Get on your H.O.E. flow
Herbs over everything, plus warm-weather suits, home-enswaggening woodworkers, and more
Welcome to Blackbird Spyplane.
Our roundup of the Best Pants Out is here.
Check our list of the world’s 35 slappiest shops, where Spyfriends have added a ton of favorites in the comments.
The Coolest Museum Shops are here.
Mach 3+ city intel for traveling the entire planet is here.
Real quick —
This coming Tuesday, Aug. 6th, from 1:30-5 p.m., join Blackbird Spyplane in the OJAS HiFi room at SFMOMA.
We’ll be playing some favorite records on one of the best sound systems on the planet, including Sleep’s 1996 masterpiece “Dopesmoker” in full for the final hour. On these speakers, it will sound like heaven ripping open in slow motion.
Today we’ve got:
Two new banging warm-weather suits you can rock from now into the fall, including one that’s not only inspired by “classic louche Armani energy” but — unlike many contemporary suits that claim Giorgio DNA — actually nails “classic louche Armani energy!”
Woodworkers = the new ceramicists? Small and large pieces to enswaggen the cribbo via a couple independent makers to have on your radar.
If you pour wine (or a beverage of your choosing) into this vessel, and then you pour wine (or a beverage of your choosing) out of it into drinking glasses, you will feel happy, delight houseguests, and make a $30 bottle taste like a $90 bottle. And the vessel in question costs less than $20. You do the math.
But first —
It’s time for our wisdom-rich series of Fire Life-Improving Procedures for the Maximization of Deep Enjoyment, a.k.a. techniques for going F.L.I.P. M.O.D.E.
When Erin and I whip up dishes from some of our favorite cookbooks — ones by, e.g., Rawia Bishara, Mina Stone and, most recently, Spyfriend Alison Roman, who blessed us with the Spyplane Recipe of the Summer, which we’ve cooked 5 times so far — we tend to find ourselves buying bushels of fresh herbs the recipes call for. You know what happens next: You use a 1/4 cup and stuff a heap of unused parsley, cilantro, basil, mint, dill, chives, etc. into the fridge — maybe with the stems wrapped in a damp paper towel for life-extension — but then it all wilts and turns to mush and you’ve got to bung it into the d*mn compost.
BUT there is a straightforward, big-brained F.L.I.P. M.O.D.E. alternative to this sad and wasteful cycle: Buy fresh herbs constantly and shower them onto everything.
Yes! This is literally one of the easiest ways to feel like you “cheffed that s**t up” in the kitchen while, technically, doing nothing. It costs little, adds a burst of BRIGHTNESS to humdrum and flavorful foods alike & it’s healthy because you are getting in more greens to boot…
How many herbs? You could just use a few, as an accent. But for our money, we’re saying go maximalist when you can: Form a mound of herbs on any and all remotely plausible dishes such that when you take a bite, a green herby landslide ensues. We shower herbs onto salads, toast, couscous, fish, pasta, eggs, mixed into rice & other grains, swirled into mf yogurt if you are trying to live to 100 like a Grecian island dweller, onto potatoes (see below), & on and on…
But please experiment with implausible dishes, too. Get on your Herbs Over Everything (H.O.E.) Flow! Sprinkle a little parsley to taste, a few cutely scissored chive rounds, and if you like the results, make it rain. “Blackbird Spyplane,” you might be thinking. “This sounds great in theory, but I’m not putting fresh herbs on, e.g., a peanut-butter-jelly sandwich.”
OK, we obviously feel that you don’t wanna put, say, dill on a sweet-leaning treat. But a bunch of chopped mint? Now you’re talking.
Meanwhile —
Woodworkers: Are they the new ceramicists? We’ve had artisan-hewn wood slappers on our minds recently when it comes to highly effective ways to enswaggen a home, and here are two gifted woodworkers we recently came across whose pieces — some large, some small — will home-enswaggen with the best of them: