Orinoco in Brookline Village

I couldn't be a food critic. I just love restaurants and going out too much. My reviews would read like, "They had booths (booths!) and served the bread with olive oil and sprinkle cheese (omg!). The chicken was good but I had just had chicken for lunch so I wasn't so in to it. But they had mashed potatoes(!)! " Not so helpful. But one thing I love to do is pass on good news.

Orinoco in Brookline (22 Harvard St. next to Pomodoro) is fantastic! They have a lunch menu with gourmet sandwiches around $7. Their dinner menu hovers around $13 for entrees. The food is Venezuelan and features such wonders as an almond wrapped in a date wrapped in bacon(!), and fried plantain hunks sliced open and stuffed with cheese(!).

OK, enough of me talking about food. The decor has an air of a South American farm house without feeling cluttered or kitchy. There are small tables and booths along the side walls and a gorgeous long wooden table in front of the open kitchen. There's also a bar by the windows, perfect for sipping caipirinhas while thinking about what to order when it all smells so good.

Electric Suede

Tonight is Project Runway night! Last week "Suede" won the challenge. (See below)

Picture by Bravotv.com

For tonight's viewing my friend Andrea came up with the awesome idea of making a drink called the "Blue Suede." Like all great blue drinks it will contain Curacao.

The Blue Suede

1 oz. Blue Curacao
1 oz. Vodka
2 oz. Lemonade

Pour over ice and top with seltzer. Garnish with a lemon. Extra points for garnishing with a blue gummy!

Ginger Chicken Salad

It's summer time and cooking a chicken in the oven does not sound appealing. Luckily the Shaw's Market we go to has whole rotisserie chickens that cost about the same as the uncooked ones. Considering how many meals we get out of them it's a real deal.

One (or two or three*) of those meals is chicken salad. There's an infinite number of ways to make chicken salad. Here's one I've been making lately:

Ginger Chicken Salad

2 cups cooked chicken in small pieces, not packed (I like to pull it off the cooked chicken by hand)
Half cup chopped celery
Quarter cup chopped onion
Half teaspoon powered ginger
Two heaping tablespoons Hellmann's Mayonnaise (More or less to taste. Start with less and add more after it’s mixed.)
Chili Powder, Salt and Pepper to taste (The red chili powder looks pretty when sprinkled on top before serving.)

Mix together and serve or chill. It’s also great the next day or to bring to "Shakespeare on the Common." It's good for a picnic because the mayo actually preserves the chicken.

*Surpassed only by pulling the meat directly off of the chicken and eating will standing in the kitchen while saying, "ticken ticken ticken." Everybody does that, right?

As preppy as a popped collar with pearls

Lately I've been into the preppy look. I love the bright colors. Also, J. Crew has been having a ridiculous sale for the past month that I have been eating up. It seems I'm not the only one. Style.com put together a great "lookbook" of Nantucket Style. Check it out.

My Favorite look is Melissa:

Photographed by: Lauryn Levin

It's so simple but not boring. Also, I think there's something kind of ballsy about wearing white pants. It says, "I'm not afraid to sit down; grass stains be damned!" If that doesn't say cool confidence, I don't know what does.

I also like this picture of Kristine because she looks pretty pretty pretty:

Photo by: Zofia Waig

That's the best thing about summer: You can just slip on an easy dress and cute flats and look like a million bucks.

To button or not to button...

On and off for the past few days I've been painting this box:


I like to use what I already have around so for the inside I went with, surprise, GOLD:

For the outside I'm using a blue/green color. It's so humid that it takes forever to dry between coats and since I didn't uses primer the black keeps showing through. I really want that gold to glow. Sigh. Gold gold gold.

I keep going back and forth on what I want the final thing to look like. I have already picked out buttons to glue all over the outside, but maybe it would be more, I don't know, elegant(?) if I painted a brocade pattern on it. Oh, yeah, brocade is the third wing of my personal craft trinity: Gold, Buttons, Brocade.

Pencil Case

For some reason I love making little purses and things with zippers and buttons. (I think it's because I don't have to worry about them fitting and I can make something with even the teeniest scrap of fabric I find.) When I went back to school in January I wanted to "craft" out my jitters so I decided to make a pencil case/supplies organizer. Here's what I came up with:


You may recognize the fabric. It was left over from the table cloth I made. It looks very Lilly Pulitzer to me, which I LOVE. The button is one of the old anchor ones I found in my collection. The inside folds out into three panels which each have compartments. The scissors are coming out of a zippered pouch.


