kitchen

Rhubarb

When I was growing up in rural Northeastern Washington, very near the north and easternmost reaches of the state near Canada and Idaho, home to Neo Nazis and other groups with interestingly purist ideas, we had gardens. My mother was an early devotee of organics and a great cook. She helped my grandparents tend their large garden in town, and she and my grandmother canned peaches from orchards along the Columbia River and cherries and pears and sweet pickles and dill pickles. It was called "putting food by" (great article in The San Francisco Chronicle on canning today), and people actually ate this food throughout the year. We ate this food throughout the year. It wasn't an ironic gesture.

My mom also had a garden at our house, a two-story turn-of-the-century white frame farmhouse out in the country that she largely restored by herself while her second husband fixed cars around the clock for his livelihood. Which was better because his personality had the overall and ongoing impact of a cluster of cockleburrs under a saddle.

Our garden wasn't as big or as well-oiled of an operation as my grandparents', but every year it yielded perhaps the tartest, most bracingly Dorothy Parker-esque berries ever, gooseberries, as well as strawberries and rhubarb, among other fruits and vegetables. Next to huckleberries (which we would pick on trips to the mountains that felt to me, at that age, interminable and frightening - a bear with cubs could be lurking around every next corner! Two cougars attacked someone just over the hill last month!), rhubarb was my favorite protagonist for baked goods. Unlike the more cloying, please-love-me pie fillings, its sweetness had to be coaxed.

These days, I don't have much time to cook. If I made my mother's recipe for Rhubarb Cake, my self-imposed training regimen might be destroyed in an afternoon, in a half-hour as I devoured half of the buttermilk (in my little petty authoritarian baking world, buttermilk is so often what delivers the swoon worthy) cake by myself, reminded that a life sans fat is not a life worth living. I could make a rhubarb fool or flummery, but that would be equally fraught with peril. I did splurge recently and have the amazing rhubarb crisp made crazily, diet-be-damned, tomorrow-is-another-day good by Cynthia Wong at one of my favorite new restaurants, Cakes & Ale. But for home I like ease and I like to keep caloric temptation in the world without.

So this week instead of poring over show stopping recipes for bavarians and flummeries and trifles within Tartine or Classic Home Desserts, I turned to the red and white checked goodness of the Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook, and made Rhubarb Sauce (which is really more like stewed rhubarb), perfect for swirling into my morning Wallaby yogurt with a few sprinkles of homemade granola on top. Here's all you do:

1/2 to 2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1 strip orange peel (optional - I left it out)
3 cups sliced rhubarb

In a medium saucepan, stir together sugar, water, and, if desired, orange peel. Bring to boiling; stir in rhubarb. Return to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and simmer about 5 minutes or until rhubarb is tender. Remove the orange peel, if using. Serve warm over cake or ice cream. Cover and chill any leftovers for up to 3 days.

Happy Birthday, Jimmy Stewart!

Jimmy Stewart would have turned 100 today. Sadly, few people under 35 today even know who Stewart is, let alone why he is, in San Francisco Chronicle film writer Mick LaSalle's view, The Best Movie Star Ever. I love the flamboyant assuredness of the superlative. Here's a snippet from LaSalle's brilliantly-written tribute to Stewart, which incidentally is a passionate case for the rarity of such fine acting:

Why do we persist in believing he was a simple man, when he rarely, if ever, played simple men? Invariably, he was smarter, or deeper, or stronger, or angrier, or creepier, or weirder, or braver or simply better than anybody else might have guessed. He played men who hid their feelings from the other characters, but he showed his true feelings to us. We saw them, even as he tried to swallow his anger at the mob, or conceal his smile of contempt for the bad guy or do his best not to become unhinged at the sight of Kim Novak with the wrong hairdo.

This is how important Stewart is: He had the best acting career in the history of cinema. Period. To say this requires neither undue confidence nor some mystical formulation. A glance at the filmography removes all doubt. Stewart was a major star for longer than almost anybody else, and he worked with the finest directors. He was a favorite of Hitchcock, Capra, Ford and Anthony Mann, and he made classics or near-classics for Ernst Lubitsch ("The Shop Around the Corner"), George Cukor ("The Philadelphia Story"), Otto Preminger ("Anatomy of a Murder") and Don Siegel ("The Shootist").

