The Art Issue: our new cover

Our new cover, which we're rather pleased with, features a photo by Nicole Bachmann of the London home of New Zealand sculptor Francis Upritchard and her husband, furniture designer Martino Gamper. It's on newsstands from Monday February 4. We think it's pretty good, and we hope you like it too. 

Inside the magazine is a visual feast, featuring homes and studios of artists and collectors including Tony de Lautour, Rohan Wealleans, Fiona Pardington, Bill Sutton, Dick Frizzell, Anthony Goicolea, Emily Wolfe, and more. We cover a lot of ground, from Christchurch to Hawke's Bay, London and Auckland - all of it in the service of inspiring you, our readers, of course.

Cathleen McGuigan visits New Zealand

We're delighted to announce that this year's Home of the Year lectures will be given by Cathleen McGuigan, the New York-based editor in chief of Architectural Record magazine, the most important architecture magazine in the US. 

 

Cathleen is giving talks in Auckland (on February 19) and Christchurch (on February 21) on the topic of New American Urbanism - how architects are rejuvenating US cities, and what New Zealand can learn from them. 

Cathleen will be in conversation with HOME editor Jeremy Hansen, and will show a number of ingenious urban developments from a range of US cities. Please come along, as it's going to be a great and stimulating talk. 

Cathleen is visiting as the international member of our Home of the Year 2013 jury. We're very grateful to our Home of the Year partner, Altherm Window Systems, for making Cathleen's visit possible. 


The details:

Auckland 6.30pm, Tuesday February 19
Auditorium, Auckland Museum

Christchurch 6.30pm, Thursday February 21
Lecture Theatre C2, University of Canterbury

Tickets are $20 ($15 for subscribers and students). You can buy them at the link here. Numbers are limited, so get in quick.

Please contact us at 09 308 2739 or homenewzealand@bauermedia.co.nz if you have any questions. We look forward to seeing you at one of Cathleen's talks.

Seasonal Recipe: Pickled Herring

Ever since I lived in Amsterdam, pickled herring has been one of my favorite appetizers. Today, I wish I could simply fill a jar of it from my grocery store's salad bar (the way I purchase similar items). But one of my mottoes is: If you can't find it in bulk, make it!

Herring is tough to find at the fish counter though. I learned that here, in the San Francisco bay area, the local fishermen use it for bait to catch the big (generally less sustainable) fish per consumer demand, and the herring boats send most of it to Japan for its roe. So when Kirk Lombard, a local sea forager/educator, invited Scott and Léo (see video below) to go fishing for them last Monday, my dream came true... 8 pounds of cleaned fillets later, we had a few jars of pickled herring.

If you, too, enjoy pickled herring and can put your hand on the fresh fish, here is how to pickle it. Note: This recipe will work for pickling other types of seafood. It is an adaptation of Kirk's recipe and I used it for eight pounds of fillets, so adapt it to your needs.

Cover the fillets in a brine of 1 part salt to 20 parts water (1 cup salt for 20 cups of water for 8 lbs. of herring fillets) and let sit in the refrigerator overnight. The next day, rinse.

Slice 3 red onions

In a jar (I used a couple of 2 liter jars), alternate layers of herring and onion

In a large pot, over medium heat, combine 4 cups water, 5 cups white vinegar, 1 cup sugar, 4 tsp allspice, 4 bay leaves (or 1 California Bay leaf), 2 tsp grated ginger, 1 tsp mustard (ground or seed), 2 tsp horseradish, 1 tsp peppercorns, a pinch of ground cloves. Once the sugar is dissolved, let cool and top the jars.

Refrigerate for a couple of days before eating. 

Serve on a slice of buttered baguette. 

Enjoy!

How Zero waste are my ingredients?

Herring: Foraged by Scott and Léo using a net and brought home in an open bin. During the cleaning process, we also removed milt (male roe) and eggs (female roe) and prepare them separately as appetizers.

White Vinegar: Purchased the brand packaged in a glass bottle, as I have not yet been able to find it sold in bulk.

Sugar, mustard (ground), peppercorns: Purchased in bulk, using cloth bags.

Allspice, ground cloves: Purchased in bulk, filling my spice jar directly (I use little and do not want to over estimate how much I need)

Bay leaves: Foraged from the neighbors branch that falls onto our property. California Bay leaves being four times as potent as the culinary kind, we use a quarter of what the recipe calls for.

Onions and ginger: Purchased loose from the produce aisle.

Horseradish: Homemade using a root sold loose in the produce aisle (recipe will be in the book.)

