MelissaH

Nina C. and coquus, thanks for your thoughts on food. I'd forgotten about spanakopita, but about a month ago we ate the last of the spinach-and-cheese phyllo triangles we'd made a while ago. They reheated reasonably well in the toaster oven. It's been raining here today. I'd considered grilling dinner tonight, but it's chilly and cold and damp, so something indoors might be more in order. My husband predicted that our pantry and freezer supplies will dwindle over the summer. Maybe Mexicanoid for tonight, since we have lettuce, tomatoes, beans, and cheese? (Burgeroid is what we call the frozen bags of veggie crumbles, just as the spreadable butter substitutes my husband grew up with and still prefers for spreading on toast have become butteroid, and all the small breads with holes in the middle available around here are bageloids. When burgeroid is used as a substitute for ground beef in combination with taco seasoning, it long became known in this house as Mexicanoid. And since we discovered how well Mexicanoid works for us, we almost never do "Mexican" with real ground beef, although we certainly do our share of other, more authentic, Mexican cuisine, although we probably won't be doing much of that this summer. In general, we've found burgeroid substitutes reasonably well for ground beef, as long as you aren't cooking it for too long or trying to keep the cooked leftovers around for a second meal, since in either case they get a mushy texture that neither of us likes. But for quick-and-dirty meals when neither of us has much time or inclination to cook anything fancy, Mexicanoid (either rolled up in tortillas, or dolloped onto chips to make nachos, with other appropriate stuff added as well) fits the bill for us. For nights when we grill, we've also discovered that Morningstar Farms Spicy Black Bean veggie burgers fit nicely into a tortilla as well, when halved and the cut side is nestled into the tortilla fold. As long as you don't expect it to taste like a real meat burger, which definitely has its place in our book, it's pretty good, really easy, and involves minimal cleanup.) The bar sink isn't great for doing dishes, but it's far from impossible. While we were on the east side of town, we considered a trip to the grocery store, but decided that we'd wait till tomorrow when the new ad comes out, and see if anything good goes on sale. I'll be getting lasagna fixings (already have mac and cheese fixings) and whatever else strikes my fancy, to cook and clean up in the real kitchen I'll have access to next week. The grocery store has rectangular cooked but not browned pizza shells in their refrigerated section, which they sell in packs of two. We did a test run with those on the grill during finals week when we were both busy and didn't have time to think about cooking, and discovered that you can do a respectable pizza on the grill using one of the shells from the store, pre-grated cheese, and whatever sauce and add-ins are on hand. One shell feeds us for two nights, so a pack of two means four meals. The shells freeze well. I suspect that's going to be our M.O. for summer pizza. Last night, we ate from paper plates. We assembled the salad out of the contents of two fridges: leaf lettuce, red pepper, cucumber, grape tomatoes, lunchmeat, feta cheese, two kinds of olives (big and green stuffed with lemon and orange zest, and small black oil-cured), and a dressing made from lemon juice, walnut oil, and a blob of raspberry dijon mustard. We heated some crusty rolls from the grocery store in the toaster. For dessert, from plastic cups: vanilla ice cream, made from heavy cream, half-and-half, sugar, a healthy glug of vanilla, and whatever else was added to the freezer bowl since I wasn't in the room at the time that happened. Eaten with Hershey's dulce de leche syrup, which Anne and I love but my husband claims tastes like sawdust...and he oughta know! We did see some lights flickering with both the toaster and the ice cream machine on last night, and this morning the coffee maker cycling also made the lights cycle. We haven't had to reset any breakers yet, though. Breakfast this morning was downstairs. Or at least the cereal and bowls were downstairs: the milk is still upstairs in the fridge because we didn't do anything about getting a small one to go downstairs (and now don't really have a good place for one). After breakfast, I removed all the knobs from the doors and drawers. They're destined for eBay. This morning, we realized that it gets really dark in the kitchen when the power is turned off. So Lowe's got more of our money, in exchange for a stand with two halogen worklights. The stand will migrate down to the garage workshop eventually, to give my husband better light down there. (The outlets on the non-cabinetted side of the kitchen are apparently on different circuit(s?) than the ones for the stove, oven, and cabinet-side outlets. We left those on for now, because it makes for a better place to plug in the worklight.) We also got a cat's paw-type prybar, because the one we'd had was a bit big for many of the kitchen jobs. The new one works well on things like molding and to yank cabinets out of their moorings. We'll see how well a job it does on faux brick veneer. If that doesn't come off easily, we'll have more drywall work to do than we'd initially anticipated...but it will mean that running electrical stuff will be easier. Before starting the heavy-duty demo, we used the adjustable poles we'd gotten and some old sheets to wall off the open end of the kitchen, to try and keep dust down. So far the cats are both doing OK with everything: Lyon's been sleeping on "his" bed, and Leo's spent a bunch of time on top of the bookcases downstairs. We'll know when Leo's had enough of the noise, because he'll vanish into my closet. The kitchen cabinets are currently on their way out: all the uppers are gone except the one over the oven, and the tall cabinet that had been next to the fridge. On the back side of the tall cabinet, we found a packing label that said "September 10, 1962" and the company's name, "Gregg and Sons." We knew the house had been built in 1962, but now we know about when things were being finished up inside. I took a picture of it, but we haven't even gotten around to downloading our Belgium class trip photos yet. To get the tall cabinet to move, my husband first had to take out the molding around its base. The first piece took some effort, but after that, the other two sections popped off relatively easily. Underneath the cabinet is just plain old plywood subfloor, so the cabinets obviously went in before the flooring. To get the uppers out, the soffit had to go. We figured that would probably be the case, because when we got the new fridge two years ago and needed about half an inch more space than the cabinets on top of the fridge permitted, we had to destroy that soffit to get rid of the cabinets. So my husband took a hammer and started bashing away at the soffit, to get a look inside. We didn't get any big surprises, and these cabinets came out about as easily as the ones over the fridge area had. With our first look inside, we also confirmed that the soffit was added after the fact, as the wall behind the soffit was nicely drywalled. I hate soffits, and I really don't understand the point of adding one afterwards! I heard my husband buzzing away downstairs in the garage just now, with what sounded like the router, maybe? No clue what he's doing. It's quiet now, so maybe it's time for a lunch break? Or maybe not: I just heard some crashing so I peeked out the office window and saw the upper corner cabinet with the turntable resting on its side in the dumpster. And now there's more noise coming from the kitchen, so work's underway again, probably this time on either the oven or the lowers. The cooktop's already in the dumpster! MelissaH