I've seen many of these films and LaSalle is so right about the emotional complexity Stewart conveys in his films. "Rear Window" and "Vertigo," two of Hitchcock's best, express the psychological warp of obsession that befalls a seemingly plain vanilla guy who gets a little too close to something he doesn't understand, and then finds himself unable to back away. "Bell Book and Candle," also with Kim Novak, is also a favorite, yet doesn't show the depth to which LaSalle refers. And is there a more romantic scene on film than that between Stewart and Donna Reed in "It's a Wonderful Life," when he comes home from college and realizes, enraged, that he is in love with the small town girl who lives in the small town he so desperately wants to escape?

As a film buff who, either by happenstance or taste, tends toward films of the 1970s and before, I idolized this generation of movie stars when I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s. I would spend hours in Cinema Books in Seattle reading from biographies of Greta Garbo and Bette Davis and purchasing stills of Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn from "The Philadelphia Story." I was crestfallen when Cary Grant died. I had been planning to become a journalist and he was on my short list for interviews. Later, I was waylaid by the temporal goo of Andrew McCarthy and Ralph Macchio, but that early megawattage of stars like Stewart held, and those are many of the films that I watch today. Happy Birthday, Jimmy! We still love you.

Money Can't Buy Taste

I have been absent, although much worth writing about has transpired in life and in news. I shall shortly be present. In the meantime, I wanted to share a great read from the May 12 issue of The New Yorker on Grant Achatz of Chicago's Alinea. The profile is on Achatz's battle with tongue cancer (I'll skip predictable comment on the irony of it all), but it is a study in a broader sense on taste and sensory perception. It's also an insightful exploration of one of the qualities we admire, and often aspire to, in our most talented artists: a refusal to compromise. In Achatz's case, not only for his art but for his life.

Paper, Rock, Scissors

I just did these press kits for the fabulous Lush Designs here in Atlanta, an artisan jewelry studio that does really simple, lovely work, the kind of stuff you reach for every day. I should have put a little fuzzy chick or a pencil in this photo for scale - these kits are actually 6"x9", not the standard size for many press kits. I like the smaller size. You can special order envelopes to fit and I think they make a good visual presentation. There is a lot of talk about the press release being dead and anything non digital being irrelevant. Certainly, we have many new media tools now to leverage our communications. I think that is great. But like any other communication if it's not meaningful and is just thrown out into the world sans intention (and, corn ball as it sounds, heart) it means little. I rather like the wonderful surprise of getting something creatively handcrafted in the mail. I think media do, too. We all need the tactile in our lives. I mean, seriously, who is going to enjoy a cashmere wrap more, me? Or my avatar? The marketing types get a little hysterical in their attempts to be au courant and jump on every new media fad, without a lot of thought as to whether the avenue can be effective for their client or, if it can be, how. I think craft is all the more relevant now because we want beautiful things to lay hands on. Handcrafted and one-of-a-kind if possible. Beehive Co-op here in Atlanta provides that sustenance for a lot of us. Natalie Chanin, founder of Alabama Chanin, just published a book I am about to order, Alabama Stitch, that celebrates generations of stitching techniques from Alabama (as in, the state) artisans. People crave not just to buy, but to learn. It's good to find ways to soothe your own soul. The daily dispatches from the newspaper sure aren't going to. Anyway, I enjoy making these kits. Artists and creative entrepreneurs have many more tools available to them now. There is my personal addiction, Moo, and a new company, Blurb, that lets you design and print your own books. And they are fantastic looking. This shift is happening, indeed, because of Typepad and other self-publishing tools. I think the playing field is going to get increasingly leveled in this realm, all to the power of independents. Look at the refashioning of the business model for the music industry (as demonstrated by Radiohead and others) that has so many big labels wetting themselves (sidenote: Is this karma for a generation of blues artists who were robbed of the rights to their music, perhaps? I like to think so.), as David Byrne so eloquently discussed in a recent issue of Wired. It is happening in the realm of small farms like White Oak Pastures. Will Harris is a fifth generation cattle rancher and a very sage man. He is opening a sustainable on-farm processing plant at the farm that has been in his family for five generations and in the process is upending, incrementally at least, how "agribidness" is done in Georgia. The decks are still stacked against independent entrepreneurs in many ways, but there are always avenues for doing things a little differently, and I predict the marketplace will continue to shift to offer all of us even more provocative, useful tools to compete.

