Kristin Donnelly is a mom, an author, a photographer, a chef and an entrepreneur. And with her first cookbook just out, a household name-in-the-making.
By Kendra Lee Thatcher · Photography by Josh DeHonney
If you don’t already know Kristin Donnelly, you will shortly. She’s seemingly everywhere at once, the way a small flame suddenly catches the kindling.
A regular contributor to the likes of Food & Wine, epicurious, EveryDay with Rachael Ray, Women’s Health and Prevention magazines, Donnelly dropped her first cookbook this summer, Modern Potluck: Beautiful Food to Share (Clarkson Potter), and already has another one in development. She also writes an online journal, Eat Better Drink Better, that’s gripping in its intimacy. An excerpt from the day after the election:
It’s 3 pm on a Wednesday. I’ve finally showered. I lit a candle and I burned sage. I walked to the mailbox and to the new bakery in town and cried with a new friend and ate the quiche she made. I’ve also received tone-deaf PR emails with titles like “Politics suck. This ladle doesn’t.” and resisted the urge to respond with vitriol.
When she’s not writing, or shooting or developing a recipe, Donnelly’s tending to her organic lip balm line, Stewart & Claire, which she developed with her husband, Philip, and to her daughter, also developed with Philip. It all seems too much to be true, so we visited her at home in New Hope and asked her to walk us through a day in her life.
7 a.m. | She’s up. And making coffee straightaway. One Up One Down Coffee brewed in a Chemex Pour-over. “I love the ritual of it,” Donnelly says. “I also love the fact that it’s delivered every other week, so it’s one less thing I have to think about adding to the grocery list.”
7:20 a.m. | As her husband and daughter, Elsa, begin to stir, she makes Elsa’s lunch. “I like to make a big pot of lentils on Sunday to use for lunches during the week. But that doesn’t always happen.” This is one of those instances, so Elsa’s ending up with her favorite lunch: a cream cheese and jam sandwich, a side of broccoli and a couple of apples they picked over the weekend.
7:50 a.m. | Breakfast varies from day to day, but Donnelly’s recent go-tos are muesli with kefir or whole grain toast slathered with jam.
8:25 a.m. | With Elsa off to school, Donnelly dresses.
8:55 a.m. | “I’m really very systematized,” she says, reaching for a leather-bound notebook that’s filled with pages of neatly written notes. “At the beginning of each month, I write a list of goals. Then on Sundays, I write my weekly to-dos. And at the start of each day, I put together my tasks and schedule.”
The window by her desk is filled with a grid of yellow and green Post-its. More lists? “Those? No. No, that’s my daughter’s ‘artwork,’ leftover from a sick day,” she says, laughing.
9:15 a.m. | “I like to start my day with the most brain-taxing tasks first because I simply have the most energy in the morning.” They range from packing Stewart & Claire orders to pitching new accounts to writing.
10:55 a.m. | Herbal tea break.
11 a.m. | “I need mental time to transition from one task to the other,” Donnelly says. Right now, that means scanning her inbox and updating social media.
11:20 a.m. | Writing. Her approach is simple, but strict: Don’t wait for the deadline. And don’t stare at a blinking cursor. She sets aside an hour each day to write. No more, no less.
12:25 p.m. | “On my best days, I have lunch planned out—a hearty salad with lentils,” she says. “I love an energizing lunch.” Today, however, leftovers will suffice.
1 p.m. | Donnelly’s afternoons are reserved for testing recipes, photo shoots, producing podcasts and exercising. What that often means is that work and dinner are knocked out in one act.
3:35 p.m. | Coffee break. Donnelly walks over to Factory Girl Bake Shop to meet a friend over an ancient grain scone.
4:15 p.m. | “I sometimes choose between working out and straightening up,” she says. “Working out has been winning.” Yoga is her go-to exercise, but, when the weather was kinder, she also liked to ride the towpath.
5:30 p.m. | Donnelly picks up Elsa from school and heads home to make (or polish off) dinner. Inevitably, a dance party breaks out. Anything by Taylor Swift and Bob Dylan’s kids station are their tracks of choice. All the while, Elsa’s helping to stir, peel and set the table.
6:30 p.m. | “We sit down to dinner as a family every night,” Donnelly says, glancing into the dining room. Here, being present is sacred.
8:30 p.m. | The dishes are done and Elsa’s tucked in, which leaves a small, fleeting window. “I’ll either do something luxurious, like read my favorite food magazines or cookbooks, or something real,” Donnelly says, “like watch ‘Gilmore Girls’ and fold laundry.”
Tracey and Rod Berkowitz specialize in marrying centuries-old features with the vestiges of modern industry, creating a niche of the contemporary-farmhouse aesthetic that’s all their own. In their own home, it carries the added benefit of holding up to their young family.
By Scott Edwards Photography by Josh DeHonney
Just inside the front door sits a small, square room—10 feet by 10 feet, maybe a bit more. It’s part of the home’s original, 1,200-square foot footprint, which dates back to 1794. To the left, there’s a considerable fireplace. The rear opens to the wide-open addition Tracey and Rod Berkowitz added seven years ago. But the eye settles on the circle of four low-slung lounge chairs in the center of the room. It’s here where Tracey and Rod will settle in at the end of another relentless day, the kids in bed, the only light coming from the crackling fire in front of them. It’s also where their guests, during parties, will play a discreet game of musical chairs.
