House Beautiful Kitchen of the Year

It was white.  
Lots of white cabinets.
Glass doors.
A wood and marble-like island.
White tiles. 

Not blinding snow white. Rather calm, tranquil cloud white.
With gleaming silver tiles and drawer pulls, black lacquer shelves and confidently placed cabinets. And elegant glass front display "storage."

It was an orchestration designed by Mick De Giulio, kitchen designer since 1984. De Giulio knows his way around the heart and soul of a home. 

In fact, the House Beautiful literature for the 5^th Anniversary of this summer rite of passage notes, De Giulio believes that kitchens can be more than workrooms. He believes they can be artful compositions that feel the soul.”

So it is that even in one of the world’s busiest, buzziest tourist sites, with an added attraction on the site of the Today Show’s morning outside features, the Kitchen of the Year is poised as a welcoming, calm respite and heart of this pulsing city. 

Chef Lisa Pensiero cooking demo

There were eager-looking yet respectful visitors watching the cooking demonstration by a soft spoken, focused cookbook author and chef Laura Pensiero of GIGI TRATTORIA.

Others were lounging in the kitchen’s sitting area fronted by a fireplace and big screen TV.

Others at the dining room table,

and still more coming and going leisurely to the outdoor garden kitchen. 

It didn’t look like a major magazine and manufacturer demonstration so much as a casual, family party. 

Oh, but one with lots of media video taping and photographing the cooking action in the kitchen! 

The Look

The 1,000-square-foot kitchen conservatory featured two fully functioning kitchens, indoor and outdoor, where delectable bites and sips were offered throughout the day.

The kitchen brought together a wide array of premiere building and home decoration companies, including Belgard Hardscapes, Caesarstone, Kohler, KraftMaid, Whirlpool, Aircraft Scentsticks, Ann Sacks, Circa Lighting, The Container Store, de Giulio kitchen design, Frontgate, Glidden, Grandin Road, Grothouse, Hickory Chair, iRobot, Kravet, Michael Aram, Napoleon Fireplaces, Shaw Floors, and VTech.

I liked the clever the spice rack and the pin-door like sliding cover. 

However, after more thoughtful inspection, I thought it was a design conceit that was better looking than practical due to the fact that the spices were lined up along the back wall, next to the stovetop burner.  And for diminutive folks like me, that could mean a Biiiigg stretch to fetch the pepper across the stove abyss!

I liked the idea of the indented or square-shaped area built into the wood island counter top – much like a built in bowl – for fruit or other display.  How intriguing… Yet here again, I’m thinking if one is a semi-serious cook, or even an absent-minded one, you could inadvertently put the oil or mixed ingredients down into an “empty” sloping bowl.  It could spell disaster.  It's a design solution in search of a need....
And I'm not entirely sold on the idea of the mix of Caesarstone and wood island counter top. It looked nice but is it enduring?  I thought it could appear as if one or the other textured material was added in rather than designed in.  Not sleek.

The only other challenge is the cook top. It’s electric. I asked chef Laura if it posed a problem as she was trying to demo her recipe. She gamely came round to the answer, saying "It does get hot fast -- It just took some getting used to." (Most chefs use gas powered stove top burners.)

All together, the Kitchen was very, very good looking and the overall, open layout was smart.  Of course every imaginable appliance was included yet due to good design, it wasn’t overwhelming.  On the contrary. It was all easy functionality. The wine cooler, ovens and refrigerator were within easy reach.

The use of glass was elegant.

The flooring was handsome and practical.

The shelves for easy access to cookbooks was enlightened.  Except they didn't showcase my Hamptons & Long Island Homegrown Cookbook. ha! 

The shelves displaying vases and bowls was artful; a stunning effect. 

The Kitchen was as engaging as a couple’s rainy Sunday romp through a Home Depot Expo.  There was lot’s of “Honey, look at this.” And “Check this out.”  Nice inspiration.  

All events were open to the public.

