Current Faves… Quarantine Edition

So, from where to where have we come in a few short months…sigh. If there is anything positive in all this craziness, it’s the coming together of people from around the world to cheer and entertain each other through free online classes, Tik Tok fun vids, etc. It’s a beautiful thing. So I have compiled a few of the ways I’m keeping busy (besides cleaning, cooking and organizing)…

Lifestyle Hacks

• FAB Coconut Primer – Being couped up indoors can be really drying to skin and I am loving FAB’s Coconut Primer, (face) which is a lightweight moisturizer that doesn’t cause breakouts.
• Walmart Pick Up – A safer way to shop at the moment and extremely easy to use. Download the app., sign up, choose an available time, enter credit info and get shopping. Once you set a time, they give you plenty of time to add/delete items on your list. They email you when your order is ready and you click when you are on your way. When you get there you get a text asking which numbered pickup parking space you are in and car color. They are out in just a few minutes and right now give the option of signing it themselves to protect you. Easy, and honestly I may just keep it up after all this madness is over.
• Great Value GF Brownie Mix – Whether you are gluten free or not, this mix from Walmart is so good. It only requires an egg and one stick of butter. Side note for those GFree, Walmart’s Great Value Flour Mix is awesome, just add to regular recipes, like Toll House Cookies or Muffins and it tastes just like regular ones.

Entertainment

• Books: Currently reading “You are a Badass at Making Money” by Jen Sincero & “The Success Principles” by Jack Canfield. Do you sense a theme? Yeah, I’m trying to stay positive and both of these are really good, especially Jack’s book – he’s the author of the popular Chicken Soup for the Soul series and it’s full of encouraging tips and real life success stories.
• Spotify/Echo Dot: Been running Spotify on my iphone & Roku to keep my spirits up using different playlists for everything from housework, dinner, nighttime routines, etc. There are so many playlists on Spotify and Echo Dot will chose from Pandora if you give her an artist to start with or vibe you’re looking for. Echo: I ask Alexa for dinner music and it’s a terrific light jazz that makes you feel like you’re in New York at a dinner club…and I use a Lounge playlist on either for evening reading or getting ready for sleep…
• DVD’s – Breaking out my favorite series collections and alternating for Marathons, or nightly eps. Currently on rotation: Covert Affairs, Mad Men, Castle & Rescue Me.
• Streaming: I recently got rid of my Netflix account because the content basically wasn’t my style, too dark and I prefer more character driven pieces and also I found myself gravitating toward the free streaming services to watch tons of old films that I still love. Pluto, Tubi, Crackle and Roku have a lot of good old ones like Baby Boom, Get Shorty & Be Cool (cheers to Dutch!), New in Town, 007 films and old Hitchcock & Cary Grant classics.
• Instagram Lives: This is where I spend most my time, have to admit…at least lately. It’s so cool how everyone is coming together as I said to offer up their skills and to keep everyone engaged and moving. You can take a ballet class from New York City Ballet’s Principal, Tiler Peck or The Cindy’s a.k.a. American Ballet Theatre’s principals, Isabella Boylton & James Whiteside – or take a dance class with Maks & Peta of DWTS’s fame… There are a ton of great free live exercise classes from yoga to Tracy Anderson right now. You can brush up on your cooking skills and get ideas for meals from famous chefs from Giada and Ina, to the Kitchen alum. (Katie Lee!)
• Learning: There are some good classes you can take online and I have tried out a few of them.
  • Masterclass: At $90/Class or $180/Unlimited – it’s a true bargain. Learn from the Masters in Writing, Photography, Playwrighting and Acting to name a few. The class can be accessed indefinitely when you buy and offers up downloadable notes.
  • Duolingo: Can’t say enough about this one, whether you want to start learning a language or to finally master one you’ve struggled with for years. Duo can be accessed by website or apps and you can choose as many as you want and toggle between them. I’ve donated all the old language learning books because I’ve never had better success learning languages any other way.
  • Cooking Classes: I’ve not taken them but Food Network does offer an app where their famous chefs stream live videos for you to learn from.
  • Skillshare: Another I’ve not tried but hear so many good things about. They do offer some free classes but essentially it’s a paid service learning platform with many, many classes to choose from.
  • Fit On: This app is wonderful – full of great timed workouts that you can stream through their app on your tablet or phone. There are banked and live classes starting at 10 minutes – even I can commit to that!
• Vlogs: I love watching this style of video, it reminds me of Cinema Verité, and I find it very relaxing. As I’ve increasingly moved to a much more Minimalist lifestyle myself, I love that type of content with tips and tricks to save money and reduce unnecessary buying. I enjoy Lifestyle vloggers like Aileen @ Lavendaire, and MuchelleB. Here are my faves at the moment:
  • Kyra Ann – Minimalist
  • Rachel Nguyen – All time fave, her videos are stylistically such high quality & creative – mainly vlog style.
  • Renee Amberg – Vlogs, Lifestyle, Book rec’s, Exercise, Day in Life
  • Lavendaire  – Lifestyle, Book Rec’s, Encouragement to follow your dreams
  • MuchelleB  –  Same as above…only Australian life
  • Ashley Brooke – Vlogs, Fashion, Transplanted Texan documents New York Life
  • Myka Stauffer – Vlogger w/Husband – home life
  • Madeleine Olivia  – Minimalist, Vegan, life in England

Well, there it is, hope it wasn’t too long a read – and I hope you all are staying home if possible and staying well. These are just suggestions, honestly the first week or two I just felt out of sorts and didn’t accomplish much except helping a family member with their taxes, taking short walks and staring at the TV totally lazy and that’s okay too. Times be strange, try your best to roll with it and get through this thing in one piece. Peace!

