Nostalgia Trip

Top Florist week two opens with a rather unexpected montage of Los Angeles streetscapes over a metaled-out version of “Kiss From a Rose” – perhaps Lifetime is trying to support Seal as a favor to Heidi Klum.  We cut to the workshop while our 11 remaining florists – “flotestants”? “floretitors”? – file in, chatting nervously.  Someone seems to have informed the group that the viewing public loves a character, because several of them seem to have amped up their styles from week one.  And not in a good way.  Violet appears at first glance to have forgotten to wear pants, but is actually sporting a fuschia romper.  It looks sort of like it has sequins, but later in the episode the sparkles seem a little uneven and I am now convinced she Bedazzled it.  Geoffrey with a G has modeled his coif after Prince: The Bouffant Years.  Our token straights should have coordinated their outfits, because they are both wearing jeans, white collared shirts, and Pumas – red and purple/green, but I couldn’t tell you who wore which shoes.

Anyway, fashionable entrance completed, Chad tells the floretitors that Carla Bruni will soon be coming to tell them about their next challenge, which will involve a “very special customer.”  Since we already know the challenge will involve prom corsages, it’s not too big a mystery who this will be.  Carla shows up, once again enjoying the chance to wear heels without causing a political incident, and repeats the prizes at stake.  I think reality shows have learned that the tedium of repeating these prizes each week is reduced when they are presented in a relatively charming accent.  I do chuckle a little when she says “Martha Stewart Lee-veeng,” but I expect that by week 12 some of the amusement will have worn off.  Blahblahblah, and then the challenge: design prom corsages for some wealthy teenagers related to wealthy adults I have never heard of.  Oh, except that one of the kids is taking Stephen Sommers’ daughter to the prom.  Stephen Sommers who directed The Mummy. The twist: the teenagers are boys.  While I agree this was sort of a surprise, in retrospect it makes sense – they do provide the corsage.  So I give them some credit for originality.

So the flotestorators have 30 minutes to talk to the boys and then an hour to shop with a budget of $200.  That is a ludicrous amount of money to spend on a teeny-tiny flower arrangement.  They have just two hours to complete the arrangement.  After the ubiquitous pan across their faces, lingering on perky! excitement! (Amanda) and angsty boredom (Jimmy), they split up and sit down with their assigned teenager to talk floral design.

This particular segment gives us an interesting perspective on our florists, as teenage boys are unlikely to be their target customers.  Patricia seems fairly at ease and focuses her questions on the prom date – what is she wearing, what does she do for fun.  Leslie and Jean are similarly pleasant and straightforward.  We get an interesting shot of Geoffrey with a G as his high schooler stares at his hair… I can’t concentrate on their conversation either.  One of the Puma-ed Pair is acting annoyingly teenager-esque, like he’s trying to demonstrate how cool he was in high school.  It’s irritating, but not so much as to be a deal-breaker.  The big shocker is Sam?, who seems completely comfortable with his cologned friend and is chatting quietly about music and shoes and hairstyles.

We flash to the clock, and Chad whisks the flotestants immediately onto the bus.  Once at the store, we learn – again – the importance of sensible shoes as Violet teeters around the slippery floors.  I can only assume this is being sponsored by Nike, because the amount of footage in the first two episodes.  We’re flashing intermittently to confessional footage during the shopping project, and Ricardo tells us how he isn’t that inspired by this challenge but it doesn’t matter, since he was in the top two the first week and this isn’t exactly a test of ability since corsages are cliché and Flowers 101.  He’s wearing an argyle vest that I love, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that he’s an arrogant d*****.  Also, has he never watched a reality show?  Does he not realize that they always air the egotistical footage and the egotist always gets booted?  Violet goes on and on about her prom and how she’s from this “tiny little town” in northern California and how she “was really excited to do something different” with her dress.  I’m anticipating a recap of Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion and am completely ready to be furious with her, but instead she tells us a sweet story about how she altered her hemline to “break up the symmetry” of her pastel gown, but she didn’t want to do anything too drastic, so no one actually noticed that it was asymmetrical at all.  Later her best friend told her that the tailor might have hemmed it imperfectly and offered to fix it so she could wear it again.

