Because Melissa is awesome and knows that things like gourmet salts are inexplicably exciting to me, she sent me home from our beer & cheese tasting with a wonderful gift: three jars of Artistan Salt.
Artisan Salts / Melissa Is Awesome
Latest Posts
Beer & Cheese Tasting w/ Melissa
Early-evening beer, cheese & charcuterie tasting at Melissa's gorgeous new apartment.
A Perfect Summer’s Eve Purchase
(Virgil agrees.)
Try This Tuesday / Pack Up Your Potato Chips
To prevent crushable munchies (chips, cookies, etc) from disintegrating en route to your destination, place them in a Ziploc bag, and then slide a straw into the top of the nearly-closed bag.
The Art of Field Recording
What we're listening to these days: The Art of Field Recording, Vol. 1, a 4-CD collection that comes with an illustrated book explaining the history of the songs. The collection is the life's work of two archivists - Art and Margo Rosenbaum - who spent half a century traveling around the country recording obscure backwoods artists. It includes hymns, blues, gospel, chain gang songs, and parlour tunes...and has to be heard to be believed.
Pitchfork: "Even when Art and Margo are, ostensibly, acting as silent observers, it is still possible to sense the Rosenbaums' presence, and some of the interview-heavy cuts (see Mary Heekin's rendition of "Lord Randolph," from Disc 1) expose Art and Margo's investment in their work. The narrations included here can be as telling as the songs themselves."
WSJ: "This four-disc set offers a sweeping survey of the American folk tradition, including blues, work songs, Mexican corridos, and more. Many of the recordings — which range from 94-year-old Sister Fleeta Mitchell's "I Am on the Battlefield for My Lord" to 7-year-old Ray Rhodes's true-crime ballad "Fred Adams" — appear on CD for the first time."
Fascinating stuff, and a perfect gift for the music lover in your life.
Shrimp Stock & Super Salad with Lemon Dressing
Take two of BGSK's Pasta with Saffron, Shrimp & Peas, this time without peas ('cause I forgot to buy them). This time, I also put in a little extra effort and made my own shrimp stock to use in the sauce in place of pasta water.
On The Agenda Tonight:
Dancing around the apartment. That's all.
Request / Picnic-Type Dishes
It's getting on towards that point in summer when all I want is a shady spot, a cozy blanket, a good book...and, of course, some delicious food that fits neatly into a picnic basket (not that I actually own one, but hey, one can dream).
Lobster Rolls, Take Three
Central Fish Market is the place where I went to purchase the ingredients for the very first "fancy" dish I ever made, when I was 14 years old and first got interested in cooking.
The Last Whoopie Pie
While scrounging through my parents' freezer in search of potential dinner components, we stumbled across something kind of neat, but mostly gross: a whoopie pie that it seems Mom and Dad saved from our wedding. That would be an event that took place nearly two years ago.
