Turkey? Pie?

This is the time of year when all foodies either run screaming from the banality of the typical Thanksgiving meal or embrace the challenge and strive for a memorable meal created from the murky depths of "tradition".
What is a traditional thanksgiving meal obviously is personal to your own family history - could be jello salad, could be yams with marshmallows or maybe creamed peas.  Likely it includes turkey, stuffing, potatoes and pumpkin pie.  But are these foods "authentic" to the original harvest feast held by the pilgrims? 


Well, we can definitely rule out the jello salad! 
(looks good, yes? Are the square shapes cheese?)

It is likely that wild fowl (turkey, pheasant, goose?) was part of the meal, as well as seafood, shellfish, greens, dried beans, dried berries and corn. Pumpkin and squash would have been available but pumpkin pie would have been unlikely as there was no access to the ingredients for the crust. Cranberries might have been included but no sugar! Those pilgrims were hardy stock.


I'm thinking of avoiding the entire "traditional" and going the seafood route. 

Imagine the table set with a whole fish to carve .... what would your guests think?

Hold on to your Eggs

Once you have chickens of your own you discover that a freshly laid egg is really an egg-citing (sorry) event. You wait patiently for the chicks to grow up and actually lay an egg ... five months is a long time. When you get the first egg there is great rejoicing and, at least in our house, a reluctance to eat the precious egg. 
If you find this to be true, you might want to think about this egg cup ....

Another option for the delicate egg is ....

On the other hand if you are not raising your own chickens and do not have fresh eggs you might be more interested in disguising the ordinary egg. A fresh egg might be something to celebrate but a mass farmed grocery store egg is not. Instead you might want to dress it up ...

Or perhaps completely alter your egg in a mold ...

No matter how you treat the egg - enjoy!

Feathers McGraw

If you don't already know about Wallace and Gromit then stop reading this IMMEDIATELY and lay your hands on The Wrong Trousers, watch, and then we will like you again.  Actually, watch ALL of the Wallace & Gromit movies, and THEN we will like you again.

So, did you know he had a name?  Yes - Feathers McGraw, the evil little penguin who wears one of the very best disguises of any of the great super-villians.... a red rubber glove!  The brilliance of it!  As we know, some chickens can actually be pretty nasty, so no surprise that a particularly sneaky one could be masterminding a museum heist as tricky as the one in this classic Wallace & Gromit film.  

Seriously LOVE this.  L. O. V. E.

Each of Nick Park's films are love-worthy:  the whole washing-machine-on-the-moon thing; the freaky shaving one with the adorable lambs; and that great homage to organic gardening, Curse of the Were-Rabbit.  Chicken Run naturally has a place close to our egg-shaped hearts, but Best Chicken in our book goes hands down to Feathers McGraw.   

Need your own super-villain disguise?  We found these at CB2.... very modern, very egg.  But you might need to have a under-sized head.

CockTails

On school nights we are wine drinkers.  Typically red with dinner.  We drink it casually, have our favorites, and don't usually take it too seriously.  Cocktails, however, are different.  Cocktails are serious business.  Serious fun, that is.  And modern.  And egg friendly!

via greygoose.com

Egg friendly? 
Yes.  Two things:
First - the name.  It's a COCKtail, of course!  But why? According to Wikipedia, there are several claims about the origin of the term cocktail, "many of which are fanciful and almost none of which are supported by documentary evidence."
Not satisfied, we tracked down several semi-plausible explanations for the term, our favorite of which is that at some point it was customary to put a feather, presumably from a cock's tail, in the drink to serve both as decoration and to signal to teetotalers that the drink contained alcohol.  We actually keep a jar of tail feathers sitting atop the bar, but have not yet been brave enough to stick one into our lemon-drop martinis.


The second modern, egg-friendly thing to know about cocktails?  There is a whole new batch of drinks being whipped up by creative bartenders (or "mixologists"...) who have rediscovered a classic cocktail ingredient:  raw egg!  It is used to add texture, and to thicken the drink.  How beautiful is that?  If you are at all familiar with the KCRW radio show "Good Food" (and if you are not you should be!!), there was an excellent piece on this recently.... you can find it here.  There is also a bit on the show about eating placentas, but please feel free to skip that part.


Allow us to share a cocktail recipe from that show, via Derek Brown & kcrw.com.


Bottoms up! 

Pisco Sour

1 egg white
2 1/2 oz Pisco Capel 
1/2 oz simple syrup
3/4 oz fresh lemon juice
Angostura Bitters 

In cocktail shaker filled with ice, combine egg white, Pisco, simple syrup, and lemon juice. Cover, shake vigorously for 15 seconds, and strain into six-ounce cocktail glass. Top with a few drops of bitters. 

(From Epicurious)

Why modern? Why eggs?

If you are like us, there is little need to ask the first question.  Perhaps you are not like us, however, and it may be worthwhile to examine the "why modern?" question for just a moment.

While this is probably not the best forum in which to examine the history of architecture, let us just say that while styles come and go, and sometimes even return with a "post" or "neo" in front of their name, we personally seem attached to the idea that if something is "modern" it is rooted in the present.  That is, it is current, timely, and most importantly relevant.  Modern is something that works for us right now - and this is what it means in our title.  (Although we do of course also love Neutra, the Eames' and Corbusier - we're architects, after all.)

(Shaun Curry/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)

The second question is a bit stickier (pun intended, although we will try to keep the egg humor to a minimum. Eggs are funny enough without unnecessary embellishment.) Why eggs?!  Breaking it down (sorry!):  eggs are simple, beautiful, and a little mysterious.  Eggs are shapely. They can be big or small.  Eggs come in mod colors:  a basket of chicken eggs might include french gray, pale brown, dark brown, olive, white....  like little oval Benjamin Moore Classics paint samples.  Except you can eat them.  And if you don't eat them (AND you have a rooster) you can watch baby chicks pop out of the eggs.  (This is the "mysterious" part....) And what is more timely, more current and more relevant than that?

E G G S   A R E   M O D E R N.

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