Most of the flotestants spend their time in the shop looking at the pricier items – gloriosas, all manner of orchids and lilies, lisianthus, and exotic filler that I really don’t recognize.  These flowers are stunning but I’m a bit confused how they are going to use these in prom corsages.  Some of the lilies are the size of my head.

Back at the blindingly white studio, hands-off Carl is making his not-at-all-like-Tim-Gunn rounds, asking each florist about his or her “vision.”  They are cagey about showing progress here – I guess because they don’t do sketches, so there’s not much to show.  Ricardo is using crimson gloriosas and orange roses and Carl raises an eyebrow but doesn’t really say anything.  Maybe he already watched the confessional footage.  There are more orchids than I think is strictly necessary for a single prom, but they are stunning so I’m not that critical.  Yet.  Jimmy is doing something dramatic with gargantuan lilies and ferns that would be pretty for a bridal bouquet, but just seems totally inappropriate for a prom.

The clock chimes dramatically and the teenagers file in with the judges.  And another twist: the prom dates are here as well and will be asked to comment on their corsages.  We get a nice view of the crowded room, which gives us a chance to admire Carla’s legs (and, you guessed it, three-inch heels).  We can’t really see the arrangements but the broad view does allow us to see the color combos – there are a few clashes, but nothing outrageous.  Judging starts with last week’s winner, so Leslie presents an eggplant and bright green corsage to her client’s prom date, who is wearing an eggplant dress.  At first glance it’s stunning, but then we see that the corsage is made of green and purple cabbage rolled and trimmed into floral shapes.  Judge Tanya applauds the originality but asks the girl to smell the corsage… and cue tears.  Leslie explains that her client told her that the date was “really into sustainable farming,” so she wanted to use locally produced materials.  We move on.  The judging section is much longer tonight, and not particularly memorable, so I’ll skim.  All of the orchids are dismissed as boring but pretty.  Jimmy gets called out for making his corsage outrageously large and for being overly dependent on ferns.  Sam has made a floral tiara rather than a corsage and receives some criticism for it, but his client’s date is stunned and delighted.  She’s wearing sort of a fairy princess dress, very airy and unstructured, and she is almost in tears as she puts the crown on.  He explains that his daughter had cancer in high school and didn’t get to go to prom, but that she’d talked about it all the time.  He didn’t understand why, but he saw her and her friends looking at the pictures and talking about their gowns and realized that prom is just a chance to feel beautiful.  Except in a really touching way.  Carla applauds Ricardo’s originality with his crimson-orange creation, but the recipient of his corsage says she feels like Morticia Addams and probably won’t wear it – her gardener can pull something together.

Jimmy and Violet end up in the bottom two, Jimmy for his repetitiveness and Violet for making a rainbow corsage that reminds the judges of Lucky Charms.  Jimmy gets the boot, because his lack of creativity seems more of a problem than Violet’s inability to rein hers in.  Sam and Patricia are the top two.  Patricia is congratulated for her delicate integration of saturated orchids with softer tones to bring out the richness of the dress; Sam is applauded for his ability to “connect with a client”, and Sam is declared the challenge winner.

Next week: Someone’s screaming in the workshop.

So here we are, starting out a brand new season of a brand new show, and gosh are the folks who design this stuff working to get us all excited. There’s ribbons, there’s flowers, there’s an assortment of scissor-y implements, and here she is, ladies and gentlemen, Carla Bruni welcomes us to the first season of Top Florist. Because sleeping with aging rockstars and being First Lady of France leaves some room in her schedule. And she’s done having torrid affairs with philosophers. So she had some time to spend on this thing, and it was a chance to stand far enough away from her husband to wear heels. Anyway, here she is in LA to welcome us to the season, product placed prizes, Martha Stewart Living, fifty thousand dollars and the title of Top Florist.

Opening credits. Ted, Leslie, Maya, Jeffrey with a J, Jean, Geoffrey with a G, Amanda, Jimmy, Ricardo, Violet, Sam, Patricia. The dozen contestants go by really fast, and the only standouts are Violet, who looks like she is dressed to play Little Nell in Rocky Horror, and Jimmy, who looks like he is crossing a gangsta aesthetic with a Buddhist philosophy, which is an interesting look. He definitely looks like he was cast for entertainment value, not his design skills.

