Remodel

Where shall we begin our story? Do we begin with a sale at IKEA in the fall of 2011? Do we begin with hurricane Ike and the long deferred repairs that resulted? How about the horribly cheap remodel of the kitchen performed sometime in the 1980's or 1990's? Yes, let's start there...

Good Ideas / Bad Ideas
First, let's remember that this house was built in the 1920's. Back in those days, you had a kitchen and you had a living room and you had thick walls between them. Today, that's not what we want in our homes. Today, we look for large, open areas that flow together. Fortunately for Sharon and I, someone had already performed that transformation on this house during a previous remodel. Somewhere along the line, someone had torn out the wall between the kitchen and living room, and added a master bedroom to the back of the house. For a 1920's bungalo in The Heights, we started all this with a fairly large kitchen....large in square footage, but short on utility.

Just because you have a great deal of space allocated to a room, does not mean that space can be put to use. For an example, let's take a look at the wall with the sink.

There are upper cabinets, lower cabinets and then, presumably because there needs to be access to the panty, the cabinets stop and there is an odd, basically useless corner.  The pantry is nice and deep, but also contains the washer and dryer. Continuing along that wall, we have the refrigerator and an open corner connecting a living room and a hall to the bedroom. Continuing to rotate around the room, as you look into the living room, you find the only other cabinets and the one viable work area; a space we refer to as "the peninsula."

The peninsula, being central to the space, collects clutter and as a result ends up being a much smaller space than it at first appears. Those two problems (weird corner, few workspaces) did not become apparent until we had used and lived in the kitchen for some time. There's another, bigger problem that was far easier to spot : those are cheap, cheap cabinets.
Perhaps it was because they were already paying to knock out a wall and/or add an entire master suite to the house, but they decided they could save some money by going to the back of the big box hardware store and buying the cheapest cabinets they could find. Your know, the ones that expect to be installed in your garage. They are mostly particle board, have cheap pulls and pathetic supporting hardware. Some of the drawer slides were already beyond repair by the time we stared dating (I would have to find other ways to prove my worthiness).

What Next
Sharon knew that the kitchen would have to be remodeled before she even bought the place.  She'd been doing a little research on the side and knew that IKEA's cabinets were tops in quality and reliability. More dependable than custom cabinets and half the cost. She knew what she wanted, but kept pushing it off and waiting for that someday...

How did someday happen? I don't know. The 20% off sale at IKEA certainly helped. 20% off of the best quality and best price? Done. They have a company that will help you design the layout of your kitchen for a mere $179 and provide installation services? Done.  The only wrinkle was that the sale ended in November and we wouldn't be ready to install the new kitchen until February....so we've been living with boxes for months.

Someday Came

We all have things we plan to do someday. Those of us who experience the joy of home ownership know this especially keenly. Someday, we'll fix the light on the back porch. Someday, we'll expand the garden onto the side yard. Someday, we'll remodel the kitchen. More often than not, the old song is right, "someday never comes." I cannot explain what happened in the fall, but in this house, we are making John Fogerty a liar.

As I write this, we are five days into the remodel of the kitchen. The floors are gone, walls are missing, and all the counters have been removed. The big paradox of building your dream kitchen is that you have to survive five weeks with no kitchen to do it.

It will be interesting to see which part of this process will be the most stressful: dealing with contractors, unexpected expenses, or being without a kitchen. For me, I think it is going to be the last one. The kitchen is the heart of any home and it physically sits very centrally to this house. We're five days into five weeks of having a hole in the middle of our home.

<sigh>

Hello? Hello?

Tap, tap, tap.
Is this thing still on?

Feeling Tralfamadorian

Life, lately, has been lacking in a sence of stillness. There's been far too much rushing around, not enough quiet and occasionally a feeling of franticness.

This morning I came across a pair of beautiful pieces of time lapse video. In the first, the camera is pointed out the window of a plane traveling from Amsterdam to San Franciso. Three hours of flight over numerous towns are condensed into 54 seconds. In the second, the camera slowly pans across the night sky somewhere in Maine.

Intersting that something that condenses time manages to convey that needed stillness.

(original post)

Jealousy, Poverty and Spinach

I love, love, love, the Sag Paneer at Indika. If any of you haven't been to Indika then you are truly missing out. Don't just take my work for it, many real life food critics consider it if not 'The' Best then within the top 5 Indian restaraunts in the country.

This particular Sag Paneer has been my comfort food of choice for about 5 years now. It was the last food I ate before each of my surgeries and the first food I ate when I got out of the hospital. I used to drive 30 minutes just to eat an appetizer. That was all I could afford but it was okay, it got me out of bad moods, got me over a divorce, made me smile and made me happy. It used to be that I would go in at least once every 2 months (and often much more) because I needed a "fix." Unfortunately I can't do that anymore because my new career involves an extremely significant cut in income and it's just not in the budget.

Now, Indika has become a once or twice a year treat. That one time a year happened to be about 4 weeks ago for Happy Hour. The owner Anita, who knows of my obsession over her Sag Paneer, mentioned that she had been talking about me recently because they were going to have a cooking class coming up where it would be on the menu. My husband (then boyfriend) and I had taken a cooking class at Indika before and it was wonderful but very expensive. We got to cook food in the restaurant kitchen, all the while drinking wonderful wines, and then sit down to dinner to eat everything we had all made that day.

Of course, I knew that someone had to take this class. I suggested that the hubby do it and last night he did. I begged and pleaded for him to bring some home but he didn't, not even a bite. Momentarily my heart is broken. He says he knows how to make both the Sag and the Paneer, the real test will come when he finally makes it for me. I'll let you know how it goes. If it goes well, you may know beforehand if you hear moans of delight coming from somewhere in the Houston Heights.

Shouldn't Sparkles Make Me Happy

Hi, my name is Sharon and I'm a bacon cheeseburgeraholic. There, I said it. People might chuckle when I tell them that I can't go 2 weeks without a bacon cheeseburger but they don't realize that I'm telling the truth. My brain is constantly awake and alert to hear of a new or new to me burger joint. Todays joint in question is Sparkles on Dowling St.

This is the kind of place I LOVE. Walk up to a window, place your order with the sweet woman inside, play a game of "meow" with the cat hiding under the building, watch the people come and go and smell the meat cooking. Back when the Axiom still existed I drove by Sparkles all the time in the middle of the night and used to wonder "hmmm, that place looks interesting" but I never came back during the day. Then recently I read a blog post that was so glowing I wanted to run outside in my robe and head straight there. Well, another blog follow up mentioned the Fried Pork Chop Sandwich and the deal was sealed.

Luckily I have a wonderful husband who both shares and indulges my love of all things in moderation. The husband spends Saturday mornings running around the fields at U of H so we've taken to meeting afterwards to explore food in that area. Well, Sparkles is right around the corner so we decided to head on over. The food took about 30 minutes from the time we ordered (no prob, I had been warned and was expecting that.) What I wasn't expecting was that the burger just wasn't good. The burger was overcooked (again, I had been warned but also assured that it wasn't dry in that condition) and really, really dry. The bun was a little stale and the meat had no spice (I'm just asking for a little salt and pepper). Yes it was cheap, but no it wasn't worth it even for the price.

The Fried Pork Sandwich was exactly what I was expecting and it was yummy. White Bread, Fried Pig, Lettuce, Tomato and Mayo. By the second bite it was falling apart and the bread had turned clear from the grease - just like the CFS sandwich I grew up on in High School. We also had a Chocolate Shake that wasn't too sweet or so thick that my head imploded. I'll go back and give Sparkles another try, because it has personality and they could have been having an off day. Let's hope next time Sparkles makes me happy.

Soup is Good Food

I don't get sick (insert knocking on wood here). I used to get sick all the time, like pnuemonia 4 times in 4 years sick. Then I got healthy, Step 1, and respected the importance of rest, Step 2 and stopped getting sick. My version of sick is now the throat tickle, followed by 48 hours of a sore throat and about 3 hours worth of aches. When this year's "tickle" began I wondered if I had been tempting fate for too long by going around and saying "I don't get sick." Luckily I remembered my Step 3 - make a big batch of Roasted Garlic Potato soup and eat it until it's gone. It has Potatoes (surprisingly good for you), Carrots (I'm not a big veggie fan so I get them where I can), Roasted Garlic (duh, do I even need to say it), and Bacon (good for my soul.) I promise you that if you get sick or not it's like a bowl of wintery goodness. The recipe is swiped from Cooking Light so you know it's good for you. Curl up with the one you love, or a fire, or a good book, or a flickering tv screen and enjoy.

Roasted Garlic Potato Soup

5 Whole Garlic Heads (ok, the goal is to end up with 1/4 cup of roasted garlic and I've never ever needed the full 5 heads but then I just refrigerate the extra)
3 Bacon Slices, diced
1 Cup Onions, diced
1 Cup Carrots, diced
2 Garlic Cloves, minced or squished
6 Cups diced Baking Potatoes (It usually takes me about 2.5 to 3 lbs.)
4 Cups low-salt Chicken Stock (personally I like the full salt version)
1/4 tsp pepper (does anyone ever measure this, just turn the grinder til it looks as speckily as you'd like)
1 Bay Leaf
1 Cup 2% Milk

Remove the outer papery skin from the garlic heads but don't separate the cloves. Wrap each head individually in foil and bake at 350 for one hour and then let cool. Squish the yummy, garlicky goodness out til you have between 1/4 and 1/3 a cup (go ahead, go a little higher, you know you want to).

Cook bacon in a large soup pan over med. hi. heat til crisp. Add onion, carrot and minced garlic and saute for 5 minutes. Add potato, broth, pepper and bay leaf; bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer for 20 minutes or until potato is tender. Remove bay leaf.

Combine garlic pulp and 2 cups of the potato mixture in a blender or food processor and process until smooth. I keep doing this til the whole soup is smooth, but that's because I like eating this like it's a giant bowl of liquidy mashed potatoes. Your choice. Another option is to use an immersion blender and save yourself some clean up. Stir in milk and eat.

Personally I always need to add salt to this soup, but then again, I've been known to add salt to every single thing in my universe. To me it rounds flavors out and I'm a big fan of the notion that it really is the most underused spice.

Is this the most exciting soup you'll ever eat, no. Is this warm, yes. Creamy, yes. Healthy, yes. Disease fighting, I think so. Bacony, you bettya.

Happy winter.