SOME PEOPLE remember Sunday family dinners with big pans of lasagne, a big roast beef or chicken, or maybe baked macaroni and cheese. Not me. I grew up in the New York suburbs and, as with many Jewish families, Chinese was our comfort food. On Sundays, we would all gather at the China Quarter in Tenafly, New Jersey, where the kids would drink Shirley Temples and the waiter knew to bring extra rice and bowls of the sliced scallions my grandfather loved. For me, comfort food has been and always will be the Chinese-American Cantonese food we enjoyed at those dinners: egg rolls, fried rice, hong-shu beef and shrimp with lobster sauce.
The China Quarter is gone now, but I still make many dinners inspired by the food and flavors I remember from those dinners, and the easiest one by far is fried rice. I haven’t quite cracked the secret of the hong-shu beef, but fried rice I’ve got down. I jettison the green peas, preferring Chinese vegetables, or, in a pinch, whatever I have around. You can start with leftover rice or freshly cooked rice, white or brown, but use a short- or medium-grain rice; long grain rice gets hard when you chill it. I start by sautéing sliced or diced vegetables in a few tablespoons of vegetable oil; I add a generous amount of thinly sliced cooked chicken—whatever leftover meat you have will do as long as it doesn’t have a different flavor profile—then I add the rice. Everything is sautéed together with low-sodium soy sauce and toasted sesame oil to taste. I push the fried rice to one side of the pan, and scramble a few eggs in the space I’ve cleared. The whole thing gets mixed together and dinner’s ready. My one last piece of advice is to pick a few items and stick to them—you don’t want too many elements. Right now I have two favorite combinations I seem to be making all the time, one picky-eater friendly and one more sophisticated.
Kid-friendly Fried Rice: It’s made with rice, grated carrots (cook until they just start to brown, so delicious!), sliced chicken, low-sodium soy sauce, toasted sesame oil and eggs. If your kids will eat more vegetables, there’s nothing to stop you from adding some small florets of cooked broccoli or diced steamed green beans.
Chinese Cabbage and Mushroom Fried Rice: Put together rice, sliced scallions, sliced shiitake mushrooms, thinly sliced shanghai or bok choy, all sautéed until tender, sliced chicken, low-sodium soy sauce, toasted sesame oil and eggs.
—Stephanie Witt Sedgwick
LittleBird “Stephanie Cooks,” a/k/a Stephanie Sedgwick, addresses dinner ideas every Monday. You can see earlier suggestions by searching for My Dinner With in the Search box at the top of the page.
In my next home I want a Gallery! Grossmueller’s Design Consultants of Washington DC enhanced the formal entrance gallery’s towering double-barrel ceiling vault with lighting tucked inside moldings, wallpaper (with a bit of twinkle, the designers point out) and brass nailheads tacked along the ribs of the vault. / MyLittleBird photo.
Two enormous photographic self-portraits (only one shown) by Danish visual artist Trine Søndergaard make the most of the ample wall space in the drawing room designed by Josh Hildreth Interiors of Reston, Virginia, and dubbed the Collector’s Cabinet. Søndergaard collects antique headpieces and creates a quiet space for herself, and the viewer, by shooting the back of her head. They flank a rather small fireplace given a step up in grandeur with the addition of a majestic “Rothschild” antler mirror from Little Big Horns of White Oak, Texas. Hildreth managed to “lower” the lofty ceiling with pecky cypress planks that are actually hand-painted woodgrain. / MyLittleBird photo.
The opposite end of the Collector’s Cabinet is anchored by seating, an antique Chinese screen and antique embroidered hangings. It’s difficult to notice anything in the room except the Søndergaard photos, and this seating area is a good place from which to soak them in, as different in scale from a Vermeer as possible but possessing the same sense of timeless serenity. / MyLittleBird photo.
The dimensions of the master bedroom suite are enormous, and it’s testimony to the skill of Dennese Guadeloupe Rojas of Silver Spring’s Interiors by Design that the room feels tranquil and comforting while allowing some glamour in terms of texture and a bit of sparkle. Sign me up! / MyLittleBird photo.
Country Casual Teak says its new upholstered lounge chairs are inspired by Danish modern design, but to my eye they’re updated bergere chairs, with upholstered back panels as well as front and sides. Country Casual Teak is located in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
Caryn Cramer used to live in Denmark, where she learned to do very neutral interiors. But she also credits the country’s aesthetic with a playfulness that has found its way into her textile designs. Cramer, a Washington DC native, designed the delightful jumble of fabrics that covers beds, chairs, upholstered walls and more in the Guest Bedroom. / MyLittleBird photo.
Here Caryn Cramer’s happy textiles meet and somehow don’t clash while creating something bigger than themselves. / MyLittleBird photo.
The 10th DC Design House is located at 9004 Congressional Court, Potomac, Maryland. The showhouse features 23 designed spaces and is open from Saturday, September 30, 2017 through Sunday, October 29.
WHEN I VISIT a decorator show house I listen as the designers explain the concept for their assigned room, because be it a powder room, a drawing room or a butler’s pantry, there will be a guiding principle, a theme. It may be the color, or the textures, or the balance, or the zany sense of people at play, but it will be there.
But while the decorators are talking, I confess that I often “slip away” and try to experience the space in a more personal way: Does the space make me feel happy, does it energize me or calm me down, does it maybe make me feel more graceful, or wow, would I feel rich if I lived here!?
I definitely would have to be rich to settle into the $11 million Potomac estate that is the setting for the 10th DC Design House, benefiting Children’s National Health System, which opens on Saturday, September 20, 2017. And with 23 designed spaces there are opportunities for all sorts of reactions. So I went through the house with LittleBird Kathy looking for spaces to covet.
And I found them. In my next house I want a Gallery, just an arm of “wasted” space on the main floor that leads to all the principal rooms. I also want the Laundry Room devised by Paula Grace Designs of Ashburn, Virginia (we’ll have a picture of it in our next installment). I could sleep quite peacefully in the pale blue tranquillity of the Master Bedroom, designed by Dennese Guadeloupe Rojas of Silver Spring’s Interiors by Design. At the opposite end of the spectrum is the wildly colorful Guest Bedroom. I know I could sleep in it, but would I want to stop watching the magical march of Caryn Cramer’s hand-drawn designs?
Then there’s the room where I would happily live out the rest of the days allotted to me: the Collector’s Cabinet, which Josh Hildreth of Josh Hildreth Interiors of Reston, Virginia, has filled with treasures, all of which fade into the background, my attention seized by two enormous photographs by Danish visual artist Trine Søndergaard, who photographs herself, from the back, wearing exquisite antique bonnets made by women in past centuries insistent on leaving their mark.
They certainly left their mark on me.
The house is enormous; we’ll have more descriptions and photos over the weekend.
—Nancy McKeon
LittleBird Nancy is managing editor of MyLittleBird.com.
THINKING OF planting a fruit tree this fall, an apple an apricot maybe a pear—or even a fruitless fruit, like a cherry? Don’t do it. Peaches. I’ve been there. Fair warning.
Yes, it’s fall, and the people who plant are urging you to do so: Give those roots the comfort of still-warm soil and then settle in for the cool, moist winter, they coo. And you have that urban farm-to-table hunger. Longing to say, “Of course, Millicent darling, I picked the apples just before you and Sebastian pulled up. Try them with the Morbier and another sip of prosecco—divine.”
Please, no!