We're underway! Let me backtrack, briefly. Much more, including pictures, will be forthcoming. We took 14 university students on a ten-day trip to Belgium, getting home on Wednesday at about 5 PM. The trip was fantastic, and they all seemed to enjoy themselves for the most part. But that's a story for another thread. The relevant part here: we were able to get in as stand-bys for the earlier JetBlue flight from JFK to SYR, which meant that we got home much earlier than 1 AM. This is important because it meant that we were both functional yesterday and today, albeit more than a little jet-lagged. The weekend before we left, my mom came to visit on her way to a ceramics workshop in the Ithaca area. Because she and my dad are moving out of the house I grew up in, they were looking for a new home for their dining room table (40 inches wide, 74 inches long with no leaves, but with two leaves that each add 19 inches). So along with all the cabinets in the garage, we now have the dining room table and four chairs to go with. Also that weekend, my husband was driving back from Michigan, and he brought some more IKEA goodies including four more chairs to go with the table, door pulls, and slow-close drawer bumpers. So, because we were functional yesterday, we spent much of the day packing the kitchen up. The things we thought we'd use, we put into plastic bins. The stuff we thought we wouldn't need, we put into cardboard boxes. Most of the boxes are stacked and in the spare bedroom, but a few with the fragile stuff are on the mantel, where they'll stay for the duration. We also made a trip to Syracuse yesterday, because we needed to pick up the floor. The floor is now in our living room, acclimating. The red accent tiles for our floor are exactly the same red as the new chairs from IKEA (Bonus: we got to go to Wegman's yesterday!) We finished the last of the packing (and purging) this morning. (Jet lag is a wonderful thing: it makes even those of us who are not morning people jump out of bed wide awake at 5 AM!) Then we went to our local Lowe's to get floor underlayment and pick out a paint color (current choice: a very pale yellow) and look more at lights and backsplash tiles (shiny black 2-by-6-inch with bullnose edge, we think) and get a plastic mat for under the dish drainer downstairs, and a few other things I don't remember in my currently foggy state. This afternoon, we relocated the refrigerator to the dining room, right next to the window. We'll find out before long whether the outlet it's plugged into is on the same circuit as anything in the kitchen. This afternoon, we also got the sink and the four turntables that will be used to modify the base corner cabinets from IKEA. The dumpster will arrive in about an hour. We're expecting the stove, hood, and dishwasher to arrive probably late next week. Demolition will begin tomorrow! In the meantime, I'm going to have one last hurrah in the kitchen by preparing a sort of Greekish salad. Our friend Anne is joining us; we'll get to borrow her kitchen for the next week and I plan to make a batch of lasagna to freeze in portions and microwave later, maybe a baked mac-n-cheese to freeze in portions, and whatever else comes to mind. Any other ideas for foods that are good to eat in the summer, but freeze and reheat well? MelissaH

