The most wonderful time of the year

Christmas Eve is the big day for food in my book. Over the years, I've taken the square peg of my family's Christmas Eve dinner and shoved it into the round hole of a southern Italian Vigilia. The traditional, old-country Vigilia has grown into the Feast of Seven Fishes in the US. Since Christmas is a holiday that lends itself to changing traditions, my version consists of whatever exotic foods I can get my hands on at the specialty grocers in St. Pete in the lead up to Christmas Eve. I'm crazy for cured meats, real cheeses and anchovies in as many forms as I can find. My skill at throwing together a cheese course has led my friends to refer to my Christmas Eve shindig as "What a Friend We Have in Cheeses," and I find that hilarious.

Last week, the delightful women over at Design Boner clued me into a new source for next year's Vigilia victuals. Check this out:

Mostarda d'uva

Snow cone sauce.

From the villages of the Italian Piedmont, where it's been around for centuries, 

mostarda d'uva (grape mustard) is a thick, savory-sweet condiment that's eaten extensively with polenta, boiled meats or cheese. I'd be content to put it on a piece of toast or a grilled cheese sandwich, too. One look at the ingredient list will tell 

you this is special: Barbera wine grapes, freshly cut quince, sugar, cloves, dried pears, orange and lemon peel, and an array of spices, all simmered till it's the texture of chutney. Roberto Santopietro, who makes it, told Ari, "You know, it's excellent with snow." Thinking he'd misunderstood, he said, "You mean with granita?" "No," he responded firmly." With snow." You see, in the mountains they go out and gather freshly fallen snow, then serve up a cup of it topped with a spoonful or two of this.

Man! That sauce sounds incredible and it's right up my alley. The sauce and the illustration come from an online food emporium called Zingerman's. Zingerman's is an actual store in Ann Arbor, MI; but their online catalog will have to hold me over until I find myself in Ann Arbor. Their website is this food-lover's idea of heaven. They have everything from salt-cured capers, salt-packed anchovies (!), and Finocchiona (a fennel and pork cured sausage) to fresh breads of more varieties than I could count. These people carry the sorts of things I'd live on if I could. And just when I thought it couldn't get any better, I stumbled upon this:

Garum Colatura

Ancient Italian fast food.

This is one of those foods for folks looking for something both old and new – and flavorful. It’s an ancient convenience food that gets deep flavor without much work.

I’d never heard of garum colatura until I visited the Italian coast south of Naples. There I discovered it’s the liquid that’s drained off the barrels of traditionally cured anchovies. Made much the same way it was 2000 years ago, it’s used as a quick way to give great anchovy flavor to a dish without having to fillet, soak and chop the fish. Locals still use it regularly, mostly on pasta.

The best meal of my Neapolitan trip was a bowl of pasta cooked al dente that had been tossed quickly with garum, some very good olive oil, chopped garlic and a touch of dried red pepper. Our accountant, Jim, likes to mix it with olive oil in a 3:1 ratio oil:garum. He uses it as a dipping sauce for raw vegetables. Jim isn't your everyday accountant

Garum is what the Ancient Romans used as an all-purpose seasoning. I suppose it was the Roman equivalent of ketchup. Now that I think of it, American ketchup evolved from garum to begin with, so I think that's a pretty accurate analogy. Whether or not it's accurate is immaterial however because these people sell garum! Amazing! My God, the further into their site I dig the better it gets. They have a section of licorices for die hard fans too. Guilty as charged on that count! Give me real licorice any way you can imagine it and I'll be a happy man. This website is the stuff of my sugarplum visions. Licorice, salami, anchovies, real cheese and crusty bread, life doesn't get much better. Check them out.

Rounding up the blogs

Kelly Morriseau, kitchen designer to the stars, writes a blog I read religiously called Kitchen Sync. She's a woman of vision and talent and her topics always give me plenty to think about. I respect her opinion and when she published a list of predictions for 2009 and beyond, I paid attention. Read Kelly's predictions article on Kitchen Sync here. She gives me ample reason to remain optimistic. Thank you Kelly!

Laurie Burke's blog, Kitchen Design Notes, is another source of inspiration and information for me. Last week, she ran a piece on some revised regulations regarding lead in paint. Renovators everywhere need to take note. Earlier the same week, Laurie ran a piece on Codding Cottage, an LEED Platinum-certified house in Sarasota Florida. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and a Platinum certification is as high a rating as there is. I haven't been down to see it yet, bad me, but it is on my list for the next week or so. I promise to send you photos Laurie!

And it feels just like I'm walking on broken glass

Last week, Ben Popken at Consumerist ran a piece on the dangers of glass-topped tables. Under ordinary circumstances, I leave the product safety stuff to other people but this item gave me pause.

