by Sam Tackeff | Dec 14, 2011 | Books, Gifts
I read a lot of cookbooks (unsurprisingly). This is a small selection from the books stacked next to my bed right now*, and I’m still missing quite a few of my favorites. This was a very good year for cookbooks. I’m absolutely adoring all of these, and any one of them would make a fabulous holiday gift.
Image of stacked books from here. 1. Vegetarian by Alice Hart ; 2. The Food Lover’s Guide to Wine by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg ; 3. Cook This Now by Melissa Clark ; 4. Indochine by Luke Nguyen ; 5. Mourad – New Moroccan by Mourad Lahlou ; 6. Comfort & Spice by Niamh Shields ; 7. My Family Table by John Besh ; 8. Jamie Oliver Magazine, Christmas 2011 Issue ; 9. Canal House Cooking – Italian Summer ; 10. Home Made by Yvette Van Boven ; 11. Bourke Street Bakery by Paul Allam and David McGuinness ; 12. Moro East by Sam & Sam Clark.
What are your favorites right now?
* In fact, there are so many books next to my bed that they could form a small table, which, come to think of it, would be quite useful because I still don’t have very much furniture.
by Sam Tackeff | Dec 13, 2011 | Gifts, Local stores, Shopping, Tea
I’ve been having a lot of fun “re-discovering” the South End neighborhood of Boston. It’s definitely the up and coming place to live, shop and eat in the Boston area.
The South End has gone through massive changes over the past several decades, and I remember when it was a different place entirely. In the 80’s and early 90’s, my aunt and uncle lived in the South End in a gorgeous bow-front (with my two very young cousins), and ended up moving out when someone got stabbed to death on my aunt’s car.
But the neighborhood has fought back, and people have come together. Small businesses have been the life blood of this community, and a lot of people took big risks that have been paying off. In food, Hammersley’s has been going strong for over 20 years now, Barbara Lynch has three outposts – B&G Oysters, The Butcher Shop, and Stir; Joanne Chang’s Flour Bakery + Café flagship is here, as is Ken Oringer and Jamie Bisonnette’s Toro (and Coppa, which I’m desperate to try).
In addition to eating, the South End is also the place to shop. Firstly, SoWa Open Market is Boston’s portal to Brooklyn and the Mission: a vibrant market, part farmers’ market, part craftsman market, part flea market. Then there is Hudson – not the jeans– where I might shop I had unlimited funds. They have an outpost in Wellesley where I used to go and covet things in college. And then, among the treasures of the South End is Lekker Unique Home Furnishings.
Lekker is one of those places that has the perfect gift for almost anyone. The store was opened by Natalie van Dijk Carpenter, a Dutch woman with incredibly good taste (lekker!) and curation skills.
The good thing about Lekker is that you can shop on a budget for yourself, or say for a hostess gift, and find some really excellent things. The store is filled with useful and stylish kitchen tools, candles, and local cookbooks. They also have some really graceful flatware and cutlery that I’d like to acquire. Or, if you are lucky enough to have generous resources, you can also find some fantastic furniture here.
I was particularly enthusiastic about that grey Jackson Chair, but it may in fact have been the most expensive item in the store at $3,650, alas.
This time, I got to go into Lekker with a hundred dollar credit from local Boston-based mobile payment service LevelUp. LevelUp allows you to pay with a unique QR code that is assigned to you – by whipping out your phone, opening the LevelUp app, and getting your code scanned at participating locations.
The big strength of LevelUp is that they work with community businesses to offer small credits at each location, and reward repeat shopping by offering better credits the more you frequent a particular establishment. The user interface is clean, and the process is simple. You store your credit card information securely, and can pay a tip with the app as well. In Boston, the majority of the merchants participating are restaurants, but it seems like a no-brainer to expand to all types of local businesses, particularly because of LevelUp’s low transaction fees.
I’ll be interested in how they scale in the longterm, and how they will compete with Google Wallet , Square, and whoever decides to throw themselves into the mobile payment space next.
I strongly believe that mobile payments and digital receipts are the way of the future, and am looking forward to the day when I can dispense of plastic credit cards and paper receipts completely.
After an hour of browsing – dreaming, touching the curved lips of the bowls and mugs, stroking the softest blankets, and sitting on each of the chairs in the shop – I ended up picking up the Hakusan Tea Pot and set of cups (the white and brown one above, with the stippling on the porcelain). It’s a nice addition to my home, and great incentive to make myself happy with my tea project.
Lekker Home
1317 Washington Street Boston, MA 02118-2139
(617) 542-6464
by Sam Tackeff | Dec 7, 2011 | Books
I believe that it is really important to never stop learning, and more importantly to actively seek out new learning opportunities. I think we all get into a rut sometimes, which is why it is so fun to make yourself happy by choosing to learn something new. I divide my learning into a few different categories:
1. Short term experiences. The idea here is to expose myself to many different things in sort of quick blasts. A lot of these are through taking a lesson of some type in order to learn the basics of a new skill or activity. Say, taking two weeks to try out new exercise classes, reading a book on a topic that I know absolutely nothing about, taking a cooking class, learning to play a handful of tabs on the guitar, finding someone who has a garden and needs a weeder.
Ultimately, some of these experiences will lead to:
2. Long term passions. These are the things that take a lifetime to develop. I like creating actionable projects to help me develop my passions. This blog is one of those projects. The Tea Project is one too. Another passion (without a real project) is developing my photography skills.
I’m particularly interested in food photography. With photography (and almost everything else in life), the key to learning is doing. It does help to have some fundamentals though. Classes are expensive, but incredibly worth it. A few years ago I took a class with Penny De Los Santos, and it was shocking how much a few hours of killer instruction changed my life. (Yes, my life.)
Another way I keep myself doing is having a camera on me at all times. It doesn’t have to be my Lumix (which I adore, for the record)– it can also be the technology that I keep in my pocket at all times: my smart phone. I love taking photos with my phone. I don’t have an iPhone, so I can’t use Instagram (sadness.), but I have a lot of fun using RetroCamera and FXCamera.
I also spend a lot of time reading about food photography online. CreativeLive is a great resource that I’ve been spending a lot of time on. They have free streaming classes, and the ability to purchase previously recorded ones. (I’m a little bitter that I didn’t buy Penny De Los Santos’ food photography class while it was on sale). MattBites, Wrightfood, and White on Rice Couple are a (very small) handful of some of the phenomenal blogs I draw inspiration from.
And finally, I love to read physical books. I take a lot of them out of the library – art books, technical books, and really constructive resources. This week, I’ve been reading Plate to Pixel – Digital Food Photography & Styling by Hélène Dujardin. Hélène writes and styles a beautiful blog: Tartelette – and I really admire her expertise and ability to share her knowledge. Plate to Pixel covers photography techniques, lighting, and styling. The book is not over-technical, and good for anyone ranging from skilled photographers who want to transition to food, to people who still can’t manage to take their thumb out of the frame. I think it would make a pretty great gift as well.
I’d love to hear about how you are learning too. What are your passions? What do you want to experience (for the first time) next?