Walk This Way

Happy (almost) Earth Day! In honor of Earth Day tomorrow The New York Times devoted its Sunday Magazine to a panoply of big and small ways we can all reduce our carbon footprints. I realize many people are probably on eco-fatigue at this point, I know sometimes I find myself irked (like when I really, really want oranges in April or when I forgot my cloth bag at Whole Foods) by having to tack more "shoulds" onto my to do list in an adult world that at times seems purely rooted in the guilt produced by the impossibility of ever achieving enough of them. Oh, I am such a stereotypical overly-educated liberal white chick. Anyway, yes, sometimes the sudden tsunami of information on all things "green," not to mention having to sort the authentic from the greenwashing, can be overwhelming. But I like how solutions-based and downright wonky some of the dialogues going on are, how innovation in sustainable design and technology is really hitting its stride. We are no longer in the 1978 health food store world where we must live on Tiger's Milk and "bread" that tastes like punishment for wrongs done in past lives. Ok, I was like, eight-years-old then, but my mom was on the forefront. Thanks, Mom! I digress horribly today. I wanted to post about one of the nifty little items in the NYT Sunday Magazine, on a cool website called Walkscore, that lets you enter your address to get a score of how walkable your neighborhood is. If your neighborhood ranks a score of 90 or above, you are living in a 'hood where you could (theoretically at least) live without a car. It also generates a map with push pins representing restaurants, coffee shops, grocery stores, and other amenities near your nabe to which you might walk or pedal. My neighborhood got a 77, which seems fair, although a number of the businesses it pulled up I would never actually walk to simply because either the neighborhoods are still in transition or the pedestrian thoroughfares might increase my likelihood of a becoming a hood ornament on an Escalade. Consumers taking all of these steps to green their footprints is definitely helpful, if for no other reason than we can use our collective awakening to pressure the corporations whose actions are integral to real change to put their pedals to the metal.

What PR Means to Me

Well if you want to sing out, sing out
And if you want to be free, be free
'Cause there's a million things to be
You know that there are.

-Cat Stevens, from "Harold and Maude"

Being a publicist is part of what I do. It's not the all of it, luckily, because dealing with the media isn't always a picnic in Central Park with Auntie Mame. Just saying that is breaking the PR code. We are supposed to be tireless, enthusiastic resources for media, provide them with useful information on behalf of our clients to, ideally, get stories about them placed.

I've always been ambivalent about PR. But it's kind of like being ambivalent about the concept of transportation. PR is, indeed, often the automobile. There are some poorly designed, gas hogging, silly looking cars out there that make a lot of noise and add nothing to the lexicon of the automobile or the world except, of course, for their exhaust. But there is also the Prius, Zipcar, the bicycle, the city bus, the skateboard, horse drawn carriage, pogo stick, and your own two feet clad in pink Minnetonkas.

I do PR for clients whose stories I think have value, add beauty or meaning to people's lives, solve a problem, have a history that interests me, are making a political or ecological stand or who, yeah, make food that makes me (and others) extremely happy to eat!

Does this mean I am an elitist snob and only work with small, boutique clients? Not at all. Some of my best clients have been corporations, some who have been around for a long time, others who are new and are just as passionate about what they do as a single artisan working into the night at her studio. The corporation in and of itself is not evil, nor is each farmer noble and selfless. People are the determiners.

PR to me is telling stories in a way that moves or excites or incites people. Like this.