A complete schedule of events http://www.housebeautiful.com/KOTY  Here online there are lots of design tips and tricks for small kitchens. 

Highlights included:

            * Todd English of Olives restaurant demonstrates Korean Style Grilled Skirt Steak

            * Highlighting the locavore culinary movement, star chefs from New York-area restaurants 
Peekamoose, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, and Gigi's Trattoria will prepare dishes and 
beverages with locally-sourced ingredients (

            *  Made In America: American Treasures Culinary Experience that recognized individuals 
and small producers in America  

            *  Miles Angelo of Caribou Club demonstrated Cappalletti with Duck Confit

Other culinary craftsman as part of the showcase were Food Network's Sandra Lee, The Chew Carla Hall, and Prune Restaurant's and James Beard Award Winner, Gabrielle Hamilton.

Outdoor Kitchen and Dining

The Belgard stone cooking island and bar in the outdoor dining area was a terrific design.  

Don't you just love the pop of green sink color?  Convenient, hidden trash receptacle

The aluminum island front and backsplash – not unlike my own inspired mirror backsplash design in our home kitchen – is just a brilliant detail.  

It opens up and reflects the light and space.  Not that one needed that in Rockefeller Center, but you will at home…

The Pizza Oven seems to be a must-do in today’s outdoor kitchens.  Men love them. And this Napoleon model was said to heat up very fast to a very high temperature.  

The Frontgate seating was conservative and rich-looking, indulgent  -- and made for relaxing while reading a good magazine or enjoying a pitcher of sangria with friends. 

The planters and island planters offered symmetry and contributed to a tranquil outdoor living composition.  There were nice container display gardens with a mix of grasses and vines and flowering plants.  

I liked the transition to different levels too – it gives a sense of being transported even if in a modest space.

I especially enjoyed chatting it up with House Beautiful's associate publisher Sean - the brains behind the entire culinary and design concept!  

We bonded over culinary design, foodie interests -- especially jam and local homegrown ingredients.  Instant friends.  Food can do that... 


House Beautiful is the leading authority on American home design and decoration.  Founded in 1896, House Beautiful is the oldest continuously published shelter magazine in the United States. In May 2012, House Beautiful won the American Society of Magazine Editors award for General Excellence in the Lifestyle Magazines category.

                                              

Home Renovation Update: Garden Design Takes Shape

I had been dreaming of my home garden design ever since I started taking Landscape Design classes at The New York Botanical Garden. 

For one of my final exams to earn the Certificate in Landscape Design, I created somewhat of a fantasy garden – knowing full well I would never be able to afford or create the concepts I had rendered on the blueprint. 

Now, in addition to being a garden and food writer, I’m also a garden designer and an award-winning designer at that! 

So when it came time to actually design my garden, I realized the stakes were high.

I wanted to produce a garden I could be very proud of. One that would not only showcase our home, but would show off my garden design profession.

And inspire other garden lovers.

And make my garden design clients glad I work for them.

And something I could write about.

And a place of enduring, beguiling beauty…

And a design we could afford.

Clearly the stakes are high.

Some of those early design concepts still bewitched. 

And over the years, while conducting painstaking research for my clients that made the home office look like something out of the movie “A Beautiful Mind” and John Nash’s garage -- with magazine clippings everywhere, books opened on the settee, tables and the Mac screen open to too many sites, I would sometimes – well actually often – come across ideas I would tuck into an all too soon bulging folder. 

When the time came, I deftly edited the file.  I smiled as I reviewed eras of garden interest: the billowy English gardens, palatial fountains and pools. Or boutique-style Caribbean retreats, Hollywood-inspired set designs, Colonial Spanish and Pasadena, California to Italian Riviera.  Then to my focus on native plants.

All grand inspirations.

But truth be told, I think a good garden design borrows a bit from all that and then it will tell a story unique to the person and home and location.

Just like I do for my clients.

I sketched the concept for the front yard garden rooms, including the driveway garden to be. Already in place is the arbor that we built and have been nurturing for years.