In a home filled with interesting nooks and features, this little room is Tracey’s favorite place to be, as much for its intimate nature as its unexpected presence. This is what they do. They reimagine the home. They source unusual furniture and accessories from all over the world—crank tables from England, large Moroccan pillows, a quilted-linen wing chair, huge oil paintings on reclaimed metal—that make little sense until they’re seen through the filter of their Lambertville, New Jersey, shop, Zinc Home. There, a raw, urban energy amplifies the familiar modern-farmhouse aesthetic, sharpening splintered, worn-down corners to a precise edge. And they approach their home with the same audacity.
It still needs to be practical
Over the course of a single month late in the summer of 2002, Tracey and Rod moved into their home in Sergeantsville, NJ, a few miles north of Lambertville, got married and opened their store (in New Hope, originally). It was owned by a realtor who, at least, restored the original, wide-plank pine floors that were painted blue by the previous owner.
“We loved the charm of it, but it was a beater,” Tracey says. “The outside needed so much work. It was a hideous mint green. It was peeling. But, I don’t know, as soon as we walked in, we knew this was the house that we had to live in.”
Tracey became pregnant with their first child, Noah, the following summer, and once he grew into a toddler, they finally started to feel the pinch of their precious little house on the prairie. When Tracey became pregnant with their second, Piper, in 2007, it was either move or grow the house. Piper was born in June 2008. They broke ground on an 1,800-square foot addition—about a third larger than the home itself—that November. And it was completed by her first birthday.
The two-story addition extends from the rear of the original home. On the outside, a porch wraps around the front of the home and its south side, erasing any noticeable division between old and new. Inside, two large, open rooms comprise the new space, the living room downstairs and the master bedroom upstairs, which is separated from the en suite bathroom by a partial wall, the only interior wall, really, in the entire addition.
Tracey and Rod knew exactly what they wanted it to look like before a blueprint was even rendered. “And then we worked with our contractor to tweak some things that we thought would be one way and ended up being another,” Tracey says. “But, overall, it’s pretty much like a rectangle.”
They needed the space. But they also seized the opportunity to mold the home into their own shape. The reclaimed wood beams and exposed, raw-side pine that form the ceiling grid (and tie the old in with the new) juxtapose the concrete floor in the living room. The rear walls of the entry and dining rooms in the original home were removed, turning those spaces into extensions of the addition and, in turn, creating the illusion that they’re a bit larger than they actually are. Basically, all of the old was preserved and made practical again, while the addition afforded them new leeway, physically and aesthetically.
“We love industrial,” Tracey says. “But, we wanted to make sure that we could keep that [farmhouse] vibe and not have it look too country—even though we do live in that kind of house.”
With the store as a fallback and a couple whose tastes are constantly evolving, it’s easy to envision a high turnover rate for the furnishings, but the opposite is closer to the truth. Relatively little has changed from the initial installation.
“We spent more money and more time to find just the right pieces, instead of just trying to decorate because we had the space to decorate,” Tracey says. “I get bored with how things are merchandized,” so the accessories are shuffled often. But the furniture—“actually, we’ve had three couches so far,” she says and then laughs at the realization.
“I just love it. But the cushions are all down and it’s super-uncomfortable,” Tracey says. “But I love the couch so much that I’m willing to suffer.”
She is not willing to suffer for it, or any other piece of furniture, for that matter.
“It’s on my to-do list, to make sure I get those stuffed, because then it’ll be super-comfortable and we can go back to where I sit here and Rod sits over there,” on the other sofa, which faces the French one from the other side of the coffee table. “I’m infringing on Rod’s sofa. He’s like, ‘This is my space. But because you had to have this uncomfortable sofa, you have to watch TV with me over here.’ And the kids don’t care. They love it over here,” on the French sofa.
How much, I ask, do two young kids, now 12 and 8, influence what you bring into the house?
“They don’t influence it at all. Like, I don’t care what they think,” Tracey says, laughing with me at her bluntness. Sarcasm tends to not be read as well as it’s heard, so I feel obligated to note that she’s kidding. “Our house is not a museum. The kids are allowed to lay all over everything. The dogs”—there are two of them, both around 85 pounds each—“lay all over the sofas. It’s a totally livable space, which is why I think the kids like it. We don’t put restrictions on them at all.
“However,” she adds, “they do know that, I don’t know if it’s because we’re in the business, they do know that they have to be respectful of the stuff that we have, that stuff costs money, that we look for stuff that’s really special that we may never be able to replace if it was ruined. As with anything, I don’t let them sit on the back of the sofa because they shouldn’t be doing that with anybody’s sofa.”
Later, Noah comes downstairs to alert Tracey that he’s due at soccer practice soon. He’s polite and personable. He stays with us for the next half-hour or so, while we finish talking and Tracey shows me around upstairs. Throughout, he’s wearing his neon-green Nike soccer spikes. Tracey never flinches.