Had I just listened to my younger self, cackling as I sat reading Henry Mitchell’s wonderfully amusing columns on my fire escape-balcony in Adams Morgan. (It was an extraordinary perch, by the way, stuffed with pots of flowering annuals and offering a spectacularly unexpected view of the Washington Monument).
Mitchell, also known as The Earthman, was the gardening guru of the Washington Post from 1970 until his death in 1993. On the subject of fruit trees he said:
“He who plants fruit trees is engaged in fools’ work . . . fouling the air with poisonous sprays and attracting wasps to the carpet of rotting fruit that invariably comes along in a few years . . . ”
Ha ha ha, I laughed at the fools, Why of course you can’t and shouldn’t plant fruit trees in a city patch. Snort.
This was before The Prince and I bought a house that came complete with a twig in the backyard we were told was an apricot tree and fell in love with a vision, which I’ve described several times, of lolling on the porch with friends, awash in wine and plucking perfectly ripe fruit from the tree, sweet juices running down our sleeves our chins our whatnots.
Wasps? Yes. Rotting fruit? Hoo boy. Have I mentioned stinking, slimy, disgusting?
The apricots, you see, persisted in ripening from the top which, by the time the tree was mature enough to fruit, was a good 10 feet above our outstretched fingers.
For several weeks each June—when the thoroughly ripened fruit fell to the garden path—I’d greet the morning in galoshes, hefting a giant trash bag and squishing my way through the foul mess and stench of garbage rotting in the 90-degree heat—a morass that included worms and slugs so fat and well fed they could be barbecued and sliced into steaks.
Did I mention we had what seemed like hundreds of fruit dropping each day?
After some years of this, the tree succumbed to a blight and was felled by The Prince’s mighty ax (actually a chainsaw, but isn’t an ax more dramatic?) while I cringed in a darkened room counting his life insurance and planning a glorious tropical future. *
It was almost immediately replaced by a cherry.
Thankfully, it is not a fruiting cherry; it’s a kwanzan, a tree of such glory when it blooms for a day or two each spring that one could expire at the sight. However, said Mitchell:
“ . . . as a boy I thought them the most beautiful trees of this earth. Later I began to notice that the tree is not at all handsome when not in bloom and its roots are uncommonly greedy.”
Not to mention having a girth swiftly grown vast, with shade so dense that even impatiens, which could grow in a closet, gasp for air.
Had I just listened to The Earthman, I wouldn’t be sitting here contemplating another bout of boy with chainsaw—and revising my life insurance wish list.
On the other hand, from column to column Mitchell often quite happily contradicts himself, leaving the hapless gardener totally befuddled (I’m sure he’s grinning down on us):
The flowering peach he said, “ . . . is irresistible. It carries extravagance beyond all bounds . . . It is somewhat like dogs—if you are going to have great ears and paws, you might as well go all the way like a basset or a bloodhound and not settle for being merely a beagle.”
I pant.
*Need I add that I have not tasted an apricot since?
There are several compilations of Henry Mitchell’s work available. Just plug his name into Amazon and they pop up quite tidily.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird Stephanie Gardens (as opposed to Stephanie Cooks, who writes My Dinner With column on Mondays) writes about her failures and triumphs in the patch of garden she shares with The Prince.
BUNNY MELLON was fabulously wealthy and had fabulous style. Jack and Jackie Kennedy thought so, and had her design the White House Rose Garden. Mellon, the widow of Paul Mellon, who helped found the National Gallery of Art, quietly lived out her 103 years in Virginia horse country, with football fields’ worth of gardens—but in her last years not so quietly got enmeshed in the John Edwards presidential campaign and love-child scandal.
Meryl Gordon has written Mellon’s story with attention to detail and social context, not to mention delightful anecdotes. Gordon will be interviewed on Saturday, October 7, at 10:30am at the very first History Book Festival, being held in Lewes, Delaware. Then she will appear at the National Gallery of Art on Sunday, October 15, at 2pm to discuss the press-shy Mellon, her style and her friendship with Jackie Kennedy Onassis. She will also speak at Politics and Prose in DC, on Sunday, October 22, at 3pm.
We think the events will be great fun. But even more fun, you can win a copy of Gordon’s Bunny Mellon: The Life of an American Style Legend, being published this week by Grand Central Publishing. Just add a Comment on this post. That will give us your email address, which will allow us to get in touch with you should you win a copy of the book. Good luck!
Black Bean Sauté, with sausage. / Photo by Stephanie Witt Sedgwick.
AT THE START of my food writing career I was a bean hater, not an attribute I was particularly proud of. A week into my first job at the Washington Post Food Section, I was tasked wth testing a Black Bean Paté from the menu of a hot-hot-hot Adams Morgan brunch spot. The thing that wasn’t so hot-hot-hot was my enthusiasm for this dish. The recipe turned out just fine, but I couldn’t believe the result was really what the chef had in mind. I called and asked if I could stop by the restaurant to see his version. As you can probably predict, there was nothing wrong with his recipe, or his dish—the problem was all me. Embarrassed by the whole incident, I decided to put aside my instinctive distaste and try to like beans. In no time, I did a complete 180. I love beans: cannellini beans with sautéed greens, white northerns mixed with chunks of pork or beef in a stew, black bean salsa, mixed bean salads and more.
It’s been a great turn-around as not only are beans on the good-for-you list (I love when that happens) but canned beans are an easy item to keep in the pantry for last-minute meals. I make bean salsas to spoon over grilled meats in the summer, bean salads to take to potlucks, and bean stews during the winter, because in addition to bringing texture and helping cut down on the meat, the beans naturally thicken the stew. Sometimes I start with dry beans, but I most of the time I rely on the convenience of canned beans. One thing I still can’t quite come around to is the black bean paté, but luckily there are so many other options.
Black Bean Tropical Salsa: Mix rinsed canned black beans with diced pineapple or mango or a combination of both, add any fruit juice that has accumulated on the cutting board. Add some combination of diced red or sweet onion, diced jalapeño, diced red bell pepper, and a spoonful of honey and a tablespoon or two of olive oil. If you have fresh herbs such as cilantro or parsley, go ahead and chop some up and add; if not, no big deal. Season with salt and pepper. Spoon the salsa over sliced grilled pork loin, chicken breast or turkey tenderloins. Or just eat as a side salad.
Black Bean Salad Primavera: I love the term “primavera”: It can mean whatever combination of vegetables you like. I’m partial to diced celery, carrots, bell peppers, sweet onions and corn with black beans, but you could add diced zucchini or even winter squash; just cook the cubed squash until tender before adding. Add some apple cider or white-wine vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper and mix to combine. Once again, chopped fresh herbs are nice but not necessary. Chopped fresh chilies can add a nice kick if you have any on hand.
Black Bean Sauté: This is a go-to meal for me. Take leftover grilled or roasted chicken or pork and dice it up into bean-size cubes, or remove and discard the casing from a few links of highly flavored sausage, such as fresh andouille or chorizo. If you’re starting with the sausage, sauté the sausage meat, breaking it up, in large sauté pan with a tablespoon or two of oil until cooked through. Transfer the meat to a paper-towel-lined plate, then, if necessary, soak up any excess fat in the pan with another paper towel. In the same pan, sauté the diced vegetables, again whatever you have on hand, until just tender. From then on in, it’s the same no matter which meat you’re using. Add the meat to the pan and cook for a few minutes over medium heat. If you have concentrated tomato paste, add a teaspoon or two here. Add black beans, salt and pepper and enough chicken broth or water to moisten. Let it all cook for about 5 minutes over medium-low heat. Serve over rice or top with a fried or poached egg for your own hot-hot-hot brunch dish.