There is an old-school way of thinking about PR that says that as a practitioner, you must be kind of like a doctor or a lawyer and divorce yourself emotionally from what your clients do. You should be apolitical and strive not to offend anyone. It's your job to make everyone comfortable. There are a lot of PR firms and independents who can manage this detachment from the message. I've never been able to and, as I get older, I don't want to. And moreover, I don't think it's good business.

I think more people in business, which includes PR, should have a point of view that may, in fact, lose them a few clients. The protesters who scaled the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge yesterday to swiftly, perfectly affix "Free Tibet" banners prior to the Olympic torch relay's stop in San Francisco knew they had a brief window to tell a story to the world. They did it boldly and with precision. Everyone may not agree with it, but even those who don't have to admire, on some level, the courage to say what you believe.

PR has the power to do that. New media frenzy aside, everything new becomes old and the essence of each tool is using your imagination to honestly tell a story that may move others as it moves you. Too often though, rather than hanging a banner boldly stamped with something of meaning, it sends up multicolored balloons that end up choking the sea animals.

To have a point of view in business means you have to be willing to lose. Big overheads with real art on the walls and salaries to pay tend to make even the visionaries among us lose their nerve. These things are easy for me to say, because in the salad aisle of business, I am microgreens. Most of my clients would be likeminded, and in that I am extremely fortunate. But on occasion you see big companies or campaigns take a risk, and it is all the more exhilarating for what they stand to lose. Look at how Barack Obama refused to distance himself from his pastor, who made comments that perhaps white America needed to hear. In so doing, Obama told a story about himself that made me like him more. It told me something important I needed to know about who he is that cemented my decision to support him.

Hillary Clinton, who seems the bolder of the two, would never be so bold. Because the boldness I am talking about is vulnerability, which requires having the confidence in yourself and others to put all of your chips in the game.

So this is just, in essence, a little love letter to everyone who is telling their story as only they can. Everyone who is being bold in doing their thing and leading from the heart, whether you are a publicist working to preserve ancient Redwoods, a chef considering a menu that includes only humanely raised meats, or a designer who only makes forties-style hats for men. Everyone won't like you, and you may not make a lot of money, but the people and experiences you will attract will unfold in wonderful, enriching surprise.

I Want Candy

As spring opens its cheerful, ever optimistic buds, I'm in the depths of sorrow (of maybe just the barren hollows of a sugar crash) for eating the very last of my stash of chocolates (the Tofu and Sake Zotter bar, from Austria) hoarded from a foray to the inimitable Candy Store on my trip to SF last month. Ah, the Candy Store. The pretty picture makes it look so soigne, so very refreshingly Catherine Deneuve in the frequently cloying, seemingly inspired by Heidi Montag, universe of sweets. But mere images deceive. This little outpost is stacked with as many different layers of sweetness as your Viennese grandmere's Sacher Torte. Upon crossing the threshold, I am Bambi in the headlights - this way, or that? Oh, deer! Red licorice ropes or black licorice Scottie dogs? Brown and Haley's Peanut Butter Mountain Bar, friend of my youth, or organic and fair trade Austrian Zotter bars which, unlike many of their well-meaning cohorts, decidedly do not taste like dirt (the Blood Orange is a revelation of subtle flavor and texture akin to fresh marzipan). In my mind, I dash this way and that, grabbing, but we adults do not comport ourselves with such obvious, if frenzied, delight. No, that would be immature. Instead, we stand and stare and covet, wondering how the hell we will get out of here without spending $100 and becoming, officially, yuppie scum deserving of having our handbags snatched within the block. In the course of my judicious, barely restrained 20 minutes at the Candy Store, I talked with one of the owners, Diane Campbell, who is delightfully not cloying and who has an eye for curating a winning collection that includes all the best of the old and the new. From her advice I selected the chocolate pretzel caramels from V Chocolates and two Zotter Bars in the aforementioned Blood Orange and Tofu and Sake flavors. If you're not in the Bay Area, no worries: the Candy Store is happy to ship all the sweets your eyes (if not your stomach) can behold.

