Friday Favorites, vol. XXI

1. beaded handbags





2. garden gnomes





3. BLATs
Most people eat BLTs, but when you add some delicious avocado, what you then have is a lovely BLAT.





4. this rosemary hand soap (which smells amazing)



5. Prada Marfa
Summer reminds me of Marfa.

I discovered Life Magazine Photo Heaven

You guys. How much do you love the classic images from Life Magazine? I mean, Life was one of the best photojournalist accounts of American society ever printed.



I just found out that you can search over ten million images from Life Magazine archived here. You can search by decade, name, key word, you name it. Ninety-seven percent of the images have never been seen before.
Or, when you search images in Google, just add "source:life" to search only the Life archives.



Here are a few of my favorite searches so far...

Marilyn Monroe



1960s



Ballerinas



So fabulous. I know where I'll be for the next few hours....

Monday Dose of Cuteness, vol. 4

Grown-up pigs are only 30% cute. But baby pigs? 100% cute!







Bonus: Vote for your favorite piglet on the weekly poll (posted on the top right).

Blueberry Puddin, s'il vous plaît

Nearly a year ago I blogged my roasted red pepper hummus recipe.
I also listed the five foolproof recipes that I know how to make, and my friend Kathryn kindly asked for me to post my blueberry puddin' recipe next. I'm sorry it's so late, Kathryn, dear.

Blueberry Puddin
(I believe this originally came from an old issue of Saveur magazine.) Not as sweet as a cobbler, this is a comfort dish that we adore. It helps that we have most of the ingredients on hand most of the time. Yummy dessert without a trip to the grocery store? Yes, please.



You'll need:
2 c. blueberries (stemmed & rinsed or frozen)
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
pinch ground cinnamon (This is an excellent time to ask if you know about Penzey's spices.)
4 tbsp butter, at room temperature
2/3 c. sugar
1 1/4 c. flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
1/2 c. milk

1. Preheat oven to 350. Put blueberries, lemon juice and cinnamon into a bowl and toss well. Transfer to an 8-cup souffle dish and set aside.


This time around, I went for fresh blueberries, because I couldn't pass up the price. Normally, I use frozen.

2. Put butter and sugar into a medium mixing bowl and beat with an electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes.



Add flour, baking powder and salt and beat on medium speed until mixture resembles coarse crumbs, about 30 seconds. Add milk and continue beating, scraping sides and bottom of bowl with a rubber spatula as necessary, until batter is smooth, about 1 minute more. (Batter will be will very thick.)



3. Using a soup spoon, drop batter by the heaping spoonful over berries in dish.



Pour 1 cup boiling water over batter. The easiest thing to do here is heat the exact amount of water you need for about 2 minutes in microwave as opposed to boiling water and then measuring it. (Water will smooth out the dollops of batter slightly.)


(This is before pouring the water over.)

4. Put souffle dish on a baking sheet, transfer to oven, and bake pudding, rotating dish halfway through cooking time, until berries are bubbling and crust is golden brown, about one hour.
Transfer dish to a rack to let cool slightly. Serve warm.



While we've never had this dish with vanilla ice cream, something tells me that would be quite delish....

P.S. Why yes, I DID use my Hipstamatic iPhone app to take these photos.