Oh and my two-liter jars were purchased from the local thrift store;)

How does pickled herring sound to you?

Fashion Friday: Overcoat and Booties

Many of you have asked for more fashion posts. So welcome to "Fashion Friday" on ZWH, a way for me to share my favorite outfit of the week and offer a view of my mini, secondhand wardrobe (and possible combinations).
Today, it's Overcoat and Booties!

Zero Waste Home essential: A cobbler

Today, I share with you another Zero Waste essential for my household: A good cobbler.

Located only a couple of blocks away from my house, Misak, better known as Tony, is key to achieving Zero Waste in my wardrobe. He is not only my partner in extending the useful life of my shoes, but he also meets my needs for a short turn-around, knowing that I only own six pairs of footwear. And, his service always comes with a smile. He is actually more than your regular cobbler, his life is to be featured in a documentary! Sadly, shoe repair is a disappearing trade, yet this work is part of the grand scheme of the Zero Waste future. Do you have access to one in your town?

My heels before handing them out to Tony

Another pair saved!

In the life of a ponytail holder...

I had a scare last week: For a day, I thought I had lost one of my most prized possession. You might ask: What would that necessity be?

my ponytail holder repaired

In my previous home, my bathroom was as big as my current kitchen and dining room combined (a real waste of heating and space considering that we used it only twice a day for only a few minutes). Its cabinets and drawers stored countless products that I had deemed necessary, such as miracle creams, makeup, colorful nail polishes, nail polish remover, Q-tips, cotton balls, rubbing alcohol... and a dozen ponytail holders.

Then when I moved to a small house and came to question the need for everything I owned, I eventually looked at my pile of ponytail holders and wondered: Would I ever use them all at once? Do I need all of these? I realized that I had been caught in the what-if; that I simply held onto the arsenal just in case. What was I afraid of?  Maybe running out or maybe limiting possible hairstyles. Since I had outgrown my pigtail years and knew that I would not wear more than one at once - ponytails and loose buns were already well ingrained into my daily routine... I decided to challenge myself: To stick to a single one (donate the others to resist any temptation to grab another option) and see how long I could make it last.

With everyday use to keep my hair tied when I cook, eat, garden, wash my face over the sink and keep my hair from getting wet in the shower every other morning, the metal-free band split in half within a couple of months, leaving me with a full head of uncontrollable hair. Crushed that my experiment had come to an end so quickly, I went to the store, out of habit, as we instinctively do to replace a broken object. But with my consumption habits changed, my view on the selection available at the store had changed too. And when I realized that to purchase a replacement required purchasing a bundle of twenty, I refused to go along with the marketing trick. Shopping is voting - and in no circumstance, was I going to participate in such gluttony.

As I often do when I cannot find an "acceptable" product (i.e., one that matches my lifestyle beautifully), I returned home empty-handed, looking for a solution to present itself. It always does, I found out. I immediately reached for a pencil and attempted to weave it into my hair, but my fine texture would not allow for such cool trick (I have always admired heads that can pull that off). Then, I simply twisted my hair into a knot and tucked the end under to make a device-free bun, one that could last a few minutes as long as I stayed in place, but this was not a sustainable alternative considering my activity level. Eventually, I pulled out the broken ponytail holder from my landfill collection and looked for a way to repair it: I simply knotted the two ends together and with a great sense of satisfaction, tied my hair back. It worked! and with this small victory, the challenge would go on. Amazingly, I found that my repair strengthened the design while retaining its elasticity. And so for ten months I went on wearing it, giving it a dedicated space for storage and diligently keeping track of it.

But on my vacation last week, moving from one condo to another disturbed its whereabouts. I thought I lost it, disappointed that such relationship, a year's worth of effort, would not earn a showcase in the glass jar containing our annual trash tally...

I did find the ponytail holder after all, stashed in a pocket for safe keeping between moves. But considering the materials used to manufacture the band, I know that it won't last another year and it will eventually join the other articles of bad design, contained in our jar. The elasticity is not what it used to be, and I will soon have to surrender it, but when I do add it to our yearly landfill collection, I'll have a story to tell ;) Overall, things that are made to quickly fail on us, make me angry. For my own peace of mind, when my ponytail holder is no longer usable, I'll vote against ephemeral crap and consider going back to the french barrettes that I use to wear as a kid. They are made of metal and they never failed.

With the Zero Waste lifestyle, nothing is too little to declutter or repair. Smart consumption entails taking care of the stuff that we have, before we run to the store at the first sign of loss or breakage, and learn from our mistakes so that we do not blindly vote for poor design, again and again.

What purchase will you make differently when it needs replacement?