Sweet Tarts

I can make a pretty pastry, but my mom is still the Grande Dame of pate sucree in our family. You can eat six of these little lemon tartlets, she kept assuring me, and that still doesn't equal one piece of pie!

SF Trip

Pics from my trip to San Francisco earlier this month. The donut holes pictured were one of the best studies of fried dough I've ever experienced...enjoyed with libations (!) during a sunny afternoon respite on Union Street. More posts to come on the second annual California Artisan Cheese Festival and the fabulous Candy Store, among other swoon worthy episodes.

Regular Joe

I quite like this little item reported in today's San Francisco Chronicle about the California courts ruling that the grande daddy of coffee chains, Starbucks, must pay more than $100 million to baristas whose tips were shared with shift supervisors. I've been a barista and I can tell you that those tips are manna from the heavens for the frequent hell of being an, er, coffee worker serving the decaf mint mocha inclined with a smile. Ah, killing me softly with your battery of flavored syrups.

This news sheds a new light on the reports of the last few days, like this one from the Seattle P.I. detailing Starbucks' multi-bulleted plan to turn the flagging company around, led by the impassioned, earnest enough sounding entreaties of the company's founder and CEO, Howard Schultz. The articles almost had me rooting for Starbucks. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and I remember when Starbucks was a much smaller, and better, enterprise.

Today, Starbucks has more than 15,000 stores around the world. As a consumer and a business owner, I can understand Starbucks' rampant, if misguided, appetite for more. If you strike a vein of gold, as Starbucks did decades ago, why would you want to stanch the flow? It seems to be the course of things that small companies that do well become big, then flame out in mediocrity or even ruin. Everything has its time and, like great musicians or artists or even a fine wine, few people or things endure on anything more than embers. More pragmatically (and how I resent such cynical words, the province of "adults," while continually resigning myself to the reality that the world, a cynical place, turns on them) rarely can CEOs face a room full of shareholders and insist on the level of purity and authenticity that drove them to open their little coffee shop on Pike Street to begin with.

I admire Howard Schultz's brilliance and his entrepreneurial legacy. And I hope that he can steer the company back toward a less Disney-fied course. The (perhaps naive) object lesson to me, which means I'll never (gee whiz) be at the helm of 15,000 stores, is that I think when you tap the vein, it's important to stop. And think: What am I doing? Or, in the case of Starbucks, What are we doing, and do we really want to end up where this road will take us? Growth doesn't have to mean selling the heart and soul of your dream. But typically, it does.

If Starbucks truly wants to get back to its "coffeehouse feel," a good place to start would be keeping its mitts out of the tip jar.

Tornado

Here are photos from the Atlanta-Journal Constitution of Cabbagetown, my neighborhood and one of the hardest hit in the tornado here in Atlanta Friday night that cut a swatch through the densely populated downtown area. I was home when it happened and it was like nothing I've ever experienced. Around 10pm it suddenly started raining incredibly hard, followed by lightning and what sounded like hail and then a clenched fist of sound like an oncoming freight train. I ran into the bathroom to wait it out and it was over within 20 seconds. When I and the other residents of my street went outside moments later, the above scenes awaited. Thoroughly surreal.

Making Tracks

I finally found some time to sit down with a story in The New Yorker that has been getting some buzz in recent weeks about the vagaries of evaluating, much less taking action to limit, our carbon footprints. The story documents British grocery megaretailer Tesco's Herculean efforts to create labeling to educate consumers about the carbon footprint (defined as each individual or corporation's contribution to global warming) we leave via our purchases, from buying beef to drinking bottled water.

The buy local/eat local movement, of which I have been and am a strong proponent, has become vaunted to rock star/sainthood status. Always a cause for pause. Yet, if nothing else, I love that money is going to small, independent farms because of the personal, authentic connection it allows people to their food. This extends to retail, too, and I'm hopeful that we will increasingly see innovative, yet beautifully simple at heart, business models such as those championed by my client Beehive Co-op, that offer product almost exclusively from local designers. The concept of buying local, if nothing else, makes us stop...and think. It can make us realize how disconnected we can become because of the anonymity technology affords us.