I'd go for the vinegar treatment myself. Most of the "fishy" smells are from amines (chemical compounds containing nitrogen), which are bases. If you treat bases with acids, you neutralize the two and make a salt. Since the salts are not volatile, you don't smell the amines anymore. Furthermore, the salts are likely to be water-soluble and relatively easy to wash away. Chemistry at work! MelissaH

Oh, I wish I could get such nice looking squid! I wish I could get any squid worth buying at all! MelissaH

The floor (Marmoleum Click) is ordered. We decided to go with a pattern that is mostly Silver Shadow (because it's lighter than the Serene Grey we'd originally been considering) but with a Bleecker Street red "zipper" up the middle of the aisle between the cabinets. We'll lay the floor across the short way of the kitchen. That way, we'll be able to use almost entirely the 3-foot-long planks of gray, with only two boxes of red squares. I'm hoping we can get the old vinyl torn up without also destroying the subfloor. We've also started to deconstruct the kitchen. The table that used to be next to the refrigerator has been relocated downstairs near the barsink in the family room, as has the IKEA kitchen cart. We've started to sort through all the stuff, to figure out what we want to keep available and what can be boxed and stored for the duration. I'm already missing having a surface next to the fridge, to make it easy to load or unload. (I'm anxiously awaiting more word from the temporary kitchen thread that wonderbread just started, to see if any good ideas come up.) I'm debating whether it's worth keeping the Rubbermaid containers available. The other choice is storing all leftovers in plastic bags and/or whatever gladware-type containers we deem necessary to acquire. Our water source for the duration of the remodel will be the bar sink in the family room. We took the bar out, because it divided the family room and made it feel really small. But the sink was attached to the wall, not the bar, and it has a bit of countertop next to it that was covered up by the bar. (I'll try to take a picture in the near future.) The sink is about the size of a bathroom sink, but it's stainless and it has a "catcher" in the drain so we don't need to worry about sending gunk into the pipes. It'll be adequate for the short term, but I'm still planning to minimize the amount of dishes that will need to be washed. I sometimes wish we had more options for take-out food in this little town. There are a couple of Italian restaurants, but to me their stuff is more suited to cold winter days than the middle of summer. We have pizza, of course. The burrito place here is only about half as good as Chipotle, and it hasn't gotten any better over the time it's been open, so we don't consider them a viable alternative. We have a decent Thai place, as well as OK if a little greasy Chinese. (I prefer Thai.) And Rudy's, the fish place on the lake, will also do take-out, but there's no reason not to just walk there and eat in rather than taking it out. I sometimes envy those of you who live in cities with take-out choice. Once the farmer's market starts up, we'll start to see some local produce also. That's always nice, especially since much of it won't require too much prep. We're currently taking bets on whether the faux brick on the walls behind the current cooktop and sink will come off without destroying the drywall we presume is underneath. But either way we win, sort of: if the drywall is in good shape, we don't have to redo it. If the drywall doesn't survive, the electric stuff will be easy to do. As far as heat for cooking: we'll have the Weber gas grill and the old propane 3-burner stove outside. Inside, we'll have the Black and Decker toaster oven we got for a wedding gift, as well as a microwave, the rice cooker, the crockpot, the electric water boiler kettle, and a single electric burner. These will probably all be set up on the cart, since that's closest to the wall with the electrical outlets. The