The thrill of the hunt
When you work long hours, six days a week, in an industry as finicky and aloof as theirs, inspiration dries up fast. So it’s not unremarkable that Tracey and Rod’s home remains a wellspring of it for them. There are two reasons for that, Tracey says. One, it took them a long time to arrive here. And two, the home, in her eyes, is still very much a work in progress. The kitchen, an addition somewhere around the middle of the last century, appears next in line. They recently covered the north wall, floor to ceiling, in white subway tile with dark gray grout. Changed the complexion of the room entirely, Tracey says. She fantasizes openly now about replacing the cabinets with a sleek, modern kind.
This is not a couple, though, that loses itself every weekend in renovation projects. The home, after all, isn’t going anywhere. And Tracey feels that in order for them to remain relevant (and feed their insatiable addiction to design), they need to be closer to the action. So, they make regular trips to New York for two, three days at a time—kids in tow.
“I just want them to appreciate what we do,” she says. “A lot of people, their parents leave for work, they don’t know what they do. But my kids have to live with what we do. At times, it stinks for them. I want them to understand that it’s hard. Like, the things that we bring into the store and the things that we bring into the house, we don’t just go to a store, normally, and buy them. We found it somewhere. It has a story.”
Sitting in one of those low-slung lounge chairs in the entry room, Tracey smiles at the memory of the late-night bidding war on eBay that played out before they finally secured them.
“I remember it like it was yesterday,” she says. “Then we were like, ‘Oh, shit. I hope they’re nice.’ ”
Tracey insists that of their two kids, their daughter, Piper, is the clear favorite to follow in their footsteps, or at least, walk nearby. She’s creative and she’s already helping with the merchandizing in the store. But, “Noah won’t, for sure,” she says. “He wants nothing to do with it. He wants a nice house. He wants us to do it.”
My tour of the upstairs finishes in his bedroom. It’s the largest upstairs room in the original part of the house, but it’s modest by modern expectations. Still there’s room for a queen-size bed and a leather loveseat and a small table. The walls, up to about waist-high, are covered in square metal diamond plates, the kind you’d find on the floor of an exotic mechanic’s garage. But Noah’s grown out of them, and much of the rest of the motif—he’s 12, remember—so they’ll be coming down soon, likely with a lot of aggravation and cursing from Rod, who’ll be doing the prying. The bed was the first part of the makeover. Noah is filled with ideas for the rest of it.
“We’re gonna do a butcher-block desk. And we’re gonna mount my TV to the wall,” he says. “And we’re thinking of getting a—what’s that called?”
“An end table?” Tracey answers. “We’ll talk about that.”
“I could definitely design, like, boys’ rooms my age,” he says.
“Oh, really?” Tracey says with mock surprise. This is hardly the first time she’s heard this.
“Yeah. I’ll pay people. I’ll have people pay me. And I’ll design their rooms.”
Right about now, you’re bracing for the onslaught—of food, of booze, of family. There’s no getting around it. But there are a few things you can do to preserve (most of) your sanity.
By Laurie Palau
In theory, the holidays are a good idea. Unplug for a week or so, surround yourself with family and friends, give and get a few gifts, overeat, overdrink. In practice, they get a little murkier. The constant entertaining, the constant indigestion and hangovers, the constant presence of out-of-town family. The first week of January should really be declared a national holiday so that we can recuperate in our own ways from the supposed vacation we just endured.
Until Bose develops barely noticeable, noise-cancelling ear buds, you’re going to have to suffer through your mom’s scrutiny. And you should probably accept by now that those gifts are really just returns-in-waiting. On the bright side, your disappointment’s been so obvious that everyone’s at least including gift receipts now.
In other words, the holidays are what they are. You need to lay claim to those fleeting moments of happiness and let the rest of it go. Easier said than done, I know. But these are a few practices I’ve managed to find great solace in. Feel free to copy and paste into your life as needed.
Know your audience
Forget Martha Stewart. And screw the Barefoot Contessa. One year, I spent months poring over gourmet recipes and settled on a set that required me to hunt down tens of obscure ingredients and prep for hours. No one was especially impressed. They gorged, they drank, they got up from the table and they moved on with their lives. With so many people to feed, it’s OK to aim for the lowest common denominator. That’s your most finicky eater, anyway, not the locavore.
Stick with tradition
In that vein, lean on the dishes you can make in your sleep. For me, it’s bacon-wrapped scallops and crab cakes. I get bored easily, but having two dishes that I barely have to think about goes a long way toward lessening my burden. Plus, you make them year in and year out for a reason.
Give them a drawer
The less your overnight guests feel like an imposition, the less they’ll actually be one. It’s a funny thing; when guests feel like they’re in the way, the more they seem to hover, always wanting to ask for something, but never quite getting there. So head them off. Ask beforehand what they like to eat and drink and stock up. And carve out some space in the closet, along with a drawer or two, in their room. Everyone feels a little more at home when they’re not living out of a suitcase.
Take photos—often
Even when your kids are feuding. Even when you’re otherwise tuning out most of the room. Before you know it, the moment will be gone, for better and for worse, and, either way, you’ll regret not preserving it. Gone are the days when Hallmark moments were the only photogenic ones. In fact, you’ll appreciate the honest depictions a whole lot more—after the fact. Well after the fact.