Although, in all honesty, there are times when anonymity with all of its bland absence of judgement or editorial comment can be nice. If I am in Greta Garbo mode, I want to leap over the counter if the barista at the local coffee shop looks at me askance. There is a downside of being known. People might realize you are totally weird.

Anyway, it is a rainy morning in Georgia and I am digressing but suffice it to say that Michael Specter's piece in The New Yorker challenges the cozy assumptions many of us have already swallowed like a tasty bite of heirloom apple - that buying local food or other goods is not only more virtuous but also better for the environment. As it turns out, sustainability, like so many things in life, is not as simple as it may seem on its face. Does a rose grown and flown from Holland to England have more impact than one grown in Kenya and flown there? Are you sure? Is it colonialist to pressure developing countries not to clearcut their forests when they have no other immediate, viable alternatives for economic gain?

Specter puts forth many such provocative challenges to our understanding of sustainability, but ultimately, of global warming, he concludes that money and legislation will drive the change that will keep all of our collective heads above water - literally. Consumers' shifting attitudes are important to making business turn away from polluting behaviors, but ultimately the marketplace needs to offer incentives that make truly being "green" (anyone need another ode to Kermit's "It ain't easy being green," ever, in this lifetime? Gag me, seriously.) the more attractive choice. In tipping a sacred cow, Specter (and others) encourage us to once again be curious rather than self-congratulating in our mindfulness, and I think that's a good thing. I like buying local, because I find that if nothing else, often what I get when I do so tastes better, is more lovingly crafted, or is just conveyed to me with more authenticity. Even when that authenticity comes in the form of a soy latte frothed up by a barista who thinks the Bee Gees on vinyl are the pinnacle of irony. Especially then.

Frontburner

Here is a link to Michael Tuohy's new blog, frontburner, that I helped design. Michael is a fellow former San Franciscan and in addition to having a wonderful seasonal, often locally-sourced menu at his Woodfire Grill in Atlanta, he has a lot to say on food politics. His latest post on health inspectors telling him he can't make his housemade charcuterie at the restaurant is disheartening, to say the least. I really hate sounding like the elitist Californian, but c'mon people, your appetite for development can't, seemingly, be sated, you totally thumb your nose at things like water conservation, and people who try to do things in a truly progressive way (again, I am not referring to molecular gastronomy and other "new" trends that have hit, and quickly departed from, Atlanta) that would draw the kind of people who might help make Atlanta a world-class city are treated in this way? This local provincialism on top of the country's biggest beef recall in history last week paints a disheartening picture. We have a meat industry that tries to rouse sick cattle from the slaughterhouse floor with forklifts and electric prods and inspectors are spending their time hassling small restaurateurs who are trying to source sustainably, humanely raised animals from local farms? It is enough to make me a vegetarian, but I think I will make a reservation at Woodfire Grill soon to show my support instead.

Taster's Choice

In honor of Valentine's Day, a fascinating profile of international chocolate taster Chloe Doutre-Roussel on NPR's "Marketplace." It's somehow about so much more than chocolate.

Mystery Meat

An honest, humorous and thought provoking piece in the AJC by our own John Kessler on the slippery moral morasse presented by buying meat. He is so right about the collective hypocrisy many of us enact by thoughtfully selecting humanely raised meat from known origins at Whole Foods while unquestioningly eating meat we are served at local restaurants. As Kessler points out, the lack of transparency and progressive regulation in the meat industry leaves us with limited ability, if we eat meat, to be consistent in our ethics. This is why it's all the more important to support local restaurants and retailers that make the extra effort when it comes to educating patrons about the farmers and vendors who provide a menu's food. In Atlanta, pioneers like Michael Tuohy have long championed this ethic and others (Five Seasons Brewing Company, Restaurant Eugene, Riccardo Ullio's new Beleza) are hopping on the trend. Until consumers understand what is at stake to our health and to the environment when we choose cheap meat (or, indeed, cheap food), the provenance of much of our meat will remain a mystery.

