Nova Clutch

Tel Aviv Cafe Culture

Monday, 8:25AM and I am sitting at 71 Irving Place Coffee and Tea Bar trying to recapture the cafe culture I experienced over the past three weeks in Tel Aviv. There is no city in the world like New York, which alone could be proven by my walk across the Brooklyn Bridge this morning. Alone for most of the span, dampness and wind making their way in and around my open jacket. Grey clouds passing over New York Harbor and the Staten Island ferry across. But, there is no city like Tel Aviv for a double strength cappuccino meaningful conversation or simple appreciation for the former IDF girl who now efficiently delivers rich and creamy ceramic cups of morning, afternoon or evening. Now sipping burned milk and weak taste I slip back to an open store front, the bustle of a changing city moving under god rays piercing overhanging trees. Perhaps tomorrow the Manhattan Bridge and a visit to Gimmie! Coffee, the one coffee bar that has raised the bar in New York. I just don't want to default to Israeli born Aroma, that would just be pathetic and in bad taste.

Natasha's Cow Photo

I know that many of our readers are familiar with Natasha's photographs of flora and fauna that she has lovingly baked, sautéed, grilled and shot with perfection. Her still life prowess is a trademark of this blog's essence, and a testament to her intuitive composition and magical sense of lighting. Despite her prolific output and mastery of the table top she will habitually hand me the camera as we pass through our apartment door and venture into the great outdoors.

However, this weekend on a trip to our friends Otis and Carlin's CSA in upstate New York we stopped off at the Washington County Fair to poke our noses into a world like no other. But that is a different story, for a different post. This post marks a moment in time when we strolled the cow barn, past the Jerseys, Guernseys and Holsteins and Natasha yanked the camera from around my neck to take this beautiful photograph. After all of gigabytes and gigabytes of documentary pixels of batters, roasts, and platters, I would have to say that this picture is one of my favorites.

I can't stop admiring the romantic richness of the amber browns that are tinged and balanced by a touch of terra cotta. I can't get my head around how the wheelbarrow mimics the angle and the weight of the cow, or how the sharp, thrusting lead-in lines bring me from the wheelbarrow's silhouetted handle to the gentile hay strewn curve of the cows spine, along its head, to finally rest on the face of the cow in the upper right hand corner. And of course the second cow lies behind railings that play off of the back and side of the wheelbarrow, effectively compacting the photo and creating frames within frames, within frames. Damn you Natasha, damn you! If there is any consolation, for this "outdoor photographer", the photo was taken inside a barn.

OK, I'm in love. Thanks to Natasha, I'm in love with a picture of a cow, and a shit-carting wheelbarrow. Well done.

4th of July, the Anti Macy's

As most Americans turned their heads and hearts to the heavens this 4th of July weekend, I set my gaze downwards to enjoy bursts of color and spectacular displays put on by mother nature rather than those provided by Macy's (no offense Natasha). Attempting to escape the melodic phrases of "God Bless America" for those of crickets and birds, I walked through the fields and forests that grace our friend's farm Pennsylvania farm Saturday afternoon. Exercising my right to bear arms and to shoot everything in sight, I captured and brought home the bounty of the day. On bent knee or in prone position I would seek out the unknown, the unusual and unsuspecting. Some that fell within my sights were well camouflaged, some were in sharp contrast to their surroundings, easy targets for my eager trigger finger. Breathe in, focus, focus, shoot! I got one, two, three! What a country, one nation, under foot. What an opportunity to leave the synthesized noise and plastic distractions of our adopted life behind to consider and reflect upon what this nation was really founded upon; a natural world of beauty and wonder, void of light beer, computer generated fantasy, right wings, left wings, cheese filled hot dogs, manmade gods and manmade fireworks.

OAPs by Hanoi Lake

One of the things I love most about traveling is seeing things that you not only have never heard of, but things that have never entered your brain before, things that make you stop and stare with your mouth open.

We saw one of those events at the main lake in Hanoi, Vietnam. Having got off the night train at 5am we had until much later in the day to check in to our hotel. I suggested going down to Hoan Kiem lake in the center of Hanoi to see if the OAP myth was true or not (OAPS= Old Aged Pensioners in Brit-speak).

The lore was that the city's wrinklier folks congregate around the lake at the break of dawn to exercise together. And it's no joke. An overwhelming number of, I'm guessing, septuagenarians, gather and play badminton, do Tai Chi, massage each other, self-flagellate–you name it– and then vanish, to who knows where. I normally contain myself like a proper English person, showing no emotion when I see surprising sights. This time I stared so hard at the people playing badminton on the street that they gestured at us to come and play with them. We looked at them, looked at each other, shrugged, and threw our backpacks down, ready to take on the auroral OAPs. Needless to say we lost, quite badly, but had a fantastic time doing it. We had picked our luggage off the sidewalk again by 7am.

