A Greek Bedroom Inspired by Nature

13 Oct

When my dad started building his dream house in Greece, I was in middle school in New Jersey.  It was the early ‘90s, and the Body Shop and Calvin Klein and Kate Moss were ushering in an era of natural beauty.  Simplicity was the backlash against an era of neon and shoulder pads.  I abandoned my hot-pink biker shorts and oversized Hypercolor t-shirts for a more natural beauty aesthetic that seeped its way into my plans for the bedroom I’d have in Greece.

Our new house was being built in an olive grove by the ocean, and I wanted to embrace an organic look for my bedroom.  I wanted to keep the walls and the bedspread as white as the walls of a white-washed Greek church.  I wanted only a few little green leaf accents and bamboo curtains to echo the call of nature.

When I saw This Is Glamorous’ post “Wicker & White and Summer Delights,” it immediately brought me back to the inspiration for my bedroom all those years ago.  Wicker baskets hold fresh, white laundry.  A bowl of pretty starfish brings the ocean inside.  A pretty white sundress looks like the kind I’d find in one of the many shops near Olympia.  There’s even a photograph of waffles, the dessert we often get after dinner in Greece.

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Tasty Tuesday: Memories of Orzo

11 Oct

When I was a kid, I loved going to Baltimore to visit my cousins.  We’d pile into the Volvo station wagon and drive the three or four hours from New Jersey to Maryland.  Along the way, we’d stop at McDonald’s.  Nowadays, most McDonald’s have a playground but back then in the 1980s, we didn’t have one like that near where I grew up, so it was always super exciting that we got to make a stop at a McDonald’s that had a playground outside of it on our trip down to Baltimore.  We almost never ate McDonald’s when I was growing up.  My mom said it was “disgusting,” and my dad called it “plastic food.”  But we always got to have McDonald’s on our way to visit our cousins.

When we got to Baltimore, my aunt would always have dinner ready for us.  It was always the same thing that first night: orzo and meat.  My mom isn’t Greek and never cooked with orzo, so this meal always stuck out to me.  I wasn’t sure what orzo even was.  Was it rice or was it pasta?  It turns out it’s a rice-shaped pasta.  Now I know.

My aunt still makes orzo when I visit.  Sometimes it’s orzo in a tomato sauce, like the kind I remember her making when I was a kid; other times it’s spanikorizo, Greek spinach orzo.

I’ve never made orzo before.  Strange, isn’t it, how a food that has such a strong memory attached to it can be something you’ve never even attempted to make?  I think it would be an easy, filling dish to make in bulk so I don’t have to worry about cooking in the beginning of the week when I have both work and grad school.

I looked up a few recipes:

Epicurious’ Orzo with Feta, Tomatoes, and Dill

Holy Apostle Orthodox Church’s Spanikorizo

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Lit Life: Catcher in the Rye

7 Oct

 

I went to undergrad in Los Angeles County and currently live in New York City, where we have an active alumnae book club to keep in touch with one another.  The New York branch of the Scripps alumnae book club has been selecting books on the theme of New York.  For August 2011, we decided on none other than J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye.

Oh, remember that teenage angst?!  The desire to be a grownup even though all adults seemed like “phonies.”  The distaste for classes.  The devastating crushes!  Holden Caufield, it gets better; I promise.

I hosted the book club at my apartment.  Well, I love to plan a good theme party!  Everyone was coming straight from work, but I made an extra effort to dress the part that day with a look that was prep-school chic — navy cardigan, red shirt, pleated skirt, and polished side part.
I served rye whiskey.  Get it?  Catcher-in-the-RYE whiskey?  I also put out colorful lollipops, reminiscent of the swirl of a carousel, like the one Phoebe rides in Central Park in the novel.  It was a pot luck and everyone brought such delicious foods!

So where do the ducks go in the winter?

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Writing Wednesday: One Step Closer to Tomorrow

5 Oct

I’m a dreamer.  Always planning for the future.  Today often gets shoved under the carpet as I dream of life a year from now.  But dreaming and doing are two very different things.  I can’t get to that future point if I don’t take steps today to get there.

Case in point: I want to publish a book.  I dream up covers and marketing ideas.  I wonder if I’ll be able to get over stage fright to do readings.  The problem is, I haven’t actually written the book yet.  How can I get to that future point of publication if I don’t spend time today writing?

What’s on your agenda for today?  Oh sure, you’ve got work and maybe a networking event function afterwards, but what are you doing today that will take you a step closer to where you want to be tomorrow?

The most productive and successful people in the world are those who are strategic.  Are you being strategic with your time?  Are you doing something every single day that will lead you to where you want to be in the future?

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Writing Wednesday: What Should I Read Next?

5 Oct

Every writer will tell you that writers should have a healthy reading habit.  The more you read, the better you write.