The goal of the arbor is to architecturally, with beauty, lead a guest from the street to the back yard.  Most suburban homes have no clue how to do this.  In our case, I wanted to create the added tension of walking from one world to the next as leading the eye through the tunnel of roses, Lady in Red Hydrangea and Coral Bark Maple overhead and the sides of arbor, there is the big drama at the end of the walk where one can see the bay and marina and New York City skyline beyond. 

It is a heart clutching, take-your-breath-away moment made possible by the creative and elegant use of plants and good garden design.

Oh and at night, the arbor is softly lit with solar powered little lights.

So romantic.

One group of designs that was appealing to me from the early days and struck a chord or me and informed my garden design for clients were the driveways from the studio of Dargan Landscape Architects. 

I made so many copies of the magazine layouts for fear I’d lose them to a misplaced file.

So it was with great joy and surprise when about a month ago, I saw an ad or received an email from the principal of that firm, Mary Palmer Dargan, to participate in a garden design webinar. I never did, but intend to. 

Yet I took this handshake across the internet as a good sign that my long-ago lust for those driveway concepts was coming into play just as she reappeared in my world.

My interpretation of the driveway look is to eliminate macadam and use natural elements of stone, gravel, trees, planting beds, and utilize layered, graded elements.

Make it good looking and functional.  Not a parking lot, for goodness sake.

One garden design client has turf and Italian white marble for two parking courts.

I almost persuaded a client to incorporate turf for a somewhat checkerboard look but instead we agreed on a paver stone set on diagonal that has worked well, especially due to its sloping elevation so no need to irrigate.  The walls are covered with climbing hydrangea and kiwi for a dripping-with-plant look and cooling effect on the sun-drenched bowl effect of the driveway to garage design.

For another client, I designed a teeny, postage stamp-sized parking court using the Turfstone – where the grass can grow up through the pavers, providing stability but beauty (see earlier blog post, November 2011) to create a serviceable and pretty driveway in what was the front yard.

While I drew up the plans for the driveway and the rest of the front yard garden vision, including the walkway to the front steps and door, my landscaper and I met several times to review materials and schedule. 

Bluestone -- to best amplify the blue grey of the house siding and old/new brick.

Decomposed Granite for part of the walk leading from the main walk design to a water garden off what is now the dinging room, with its wall of windows, two of which are sliding French doors.

Here, I wanted to create an instant mini lawn for the two steps down into that water garden.  I think it will be lovely in every season: green grass to step out on and in winter, a wonderful canvas for the snow.

There will be a front border, street side, and small strolling garden off the front steps. Later…

But as the spring season turned to early summer, we still had plywood leading to the driveway which made guests come and go like circus Wallendas or gymnasts on a balancing beam. 

And when it rained, it was more medieval moat.

Then there was the big sand pit or what we came to refer to as the big kitty litter box. 

It was the sand left by the mason.

Burke the landscaper extraordinaire and the team were so over-scheduled and weather wasn’t helping due to what I call the Goldilocks weather report: “it’s too hot, too cold, too wet…”  All extremes.

So no work at our house despite great planning.

In the meantime, we had the stunning but massively large Kwanzan pruned up and in for our sake, and our neighbor’s and the tree.

And we waited.  And waited.

Finally the week before the big Independence Day fireworks party the work began!  Towns around glory in our town’s fireworks, set off in the marina below and our house has a front row seat. The entire town ignites in preparation. There is a Fireman’s Fair the week before.

Every house it seems is undergoing painting, manicuring, and decorating. It’s big.

And happily, we could too.

I couldn’t have guests navigate the plank. My sister in law just had had hip surgery too. So for safety reasons we needed at least the walk and a bit of turf. 

A few last minute reviews with Burke and me.  He painted it out.

At his suggestion, I went to his yard to look at some stone and brick.

At this point, there wasn’t really any time to get from a stone dealer.

Plus he could clear out some things and I loved the idea of getting some stone with provenance.

