in good taste, vol. 87: home work
office inspiration, better adjectives, and a winter chicken stew
Hi and happy new year!
It’s a fact well-documented that I am a glutton for home walkabout content. It doesn’t just have to be Cribs or Architectural Digest celebrity stuff; I have deep love for the cabinet shelf, the refrigerator dissection, the organizing tips. Domestic home living content, the kind that tends toward organization and archiving, really scratches an itch. It’s a fascination not far off from those little slice-of-life aesthetic TikToks. Little periscopes into the filtered mundane, making the average feel transcendent, if only for sixty highly edited seconds.
I’ll take a moment of transcendence however I can get it these days.
A recent rabbit hole for me has been peeking into how people sort out their home offices. One of my pet projects this year is revamping my home office top to tail. I’ve created a couple of Shuffles as moodboards for colors and general textures. And so far, I’ve switched things up with a real wild rug and a 1960s Jens Risom desk with squeaky, well-loved drawer hinges.
(Quick plug - you don’t have to be Gen Z to enjoy creating a Shuffles collage. It’s a great place to be creative without needing to be social.)
I love seeing how people invest in their physical work spaces - not just financially, but in their time, their attention, in accommodations for individual needs and quirks. Where do you set your morning coffee? Your favorite pens? Do you have a desk calendar? An emotional support water bottle? A printer? We are our routines, and they are never more boring or intimate or personal than in our work spaces. Maybe, making the average a little more transcendent.
A COLLECTION OF LINKS BOTH HIGHBROW AND HELPFUL
“The number of writers on food who are both artists and honest men or women is limited … Among them must be placed M.F.K. Fisher.”
I don’t really love romanticizing the return of a large corporation whose success has ridden on the loss of independent booksellers, but this piece is a good read on Barnes & Noble’s rejuvenation.
On the flip side, some great news for the indies and Bookshops among us: UK Indie bookshop numbers hit 10-year high in 2022
On the poetry beat, “Letter Written During a January Northeaster,” by Anne Sexton
I have this written on all sorts of notebooks: “little beginnings everywhere”
“It speaks, I think, to the importance of keeping fragments around, hints and clues and half-baked impressions. But also the importance of revisiting them.”
Servicey! No More “Very” combines "very" with a simple adjective to get a more concise adjective
A WINTER CHICKEN STEW
My husband Adrian hosts a weekly game night with friends, one of whom, Adi, loves stew of any form, any kind, any type. I made this winter stew for Adi (and the group at large) as a thank-you for feeding our beautiful grump of a cat over a long weekend.
This stew requires a bit of an early start - prep to table takes about 2 hours - but it can easily be made, chilled and stored, then reheated when you’re ready.
You could easily cut the time in half (if not more, to your soup vs. stew preference). Make it vegetarian with chopped portobello mushrooms, cooked separately in butter, and added to the mix at the end.
INGREDIENTS
3 tablespoons, grapeseed (or another neutral) oil
1 tbsp., butter
4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, patted dry and salted + peppered, then chopped into 1-inch chunks
2 medium yellow onions, diced
4 cloves of garlic, minced
3 parsnips, peeled and cut into ¾” planks
3 carrots, peeled and cut into ¾” planks
3 turnips, cut into quarter chunks
4-5 medium red potatoes, cut into quarter chunks
⅛ cup, flour
1 tsp., Dijon mustard
1 cup, white wine
3 cups, chicken stock
1 tsp., chopped fresh thyme
1 tsp., chopped fresh rosemary
½ tbsp., za’atar (optional; recommended)
1 tbsp., white wine vinegar
WHAT TO DO
Preheat the oven to 300. In a Dutch oven, brown chicken lightly on all sides in 2 tbsp. of oil over medium-high heat (about 10 minutes), then set aside in a bowl.
Add butter and the last tablespoon of oil to the pot, being careful not to melt but not brown the butter. Add onions and cook until soft, sprinkling with the za’atar (if you have it) and about a ¼ tsp each of salt and pepper.
Whisk in flour until combined into a paste, add the mustard, cook for 1 minute. Add wine and scrape up the browned bits. Mix in garlic, thyme, and rosemary, cook until fragrant but not browned.
Pour in chicken stock, parsnips, carrots, turnips, potatoes, and the chopped chicken with its juices. Mix to combine and bring to a slow simmer, then cover and cook in the oven for 60 minutes.
At the hour mark, bring it out of the oven, add white wine vinegar and cook on the stovetop for about a minute. Turn off the heat, let it stand for about 10 minutes or until it’s thickened a bit. Serve with parsley on top and maybe a bright green salad on the side. Eat this on a chilly, damp evening.