Breathe deep—often
I’m the furthest thing from a Namaste chick, but when I feel my blood pressure spiking, the surest way to calm myself down is to pause right where I am and take a few deep breaths. You’ll know the moment.
Laurie Palau is the owner of the New Hope-based simply B organized, a home and life organization service.
She’s way too modest to say so herself, but there isn’t anything our resident organizer, Laurie Palau, can’t do. While the rest of us here only ever seem to add to our to-do lists and plead for extensions, Laurie’s turning her columns in a month ahead of deadline. (That’s no exaggeration.) Tired of looking so pathetic by comparison, we finally asked how she does it. This is her reply.
By Laurie Palau
I get it. Trust me. Between two busy teens and a pair of working parents, our front door is a revolving door. It occurred to me long before we ever reached this point that if I didn’t structure my life around some hard habits, my life was going to jump the rails, and fast. This is what I came up with. I’m proud to say I’ve remained true to them, and, in turn, they’ve never done me wrong.
Meditate
Regardless of what time it means I have to get up, I always set my alarm for 30 minutes earlier than I need to be up. That half-hour is mine, and mine alone. The house is quiet, the coffee is hot. Amid that peace, I do the following: I review my tasks for the day, which keeps me from feeling frazzled later on; I read a daily devotional, which motivates me and reminds me of the bigger picture; and I peruse social media, which reminds me of the smaller picture. If I don’t have another moment to myself for the rest of the day, I’m OK with it, because I have my half-hour to look forward to tomorrow.
Volunteer
Truth be told, I’m overextended a lot of the time. But I never regret volunteering. It fills me with a satisfaction and gratefulness unlike anything else I do. Find a cause that means something to you, and offer your help. It doesn’t need to be an all-consuming commitment to count. If you’ve only got a couple of hours a month, that’s not nothing. And you’ll be shocked to see how totally disproportionate your impact is.
Delegate
Since they were old enough to understand the words that were coming out of my mouth, I’ve tried to instill in our kids that our family is a team; we’re only viable if everyone contributes. Me shouldering the bulk of the load—cooking, laundering, unloading the dishwasher, cleaning, walking the dogs—is not sustainable. Plus, I’m pretty sure they’d never move out if I did. Assign a few small, age-appropriate chores and build from there. They won’t be done to your specs, but you’ll be a happier person for it.
Divide and Conquer
There’s very little that’s more defeating than confronting a run-on to-do list first thing in the morning. Where to begin? Why begin at all? My way around that is crafting multiple (short) to-do lists on Wunderlist. I have one for work, another for family and a third for volunteering. Each day, I pick three to five things that I want to accomplish—in total, not from each list. Having three lists going at once helps me prioritize and feel like I’m actually getting things done—because I am.
Unplug
The same way I dedicate a half-hour every morning to easing into my day, I shutdown all of my devices a half-hour before I go to bed. Maybe not every device. I still watch TV. The idea is to disengage and start separating myself from the day. If I put my iPad down and tried to fall asleep right away, it’s not going to happen. Even if I was scrolling through something totally unrelated, my mind’s going to want to rehash the day or start prepping for tomorrow. By contrast, once I get comfortable, it sets off a gradual chain reaction in me. Next stop: Sleepy Town.
Despite whatever they’re going to say about me, I’m no Wonder Woman. I’m not immune to stress. I get overwhelmed. I lose my patience. There are too many days when I don’t get everything done that I need to. But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to give in to any of that. I’ve learned to cope with it. Tomorrow, I’ll savor my coffee and take another run at the world.
Laurie Palau is the owner of the New Hope-based simply B organized, a home and life organization service.
Because the summer’s too fleeting to squander on work and socially acceptable drinking hours.
By Mike Madaio
Happy hour, pre-dinner apéritifs, post-dinner digestifs, a marathon pub crawl that lasts until last call (and then some). We don’t refer to any of those experiences as night drinking. Yet, we feel pressed to qualify any imbibing done before 5 p.m. (even though it’s always five o’clock somewhere) as day drinking, such is the stigma that stems from the “Mad Men” era, when the men drank themselves under the lunch table and the women, under the coffee table, neither supposedly the wiser. Clearly, we’re a much more restrained culture now.
Day drinking these days is more about taking advantage—of a rare couple of quiet hours among old friends, of a gentle breeze on a July afternoon, of a setting that’s far too cool for our likes come nightfall—than blacking out. (Though blacking out’s still on the table. We’re not Mormons.)
Summer itself is practically an open invitation to ditch the to-do list (and the kids) and rustle up a spur-of-the-moment BYO gathering by the pool, at the park or the beach. But there’s also something about sliding into a dimly lit booth on an ideal afternoon that feels deliciously rebellious. Neither way’s wrong. There are, after all, no rules for day drinking. Other than postpone the errands for another day altogether, not simply until later in the afternoon. That’s a viral video waiting to happen.
On that note, allow us to introduce you to a few of our favorite day-drinking spots.
