therese
-
Posts
2,780 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Store
Help Articles
Posts posted by therese
-
-
Another detail: the drawer to the right of the sink, over the trash can, contains dish towels and pot holders.
-
Okay, this is it. I'm finally showing you the sink. I love this sink:
What I love about this sink:
1. It's pretty. I've wanted an apron front (aka farmer sink, aka Belfast sink) for pretty much forever. The kitchen of my dreams, at least in this house, was going to include this type of sink, period.
2. It's big. I can get anything in this sink: cookie sheets, serving platters, stock pots, gigantic vases, an entire day's worth of unwashed dishes. There's a dispos-all to the right of the faucet that you can't see.
3. It's right where I want it: the surrounding cabinetry has everything thing I need. Underneath is cleaning supplies and trash bags. To the right is a covered garbage can that swings out from under its lid when I open the door. To the left is a bank of drawers, with the top drawer containing cutlery, the middle containing plates and saucers, and the bottom containing bowls and mugs. The bottom two drawers aren't really so much drawers as they are shelves:
The dishwasher is located behind the false cabinet front to the left of the bank of drawers. Here's view from the other side:
We had the false front made to look a bit like another bank of drawers. There's a narrow panel below it that attaches with magnets to cover the very bottom of the dishwasher, and then a drawer below that (where I store appliance warranties and directions and so forth). It's not entirely successful, as the bottom drawer is not flush with the the rest of the "bank"---one of those things I could have insisted on having changed, but figured the hell with it. I'm pretty sure people don't stand around whispering about it.
Mostly they just stand around and try to figure out where the dishwasher is. It's not just hidden, it's very quiet, so I can run it while I've got people sitting at the adjacent table. Note also that it's higher than usual, an entire 12" off the floor (such that the maple butcher block-topped upper counter is 6" taller than usual bar height), easier to load and unload. I don't think of it until I have to load one that's installed at the usual level and then I miss it a lot.
Everyday glasses and cups are stored on open shelves as shown.
Here's another shot of the open storage for glasses and cups:
The arched openings that you can see over the butcher block are the door back to the mud room on the left, the door to the family room on the right. I can see the TV when I'm cooking, but we didn't want one that could be seen from the breakfast room table.
And when I say "we" I mean "I": everybody else would be perfectly happy to eat meals in front of the TV. Oh, and we have a "no kids with food outside the kitchen" rule.
-
Okay, back to the kitchen. Before we leave the mud room I need to point out another part of it that you can see in this photo:
As you look directly into the kitchen proper the coats are on your left, and two doors are on your right. The one closest to the kitchen is a powder room, with the same bricks on the floor. Not particularly kitchen-y, except that we installed an exhaust fan with a timer that you can leave running after use.
The other door (you can just barely see the corner) leads downstairs through the basement (which is small) and into the garage. Again, not really the kitchen, except that all the crap that's normally dragged into a kitchen (backpacks, etc.) instead gets dumped in the mudroom.
-
Johnnycakes are non-sweet pancakes cooked on a griddle from a cornmeal batter. They originated in Rhode Island and do not traditionally have sugar in the batter--but they can be served with butter and syrup for breakfast or as part of a savory dish. They're said to date back to the orignal settlers who may have received a recipe like this from the Indians.
Cool. New info.
-
Remember back in Chufi's blog when Soba described our household as busy professionals with children? Well, the following dinner is what happens when you've got 45 minutes to prepare and eat dinner and still get your daughter to swim practice.
Gerhard's Chicken Sausage with Herbs:
Gnocchi (Ferrara brand; "Are you ready for your close up?"):
Sweet and sour red cabbage (from a jar). I'm sparing you the picture because it is, frankly, disturbing.
Pretty tasty all in all, and certainly better than fast food hell. When I'm planning ahead a bit better I do meals ahead of time in the slow cooker. I can slam those onto the table in less time than it takes the kids to set it.
-
I have a friend who lives in Atlanta, I'm assuming suburbia. Their community is gated, they have their own community centre, pool, daycare etc. and in discussions with them seem to find it normal to keep to their own little neighbourhood. It does come across as rather snobby when they tell it....They have mentioned that this is usual in Atlanta (they're Canadian). Is this an isolated group or is it common in your area of the south. The food angle, well, she used to eat Kraft Mac & Cheese every day for lunch growing up.
I don't think of your friend's life as being so much very typical of Atlanta, but of being very typical of any large U.S. city that's grown enormously over the last three decades without any geographical features to limit sprawl. Families moving to Atlanta will likely have some impression of downtown Atlanta as a scary place populated entirely by crack whores, HIV-infected orphans, and professional athletes. Real estate agents will do nothing to change their minds, instead showing them brand new houses in a bucolic swim tennis community a mere 30 minutes from downtown (yeah, 30 minutes in a helicopter, maybe).
A colleague of mine who'd specifically asked to see houses within a two mile radius of work had to very nearly leap from a real estate agent's moving car to make the point that he absolutely would not be living any farther than two miles from work.
Anyway, your friend is correct, it's not uncommon for people to live this way in Atlanta. But it's also not uncommon for people to live in much higher density settings, walking distance to shops and restaurants (whew, got that food angle in there). These people are much more likely (in my experience) to actually be from Atlanta, or to at least have friends who are from Atlanta and can tell them how great it is living close in.
-
Isn't it called "johnnycake" when it's made with sugar and "cornbread" when it's not?
It may well be in some parts. We never used the term johnnycake (so I don't know how it's used). Hoecakes are made by using cornbread batter that's been thinned to pancake batter consistencey and cooking spoonfuls of it on a griddle like small pancakes.
There used to be a place here in Atlanta called Deacon Burton's. It smelled exactly like my grandmother's kitchen. You went through a sort of cafeteria line to get your food (including hoecakes, which is what reminded me of the Deacon's) and then at the end of the line you stopped at a cash register and paid. Women paid less than men, and young pretty women paid very little indeed. You could get a pretty good idea of where you stood on the babe-o-meter by visiting the Deacon's.
-
#1 I am going to hell. OK! ...I'll call it cake from now on.
Vide supra.
And those books were just amazing.
-
You know, I've never had cornbread that had no sugar in it....so now I'm wondering what real cornbread tastes like.
Tsk tsk tsk. You can still remedy the situation. Find a recipe that calls for no sugar, and ideally includes buttermilk.
I don't make cornbread myself, because I learned to make it from my grandmother, and the recipe was entirely by "feel". And since I no longer have access to the correct bowl and her buttermilk (the real stuff, what's left after you make butter from clabbered cream) and whatever else was called for it just doesn't seem worth the effort.
-
Your kids seem to be adventurous eaters. For kids, that at least. Was that something you worked at or did it just come sort of naturally?
Both. I definitely think that the parents' attitudes toward food makes a difference. Were it left to my husband the kids would likely have survived on a steady diet of chicken fingers and fries. He's not evil, he's just not as concerned with food as I am. He definitely appreciates good food, he just won't go to great lengths to get something better or different or whatever.
But kids have inborn taste as well, I think. My son doesn't like fruit. He also doesn't like fruit juice, carbonated beverages (even water), fruit-flavored candies, or wine. And he's limited when it comes to vegetables (though he's getting better about that). Oh, and he'll eat bananas. But strong cheese of any sort, sashimi (dinner conversations include statements like "Hey, leave some uni for the rest of us, okay?"), foie gras, bean-based Asian desserts? He's all over it.
Girl's presently going through a bit of a meat aversion stage. She occasionally describes herself as a vegetarian (except for country ham and my mother's fried chicken), but I point out that vegetarians eat vegetables. She's more of a breadarian. But even she's cool with stuff that most Americans find sort of weird: lentils, mussels, an egg on her pizza.
Do you pack a lunch every day? I've noticed in recent years that few of my colleagues do that anymore. I still do it because I eat better and it's cheap.Yeah, you got that right.
So, yes, I pack my lunch almost every day. Way way way better food. The cheap part is just an added bonus.
Do you have trouble going without shoes throughout the winter in Atlanta?No. It builds character.
And I think it important to point out at that I was drinking a beer when I read that last question, and now my nose hurts.
-
And now that I have that out of the way...can you tell us more about your "tea masala"? Do you make/blend it yourself? Do you buy it?
I buy it. Lazy lazy lazy, I know.
But I do at least transfer it to this sweet little shaker. When my mother visits I have to caution her to not use any of the unmarked shakers. Between the basil seeds and the tea masala we could have a really interesting batch of cole slaw.
