Colormatch

Campfire-Roasted Balsamic Brussel Sprouts

brandy — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 05:45:03 +0000

There’s a wonderful thing about campfire that imparts a particular irreplicable smokey flavor to camp food. To attain this special rustic kiss, you’ll have to venture into the wilds for this culinary delight.

Suggested companions: dirty rice, fresh-caught rainbow trout, a Reisling, Chardonnay or Pinot Grigio.

Ingredients

2 cups brussel sprouts, halved
1/2 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1/8 cup olive oil (a healthy splash, enough to coat everything)
1/8 cup balsamic vinegar
a pinch of salt
a pinch of pepper

Tools

Aluminum Foil
Cutting Board
Knife
Firewood or Coal
Matches
Tongs

Method

Put brussel sprouts, chopped onions and garlic cloves in the center of a 12 inch sheet of foil. Make sure there is enough extra foil around the ingredients to fold the foil packet tightly.
Drizzle olive oil and balsamic vinegar over the ingredients and season with salt and pepper. Use tongs to mix all ingredients evenly.
Fold foil to create a packet, making sure to seal the seams tightly. Place the foil packet on a grate over the fire or directly on embers.
Keep a close eye on the packet and open once in a while, using tongs, to stir ingredients. Rotate position if necessary.
Your roasted balsamic brussel sprouts are ready when they are slightly crispy and charred on the outside and the balsamic vinegar has caramelized at the bottom of the foil packet. These are best when served immediately.

from Dirty Gourmet camping food blog: http://www.dirtygourmet.com/roasted-balsamic-brussel-sprouts

Colorful Miso Stew

brandy — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 04:30:44 +0000

Colorful, flavorful and wonderfully healthful.Ingredients

2 tablespoons arame, soaked in 1 cup filtered water in a small bowl

2 ½ cups water

½ medium onion, chopped into large pieces

1 tablespoon + 2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

1 large or 2 small purple potatoes, thinly sliced crosswise

½ lb firm tofu, cut into 1” cubes

1/2 carrot, halved lengthwise, grated into long strips with veggie peeler

5 fresh shiitake mushrooms, stems discarded and caps thinly sliced

1 (1-inch) piece kombu

1 package of enoki mushrooms, stems discarded

½ – 1 tablespoon Shiromiso (white miso) to taste

1 cup very thinly sliced bok choy

1 teaspoon tamari to taste

1 scallion, thinly sliced

½ teaspoon dulse flakes

1. Cook purple potatoes in 1 tablespoon of oil in 3-quart saucepan over moderate heat till tender and crispy on the outside, about 4-5 minutes. Transfer into bowl and set aside.

2. Sauté onion in 2 teaspoons of oil in the same 3-quart saucepan over moderate heat. Stir frequently until it begins to brown, about 4 minutes. Add garlic and cook just enough to emit a fragrance, about 30 seconds.

3. Add tofu, carrot, shiitakes, kombu and 2 ½ cups water. Simmer until carrot is tender, about 4 minutes. Turn off heat.

4. Put miso in a small bowl and add 1/4 cup (cooled) stew liquid, mixing until miso is more liquid. Stir into stew a little at time, to taste. Note: do not allow the miso to come to a full boil. Adding miso to preparations after they have cooled, preserves the flavor and nutritional value.

5. Drain and rinse arame and add to stew along with bok choy, tamari, enoki mushrooms stirring to combine.

6. Serve right away. Sprinkle with scallion, dulse flakes and a few slices of purple potato. Note: purple potatoes are naturally purple and contain the same antioxidant that give blueberries their brilliant color.

Garden In Motion

brandy — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:58:57 +0000

The element of water brings tranquil sound and motion to a garden. Though not necessary, a set of caster wheels with brakes makes this water garden movable. By creating separate boxes, the garden can be shaped, rearranged and relocated at your whim. In this way, it’s noncommittal and a wonderful way to partition space.

Materials:
• Wood
• Water sealant
• Plastic liner
•Water plants (Plants used in this how to: Japanese sweet flag, arrowhead, common duckweed, broadleaf, stonecrop, houseleek, deer fern, and blue-eyed grass.)
• Potting soil
• Pea gravel
• Gazing ball or other ornament
• Optional: casters w/ brakes
• Optional: fountain unit (can be purchased at garden, hardware or craft stores)

Tools:
• Handsaw or circular saw
• Hammer and nails
• Drill
• Wood screws, screwdriver

(Instructions here do not explicitly call for wheels so remember to add them to your material list and fasten to box before adding soil, plants and water!!)

Step by Step Instructions:

1. Get 1×8 – inch cedar boards. (You could use 1×10 or 1×12 boards to create a deeper pond.)

2. You will need 2 pieces that are 30-inches long for the sides and 2 pieces that are 15-inches long for the ends of the box.

3. Assemble the outer frame with a hammer and some nails.

4. Measure the interior dimensions for the floor of the box. You can use the same 1×8-inch wood or you could get some 3/4-inch exterior plywood. Cut the wood with a hand saw or circular saw, or you could have it cut at your local hardware store. You want your cuts to be as straight as possible to minimize gapping.

5. Pre-drill holes every 6 inches along the edges of the box to attach the bottom piece. Start with attaching long side to the base first, then the two short sides, and finish with the remaining long side. Use wood screws to connect the boards.

6. If you want to create a divider, as illustrated in this project, for a separate planting box—cut another piece of wood that is the width of your interior. You can try it in a few different spots, before you decide on where you would like it. In this example one-third of the box is for plants and two thirds are for the water garden. When you are happy with the placement, attach the divider with the wood screws.

7. Use additional wood screws to fasten the end joints on all four corners. Screw them in as tight as possible to minimize gapping.

8. Apply sealant to lengths of 1×2-inch stripes of wood and fasten them to each corner. They will strengthen the box and provide additional sealing.

9. On the inside of the box, install a plastic liner or use a water sealant. If you are planning on having fish in your water garden, make sure that the sealant that you choose is safe for aquatic life.

10. If you are going to have a garden side in your box, you will need to drill two or three holes in the bottom to provide drainage.

11. You are now ready to create a composition with your plants. Try choosing some that vary in size, texture, and form. Choose a combination of edge, submerged, and floating plants. Select some that are taller and a couple trailing plants.

12. Fill the garden side with potting soil and fill it with plants that have similar growing requirements.

13. If you are using floating plants in the water garden, place them on a brick, so they sit two inches below the water surface.

14. As a final touch you could add ornamental elements for visual interest. You could also paint the outside of your box for a different look.

For some helpful tips on how to plant in your water garden click here and for ideas on how to maintain your water garden follow this link.

Strawberry Shortcake

brandy — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:29:04 +0000

If I were a strawberry, this would be my most desired fate!

How to make:

Strawberry Shortcake has two parts, the lush strawberries and the divine crust.

Gather the freshest strawberries, a couple of baskets full and a few to pop in your mouth will chopping them. Gently rinse the strawberries, take their green hats off, mash them lightly, just enough so they render their juice. Then sprinkle half of a cup of sugar, a couple of splashes of Grand Mariner, five or six chopped mint leaves, and a cup of cream, the thicker the better.

Let them sit in a cool place for an hour or two.

For the shortbread crust, first finely, chop a handful of hazelnuts, then add half of a cup of soft butter, a cup of sugar, two large eggs, two cups of flour, and a teaspoon of baking powder. Mix lightly until it forms a ball. In a buttered (8X11) pan add some wax paper, and then gently pat the crust into place.
Bake for about 20 minutes on 350°

When it is golden, take it out of the oven and out of the pan, and let it cool somewhat before cutting it.

Make sure the knife reaches to the center of the cake. You want to take the top off and add strawberries to the bottom half. Then put the top back on.

Thank you, Corey Amaro of Tongue in Cheek.

Trailer Park Nouveau

brandy — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:11:07 +0000

When it comes to real estate, the trailer park gets a bad rap. But some designers think that this forsaken corner of the market is worthy of reevaluation—and even resuscitation.

For decades, trailer parks have been increasingly marginalized to a strict set of stereotypes. They might gleam as well-manicured retirement communities to some, but in their most iconic state they are perceived as the province of the unfortunate. The question of whether design can save or even improve trailer parks is preempted almost immediately by “Why bother?”

The latter question is easier to answer. Allan Wallis, author of Wheel Estate: The Rise and Decline of Mobile Homes and an authority on regional housing, calls trailer parks an undervalued, endangered resource. “Hundreds of thousands of living spaces” have been zoned out of existence, Wallis says, warning that “we are losing a certain niche in the housing market that the market left on its own would not really replace.” Trailer parks, he explains, put workforce housing where communities desperately need it. Drive these inhabitants to suburbia’s outer rings, and freeways get clogged while households become severely strained by car and gas payments. Wallis welcomes innovative design: Trailer parks could use a face-lift. “You need to create a visually attractive package,” he says. “I would ask the designers of the iPod, ‘Could you do that for a mobile home?’”

Michael Hughes is an architect ready to provide that attention. TrailerWrap—–a stylish rethinking of a traditional double-wide—–began as a University of Colorado project exploring “alternative urbanism” in a standard-issue trailer park that survived Boulder’s million-dollar housing market. Trailer parks emerged, says Hughes, as “a way that more people could afford to live in urban settings, in the heart of expensive cities, and retain an interpretation of the American dream.” He argues that “you can redirect the effort and money from the 24 roof pitches you see in suburban houses and put it into bigger windows, taller ceilings, bigger volumes, better finishes, a more open and expansive connection to the outdoors.”

