Long Island light and shade

December 6, 2011

I feel the air miles  when a man with a festive beer in a plastic cup offers a seat on the packed late train  to Ronkonkoma  and questions with some incredulity  ” You’ve come all the way from England for Thanksgiving ?”  I have  and  it’s my first.  The  blazing fire,   turkey with a turkey flavour  from a North Fork organic  farm and the warmth of the Foley family to whose  Long Island Thanksgiving I am invited the next day will  meet all of my expectations and more.

With my body clock somewhere after lunch, I wake   rather suddenly   to the crack of  gun shots from the  duck hunters across the lake. ( It is never wise to think the countryside is peaceful)  But it’s tranquil enough, absolutely blissful in fact,  drinking hot coffee on the  porch ,watching  the  melting  pale pink early morning sky  and all around the earthy woodiness  of damp leaves.  I’m at  the white house, the  simple white  wood clad home (and location space) of  Trish Foley the American  queen of white and  natural  decorating. Her first book the Natural Home published in 1995  was  ahead of its time, and is as inspirational today.

Trish’s 3rd  pop up shop event for her New General Store takes   place  with soup  cider and cookies over the Thanksgiving weekend. It  features  white and natural home ideas on sale in Trish’s  studio and white cabin tucked amongst the surrounding  winter thin woods.

There’s a gang of us  to pull the  last minute threads  together:  stirring the spicy pumpkin soup (cumin, coriander, chilli,  toasted pine nuts and croutons make this a particularly delectable pumpkin idea),  wiping down the thick glassy beads of  overnight dew from the  outdoor  benches and  sweeping leaves off the  huge outdoor  plank table.  The sun feels warm again on my face, a remnant of summer  and as in London, everyone is saying how unseasonable the temperatures are.

Matthew Mead sets up his stall in the  White Shop,  and signs copies of Holiday magazine- his  brilliant and  visually  inspiring  take on crafting and making that comes out quarterly.

I have my eyes, on white pots filled  with bulbs and moss,  but can’t exactly see getting past airport  security  A narcissus- scented candle will do very nicely instead.  And there is a gorgeous collection of  vintage white Ironstone china,  platters, cups and bowls, that I could also happily pack to take home – if only.

We say clothes pegs you say clothes pins.

As well as delicious flavoured vinegars and olive oils, there’s  flowery and scented Rugosa Rose jelly  made by The Taste of the North Fork.  I have some  dollops of it  on toast with butter  for breakfast to keep me going.

I am on duty  signing books in the studio, suffused with the scent of flowering  paper white narcissi, and bathed in the  long low sunlight pouring  through the  south facing wall of glass window panes. It’s  good to meet  the New York/Long Island crowd and find that there’s  common ground – simpler living is as much on the agenda in the economic  downturn as it is at home.  I’m glad that all my favourite things:  parrot tulips,  rhubarb,  roses,  chestnuts and lemon meringue pie seem to be  appreciated across the pond.  The books are a sell out and  so I celebrate with walnut shortbread baked by Michael Jones.

The next day I’m 0n the road again, heading to my next signing at Loaves and Fishes, in Bridgehampton.  This is a wonderful treasure trove of a cook shop with the best of its type,  from  coffee making machine and  shellfish picker to sharp knife and dinner plate.  Run by the charming and welcoming Sybille van Kempen  Loaves and Fishes is also noted for its food shop and cookery school and is  as much a  Hamptons  landmark as all the gorgeous beach houses*.  It’s Sunday lunchtime, and so my samples of  chocolate and chestnut cake are a great crowd drawer,  and another of the book’s recipes that seems to travel rather well.

*   Ralph Lauren  designer, Ellen O’Neill’s  heavenly red and white house  ( American country house style meets Bloomsbury ) is another Long Island   location shoot’s dream.

Time for some  R and R and I head off to the City via the Long Island Rail Road  ( it’s all so American-  the toot tooting  of the train when it passes  the  unmanned barriers reminds me of every cowboy  movie I’ve ever seen)  and Penn Station. The avenues of Manhattan await me and my wheelie bag.

See Pure Style on Design Sponge!

October 5, 2011

I wanted to show you this great piece on my home that’s just gone live with Design Sponge. Thanks so much to Keiko for taking such glamorous pictures!

Things I like this week…….

October 3, 2011

More brilliant ideas from the Pure Style design files.

Mellow yellow:  simple Daisy pattern wallpaper from The art of wallpaper.  Also comes in a good sludgy blue, brick red, and charcoal.

The clocks will be going back soon and there will be a great excuse for investing in a really good desk lamp – I love this one from Anglepoise.

Blue and white striped Cornishware mugs feature in all the kitchens that I have lived in over the years. I love their utilitarian cheerful feel. From recently rescued TG Green – and also in red.

