Featured – The Ranchette

Goodbye, Vegas Bath!

October 14, 2012 11 Comments

Things have been a bit crazy here at the Ranchette lately, hence the neglect of this blog. But in the meantime I’ve been planning a big project for a little room. This house was built in 1963, so there’s not much hope of adding a Japanese ofuro or an enormous steam shower. My top priorities for this bath are that it be functional, that every component represents something I’ve always wanted, and that it be highly, highly cleanable. Since we moved in we’ve contended with a fiberglass shower stall and a glass/aluminum sliding shower door. The fiberglass is a sort of putty color with flecks of gold glitter in it, which is why I call it the Vegas shower. And like Las Vegas, it is perpetually dirty, both from 49 years of abrasive cleaners and the many unreachable crevices in the aluminum track. For seven years I have hated it, and I am finally doing something about it.

So first, here is my dream bath…

Blog, Featured, Food

Nontoxicocktail

July 17, 2012 6 Comments

I was throwing a weeknight dinner party for an old friend (as I am wont to do). And for the end of the meal, I had planned a special cocktail to cap off the evening.

When she showed up at my door, I was nonplussed. I quickly gave my menu a mental review: no soft cheeses, no raw eggs, no lunchmeat. Check, check, check… just in case. But it wasn’t till I saw her rub her belly that I felt safe in asking my question: “Uh, is there something you wanted to tell me?”

Here’s a rule for life: no non-pregnant woman ever rubs her stomach, except maybe if she’s eaten a really large meal, and even then probably not.

And yes, my friend was seven months pregnant, and had not mentioned it. And so my cocktail was out. That’s okay, we just had them later.

I don’t claim to be any kind of mixologist, but I did make up this cocktail especially for my sweet husband Richard, who loves orangey things, and for the novelty factor: it glows in the dark.

Blog, Featured, Things I Love

From Russia with Love

June 5, 2012 2 Comments

So, this happened.

Thanks to my very dear friend Michael Tole, who also happens to be a serious Artist with a capital A, this is my new view upon waking and falling asleep. I love it. Love is not the word.

This beast is 5 feet by 4 feet of vertiginous, riotous wonder. I generally like my art kind of dark and miserable, and this is most certainly not.

Blog, Featured, Food

Toas-Tite Madness

June 2, 2012 4 Comments

My friend Stacey first introduced me to the Toas-Tite a few months ago, and the impulse to buy one of my own has been lingering in my brain ever since. This week, I succumbed.

The Toas-Tite is a little clam-shaped sandwich maker with a long handle. You put in a piece of buttered bread, add your filling, put a second piece of bread on top, and close them in the Toas-Tite iron. Peel off the excess bread, put it over the stove (or the campfire!), and minutes later you have a UFO-shaped sandwich that simply does not leak, just as they claim. Introduced in 1949, it’s a space-age gadget for space-age sandwiches.

Blog, Featured, Things I Love

Things I Love: Dansk Edition

May 26, 2012 1 Comment

We had been limping along with disposable pepper grinders from Aldi for a few years, but after the plastic mechanisms kept getting ground up and dumped into our food, I thought it was time for a grown-up one. Whenever I need to buy something practical and/or boring like this, I ask myself if there is a classic version of it. Then I consider whether I like that classic version. It works a bit better than the process of going to Target and Bed Bath & Beyond, thinking everything looks like junk, and then buying something anyway out of desperation.