Paramour (at the Wayne Hotel) | Wayne When the sun’s shining bright and the humidity’s lightened up, the sidewalk seats along North Wayne Avenue are highly coveted, naturally. But the savviest among us know to seek out the 110-year-old Tudor Revival veranda, complete with ceiling fans and ample views of the surrounding gardens. Either way, order the Parisian Spritz, a light, bright sparkling wine cocktail spiked with a dollop of peach puree.
World of Beer | Exton The franchise is comprised of 75 locations spread across 21 states, yet this one, which opened in May, is Pennsylvania’s first and only (because control states rarely get to have nice things). A thousand-square-foot patio holds more than enough table seating, as well as several outdoor sofas and a cornhole court. It’s what your backyard would look like if you had room for a thousand-square-foot deck, 60 rotating taps and a 600-bottle menu.
Martine’s RiverHouse | New Hope People watching can be overstimulating. And sometimes—most of the time—the whole point of day drinking is to step out of your routine and dive headfirst into your company. On such occasions, there is no more tranquil setting (with a well-stocked bar and a well-versed bartender at your disposal) than the riverside deck at Martine’s. Main Street bustles on the other side of the restaurant, but it may as well be miles away.
Pag’s Wine Bar | Doylestown Stuck home when, really, you should be using your vacation days more wisely? Head to Paganini. Between the deep (and reasonably priced) wine cellar, the small-plates menu and the just-out-of-the-way location, it’s an honest facsimile of a European square experience. Sip, nosh, repeat. No hurry.
Mas Mexicali Cantina | West Chester If there was an official drink for day drinking, it’d have to be the margarita. Mas Mexicali obliges with 11 varieties. Paired with the rooftop deck, there may be no better place around here to watch a hazy sun set with a drink in hand (and a taco in the other).
Va La Vineyards | Avondale Sidle up to the bar to try one (or four) of Anthony Vietri’s authentic, Italian-style field blends, each paired with a locally made artisanal cheese. From there, grab a bottle of your favorite and head for the deck out back, where it feels more like Tuscany than Chester County.
Tired Hands Fermentaria | Ardmore The large picture windows (ideal people for watching), tall ceiling and the skylights make for one airy space. But unlike the saturated suckers walking by on the other side of those windows, you’re savoring your house-brewed session beer (a beer made for day drinking) and whiskey dills at a lovely 70 degrees with no hint of humidity.
X Marks the Spot Legally, we can’t advise you to head for your secret-but-public spot with a bottle or a sixer in tow, but they’re the places that spring to mind first when you hear “day drinking,” are they not? No table, no chairs. Maybe a blanket. Definitely a spectacular view. We won’t tell if you won’t.
Some simple moves now will spare you from 10 months of escalating aggravation.
By Laurie Palau
You’re forgiven for not noticing them here in the throes of camp season, or before you bolted out of town, but those blinking lights on the horizon, they belong to a school bus. Don’t tell the kids. Let them splash and run with abandon. Their day will come. But ours has arrived.
You’d think back-to-school prep would get easier in this digital age, but the backpacks only grow bigger and fuller as the school years pass. Before their contents explode all over your kitchen table, establish an order while you’re easing them—trying to, at least—back into their routines.
Reload ‘em. All those essentials—notebooks, pencils, folders—buy them now, and not just to cover their immediate needs; stock up for the entire school year. It’s never going to be cheaper. While you’re at it, try to anticipate their long-range needs—poster board, glue sticks, copy paper—and stockpile that stuff as well.
Hook ‘em. The sight of backpacks hanging across kitchen chairs or slung onto counters gradually gnaws at me until I finally detonate right around Thanksgiving break. Install hooks near whichever door they use most. It’s not foolproof, but shouting “Hang them on the hooks!” is a better solution than shouting “Get them out of here!” And, if it takes, it’ll spare you some headaches in the morning, too.
Corral ‘em. Kids are no different from us. Designate a corner the home classroom and they’ll be that much more productive. Make sure it’s out of the way (read: no TV in sight) and quiet. There should also be plenty of room to stow textbooks and ongoing projects.
Mobilize ‘em. Nothing says all that storage needs to assume the form of fixed shelving or desk drawers. Get creative and construct an art caddy that’ll stash all their supplies. The easy portability may even encourage them to dip into it just for fun. Either way, it’ll allow you to tuck it wherever it’s convenient.
Excuse ‘em. Kids are the world’s cutest kleptomaniacs. For no apparent reason, they’ll arrive home with someone else’s Minions lunchbox, jacket or pet turtle. Install a small basket right beneath the backpack hooks to keep them within easy reach for when their rightful owners come calling. The faster you can get them in and out, the less explaining you’ll have to do.
Laurie Palau is the owner of the New Hope-based simply B organized, a home and life organization service.
Feeling good has a lot to do with what we eat. But it begins with forging the right mindset.
By Rose Nyad Orrell
Eating right all the time and working out five days a week is supposed to position you for a long, healthy life. Yet, there you are: stressed and stuck in a rut.
From my perspective as a certified holistic health practitioner, the concept of wellness has been rewritten to suit our goal-oriented nature. Eat this many calories, exert this much energy and none of the rest really matters. But it does. And so does our approach. Balance is key. There’s no one-size-fits-all regimen when it comes to achieving a sound mind and body. But there is a blueprint.
