Craigie on Main is actually the only place from which I will tolerate mass e-mails because they actually send out cute, but not gushy, and useful, but not overwhelming notes and messages.
…Like this idea for pommes aligot, a much better alternative to your everyday mashed potatoes:
“ Pommes Aligot, A Valentine-Friendly Recipe You Can Make at Home:
Stretching the Valentine’s Spirit
This month we present an approach to traditional mashed potatoes that is downright - we are not kidding - seductive! In this recipe, we’ve omitted formal measurements, since this is so much a mattter of personal taste. If you use any recipe and keep tasting, you really can’t go wrong. Read on:
Cook starchy potatoes (more like russets than red skins) in their skins. Pass through a tamis or potato ricer. Add butter, milk and a little garlic to taste. For super smoothness, pass through ricer or tamis a second time. Fold in fresh cheese curds (actually from mozzarella) and grated Laguiole cheese, stirring constantly until well incorporated and emulsified.
Now here comes the good part. Besides tasting great, the curds make the potatoes s-t-r-e-t-c-h like taffy! This means you and your beloved can have fun playing with your potatoes on Valentine’s Day. Here are five easy steps:
1. Scoop some potatoes with a spoon (it’s ok to use two spoons).
2. Twirl some potatoes around the spoon(s) - think taffy.
3. Pull the spoon toward you, pulling a generous strand of the potatoes with it.
4. Raise your arm and keep pulling the potatoes - you should be able to stretch this strand about 2+ feet
5. Think of how to get silly and have fun with your Valentine potatoes! ”
via npr![theatlantic:
Museums Want to Entertain You (and That’s Not a Bad Thing)
Once, art museums were like fortresses. They were built of stone atop forbidding mountains of stairs. Today, museums might be nestled under glass pyramids, or sheathed in undulating ripples of stainless steel, or built to look like boats and the hood of a sports car. A city in China has plans for a comic book museum that’s shaped like a speech bubble.
Just as the buildings have changed, so have the exhibits inside them. Today museums must compete with a host of entertainment options that didn’t exist a generation ago. Customers who could be down the street seeing Titanic: An IMAX 3D Experience instead are unlikely to be satisfied with the old school, cattle-like shuffle past painting after painting, just as patrons with smartphones in their pockets don’t want to read names and dates off of little white cards. Even the Louvre has gone high-tech. The venerable institution has partnered with Nintendo to put gallery maps, high-resolution imagery, and a dozen languages of audio commentary in every visitor’s palm.
Patrons who expect multimedia bang for their buck get it at “Inventing the Modern World: Decorative Arts at the World’s Fairs 1851-1939,” a new exhibit at Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. The ambitious show, which opened on Saturday and runs through August 19, explores how World’s Fairs did—and still do—offer a means for nations to assert themselves on the international stage. World’s Fairs also became the first platform for introducing new styles, manufacturing techniques, and consumer goods on a global stage. Popular products first presented at a World’s Fair, for instance, range from mayonnaise and Cracker Jacks to the sewing machine and telephone. The bejeweled Cartier clock is eye-popping. The prototype Herman Miller plexiglass chair will make any design-lover swoon.
Read more. [Image: Bob Greenspan]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2q9k3amrN1qcokc4o1_400.jpg)
via theatlantic
via timphan
via robot-heart