What prompted the Consumerist piece was the news that an 11-year-old girl in Rhode Island had recently died from lacerations sustained when she fell into a glass-topped coffee table. Here's the story from the Providence Journal. I mean, I've seen Kill Bill and Kill Bill 2 and I know that glass coffee tables shatter when fights break out in movies, but it never occurred to me that they could do real harm in non-movie situations.

Ben linked to a Consumer Reports article on the same topic where I came across this:

Each year an estimated 20,000 people, most of them children, are treated in emergency rooms for injuries sustained from glass furniture. In an average year, three children die. The injuries can turn critical in moments. These grim statistics prompted Consumers Union to make a presentation to ASTM-International in late 2005 recommending that a safety standard be developed to address the hazard posed by glass in furniture. Three years later, a standard is currently under development.

This issue has escaped the attention of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, an agency that could easily fix this problem. A requirement to use tempered glass in furniture would virtually eliminate all serious laceration injuries. The CPSC currently requires the use of safety glass in shower doors and storm doors, but not glass tables.

Who knew that there were no regulations in place regarding the use of tempered glass in furniture? I'd always assumed that since things like shower doors and oven fronts had to use tempered glass, that furniture would have to as well. It doesn't surprise me that the Consumer Product Safety Commission has been asleep at the wheel about this either. They've more or less been in a coma for the last eight years. This really stinks.

Apparently some manufacturers use tempered glass for their table tops and some don't. You cannot tell from looking at a sheet of glass whether it's tempered or not, so you have to ask. Don't buy anything until you have a solid answer, and even then I'd err on the side of caution. Be careful with the things, tempered or not. I mean, who knew?

My latest marble counters went in the other day

I've been working on this job for the last couple of months and the marble counters went in earlier this week. This is Carrera marble with a honed finish and it's turned out really well. I have to say that I've never seen Carrera this beautiful so kudos the Rick and the Gang at Custom Marble in Tampa for finding the slabs this counter was made from. This Carrera has veins of a taupe color in it and it reminds me of its sister stone, Statuary marble. To give you an idea of the scale of this counter, the peninsula in the foreground is made from a single, whole slab. That's a pretty big counter.

I think it's all beautiful and my homeowner's ecstatic about her renovation. There's a chunky stainless steel shelf going on the wall to the left of the hood, so that corner won't be as out of kilter as it looks now when it's completely done. The contractor's goal is to be out of there by Christmas, so if the stars align for him I'll have some photos of the completed room next week.

The cabinetry is a non-beaded inset door with an exposed, black final hinge. I used cherry with a really dark stain called espresso. The cabinetry came from Medallion's Platinum line and if you go to their website, the door style is called Craftsman.

Here's the door in a light-stained oak so you can see the details of it. I loved using this traditional door in a nontraditional and clean way. All around, I'm pretty keen on this room  and it's as close to something I'd want for myself as I've worked on in ages. But man! I wish I would have found out about those Bocci 22s  in September when this whole thing started.

Notes on orchid husbandry

My philosophy of orchid cultivation is what's called benign neglect. I'm fortunate to live in a climate where all I have to do is put them in a good spot and let nature take its course. If I try to care for them they die and when I ignore them they're fine. Well it's not quite so simple as that, but it's close. I mist them during the dry season and repot them every two years or so. Aside from that, they are on their own.

It's a good thing they're around and I get reminded of that from time to time. I think yesterday was the worst day in human history.  I swear, people formed a line for the chance to be mean to me. Horrible day. Horrible day! I came home late and paced and growled like a caged animal. I went out onto my patio and something happened to make all of that drift away.

I walked out the door and stepped into a cloud of the most delightful fragrance on the planet. My Brassavola nodosa is in bloom and nothing I've ever encountered comes close to the scent of these otherwise nondescript white and green flowers. B. nodosa blooms in the winter here and it's fragrant only on warmer, wind-free nights. Last night was one such night. I stood under a waning gibbous moon and inhaled a scent of such complexity I had to sit down to process it. It's almost as if it's a combination of the blossom of a key lime with a flutter of vanilla and a black pepper end note. If I stand farther away, it's kind of caramelly and chocolatish with a whiff of nutmeg thrown in. At mid range it's a buttery jasmine with a hint of damson plum. Man, I could spend an hour circling the thing and inhaling, dreaming of moonlit nights in exotic lands. Ahhh. One good whiff and I was transported to a cliff side terrace in Grenada, a balcony in old Rangoon or a moonlit night in the same highlands of southern Mexico where B. nodosa originated.

Having a bad day? Stick your nose in a blooming Brassavola nodosa and it won't matter anymore.