck, it’ll survive for the length of my subscription, at least.
If you really have nothing else to do for the rest of the week, wander your fingers onto Pinterest, for hundreds of table and flower arrangement ideas from everyday settings to weddings, handily broken up into 30 categories, such as vintage, rustic, outdoors and even table shape. So (in theory) you’re less overwhelmed.
I do hope you haven’t sent your fancy tableware to the thrift shop. You’ll need it.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” is happiest when immersed in floral excess, even when she didn’t grown the flora herself.
WINTER MEANS stew. But call it boeuf bourguignon and you can serve it to guests, right?
The version I’ve been making for the past decade or so doesn’t come from Julia Child but the less-likely Duchess of Devonshire. Youngest of the six Mitford sisters, she was neither the communist nor the Hitler pal, thank goodness. Instead, she had an entrepreneurial streak that blossomed when she married the man who would become the 11th Duke of Devonshire and turned her attention until her death in 2014 to the family’s stately home, Chatsworth, in the possession of the Cavendish family since 1549. She wrote books about Chatsworth making it convincingly clear that she saw her role in keeping up the house as a serious job. She ran a retail and catering food business and a farm operation there; Wiki says she was even known to man the ticket booth for Chatsworth visitors. (It takes some 300,000 visitors a year to maintain 126 rooms and parkland of about 1,000 acres, even though the property is run by the National Trust.)
But all that, I suppose, is neither here nor there. My friend Mary found the recipe somewhere years ago, and I’ve been executing it, sometimes faithfully, sometimes not so, ever since. There’s nothing slapdash about it: Each ingredient—beef, carrots, onions yellow and pearl, mushrooms, bacon—is cooked separately, then brought together under the cover of gutsy Côtes du Rhône wine in a marriage not (for sure) of convenience but of maximum deep flavor.
This recipe is as I received it, made four servings. Not being a glutton for punishment, I generally triple it and keep large portions in the freezer. If you do the same, don’t triple the wine; two bottles will certainly do. And I’ve never gotten the triple dose of little pearl onions to really cook down and caramelize in sugar, butter and water; nonetheless, cooking them for an hour or more does bring out their sweetness. As for the bacon, the only way I can manage to get slices cut into skinny little batonnettes is to use scissors.
—Nancy McKeon
Beef Bourguignon, attributed to the late Duchess of Devonshire
Makes 4 servings
1½ pounds of stewing beef, cut into small pieces
Vegetable oil
1 large carrot, cut into thin rounds
1 large onion, sliced thin
1 or more cloves of garlic, crushed
At least 1 teaspoon of salt
At least ½ teaspoon of ground black pepper
About 3 tablespoons of flour
1 bottle of red wine, like a Côtes du Rhône
A bouquet garni (2 to 3 sprigs each of thyme and parsley and bay leaf, tied together with kitchen string)
10 ounces of white pearl onions (I’ve used fresh and frozen and haven’t detected a difference; my suggestion: Go with frozen)
2 tablespoons of sugar
1 tablespoon of butter
4 ounces of sliced country-style smoked bacon
10 ounces of button mushrooms, stems trimmed to be even with the caps
Steamed or boiled potatoes or cooked noodles to be topped with the stew, prepared separately
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Defrost the frozen pearl onions unless you are using fresh. Pat the stewing beef dry.
Heat a tablespoon or so of the vegetable oil in a heavy Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Brown the meat on all sides in batches; you will probably have to add oil as you continue. As the cubes of meat are cooked, remove them with a slotted spoon and set aside.
Leave the drippings in the Dutch oven and add the carrot and onion slices; sauté them until the onions are golden. Add the crushed garlic, the salt and pepper and sauté it all for a minute or two. Sprinkle the flour over the vegetables and stir to coat them with the flour; cook together for a minute or so.
Add the browned cubes of beef to the vegetable mix and stir well. Now stir in the wine, a little at a time, until the flour is blended. Add the bouquet garni and heat the mixture to boiling. Cover and bake for an hour, until the meat is tender. After the first hour, lower the heat to 300 degrees and add a little water if the liquid doesn’t cover the meat.
While the beef cooks, place the (defrosted) pearl onions in a saucepan with about 2 cups of water, the butter and the sugar, and bring to a boil. Then simmer them, stirring frequently, until the onions are transparent and tender, the liquid has evaporated and the onions are coated with a caramelized glaze, for about an hour (if you’re lucky; otherwise just do it until you have to add the onions to the rest of the stew).
While the pearl onions are cooking, cut strips of bacon crosswise into narrow pieces (as I said above, I use scissors reserved for this job). Fry the batonnettes of bacon in a sauce pan until crisp. Set the cooked bacon pieces aside and use the rendered bacon fat in the pan to brown the mushrooms; be sure to brown them on top and bottom. You will have to do this in batches as well. Add the mushrooms to the bacon and set them aside.