Back to basics
Over recent years, our diets have grown increasingly acidic. The most common culprits: fried and processed foods, sugar, dairy, white flour, coffee and alcohol. What they do is trigger inflammation. When that happens often enough, it’s no longer your body’s healing response but its natural state. And when you’re inflamed all the time, you open yourself up to a host of ailments. Tip the balance back in favor of alkaline foodstuffs—veg; most fruit, including blueberries, dates and apples; and certain whole grains, like quinoa and amaranth—in the neighborhood of 80 percent and your body will regain its sensitivity.
In defense of bacteria
Probiotics are getting a lot of play these days, but they’re being sold as a cure-all because it accommodates our pared-down version of wellness. In a healthy body, think of the intestines (a.k.a. the gut) as the engine and the probiotics, the fuel. They facilitate the growth of good bacteria, which primes the intestines to more easily breakdown and absorb food. And the more efficient the operation, the stronger the body’s immune system becomes. However, indulge too often in pizza, fried chicken and gelato and the intestines become gunked up with bad bacteria (yes, there are two kinds), which hampers digestion and weakens our immunity. Simply countering that with the occasional Greek yogurt is like trying to cool off by standing in a puddle. Start by eating more alkaline foods, then begin incorporating live-cultured things, like sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir and fermented coconut water. With the foundation already in place, the good bacteria will be free to flourish.
Peek under the hood
Our bodies have the incredible ability to adapt—as long as we get out of our own way. The point of the first two steps is lost if they feel like a chore. After all, true wellness, as it’s described by the World Health Organization, is “a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” Read: This is always going to feel like a work in progress, but a sound mind will keep it feeling like this is the way it should be, rather than this is the way it has to be.
We tend to suppress our emotions so we can deal with them at a later time, when we’re better equipped. Which, of course, never happens. When it goes on long enough, this inner turmoil starts to manifest in physical symptoms. If you’ve been bothered by a persistent ache, or worse, consider what you’re harboring and start to work it out.
And sometimes the sources of our stress are obvious—a dead-end career, a neglected marriage—but no easier to deal with. Change can feel incredibly daunting, but for the same reason we dread it—it’ll change the landscape of our lives—it’s also the single-most empowering act we’re capable of. And in order for this to have any permanence, bold moves are required.
Rose Nyad Orrellis a New Hope-based certified holistic health practitioner.
We know you’re eyeing up a whole lot of nothing, whether it be by the pool or the ocean, but there’s a lot that’s about to go down. We’re not saying that you need to be there for all of it (for now), but you should at least get to know the major players so that you can hit the ground running once you return your lounge chair to its upright position. Portfolio by Scott Edwards
Ashley Smalley | Owner | The Selvedge Yard | New Hope
The brimming displays of the N3rd Collective.
The Selvedge Yard is distinctly cooler than I am, but I still felt a kinship with every inch of its 600 square feet from the first time I lingered within its walls—the Conrad Leach iconography prints, the midcentury blueprints doubling as wallpaper, the Silver Piston Indian Head pendant and chain, the red button-down made from shop-rag fabric that Ash pulls down and holds up close so I can appreciate the stitching, which is done by a 1930s Merrow sewing machine—and the $175 price tag.
The shop opened last summer, but it was an illustrated lifestyle before that. Ash’s husband, JP, has worked in all facets of fashion. Seven years back, looking for a creative outlet beyond his work, JP started The Selvedge Yard, the blog, with the intent to become the Internet’s denim aficionado. “And I got bored shitless within like three weeks,” he says. So he grew his scope and latched onto something more intimate—“All the things,” he says, “that have turned me on throughout my life, that make me who I am.” Which, of course, distinguishes him from none of the countless other bloggers. What does: “I grew up in a house with Harleys, and pot and dobermans. And a lot of the icons for me, growing up, were Evil Knievel, and Jungle Pam and Linda Vaughn. Even Fonzie.” Straightaway, there was a connection.
JP and Ash are big on community. They live in New Hope, too, and like to refer their customers to their favorite spots around town. When they opened the shop, they called upon their massive online community, as they refer to it, filled with artisan designers, to help them stock it.
“I look around and I don’t see just product,” JP says. “I see people’s faces, I see relationships.”
And just as JP’s life has grown to encompass Ash, they’ve begun to incorporate women’s clothing into The Selvedge Yard. Now that they’re both getting what they need out of the shop, you and your other half can too.
Michael (pictured) and Dino Kelly-Cataldi | Owners | Dino’s Backstage & The Celebrity Room | Glenside
Beneath the charcoal and chocolate surfaces, the red wallpaper that looks like tufted leather, the shimmering chandeliers and the larger-than-life portraits of Jane Russell and Jean Harlow, beneath the $1.5 million-, yearlong-renovation, Dino’s Backstage & The Celebrity Room comes down to pure devotion.
When Michael and Dino got together 18 years ago, both were scraping bottom. Michael had just closed his shop and Dino lost his restaurant. Slowly, they began to lift each other up. Dino got a corporate job. But Michael was never going to abandon his singing. In time, Dino came to realize that his love of Michael would lead him back to the unthinkable. This won’t be his restaurant, though. It’ll be theirs. “We’re taking a leap of faith here,” Dino says. “If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t really matter because we still have each other.”
