Feb 04

2016

Farm Food: Chicken Pot Pie

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Making the table look pretty is almost as fun and satisfying for me as the cooking.

It’s hard to argue that there is any meal more quintessentially English than Sunday lunch at home. Many of our friends and family members make it a weekly practice – either going for lunch at a friends house or hosting their own. As much as Christopher and I enjoy these meals, we often feel that we need Sundays to be more focused on down time – finding ourselves in the garden, on a horse, or gorging ourselves at the buffet at Soho Farmhouse instead of hosting a house full of people. With Zach at school 6 days a week, it’s the only day we have him to ourselves and we all like to sleep late and go where the day naturally takes us.

That said, from time to time, I do get inspired to cook Sunday lunch. And when I do, I like to enjoy the results of my labour with friends and family just like the English do. ..


Oct 30

2015

Farm Food: Our New Juice Press!

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My very first turn of the juice press. Shirt by Isabel Marant, trousers by TopShop, boots by Grenson.

Every autumn when I was a child, my family would chose a Saturday to pile in the car and drive at least an hour north from our home in Westchester to pick apples and buy cider. We always returned with huge bags of tangy, crisp fruit far better than anything you could buy in the supermarket. We ate as many as we could and then my mom would make the rest into apple sauce.The years of memories are hard to differentiate in my head – they have all melted together into one collection of happy fruit-picking nostalgia.

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This tree has the sweetest apples.

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A collection of apples from various trees in the orchard. I tend to prefer a mix of varieties and flavours.

When we moved to England, and I found myself surrounded by more apples than you could possibly pick come September, the abundance quickly weighed heavily upon me. Yes we picked them. And I made a pie or a crumble, and then as much apple sauce as I could possibly make. But that didn’t even touch the surface of making the most of our apple supply. ..


Sep 24

2015

Farm Food: Fig Jam

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I could probably fill up most of my September and October blog posts documenting my manic effort to make the most of the autumn fruit growing just outside my cottage and around the farm. But since I am still new to this and have varying levels of success, I will chose to focus on the highlights here. First and foremost, I think of September as FIG MONTH (even though you could equally argue that it’s apple, pear, blackberry or quince month). I eat figs just about every single day, mostly by choice, but there is a certain urgency to it as well. Whether still on the tree or just picked, figs are only really good for one day. You pick them a day early and the seeds are too crunchy, or a day late and the whole thing is mushy and likely half-eaten by a wasp. We just have one tree in our garden and I thank god for that because it supplies more figs than I can eat or preserve for a full six weeks each year. ..


Sep 03

2015

Farm Food: Rhubarb Crumble

When I was at a crossroads in my career in my late twenties, my mentor Diane Von Furstenberg encouraged me to strike out on my own, saying to me, “Every woman needs to be known for something, even if its for making the best apple pie.” I don’t think either one of us thought I would eventually take that idea so literally, but it seems that I have (if you switch the apple for rhubarb and pie for crumble). Yes, rhubarb crumble. That is my thing. ..


Mar 27

2014

Farm Food: Cooking Bardot-style

When I was living in New York I didn’t have the time or patience to collect and pour over cookbooks like I do now. In fact the closest I got to anything resembling a cookbook was a manilla office file filled with appealing recipes I had torn out of magazines while reading in bed on the weekends. On the rare occasion that I’d host a dinner party at home, I would consult my recipe file and chose what seemed like the easiest thing to cook. “Easy to cook” in my mind means few ingredients, nothing that requires shopping at a specialty store, minimal active prep time, and delicious results. ..

Nov 05

2013

Life on the Farm: Kitchen Garden Abundance

Last year I just kind of passively watched as the abundance of farm produce came and went with the summer and autumn seasons. I was too distracted by the move, settling the kids into school, finding a routine for myself, and updating our home to engage in any significant way with the vegetable garden or any of the trees – pear, apple, quince, elderflower, fig, blackberries – that the farm offered up. Granted, we didn’t actually have our own vegetable garden last year but on the farm there are two large ones maintained by other family members that I am always welcome to take from...


Sep 26

2013

Life on the Farm: Another September

In June of 2012, I announced to the world, or at least the fashion world, that I was taking a year off to go live on a farm in rural England. So here we are at the end of September 2013, and here I am. Still. People ask me from time to time when I am coming back or what my future plans are, and so I thought I’d let you all know what I’m up to.

For starters, I love it here. For more reasons than I can explain. But the main ones are the following: I have never been more clear about who I am and what is important to me...


Jun 18

2013

I ♥ Your Wedding Style: Rachel Chandler Guinness

While I’m on the subject of weddings, can we all just take a moment to be obsessed with Rachel Chandler Guinness? I first saw her about three years ago at a fashion show. It was Tara Subkoff’s second Imitation of Christ show after attempting to take back the label she founded, and all the cool girls were there – Chloe Sevigny, Jen Brill, Liz Goldwyn – but it was Rachel I noticed most. What caught my eye were her Belgian shoes...



Apr 04

2013

Farm Food: Spring Cooking

Although I love love love to cook, I don’t usually post recipes because I don’t feel like they’re mine. I am definitely a recipe girl. I need a cook book. That’s how I learned and continue to learn how to cook –  I buy a book that appeals to me and cook all the recipes that look good. Then I buy another book and do the same. I’ve cooked through Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers, Nigella Lawson, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Ina Garten, Tamasin Day-Lewis, Jamie Oliver, the Smitten Kitchen blog, and at the moment I am obsessed (along with the rest of the world) with all things Ottolenghi...