Indian summer’s over – it’s time for tea and toast. This smart glass jar comes with spiced fig jam, from Toast. Recycle it for your own jam making efforts.

More autumn leaf yellows (THE colour this season) in wool knit by Danish company Kvadrat cover this 50’s Scandinavian style easy char in oak, from Heal’s. It also comes in leather, but I’m not so sure that works so well.

Yes I know linen sheets almost need a mortgage, but treat them like investment dressing and save up for a set from Volga Linen to last and last.

I love the way denim fades when you wash it. Get the look with this squashy bean bag made in the UK and covered with indigo denim woven in Lancashire, from Ian Mankin.

Things I like this week …

September 28, 2011

This is my new weekly post where I share inspiring pictures and ideas from the Pure Style design files.

Retro look for keeping warm this winter: wool blanket ‘Madison Gold’ from Melin Tregwynt.

With 20% off from 1^st October Scottish fabric designer Donna Wilson’s Eadie armchairs at SCP are potentially more than just a textile-dream.

Just launched at the London Design Festival is Studioilse’s Companions bedside table in oiled chestnut and cork for De La Espada.

This olive oil crushed from Arbequina olives, by Spanish food specialist Brindisa is really mellow and nutty – I think it’s brilliant for making mayonnaise.

I’ve had my Le Creuset cast iron casserole pans for over 20 years – but wouldn’t mind adding a cream coloured one to my kitchen kit.

Feathery white parrot tulips are essential in my spring garden. Definitely putting in another order this season from Crocus.

It’s time for dealing with the fading roses. Great for pruning are Swiss made Felco secateurs.

Local paradise

May 16, 2011

Suffused in pools of light and shade this May afternoon the garden seems to take on an air of secrecy and serenity. It is my place of shelter and repose from the roaring traffic and sirens on the South Circular, just two streets away. I turn on the hose and give everything a good drink (drought conditions continue, and gardeners are being asked to create mud pools so the house martins and swifts can build their clay like nests). The arc of water plays like a silver stream over the last tulips, rosemary, alliums and clumps of purple chives. It leads my thoughts to a piece I have read about Islamic gardens, and how we owe a huge debt in the West to the Muslim ideal of paradise. This is encapsulated in the design of the Persian ‘chahar bah . This enclosed garden has a central fountain which flows into water rills which represent the four rivers of Paradise. Famous examples include the Taj Mahal garden in India and the Court of the Lions in the Alhambra, Granada. In his book’ Gardens, An Essay on the Human Condition’- the academic Robert Pogue Harrison argues that it also provides a key to understanding Islam in the modern world. He suggests that where paradise is imagined as a garden of perfect tranquility our incurable Western agitation takes on a diabolical quality. It would be wonderful to have world peace and understanding through gardening.

On a personal level, working in my garden takes me away from just about every mental annoyance that happens to be swirling around. I enter a calm non judging head space when having to concentrate on the delicate and precise task of lifting fragile radish and bean seedlings into position for the next stage of development. My senses are energised: bad or dull feelings float away with the smells of damp earth as the hose plays across the beds, and I feel more in touch with the elements as my legs are lightly tickled by lavender that has spilled voluputously over the brick path.

The Constance Sprys, are in themselves a vision of petally paradise, tumbling luscious pink blooms over on both garden fences. Not only visual balm, but with a scent that is so light and sweetly fragrant that I feel I want to drink it .

Then there are the equally fabulous frilled and frothy pink peonies, (below) the ones I lifted and divided from my childhood suburban garden after my mum died. It is reassuring that she lives on, in a way, through this yearly renewal in the garden.

I’m always coming up with ideas for Pure Style this and that – one dream is a heavenly little hotel with a walled garden and bright white bedrooms. If there was to be a Pure Style scent, of course ‘rose’ would get a first look in, but I have to say that if anyone could help me bottle the delicate vanilla fragrance of my wallflowers this spring( see below) I am sure we could be on to a winner, too.

Look! new book

April 28, 2011

An advance copy of my new book has just arrived and here are a few sample pages for you to  look at!  It is packed with simple seasonal ideas for  home cooking  and living, from a spring feast to Christmas treats. For me a good meal is as much about where it is eaten as what is on the plate, so every recipe suits an occasion. In the summer chapter, for example, there’s easy tortilla for a picnic,  spicy chicken piri piri for a barbeque,  holiday inspired Portuguese  fish and potato soup,  and lemon ice cream for a long hot afternoon.

Also just posted is my latest utube which shows you how to make  the delicious pan con tomate as  seen  above on the cover!

I love to eat asparagus and purple sprouting broccoli in spring, and it tastes even better with some homemade hollandaise.

My mum taught me how to bake cakes and biscuits.  Shortbread is one of my favourites and really really easy  to make.

