Author: lgaylord

Louisa believes in expanding horizons and learning - anything that broadens our minds beyond the here and now, allowing us to learn from the past and innovate for the future. She is particularly interested new and inventive methods of sustainability: city planning and green buildings, creating new objects from old trash, and ways that nature can provide examples for new materials and construction. She is also curious about new scientific breakthroughs, technology and discoveries, and how they will shape the future of consumerism and marketing. While science is important to advancing society, Louisa believes that music, education, art and culture are equally necessary, especially on a local community level.

Flavors

February: Peanut Stew with Winter Vegetables & Cornmeal Dumplings

This peanut stew looked delicious when I was flipping through “Afro-Vegan,” and it turned out to be just that. I hadn’t attempted cooking African cuisine before, but the friends who graciously agreed to be my taste-testers for the evening really enjoyed it. One had even traveled to Africa several times for work, and claimed that this recipe tasted almost exactly like an authentic peanut stew!

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lgaylordFebruary 2, 2018October 9, 2019Leave a comment

Flavors

January: Thai Curry

Living in Seattle has allowed me to become exposed to a lot of amazing Thai food. Although I’ve tried cooking some before, with mixed reviews, this curry seemed fairly foolproof because of how few ingredients it requires. I always love a recipe that calls for “whatever you happen to have in your fridge.” It might not end up with the most authentically Thai ingredients, but I’m guaranteed to like it!

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lgaylordJanuary 22, 2018October 9, 20191 Comment

Flavors

January: Pasta e Fagioli

I always like to keep track of the year in some way. In 2015, I read 52 books from a list and wrote haiku reviews of them. In 2016, I read every single New Yorker magazine cover to cover so that the nonfiction and short stories could act as a counterbalance to all the fiction from the previous year. And last year in 2017, I kept track of hard data. I also managed to watch 44 spooky movies in the 2 months leading up to Halloween.

I’ve been doing a lot more cooking recently. I’ve always enjoyed it, but now that I live with 3 other people, I’m much more likely to be adventurous in the kitchen. And because I have a ridiculous number of cookbooks that I like to flip through, I’m going to try new vegetarian recipes at least once a month. So here we go!

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lgaylordJanuary 8, 2018October 9, 2019Leave a comment

Exploring our World, Music and Art, The Seattle Scene

2017 By the Numbers

So much has happened this year, it’s difficult to keep track of everything. But I’ve managed to break down this year’s highs and lows into some concrete numbers to help measure everything I’ve experienced this year.

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lgaylordDecember 26, 2017October 10, 2019Leave a comment

Building Industry, Exploring our World

Beyond Transparency: Material Disclosure and Practice

Materials Matter is a five-session series from the AIA Seattle chapter that delivers comprehensive, high-level knowledge and strategies for assessing and selecting healthy, sustainable materials. I had the opportunity to attend the first run of the newly-developed series with many of the local industry leaders who helped create the innovative course materials. AIA Seattle has just finished hosting the series for a second time.

The series encompasses everything tied to building materials and how they impact our lives: human health, the tools and data available for assessing and prioritizing materials, and strategies for integrating informed decision-making into projects and practice. Join me as I discover exactly why Materials Matter.

AIA MM 5

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lgaylordOctober 2, 2017November 6, 2017Leave a comment

Building Industry, Exploring our World

Just Do It: Strategies for Projects

AIA MM 4

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lgaylordOctober 2, 2017Leave a comment

Building Industry, Exploring our World

Tools of the Trade: Assessment & Implementation

AIA MM 3

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lgaylordSeptember 8, 20171 Comment

The Seattle Scene

Continuing the Epic Saga

Four years ago, I wrote a post about the ongoing saga of Seattle’s Alaskan Way Viaduct and Big Bertha, the massive drill that would bore her way under our streets to make way for an expensive new tunnel that will be everything that was promised. It was predicted that the project would cost $4.25 billion, that digging would be completed by the fall of 2014, and that the underground roadways would be open in 2015. Oh, my sweet naive child. How very wrong we were. This is not the final verse of the Epic Poem of the Viaduct, merely the next one, continuing on into eternity.

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