table will be an adequate food prep area, and the space under the table will be for storage of drygoods and the equipment we want to keep available. We're thinking we'll keep a bunch of tongs, at least a couple of silicone spatulas, the pasta pot, a 3-quart saucepan with lid, and our crappy old non-stick frying pan that we'll probably toss out when we get the kitchen done available. We have a good supply of paper and plastic, to minimize the need for dishwashing. I've been vacillating on whether or not it's worth having a metal 9-by-13 pan available as well, to act as secondary containment for marinating meat in ziplock bags or in case I get the urge to try baking something like brownies in the grill. I'm also quite torn about whether or not to keep the KA mixer available: without an oven and with limited ability to clean up poofed-out flour, I'm not going to be baking anything touchy, but I'd like to have some kneading help available if I want to make some pizza or flatbread dough to grill. But we can get respectable rectangular pizza shells at our grocery store (one makes enough to feed us about 2 meals, appropriately topped) and we also have a pizzeria willing to sell us balls of their dough. I'm leaning towards packing the mixer at this point, much as it breaks my heart. And my friend Anne has one, as well as a range with a functioning oven, that I can probably use should the need descend upon me. We'll probably keep our chef's knives and a couple of paring knives out, as well as the instant-read thermometers and probes. Maybe a whisk and a pancake flipper too. The ice-cream scoop might be a good idea also...or we'll make a point of walking to Bev's on the lakeshore if we want ice cream. It's always a nice walk there, and it lessens the guilt somewhat. The fridge will get wheeled around the corner to the living room, at least until the kitchen is demolished, the utilities are done, the floor is laid, the walls and ceiling are painted, and the cabinets are into that end of the kitchen. At that point, we'll be able to set it back into its new home. We'll probably be pulling Rachael Rays, seeing how much refrigerated stuff we can get into our arms in one shot for each trip downstairs. Maybe that's another reason to keep the 9-by-13 pan available: to help shuttle cold stuff. Or maybe we see if we can acquire a cheap dorm fridge now that all the students are getting ready to move out at the end of the week so we have something downstairs. Our plan is to keep as much as possible in whatever drawers they're currently in, since the drawers can be stacked one on top of another somewhere out of the way. A bunch of other stuff is already in covered plastic bins. The other day at Big Lots, we got more plastic bins with lids, to hold the rest of everything that needs to be stored. (Note to self: might be a good idea to keep at least a little bit of flour and sugar available.) We've entered the clean-out-the-refrigerator phase. This week is the last week we'll have a kitchen to cook in! As far as lighting, I'm thinking xenon for under the counters. I like the ability to dim the lights there, if necessary. And the ones I looked at in our local Lowe's were most definitely less thermally hot than the comparable halogen lights. IKEA's not really an option, because we won't be anywhere near one until long after we'll be ready for the lights. MelissaH

Susan, Marlene, and Mike: This has been a wonderful blog, weather and all. I particularly enjoyed seeing the smoking and grilled pizzas. That, to me, is what tag-team blogging is all about. Thanks to all three of you! Marlene, I may have to try that broccoli gratin at some point. Have you ever tried cooking it in its pan on the grill, essentially turning the grill into an oven? But all of you: at least you HAVE a dishwasher to unload! My dishwasher is currently typing this note! (At least, for another three months, that is. By the end of August, I too should have a non-human dishwasher to unload. And then I can join your chorus. MelissaH