—Stephanie Witt Sedgwick
LittleBird Stephanie Cooks presents ideas for dinners every Monday.
A friend has swarms of them, millions probably, in the little pond beside the pool at her Virginia country house. “Take some,” she said. So we did, or rather, The Prince did, some months back, scooping a dozen or so into an empty bottle for the drive back to the city and a new home in our pond, where a headless woman pointlessly pours water in an endless stream over the rocky edge.
We’ve had frogs before. The night noise is evocative of something. Raccoon got ’em. Eviscerating our darlings and leaving the stinking remains on the white porch sofa cushions—well, shouldn’t he be comfortable while dining? No doubt he snickered as he and his blood-soaked whiskers skittered away to wherever he lurks in the daytime.
He got plenty of fish too. First the costly koi and then the gold-and-black-splotched “feeder fish” that your pet snakes are so fond of. We bought them in batches, 10 for a dollar. Feeder fish, ha.
The trick, we’re informed, is to set a pot on its side on the pond floor so the fish and the frogs have somewhere to hide from marauders. It also helps to put the fountain on a timer, setting it to turn off when we’re asleep. Critters of the night are attracted by the sound of running water, it’s said. That’s an actual useful sounding tip, so take note.
Filled with hopeful trepidation we packed our toothbrushes and our tiny new pets and returned to the city, where I considered how such visits always cost, even when they’re free. There are all of these ideas one has on the porch at dawn, watching the deer graze down by the stream at the edge of the meadow.
One rocks away, inhaling inspiration. I want a deep purple living room, or maybe turquoise, I think. Have you seen “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries” on WETA UK? There is nothing subtle about her rooms or her person. I want to swan about in her black silk kimono with a dragon embroidered in gold and red on the back. And drive a 1924 Hispano-Suiza. I do not need a golden gun.
I want lamps for the dining table, with pink bulbs and fringed shades. In fact, I want pink bulbs everywhere—where does one find them?
A butler would be nice.
Of course I want a pool in the garden, as I’ve mentioned too many times before. I read somewhere once, and I’ve probably said this as well, that if you ask the universe straight out for what you want it will sooner or later arrive. We’re getting a tad close to later.
The mind bumps along like that. As long as I don’t move, this costs nothing but ink. But the tadpole harvest forced a stop at a garden center for pond plants—something for our budding croakers to feed on. So we buy bulbous green stuff to float and frilly green stuff to sink and stalky things to rise above the water and maybe flower (we should be so lucky).
Free tadpoles, $50 in plants.
What’s left of this exercise? Not even a leg to nibble. And so it goes.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird Stephanie Gardens writes about city gardens and what passes for them. To read earlier columns, type Green Acre in the Search box at the top of the page.
Panini with roasted broccoli and mozzarella. / Photo by Stephanie Witt Sedgwick.
WHEN WE RUSH into the house late, or when I’m pressed for time, or just want dinner fast, I turn on the oven and line a rimmed sheet pan with heavy-duty aluminum foil. It’s gotten to the point that one of my nieces once asked me if I had an investment in an aluminum foil company. Not exactly, but I’ve come to appreciate how much I can cook on that one pan and how easy the clean-up is—perfect for weeknight dinners.
My current favorite is roasted broccoli. Roasting gives broccoli a nice hint of bitterness and a depth of flavor you don’t get from steaming. Better yet, it is so easy. You just cut the broccoli into whatever size florets you like; the smaller ones cook faster but also overcook faster so choose your size carefully. Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper, place on the foil-lined rimmed sheet pan and pop into an oven preheated to 375 degrees. After 15 minutes, I add thinly sliced garlic, which I have also tossed with olive oil and salt. (Note on the garlic: Always slice it when using it like this. If you chop it, it will cook too quickly and burn; if you leave the cloves whole, they won’t cook quickly enough.) I use tongs or a spatula to mix everything together and continue roasting the broccoli for an additional 7 to 15 minutes. How long you leave it in there depends on how you prefer the broccoli cooked. I like it more on the browned side, so a total of 30 minutes usually works, but if you like yours a little firmer, a total of 22 to 25 minutes should do it.
And then what? Here’s a few options:
Roasted Broccoli Side Dish: Remove the broccoli from the oven, sprinkle with fresh lemon juice and enjoy as a side dish. A little freshly grated Parmesan is nice here.
Pasta With Roasted Broccoli and Garlic: The original emergency meal! While the broccoli’s roasting, cook some pasta; I like shells but it’s up to you which shape you use. When the broccoli’s done, toss the broccoli, garlic and any oil from the pan with the drained pasta. Add additional olive oil if needed. Serve with lots of freshly grated Parmesan cheese and pepper.
Roasted Broccoli Panini: You have to try one of these panini: They are surprisingly delicious, with the slightly bitter broccoli (roasted with garlic as above) providing a perfect counterpoint to the rich melted cheese. For each sandwich, I brush one side of 2 slices of Italian bread or any country-style loaf (you can keep some in the freezer) with olive oil. The bread goes oiled side down on a cutting board. Next add a layer of sliced mozzarella cheese. Top this with a layer of the roasted broccoli, making sure to include a few slices of the roasted garlic. I put a few teaspoons of ricotta in between the broccoli pieces, then another layer of sliced mozzarella. Top with the remaining slice of bread, oil side up. If you have a panini machine, now’s the time to pull it out; if not, any griddle and a flat pot lid or heavy plate will do. Heat whichever pan you’re using and cook the way you would any grilled cheese sandwich. You can add a slice of prosciutto, salami or ham if you like things more substantial. The sandwich captures the spirit of a calzone but is much more fine-tuned, with a crispy bread exterior, a soft cheesy interior and a great punch of flavor from the broccoli and garlic.
THEMOSTDAZZLING display of tulips I’ve ever seen was a few years back, a Capitol Hill row house front garden, typically-sized, maybe 15 by 20 feet, completely covered in salmon-colored tulips—the precise shade of salmon as the house. The flowers stood shoulder to shoulder without a space between to breathe. It was as if Salvador Dali had taken a brush and swiped, the color swooping from the roofline down to the sidewalk. It was astonishing. I took no photos.
I have some bulbs, tulips and daffodils in the front yard that go back over 30 years. There was this special, run by American Express just after moving to this house with its patches of front and back yard, and the deal looked just fine to me, exciting even.
There were hundreds of sweet-smelling grape hyacinth, stubby red tulips with yellow centers, tall white ones like goblets, and garden variety yellow daffodils. For years they put on a very fine show.
Amazingly, the white tulips are still coming up, their regal white cups emerging from the ivy ground cover. Less amazing, the daffs are also still come up, multiplying each year no matter how I try to kill them off to make way for something more . . . imaginative.
The post-flower daffodil foliage is an ugly sight and far longer-lasting than the flowers themselves—which wither fast if we get a hot day or two. A better idea in close quarters would have been to spend a couple of bucks on grocery store bunches, stick them in those little pointy-bottomed water holders and jam them here and there, replacing them when they went limp.
This is a pretty good tip for most lack-of-flower situations, by the way. I actually got the idea from Rob DeFeo of the National Park Service. The man who declares when the cherry trees will bloom has been known to jazz up his own garden with store-bought blossoms.
Pause. Nap time.
Snip snip snip. Snip. Snip snip snip. What an irritating sound and I know who’s making it. The sheets are fresh and white, a cool breeze flutters the curtains, the ceiling fan gently tosses said breeze to and fro, and I’m sacked out beneath it, being near death due to sitting next to an extremely nasty old French lady with vociferous sniffles on a plane back from Florida the other day—and snip. Snip snip.
Hauling myself out of bed and tripping over a suitcase on the way to the window, I open the shutters and lean out over the window box and yes. Snip. It’s he. Snip. Who else but My Prince, and why is he snipping the forsythia, without permission.
“My darling,” I say. And I do say it ever so nicely, not wishing to rile him, just wishing him away. “Do you know how irritating that sound is?”
“Oh, sorry,” he says. Surprising. He hates being halted in his Very Important Tasks no matter how gently one wishes . . .
Returning to my nest and smothering my head in down, I reclose my eyes.
Swish, swish swish, swish. Swish swish swish.
Now he’s sweeping. Why does he think this is any better?
How did I get here, I’m wondering. I should be playing tennis in my Scarsdale backyard (even though I don’t play tennis) and afterwards, white towel around my neck, being served iced tea in a frosty glass. Skinny and tan. Or calling the doorman from my prewar Park Avenue duplex to hail me a cab to Saks. Skinny and tan. I could shop, given the credit card. Yes. I could.
I’ve already told him what he’s supposed to be doing and he’s not.
I took the wrong road. Sigh.
Sweep. Sweep sweep.
Also. Sous-vide is a terrible thing to do to a prime rib, unless you like chewing a tasteless wad. If you see it on a restaurant menu, and particularly if the server says it’s their most popular dish. Flee.
That is all neither here nor there. I was musing about tulips, wasn’t I?
While the front yard, such as it is, takes care of itself, the backyard is reliant on the selection of bulbs available at Costco where, thankfully, pink and purple dominate. I have the taste of a 7-year-old when it comes to tulips. If they came sprinkled with glitter, I believe I’ve said more than once, my bodice would positively heave.
How grateful I am to myself for having cultivated friends who are not flower aficionados and find anything coming up in the garden worthy of applause, particularly if you hand them a drink.
Two bags of bulbs now hang in the basement stairwell, waiting for the last of this summer’s warmth, when I’ll roust the tropicals and bare the soil. Probably around November.
This year’s haul includes 25 each of pink Early Glory, and lavender Blue Beauty,
deep fuchsia Margaritas, and Foxtrots, which shade from deep pink to near white. All are early bloomers, emerging (with luck) in March and in full bloom when the Kwanzan cherry peaks in mid-April. There’s no trick to this. I read the packages, they’re marked early season.
And when they’re done, I’ll yank them and toss. There is not the luxury of space here to have several different gardens – the rose garden consists of a single, brilliantly red Don Juan clambering up the back porch waterspout. This not Dumbarton Oaks.
As quickly as possible after the tulips’ demise we make way for the transition to the tropics, switching out the sweetness of Spring for the more seductive perfume of jasmine and lemons and the ruffle of palms to greet the summer heat.
—StephanieCavanaugh
LittleBird Stephanie writes about flowers and trees and all the things, good and bad, that go into gardening.
I’VE BEEN HAVING a rough couple of weeks. The older of my two sons left for college and along with all the crying in his empty room (me), worrying over course selection (him), the usual pangs of loss (both of us) and the trips to the post office to send him packages, I had an even bigger problem.
Ben, in what has been a revelation to me, turns out to have been my culinary compass. I had spent the better part of two decades building meals around what he liked, needed or craved. He’s my big eater and because he would eat things the rest of us also liked, I built our meals around what he had had for lunch, or what he asked for, or what I thought would be a happy surprise.
Now, as person who prides herself on always figuring out something to make for dinner, I have been at a loss, looking for inspiration when I never needed it before. There have been a few tuna sandwich nights and lots of pasta, since that’s what my younger son, Sam, prefers. But even my amiable husband started wondering where my mojo had gone and when was it coming back.
Faced with a head of cauliflower and not an idea in sight, I took a look through Sanjeev Kapoor’s How to Cook Indian (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2011). My problems were not nearly over as almost every recipe had about a thousand ingredients that my pantry lacked, but it was start. I had dog-eared a rice pilaf with potatoes and cauliflower. Now, I have to beg Kapoor’s forgiveness because my dish is a complete bastardization. Lacking 10 of his 15 ingredients, I came up with my own version. But I also need to thank him, because it got me back to the stove.
So what did I make? I made a pretty good pilaf.
I sautéed a thinly sliced red onion in a couple of tablespoons of butter (sorry, Kapoor, no ghee here), a couple of teaspoons of mild curry powder (I know, I know, pre-made curry powder—it’s what I had) and some salt. I added cauliflower I had broken into very small florets, a cup of cooked chickpeas (my addition) and 2 small potatoes diced into ½-inch-or-so cubes. I added a cup of uncooked jasmine rice (close enough to the basmati the original recipe called for) and let everything sauté for a couple of minutes, mixing so it all cooked evenly. In went 2 cups of water and I let it cook, covered, on low heat for 15 minutes. I let the pilaf sit for another 10 and, voilà, I had dinner. A few lamb chops would have been great too, but my husband was so happy to see me back in action, he had the good sense not to suggest it.
JEANNETTE FRISTOE and Larry Blake’s house in Bel Air, Maryland, was featured on Houzz.com a couple of years ago in a feature by photographer and stylist Rikki Snyder, and the retired couple still love their airy nest.
Nonetheless, there have been changes, says Fristoe. The pictures here show the living room with white walls, but those walls just wanted to be gray. They’re now pewter, a little darker than the dining room, seen here in a mid-gray. In fact, says Fristoe, “All the rooms are now gray!”
The back wall of the sun porch has been painted black, as has the floor, a fine effect when all those windows keep light pouring in. In the kitchen, all the base cabinets are now black instead of white.
And what about the star of the kitchen, that big AGA Cooker? “We love it!” Fristoe exclaims. For those unfamiliar with the AGA concept, the range is basically on all the time, with hot plates on the top instead of burners and four ovens, each maintaining its own constant temperature.
“It’s like having a huge slow-cooker,” Fristoe explains. “You don’t have to man the stove.” If you want something done in an hour, you put it in one oven. If you want it to cook over the course of, say, four hours, you can put your dish in the 250-degree oven. It takes about 24 hours to heat up the appliance; Fristoe and Blake use it all winter. In warmer weather, they use a smaller Chamber range, seen tucked away in the pantry.
The outside of the house is just as remarkable as the inside. In another feature, Rikki Snyder showed the couple’s lush landscape. You can take a look at that here too.
EVERY NIGHT I fight the same battle with myself. I am a culinary school grad with more than 20 years experience developing recipes and even more years of cooking experience, but all the experience in the world hasn’t spared me the sinking feeling that comes as the clock inches toward dinnertime. I’m tired. The stresses of the day have worn me down. I feel as creative as an earthworm. I have to fight the urge to order takeout.
Most nights, I fight it back. And I win the battle because I’ve stocked the larder, quite literally.
When I put away the groceries it’s scary, I buy so much stuff. I don’t have a list of recipes I’m planning, just some vague ideas, based more on the family schedule, about what I may or may not want to make that week. I always have pasta and rice on hand. Onions, garlic, some green vegetables, carrots and celery are on my must-have list. I have stocked the shelves with beans and chickpeas, and I stash easy-to-defrost portions of chicken breast and chopped meat in the freezer. I win the dinner battle because I have so much stuff on hand I can always find something to make. Also, I have two other things pushing to victory. One, my frugal side doesn’t want to waste what I’ve already purchased; and two, I really know how to cook—not haute cuisine cooking but down-in-trenches get-the-meal-out cooking. I can open the fridge and the pantry and almost always make something.
You don’t need a culinary degree to make my dinners. In my everyday cooking, garnishes are a nonstarter and plating is optional. Most of my meals are pretty simple, but they get the job done and I think they taste pretty good. I know everyone at my house looks happy, and a little relieved, when I announce, “Dinner’s ready.”
So if you stick with me, every week I’ll give you an idea of how to do it. No strict recipes to follow, no strange ingredients to buy—and I have tricks to share too. Every week I’ll pick one ingredient and give a few ideas/loose directions for how to turn that into dinner, whether it’s a pound of ground pork, a bag of zucchini or two cans of black beans. Along the way, I’ll make suggestions for how you can stretch one night’s cooking into two or three nights’ meals and how to make leftovers into new meals. Your freezer will become your friend, really. And I’ll make you a promise: If I can do it, so can you.
—Stephanie Witt Sedgwick
Editor’s note:This whole idea came about after I got home from the supermarket one evening this summer with a dilemma.
I sent out a quick email—”I bought a package of ground pork by accident, thought it was ground turkey. What the hell do I do with it?”—to my sister, Pat, a girlfriend, also Pat, and Stephanie, who used to be Recipe Editor at the Washington Post Food section back in the Pleistocene, when I edited the section.
Within 12 minutes—no exaggeration, I double-checked—Stephanie had emailed me back with “I love ground pork” as the first sentence and giving three dishes using ground pork that I could execute that night, probably without a return trip to Safeway. The Pats chimed in a bit later with meat loaf and a minced-pork stir-fry, but I was already working on Stephanie’s Pork Dumpling “Burgers.”
These aren’t step-by-step recipes, just ideas of ingredients to put together to create different flavor profiles. They just may come in handy one evening when you’re staring at the clock or the fridge, or both, and wondering in despair . . . What’s for Dinner. . . ?
—Nancy McKeon
Asian stir fry: Sauté 1 pound ground pork, breaking it up, until cooked through (use a little oil and salt). Transfer to paper-towel-lined plate. In the same pan, sauté sliced scallions, onions, etc. with a little oil. Add lots of minced ginger, cut up veg of choice, soy sauce, sesame oil and 1½ to 2 cups chicken broth or water. Cover and let cook until veg is just tender. Add pork, 1 tablespoon or 2 of cornstarch dissolved in sake, white wine or whiskey, stir to combine. Bring to a boil. Eat.
Very easy pork and black beans: Sauté 1 pound ground pork, breaking it up, until cooked through (use a little oil and salt). Transfer to paper-towel-lined plate. In the same pan, sauté, with a little oil, diced carrots, celery and onion (about ½ to ¾ cup each), 1 finely diced jalapeño and salt and pepper until just tender. Add the beans. Add a tablespoon of Italian double- concentrated tomato paste and chili powder to taste (I like to combine adobo and chipotle powder, but any chili powder works). Sauté, stirring for a minute or two. Add ½ cup chicken broth or water and the ground pork. Stir to combine and let simmer for 10 minutes to combine the flavors. Taste and adjust seasonings. Add more water or broth if needed to keep mixture moist.
Pork Dumpling “Burgers”: Mix the ground pork with finely chopped scallions (2 or 3), 2 to 3 teaspoons finely minced ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil and salt to taste, 1 egg white and a teaspoon cornstarch. Fry a baby burger to taste for seasoning, adjust as needed. Form into patties. If your mixture feels wet, dust the patties with additional cornstarch before sautéing in oil.
STOP STARING at the stove, or even the refrigerator. It’s possible that the answer to “What’s for dinner?” is lurking there, but it may need a little nudging to make its presence known. It just may pop up in our new column by Stephanie Witt Sedgwick, a cook who knows how to make her fridge, freezer and gas range work daily miracles.
Stephanie knows her way around a kitchen: years as Recipe Editor for the Washington Post’s Food section, then the Seasonality and Nourish columnist there. She started at 17 working in a bakery, then, after graduating from the Culinary Institute of America, worked at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. She was the Baby Chef for the Club Med Sandpiper Bay, and worked in other hotels and in catering. Then she took a bit of a break to marry and raise two kids. Whew.
She nailed the idea for MyLittleBird when she responded to one LittleBird (ahem) who one evening brought ground pork instead of ground turkey home from the supermarket. You’ll see, and it’ll be fun. Every Monday, starting tomorrow.
There are dozens of theaters, and even more theater companies, in the Washington, DC, area. Here’s a roundup of the biggies, the usual suspects, with suggestions for nearby restaurants.
ANACOSTIA ARTS CENTER
1231 Good Hope Road SE
Washington, DC 20020
202-631-6291 anacostiaartscenter.com Since summer 2013, a center with theater, boutique and gallery spaces. Theatre Prometheus performs here.
Restaurant at the theater: Art-drenaline Cafe
202-306-5545 art-drenaline.com
Soups, salads, panini, flatbread pizza, all fresh and locally sourced.
Restaurant nearby: Mama’s Pizza Kitchen
2028 Martin Luther King Jr Avenue SE
Washington, DC 20020
202-678-6262 www.mamaspizzakitchen.com
Casual, pizza and wings.
ANACOSTIA PLAYHOUSE
2020 Shannon Place SE
Washington, DC 20020 202-241-2539
Aims to develop and produce socially conscious and thought-provoking work.
Restaurant nearby:
Art-drenaline Cafe
1231 Good Hope Road SE
(in the Anacostia Arts Center)
Washington, DC 20020
202-306-5545 www.art-drenaline.com
Soups, salads, panini, flatbread pizza, all fresh and locally sourced.
Mama’s Pizza Kitchen
2028 Martin Luther King Jr Avenue SE
Washington, DC 20020
202-678-6262 www.mamaspizzakitchen.com
Casual, pizza and wings.
ARENA STAGE
Mead Center for American Theater
1101 6th Street SW, at Maine Avenue
Washington, DC 20024 202-488-3300 www.arenastage.org Specializing in great American plays.
Casual—very casual—Gulf Coast and Cajun seafood and lotsa drinks, right on the water. The Cantina is closed every December, January and February (it’s cold out there on the water) and will reopen in March 2017. But sometime after that it will close for a year as part of Phase 2 of the Washington waterfront revival.
The theater where President Lincoln was shot is a museum by day, a working theater by night, and presents plays and musicals on American cultural themes.
Restaurants nearby:
Hard Rock Cafe is next door, and there is “gourmet” pizza in several directions: Pi Pizzeria on F Street, &pizza on E, and Ella’s Wood Fired Pizza on 9th.
&pizza
1005 E Street NW
Washington, DC 20004
202-347-5056 andpizza.com
Modern pizza chain–dessert pizzas!
Ella’s Wood Fired Pizza
610 9th Street NW
Washington, DC 20004
202-638-3434 ellaspizza.com
Pasta and salads in addition to pizza. Plus house-made limoncello!
Hard Rock Cafe
999 E Street NW
Washington, DC 20004
202-737-7625 hardrock.com
The classic (and loud) rock-n-roll-centric burger joint.
Pi Pizzeria
910 F Street NW
Washington, DC 20004
202-393-5484 pi-pizza.com
Shares its deep-dish and thin-crust offerings in DC, St. Louis and Cincinnati. Plus cocktails.
A small theater company in a 118-seat theater producing musicals and plays, sometimes with an Irish bent to them. (The company also tours Ireland every year with an American classic.)
