ich Kalliope

Buttoned Up

I'm trying to better organize my closet, straighten it up a bit, get rid of some things, maybe to make way for a few new things, you know, for the new year.  On one of the top shelves, there's a box where I place buttons.  Primarily the extra button or two you get with a new purchase... I guess I never lose buttons cause I've got a couple small boxes - full.  What do you do with all the extra buttons?  Here's an idea, color studies, sewn onto fabric, by Multistorey.

One last footnote on the subject of buttons.  The famous Munich department store, and a special favorite of mine, Ludwig Beck am Rathauseck has it's own special haberdashery, with the most amazing selection of buttons and trims I have ever seen.  When I lived in Munich, it was a favorite stop to just look, and buy, it's a magical place.

 

Spectral Study XII: Brown

Composing the year's last spectral study I got to brown, and in reviewing my photographs found them to be a wonderful composition of the year.  Particularly a retrospect of the amazing journeys 2008 held in store for me.  From Mexico and Milan, to Munich, to Marathon.  The Pergola's, Biergarten's, Cafe's and great furniture all express a warmth, depth and luster that is imprinted in my heart and soul as we begin 2009.  Next year, I plan to focus on color combinations and continue to post a monthly spectral study, with the hope to inspire us all to look at what surrounds us a little differently.

Happy New Year!

       

        

        

      

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays

Wishing all the readers of Ich Kalliope the happiest of holidays, and may the new year bring us much HOPE, JOY and most of all PEACE throughout the world.  Particularly in the United States, January 20, 2009 will be the real start to the new year.  With possibility, trust and respect as the cornerstone of a new foundation, replacing the one that has crumbled.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays!  "Getting to know" so many of you has been a wonderful highlight of 2008.  Thank you all.

Ma Baker

I've written here before that I am a self-professed foodie.  My husband is a fabulous a cook, and we enjoy having dinner parties with wonderful dishes, simple if I'm cooking, more complex if my dear husband is at the helm.  Cooking together with friends is another favorite, and of course the holidays gives us plenty of opportunity to cook, eat and drink for many happy hours. I have met many wonderful fellow bloggers who are committed to great food and they inspire always.

Cookies are part of Christmas, and simply put, I don't bake.  It's takes a lot of work and love, ingredients have to measured, it's chemistry really, and one needs patience to form, shape and finish.  With the best of intentions, I do not have what it takes.  But my mom sure does!

The plate below is a beautiful composition of what arrived at our door this week, shipped with care across the country, in little boxes and tins.  And yes... they taste as good as they look. Each cookie is nearly perfect, same size, beautifully crafted.  I always joke with my mom, that "when" I make cookies, they start out small and get bigger and bigger and bigger as I just want to be done!  That's not the proper attitude for cookie baking.

I'm including her recipe for a traditional Greek cookie, Kourambiethes (Κουραμπιεδες).  If there was an award (maybe there is...) for the best Kourambietha, she should win.  So if any of you are inclined to bake this holiday, this recipe would be worth trying.  Doing a bit of Kourambietha investigative work, I think her secret ingredients are the use of Cake Flour (sifted 27 more times finer than all-purpose flour) and Orange Juice.  Just a hunch, but I'm not the baker.

      

Kourambiethes                                    Red + Green

                                        

Kalliope's Favorites                             Koulourakia

And the winner is...

Ma's Κουραμπιεδες

• 1 lb. whipped sweet butter
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1 egg yolk
• 3/4 shot whiskey
• 1/4 t. baking powder
• Cake flour (Swan's Down) about 1 3/4 lb or three-quarters of a box
  
• Juice from 1 med. orange (strained)
• Powdered sugar for top

Whip butter with powdered sugar.  Add egg yolk and beat.  Add orange juice and whiskey, beat.  Keep adding cake flour until consistency is right (hmmmm....it's tips like these that trip up people like me) to form. 

Roll into 8" logs, flatten down and slice at a diagonal, about 1/2" wide.  Place cookies on an ungreased cookie sheet about 3/4" apart and bake at 400^o F for 15 minutes.  Generously sift powdered sugar over cookies immediately after removing from oven.

Tip from Kalliope: Refresh with fresh sifted powdered sugar if necessary, after shipping, or if you want your friends to think you made them yourself.  Eat them slowly, because they go down fast.

Ritual + Holiday + Snow

 

One of the things I look forward to over the holidays is digging into the New York Times Magazine "Year in Ideas".  It usually takes me the whole break to read every entry, it has become a ritual.  It's distributed with the Sunday paper, the second week in December, but I don't usually crack it open until I'm officially on holiday vacation.  Another ritual.  The link here, will get you to the web version, but I prefer to camp in front of the fire with the magazine, highlighter and bookmarks in hand.  And yes, I read it in alphabetical order, one more of those important rituals.  A glass of red wine or sherry is good too, if it's after 3 pm... somewhere.

This year it has been made so much easier by the record amount of snow we're getting here in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, and the fact we can't get anywhere.