Chocolate on the Inside

There's no harbinger of spring like finding oneself suddenly smitten, whether the object of affection is another person or even, perhaps (ahem), a pair of Charlotte Ronson flats. Crushes pluck us from the unforgiving ice and slush of a "Dr. Zhivago" winter and set us down in the technicolor green grass sweetness of an "Umbrellas of Cherbourg" spring. Crushes enliven our senses and remind us we can be surprised by the world.

Kitchen's latest crush is on the chocolate wonders being turned out by the dedicated folks at Askinosie Chocolate, a small batch chocolate maker based in Springfield, Missouri. Askinosie is the brainchild of Shawn Askinosie, a former defense attorney who founded his company in 2007 to make great chocolate that gives farmers, in Askinosie's words, "a stake in the outcome," which in this case means paying them above fair trade prices.

I first tried Askinosie's Soconusco 75 percent chocolate bar (which is made from single origin beans harvested in Mexico) last fall at Oakland's Bittersweet Cafe. I really can't remember being so captivated by a chocolate bar since reading those famously evocative passages in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" when little Charlie Bucket oh-so-gingerly, ever-so-appreciatively, unwraps the foil of his Wonka bar in hopes of finding an elusive golden ticket. The audacity of hope, indeed.

First, I'll make no pretense. I'm a complete sucker for packaging. Askinosie's is brilliant. It draws you into its intrigue. You want to know: who are these people and what are they up to? Much like the Lee Brothers Boiled Peanuts catalogues: lovingly and artfully crafted, homespun yet polished and perfect, bursting with a story to tell. The front panel of Askinosie's kraft paper packages have a picture of the farmer whose land the cocoa beans came from, the country and region the beans originate from, the variety and the cocoa content. And a nifty map with more details is tucked inside should you want to know more.

But, like a novel with arresting cover art, none of this would matter if the chocolate disappointed. It does not. This is chocolate that is sustainably sourced, is made with beans for which farmers have been paid a fair price, and tastes amazing: dark, sweet, smooth, complex. What chocolate or coffee lover hasn't felt the disappointment of buying a fair trade product that, while noble in ethos, delivers all the flavor of a sodden recycled paper towel? In addition to the Soconusco bar that gave wing to the thousand butterflies of my affection, Askinosie also makes a 70 percent San Jose Del Tambo dark chocolate bar (beans from Ecuador). They also make Soconusco and Del Tambo "Nibble Bars" with cocoa nibs and delectable sipping chocolates that, like any good crush, remind you how good things can really be. And just in time for Valentine's Day, no less.

Art + Commerce

A big congratulations to my client and friend Petra Geiger, founder of Beehive Co-op, on a great piece in Business Week on the challenges of making a living from your art. I feel so lucky to learn from and continually be inspired by the vision of entrepreneurs like Petra, who understand that "building a brand" is not about fashioning a glossy veneer, it's about defining and articulating what truly excites you about what you do. If you can't tap into that, you can't very well share it convincingly with anyone else. Way to go, Petra!

Hide n' Seek

The first handbags I remember belonged to my grandmother, who loved clothes despite our sartorially challenged spot on the map in the corner of northeastern Washington State. Like the other ladies she often went to lunch with downtown, there were rules associated with handbag carriage. The rules seemed to be fairly finite: the bag needed to be either white or buff colored leather, preferably with gold hardware. It had to be large with sharp, squared off corners and external and internal pockets. It had to make a loud snapping noise when shut. Sometimes, it might come with a matching checkbook cover. And, most important, when leaving the house to journey into the world, even just to the IGA, one's shoes had to match the bag.

Ashley Watson makes beautiful, finely detailed bags that don't need to match your shoes. They're so distinctive and well-made (and one of a kind) that really, truly, no one will be looking at your feet. They don't come with matching checkbook covers, but she does make wallets in many yummy colors. I started coveting my own Ashley Watson bag after seeing them at one of my favorite independent boutiques in Atlanta, the indispensable Evolve. While fashioned out of vintage leather jackets, the bags are modern, understated, and bring an authentic new facet to the term "sustainable design."

