Apple crumble is one of my brother’s favourite desserts. It was a Saturday staple growing up, served hot with heaps of Bramley apples. Alex used to fully submerge his crumble in piping hot English custard. The custard was never my thing. I’ve attempted the odd crumble myself over the years, but it’s never been as good as the ones I grew up eating. I came across this recipe from James Rich, a British food writer with apple juice running through his veins, (Rich’s family grows apples and owns a cider farm in Somerset) and I thought I might try it. It sounds pretty classic, no doubt Alex would approve.
I came across the work of Brooklyn based artist, Yuko Nishikawa today and her art, philosophy, and rhythmic attitude to life resonated with me a great deal. She makes lighting out of clay that’s wonderfully weird and anthropomorphic, as well as beautiful mobiles that feel like roving planets. During quarantine she made one painting a day, some incredibly detailed, and others simple and bold in execution. “Piku piku,” Nishikawa says in her artist’s statement, “is a Japanese onomatopoeia that describes involuntary movements caused by unexpected contact. I want my work to make you feel piku piku, tickling something deep down inside you.”
One of the silver linings of Covid, is seeing how imaginative and resourceful people can be in times of challenge. We’ve watched neighbourhood restaurants morph into gourmet grocers, florists sending stems with build-your-own-bouquet videos, and dozens of gyms and fitness centres taking their workouts into the woods. This summer, I watched my friend, Lily turn her drive and garage into a creative heaven for neighbourhood children. Lily’s grassroots camp provided jobs for local teenagers, and kept the younger children in her neighbourhood safe and engaged. My friend, Jessica, a Mum of two and a passionate cook, zoom-taught sprogs across the country to make bread sticks, croissants and sticky buns. “My mantra has been from the very beginning,” said Moschino head designer, Jeremy Scott, “my body may be in quarantine, but my mind isn’t.” I love this quote. It’s a solid reminder of how creative we can be despite limitations. This year, Moschino presented Spring 2021 in a very different way. Scott worked with Jim Henson’s famous Creature Shop to create a marionette puppet show titled, “No Strings Attached” in lieu of a traditional runway show. It’s kind of exquisite –– the dolls, the clothes, the imagination.
For the last few months, this parking lot has doubled as our children’s playground. With our back yard a mud-pit of discarded nails, wood planks and sheets of aluminium, the parking lot behind our house became their stomping ground. And boy, have they stomped. If not shooting hoops, or racing their bikes around the outer rims of the lot, they’re playing hide and seek, gaga ball or simply loitering like teenagers. In the summer months, all the neighbourhood kids gathered here for games, and now it’s just the three of them again, plus our next door neighbour (and his ace laser pistols) throwing a ball, counting cars, bickering and laughing. By 5 p.m. the parking lot is empty, so they have so much room to run around. It’s not charming or quaint, but it’s all the fun they need.
I’m not a huge fan of Autumn flowers –– celosia, chrysanthemums and rudbeckia –– but I still think any flower in abundance looks beautiful. Heaps of goldenrod, or a vase full of cornflowers is lovely, even if they’re not my favourite bloom. As clichéd as they are, sunflowers really are joyful, conjuring images of Provençal fields, Van Gogh paintings and stone kitchens with large farmhouse sinks. Everyone should buy themselves a sunflower this weekend; better yet, make it a dozen.
Yesterday evening we went to watch the salmon making a metre-and-a-half jump over the Old Mill dam on their way upstream along the Humber River. The salmon run is the time when salmon which have migrated from the ocean, swim to the upper reaches of rivers to lay their eggs. What’s miraculous to me is that they use a sense known as magnetoreception to locate the general position of their natal river. Once “home,” they lay their eggs, and with the exception of Kelts, (repeat spawners) the salmon then die there. As I watched the fish fling themselves at the dam, putting in their very best effort against the gush of water, my human responses –– disappointment, sadness, frustration –– kicked in. Many of them didn’t make it over, despite their bold efforts, and most of them will die without making it home. And yet, for the salmon, c’est la vie. Fish are used to facing threat and adversity, it’s all they know; only the strongest, and luckiest reach their destination. This is nature. This is life. Perhaps, in some ways, we’re not so different to a Chinook. “I think we’re going to the moon because it’s in the nature of the human being to face challenges,” said Neil Armstrong. “It’s by the nature of his deep inner soul… we’re required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.”
‘Take your pleasure seriously,” said Charles Eames. Choose work that fulfills you, and make room for people and pastimes that do the same. Charles, and his wife, Ray resolved to only take on projects that were of interest to them, and once committed to the project, give it their very best. Pleasure remained a priority all their lives, from the chairs they designed, to the picnics they prepared for gathering friends. To this trailblazing couple, seeking pleasure wasn’t a luxury, but a necessary pursuit, a process, and a way of being. Eames once said, “we worked very hard at that—enjoying ourselves. We didn’t let anything interfere with what we were doing—our hard work. That in itself was a great pleasure.”
I’ve always wanted red hair. Both my paternal grandparents were red heads, so I was in with a running chance. Sadly, I got brown hair, but I also got olive skin which they didn’t have, so I suppose there’s something for everyone. I’ve dyed my hair twice in my life, and both attempts were at a rich, pre-Raphaelite red. In the first instance, the result was more of a tango orange, and the second, Christmas Eve, 1994, was a Gothic plum. Barring some golden highlights in the late 90s, I’ve since accepted by natural brown (with lightening bolts of grey) locks. I do still double take every time I see a red head though. They are beautifully rare, after all.
Frances Palmer is a bee keeper and a potter. She grows giant dahlias (some 140 varieties) in her beautiful Connecticut garden, and is a passionate photographer and cook. She studied Art History at Columbia and cut her teeth at print making and knitting before getting into clay. I read an inspiring profile on Palmer in House & Garden today –– her creativity, approach to clay, and life. Of clay she says, “you have to be completely calm. I meet the material part-way. It’s the same with the flowers and bees.” And of her ability to move from one creative endeavour to another, she says, “I’ve trained myself to do many different things in small segments over the course of the day…..Yesterday I began by making a butternut squash cake for our meeting, then I worked on my kintsugi.” It’s always exciting to meet a person so abundantly creative and whose aesthetic is so confident that it manifests in every single thing they create. Have a gander around her home; it really is a labour of love.
My Mum wore Kenzo in the 90s. She owned a lot of the brand’s signature prints, and she wasn’t afraid of combing them. I was sad to hear of the passing of Kenzo Takada. His designs were exuberant, playful and irreverent. As journalist, Suzy Menkes said yesterday, “he wanted to make happy clothes.” If you have a minute today, please watch this beautiful portrait of Kenzo’s hands created by Buenos Aires-based filmmaking collective, 1985. “The hand is where the mind meets the world. The way we use it shows what kind of a person you are.”