All the great new restaurants on 14th Street are a bit of a hike. Better to stick to the 17th Street-area offerings:
Home to the National Symphony Orchestra, the National Opera Company, and the Suzanne Farrell Ballet, the Center also hosts visiting ballet companies and musicals from Broadway and around the world. The Center offers (expensive) on-site parking.
Restaurant at the theater:
The Roof Terrace Restaurant for fine dining,
KC Cafe for casual fare.
Sandwiches and snacks at lobby concessions. Intermission drinks and snacks can be ordered before the show.
Operating out of the Atlas Performing Arts Centre in the H Street Corridor, Mosaic produces socially relevant plays with an emphasis on the Middle East and social justice.
Big sandwiches, big salads, plus their signature beef stew and chill. Lotsa brews, local and international. Note: Probably the most convenient to the theater, but they don’t take reservations.
Serves German-inflected food plus Belgian, German, Czech and American craft beers. Lots of communal tables, indoors and out, for that German biergarten feeling.
The DC version of the San Francisco original offers (fairly expensive) little plates, a glamorously dark interior and, when the temp hits 45 degrees Fahrenheit, a large interior patio with fire pits. Also, a major craft cocktail bar.
Also, more than a dozen cafés and restaurants are within blocks; the theater website lists names and addresses.
An emphasis on contemporary musicals and plays, as well as reinventing classic musicals.
Restaurant at the theater:
Ali’s Bar, 2nd floor, Mead Lobby
Salads, sliders and other casual fare
Intermission drinks and snacks can be ordered before the show.
Restaurants nearby:
Shirlington’s Campbell Avenue has Thai, Mexican, modern American, Indian, Chinese and a branch of Busboys and Poets, the bookstore/cafe/art space; see villageatshirlington.com/eating for names and addresses.
Popular spots such as Jaleo (tapas), McCormick & Schmick’s (seafood and steak), Good Stuff Eatery (burgers and shakes) and Noodles & Company (global noodles) are within a few blocks.
THEATER ALLIANCE
Performs mostly at the Anacostia Playhouse
2020 Shannon Place SE
Washington, DC 20020 202-241-2539
Restaurant nearby: Mama’s Pizza Kitchen
2028 Martin Luther King Jr Avenue SE
Washington, DC 20020
202-678-6262 www.mamaspizzakitchen.com Casual, pizza and wings.
Peeking through hibiscus at the garden path. The would-be studio is in the rear. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
MY FOYER has walls, which is a nice thing. It also has doors, which I’m also quite fond of. French doors, these are, of chestnut with many panes of glass and brass knobs. They nicely frame the living room, creating a little air of mystery: Open them and something will happen.
Sometimes I imagine I’m in a Sherlock Holmes novel: Come to my rooms for tea and watercress sandwiches at 4, or a brandy in front of the fireplace at 9. I’ll open the doors and you can have that wing chair and I’ll take this one. You simply cannot do that in a living room without walls; there might be drama in a wide open space—but no mystery. Life is immediately exposed.
I like my house to have walls, and rooms, and doors, presenting pleasant surprises or hiding what needs to be hidden, both inside and out. Open-plan living, the very idea of what you see is what you get, is, to my mind, depressing.
There are also walls around our dining room, separating it firmly from the kitchen, sparing the eye from the inevitable disarray
Granddog Tallula keeps a eye on the writer from her favorite spot in another small room, the solarium. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
caused by my enthusiastic and complicated cooking. The thought of cleaning up is suspended until the candles are gutted—though washing up is always The Prince’s job and I still don’t want to think about it.
The kitchen is very small and deliberately has little storage but nice walls and doors. There are no cabinets above the stove, nor a microwave, an appliance I do not understand. Instead, there’s a large and rather ornate mirror behind the range that reflects the cabinets on the opposite wall. These have glass doors to expose china and glassware and a growing assortment of pills. It has, I think, the air of a butler’s pantry. Two people do not work happily here. I don’t care.
If you wander about, you might notice I’m also rather fond of mirrors. Most rooms have at least one, usually large—if not mammoth—mirror, which is heavily framed. They play so nicely with the light, which dances about, and expand what are in truth minuscule spaces. Then, mirrors create more rooms, a looking-glass world to step into. A gift to the imagination.
I imagine a lot, mostly about creating more rooms. I even dream about this.
Like turning the little room under the front porch into an office. Originally used for coal storage to heat the house, the chute still exists in the alley. There’s a row of windows that peek out at the front walk in winter and are muffled by forsythia spring through fall. A wood stove would be nice when the air turns crisp, as the space lacks heat. I see myself sitting bundled in sweaters and fingerless gloves typing my memoirs.
I also imagine a grotto under the back porch where double glass doors lead to a rather charming guest room, though it has always been wasted as another storage area. How nice it would be, I think, to set a bistro table and chairs here, with maybe a fountain on the wall. A much nicer view than the jumble of I-know-not-what that’s now there.
French doors with many panes also open to the back porch, which is reached from the dining room. Last week the termite man came to spray, stepped out and stopped short with the sort of comical suddenness that could cause a people pile-up. “Ungh,” he grunted in surprise, which I took to be a compliment of the highest order.
I am not usually called upon to look at this less-than-vast estate with fresh eyes, but there I was.
The porch has walls too, at either end, making it as cozy and as private as can be in the midst of this tightly packed neighborhood. We live outside when the weather permits, surrounded by newspapers and brunch. This is reflected in a vaguely Moorish four-paneled mirrored screen that sits at one end. I do not look in this much as it is distorted in a particularly fat way.
Fences surround our 15-by-25-foot garden; these are vine-topped and far too high to see over. While there are no walls within, there are clearly defined Areas of Purpose along the river-rock path that snakes its way through.
Like mirrors, a curving path creates the illusion of distance where there is none, while shrubs and trees provide the illusion of walls, showcasing vignettes along the way.
At the foot of the steps is the dining area, with a glass-topped round wrought-iron table and chairs that my parents bought in the 1950s. This nestles between the staircase and the Kwanzan cherry tree that tangles overhead with a white and red rose of Sharon and is lit like a yacht by night with strings of tiny lights.
An overgrown hydrangea and an enormous mock orange flank a hidden patch of white-flowered jasmine that lofts its heady scent at dusk and dawn, like the perfume lady at Nordstrom spritzing you as you pass.
While you can hear it coming, you have to pass an 8-foot mock orange (also divinely scented, though only in spring) to discover the fish pond—and a fountain statue of a Greek-gowned woman pouring water. The raccoon has knocked her over a few times so she lost her head, and part of her torso. These rest on the ground beside her.
There are several spots to sit along the path, each tucked into a curve. A pair of elderly metal rockers, painted flamingo pink, face the pond. Between them is a chalk-white plaster birdbath topped with an ivory granite slab, handy for a wine glass. The Prince lounges here of an evening, feeding the fish and taking a head count. The raccoon again.
Another pair of chairs, these a serendipitously fine blend of verdigris paint and rusted metal, face the opposite way, for contemplating the flower border, which in some years is fine and in others is definitely wanting—and so requires sitting down to contemplate and grouse.
At the end of the path is the garage, which looks quite like an inviting little cottage, with windows flanking an antique door The Prince repurposed from a dumpster on Massachusetts Avenue and painted aqua.
In another fantasy, the garage is called a carriage house and is not filled with more Princely rubbish. It is a studio, where I can do Jules Pfeifferesque dances, all (imaginary) attenuated limbs and thoughtfully dramatic poses. Or maybe I’d paint. I bought a voluminous white linen shirt with this very idea in mind some years ago—it also involved many heavy rings, bangle bracelets and thick eyebrows.