Here's to new ideas and tradition!

City of Dreams

  As long as I can remember I wanted to live in the city.  I think that this urban living seed was planted back in the early 60's when Marina City opened it's doors in Chicago.  I remember seeing it for the first time, the two petal-shaped cylindrical towers sitting directly next to the Chicago River, and it began my fascination with round buildings and urban living. 

The concept was amazing to me back in the day.  Hearing that people could live and work in those buildings and never have to leave them, was pretty cool.  They had a grocery store, book store, bowling alley, theatre, auditorium, parking, boat dock and groovy pie-shaped flats.  As the snow blankets much of the midwest this year as every year, I still think there's a place for Marina City.  A City-within-a-City is how it was marketed.

Designed by the Bauhaus trained, Chicago born, architect Bud Goldberg, the innovative structure was part of a growing landscape of amazing architecture that continues to find it's home in Chicago.  The concept of Marina City was much more than just amazing poured concrete and glass buildings.  It was meant to slow the exodus to the suburbs.  It was sustainable and green, before sustainable and green were cool.  Like many innovations, it was ahead of it's time.  Just like the ideas of designer Buckminster Fuller are earning their well deserved second act, and in the exhibit Massive Change by Canadian designer Bruce Mau he says the future of cities are vertical, Marina City stands today. 

I am living in the city now, granted a smaller, much smaller urban environment.  But as I pulled my car into the garage this cold December evening, realizing that I may not have to drive for at least the next two weeks, my dreams of a groovy flat in Chicago's Marina towers were awoken.

         

         

Extreme Inauthenticity

I did it.  December 2008.  An artificial Christmas Tree stands in our home.  There I said it, put it out there, went public.

This wasn't an easy decision.  I have been struggling with "should I? shouldn't I?" for months, ok weeks... actually a week.  And even now, I'm not exactly sure why I chose to go with an artificial tree, which I said I would never have.  When my parents first went with an artificial tree many years ago, I didn't like it.  Not at all.  Let them know it too. 

So here I am, with not only a fake tree, but an extremely fake tree.  It's black.  Shiny black.  Imagine the silver trees of the 60's only black.  And I love it.  As my husband says, "wenn schon, denn schon".  Hard to translate from German, sort of like "go big, or go home!".

  

   

Any recommendations out there for a high quality, artificial, pine tree scented candle?

Mark it with a P

I think a person can consider themselves pretty blessed when they have favorite places around the world, truly favorites.  Count me in with the blessed!  Now this one may appear trivial, afterall, butter cookies are pretty much found everywhere.  Just a couple of months back I wrote about my favorite Greek butter cookie, but I may have still been under the spell of my sabbatical back then.  Because my truly, absolute, favorite butter cookie AND place to buy them is at Poilâne in Paris at Rue du Cherchi Midi 6.  This special bakery is famous for it's bread and punitions (butter cookies).  They mark the bread with an enormous script P, branded and delicious!

The first time I visited this special place was about nine years ago, I was with a colleague who had lived in Paris and knew it well.  She was able to get the ok for us to go down in the basement of the small storefront shop to see the baker and the oven where the magic happened.  It was beautiful.  Small space, enormous oven, and table where the dough was being kneaded and the punitions rolled out.  Warmed by the oven, everything seemed to be a light golden color.  That day there was only one person working there, I'm not sure there's room for two.  He was busy.  Afterall you have to make a lot of those bite-size cookies to satisfy.

  

Of course if I'm in Paris I visit Poilâne, which is not often enough.  I buy a bag of cookies to sustain me during my "tough" travels, and a bag to bring home to my dear husband.  Bringing these home to husbands is more common than I thought.  Very shortly after the 9/11 attacks here in the United States, I was on a flight from New York back home to Portland, Oregon.  Shortly after takeoff I began chatting with the woman in the seat next to me, who said she was on her final leg home from Paris.  She had gone there to celebrate a milestone birthday with her girlfriends.  Somehow, I brought up Poilâne...  and low and behold she reached into her carryon bag and... voila a small bag of the famous cookies appeared.  She was bringing them home to her dear husband.

  

The shock of 9/11 was still very fresh, and so when our plane began to descend less than an hour into the flight we all became nervous.  It took quite sometime for the pilot to announce the reason for the sudden descent, and there was a lot of commotion in the back of plane.  My new "friend" and I finished our glasses of wine, trying to stay calm.  She then reached into her bag, pulled out the sealed bag of the little Poilâne treasures, looked at me and said "what the hell", and we proceeded to polish off half the bag before the pilot announced we needed to land in Detroit because of a medical emergency. 

Unfortunately, not everyone had the benefit of the little treats from Paris, and 3 other passengers had to be removed from the flight because of panic related issues they experienced during the initial descent. 

By the time we reached Portland 8 hours later, there were only crumbs in the bag, which was left in the seat pocket, and two very calm women walked off the plane to greet their dear husbands.  Thank you Poilâne!