Hughes is not the only architect prying the trailer free of its dubious pedigree. San Francisco architect Christopher C. Deam’s design for a 400-square-foot unit called the Glassic Flat is small by any standard. Built by an established trailer manufacturer, his “shoebox with one side in glass” rolls out of the factory at around $65,000. The design holds to current modular styles, but requires no foundation, no contractor, and a fraction of the cost of a high-design modular home. “You just drive the thing in, set it up, and you’re done,” Deam says. “It’s a total solution to make prefab truly prefab.”

The design-inclined might wonder why all trailers don’t celebrate the box in this way. Mobile homes boast the briefest history in housing, literally towed into existence by the automobile. For a time, they held an atomic-age chic—–Bing Crosby counted Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz as tenants in his Blue Skies Village outside Palm Springs—–but somewhere along the line trailers became “manufactured housing.” Design gave way to economy, and trailers wheeled into a rut of small windows, fake shutters, and bleak ribbed siding. The inherent beauty of the box was supplanted by icons borrowed from suburbia.

That design lapse persists. Tim Howard, president of Breckenridge Finer Living, says he builds “cottages.” Deam’s Glassic Flat joins a Brecken-ridge line that includes a peak-roofed trailer with “the natural beauty of a stone exterior” made from “a high-density synthetic stone product.” When Deam first came into his office, Howard politely showed the architect the door. “I absolutely did not get it,” Howard says. But when Target ordered a half-dozen trailers for New York Fashion Week, Breckenridge reconsidered.

Even people who value the niche question what design could do for these communities. Wallis and sociologist Kate MacTavish at Oregon State University say designs like TrailerWrap might ease the eyesore factor, but both acknowledge that economics
and a pervasive stigma stack the deck. Wallis notes that cities have long discouraged housing that generates little in property taxes. MacTavish, who spends much of her career in the parks, calls mobile homes America’s largest source of unsubsidized affordable housing, but explains that the economics work against the individual owners. They might pay usurious interest rates and face inevitable depreciation, divesting them of the single most important investment payoff most Americans will see: their homes.

MacTavish also asks, “Where are the dollars going to come from to upgrade these aging parks?” Many trailers are nearing the end of their useful lives and owners cannot sell their homes or even afford demolition. The new designs are nice but gentrification looms. She wonders if “you would end up with two kinds of parks”: the standard lot of rusted siding, and that of elitist enclaves of design devotees keeping sleek pied-à-terres on wheels.

That wheeled oasis is Canadian designer Andy Thomson’s vision. His miniHome packs off-the-grid ecofeatures into a segmented box, but at $119,000, it’s not an affordable housing model. He shies from the “trailer park” term. “We have a contest to come up with a name, and we haven’t thought of it yet.” An investor exploring the concept of urbanites shopping for second homes, Thomson believes that “blue-collar and downtown” don’t necessarily mix.
The line between alternative style and down-market desperation may lie in demographics. While Sean Penn lived in a 27-foot Airstream and El Cosmico brings an instant arts community to rural Texas with a village of vintage trailers, the mobile cachet of cool lurches to a stop with the word “double-wide.”

For Hughes, the positive attributes of the trailer park don’t extend to the trailers themselves. While “the trailer park is built on good bones,” he says, “the downfall is in the unit.” Saving the trailer park means getting rid of the trailers. His alternative urbanism ideal would let owners buy the lots they rented and build efficient, permanent homes with traditional mortgages and the benefits of appreciation. A requirement that homes in the park remain “mobile” adds expensive retrofits to TrailerWrap—–this despite most mobile homes making only one trip, from factory to park.

Like MacTavish, Hughes holds an affection for the classic New Orleans shotgun house. He brings that restraint to a development planned for Fayetteville, where he teaches at the University of Arkansas. The idea, he says, is to “take the design ideas of TrailerWrap and ignore that it has a chassis,” creating a community of courtyard houses affordable to police officers, his fellow faculty, and employees at nonprofits.

Taking lessons learned in the trailer park beyond the park gates may be the single greatest benefit of thinking inside the box. Small, efficient homes could define a new kind of neighborhood and fulfill a promise that mobile homes missed so conspicuously. Trailers could distribute the benefits of modernism beyond its moneyed devotees to serve a greater public. The question may be not what modern design can do for the trailer park but what the trailer park can do for modern design.

Article by Rick Polito for Dwell.com.

Read more: http://www.dwell.com/articles/upwardly-mobile-homes.html

Meals on Wheels

brandy — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:08:31 +0000

Mobile dining is making its way to D-town (and Boulder)! Among the new fleet of delicious drivable kitchens are Comida, Biscuits, Denver Cupcake, a mobile Steuben’s and StrEat Chefs (to be let out of the garage soon).