As you know,  I have a vegetable patch and grow simple things such as climbing beans,  and  radishes which are brilliant to dip in salt and eat with other summer salad  treats.

Blossom days

April 27, 2011

I wake  early with the encouraging limpid blue of an English Spring  sky.  Since  I’ve been away in Olhao  the apple tree has blossomed in a candy floss of  fluffy  pale pink petals.

The morning  sun warms the  worn red  brick paving  tiles and spills across the newly opened array of tulips. I can’t remember planting quite so many gorgeous varieties.  (Not that surprising  because when I did so, the garden was coated in a thick white icy coat of snow and it was all I could do to force the bulbs randomly into snow rimmed earth holes before it all became too cold and unpleasant and I had to scurry inside, toes and fingers numb.)  It is so exciting to watch this blast of petally colour unfold.

See above  from left to right:  Spring Green;  Black Parrot ( a straggler  from  bulbs  that I planted three years ago ); Lilac Perfection.

The purple and white striped ‘Triumph’ tulip reminds me of the purple and white colourings of red onions; it has to be the most stylish  of my tulip flock.

Hardly have the bags been unpacked and the weeds attended to,  then our spring jaunt continues with a large family  get together in Suffolk. By now the air feels midsummer balmy and the weather people are in high excitement  about the early heatwave that is hitting northern Europe. Whilst  I am ambling along dewy lanes,  alive with cuckoo song , lilac,  and wild asparagus (see above), a subdued  text from our tenant in Olhao describes great winds and rains  and a request for wet day  activities  in the area.  Wow, we had a narrow climatic escape.

We visit Walberswick, rather like an  English east coat version of  the Hamptons, on Long Island,  all beautiful picturebook, wisteria-clad houses and cottages with immaculate picket fences. There is a village  green with swings, well behaved  children and a horizon with simple beach huts. We crunch along the pebbly beach and some  of the party, plus the dog, embrace the unseasonal warmth and swim. Of course, the sea is still winter cold and we drive home with the heater full on to keep hypothermia at bay.

I negociate a detour to Wootton‘s  nursery which has everything from agapanthus to old fashioned cottage garden plants, and the most amazing selection of auriculas (see above) all massed together in a light white greenhouse.  I come away with a box of cat mint and  lavender for the potager beds,  blue geraniums for  ground cover,  and an exquisite lemon secented old perlagonium  called  Mabel Grey which  I shall keep in a pot to sit  on my desk through the winter.

Sufffolk (and going over into Norfolk) is also very blissful with its  wide flat watermeadows  around  Harleston and Beccles,  where cows swish their tails in the shade of  ancient  willows and the river Waveney is cool and meandering. We  bike past hawthorn hedges frothing with white blossom and look over to into fields where  hares leap across the furrows.  The county’s vast field aspect can be overwhelming, as are the electric  yellow swathes of rapeseed.  Sometimes I catch the whiff of a  more industrial and stinky smell than anything with more rural connections.  There are clues in the  anonymous green lorries thundering past gnarled  greening  oaks to what is probably  hidden away landfill.

We eat well on Suffolk honey, the new season’s asparagus,  cod landed at  Lowestoft and rhubarb for pudding.  The  Ship inn at Dunwich  serves the best fish and chips  of the week, and is also a only a few minutes walk to the beach , where it is said  that  divers can  hear  the ghostly clang of    church bells that succumbed to the sea.

Arriving back in London through steamy streets where the thermometer is hitting 27C,  I am almost bowled over by the riot of colour  (see above and below)  that that has taken over the garden.  All  the tulips are now full and voluptuous on leggy stems.  I watch their cups open up lazily  in the sunshine and   close  in the shade as as if  to keep warm.

New this year to my bulb order  are   ‘Silver ‘ parrot tulips (see below right)  which when they first came out weren’t in the least bit silver, more  bright raspberry ripple.  Now that they’ve matured, the pink has faded a little and is rather fabulous.

Natural beauty

April 9, 2011

The garden is growing growing growing. The warmth and sun of the past week has kick started the spring juices and the little beds in the parterre/potager are greening and filling out fast. The tulips that started as a flop of leaves have developed slender stems with tight buds. The first to flower is the variety Lilac Perfection (see above) in fabulous bowls of fuschia pink petals.

This natural beauty in my backyard is a kind of antidote to all that’s commercial and mass market: ads that make us want more even though we don’t need whatever is being pushed, or the TV mush of American teen soaps and celebrity dining shows. This, and my desire to live more simply and without so much fuss is also where I am at with my Pure Style philosophy. I think I must be on the right track when I read that my design hero Terence Conran has a buff label on his desk with the words ‘Plain, simple, useful’ and says that we should apply this attitude to everything we own and use.

I am also a fan of John Lane’s Timeless Simplicity – in which he explains how to live more creatively in a consumer society.

It quite a revelation, to see that it’s not the first time there has been a reaction to the consumerism in society. Go and see the V&A’s exhibition Escape into Style, ‘The cult of beauty: The aesthetic movement 1860-1900’ which is about the late nineteenth century revolt against Victorian industrialism by artists and architects who wished to create a new ideal of beauty in wallpaper, painting, architecture, textiles and poetry.

NB: Although it’s really all about middle class family angst – and a rather too close to home portrait of it too, I recommend the film, Archipelago, to see some truly mesmerising visuals of the natural beauty on the wild and windswept island of Tresco in the Isles of Scilly.

Spring greens

March 18, 2011

The new greens are in season. Whatever else might be thwarting my daily progress, young bean green shoots and fresh bright spring green grass are reassuringly sprouting and budding outside the kitchen window.

I can’t resist bunches of  ‘muscari ‘ grape hyacinths (see above) delicate blue flowers on equally delicate lime green stems. They are packed fresh from the fields in a box propped up outside the florist with the logo, Cornish flowers on its base. At £1.25 a bunch I am surprised that by lunchtime the sales woman says that I am the first to buy some of these vibrant and colourful pieces of spring.

With its potent link to nature, green is one of my favourite colours to have about the home. (Have a look at the exciting greens for faux suede by Designers Guild). Its presence as a decoration tool can be as minimal, as a flash of a lime green painted flower pot to brighten up the bedroom, or as all encompassing, as our lime green painted loo. The latter idea is a very good way for me to incorporate a rich green colour in a house that needs to make its living being painted white almost all over!  And I have also managed to make way for some muted greens in the tv room and garden shed as the shoots are very keen to use them for backdrops to simple and natural still lives.

As soon as there’s a day with the faint burn of spring sunshine my thoughts turn to picnics. I like to head for that south facing spot on the tussocky slopes that frame our walks along the Somerset valley on visits to my father. Feta cheese, basil and cucumber is one of our favourite fillings in hunks of sourdough bread that come freshly baked via our local corner shop.

Colour love

February 18, 2011

Ha Ha! I am right on trend in my several-seasons-old canary yellow buttoned J Crew cardigan,  as the March issue of Vogue proclaims ‘fashion’s new love for colour’. Of course we all know it’s not really new, as fashion is all about an ongoing passion with colour in some form or other. But there is something particularly resonant about the  newness and vibrancy that Spring brings to everything. A sense, too, of optimism and possibilities – from the leggy amaryllis by my kitchen window (see above) about to unfurl in a whirl of striped pink and white petals, to the Spring pages of fashion mags  washed in bright shades of tangerine, raspberry and quince. (I look forward to the first swim of the season at the lido and have my eye on a hyacinth blue retro spot halterneck swimsuit in the Boden catalogue that plopped through my letter box last week.)

When I haven’t seen my children for a while and we meet   after a fortnight  away or longer,   there’s a sense of seeing them as new people, almost like getting to know them all over again. That’s how I feel, in a way, when I hold the neatly bound sections of the new book, all ready to be sent off to the printers in China. Is it really three months since I turned in the final acknowledgements? I am excited, because I now see the book with a fresh eye. It’s not tiring to scan the spreads that I checked over and over  during the editing process. I hope it doesn’t sound puffed up to say it’s looking good!

Feeling buoyant I am inspired to revisit a piece of half finished patchwork that has been lying in my large turquoise canvas remnants bag for the last year or so. It’s made up of blue and white pieces cut from various sources:  pairs of worn out children’s pyjamas and tattered jeans. There’s also a bit of floral Liberty print from a dress that I cut up because I grew tired of its shape. (Although quite expensive, I also like the idea of pre cut Liberty patchwork squares sold by the bundle.)

Foot on the accelerator I motor along on the rather battered Elna Lotus SP that my parents gave me for my 21st birthday. The process of pinning and stitching, trying to  steer not only a straight path but  also fingers away from the dagger effects of the speeding needle,  are all good for freeing the mind of muddle. As good as digging the garden, or beating egg whites to frothy peaks.

Once everything is sewn together I hem the edges of what is to become a kind of patchwork loose cover for the seat of the chesterfield. I say, loose, because the dog, and the cat, are very fond of this surface, and it would soon look very sad, very quickly if I couldn’t whip it off to be washed and revived.

NB Must catch the British photographer E.O. Hoppe’s modernistic portraits (Vita Sackville West, John Masefield) at The National Portrait Gallery.

NNB I made pheasant and pea  (frozen petit pois are delicious) risotto  last night, with the leftovers and  home made stock  from  a brace of pheasants  from the Farmer’s market. It’s good not to have to be a hunting shooting fishing type in order to enjoy the mildly gamey flavour, and lean texture of these  inexpensive birds.