We return from commercial to the obligatory reality-show footage of contestants arriving in Los Angeles. A city known for its flowers. Except for how it’s not. Ted and Leslie wheel their suitcases into a high-rise condo and make admiring noises about the skyline. Leslie interviews that she’s from Kansas, and she’s not in Kansas anymore. Geoffrey with a G interviews that he loves LA and he would never live anywhere else. He moved here to go to design school when he was seventeen. He has this weird, flock-of-seagulls hairstyle that makes me want to take away his hair gel privileges. Back at the apartment, more contestants have arrived, and Maya is nervous about tomorrow, when the competition will start. In the living room, Ted and J-Jeffrey bond over the challenges of being a straight male florist. Everyone assume they’re gay all the time. This is really an industry dominated by women, and by gay guys. Ted jokes that he got into this to meet girls.

Patricia is from Connecticut. She does a lot of floral arrangements for churches. She looks a tad uncomfortable with Violet and Jimmy in the background. I sort of hope she’s rooming with Leslie. There’s a pretty big age difference between them, but “not in Kansas anymore” is unlikely to freak Patricia out.

Morning! Oh thank heavens, we can start with the actual competition.

Carla Bruni strides into the workshop, which looks much whiter than anyplace I have ever seen a florist work. I guess green and brown don’t work so well on tv. Or they got a deal on rejected Top Chef setups. Carla introduces the judges for this challenge. There’s herself, of course, and the of course allows her to completely omit her actual resume (you’d think she’d get in a plug for her duet with Harry Connick Jr., but she passes for now). Additional judges are Tanya Holnwick, editor of Martha Stewart Living, and Chad Markovitz, founder and owner of Color. Jean interviews that Chad is “legendary.” “Color is only the most amazing floral design business ever.” Chad has done floral design for basically every celebrity there is, for movies, for world leaders. (World leaders care about florists? Who knew?) Jean is really excited to be working with him. Or, she says, near him. Since he’s already said in interviews that he’s not Tim Gunn, near him is probably accurate.

Carla takes a moment to introduce this week’s guest judge - Maria Shriver. I’m sensing a theme here. The challenge is to design a table arrangement with a patriotic theme for the speaker’s table at a DNC fund-raising dinner. The winner gets immunity for the next challenge, the loser will be eliminated. Contestants have a budget of $100, an hour to shop at the LA Flower Market, and then six hours to put their arrangements together. The florists sprint to the fleet of waiting SUVs and head out.

Once there, it’s clear that there’s a major advantage to the contestants in sensible shoes. Patricia may be fifty, but she’s all over the place in her tennies, while Violet nearly sprains an ankle just getting through the door. Everyone’s running around like crazy, and we really don’t see what anyone buys. Jimmy interviews that he things that the contestants who have really had to market themselves have an advantage over the ones who can get by on church arrangements. Leslie interviews that the budget is really tight for this kind of arrangement - they’ll have to produce something about three feet by three feet, to cover the front of the table and hide wiring for microphones, and a hundred bucks is not a lot of money.

Back at the workshop, the chimes of impending judgment play for Chad, who’s doing a walk-through to see how things are going. Jimmy confesses that he doesn’t think he bought enough, and he’s worried about filling the space. Maya is worried about the patriotic theme - she prefers her arrangements to seem like organic parts of the environment. For only the eighth time this episode, I feel like explaining Los Angeles is a dessert. Unless they wind up doing arrangements in rocks and lizards, none of their materials are organic to this environment. Anyway, how are flowers ever an organic component of a banquet hall? It’s a good thing that Chad doesn’t see himself as the Tim Gunn type, because his idea of a supportive comment is “Good luck with that.”

The clock ticks down to zero, and the judges come in… Carla evidently really missed wearing heels. We barely see some of these arrangements - Jean has done something with a lot of white, and red and blue ribbons. Patricia used a lot of hydrangeas, which seems like a good way to fill the space, even if the colors seem a tad off. Jimmy has backed up his red and white streaky peonies with a lot of ferns, and the effect is sort of… hedge. It looks like Ricardo has done sort of a mountain-y thing with lots of upward spikes. His arrangement is much less red and white than most, and I’d like a longer look, but we can’t waste time on that, because we have to take a look at J-Jeffrey’s disaster. I’m not sure what flowers he used, but they’re flopping all over the place. We also get three angles on Maya’s thing. She abandoned the organic idea, she said, because politics isn’t organic anyway. Her new idea was to use a lot of foil. Amanda’s flowers look very wedding-y. G-Geoffrey has also used peonies, with delphinium accents. Leslie used a lot of crysanthemums.

