Author Archives: blaise

piano

Posted on December 10, 2011 by blaise

A cou­ple of months ago I began play­ing with our new dig­i­tal* piano.  What a love­ly thing a key­board instru­ment is!  You just push a but­ton, and out comes a per­fect note— hard if you hit it hard, soft if … Con­tin­ue read­ing →

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treasure hunt

Posted on November 22, 2011 by blaise

Over the past year I’ve set the kids a num­ber of trea­sure hunts, which are both fun to make and always in demand.  Like any­thing one tries a few times, it’s got­ten quick­er.  This morning’s was assem­bled in record time … Con­tin­ue read­ing →

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kindergarten: saudade do futuro

Posted on November 8, 2011 by blaise

I hope not to get in trou­ble for post­ing, ver­ba­tim and with min­i­mal com­men­tary, an update we’ve just received from Eliot’s kinder­garten.  I find this fas­ci­nat­ing and, in its way, rather utopi­an: As you know, we have been exper­i­ment­ing in … Con­tin­ue read­ing →

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fennel indecency

Posted on October 19, 2011 by blaise

Like the fried fiori di zuc­ca, there are some dish­es whose ratio of low effort to extra­or­di­nary result seems like a vio­la­tion of some nat­ur­al— or at least moral— law.  This is one such.  The recipe comes orig­i­nal­ly from Frank, … Con­tin­ue read­ing →

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fiori di zucca

Posted on September 11, 2011 by blaise

The sea­son won’t last much longer, so it seems a good time to share the tech­nique we use for mak­ing one of the loveli­est things one can pop into one’s mouth, e.g. with a glass of pros­ec­co before din­ner with … Con­tin­ue read­ing →

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chicken marbella

Posted on September 10, 2011 by blaise

Nan­cy made this for us last year, and it was great.  Appar­ent­ly a clas­sic.  Adding it to the blog now because it’s today’s shop­ping list. 4 chick­ens, 2½ pounds each, quar­tered 1 head of gar­lic, peeled and fine­ly pureed ¼ … Con­tin­ue read­ing →

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testi espliciti

Posted on August 26, 2011 by blaise

A recent episode of the Plan­et Mon­ey pod­cast about the trou­bled Ital­ian econ­o­my opened with some rather sticky hiphop, which on inves­ti­ga­tion turned out to be the wild­ly pop­u­lar (in Italy) and as far as I can tell unknown (in … Con­tin­ue read­ing →

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places in corsica

Posted on July 26, 2011 by blaise

This blog isn’t much of a diary.  I’d be hard pressed to say what exact­ly it is, but one of its func­tions is to record things that might be use­ful or inter­est­ing lat­er on, to our­selves or to friends or … Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Posted in food, travel | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

french coffee

Posted on July 25, 2011 by blaise

We’ve had a won­der­ful time abroad.  More on that soon.  But a notable minus of Cor­si­ca: the cof­fee sucks. In fact, the cof­fee sucks in France as a whole.  For a cul­ture that so val­ues gas­tron­o­my, this is dif­fi­cult to … Con­tin­ue read­ing →

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allsaints

Posted on May 15, 2011 by blaise

A few months ago, I drove past the cor­ner of 5th and Pike in the evening and saw some­thing new, a shopfront that flash­ing by looked like some sort of Bab­bagesque mechan­i­cal com­put­er, brass machin­ery grid­ded in glass and lit … Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Posted in appearances | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments