Much like when I got engaged and ran out and bought a bunch of wed­ding mag­a­zines, I have been work­ing my way through a stack of preg­nancy mags. Much like the wed­ding mag­a­zines, the preg­nancy peri­od­i­cals are very close to useless.

I real­ize that ours is a con­sumer cul­ture, and with each life event comes some enter­pris­ing soul wish­ing to make mad money from it, but some of this shit is ridicu­lous. I’m look­ing at you, Bellysonic.

(I guess you wear this and baby can lis­ten to your iPod with you? This is just the tip of the iceberg.)

Before I get ahead of myself with par­ent­ing promises to break as soon as Mr. Baby presents him­self to the world, I’m focus­ing on short-term goals. Namely, some pregnancy-related words that I pray I never find myself using. Is preg­nant so hard to say that short­en­ing it to preggo or pregs is nec­es­sary? While I’m all for gifts, doesn’t call­ing one a push present make it feel like birthing a child is some sort of busi­ness trans­ac­tion? On that note, does tak­ing a trip together before baby arrives have to be a baby­moon? Please.

(But if we’re talk­ing about some places I wouldn’t mind visiting…more on that shortly.)

My mom is an excel­lent cook, and a woman who rarely—if ever—eats prepack­aged food. So when she tells you she likes some­thing that comes in a box, I sug­gest you lis­ten up. Her tip: Beecher’s mac­a­roni and cheese. You can buy it online, but I found it nearby at Smart & Final. (My mom says the Dean & Deluca in Kansas car­ries it too.)

The box says it serves four, but would you judge a preg­nant girl for eat­ing the whole damn thing?

No. You would not.

Did you/do you crave things while preg­nant? I have always been firmly on Team Choco­late, but baby has brought with him a desire for gummi bears. Weird.

I am about to drop some seri­ous Secret on your ass.

A few months ago, I wrote a bit about Alexan­der Girard. So what. (Girard’s awe­some­ness, not news.) In the post, I men­tioned my excit­ing dis­cov­ery: Girard designed an apart­ment for Joyce Hall of Hall­mark. Pon­der­ing this mys­ti­cal place sort of hit my holy trin­ity: Girard design, Kansas City, warm fuzzy feel­ings for Hall­mark. But alas, I could not turn up a photo.

In the com­ments, Sarah from máX­imo said that she did in fact have a pho­tos of the apart­ment. She sent them. I freaked out. And then, not unsur­pris­ingly, the exis­tence of these pho­tos van­ished from my mind.

So, like a junkie with a secret stash, I have been keep­ing these to myself. But that ends now. Sadly, these aren’t color. But feel free to men­tally paint these in some Girard-approved hues. In my head, there is def­i­nitely some magenta up in this joint…

Pretty sure this is a detail shot of the above curio wall:

And here’s an infor­mal liv­ing room (I think). Dig the records and the banjo on the floor.

What else have I been not shar­ing? Tons. Con­sider this a taste and I promise more goodness—maybe even a lit­tle less sporadically—next week.

(All pho­tos cour­tesy of the ever-generous máX­imo. Seri­ously, I can’t believe I get to see these—and then share them.)

From the “If I want it, oth­ers must too” files: a leisure pool. A pool club that doesn’t require laps or gog­gles. Not a coun­try club—I don’t want golf or ten­nis (or expen­sive dues). Just a place I can go and float in a pool.

If—and this is a big if—I decided to do some­thing vaguely ath­letic in said pool, I think it would be syn­chro­nized swim­ming. Don’t laugh. I just learned about the Aqualil­lies, a troupe of swim-dancers (dance-swimmers?) who even teach classes in the LA area.

I sug­gest watch­ing their YouTube chan­nel if you are cur­rently buried under snowdrifts.

Back before we moved to LA, when I was in what­ifwe­movein­toas­tu­dioOMG­we­have­toomuch­stuff mode, I sold a lot of our fur­ni­ture. Like our beloved patio set. I checked Circa Who’s site a few times, won­der­ing if our stuff would appear (and, let’s be hon­est, won­der­ing what the retail price would be), but never saw them.

Fast for­ward to last week: I’m look­ing at the new Lonny, and there’s an arti­cle about Mar­lien Rentmeester’s home in Pacific Pal­isades. Dec­o­rated by Hillary Thomas, the house is a refined mix of preppy Palm Beach and Cal­i­for­nia bohemia. I rarely read the arti­cles in Lonny (no offense, Lonny, I greatly pre­fer your pretty pic­tures), but I started skim­ming this piece to find that Rent­meester and Thomas had speed-shopped West Palm Beach to fur­nish the house.

My first thought: I hate you, Marlien.

My sec­ond thought: Hey, those look familiar…

Verdict’s out on whether they once graced our back­yard or not, but I’m enjoy­ing think­ing the chairs live nearby.

(Title cour­tesy this clas­sic book; Lonny photo by Patrick Cline.)

I told Ryan this morn­ing when he left that the only thing I was doing today was clean­ing the house. “Maybe,” I said, “when I’m done I’ll take myself to Clemen­tine for lunch.”

Famous last words.

It’s 2:18 as I type this and the list of today’s accom­plish­ments is pretty lean. I changed the laun­dry a few times, and of course Harry has curled up in the clean pile that I dumped on the sofa so that I could fold while watch­ing DVR-ed shows. I fixed a kitchen drawer that’s been bug­ging me—the dividers kept com­ing loose—and washed the tray we keep our cof­feemaker and grinder on. I took a shower, if we’re going to cel­e­brate the small things.

Our Christ­mas tree is still up. There’s a drawer in our dresser that I ear­marked for presents and now fear open­ing. I have a 2011 cal­en­dar still in its wrap­per sit­ting on the book­case. I made the mis­take of look­ing at our base­boards a lit­tle too closely when pick­ing up dog toys and now fear that those might need to be dusted. I have a list of posts I keep mean­ing to write and this is what I bring to the table. And a photo of Harry with some Paulette mac­arons.

When there’s no good place to start, where do you begin?

Like the rest of the world I have been in the dream state that is holiday/family mode. Mine was par­tic­u­larly lovely and par­tic­u­larly long, but I am back and ready to party.

Truth­fully, the par­ty­ing is a lit­tle sub­dued since I’ve come down with a very annoy­ing cold, but I’ve used it as an excuse to catch up on my mag­a­zines. Did any­one read the pro­file of Bot­tega Veneta designer Tomas Maier in the New Yorker (Jan­u­ary 3 issue)? Here’s the thing: if I were crazy flush, I would very hap­pily carry a BV bag. Like Reese:

But the real rea­son I bring this up is because Tomas Maier, obsessed with the tini­est details (the arti­cle men­tions how a cof­fee saucer that doesn’t sup­port a spoon dri­ves him insane), a man who says, “The It Bag is a totally mar­keted bull­shit crap” (despite it, um, sort of pay­ing his bills) lives in—are you ready for this?—Delray Beach.

Say what?

It should be men­tioned that there is no Duomo in Delray.

Del­ray is, as I have men­tioned before, not my favorite place on earth. If you are a con­trol freak (sorry, Maier, it’s a com­pli­ment) who will not live in Milan due to its “design flaws,” you can do bet­ter than Del­ray. Dur­ing our time in Florida, Ryan and I exten­sively dis­cussed how we could make it bet­ter. Our con­clu­sion, for us, any­way, was that if you led a cer­tain lifestyle—one in which you could afford a house on water, a boat, etc.—South Florida could be, let’s say, not so bad.

Maybe Milan totally sucks? I don’t know. I have spent all of three hours there, and I was 16, so I’ll remove myself from weigh­ing on it. If I cre­ated beau­ti­ful things for a liv­ing, I assume I’d want to be inspired (even a lit­tle bit) by my sur­round­ings. I’d go in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion than a retire­ment com­mu­nity sur­rounded by strip malls and I-95.

(Reese photo here, Duomo here.)

It’s my day in the Pretty Mommy recipe exchange—and my birth­day, so I thought I’d go big. Festive.

However.

What I tried to make—a caramel bar like the one they serve at Santa Monica’s Huck­le­berry—was not as expected.

The con­struc­tion of the bar is much like a lemon bar: a short­bread crust and a thick layer of caramel. Easy enough, I thought. First I baked a short­bread crust using my favorite recipe for lemon bars. Then I tried mak­ing easy caramel with a can of sweet­ened con­densed milk. The result of that exper­i­ment ended up in the trash. I made another attempt, fol­low­ing this recipe. The fla­vor pro­file of the caramel is per­fect. But Huckleberry’s bars have a cer­tain jelly-like qual­ity to the caramel that I can’t fig­ure out how to repli­cate. So, if you know what I’m miss­ing, or, if you’re the baker at Huck­le­berry and can give me a hint, I’d be eter­nally grate­ful. Right now I have a layer of short­bread with a hard caramel attached to it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s deli­cious, and we can’t stop eat­ing it, but it’s not quite right.

While I con­tinue to pon­der the miss­ing ingre­di­ent, my con­tri­bu­tion to the exchange is instead some­thing I know how to make: vinai­grette. Actu­ally, my vinai­grette is really David Lebovitz’s vinai­grette, and if you don’t have plans to make a salad soon, may I sug­gest that you do?

David Lebovitz’s Vinaigrette

Ingre­di­ents

1/8 tea­spoon sea salt
1 table­spoon sherry or red wine vine­gar
1 table­spoon finely minced shal­lot
1/2 tea­spoon Dijon mus­tard (Lebovitz rec­om­mends French brands like Maille or Amora)
3 or 4 table­spoons good olive oil

1. In a small jar (Bonne Maman jam jars are per­fect for this), com­bine the salt, vine­gar, and shal­lot. Let stand for about ten minutes.
2. Add the Dijon mus­tard and 3 table­spoons of olive oil. I like to use a tiny whisk, but that’s just because it’s the only time I get to use it. Taste the vinai­grette. You may want more oil for a mel­lower fla­vor. I usu­ally add salt and a lit­tle more mustard.
3. Lebovitz sug­gests the addi­tion of chopped herbs, but I am lazy and gen­er­ally pretty happy with the vinai­grette with­out them.

I do think a great vinai­grette makes sal­ads a lot more appeal­ing, espe­cially after a week­end lack­ing in veg­eta­bles. While it’s sunny and warm here in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, I real­ize eat­ing veg­eta­bles is a lit­tle harder when it’s freez­ing out­side. I think this would work just as well on roasted veg­eta­bles or even poached fish.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjWYbcbpiWA

(Thanks to Design Cri­sis for bring­ing this genius to my attention.)

I just dropped my sis­ter off at LAX and I might need to do some sort of juice fast for the next week. Which is a real downer, since my birthday’s tomor­row and all.

It was a whirl­wind week­end. We ate Lar­don and LudoTruck (food trucks serv­ing up bacon and fried chicken, respec­tively.) We walked Rene­gade Craft Fair, Arti­sanal LA (where, once again, I drank the awe­some­ness that is Cold Brew and Cola), and Unique LA. We stim­u­lated the econ­omy. We took Harry the dog just about any­where that would allow him. We hit the Rachel Pally sam­ple sale. We got our nails done. We went to the Santa Mon­ica Pier.

While I go into salad mode, here’s last week’s recipe exchange recap: snickerdoodle-eggnog cookie pies, enchi­lada soup, dev­iled eggs, peanut but­ter choco­late chip cook­ies, and corn souf­flé. (That last one is from Sharon at I Can Totally Make That, one of my favorite peo­ple I know from the inter­net. Also, she has super­cute dogs.)