“I love the sentiment of that,” Michael counters. “But I’ve never been so sure of something.”
When it opens in early June, Dino’s will be an entirely unique breed, a midcentury-era supper club, complete with a decadent dining room and a seductive cabaret lounge. “I’m sort of thinking, like, 1948,” Michael says. “Why, in my mind, 1948, I’m not quite sure.” Either way, it’s meant to invoke a day when going out was an indulgent affair, when all involved, right down to the hosts, could exit the grind and slip into a virtual reality where anything felt possible for a few hours. And usually was.
Elizabeth Cassel | Owner | Baby Scout and Scout Salvage & Vintage Rescue
Cassel’s been picking for several years now. She knows where to look and when. And on a typical haul, she figures that 20 percent is exceptional. The rest is passable. She was selling the exceptional stuff before she could unload it from the truck and move it into her Old City shop, Scout Salvage & Vintage Rescue. Granted, it was a good problem to have, but it was still a problem. Sometimes it wouldn’t even make it that far. She’d snap a pic of her find onsite and post it to Instagram, where it was almost always snatched up before she made it back.
So Cassel grew her ranks. She rounded up some friends from The Clover Market, where she also sold, and together, last October, they opened the N3rd Collective in her old storefront. She describes it as “part-boutique co-op, part-small business incubator.” As the collective took off, Cassel, five months pregnant when it launched, had her first child. And she happened upon her next frontier in the process: Baby Scout. We talked in early May, while her son napped. The concept was just taking root then. She’d decorated his nursery, floor to ceiling, in vintage Sesame Street, and a new world exposed itself: kid-friendly vintage. “He has some really funny vintage T-shirts that are waiting for him to grow a little bit bigger,” she says, with a laugh.
Cassel envisions everything from clothing to bedroom furniture, functional as it is fashionable, as has become Scout’s reputation, comprising the collection, which she’ll sell online. That’s likely the direction for Scout too. By the time you read this, Scout will likely be gone from the collective. It’ll live on, fear not. But she’s a mom now, and time is fleeting.
Sarah R. Bloom | Visual Artist | Narberth
The last 18 months have been a rollercoaster for Bloom. On the breakneck descents, she screams to get off. But once she’s safely stowed back in the bay, she steels herself to go again. And again.
“The last year has been a great year for me as far as attention goes with work,” Bloom says. “It’s also been, like, emotionally, the worst year of my life. It’s a very interesting dynamic.”
The onslaught of attention started with a two-minute profile in a documentary series called Wastelands. It posted on a Thursday night in January 2015, and by midday the next day, The Huffington Post and The Daily Mail had requested interviews. Before the year was out, Bloom was named Philadelphia magazine’s favorite visual artist and one of the “28 Badass Women You Should Be Following On Instagram.”
What drew them to her: Self-portraits that are, at turns, vulnerable, dark, funny, combative, gripping. In 2006, she was invited to join a Flickr group called “365 Days,” where its members took and posted self-portraits every day for a year. Bloom figured she’d last a week. But she fed off the support and started to look at herself differently. Midway through Year Two, she began shooting herself amid the ruins of old buildings, as she’s pictured here.
“I was thinking a lot about aging at that point, or starting to, and starting to notice things about my own body that were changing,” she says. “It felt like an apt metaphor to use the abandoned spaces as, like, a reflection of my inner state, and then, eventually, my physical state.”
A couple years back, Bloom, still shooting daily, began framing her years with themes, for added purpose. This year’s: “Feminist Manifesto,” she says with a knowing laugh. She’s pairing black-and-white portraits with quotes from legendary feminists and, conversely, absurd comments made along the campaign trail. Should be no shortage of inspiration this summer.
David Jansen (fifth from left) | Owner/Chef | Jansen | Mt. Airy
Grilled Norwegian salmon, potato and oyster fondue.
When Jansen left The Fountain at The Four Seasons after more than two decades there, his mind was on his three kids, not another restaurant. He spent the next five years being a full-time dad, coaching his youngest daughter’s soccer and softball teams, making them dinner, describing it, in the end, as “the best decision I made.”
But a chef with Jansen’s pedigree—he entered the professional kitchen 35 years ago, at 14—was always going to return cooking. That time came last October, when he toured a rundown, 300-year-old stone building along Germantown Avenue, the latest in a long list of potential restaurant sites. But this one held his attention. It’s close enough to his Chestnut Hill home that his daughter comes around most days to do her homework upstairs, at the charcuterie, cheese and raw bar. And his son works there. (His oldest daughter’s a college sophomore.)
Jansen always claimed ownership of The Fountain, but he was never able to make it truly his own, not like this. But it’s still hard to tell, naturally, where The Fountain ends and Jansen, the restaurant, begins—the perfectionist, French-based cooking techniques, the hyper-attentive service. The white tablecloths are still pronounced, too, but the formality’s been shed. And the menu’s more agile, though hardly cutting-edge. Jansen may have been away for a while, but he hasn’t forgotten who he is. “I don’t do foams,” he says. “I do good sauces, good soups. I cook fish properly.”