I really liked making it and will definitely do more. Next time I'll take progress pictures and do a sort of how-to in case anyone wants to make one. I'm just waiting to come across the perfect fabric again.
And, PS, crafting as a stress reliever totally works. Just try to stay anxious while holding a handful of tiny pink buttons. It's impossible. IMPOSSIBLE.

An important message...

I was going to be all cryptic and just put a "here" to click on but, why not be up front with my links? Here's a pug licking your computer screen. You're welcome.

Cookies! With Hershey's!

Since I was having some friends over last night I decide to see what I had in my pantry and whip up quick some cookies. (I will use any excuse to bake. TV show premier? Blondies! New hair cut? Snickerdoodles! Bad day? Carrot cake cupcakes! )

I was going to post the whole recipe but I'm not completely happy with the butter cookie recipe I used. Not bad, just a little blah. I'll tweak it in the future and put it up when it's just right. In the mean time here it is simplified:

Hershey's Butter Cookies:

Preheat oven to 375
Follow your favorite sugar or butter cookie recipe.
Roll dough into quarter size balls.
On baking paper lined baking sheet, press dough balls flat with your palm (fingers make ridges)
Sprinkle with chopped walnuts
Press a Hershey's chocolate square into the center of each cookie.
Bake for 12 minutes

Enjoy!

Project Runway Premier!

Tonight is the season premier of Project Runway! The show is now on at 9 instead of 10 p.m. which makes it easier to watch with girlfriends (And boyfriends, too, who always seem equally enthralled with the show). I'm not usually a fan of reality television but PR is just perfect. Watching it makes me want to get a dress form and start making my own clothes. I get so inspired!

I think for the premier this evening my friends and I will be making some spiked lemonade with frozen strawberries for garnish. Maybe we should call them Nina'tinis or "Make it work"aholics? Tim Gunn would be proud. Auf Wiedersehen.

Striped Shirt- Before and After

Here, again, is the old shirt I decided to cut up:


And here is what I made(!):


OK that picture makes it look kind of boring. But it's crazy interesting in real life, I swear. The inside is lined and I took one of the shirt pockets and sewed it in:


I switch up which purse I carry almost every day (sometimes more), so I'll use this for lip gloss, hairbrush and the like so I can keep them together. I still have about 75% of the shirt left so I can do more with it down the road.

Future Projects

A couple of weeks ago I was on the Cape and went to a yard sale with my mom. We were there for about 5 minutes but I got a couple of items to have some fun with. ( We got there when they were packing up and one of the owners said I could buy a paper bag for $2 and fill it with whatever we wanted. I looove yard sales.)

One is this painted wooden jewelry box:


The other is this silver painted picture frame.


Both need to be cleaned up. The frame I may keep as is and just find something to go in it. The box is a different story. Right now I'm picturing it covered with buttons (Did I mention I have a million buttons? Because I do.) and possibly pink feathers. I don't know. At this stage it's fun to think of crazy ideas, then when the right idea comes it's usually more down to Earth. But that's not to say it won't involve lots of buttons.

My Favorite Four Letter Word

I saw this on Newbury Street yesterday. It's made entirely of yellow dish washing gloves on plywood.


It's for Louis Boston which means that in a few weeks the leftover goods will be popping up at Filene's Basement.

Some Assembly Required

Here is the current status of my striped shirt project.


The lining is gray jersey that I had already. I bought the zipper today at Windmill Fabrics in Chinatown. I love that place. They have great prices and a very large cat that sleeps on the piles of upholstery fabric.

I also bought these two zippers because they're good to have around (you know, like when you're blazing ahead on a spur-of-the-moment craft project and then you realize that you don't have a proper zipper to use, which means you have put it down until you can pick one up at the store. That's just a situation everyone hates to be in. Am I right?).
The top one is pink, but I especially love the bottom one which is navy with a gold zipper. I would love to do a little something in navy blue with gold accents on it. I have some gold buttons with anchors on them which would be pretty great on a little clutch. I hope the nautical trend doesn't go away anytime soon because I still go crazy for anything with stripes or anchors.

Shakespeare on the Common

"As You Like It" is this year's play during Free Shakespeare on the Common from July 18 to Aug. 3. Boston Common, Tuesday-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.

As You Like It is one of my favorites of the comedies, although, I think I’d say that about any of them. There are some great fools and, of course, plenty of cross dressing.

