magbot's Profile

I say '70s, based on:
--the style of the coffeemaker
--the wallpaper on the staircase wall
--the wood face trim on the dishwasher
And it's hard to see, but I think that's a Chambers cooktop, and I believe Chambers went out of business in the '80s.

I don't think the secret to good cooking is memorizing recipes -- it's learning a few basic techniques, and then applying those to your ingredients at hand. If you learn the basics of egg chemistry, you can create anything from a souffle to crepes. Learn the rudiments of incorporating fat into flour and you've learned cookies, pie dough, and gravy. Put those two together with some sugar knowledge, and you know cakes.

Cookbooks are really just eye-candy for those of us who love food and cooking. Of course I too own a mountain of them (they're fun!) but I could know everything I need to from just four: Larousse "Gastronomique", Jacques Pepin's "La Technique" and "La Methode", and Michael Ruhlman's "Elements of Cooking".

My friend's 86-year-old mother cooks constantly, every day, and totally enjoys it. But when she makes anything, even just pancakes, she pulls out an old recipe card and clips it above the stove. To me that's just sad -- it means that in 65 years of cooking, she hasn't really learned anything.

"Alice, Let's Eat" by Calvin Trillin. For my money, the most hilarious book ever written about food & eating. (And it's part one of a trilogy too, so there's second and third helpings if you like it!)

It's definitely cool! Classic menswear textiles like argyles and stripes NEVER are out of style!

I've been thinking of going to a menswear pinstripe bedding with argyle pillows for a while now... I think it'd look great with a navy color base mixed with class camel.

I would play Foodie Fight with Tony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlman (well, at least I'd invite them to play) because they're the two snarkiest food writers on the planet, and because Ruhlman invented the Pork Belly Caesar Salad </a href>.

Right on, Wende! Anyone who remembers carbon paper will get a kick (or maybe a shudder) out of this little item:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320159751269

I have a big collection of House Beautifuls and House & Gardens from the late 1940s through early '60s, and it's mostly true their rooms are ones I'd be thrilled to live in today. (With the exception of the 'colonial' (Early American) stuff that was pretty prevalent, right alongside the best modernism found in those years.)

The biggest difference I notice in those older photo spreads is how much sparser rooms were then -- even opulent, wealthy homes were leaner then. We jam so much stuff into our rooms today. I'm tired of that, and glad that the revival of mid-century modern has tempered that trend somewhat.

I like to change to darker sheet colors in winter. In summer, pale green and peach colors; this winter, I'm going with an oxblood striped damask set from Macy's (found at half price during a summer sale!).

Something about those darker colors just feels warmer when you climb into them in winter.

Yay! Not a TV, but a shirt's still welcome! Since our profiles don't seem to contain our email addresses, do we need to send you addresses, shirt sizes, whatever?

This television would improve my home by permitting Jonathan Adler to contact me. I'm pretty sure Jonathan has been trying to reach me through the cathode ray tube to entice me to join him in his reality-TV addiction, but unfortunately the reception on my 12-year-old behemoth RCA set just keeps garbling his message.

Also, even though I can't be certain, Jonathan may have also said that he'd like for my Nelson-knockoff slat bench to be placed somewhere that people could actually see it. Right now that's the only platform in the house sturdy enough to support the stegosaurus that's living out its retirement years as my only television -- its prime working years having been spent as a floor demonstration model at Mega-Mart, where I purchased it for 70% off because its internal clock said it had already logged 6,000 hours of running time.

Yes, I'm quite confident than Jonath -- wait, my microwave is beeping oddly. Jonathan, is that you? Jonathan?