Less mobile, but more predictable in location are our beloved fine fare food carts like Thai Cart, the Gastro Cart, Biker Jim’s Gourmet Dogs and Pinche Tacos.

Comida: Rayme Rossello, who brought us Proto’s, Mateo and Radda, has a new project: a big pink truck dishing out Mexican feasts in neighborhoods around Boulder. Comida took to the road on May 17, and Rosello donates 1 percent of its sales to projects aimed at feeding the hungry. Find Comida at www.eatcomida.com.

The Denver Cupcake Truck: Cake Crumbs Bakery went mobile in April, delivering Denver’s dessert fiends their fix in the form of cupcakes with flavors like Rockin’ Red Velvet, Vanilla Party and Chocolate Lemon. Owner Denon Moore and her husband, Sean, offer incentives to Twitter followers, including parties and T-shirts. Find the cupcake truck at www.cake-crumbs.com.

The Biscuit Bus: May 1 saw the debut of the Biscuit Bus, the frisky vehicular counterpart to a breakfast joint inside the Atomic Cowboy. A limited line of morning offerings is available from the truck, including the Franklin, a mix of fried chicken, bacon, cheese and gravy, and the Jack Lee, which pairs bacon with grape jelly; it’s already become a consistant presence at the farmers’ markets in Cherry Creek and Stapleton. Find the Biscuit Bus at www.denbisco.com.

Steuben’s: Serves Steuben’s staples like “Steuby Snacks”, gravy fries, lobster roll and fried pork in cones plus cubanos, happy hour… Is “Pearl” still frequenting Civic Park? Get Twitter updates and Facebook. www.steubens.com/truck.htm.

StrEat Chefs: Chef Hosea Rosenburg was the executive chef at Jax Fish House in Boulder when he won Top Chef in its fifth season. Now he’s jumped on the mobile-dining trend, with plans to hawk global street food — everything from banh mi to grilled cheese — from a tricked-out Airstream trailer slated to hit the streets this month. Find StrEat Chefs at www.streatchefs.com.

Motorhomes

brandy — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:07:08 +0000

Oh, the romance of the road. Its siren call is difficult to resist. And why should it be denied? There are practical reasons as well as romantic to opt for travel by motorhome. Not even considering fueling your adventure with veg grease, gas and other resources expended on a motorhome adventure it is far less than that of airliner, cruise ship or resort stay. Besides, motor homing affords a more intimate, spontaneous and personalized adventure.And speaking of personalized, outfitting your motorized home or trailer should be just as much a part of the adventure. Being fairly confined, this is a space that becomes more intimately experienced than most any other. And don’t I know it.

Pictured here is the stern end of Amelia Earhart, a 1976 Ford Econoline that once took me on a cathartic and creative adventure through most of the continental US. I gutted the four-wheeled beast then wallpapered, painted, recarpeted and adorned her with flokatis, faux furs, and original artwork. Romance is never complete for me without the details of spacial aesthetics. While driving, it’s the panorama of the landscape that has you, but when the cherry blossom curtains are drawn at night, one must feel embraced by the familiar comfort of home sweet (motorized)home.

Consider the following for inspiration:

House To Go

Yes, it’s a garbage truck

Woodlined Schoolbus with wood burning stove & recording studio

Cinematic Inspiration, Wim Wender’s Kings of the Road

Bike ‘n’ Fuel

brandy — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 22:44:33 +0000

Salvagetti’s is… oh yeah, it’s a bike shop. And one helluva bike shop as I hear. Admittedly, I go there as a regular for my morning lattes. And there’s no shame in going to the Happy Coffee+Parts bike thru window by foot. For one, I’m absolutely charmed by the staff and No. 2 (which is easily on par with with No.1), I love them Happy lattes! I don’t ask how it is that a bike shop has the upper hand on Denver lattes (they seem to care about everything they do there), I just enjoy. But also to be enjoyed is the knowledgeable staff, workshops and winter month spin classes at Salvagetti’s. Find out more for yourself–>Salvagetti + Happy Coffee

brandy — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 02:04:32 +0000

“But what is of great importance to me is observation of the movement of colors.”

-Robert Delaunay, Abstract Orphism Cubist painter

Not Just For Ewoks

brandy — Wed, 26 May 2010 18:44:02 +0000

I’ve long had a fantasy about one day building a tree house. What a wonderful getaway if not living space that would be! In my work, I aim to help clients create aliveness in their spaces through color and decor choices. The tree house, I believe, takes that concept to a whole new level (hmm, nice pun). I hope you enjoy sharing in my recent indulgence. As you can see, visions range from Ewok to Jetsons and everything in between.