A weekend in upstate New York

I had a blissful Memorial Day with the people I call my good friends – you know these guys, some of these guys, some of them. Amongst just sitting in the glorious sunshine and reading, we saw Indiana Jones, walked around an architectural masterpiece, played Scrabble, hiked to Doodletown and went to Millbrook Diner.

It was a wonderful long weekend filled with silly amounts of eating and a fair amount of cocktail dabbling. Melissa made smooth mint juleps, Cindy potent scorpinos, Jenn kickass lychee/mint martinis and I herby pink grapefruit/rosemary martinis. Hence the fact that I really can't talk about it, I can just show you pictures. Words just don't do it justice.

Chocolates from À la Mère de Famille

More presents! We're so spoiled. Our dear friends Jenn and Tom got us two brilliant presents from their recent trip to Paris. Here's the first.

À la Mère de famille was founded in 1761 and is the oldest confectioner's in France. It sounds like the ultimate candy store, complete with old world sweet shop magic. There's something so evocative about that moment when Charlie Bucket steps into the candy store, his eyes raised to the ceiling filled with jars upon jars of cavity-inducing goodness. I can just imagine Jenn's little girl's reaction when she walked in, and I'm sure that is what mine would have been too.

Even though we didn't go, we were lucky to have this amazing box of chocolates brought back for us. Dusted in just the right amount of cocoa, these surprising little logs are filled with a slightly wafer-like noisette filling that we cannot stop eating. Contrary to the fact that I have an interminable sweet tooth, I don't normally eat chocolates like this. The empty box is testament to the fact that these are no ordinary chocolates.

La Mère de Famille has five locations around Paris. Store image from La Mère de Famille.

Blank matryoshka dolls

We picked up these little dolls at a Izmailovsky Market in Russia, on a whim because, you know, when in Russia and all that. It's really an obligation. We had picked some blank, unpainted matryoshka dolls a few years ago for our little friend Zo at Shelf in London and I had always wished we had got some for ourselves.

So this time we bought not one but two sets of dolls. The regular matryoshka shape was exactly what we expected, five nesting dolls. We only realized that the little stubby one we bought had not five but nine dolls – and the big one is only three and a half inches tall to begin with! I know it's probably going to be dusting hell but having them all laid out makes me smile.

Izmailovsky Market, Moscow

Our friend Kate insisted that we based our trip to fall over a weekend in Moscow a) so that we could have a night out with the billionaires and b) so that we could go to Izmailovsky Market. I know which option drew my attention.

It was a great time of year to go – cold, but not painfully so, with sunlight bouncing off the shiny lacquer that is ubiquitous in Russia. It's just a fascinatingly rich place to look at; matryoshka dolls of every ilk (Lenin, Putin, Eminem, you name it), furs, stuffed animals, crazy antiques that you aren't allowed to take out of the country, guns, bullets...and this was the one place where people were genuinely excited to meet foreigners. Probably because we may buy something. Michael even had someone sing Snopp Dogg at him. Yikes.

We also had probably the best food of our whole trip in the market. And it didn't cost $200! Puffy flatbread with grilled pork, cooked perfectly with hot sauce. And thank God we had it just before we got on the plane, as I can't really attest to the strengths of Aeroflot cuisine.

An army of caterpillars, a murder of crows...

A superfluity of nuns? Who knew? Who even thought about what a group of nuns was?

We hadn't, until Friday when we were walking around Cold Spring on the Hudson on Friday night. A whole gaggle of nuns, bursting with excitement because they were going to Yankee Stadium. No, it wasn't the game they were excited about, it was the Pope. My bad.

We also saw a few other things in Cold Spring and Garrison this weekend. And we did the Breakneck Ridge hike, which I probably wouldn't have chosen had I read the rest of the description. Although, to any normal person, the name "Breakneck Ridge" would have been enough of a clue. This was serious rock climbing, but hey, it made us beautifully tired for the rest of the weekend.

Eliseevskiy, the best food market in the world.

Quite a bold statement, I'm aware. But I just think it might be. This place puts Dean & Deluca to shame.

Michael and I are the kind of travelers that go to see the sights, yes, but we also go and see things that other tourists may not. One of our favorite things, as designers, is to go to local supermarkets. We went to a few in Russia, but were more fascinated by the lurid colors of borscht and the wonder that is cyrillic typography than anything else.

Until we went to Eliseevskiy. This place is insane. It looks like a Tsar palace that they sell food in. Gone are the visions of Russians waiting in line for a loaf of bread. Oh no. Here they have mangosteens (we don't have those in the US yet!), fresh tamarind, even longans from Vietnam! Sure, you'll pay $80 for a small package of them, but hey, it's not the price, it's the fact that you can.

Photographs from http://eliseevskiy.ru/, because we were too scared of the Russians to take any photos.