 

 

 

Art Fair Days

Spent the afternoon at a local art fair. It was such an enjoyable day hanging out with interesting characters like this guy. Incredibly, he seemed to have no problem juggling, even at such heights. And then…

Hula Girls

This little girl was transfixed by this lovely lady, who had a talent for all things Hula. When I was this little one’s age, I loved my hula hoop and not just because it was my favorite color, pink. I got pretty good at it myself and I loved seeing the way she was studying the older girls moves.  Then it was on to…

Corn Dog Palace…

I dubbed it thus as a play on the Corn Palace out west. This food truck was everything you could want in a summertime fair experience. Hot dogs, burgers and cool pop…what else do you want? Actually, they had so many food truck options, wraps, ice cream, lemonade and even authentic Polish food this time out. It was a beautiful, albeit quite hot, summertime day and everyone seemed to have great fun!

Goodbye Tony

I never met Anthony Bourdain, but from No Reservations & Parts Unknown and his books, I felt as if I did actually know him and I know I’m not alone in this feeling. He had that swagger and cool way about him that drew so many fans. He was a gifted writer, a unique and genuinely interesting person, always seeking out new adventures, people, music, and cultures. What drove him to keep moving and filming so many shows would be conjecture on my part, but it almost seemed as if he was afraid of slowing down to the kind of quiet introspective life that many people who have the means to do so crave. I never kidded myself into thinking that he was a happy-go-lucky sort – he was a former addict, school of hard knocks kind of guy and carried a world weary vibe that was easy to see but I was still completely stunned when I woke to the news he had taken his own life. I spent the day feeling heavy and sad, which surprised me having not know him – I felt like I’d lost a friend. He was so alive in every sense it seemed to me. I thought I remembered him talking about a dark time in his life after his first marriage fell apart in his book, “Medium Raw,” and when I looked again there it was…a mention of his fighting the urge to end it all, drunk and driving on a curvy island road. Maybe he’d been pushing back the urge for a long time. Maybe the ones who accomplish so much more than most will in an entire lifetime, simply get world weary and burn out of this life. Safe travels Tony…

Scenes from a Café

Café Tosca, San Francisco ©Flickr/lcrf

Café Tosca, San Francisco ©Flickr/lcrf

Café, Brighton ©Karmin Photography

Museum Café, Vienna ©Flickr/Clod79

Café, Jerusalem ©Werner Kunz

Cafe direkt an der Rialto-Brücke, Venice ©Flickr/AnKain_

Café Maravillas Spain ©Flickr/Monkeypainter

Café de Flore/Paris, France ©Flickr/DarkB4Dawn

Café El Gato Negro Buenos Aires, Argentina ©Paula Moya

Café/Hamtramck, Michigan ©MarkinDetroit

Café, New York City ©Flickr/phl

Cafe Figaro/Los Feliz, California

Ruhlman & Bourdain

What could be better than Bourdain? Ruhlman and Bourdain of course… My favorite “No Reservations” eps are ones where Ruhlman rides shotgun; Vegas & Cleveland. He’s the perfect foil for Tony, our favorite wise-assed intrepid traveler and general all around malcontent; who serves up a side order of yak testicles with a hearty disdain for all things Food Network (sorry Rachel).

Marguerite & Potato Leek Soup

“Very early in life it was too late. It was already too late when I was eighteen. Between eighteen and twenty-five my face took off in a new direction. I grew old at eighteen.” -Marguerite Duras, “The Lover”

I have long believed that these lines are amongst the greatest in literature. I know that kind of thing to some extent is subjective but in this case, I stand on my belief. I remember the first time I read these lines and the effect they had on me; I was slightly embarrassed I think by the truthfulness of those words – arranged as they were. They unapologetically laid bare Marguerite’s truth. Her book has the same effect on me that Lucien Freud’s painting’s do. I feel like a voyeur, as if I should look away but can’t.

I read once that when they were making the film based on her book, “India Song“ – Marguerite invited the cast to her beautiful home; Neauphle-le-Chateau. She made big pots of potato-leek soup for them, because she said that it was wonderful to make when the air turned cool. So I decided one day to make some myself, to see if she was right about that – and she was. I’m a big fan of leeks to begin with and she’s right about the lovely way it smells cooking. It’s fall here in Michigan getting ready to head into winter yet again and yesterday I took her advice again; chopping up leeks, peeling potatoes; it’s warmth against our increasingly cooler air was much like her work…wonderful.

Tony Bourdain

Tony Bourdain amuses me…. If he were a really old dude I think he’d be referred to as “crusty” – something like that. He’s cynical, has a dark sense of humor and hates all that clean livin’ shit. Like I said….he amuses me. I do think that after watching several episodes of “No Reservations” though that he’d better be getting on some list for a liver soon – just a suggestion. Anyway, he’s a good writer and his blog is worth checking out…

Link: No Reservations