Ricardo gets grilled a little - Maria wants to know if he’s aware that nearly all of his flower choices are poisonous. “It’s a great look, but these are not good choices for a political event.” Carla nods, but it turns out he’s in the top two. Leslie says she wanted her flowers to create the look of a fireworks display, and is declared the winner.

The bottom two are Maya and J-Jeffrey. Tanya likes that Maya took a risk, but the consensus is that her arrangement looked like Sputnik. J-Jeffrey explains that he hoped to be able to wire his flowers for more height, but he failed. In the end, the judges decide that Maya’s arrangement was worse: it was ugly, it missed the theme, and it failed the task. Maya is sent home.

Next week: prom corsages!

One of the reasons I bought this URL was because I wanted to write about the joys and the pitfalls of the way things used to be, to celebrate the good and bad old days, to expose the flaws in the belief that things used to be better, as well as the flaws in the belief that things used to be worse.

The divorce rate was really low during the Victorian era, when (at least in Britain) you had to be a member of Parliament, and stuff through a bill in order to split with your wife. It was always “your wife” because Parliament was exclusively male. I am developing the opinion that this system was supported by the upper middle class Victorian habit of having servants to do just about everything around the house. If not for these staffing arrangements, citizens would have stormed Parliament to demand serious and immediate revision to the divorce laws.

If this was 1875, I wouldn’t look at the wreck that the toddler has made of the living room and wonder why my husband was never moved to tidy up, I’d go off in a tirade against the slovenliness of the help. After a long night spent walking a colicky baby, we wouldn’t be at each other’s throats, we would be sending the footman out with an urgent note requesting a staffing agency to send us a competent nurserymaid. Bad dinners and untidiness wouldn’t be internal assaults upon our partnership, they would be a common enemy. When he couldn’t find his jogging socks, or my handbag was in the wrong place, we wouldn’t yell at each other about who moved what and why, we would rise up, united in discontent, and fire the housekeeper.

Today is our seventh wedding anniversary and there’s a cleaning lady vacuuming the hall. I’m delighted about both of those things.

One of my favorite, favorite things to do lately is make tomato sauce. I didn’t even know how until recently - I was dependent on jarred sauce from the grocery store, doctored into acceptability (more pepper, more basil, more garlic, cook it down a little, splash of red wine…). Which is just about as time consuming as making it myself, and affords far fewer opportunities for PETA-approved violence.

There are people who say you don’t need to peel the tomatoes. Those people either say they don’t mind tomato skins in their sauce, or (mostly) that they are running the results through a blender or food mill. I mind tomato skins, and I also mind washing extra dishes. We peel our tomatoes in this house. Most people will suggest that you do this by scalding them in boiling water, but a few whisper, darkly, that this dilutes the tomato flavor, which we cannot have. The fun way to peel a tomato is to stick a toasting fork in it and hold it over a gas flame until it cries for mercy.

I am so not kidding about the crying for mercy. The tomatoes pop and squeak, and their skins blister, and then you can put that tomato down, flip it over, stick the fork in the other side and repeat the process. Chortle as evilly as you like. If you have an electric range, or a lot of tomatoes, you can stick them under the broiler for ten to fifteen minutes (flip them over halfway through). It’s just a lot less fun.

You let the blistered, burn-victim tomatoes cool for a while, and then you rip their skins off. Slice them in half horizontally (from guggle to zatch, not pole to pole), hold them over a bowl, and stick your fingers into their innards. They will suck at your hand like the starving undead while you pull the seeds out. Then hold the fleshy, quivering, gutted remains of the tomato over a skillet and crush them in your fist. When you’re done dismembering the main ingredient, stop and mop up a little. Compose yourself.

Add a splash of olive oil, some crushed red pepper, minced garlic and dried basil to the skillet and turn the heat on. (We disdain measurements here at Nostalgia Trip, mostly because we think most of our measuring cups are at the bottom of the toybox. When you get bored mincing, that’s enough garlic. Shake pepper into the palm of your hand to avoid accidental overdoses making their way to the pot. Taste results and adjust seasonings as desired.) If you think the tomatoes should be in smaller pieces, smoosh at them with a wooden spoon. Add salt, pepper and sugar to taste (be careful with the sugar, especially at the height of tomato season). Cook until you have something that looks like it would hold up well to the use you want to put it to.

I usually use this sauce for pizza. You will not get a Ragu-consistency sauce out of this, but it still goes fine on spaghetti.

This is one of the very few photos of my kitchen you will ever see here, and this is why. This is the counter to the right of my kitchen sink, partway through the process of trying Smitten Kitchen’s recipe for watermelon lemonade. The stuff on the cutting board is spilled watermelon puree. In the background is an empty olive oil container, a rice cooker, infinite amounts of tea, and a bottle of elderberry wine given to us by a neighbor as a “thank you” for shoveling his walk. (I have expanded considerable thought on the question and cannot tell whether he wants us to shovel his walk again. On the one hand, it was a gift. On the other hand, it is elderberry wine. You kill aspidistras with it.) You can’t tell from this picture, but the countertop laminate is separating from the countertop. They were never happy together, and they are bitterly working out the terms of a divorce.

Check out the recipe link - it’s gorgeous. Notice how tidy the whole process appears, with the clean granite counters, the total lack of anything extraneous to the process of making watermelon lemonade. Deb over at Smitten Kitchen does not appear to have been reminded, on this project, of what happens when you overfill the bowl of a food processor with an ingredient which you then convert into a liquid. Even the juiced lemons look appealing.

I have no idea how anyone ever does this. I have no end of respect for it. I have never been able to do it myself. Maybe once.

It was pretty good lemonade. The single batch is ridiculously small - multiply by eight.

I keep running into people on the internet who have spent hundreds of dollars on knitting stuff and come away without the things they need to do what they want to do. So here’s what you actually need to learn to knit.

1. Desire. Without it, you will never get anywhere. Before you learn to knit, you need to want to knit, and (because very few people want to just play around with sticks and yarn to no particular purpose) you probably need to want a knitted object. A blanket. A shawl. A hat. Some socks. Whatever. If your desired object is seriously complicated, kind-hearted people will suggest some intermediate work - maybe a hat before you start on socks. Maybe something plain before you start on lace. You need some idea of what you’re working towards, or it will be hard to get there.

2. A plan. A pattern is a good place to start. Whatever you want, you can probably find a good pattern for free someplace on the net. Take a look at it, because it will guide you concerning materials. If you can’t knit that thing right now, you can find an easier thing using similar materials, or you can knit a bunch of practice swatches using the materials for your desired project.

3. Yarn. A nice-feeling, not-too-expensive yarn of appropriate fiber and quantity for the thing you want to make. If you want to experiment with dying, go for animal fibers. If you want to felt, you need unbleached wool and you avoid anything labelled “superwash”. If you want to put this item near a baby, spare yourself heartache by embracing washable yarns.

4. Knitting needles. Two to three sets of needles that approximate those called for by your pattern. It’s important to get the right kind - you can’t knit circularly on straight needles, but there’s nothing you can do on straights that you can’t do on circulars. If you’re making socks or a hat, you probably need some double pointed needles. There are two things you don’t want to do: you don’t want to bother buying needles you have no use for, and you don’t want to assume that you and the pattern designer will get the same results using the same size needles. Get one set in the pattern designer’s recommended size, one in the next size up and one in the next size down. Use the set that works.

5. A crochet hook. To fix mistakes. Get one in a size smaller than recommended for the pattern, because you’re likely to be a little cramped when picking up dropped stitches.

6. A yarn needle. For seaming. You may be able to put this off until later.

No matter what your pattern says, you do not need the following:
-Stitch markers (use safety pins, hair elastics, brace elastics, or spare bits of yarn).
-Stitch holders (use spare bits of yarn).
-The exact brand and color and dye lot of yarn that the designer used.
If you look at the object and think it resembles a safety pin, you can use a safety pin. If you think the item is too expensive, or if you can’t figure out when you’d use it, you don’t need it. Don’t buy it. Move on. Knitting is not a cheap hobby, but there’s no reason to make it more expensive.