Another book I recall reading as a child was Reay Tanahill's "History of Food". Oh, and "Gone with the Wind" has great food references in it. Margaret Mitchell used a book called "Life in Old Dixie" by a woman named Mary Gay as background material for the book.
And I was married in the Mary Gay House.
-
So summers on the farm, the rest of the year with my parents, mostly somewhere in the Midwest.
My mom's an excellent cook, and as interested in food as I am. For her time she was amazingly adventurous, and would often get neighbors from other places to show her how to make something. She was also a big fan of Julia Child, and I particularly remember her making Beef Wellington once for a dinner party when I was young. Bajillions of different sorts of Christmas cookies, each and every one of them perfect.
She had (has, actually) lots and lots of cookbooks, and I particularly remember a series published by Time Life, with each book in the series featuring a different part of the world. More a travel series than just a cook book, sort of "A Cook's Tour" without all the swearing. The one about French country cooking included a piece on the Boulat family---very weird to come across that name years later in the person of the now grown daughter who's a photographer/journalist.
Anyway, I always wanted to travel, and I got my first chance in high school, when I did an exchange in France, just outside of Deauville. A very cool experience in every way, including the food.
My next extended period abroad was in college, when I worked au pair in Italy (stopping off to see my French family en route). Well, I was supposed to be working au pair, but that didn't quite happen, so instead I traveled with Italian friends and their families. Again, very cool food.
I now travel as part of my work, exactly as much as I'd like, and pretty much only to places I want to visit. In the last five years I've been to Greece, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, England, The Netherlands, and New Zealand. I passed up a meeting recently in Belgium---too bad, as everybody who went said the food was fantastic.
Cool trips planned so far this year are London and Athens.
-
Also, will we get to see some real southern cooking/food this week. You've mentioned you like Asian, what are your other favourites and what did you grow up on?
Southern food? Stay tuned.
I grew up eating lots of different sorts of food.
I was born in Virginia, the very western bit of it, west of Roanoke. We moved away (to the Midwest, first to Keokuk, IA, then to Lafayette, IN, then to Cape Girardeau, MO, then to...it goes on and on) when I was still an infant, but as soon as my mother could do so in good conscience I was shipped back (along with my two younger brothers) to Appalachia for extended periods (a couple of months at least) every summer. I don't know how old I was when this started, but pretty young, as I remember being away at my Grandmother's when my youngest brother was born, and he's only four years younger than me. His first summer on the farm he was still drinking from a bottle and small enough that riding the chickens seemed a reasonable thing to try.
The farm (garden, orchard, pigs, chickens, dairy cows, beef cows) was an amazing lesson in food, and how much work it takes to produce and prepare and preserve (a huge part of life on the farm, as the mountain winters are long and cold---even if you wanted to run down to the Piggly Wiggly and pick up some Kraft Mac'n'Cheese you wouldn't have been able to, the roads being snowed in). My grandmother cooked on a big black wood/coal-burning stove (which also heated water), and that feeling of a hearth is one that was important to me when it came to desiging my own kitchen. Yes, wall ovens must be wonderful things---I just can't imagine cooking in one.
I can yatter on like this for hours and hours, by the way. Blackberry jam, fried pies, cornbread... everything was imprtant.
Oh, and by the way, there's a special place in hell for people who put sugar in cornbread.
Fine if you want sugar in it, but then call it what it is, cake.
-
Food, food, and more food. Ham and fried chicken and deviled eggs and pole beans cooked with fatback are the things that I remember most clearly (it's been a while since I've been back home to a funeral). Fresh tomatoes and melon if it's summer (but somehow it seems like my family members always pass in the winter). Pound cake and coconut cake.
All of it homemade.
Everybody drops by the house in the days before and after the funeral, and they're expected to eat.
-
Therese, your blog is wonderful! I haven't been to Atlanta in 10 years, and even then it was only for a weekend. Your pictures are wonderful, and after looking at that dinner and the cheese cabinet, I'm starving!! I can't wait for the rest of the week.
Glad you're enjoying it. I'm definitely having fun doing it. If only I didn't have to go to this darn job...
While I'm posting I'm going to once again urge people to ask me questions. Even questions that seem rude, like "Hey, are you sure you're from the South? 'Cause people from the South are all ignorant yahoos who don't wear shoes and don't know how to spell."
Maybe that's a bad example, though. Maybe an ignorant yahoo who doesn't wear shoes or know how to spell is exactly the impression I'm giving.