Back before we started packing up the kitchen, I decided to try making a cake featured in the May Cook's Illustrated magazine. It's the base for their Strawberry Cream Cake, but I didn't bother with the cream part, just the cake and some strawberries chopped up and tossed with the sugar. When I baked the cake, it wound up with a dense, greasy line close to the bottom. I know I've seen a list of cake troubleshooting somewhere, but I can't find it for the life of me now. Any guesses what I did wrong? Is it me or the recipe? (As an aside, I'll be keeping the recipe because my husband, who loves yellow cakes out of a box, said I'd hit the flavor dead-on. ) MelissaH

Matt, I would be interested in your recipe, particularly the ale barm part. My husband's a homebrewer, and I'm always looking for ways to make a direct connection between his beermaking and my breadmaking. (And the current eGCI course is also on homebrewing.) Could you please paraphrase and share? Thanks! MelissaH

This doesn't help much, I know, but I keep remembering the line from My Big Fat Greek Wedding: "What do you mean he don't eat no meat? Oh, that's okay. I make lamb." Good luck, and have lots of fun on your trip! MelissaH

Those of you with under-cabinet lighting: what kind of lights do you have? I'm concerned about the heat that a halogen light would generate, but I'm also not thrilled with the color of the fluorescent lights I've seen. I'm hoping that the under-cabinet lighting will be the major source of task lighting, and my husband's put me in charge of choosing the ones we'll use. Any advice? MelissaH

I'm particularly of the diet red raspberry, with a good squeeze of lime added so it's not quite so sweet. MelissaH

Friday morning, I was getting ready to head out to a conference in DC for the weekend. My husband grabbed me before I headed out the door, to say, "While we were in the faculty meeting, I got a call from the shipping company. I'll let you know what's going to happen." So, I headed to the airport, and while I waited for my plane, I talked to my mom. While I was talking to my mom, my husband called. The cabinets were due to arrive to them later that day, and they wanted to deliver them on Monday! Now, this wasn't in our plans: we'd hoped to have the cabinets delivered at the beginning of JUNE, not May! But he decided, and I agreed he was right, that it would be better to have the cabinets in our garage than to have them bouncing around a warehouse for a month. So yesterday morning at 9 AM, a semi backed down our street, and disgorged three pallets of cabinets for us. Luckily, they had a pallet lifter in the trailer with them. It didn't take long to get everything into the garage. One of the three pallets was obviously countertops. The other two were about waist-high with other stuff. We immediately noticed that one end of the countertops looked like it had been smashed in a little bit. We opened up the three countertop slabs to check them out, and discovered that a piece of styrofoam had taken the worst of the damage. One of the pieces has a bit of a nick, though. The good news is that we don't think it will be a big problem: we'll need to trim the countertop pieces to fit, and we should be able to cut off that edge without a problem. We didn't have any time to do anything else until after we got home yesterday. So yesterday evening, I worked on dinner while my husband went through and first compared what actually came to the packing list, and then compared the packing list to what we'd ordered. And out of nearly 200 packages, there was only one thing missing: a 24-inch base cabinet box. We got all the other parts (shelves, door, hinges, etc.) but there's no box to go there. It's not that big a problem, because this is likely to be the last cabinet to go in anyway, since it belongs next to the stove. The other things we couldn't find were the hinges to go with the two corner base cabinets. This morning, my husband called IKEA, to find out what was up with the hinges (the corner cabinets take different hinges than everything else, and they should be packed in the box), the missing cabinet (one will be on its way), and the nicked countertop (if it's a problem, we let them know and they'll send a new one). Tonight's a late night on campus for both of us, so nothing more's going to happen until Wednesday. But we still need to open all the boxes and be sure everything's OK. When we do that, we'll probably start grouping things by cabinet. We might even start putting some of the stuff together. The car's out of the garage until sometime this summer, since it's full of cabinets. Oh: when I got home on Sunday afternoon, I discovered that my husband had pulled the bar out of the family room! It had been a divider, about chest height, to wall off the sink from the rest of the family room. We still have a counter by the sink, and the whole length of that counter is now usable, even the two feet or so that were previously covered by the bar. We moved a shelving unit down to the end of the counter, and when we start the demo we'll relocate the kitchen cart downstairs, and we have a small table to help with prep space as well. The whole area is near the door to the patio, and we moved the bar itself outside (a little rain won't hurt it any, since we're planning to get rid of it) to help shield the old propane stove from the weather. I really like the more open feel of the family room without the bar! Tonight, we'll be going to Big Lots to get plastic tubs, to hold the stuff we'll pull out of the kitchen. It's getting much closer! MelissaH