Artistic talent, I felt, would surely follow.
You need walls for such imagining, little shadow boxes to put your dreams in.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird Stephanie writes about home and garden. To read earlier columns, type Green Acre in the Search box at the top of the screen.
The Mark Twain House conservatory in Hartford, Connecticut, a solarium to aspire to. / Photo by John Groo for The Mark Twain House & Museum.
MY PRINCE is at the precipice of building a new solarium this fall. He guarantees it will be completed before the first frost nips the Bird of Paradise and shrivels the hibiscus.
Keep in mind that we’ve been without a ceiling light in the master bedroom for the past three months. He’s getting to it. Meanwhile I dress in the closet, and look it.
Also keep in mind that he’s 70 years old, a fact he reminds me of whenever I look askance at one of his uncompleted projects, some from last century. “I just don’t have the same energy,” he moans, though as I type this he’s doing something enormously energetic and loud in the basement, with accompanying language that would give Scaramucci a run for his money (I wish).
To return to the subject at hand. The existing solarium was temporary, five, six, seven years ago, a sky box hovering above the open lower porch where stairs lead down to the garden. And so I have complete and total confidence that the solarium can be completed. Operative word: can.
In the beginning, the upper back porch spanned half the width of our row house on Washington’s Capitol Hill. Opening off my office, it was,
The Cavanaugh conservatory, thus far. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
in the early decades, a summery spot for a hammock and a book. But as the years passed and my collection of tropical plants grew, a winter place other than the kitchen counter needed to be found.
While it was a juggling act to make hamburgers, I actually didn’t much mind my quiet companions. There’d be snow outside and jasmine tickling my nose.
But The Prince disliked the clutter. Knowing him, this is hugely amusing. There is not a spot in his designated areas, which include the garage, the attic, the basement and the second largest of our three bedrooms that he has commandeered as his office, that is not massed with his detritus. His office is so crowded, as a rule, with boxes of this and that and loose papers, that he’s forever sitting feet-up at my desk, stroking his bald spot and yakking on the phone.
And I can’t have a stinking dozen or so plants in my kitchen, a space he is endlessly rearranging so that I can’t find the measuring spoons? Always kept in the silverware drawer, now relocated to the lazy susan in a corner cabinet. Really?
Do I mess with his tools?
Approximately half of the above paragraphs are neither here nor there.
The little greenhouse he built ended up delighting me, and contrary to my fear that he’d take the space apart and that is how it would stay for a year or 10, it was built in a week. One of maybe two times I can recall that our spasms of home-improvement enthusiasm coincided. Oh, wait, I just recalled a third. Sorry, that’s another aside.
He is a genius at finding reasonably perfect parts—cheap—at Community Forklift in Hyattsville, Maryland. CommFork, as he lovingly calls it, is a vast warehouse of new construction scrap such as boxes of excess bath tile and slightly chipped marble counters, donations from renovations like kitchen cabinets and super-scaled fridges and vintage items currently out of favor, such as coal stoves and baronial mantelpieces.
And there is a vast collection of doors and windows, some reclaimed, some new. For the original solarium, a single trip yielded a set of French doors and sidelights to run across the back of the house, and four enormous double-paned windows for the sides. Since this was temporary (sigh), only one door opened and none of the windows, which left the space rather stuffy in the August heat, but in winter it’s a pleasantly hot little box where tropicals thrive as long as I remember to water them.
Since it was meant to be temporary, maybe one year was the (don’t-hold-your-breath) promise, it was never quite finished. Painted white on the inside but several shades of this and that on the outside—where we didn’t have to look at it; various crevices are filled with little hemorrhoidal burbles of foam—and a don’t-worry-I’ll-cover-it section of insulation has been staring at me from below the skylight for two years. Not that I keep count.
Suddenly! Progress has been made.
An architect is finishing plans for the extended space. The porch will span the entire back of the house, with the two rear bedrooms opening onto it. For less than $400, My Prince grabbed up five seven-foot-tall double-hung windows with arched tops at CommFork. Set side by side, they will completely fill the wall overlooking the garden.
Inside will be an Edwardian fantasy of black-and-white-tiled floors, wicker furniture, a ceiling fan and masses of parlor palms, lemons and limes, hibiscus and jasmine. It will have the feel of the conservatory in Mark Twain’s Hartford mansion—while looking nothing at all like it. That’s a fantasy for my next lifetime.
Meanwhile, the new windows are stacked in the neighbor’s garage. We’re plum out of space in our own.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird Stephanie writes about gardening and The Prince every week. To read earlier Green Acre columns, type Green Acre in the Search box at the top of the screen.
AT LAST we have come to a time and place where we can grow little other than ferns.
Don’t get me wrong. I like ferns. There is such a surprising variety. Some grow frilly, others straight as swords, some are sprawling. The aptly named Equisetum giganteum ‘El Tabacal‘ grows 10 feet tall. There are different shades of green, from bright to blackish. There’s the occasional burgundy and sometimes a bicolor, green and white.
There are more than 11,000 varieties, give or take a Hymenophyllales or Gleicheniales. The oldest of them, they say, is the Osmunda claytoniana, which has remained virtually unchanged for 180 million years.
Fascinating.
But at some point one would love to see, perhaps, a zinnia. Vividly red or hot pink or chrome yellow or a batch of them mixed, standing tall and big-flowered in the . . . sunshine.
Aye, there’s the rub.
When one has boldly gone and planted a Kwanzan cherry tree in a two-bit yard—what did I think? That 10 years on we would actually have moved to that tropical beach? That I’d be now sitting on a terrace overlooking turquoise water, shaking sand out of my towel and dosing my burnt shoulders with aloe? Did I?
Yes. And that is how we have arrived at a time when The Cherry, planted to obscure some obnoxious town homes that arose in the once-empty lot behind our house, in air space we considered to be our own, has grown to such a size that it forms a vast umbrella over the entire back yard. A place where ferns, and little else, flourish.
It is exquisite, this tree, for the two or three days, maybe a week, when it is in full flower. If the weather is cool maybe we get two. The blossoms are glorious as they fall on the garden path and the theoretical flower borders that flank it are drifted with ballerina-pink snow.
And then we are left with ferns. And mulch. And house plants that summer in the shade, doing not much of anything besides growing larger, as in a horror film. The philodendron leaves have grown this summer to such prehistoric size that one expects a dinosaur to part the foliage and stare out balefully.
Is it possible, I pathetically whisper, to create a patch of sustained light, where a little clump of something bright will flourish?
The other day I planted that question with Adrian Higgins, garden impresario for the Washington Post. He was having an online Q & A and I took advantage of a far bigger gardening brain than mine:
Me: My Kwanzan cherry has grown like Godzilla, threatening to eat the entire garden. I want roses! Zinnias! Just a few sun-loving plants . . . even a little patch of cosmos. Can I use a grow light outdoors? How about a full-spectrum flood?
AdrianHiggins: “We have a full-spectrum outdoor lamp already, it’s called the sun. This cherry can be denser than Yoshino, but could be carefully pruned to allow more light into the tree and the plantings beneath it. I have found California poppies, by the way, will take some shade and make a great annual display.”
To this I say: Yeah, yeah, I know about the sun. Highly unreliable. It’s subject to an eclipse on average every 375 years, depending on where you’re standing. *
But the thought of poppies makes me weak-kneed. “Poppies!” cries the Wicked Witch of the West. “Poppies!” she repeats, waving her wand above the field leading to Oz, and one by one the Tin Man, Scarecrow, Lion and Dorothy fall asleep.