Photos: (Ashley Smalley/The Selvedge Yard) Josh Dehonney; (Michael Kelly-Cataldi/Dino’s Backstage & The Celebrity Room; Elizabeth Cassel/N3rd Collective; David Jansen/Jansen) Matthew J. Rhein; (Sarah R. Bloom) courtesy Sarah R. Bloom
Not even the recession fazed the New Hope developer’s meteoric trajectory over the last decade. And with his two latest projects well underway, one in the city and the other in the ‘burbs, he’s showing no signs of flaming out any time soon.
By Scott Edwards
A rendering of Rabbit Run Creek. Top: Scannapieco, pictured outside of Waterview, another one of his New Hope projects. Below: 500 Walnut.
Tom Scannapieco is sitting around a conference room table with the Buckingham metalsmith Ray Mathis talking through Mathis’ sketches of the gates for Rabbit Run Creek, the high-end townhome community Scannapieco’s building across town. Toll Brothers, this is not. Thirty-seven homes, each about 3,500 square feet, each with its own elevator, will be embedded among pocket parks. The asking prices start at just over a million.
Rabbit Run Creek is Scannapieco’s suburban follow-up to Waterview, which changed the game for the New Hope developer. “That was a real departure because no one ever built million-dollar condominiums in the suburbs,” he says. Again, not what you’re thinking. Twenty-eight nearly-4,000-square foot condos perched right on the west bank of the Delaware, a short walk from downtown New Hope. Every one of them sold before construction was even completed in 2006.
Scannapieco used roughly the same template in erecting the 31-story 1706 Rittenhouse Square, which was named among the Urban Land Institute’s “Top 20 Projects in the Americas” in 2011. He wanted to build it on the Main Line and in Princeton, New Jersey, but land and progress came faster in Philadelphia. Construction ebbed through the recession, but Scannapieco never lowered his asking prices. Again, every condo sold ahead of schedule. And three have since been sold again—for at least a million over the original asking price in a mere three years.
Last April, Scannapieco found himself publicly refuting a rumor that Jay-Z and Bey had bought the penthouse at 500 Walnut, another posh, 26-story condo tower shooting up over Society Hill, overlooking Independence Hall. “The rumor was that they bought it for $20 million, which was curious because we only had it on the market for 17.6,” he says, a sly grin underlining the obvious: Not exactly bad publicity. Nonetheless, he’s still looking for a taker. Precedent says he won’t be for much longer.
The real estate mogul may have no regrets about abandoning a career as a physicist, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t still think like one. Also, for someone who spends most of his days thinking about how the upper crust lives, he’s remarkably low-maintenance.
I bought my first property … in 1974 for $11,000. It was a shell of a post-Civil War townhome in the art museum area. Those houses now are all million-dollar townhouses. I basically took a building that was converted into six small residential units and converted it into three condominiums. Sold two and lived in one. Great memories of that.
If I didn’t become a developer … I’d be an architect, because I love design, or an investment banker, because I enjoy structuring deals and negotiating land.
The last book I read was … Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream (North Point Press, 2000), by Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk [and Andres Duany and Jeff Speck]. It was written 16 years ago, but she already perceived what we are now fully recognizing, this movement toward community and more urban-type spaces. And a lot of her comments, I think, were a result of living close to New Hope. As you read the book, you see her talking about New Hope.
The last show I binge-watched was … Probably “24.” Actually, the last one was “House of Cards.” I kind of liked the earlier episodes more than the later episodes. By the end of it, I was done with it.
If I ran Philadelphia … I would take all the empty rowhomes and give them to people. And then I would give them free materials and let them fix them up themselves. Because right now we have a system where you have people that need housing and we think the way to approach that is to pay people $100 an hour to go build a house for them. So you’re addressing one hundredth of one percent of the problem, because that’s all you can afford. You’re spending $200,000 to $300,000 to build a low-income house. Just give them a credit card for Home Depot and limit how much they can buy at any point in time and have spot inspections to make sure the money’s being spent. I think we’d be amazed at what people can do if they’re not told how to do it, they’re not inspected twice a day and they’re just left to do it themselves. And it would be a fraction of the cost of what we’re doing today.
To break a sweat, I … play racquetball once a week and I lift probably three times a week. I go to Cornerstone, here in New Hope.
When I’m not working, I’m … reading the newspaper in a bay window overlooking the river.
My last vacation … was in Venice, a year-and-a-half ago. My daughter was living in London and moving back to Philadelphia, so I met her in Venice and the two of us spent four days there during the Biennale. That was fantastic. It was like going to a world’s fair.
My death-row meal … would be between pizza and a pasta dish with a seafood marinara sauce or something like that. The pizza would probably be plain, nothing imaginative.
The advice that’s stuck most with me … I can’t put a source to it, but I absolutely believe that things are never as bad or as good as you think they are. There’s a real coming back to the norm. It’s just a point in time and, eventually, that’ll pass too.
In five years, … I’d like to be doing exactly what I’m doing. I’ve thought about retirement off and on. It’s only in the last year or so that I finally clarified in my mind that that’s not my calling.
Portrait by Josh DeHonney | Renderings courtesy Scannapieco Development Corp.
