Since I’m not a huge salad person, I worried that the edible borage flowers that I bought at the Windfall Farm stand at the Union Square Greenmarket would go bad. But no worries…I simply tucked them into an ice cube tray, and now they’re happily awaiting their future as adornment for gin and tonics.
Photo
My aunt Trudy (who my mom was visiting in Canada this past weekend) runs an online store called New Moon Creations, specializing in pendants with unique healing properties (she hand-crafts each and every item that gets shipped out). My favorite items are these beautiful - and wallet-friendly, at $18 - gemstone pendants (above), which make perfect gifts. You can tailor them to each person’s birthstone, or give them a pendant featuring a stone with properties that will enhance their life (rose quartz, for example, mends a broken heart, while jade brings peace and obsidian offers protection). I also really love her Sweetgrass and Buffalo Sage pendants.
Look for Trudy’s pendants in my Holiday Gift Guide, which will go live in early November (gift-buying stresses me out to no end, so I try to get a jump-start on the season).
The finished product, served alongside a store-bought Caesar salad. Super-quick and easy…the entire dinner for four took about 15 minutes. Go HERE for the video.
LINGUINE CARBONARA (serves 4)
What you need:
A box and a half of dried linguine (I like Barilla brand)
Linguine Carbonara is relatively inexpensive to make, and the recipe can easily be adjusted if more people decide to pop over for dinner (as I’ve found often happens when you announce you’re making this dish). The entire dinner for four ran me about $30, and could have been made even less expensive by using bacon instead of pancetta (which accounted for about $11 of the total) or a less highfalutin’ brand of parmigiana.
Friday evening’s table setting, with lavender roses courtesy of Kendrick in a Vera Wang vase that Parisa and Tim gave us when we got married, Z Gallerie bamboo placemats that I bought years ago in California, and our wedding-registry Kate Spade china. I kept the settings simple - no chargers, no side plates, not even any knives or spoons, because they weren’t needed for this meal - and used paper napkins. For a casual dinner at home, less is more.
I know the air conditioner isn’t pretty, but I tried to cover it - yeah, I know it didn’t really work - with my refurbished lamp. Also, in this picture you can see that I deliberately matched the lamp’s base to my candlesticks - a detail that I am excessively proud of.