And then there’s opium. Oh, there’s a story to tell there, but not here.
Poppies make me happy, but they will not grow in my garden, and if they did it would be in springtime before the bloody tree leafs out and the tulips nod and so forth. In other words, not when I need a splotch of color, like now, when we’re heading into late summer and I see nothing but the Emerald City out there.
I gave the question another go with Thomas Kapfer, lead landscape designer at Washington’s Ginkgo Gardens, who said he’d never been asked such a question. While he too suggested calling in a professional arborist for some judicious pruning, he thought full-spectrum lighting might do the trick.
“Flood lights should work,” he said, “if the bulb is full-spectrum and put on a timer to mimic daytime—as you would an indoor grow light.”
But, he cautioned, make sure it can go in an exterior fixture. “Path or accent lights won’t allow for a strong bulb.”
Using the proper outdoor fixture is essential, agreed Jess Sears, head of field operations for Outdoor Lighting Perspectives of DC Metro, which specializes in lighting everything from swimming pools to gardens. The bulb need not be outdoor-rated, but the fixture must be. “The top of the bulb must be fully enclosed and facing downwards,” he said. “The neck must be watertight.”
Yes and yes, says our go-to lighting guru, Randall Whitehead: “You want ‘grow lights.’ Now, grow-light fixtures are made for indoor use. They are not wet- or damp-location rated, so you can’t use them outside. You can get grow-light bulbs, though, that will screw into wet-locatio-rated fixtures.”
One such bulb is GrowLED PAR38 LED grow lights from Thinklux Lighting, recommended for “Cannabis, Flowers, Vegetables & Fruits,” and available (of course) from Amazon for $14.90.
You know what else those full-spectrum bulbs are good for? Seasonal depression, which in the past was limited to the winter months . . . but seems now to be a year-round phenomenon. I suggest you sit under yours while watching the nightly news.
LittleBird Stephanie clearly suffers from Seasonal Affective Disorder in summer, when her garden doesn’t do what she wants it to. You can read earlier columns by typing Green Acre into the Search box at the top of the screen.
THE ONLY FEMALE director to win an Oscar, Kathryn Bigelow took away the gold in 2010 for “The Hurt Locker.” Her 2012 film “Zero Dark Thirty” won several Oscar nods and a Golden Globe win for Best Actress Jessica Chastain. Now, Bigelow is back with “Detroit,” another controversial film, this time about the summer 1967 riots and civil unrest that tore apart that city. Little Birds Janet, Nancy and Kathy think the 5-foot-11-inch. 65-year-old Bigelow looks pretty terrific. Of course, though, we have our opinions.
Kathryn Bigelow at the 2010 Academy Awards. / Shutterstock photo.
JANET: Here’s Kathryn Bigelow at the 2010 Academy Awards, when she won the Best Director Oscar for “The Hurt Locker.” I have to say that a tuxedo is more her style. Gray doesn’t translate as celebratory to me.
NANCY: Yeah, she usually wears separates. But the gray is nice on her. (And Style Bistro pointed out her diamond tennis bracelet, more obvious in person, no doubt.)
KATHY: I love the simplicity of this gown (always wonder how those red carpet women can move, sit or even go to the bathroom without all their scantily covered parts falling out of those barely-there gowns) and how it looks like it actually might be comfortable. But I have to say I don’t think gray is anyone’s friend (maybe it’s supposed to be silver). The black lace helps, but still. And I’m not a fan of satin. See how it wrinkles just below her tummy?
Kathryn Bigelow in January 2010. / Shutterstock photo.
NANCY: I like this break from her usual monochromatic look. Also, she wore those python peek-toe sling backs to at least three big events—so they must be comfortable.
KATHY: I wish my arms looked like that. Then I’d wear this brown blouse too. She’s so good with the no-frills look. Like one of those women who walk through their closet and things just magically fall onto their bodies. It look as though she doesn’t even try. It just all comes together on its own. I think I hate her a little bit.
JANET: Like this departure from usual style, too. Shorter skirt shows off her good legs. Halter-esque top flatters her arms.
Kathryn Bigelow arriving at the Directors Guild awards in 2013. / Shutterstock photo.
JANET: That satin jacket really looks clumsy. I think she looks great in tuxedo dressing, but not this time.
NANCY: I think this outfit proves that even if you’re almost 6 feet tall, carpet-grazing trousers and what look like flat shoes can make you looked nailed to the floor.
KATHY: Um, no. Just no. I know what she’s going for. It’s something I would opt for too. What could be more simple and appropriate than a black jacket and pants paired with a white top? But there’s that satin problem again, and this duo just looks like it doesn’t fit her very well. Maybe she was in a hurry and just grabbed something from her closet and thought “Oh, what the heck.”
Kathryn Bigelow at the 2013 Oscar nominations luncheon. / Shutterstock photo.
NANCY: Monochromatic is just great! Liquid gold, or I guess champagne.
KATHY: I’d love to have this combo in my closet (and I’d love to have her figure to go with it). It’s so pretty and dressy, yet she looks so at ease in it. It’s not gimmicky. Just wonderfully classy and sophisticated.
JANET: Love this tailored and polished monochromatic look. She nails it for the occasion.
Hannah Murray, Jacob Latimore and director/producer Kathryn Bigelow at the world premiere of Annapurna Pictures’ “Detroit,” in Detroit, July 2017. / Photo by Eric Charbonneau/REX/Shutterstock.
KATHY: I’m totally sold on crossbody bags and really like this little number. She looks comfortable and chic with the bag’s tiny touch of bling.
NANCY: I agree. Crossbody bags have changed my life. This one looks like a Stella McCartney number, though I can’t be sure. Overall, this outfit can be had at virtually every price point; doesn’t take much to dress it up or down. A real winner.
JANET: Straight out of central casting for how to look like an Oscar award-winning female director at the preview of her new movie. Black suit taken down a notch from formal with white T-shirt. Aviators — a little Hollywood. Minimal jewelry and cross-body bag. Hands in pocket —an accomplished, confident working woman.
John Boyega and Kathryn Bigelow, director/producer of “Detroit,” at an August 2017 screening. / Photo by Eric Charbonneau/REX/Shutterstock.
KATHY: Okay, I take back what I said about gray. This jacket is fabulous. Or, is it ivory? Whatever it is, she looks terrific in it.
JANET: Hard to say exactly what color that jacket is or what material. Not a lot of distractions in this outfit. Simple and direct.
NANCY: The seaming makes the jacket quite special, I think. I wish we had a bunch of pictures of this outfit so we could see how the pieces come together. And so we could see what that little loop at the bottom of the jacket is: It’s driving me crazy. This outfit, like the champagne sweater-set outfit, shows that when you’re going simple, quality and tiny details really have to be up to snuff. Nice.
O! ALL THE WOMEN we’re not supposed to be! We’re not supposed to be too fat (Melissa McCarthy), too strong (Serena Williams), too shrill (Hillary Clinton), too old (Madonna!). But here we all are, in Anne Helen Petersen’s Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman, a provocative but serious look at women who threaten, well, everything, right?
Petersen will be at Politics and Prose in DC on Monday, August 14, 2017, at 7pm. But even if you can’t attend, you may be in luck: We’re giving away 2 copies of the book, thanks to publisher Plume, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
For a chance at one of the books, please email Nancy@MyLittleBird.com by the end of Thursday, August 17, 2017, using UNRULY as the subject line. Be sure we can get back in touch with you because Plume will need the winners’ mailing addresses. Standard contest rules apply. Good luck!