This summer, should it ever get hot enough here to be an issue, I won't be using my oven because I won't have an oven. We're going to be totally renovating the kitchen, and my cooking will be limited to what I can do on the grill, toaster oven, or portable propane stove that dates back to when my husband's grandparents still had farms. If I get desparate enough, I might need to try a pan of brownies on the grill (Weber gas, from the generation before the Genesis series but the same general idea). MelissaH

The faucet and garbage disposal are here! MelissaH

Coquus, That's where the Marmoleum Click comes in. It's snap-together planks, easy to install, no seam sealing needed. We looked at sheet goods, but we couldn't do that ourselves. We'd also need to spend a lot of time working on preparing the surface for the flooring, since it would be glued down. While it might take us a little longer to put down the click floor than it would take a pro to put down a sheet, we won't have to put much time into floor prep, and we won't have to pay an installer. Owen, It all depends on your perspective. Where my parents live, there are only 2000 people in the entire county. For them, a trip to a town the size of Oswego counts as "going to the city." We haven't tried that one, because when we're in that neighborhood we tend to stick only to places betwee Ahn's grocery on Erie Blvd. at Teall and the DeWitt Wegman's (hey, if I'm driving 50 miles to get there, I'm going to make a point of getting some stuff that I can't get in Oswego. Their fish counter is miles better than anything at either of our grocery stores here or the Wegman's in Clay) and not wander too far. We've been relatively happy with the Korean dishes at Tokyo Seoul (can't speak for the Japanese dishes, since we haven't tried them). But if there's another good place in town, we'll have to investigate. We had a wooden bullnose on our Ohio kitchen's countertop. We might have considered something along those lines more, had this particular IKEA countertop not come with a round-over on the front already. Since neither of us sees much sense in running every single piece of countertop to rip off a rounded edge so we could put on something else, we'll just keep the factory round-over on these. Sounds nice! We're great fans of polyurethane finishes, and anything more that we need to build or refinish will be getting a few coats. It drives me bonkers when appraisers on the TV antique shows mourn the loss of the original finishes, since someone decided to put something practical like polyurethane on to make the piece more usable. (My in-laws' dining room table and secretary both have a beautiful polyurethane finish now. It might not be original or antique, and the pieces may have lost "value" to an appraiser, but to all of us in the family they're worth far more because they can (and are) used every day. Once we recover from the kitchen project, we may start thinking about a sideboard. The original motivation was to hold a set of china that my MIL picked up from an estate sale with us in mind, but we'll have tons of cabinet space in the new kitchen and may not need the extra storage, especially for things that we don't necessarily use every day. Then again, is there a such thing as too much storage? Bruce, We didn't have a problem in Ohio with the wooden added-on bullnose there. But that bullnose was well in front of the front edge of the cabinet, so it wouldn't have been an issue as far as liquid getting into the crack. And we never spill anything anyway. I'd like to be able to check out samples of floor, to see how they'd look in the kitchen. But we'd have to get them back relatively quickly, and each round trip from us to there is about 100 miles. We typically head to the Big City once a month or six weeks, and on every trip we run multiple errands, the things we can't do closer to home. And we won't have the lights in the kitchen until after the floor will need to be ordered. Fortunately for us, the floor place is close to a Home Depot, so we'll be able to bring our door along, borrow a piece or two of floor, and choose our backsplash and wall colors. We were really hoping to find a chunk of counter in our pattern waiting in the As-Is section. We struck out on that count. Oh well. I liked As-Is more when it was closer than 5 hours away. MelissaH

