apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

We don't have a green thumb and honestly we don’t really aspire to have one. Incidentally (or not) we don’t even have a smidgen of a yard – our house is literally surrounded by concrete on all four sides. But we love the idea of supporting and eating locally grown food so if we did have a little plot of land and some discretionary funds, we’d definitely call Greenbean Gardens. We met Gabriel Erde-Cohen, urban gardener and owner of Greenbean Gardens this past weekend at Bike’s Not Bomb’s Greenroots Festival in Jamaica Plain. He’s landed on a brilliant business idea….

It's June, which means local farmers market are up and running throughout DC. Do you have a favorite farmers market in the District? We love fresh produce and flowers, and especially love buying them at outdoor markets that also sell furniture and home goods. But we're lazy and tend to only visit...

[photo from Twin Springs Fruit Farm]

We have finally done it. Hats off to Yvon Chouinard, our readers and advertisers.

We've turned AT into an earth supporting machine.

Click on over to Re-Nest, our green site for the home, and check out what our readers over there did last month...

Saving the Burnt Pan - foreverdigital

Dear AT:SF, I recently steamed some tamales in a large non-stick pot. I think I messed up with the steaming, and perhaps did not use enough water, or steamed them for too long...either way, I ended up with a very burnt pot...

Dear Readers, below the jump you'll find a Reader Survey - something we've never done before - that will help us get to know who all is out there. We'd love it if you'd take a few minutes to go through and ask a number of questions by clicking on a bunch of buttons. In return for taking the time, you'll be entered into a $100 giveaway. Interested? Click below for more...

When we have holiday celebrations at home, we always take tons of photos. What's funny is, it always turns out that our entire family takes more photos of the food than of each other. We've seen friends and other families do this, too...

Look again. It's Sebastian Bergne's Kitchen Pencil design for Lapis. The pencils are actually wooden spoons. Or the spoons actually are pencils. Either way, the design combines two practical kitchen needs in a way that's familiar and comfortable.

Why encourage the making of more stuff when there's so much cool stuff in the world already? One Ungifty way to give a great gift this Christmas is to look on eBay for pre-loved kitchen stuff, which often comes with a story. Here's a special end-of-week eBay scavenger from Chicago editor Heather...

Our tech team tells us that we've fixed all the frickin' RSS glitches and you should be good to go. So if you have a new spankin' Kindle reader tucked into your bag, you won't miss AT, Kitchn, Ohdeedoh, Unplggd or Re-Nest in their new incarnations. The Atom feed is at the bottom of every page (cities as well as main). Please let us know if you encounter any more problems: support @ apartmenttherapy.com.

A Swiss Army knife for the home. If space is a real issue, you're a minimal club kid or you just like the idea of everything-in-one, we found a hip new product from the ever hip and charming Jamie Oliver. Jamie's Tefal Survival Kit collapses a wok, frying pan, sauce pan, two glass lids, and a universal handle into one store-away container...

Clams, cookies, and casseroles.
Family recipe boxes are a big inspiration for us, especially in the holiday season. Check out Serious Eat's photo of the day.

Pictures like this are an intersection of graphic punch and family history. We'd love to give or get a series of photos of recipe boxes from multiple generations of our families.

More good ideas from Serious Eats after the jump...

- Click Here For More -

Fresh from the farmer's market. We've been cooking more all natural, grass fed beef lately and finding it a bit tough. Turns out, we've been cooking it all wrong. The nice folks from Elk Trails Ranch at the Union Square Farmer's market gave us a great tip on how to cook it. • To All One Minute Tips over at ATNY.

Bite sized wisdom. We're starting a new feature today, which we cooked up over our vacation, One Minute Tips. Our first one features Olivia in her kitchen right after having just baked a beautiful peach pie. Enjoy!

Everyone who works for AT was a reader first. It is with this in mind that we are putting up this post and copy catting our favorite ice cream company (see 1994).

The time has come to find a really good, smart, fanatic person who is capable of joining our staff here at AT and helping to run operations and all that business-y stuff for the years ahead. Is this you? If so, read on...

Straight from the Kitchen. We're starting a new feature today, which we cooked up over our vacation, One Minute Tips. Each video is a totally unscripted short, taken with our tiny digital camera, no longer than one minute. Our first one features Sara Kate with a great tip for preserving your knife edge and moving small chopped veggies. Enjoy!

[Welcome back to Nora, a new contributor to The Kitchen, who will be trying out on Cheesemonger and Farmers' Market posts.]

The challenge at the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market in San Francisco last Saturday was to summer-fy Michael Chiarello's Forever Roasted Pork Shoulder (see recipe after the jump), which guarantees falling-off-the-bone pork most appropriate for east coast winters or San Francisco summers.

Some of the more interesting highlights entirely new to us New Yorkers: Zapallitos, a sweet and tender summer squash originally from Argentina; Miyoza, fragrant Japanese ginger flowerbuds; and Bittermelon (see above photo), a little-known member of the gourd family considered the most bitter among all edible vegetables, used to enhance stir fries and soups.

We've received a great batch of bag designs, but we get the feeling there are a few more good ones out there in your big creative minds. So, we are extending the deadline for Apartment Therapy Market Bag designs.

Email your designs to us by this Friday, August 17th.

[Welcome Nora, a veteran of the cheese world and an avid New York farmers' market shopper. She'll be trying her hand at the Cheesemonger series on Wednesdays and the NYC Farmers' Market Report on Fridays.]

One of France's most revered cheese conoscenti once told me that the best cheese I would ever taste would be made from raw milk. In his next breath he cautioned that the worst cheese I would ever taste would be made from raw milk.

If you don't know the back-story on raw milk cheese, this may make as much sense as someone telling you on your wedding date that it's sure to be the best and worst day of your life.

We're working under the hood this weekend. Please excuse us while Mark has been shifting our entire publishing system this weekend to a new server. Although you won't notice any great changes on Monday, everything should load far quicker, and it lays the foundation for everything we're adding in the next eight weeks, including a new search function this week. Yee-Haw!

We got a special glimpse at the MoMA Store Fall Collection, and theres plenty of style cookin for the kitchen and tabletop at this design retail powerhouse. Lots of technology breathing new life and edge to traditional materials, shapes and motifs. These items arent even on the MoMA Store site but will be appearing and available soon...

Brand: Griffins' Raspberry Extra
Fruit: Raspberry
Location: Galway, Ireland

Rating: Addictive*

Soft and soupy in consistency, this rich raspberry delivers a big juicy punch.

We found this in a small bakery on the main street in Galway called Griffins. It had no label, but a small paper on the lid that told us that this local raspberry jam had a little extra liquor in it, which you barely taste. It does seem to add to its sweet tartness however, as this jam is first class and unique in taste. We heartily recommend tracking it down via mail or foot.

This is a tough subject. As a school teacher for seven years I learned to have faith in community and also to believe in the necessity for discipline in order to preserve community. Tempermentally I tend to be lenient, but I find I get less so each year. Quick, decisive discipline coupled with the availability of forgiveness is now my model.

Which is all to say that much as we hate to do it (and by we I mean the gaggle of us who now make up AT), we've had to ban two readers in the past week, and we want to be very clear about how and why...

How can your home be more green? Apartment Therapy has always been green. It informs all of our blogs, from the original AT:NY to our newest, Home Tech. But the time has come to expand our coverage for the home: we are planning a dedicated site to present the good green content from all of our current editors while adding posts from a new super-eco blogger (or two)...