It’s the perfect excuse to pack a picnic. Kenneth Branagh Baglechips. Hamlet and Cheese Sandwiches. Love's Labour's Lobster Rolls. I could go on for ever. Julius Caesar Salad. Weird Spritzers. OK, I'll stop.

Pro-ject! *sing song voice*

I thought I loved this shirt when I bought it years ago (circa 2003?) from J. Crew. I think I’ve worn it maybe twice. And yet it has survived dozens of closet purges and big black garbage bags being carted off to the Goodwill. (It's just that it's so soft and well, maybe I'll be wear it some day...) I realize now that what I love is the fabric. Scissors, please.


I think I’m going to make a little makeup bag or maybe a summery clutch. This isn’t the first time I’ve cut up an old shirt or skirt to repurpose the fabric, but usually it’s been from something I loved but some how died from an unfixable snag or a stain. Confession: Once I have a project picked out, I get really excited and think about it a LOT, working out all the details and picturing how to do it. It might be my favorite part. So, yeah, totally normal.

Color Love

I love color. One of my favorite mental screensavers is picturing different color combinations.

One that I've been thinking about a lot lately is fuchsia and turquoise. I love how the aqua color pops against the bold pink. I made a couple of little purses in the combo for presents last Christmas.

Here is a shirt and necklace I wore the other night. The shirt is from Anthropologie and the necklace is from Filene's Basement.



I also love the way it looks with this necklace that I just got at a flea market on Cape Cod.

Flag Cupcakes

I'm not really the kind of person to wear my patriotism on my sleeve. I'm more apt to watch 14 hours of John Adams on t.v. (so good!) than wear a flag on a T-shirt. Still, since I was a little girl I've been in LOVE with the summer flag cake. I've never made one before, so for my friend Meera's 4th of July BBQ I knew I had my chance.

I decided to go with mini-cupcakes to make it a finger food. Plus I don't have a giant sheet cake pan....yet. I used a yellow cake mix and made the buttercream frosting. The recipe is on the box of confectioner's sugar and is totally worth it. I love the canned stuff, but homemade just tastes better.


I used blueberries for the stars.


And strawberries for the stripes. I'm pretty happy with it. If it was a sheet cake you could go really nuts with the berries.

Time to go celebrate. HAPPY 4th of JULY!!!!!

Frozen Lemon Slices

I came up with this when I had a lemon and didn’t know if I would use it before it went bad. Enter: freezer magic.


For pretty ice for pitchers and punch bowls:
Slice a lemon, remove any seeds
Using small bowls (I used a set of measuring bowls from ¼ cup to 1 cup) place a slice in each bowl and cover with water. Freeze. Remove ice from bowls by turning upside down and tapping. You can store them in freezer bags for a long time. Ice looks great floating in punch bowls.

Try it with different fruits, too. Place a raspberry in each cube of an ice cube tray. Mint leaves in ice cubes look great floating in a pitcher of ice tea. My favorite part is that once they're frozen, they won't go bad. And you look like a genie when you have an unplanned evening with friends at your place and you whip out mixed drinks with festive ice.

Wall Art: Before and After

I finished the wall art paintings and hung them up last night in our room. Not that there's anything wrong with the olde dainty flower pictures. I've been wanting to have a bedroom that was more bold than cute. Here's what the wall space above a waist-high bookshelf looked like before:

And here it is now:I'm pretty happy with it. It was the first time I've painted for fun (other than walls and furniture) and it makes me want to do more.

White Wine Sangria

I like the finer things. I like designer clothes. French food. Air conditioning. I also like plastic bendy straws, and fun boozy summer drinks. I’ve always loved the idea of white wine sangria so I did some research on the internet, made a few batches (which my friends have been kind enough to help me with), and came up with my own recipe. Serves 8.*

Lesley's White Wine Sangria

1 large bottle of white wine, cheap
½ cup brandy or apricot brandy
2 oz. peach schnapps
½ can (12 oz.) Goya apricot nectar
½ liter bottle sparkling lemon water (like Polar seltzer) or Sprite if you like things sweet
10 or so Strawberries, sliced with a few left over to garnish glasses.
1 or 2 peaches, sliced

Combine white wine, brandy, schnapps and apricot nectar in pitcher and chill. These may sit together over night or you can serve right away. Add fruit and sparking water (or soda) right before serving.

Fill glasses with ice and garnish with a strawberry. Pour into glasses. A spoon is helpful for getting the fruit out of the pitcher.

Tastes best outside.

*I find that it’s just the right amount for 3 friends to sit outside and keep refilling their glasses over increasingly boisterous conversation.