A better example might be "Wow, you sure do eat a lot. Are you sure you don't have a tapeworm?"
-
We all got dessert, but the only one I managed to capture before it was unphotographable was mine, a suite of sweets (heh heh---I'm here till Friday, and don't forget to tip your waitress) all based on figs:
My husband and I both had glasses of Shramsberg Cremant Demi-Sec, a beverage for which we have a particular and possibly ruinous fondness:
With dinner we'd enjoyed a bottle of chardonnay from Harrison's in Napa. Pricey by Woodfire standards (which always had a great list, reasonably priced) but a great deal on Sundays.
We skipped one course that's great at Woodfire, cheese. But Chef Tuohy obliging unlocked the cheese cabinet (which I think of as the cheese spa, because part of the labeling includes the word "confort") so that I could take a photo without getting bounce back from the flash off the glass door:
-
Second courses were flat iron steak (Boy's, ordered rare, earning him a second and approving look from our waiter), crawfish with grits and collards (The Man's), pizza (Girl's, a special request without prosciutto and speck because, well, puberty must be rearing it's ugly head, because she loves both prosciutto and speck), and yellowfin grouper with celeriac and parsley puree (note the truffles) in a lobster broth with bok choi (me---I'd clearly gotten my priorities in order by this point):
-
Dinner was great. As there were four of us (me, The Man, 11 year old Girl, and 14 year old Boy) there are lots of dishes to show.
Firsts include salmon carpaccio (Boy's), smoked tuna (The Man's), assorted olives (for the table, but mostly The Girl's), and salad with goat cheese and blood orange vinaigrette (mine, except what was I thinking? a salad? fortunately The Man traded with me halfway through---I guess he really does love me):
-
So what I did load into Image Gullet early this AM were photos of last night's dinner. We often eat out as a family on Sunday nights: it's not a usual "date night", restaurants are not as busy, and there's no frantic school/homework/after school activity rush.
Last night we chose one of our favorites, Woodfire Grill. I'd already booked it before I knew I'd be blogging, as I assumed there'd be crowds for Valentine's, and I was right, it was packed.
We like this restaurant because the food's great, the atmosphere's cozy, and it's not far from where we live. And they've got half priced bottles of wine on Sundays.
One of the things that makes the restaurant so pleasant is the small open kitchen in the front of the restaurant. This picture is taken with a flash, and shows the woodfire grill:
This picture is without a flash, and so is very blurry indeed (no tripod, and it is the working kitchen so I couldn't exactly doodle around with the time delay and everything) but conveys the warm of it:
There's an adjacent woodfire oven that I didn't manage to take a decent picture of. That I managed to get any pictures at all is courtesy of Woodfire's extremely gracious chef and owner, Michael Tuohy. A very cool guy who has been on the Atlanta dining scene for years, and deserves a large share of the credit for making it what it is today. That's him on the right (obviously), with the wine director Greg Koetting (an old friend, who was also waiting table last night):
-
General stuff that I wanted in my kitchen:
1. Low maintenance, functional surfaces.
2. Relatively tight work area (range/sink/fridge) for a single, primary cook. Similarly tight loop for clean-up (table/sink/dishwasher/storage).
3. Cabinets and major appliances positioned so as to minimize stretch/reach and bend/reach motions, as well as repetitive bending.
4. Decor that respected the period of the house (though obviously this sort of kitchen wouldn't be even remotely consistent with the original period).
So, remember my priority list? Well, I'm going to go ahead and address the second part of item #2, a tight loop for clean-up. Of course, items #1, 3, and 4 are addressed along the way as well.
The single hardest item to source in my kitchen was my sink. It wasn't actually all that difficult, but it was the one thing that we were careful to order well in advance, as I really wanted this particular item (or something very similar to it)...
Oh, hold it, I've just realized that I've not yet loaded this set of images into Image Gullet. They're still at home on my computer (and I'm at work, obviously not doing much work at this precise moment).
So I can't show you my really cool sink yet. But it is really cool, and I'll show it to you soon. Really I will.
You're beginning to think that I don't really have a kitchen at all, I bet.
-
I actually love McCanns, but I suppose the modern age has spoiled me for a breakfast which takes a half hour commitment and just winds up looking er... like that.
It really is too bad that so much really good food looks so ominous. It looked a little less scary once I'd added milk, but not much.