When you determine that the beef is tender, remove the bouquet garni. Remove the meat with a slotted spoon so you can boil the cooking liquid containing the carrots and sliced onions (if the liquid is thin) and get the liquid to coat the back of a spoon. Return the beef to the Dutch oven and add salt and pepper, if needed. Add the pearl onions, batonnettes of bacon and the mushrooms and mix thoroughly with the liquid. In the oven or on the stovetop, heat the stew thoroughly.
For a gutsy dish such as this, you may want to invite guests to serve themselves boiled or mashed potatoes (or noodles) from a large pot on the stovetop and add a hefty portion of the stew from the Dutch oven on the next burner.
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In the Cavanaugh household, where there are no plants to be found there is flowered wallpaper, in large-scale in-your-face patterns. (But even there, note the tendril trailing artfully across a framed picture.) / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
AT THE TENDER age of 70, our friend Jill left Washington DC for New York for two years to take a master’s degree in art. She left her ponytail palm, a Dr. Seussian plant that resembles a pineapple with a Rasta wig, in our care. As she’d nurtured the plant from a pup, and it was pushing 40, this was a nervous-making proposition.
It did well, though, lolling in its pot in the garden shade for the summer and set on a pedestal between our bedroom windows for the winter.
When Jill returned, and the palm (which, despite its name, is not a palm but a succulent) returned to her window, our pedestal appeared bereft. This was not an issue in summer, when the ancient elm at the sidewalk’s edge unfurled its majestic canopy and provided, in Realtor-speak, a treehouse view.
In winter, though, the space felt naked.
A fat, frilly schefflera bush, hustled in from the greenhouse, took its place. Immediately the room felt warmer, more inviting, more . . . seductive. Alive.
Such a simple change had that great an impact.
Indoor plants and flowers, they say, do have tangible benefits, cleaning the air, increasing oxygen. They also have benefits less obvious, uplifting mood, increasing creativity. To go a little Feng Shui woo-woo, they enhance a room’s Qi (or Ch’i), its vital energy and balance.
Years ago a Feng Shui practitioner took a look at my living room and pronounced it a horrible place to raise a child. “So much violent imagery,” she said with an actual shudder. At that point said child was in high school and appeared undamaged, but who knows?
Pointed out were a cannon that once held a gallon of Courvoisier V.S.O.P. cognac, a set of vicious-looking knives in an elaborately carved wood case, a rug patterned with warriors on horseback and a picture I inherited that’s made almost entirely of feathers titled “Tormento de Guatemozin” above the fireplace—that last is of an Aztec emperor with his feet to the fire.
My grandfather was an antiques dealer, which accounts for some, though not all of this.
To balance the Qi, she insisted on live plants (along with getting rid of or hiding some of the more egregious offenders). The feather picture would remain in place, though. It’s too wonderful and rare.
Taking a wander through the rooms today, every one has an element of nature. A sago palm (also not a palm, but a cycad) is in the foyer. A pair of potted palms (which actually are palms) are behind the living-room sofa, and a 7-foot schefflera tree is in a corner of the dining room, where it snags light from the French doors that lead to the back porch.
Tabletops have sprigs of greenery, maybe a flower or two.
I thank my little greenhouse for this. The room just off my office is filled with tropical plants that spend summers outdoors. At the moment, the Meyer lemon, a jasmine and the paperwhite narcissus are in full bloom, the scent near overpowering, drifting into the hallway and perfuming the upstairs. There are also hibiscus, a key lime, geraniums, Boston ferns, philodendrons, elephant ears and a bird of paradise so tall its leaves bend over at the ceiling (though it shows no sign of flowering, which is neither here nor there, just irritating).
Where there are no live plants, there’s wallpaper. Blousy pinkish-red tulips flounce on a green background in the bath, grapevines with curling leaves grow on the kitchen walls. Both patterns are large in-your-face scale, the better to be seen by the myopic. Permanent gardens.
While I don’t need another plant, if I come across fresh curly-willow branches—which seem to appear only around this time of year—I’ll buy a bunch and put them in water in a vase on the dining table. Virtually overnight, tiny green buds will appear along the four-to-five-foot-tall stems. These grow so quickly into fully leafed-out branches; it’s like watching a stop-motion video—and suddenly there’s a tree.
In the dead of winter, a delightful harbinger of spring.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” finds Nature a source of wonder and comfort, indoors and out. She explores that concept every Thursday.
King Arthur isn’t alone: Local supermarkets seem to be out of flour (King Arthur, Gold Medal, etc.), also local direct-delivery grocery operations (though this morning I was able to score a 4-pound sack of sugar, another hot commodity). Last week, I found a small carton of yeast packets seemingly orphaned in the rear of my little corner greengrocer. I bought the usual strip of three packets and now wish I had bought more: This morning they were totally out. Maybe next week, the manager said as he feverishly unpacked box after box of other packaged goods that are moving fast.
