Archive for the ‘Portfolio’ Category
Oregon is a Beautiful Place
The quiet of a country road. The smell of a property frequented by sheep and cows. Here in the nearly untouched landscape of rolling hills and tree canopies the sun comes out for a brief moment. We all turn towards it, trying to soak up as much as we can, knowing fully well it will disappear in minutes. Rain jackets are thrown to the ground to celebrate the brief moment of spring.
The white, fluffy clouds roll by, bringing darker, more mysterious ones in their wake. We wait for the storm and cross our fingers that it won’t be a deluge. It’s spring after all.
Foodie Underground: Scandinavian Takeover
Covered the Scandinavian food trend over on EcoSalon today. Love to see Swedish food making its way around the globe… I’ll take a fika any day.
Notice how any recent mention of fare from Sweden, Norway and Denmark also denotes how a Scandinavian food trend is quickly making its way into all kinds of food markets?
Why it’s taken so long for Scandinavian fare to hit the global market is beyond me, but with simple, down to earth ingredients, in the time of slow food movements and a return to more classic, traditional recipes, the timing for Viking-inspired recipes makes sense. Point being, Scandinavian inspired recipes are going to be hot this year, and you’d better prepare yourself.
Growing up with a Swedish mother and annual trips to visit my family have certainly impacted the way that I cook, and for a while now, I’ve been drooling over Kalle Bergman’s Huffington Post column, every time thinking to myself, “I need to be writing that.” Well, now’s the time.
Here’s your quick and dirty guide to everything you need to know to staying on top of the Scandinavian food trend.
Read the full article (+ recipes) here.
Foodie Underground: Are You Abnormal?
For Thanksgiving I found myself staying in a yurt near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. There was a small propane stove and no running water, but Thanksgiving is Thanksgiving and so we made a concerted effort to eat well.
The stuffing used locally baked pumpkin bread, the sweet potatoes were organic and made without a Cuisinart in sight, and I hand-chopped a cranberry relish. After not finding anything but absurdly cheap, huge frozen birds that surely came from the mass farms of nightmares, we accepted the fact that we would be without the Thanksgiving staple. Fine in our books, as no one was interested in eating “a depressed, fake bird,” as one friend put it. Fortunately, an organic, free-range, local bird was scored at the last minute.
Sitting in our woodstove-outfitted yurt filling ourselves with the bounty of a day of cooking felt perfectly normal. We were, after all, celebrating the most traditional of American holidays.
But apparently the scene was far from normal.
Read the rest here.
Yurt Life
This week’s office looks a little something like this…
Plenty of good stuff going on right now. Em and I are officially on board at BETA, finalizing 2011 contracts at Under Solen, getting to work with cool groups like 5 Gyres and iLCP, and as usual, lots of coffee.
All in all lots of things to be thankful for this week.
Ongoing Thoughts
The thoughts that cross my mind towards the end of the week:
I need to create more.
I need to explore.
I need to write more.
I need to plan adventures.
I need to learn how to say no.
I need to remember when to say yes.
I need to be scared.
I need to just be.
New Project: Inspiration Mittemellan
I have this thing about being “in between.” In between two cultures, two languages, two countries… it’s the topic of many conversations. During a recent visit to Portland, my best friend in Sweden (who also has the whole Swedish/American thing going for her) and I were having this discussion, and after much talk about the things from both places that inspire us, we decided to embark on a new project: Inspiration Mittemellan.
The focus will be on everyday inspiration from America and Sweden, including (among other things) food, design and nature. It’s still in the building process, but go check it out!
Parking Space Turned Cafe
Park(ing) Day is this Friday — props to those who will be converting parking spaces into mini urban parks — so I figured a mention of this super cool looking pop up cafe in New York was fitting, pulled from this week’s installment of Foodie Underground:
Sponsored by two neighboring eateries – Bombay and Fika – and the New York City Department of Transportation, the pop up cafe is composed of a wooden platform that houses 14 tables and 50 chairs. An attempt at solving the problem of cramped sidewalks which don’t leave much room for outdoor seating, the pop up cafe is part foodie attraction and part public space improvement. In fact, Bombay and Fika don’t offer table service, and anyone who wants to take advantage of the space is allowed to take a seat.
Taking the place of several parking spaces, the outdoor seating doesn’t conflict with the sidewalk traffic, and it’s a project that the DOT is more than happy to support. “Every time we put down just an orange barrel, people just materialize out of nowhere,” said Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan to Streetsblog. “If you build it, they will sit.”
Image: DNA Info
The Bike-Thru
Love this idea so much I had to cross-post from my Foodie Underground column over on EcoSalon:
The drive-thru: an iconic institution fueled by the American spirit to hit the open road. But in this day and age, drive-thrus have become synonymous with unhealthy lifestyle habits, both because of the food they serve and the mode of transportation used to get there. But what if the food was good, and getting access to it promoted sustainable living habits?
In Madison, a restaurateur is looking to open an eating space that’s anything but a drive-thru; he wants to launch a bike-thru, accessible only by two wheels. The Wisconsin capital is already known for its cycling culture, in fact it’s currently ranked the nation’s #7 city for biking, and Chris Berge thinks it would be the optimal spot for what he calls a “bike-in” bar and grill. The proposed restaurant would be built on the city’s Southwest Commuter Path, making it inaccessible by car, and commit to serving local food, and producing zero garbage. He’d also make it a great place for riders to get a quick rest stop, with bathrooms, a fountain for filling water bottles and a bicycle repair service station.
Although the restaurant hasn’t been officially proposed yet, the idea has already garnered the support of the mayor of Madison, Dave Cieslewicz. “I think it’s fascinating idea,” Cieslewicz said. Be it a love for good, local food or a passion for two-wheeled transport, the idea has the potential to take off in other cities as well.
21.5.800: Yoga + Writing
21.5.800. I’m doing it.
What do all those crazy numbers mean? It’s a community project online to commit to, for 21 days, 5 days of yoga a week and 800 words of writing per day.
Here’s the deal (from Bindu Wiles):
THE WRITING: The writing can be ANYTHING. Memoir, blogs, business plans, essays, fiction, free-writing, letters,……..ANYTHING. The point is to get writing again daily and to have the boundaries and challenge of a daily word count to reach.
THE YOGA: There are several options for you to do the yoga portion of 21.5.800 5 times in 7 days. Here are the options: 1. Go to a yoga class in your ‘hood. 2. Do a yoga dvd at home. 3. Take a 20-40 minute savasana at home on the floor.
I think it’s going to be good… very good. You’ve got to commit to non-work related once in awhile, right?
Mixtape Writing Contest
One of my favorite blogs is Matador Senior Editor David Miller’s, which he recently renamed “Operating on Stoke.” One of his new projects is the Mixtape Writing Contest, a weekly contest where people submit writing and a mixtape is made based on the winning entries. And because David’s such a creative guy, he comes up with some pretty cool themes for the contests.
This week he wanted a 3-sentence confession, made by relating a story, conversation or scene and adding a confessional sentence that hints at a deeper story. The 3-sentence confession had to be nonfiction. On a whim I submitted the following:
An old man sits on the park bench, paintbrush poised in hand. Behind him, a dog sprints away from its owner. I have a hard time saying no.
The full disclosure on this is that I don’t necessarily remember having this thought while I watched this scene. It is a thought that I do have often enough however, and it’s usually had at very random times, so I felt like it fit. David picked it as the winner and gave it a wonderful analysis as well as a pretty kick-ass mixtape. Check it out here.
blog.annabrones.com 