66 Square Feet | Marie Viljoen

South African-born Marie Viljoen started her blog 66 Square Feet (the size of her Brooklyn terrace) to document her life of gardening and cooking in New York City. Despite designing luxurious rooftop gardens for wealthy clients, her own tiny terrace remained her source of daily inspiration. The blog has subsequently been lauded by Apartment Therapy and the Discovery Channel's Green Planet blog as one of the top 10 gardening blogs to read. Martha Stewart Living and The New York Times have featured Marie's terrace in their pages. Her book, 66 Square Feet - A Delicious Life, is Marie's tribute to the city that has nurtured her. Month by month, we walk with her through New York's parks, streets, and farmers markets, watch her garden and rooftop farm grow, and then gather in the kitchen with a good drink: each month culminates in a menu that highlights the best of the season's produce - foraged, marketed, or grown at home. Her recipes include original cocktails like Bear Talk (hard apple cider and spicebush-infused cognac), and the Transatlantic (serviceberry-infused Calvados with prosecco), carrot and cumin soup with buttermilk, fig and tomato salad with mint and basil, lamb shoulder with anchovies and field garlic, and quinces roasted with juniper berries. Arresting photographs by Marie's husband Vincent Mounier reveal an unexpectedly green side of New York City, while Marie's terrace and menu images offer the reader an intimate and inspiring glimpse of a life lived well, with food and flowers.