I use the half hour to make lunch and tidy the kitchen and check up on eGullet activity overnight (the family computer being in the kitchen, of course).
-
Photography tip of the day:
When shooting something with a highly reflective surface, don't shoot straight on or you will get a nice picture of a) yourself and/or b) your flash. Instead, shoot the subject at an angle, off to one side. This prevents flash bounce-back and unwanted reflections.
I have never heard of dutch babies before this blog. Is this a traditional dish for your family? Or is it just something you learned how to make on your own?
Yep. I'm not using a flash in the pictures in question, preferring the natural light (of which I've got lots) and knowing that there would be bounce back. But for some reason I just didn't think about my reflection.
The reflection of myself in the restaurant windows was deliberate.
Dutch babies are also called German pancakes. I've seen them all my life, though not too frequently. The Original Pancake House here in Atlanta has them on the menu. We use the recipe in The Joy of Cooking (except we use less butter---it calls for a boatload of butter).
-
But Therese, you know the only reason we're reading your blog is to see those pictures of you in your pajamas! Some of us Seattle eGers are going to a Korean women's spa and out for Korean dinner tomorrow, so your pictures really get me in the right mood. And my husband, native Atlantan that he is, will be enjoying your pajama pictures, er, blog, too.
edited to add, now that I've gotten with the program and read the second page, what other uses for basil seed are there besides planting and the Thai drink? What do you make with them?
Heh heh. The pajamas in question weren't really the sort that anybody would go to great lengths to sneak a peak at: pink flannel plaid bottoms and a stretchy pink shirt. You can see my reflection in the doors of the two Korean restaurants; I'm wearing tan trousers and a black hip length coat.
I didn't notice that I'd taken my picture 10 times over until I saw them on the computer screen. I went back and re-took them using a tripod. Well, not really a tripod, but a kitchen bar stool and the time delay on the camera. Another member of my family can be seen in one of them (not yet posted).
I don't know of anything other than beverages that uses basil seed as an ingredient. I keep my jar of basil seeds in my "tea prep" area near the stove, and noticed it this AM when I was photographing the oatmeal tin (which I also keep next to the stove) and thought it would make a cool picture. I use it in what's basically iced chai (made with tea masala and milk, not the concentrate stuff), but I've also had it in local Indian restaurants as an ingredient in falooda.
If you've not had it before, falooda is somewhere between a beverage and dessert, often sort of an ice cream float. The name (I think) refers to a sort of little pasta kind of item that's not necessarily always in it. Coconut milk and rose water and ice and ice cream and little strips of jelly and basil seeds are typical ingredients, but it never seems to be the same from place to place.
-
That WAS fun. The suspense was killing me... but not as much as the suspense of waiting to see photos of your kitchen!
You can see a little bit of it through the door out of the mudroom. More soon, I promise.
eG Foodblog: therese - So, you want to remodel your kitchen?
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
Next topic, the faucet.
My ideal faucet would be wall-mounted (so that no wet goop can gather around and behind it), operated by foot pedal (common in hospitals and public bathrooms in some parts of Europe), and with a pull out spray nozzle.
Two out of three isn't bad:
Just finding a wall mount faucet is no mean feat. This one was supposed to have arrived with lever handles, but apparently the manufacturers discontinued that option without telling us. Even more irritating, it's threaded in such a way that it should have lever handles, so that one of the present screw handles has to be turned the wrong way. I called the manufacturers to complain about it and they told me that I was insane (they practice telling people this until they sound like they believe it). They told me that my plumber could just switch around a couple of doohickeys and it would be fine. So the plumber did what they said to do ("switch the valves") and it was still screwed up, just on the other side.
The foot pedal operated option earned me all sorts of freaked out looks everywhere I went: husband, contractor, plumber, fixture salesperson. So never mind.
The pull out spray nozzle doesn't work in a wall mount, and a separate deck mount spray nozzle was just going to be someplace for nasty crap to accumulate. Turns out I don't miss the spray nozzle after all, as the spigot swivels pretty much wherever I need it.
All in all I'm happy with the faucet. It does indeed keep the deck much cleaner, and the space underneath the faucet is more useful than you might think.
Oh, and the little soap dish is great: no hand soap dispenser cluttering up the deck. I replaced the old worn out bar of Neutrogena with a nice fresh in honor of my eGullet guests.