Yes, but Owen, you're blatantly ignoring the choices you make for your place in the social contract. You are a high intelligent, driven person. If tomatoes were higher on your list, you would make room or time for them. When you state, "I have no time, or access" you are leaving things unsaid. ← Owen, I'm with you. My husband and I are both teaching this semester. We're regularly on campus 10+ hours a day, and even when we aren't on campus we're working, as long as school's in session. Many days, when we get home we're both tired enough that even putting a pot of water on to boil seems like a lot of work. It's easier on those days to open a jar, to pair with a reasonable brand of dried pasta. Do we find cooking both therapeutic and recreational? Sure. Just not when we get home starving after 8 PM. Weekends? Those are for catching up on grading, lecture notes, exam writing, and all the other stuff that doesn't happen during the week. If we can make up a batch of sauce at some point and freeze in portions, great. But it's much easier to open a jar than to either plan enough ahead of time to take it out of the freezer, or to try and microwave-thaw it without giving yourself a major cleanup task. MelissaH

One of my fondest memories is my first wonton-making experience. We were visiting with old family friends, when I was a young teenager. These were people we saw about once a year, but my parents had met them when all four were newlyweds so the family friendship went way back before then. All nine of us stood around the kitchen counters, filling and folding wontons. Even my dad made some. After we made them, we cooked them and ate them. I don't even remember now what was in the filling, or much else about that day, but I do remember how delicious they were and how much friends we had. This memory is especially precious now, because both parents of that family have now passed away. MelissaH

Range (GE Monogram 36-inch, 6-burner), hood (GE Monogram restaurant-style, 36-inch), dishwasher (Bosch Evolution 500, stainless door), sink (Elkay Pacemaker single-bowl 20-gauge stainless with one hole), faucet (Grohe Alira, a style where the head pulls out to be the sprayer, chrome finish because we didn't feel like paying for the brushed finish on a "temporary" faucet), and disposal (Insinkerator 3/4 HP) are ordered. The only decisions left: how to pattern the floor, what color paint and backsplash, whether the two pendant lights (over the sink and over the baking area) will be incandescent bulb or halogen, and how to switch the disposal. (About that last one: my husband grew up in a house with the switch tucked inside the cabinet under the sink. He loves it. I didn't. It drives me bonkers. It's what we have now. I'm probably going to lose this one, because he's summarily ruled out any thoughts of a switch anywhere else because he doesn't want the disposal being turned on when he has his fingers in it. I just keep telling him to put his fingers elsewhere. ) Our Lowe's had a good selection of pendant lights. If we go halogen, we'll probably go with a conical shade that's got a red swirl in it, from the mix-and-match halogen lights: you choose a hanger and a shade separately. (Sorry, couldn't find a link to that one.) If we go incandescent, I really liked the yellow saturn-shaped shades from the mix-and-match, since they're about the same color as the Lion of Flanders yellow, and I like the idea of bright yellow saturns in the kitchen. Before we make a final decision there, we'll need to investigate dimmers, and decide whether we want them on the pendants. MelissaH

Klary, The party looked wonderful! Isn't it amazing how everything always seems to work out in the end? And you do all this and more with no dishwasher, on real plates! I would have been running for the disposable stuff long before this. (Are dishwashers common in Amsterdam homes? Or is it just another American fixation?) MelissaH

Yup, we looked through that book. We placed the cabinet order this morning. Tomorrow, appliances and sink/faucet/disposal. No turning back now! MelissaH

In January, in the northern part of Belgium (Gent and Ieper), we had exactly what you describe: bread, cheese, and cold cuts (typically ham and salami). Tea or coffee, and in Ieper we were also served boiled eggs and Kwatta chocolate spread to go with the bread. It was all yummy, and I'd like to find some boerenwurst or a recipe for it in the US! Klary, the book was that good? MelissaH

