Off The Counter: Camp Site Cooking With Batter Blaster And Pearled Couscous

  This week's Off The Counter is inspired by food preparations during our recent camping trip to Lassen National Park.  Roasted peppers, couscous and a container of Batter Blaster made for two quite simple, but very tasty meals that would be just as enjoyable at home as they were in our first camp-out since the big move West.  Take a look:

Do you have a favorite meal to prepare while camping?!  If yes, PLEASE share it with us, since we anticipate many more camping trips while living here!

Roasted Pepper Couscous

Ingredients:  2 boxes of pearled couscous, 4-6 peppers, 2 portabella mushrooms, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Instructions: roast the peppers and portabella mushrooms and season all with olive oil, salt and pepper.  Prepare pearled couscous as per box instructions and add chopped roasted vegetables.  Mix together and enjoy!

Batter Blaster

Fire away!

Many thanks to DS, BB and Olive for allowing us to join them on a very successful [first] camping trip with our kids, and d to MT and JT for reserving quite possibly the most beautiful and sought after camp site ever at Summit Lake in the Lassen National Forest!

Out And About: Berkeley's Pasaje Picante

Last Friday afternoon, the kids and I visited Alex at work and we all had dinner in Berkeley at Pasaje Picante.  Celebrating Mexican cuisine with fresh ingredients, authentic flavors and a relaxed atmosphere, Pasaje Picante was a big hit for all of us.  Take a look:

We're looking forward to regular Friday night visits to Berkeley for a dose of urban atmosphere and a sample of the city's many culinary offerings.

Moving Mode: Putting Themselves Out There

Now that we've settled into the house that's feeling more like a home, the kids are looking forward to meeting new people.  A week ago they worked on signs introducing themselves to potential friends and hung them on a post at the 'circle', the IT place where neighborhood children hang out.  Feeling anxious and a bit shy, they bravely and confidently put themselves out there and met a few of them.   As time passes, each child adapts to the move differently.  Ben, who's favorite song at the moment is Red Hot Chili Peppers' Californication, is missing his Cambridge comrades the most and finding it difficult to feel like his old self.  Enjoying her very own room for the first time, Zoe has become more independent than ever.  One can overhear her saying things like: "Is this for real or am I dreaming?" and "I want to live here forever!”.  Max who was the first to knock on a stranger’s door to introduce his family swears that when he turns 20 he'll buy a plane ticket back to Cambridge.  Managing the many emotions of three children can be challenging, but I’m so proud of each one of them  for acclimating at his/her own pace.

Here's to putting oneself out there!

Obsessing Over: 7 Vintage Moroccan Rugs

 

I'm loving the shaggy pile, mixed pattern and varied color found in vintage Moroccan rugs.  Woven in abstract or geometric designs in either monochromatic or bold colors, these rugs provide a great way to add whimsy and comfort to any room. Take a look at 7 of my favorites:

Which one do you like?

Images/Sources:

1./2./3./4./5./6./7.

When A Chair Is More Than A Chair: A Guest Post

While assembling a restored chair that had been in his family for many years, my husband was inspired to blog about it.  Take a look at a chair that has  traveled coast to coast several times and created  history along the way:

"This chair has been in my family since 1977.  It's been in and out of my home growing up and has been in NY, CA, NJ, NH, MA and now, back in California.  It's been so ingrained in various memories that it became almost ignored as a design object, an unfortunate consequence of the familiar.

For reasons I cannot quite place, the decision to restore the chair was sudden and urgent and it pulled together some of the great artisans in Cocoon's network.  As a last gasp before leaving Massachusetts for California and because of the great work of John Vasquez of JV Upholstery and Seth Barrett of Village Green Renewal, the chair has come back to life...with some surprising and unintended consequences. Debra began the renewal project by asking John to use the original, damaged leather as a pattern for a new black leather insert for the chair.  Next, we invited input from Seth regarding the wood frame and how to treat it.  Seth carved away some of the wood to have a look and believed the chair could be made out of rosewood.  Then, my mother, checked the web and found a match with other award winning Sergio Rodrigues chairs.  You can still find some of Sergio Rodrigues' furniture and other Brazilian modernists at Espasso .  After some discussion, we decided to proceed with stripping the paint off the chair to see exactly what was under there.

Seth called first to give an update and simply said that the wood was amazing.

On the next call we discussed how to finish the piece.  He advised going with an untainted hard wax that would protect and coat the wood while letting its natural color and luster come through.

When we eventually received the restored piece in California, we were stunned by the outcome.  Not only did the wood look beautiful but the use of the original, stretched leather as a pattern for a new insert - somehow caught the look of a broken-in chair.  Not just any broken in chair - but broken in the way my family broke in the chair.  If you compare it to a newer Kilin chair you'll know what I mean.

Coincidentally, here is where it gets really interesting for me.  The chair has made me think a lot about my father who passed away in 2000, 23 years after he bought the chair and 10 years since I had become its primary user when the chair came with me to college.  The chair is a reminder of my father, my childhood and the way we lived between 1977 and 1990. You could say it's been rediscovered by going back to a state that is closer to the way it was.  Recently, I've wanted to go with it.

The chair is now in our bedroom and I look at it every morning when I wake up.  It never looks empty to me."

Thank you, Alex.