The turf step off the dining room would now be in former bluestone sidewalk from a neighboring seaside town! 

So the work began.

The first-class team of Honnold Landscaping artisans was on the job. 

Like cobras, they fix on the stone to be measured and cut. 

They stare it down.

They use the string, the level.

And only when they are absolutely, positively certain, do they cut.

After the step up from the driveway, I wanted a circle design. I think a circle represents movement and in this case, one has the option of going up to the front walk and door or to the walk to the water garden. Essentially offering a choice of three directions to take.   

In terms of the design and the stone, the circle proved a bit challenging.

It took three of us some time to recalibrate and amend a look to make the angles and geometry work.  But we did it.

The dust flew.

It was hot.

The grass steps and stone turned out better than perfect. The old stone is extraordinary and made the design work all that much better.

And there is a story to tell with it. You can even see some of the yellow from the No Parking mark!

The steps are off the new dining room - seen here from inside.  I designed the curtain look from the valance to the drapes.  When the breeze catches them billowing and flirting it's pure cinema. Then picture opening the doors to step out onto the grass steps and soon to be - I hope - water garden.  I wanted to create that lovely sound of water off the dining room. 

The other side is all bay and city scape vistas which is tough to compete with! 

The turf was cut as the truck waited.  And then, just like that, we had a front walk and some real grass for the very first time.   

And our guest for the fireworks party could walk up to the front door.

We celebrated our first phase of garden design with a bang!

Party Time

Couldn't have done made phase one of the dream come to be without the amazing talent and dedication of Burke Honnold Landscape team. I love them and respect their talent. Burke and family, er sorority made it to the party too! 

 Do you want to see the before/before pictures??

Summer Garden Harvest

This is my first real posting from the new writing room.

In the exuberant experience expressed in the iconic charge from the Titanic movie star Leonardo DeCaprio, “I am the king of the world.” 

I too feel a sense of exuberance – a literary optimism.

Just as my first book, “The Hamptons & Long Island Homegrown Cookbook” explored and embraced the relationship between the chef and their local, homegrown, artisanal grower that most inspired them, our own Garden State “farme-ette” inspired this weekend’s dinner menu.

Our homegrown garden yielded a bumper crop of edible delights. 

Today, we harvested this year’s potatoes: Chieftens, Nicola, and Yukon Gold.

I continue to yield and enjoy the just-picked garlic. 

Seasonly sad, my husband has advised I demur from indulging in our homegrown garlic.

I reek!

At the same time, I am not altogether convinced that it's not worth the olfactory sensation!  It's that good.  Fresh, crisp, peppery... 

Plus the basil and parsley contributed to the best Pesto this season!

Just as I lovingly noted in my book’s Acknowledgements, my beloved father’s father and I would dig up the earthly jewels of earth, to harvest the best homegrown potatoes. 

To this day, it has never lost the allure and magic.

Squash blossom went from garden to plate, cooked with pinch of anchovy paste & ricotta. It was supreme!

Home Renovation Diary Update

The stairway to heaven was cursed. 

In fact, it was driving us to hell in a hand basket!

The spiral staircase was an inspired, gateway to the new loft office/ atelier/guest room. 

It was to be a visual, cinematic gesture: custom black iron work, stairs we’d stain to match the kitchen’s new wood floor, copper-painted spindles to better match the copper floor insets that randomly punctuate the porcelain tile floor in the renovation’s dining and sitting room.

It was a good design concept. 

Bill engineered the specs, found a Pennsylvania craftsman to build it and the railing.

What could be better? Simpler. 

The builders and literature said “Two people, Two days.”

Umm, unless they had a super hero in mind, this is unrealistic and was never going to happen.

But we didn’t yet know that.

As gal Hilary often admonishes, “It takes a village…” and in this case, we did reach out for help. 

With optimism, we had an extended-circle friend come to help install and we were most grateful. 

In just one long day, the spiral stairs were up! 

Thanks to Bill, the point of first-stair entry matched up to the dining room carpet with the precision of a German-engineered Porsche fanaticism. 

