Curator Picks - 4/17

Dear New York, today I love you. I loved you when I stepped outside this morning in only a t-shirt to walk the dog. I loved you when I walked up the street from work to City Bakery for a chocolate chip cookie (okay two chocolate chip cookies and marshmallows) after lunch. I loved you when I walked across Union Square and smiled at the people crammed into the tiny park in the center, duking it out for a tiny piece of park bench to sit on and enjoy the warm air rustling the leaves. I even loved you when I came back to the office and had to sit through an interminably long computer session to learn a new sales tracking system at work. And I'll probably still love you tonight when my tired feet walk down the hill towards First Avenue and I'll catch glimpses of the East River sparkling between the buildings.


Julianne Moore's beautiful west village garden was featured by Architectural Digest (also covered today via Curbed and Apartment Therapy). Her garden designer, Brian Sawyer was recently back from a trip to Northern Ireland and was influenced by the dark, mossy green gardens he saw there. Moore's back garden is bigger than my apartment and has totally cool features like stag-horn ferns mounted like antlers in her brick walls. So clever!

Photo by Christopher Baker for Architectural Digest.

In the same kind of earthy, garden-y vein, check out this gorgeous blog, The Forest Feast. Run by a former New York City photographer, Erin Gleeson, who moved her life to a cabin in the woods in northern California in 2011. With a mix of whimsical illustrations and beautiful photography, Erin's goal is to create a cookbook out of the collection - and I would totally buy that book. The site reminds me a little of the illustration/photography mix in Stephanie Reynaud's French Feasts:

Off the earthy vein: Irish pancakes are more like crepes; thin slices that I then squeeze lemon on and sprinkle liberally with sugar. I try to make them every weekend (along with a batch of the fat American pancakes that the other members of my household crave). But I think I might get the best of both worlds with this amazing looking Banana Bread Crepe Cake on Smitten Kitchen's site.

Looking for a good recipe for Thai food? I usually end up ordering it because I can't seem to replicate the results at home. But over at Camille Styles today I found this recipe for Thai Steak + Noodles that looks pretty delicious. It has a lot of ingredients (and a 2 hour steak marinade), which usually makes me discard the recipe but I think this one might be worth it. I'm sure you could make it easily without the steak too for all you non meat eaters out there.