Chris Nordquist
It’s porch-sitting weather in New York. Our back porch in Southampton is fully furnished –a sofa and easy chairs, coffee table, dining table for eight, and a large, low daybed that Julia has adopted as her favorite place to jump and sprawl. The front porch, however, is completely bare, which seems like a waste of […]
Who doesn’t love candlelight?. It’s warm, festive, romantic, and flattering (the reason it’s romantic?). It can also be a little expensive. Until recently, I never paid much attention to the cost of candles. Except for pricey artisanal beeswax models, the price of candles always seemed reasonable –$2 or $3 for a taper, $8 – $20 […]
It can be frustrating. You find a interesting cocktail recipe in, say, the New York Times (or here in this blog), and it calls for Velvet Falernum or Allspice Dram or Creme de Violette –some intriguing ingredient that’s next to impossible to find. Local liquor stores (or, in more hooch-friendly states, supermarkets) tend to cover […]
Sometimes, as they say, it’s the little things. Every time I open a kitchen drawer to find a neat stack of clean white flour sack towels, I smile (at least inside). They’re just humble squares of white cotton gauze, but they’re perfectly adapted to life in the kitchen. Folded into a small square, they’re great […]
We’ve been walking around the souks of Marrakech and they’re filled with poufs –the furniture kind, at least. Here’s a repost of a piece about a pouf I got last year for Julia’s room in New York. A couple of weeks ago I was walking through Manhattan’s Chelsea Market (on a mission to buy Mahi […]
When we were planning our kitchen and family room in Southampton, we just avoided the issue of where to put the TV. We knew we wanted one — for after dinner movies and for watching the news or Ina Garten (or now the Wiggles DVDs) while making breakfast or dinner, but we never really focused […]
For the sake of our planet, and, in particular, its marine life to which they pose a particular threat, I hope that thin plastic shopping bags become rare. For now, though, they’re still everywhere. Even though I try to avoid them, I still end up bringing some home with groceries and impromptu stops at the […]
When I was in college in the mid-1980s, I took a course in rural economics at an institute out in the country outside of Bangalore, India. It was a beautiful place. Our simple but comfortable quarters had private bathrooms, but no running hot water. Each morning, I would carry a large bucket to a central […]
The weather was cold, rainy and exceedingly windy in Southampton this weekend, which drove us indoors and to some very nice activities like napping, watching a movie together and chasing a giggling Julia around the house. I also got a chance to take stock of our pantries there and in New York, both of which […]
Dressing a little girl is fun. She’s cute beyond belief, and, at 18 months old, still too young to object to our ideas about what she should wear, at least for a few more weeks. Shopping for a little girl isn’t easy, though, at least for these two men. There’s certainly a lot to choose […]