But what happens when you have no reading inspiration?

The website What Should I Read Next? solves your dilemma by suggesting books based on your favorite authors.

I tried it out and had mixed results.  I typed in “On the Road” and out came:

  • Martin A. Lee, Bruce Shlain – Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond
  • William S Burroughs – Junkie (Traveller’s companion series-no.114, four Square books)
  • Allen Ginsberg, Williams/William Carlos – Howl (Pocket Poets S.)
  • Gregory Corso – Gasoline
  • Lucius Apuleius, Apuleius, Robert Graves – The Golden Ass: The Transformations of Lucius
  • William Burroughs – Naked Lunch: The Restored Text (Harper Perennial Modern Classics S.)
  • Gary Snyder – Turtle Island (A New Directions Book)
  • Paul Auster – Leviatan
  • Kesey Ken – One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest
  • Rick Moody – Purple America
  • Siegfried Sassoon – The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston (Faber Paper-Covered Editions)
  • Charles Yu, – How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe: A Novel
  • Tracy Barrett – Anna of Byzantium
  • Katsuhiro Otomo – Akira 2

So on and so forth.  Kind of a random list.  The related Beat Generation works make sense, and I can see how a few of the others speak toward a vision of America, but some of it seems just bizarre.

 

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Clip: Church Hopping: St. Nicholas Church at the World Trade Center

3 Oct

As the debate rages on over whether the Muslim community center Park51, better known by the misnomer the “Ground Zero Mosque,” should be allowed to be constructed near the former cite of the World Trade Center, little media attention has gone to the one house of worship that actually was destroyed in the terrorist attacks of September 11: St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church.  Established by immigrants, the small Greek Orthodox church had served the spiritual needs of Lower Manhattan since 1916, just shy of a hundred years.  St. Nicholas was destroyed indirectly when the South Tower fell on it during the attacks of 9/11.  With religion at the center of debates over whether a Muslim community center should be built so close to where the Islamic militant group Al-Qaeda attacked and whether there should be any sort of clergy prayer at the ten-year anniversary, why has the Greek Orthodox church’s destruction gone under-reported?  Why are people who profess themselves Christian more invested in keeping a Muslim community center at bay than in rebuilding and growing a Christian church?  Is Greek Orthodox not Christian enough?

You can read my full Church Hopping article on St. Nicholas Church at the World Trade Center on Burnside Writers Collective.

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Clip: Church Hopping LIVE: Church of the Intercession

29 Sep

Did you know Audubon (yes, the bird guy) was one of the founders of a church up in Washington Heights?  If you weren’t able to make it to the live Church Hopping event, you can read about it here, on Burnside Writers Collective.

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Writing Wednesday: Brooklyn Book Festival 2011

28 Sep

New York’s largest free literary event took place on Sunday, September 18.  That’s right — the Brooklyn Book Festival!

My writer cohort and I had such a blast zig-zagging through the tents, ducking into readings, creeping close to authors, poring over books, and running into people we knew.  She introduced me to John Woo of the Magnetic Fields.  We ran into another friend from Little, Brown and Company, who instead of going the MFA route is doing his Masters in Publishing at NYU.  I saw Alisa Harris, whom I used to work with at Patrol, and who now has her own book out.

On the speaker side of things, I got to hear my writing mentors Phillip Lopate and Darcey Steinke.  I also got to hear Mary Karr, whom I had also heard speak at FFW.  Plus so many other great speakers.

 

 

I spied my writing colleague Susan E. Isaac‘s memoir on the Greenlight Bookstore table at Brooklyn Book Fest.

 

…as well as Greek American Tina Fey‘s memoir.

 

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Tasty Tuesday: Epicurious’ 80 Dishes Blog – Greek Recipe

27 Sep

Travel the world in your very own kitchen!  Epicurious has been featuring national dishes from around the globe in its Emmy-Award-winning cooking video series.  Chef Michael Skibicky makes Lamb and Eggplant Moussaka in the Greek recipe post.

I used to have a pet lamb in Greece, and I don’t eat lamb, so here’s a vegetarian moussaka recipe from Bon Appetit.

Where would you like to travel to savor world cuisines?

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The Lying Game’s Christian Alexander Born in Greece

26 Sep

 

So I’m kinda obsessed with The Lying Game.  Such a guilty pleasure!  As it turns out, the actor who plays Thayer, Christian Alexander, was born to Bulgarian parents in Athens, Greece.  (Hm, I seem to be onto a trend here about actors born in Greece to non-ethnically Greek parents….)

The show is based on the eponymous novel (HarperTeen) by Sara Shepard, the Brooklyn College MFA grad who also wrote the novels behind Pretty Little Liars.

What’s your guilty pleasure?

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