Next is the railing.

Not so fast.

The steps we learned have an ordinal pattern that needed to be followed.

Yikes!

The stairs were up and winding and twisting with all their sinuous charm but it was not meant to be.

Solution? 

Not unlike those Apollo astronauts, Bill came up with an original, “duct-tape” remedy that he’d thought about, worked out and re-worked out a gazillion times in his head and on paper.

The plan was brilliant. The jack wasn’t. 

After some stroke-inducing attempts between the two of us, he reluctantly agreed we could use some help.

Yeah!

In came our brother-in-law, Gerry, the mastermind of all things good, family, and construction; along with our fireman-hero nephew Brian and friend, who had the brain muscle and muscle-muscle – if you know what I mean – to get these bloody steps aligned properly. 

Success was celebrated with lots of grilled hot dogs, beer and fair-thee-wells.

Now the “easy” part.

Just needed to get the rail up and banister up.  

Bill painted the spindles a copper color to match the copper in the insets in the floor.  Here they are painted and looked not unlike those terra-cotta Chinese soldiers!  

Bill and I were steeling ourselves for the task ahead when miraculously, the extended-friend circled back ‘round that very morning. 

Brilliant you say.

I did too.

The stair railing was up in less than half the time.

Only trouble was, now the railing  had to be painted in situ.  Sigh.

The question was to spray or to brush paint.  Each was fraught with issues.

Soon, after some trial and testing, all was resolved and we were back on track to completion.

Not without some painful “Holy Smokes” and “Oh for the love of Pete” and some sailor-style cussing.

And there was more, I assure you while putting in the railing. 

Was it worth it? 

Yes.

Decorating the Loft with Furniture

I’m not embarrassed to say, it came to me in a yoga moment.

We had listed our black lacquer furniture that was oh-so-courant in our previous townhouse and as a placeholder in this house on eBay and Craig’s list. (beware that Craig's List, I say)

I had been totally seduced by the sexy Koket day bed while walking the Architectural Digest show earlier this year. http://www.bykoket.com/catalogue/prive.php

(I have been trying to do a feature story on the designer, Janet Morais, ever since I fell in love with her “Love Happens” romantic, design approach.  And will do when we are not so both over the top crazy. But don’t miss her designs simply because we are oversubscribed.)

Feature story to follow, accordingly.  Morais possesses a passionate attention to detail, customer service and an enduring romantic, feminine perspective.

Plus a wicked sense of humor.

It doesn’t get any better.

Plus you get to glam it up.  From the moment it arrived in it's own sarcophagus

My nieces couldn’t resist. 

Neither could I.  

It’s a longer story for another post and while fraught with its own can-you-believe-it-moments, the designer and I never lost our sense of humor and dare I say, glamour. 

The daybed is quite sexy, no? And it has black lacquer sides.

So while I can’t remember if it was a downward facing dog or plough or a triangle pose, it did indeed hit me that hey- I can re-purpose and use the glamorous furniture we have to complement the outré daybed.

Ask me how much satisfaction it was to “shop” in our garage and basement for long-forgotten furniture and I will tell you it was over the top hilarious.

The price was right. Free!

It cleared out the garage so we could actually put the car back in after almost two years of having my wonderful mother move in with us and accommodating all those boxes and then moving all our stuff there for the repairs and renovation.

It was just so great

And in that meditation moment, it came to be.

The only challenge was we sorely needed that manpower yet again.

To the rescue was nephew Brian aka superhero fireman and friend.

I held my breath twice in spite of their careful, homecrafted attention to hoisting the two furniture pieces up, up, and ally-oop over the loft balcony, prior to the railing going up.  

And then, just like that, it looked like it had all been planned from the get-go.  

In some way, perhaps it was.  All that good karma cannot be a mistake.

Cheers.

Almost there.

Wait till you see the Parisian-like ball-gown silk drapes… 

And the beginnings of the garden design will break your heart with hope…