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I Have Conquered The Paella

September 8, 2017

Okay, so I had help. A lot of it. And okay, so maybe my primary contribution was to hover around my paella-knowledgeable friends taking photographs and taste-testing ingredients just to make sure nothing was poisonous, rather than actually "cooking." But still.

The first time I ate paella was in Barcelona, which seems like the right place to have your first experience, except mine was kind of traumatic. The bowl arrived and I gave it a stir, and all of a sudden the creature from the black lagoon came launching up at me out of the depths, all claws and tentacles and such. (Spoiler: it was a crawfish. But when you do not expect to see a crawfish and are surprised by one in your food, terror is a totally acceptable reaction to have. Those are scary little fuckers.) I've never tried making it myself because it looks complicated, and saffron is expensive, and it seems like the kind of dish that should be made from a recipe handed down from a relative.

Enter: my friend Erin, whose mother-in-law Linda has a family recipe, and who just so happened to be in town last weekend.

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Decor

I Never Thought I’d Hire An Interior Designer…But Here’s What Happened When I Did

August 31, 2017

When I was about fifteen, my parents decided to hire an interior designer. His name was Val, he charged a small fortune (or at least I assume he did, based on the fact that he essentially lived at our house for two months while he sifted through piles of curtain fabric samples and such), and he did a very nice job, save for the fact that he covered the walls of our kitchen with a paper featuring French quotes about love on the very same day that my French boyfriend broke up with me and utterly destroyed my heart. 

(I walked into the apartment - already in tears from our breakup conversation - took one look at the kitchen walls, and collapsed on the floor, screaming "WHYYYYYY?" To which my mom, to her credit, responded, "Oh, Jesus, Jordan. Get off the floor.")

It's safe to say that I've never been super into the idea of hiring an interior designer myself. I mean, I have my own ideas about what I like, and while I may not be especially good at things like planning and foresight (which means that my decor plans tend to undergo a lot of revision as I discover that, say, the rug that I ordered in no way fits in the room I intended it to live in), I also don't want to spend thousands of dollars for a service that, to my mind, seems a little...I don't know...indulgent?

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Decor

A Little House Tour (Two Years Later)

August 30, 2017

Riccione Multicolor Umbrellas, by Gray Malin

Let me take you back to an era many, many moons ago. The Supreme Court had just affirmed same-sex marriage, a record-breaking 195 countries had signed on to endorse the Paris agreement (including the U.S.! Imagine!), and "athleisure" had become a word that people actually used in casual conversation.

Another thing that happened around that time: Our family drove up to a California ranch house that we'd only ever seen in photos, and right there on our brand-new porch, waiting patiently for us, was a housewarming gift: A print of a San Francisco nude beach taken by my all-time favorite photographer, Gray Malin. It took us many days (and months, and years) to wind our way through the process of making that funny little ranch house our own, but one thing that happened on Day One was that the nude beach print went right up on our dining room wall. Once it was hung, I laid down on the floor with a cup of warm champagne and looked at it for awhile - the waves swirling up onto the sand; the rainbow of striped beach blankets; the many, many naked butts  - wondering what what was to come.

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Entertaining

Labor Day Weekend Suggestion: Make S’Mores Shots

August 30, 2017

You are seeing this correctly: it is a s'more. And a shot. More specifically, it is a shot made out of a s'more. I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that these are the easiest things to consume - they require a sort of nibble/sip maneuver that takes a bit of practice - but oh, they are worth the work.

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Decor

I Have Been Blessed By The Etsy Gods

August 29, 2017

Wheeeeeeeeeee

When I bought our new couches, my primary concern (besides the fact that they're...you know...white) was the fact that they're also small. They're muuuuuch better-proportioned for our living room, but still: they really just amount to a loveseat and an armchair. It turns out that they're actually super comfortable and totally work for us - those wide arms make them feel much bigger than they are - but prior to discovering this I made the executive decision that our living room needed an enormous, smooshy addition to soften the blow of losing our enormous, smooshy Couch Boat.

It was then that I remembered The Beanbag. The Restoration Hardware beanbag, to be exact. I'd seen someone post about it - or maybe a pop-up ad? I can't remember - and ever since then it had been flitting around on the edges of my mind as a completely ludicrous obsession. You would be correct in thinking that only a crazy person would spend a thousand dollars (yes, you read that right: we're talking about Restoration Hardware here, remember) on a beanbag. But LOOK AT IT.

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