The Brown Derby Cocktail

...cloudy. A version of it appears as the “De Regueur” in the Savoy Cocktail Book. Some say that bartenders at the Vendome, a popular delicatessen on the Sunset Strip in the 1930s, did a slightly readjusted version of it that ended up being named for the Brown Derby restaurant. Allow me to digress. If Steven Pinker tries to sell you on his hustle of how things are sooooo much better than they used to be just show him what happened to the Vendome: Th...

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Saturday Linkages: A Difficult Week

...D-19 and Circuits of Capital Holding the Vision: Collecting the Art of the Book in the Industrial North West (museum exhibit in a series of blog posts) Mystery as 60 peculiar cubes with inscriptions pulled from Coventry river Thermoelectric Stoves: Ditch the Solar Panels? The Complete Guide to Creating Your Personal Makerspace (Via Eric of Garden Fork) Infectious Bronchitis In Chickens: Another Coronavirus My friend found a listing for an otherwis...

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Kelly’s Office Furniture in Progress

...cing on scrap wood. Kelly did not like how long it took for me to make the bookshelf (made out of inexpensive beech wood, by the way) and requested that I put the cabinets together faster. I used birch plywood which was more fun to work with than I expected and certainly saved a lot of time. Hardwood has to be milled, the edges jointed and small pieces glued together to make wider boards. It takes days of work. Plywood cabinets come together in ho...

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RIP Joseph Shuldiner

...and designer with a passion for food. He was the author of a terrific cookbook called Pure Vegan: 70 Recipes for Beautiful Meals and Clean Living. He had a second book due to come out next year, The New Homemade Kitchen. He went on to oversee, along with Kevin West, the transformation of Grand Central Market. He also founded and ran the Altadena Farmers’ Market. Unlike many market managers, Joseph made sure that the vendors actually grew the food...

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Kelly’s New Desk

...to Schwartz’s blog in the past and can’t say enough good things about his books. In addition to being well written they are just plain beautiful books and the projects strike a perfect balance of good design and ease of construction. Schwartz specializes in reviving what might be thought of as the furniture of common people, not the fancy and fussy stuff usually associated with middle aged woodworking hobbyists. He draws a lot of inspiration from...

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