Kitchen recently fielded a few questions to Watson, who designs and distributes her line from her home city of Vancouver, British Columbia.

I just got one of your handbags and I love it. What inspired you to start making bags and other accessories out of recycled leather?
It was sort-of by accident actually. I was impatient and wanted to make myself a leather bag but all I had was one of my Dad'™s old leather jackets. So, I made it...and then when it was done, I really liked the fact that it was used leather... and then it just seemed to snowball from there. Now it's a huge part of the design since each bag is one of a kind and incorporates details from the specific jacket that is used. Because each jacket is different, each bag takes its own thought process, so the designing aspect is always fresh and doesn't get boring, which I really like.

How long does it take to make a single bag?
I would say it takes us about three to four hours depending on the bag, including the cutting process, which takes huge consideration to make the bag conform to the chosen design, and the shopping for the leather, which entails rummaging around in many thrift shops, and then, finally, the sewing.

Your bags are really catching on. Is sourcing the leather you want as demand grows a challenge?
It is definitely getting to be a challenge. I really want to keep buying my leather at charity thrift stores and we are buying out a lot of the leather in Vancouver. I am hoping to soon have buyers in other cities in Canada buying for me.

Is buying something made of recycled leather kind of like buying vintage fur - somehow less troubling for people who put purchases through an ethical filter?
I would definitely say yes. The fact that no more animals are killed for that bag is huge and definitely fuels me and the business.

What design features make a great handbag?
I think there are a million different design features that can make a handbag great and it just depends on peoples'™ taste but for the most part I would say it comes down to practicality. I am also not usually into anything too flashy - like major hardware, etc., but that's just my aesthetic.

Your aesthetic seems kind of incidentally "sustainable" - design comes first. Are there designers you like who have a similar approach?
I generally seem to admire designers who take an artful approach as opposed to cookie cutter made...things that are often one of a kind or close to it. I just bought an emerald green shawl from designer Isabelle Dunlop who is also from Vancouver and it is one of a kind and I love it. I also really admire a designer named Hajnalka Mandula who is also from Vancouver. I did a fashion design internship with her a few years ago. She uses things like vintage buttons and each piece is an amazing work of art.

Where are your bags sold?
We sell in small boutiques all over North America. We are currently moving into the UK and a store in Germany just picked us up. I prefer to take on boutiques that specialize in selling smaller designers and are often interested in a handmade approach.

Do you want to keep growing or stay small?
I would like to keep growing but I'm not totally sure to what extent. I definitely never want to get to the point where I am having anything made out of house. I love seeing each piece go out so if I do get bigger I'll have to deal with that.

You're located in Vancouver, which is a gorgeous city, but is it a trendsetting one?
I think there is definitely some great stuff going on in Vancouver but I also believe that at this point, it doesn't really matter where you live because the world is so small these days. I believe it is just about doing your research and taking the odd trip to look at things outside of where you live. I believe anywhere can be trendsetting.

What's next for you?
We have a new men's line coming out any day now, with things like laptop bags and wallets. New ideas keep coming and it'll be interesting to see how we evolve.

The Carnivore's Dilemma

It's Friday and I can't think of a better day of the week for shameless self-promotion in the form of a link to an article I recently wrote on nose to tail eating for Restaurant Forum. I did rather enjoy myself with the by now surely arcane Scorpions reference in the article's title.

Alas, more adults should amuse themselves in such a childish fashion.

Not Their Bag

Whole Foods announced earlier this week that it will be banning disposable plastic bags from all 270 of its stores in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada. The natural and organic foods chain aims to totally phase out the bags by Earth Day (April 22, 2008). Whole Foods estimates the move will keep 100 million new plastic bags out of landfills by the end of this year alone. Impressive. The decision follows one by the city of San Francisco last March to outlaw the bags at chain supermarkets and drug stores by 2008. If y'all need cute reusable shopping totes that don't need to be tucked out of sight in the trunk when you're done with them, check out the rainbow bright selection at Baggu Bags.