Grrr. Just when I thought we had things worked out, including a gorgeous faucet that I adored, a problem surfaced. The issue: our sink will remain in front of the kitchen window. The window is double-hung, and somewhat tough to open or close because of its location behind a counter. We realized that the faucet we liked, with that glorious sprayer arm, would rise so far out of the countertop that it would get even more difficult to open or close the window. So, we need to find a new faucet. We're also not yet settled on a sink, entirely. We know what we want, but we also don't want to spend $600+ on a sink that we're projecting to last on the order of 10 years, or until we take out the laminate and put in the dream soapstone countertop. So, last night we went to Syracuse to check out the flooring store down there, visit a Home Depot, stop at BJ's (our warehouse club), and other Big City Errands, of the sort that's easier to do there than here in our small town. I took my largest roaster, a half-sheet pan, my biggest cooling rack, and the tallest pot we own, so we could see how they'll fit into the dishwashers and sinks. But first I need to back up a little. Over the Easter weekend, we went back to the New Haven IKEA to nail down (no pun intended) our cabinets. While we were there, we were able to figure out the amounts of molding, toekick boards, cover panels, and the like that we'll need to order. We also finally figured out where the microwave oven will go: since it won't fit in the Perfekt shelving unit we were considering for the end of the run, we've instead decided to put it in a cabinet, but not to put the doors on the cabinet so we'll have easy access. This cabinet will go next to the range, and we'll put an outlet on the wall to make it easy to plug in the microwave. (This is the location we considered for a wine fridge, but we decided that we'd be happier with a wine fridge downstairs. With an outlet in place, though, there's nothing to prevent us from changing our minds when we redo the countertop.) We can also install a pull-out shelf in the cabinet directly under the microwave, to give us a landing place for hot nuked dishes. Underneath the microwave, we'll figure out something pretty and cat-proof. Without knowing the exact amount of room the microwave will take up, we can't put a drawer underneath. And knowing that microwave ovens don't last forever, we don't want to be locked into a specific size. So we're keeping our options and the bottom of the cabinet open. We also looked at countertops while we were there, and realized that since we're looking to save some money on countertops, we could do much worse than the Pragel, in stone effect black color. So that's our plan: everywhere we'd like soapstone in the end, we'll put the Pragel laminate. As far as the other places, we've decided to use the Numerar butcher block next to the stove (instead of stainless) and also in the pastry area (instead of marble). This is in part because it's a much less expensive option than either stainless or marble, and in part for functionality. Wood will be fine as a resting place for hot stuff from the stove. And since I've been rolling my piecrusts on a wooden pastry board for forever now, it won't be much different than having a wooden countertop. The other advantage to a wood countertop in the pastry area is that we'll be able to fit the pieces together nicely. The laminate we've selected has a rounded edge. And in our kitchen, we'll need to join pieces together in an L, and mitering the joint isn't an option because the two pieces are of different material. IKEA sells a "cover strip" (a metal piece that slips into the gap, to take up the space left by the rounded edge and make a flat surface). But it's ugly! With a wooden pastry area, we should be able to pretty easily use the router to take out just enough material from beneath, so that the rounded area will easily fit into the bottom of the butcher block, on both sides. We also looked at lights, but ultimately decided that we'd be better off getting our recessed cans and under-cabinet lights locally. Neither of us liked the selection of pendant lights at IKEA, but our Lowe's has some good ones. After all that, the only purchase we made for the kitchen was from the as-is section: a cabinet door that someone had drilled into for a door pull. It's a big door, but we got it so we'd have something to show us the color of our cabinets. We were all ready to phone IKEA and place the cabinet order yesterday. But the person we've been working with at IKEA Direct apparently has Friday and Saturday off. So tomorrow morning, we'll make that phone call, and start down the Path of No Return. Once we know what dishwasher we'll be getting we can also order appliances, by Monday morning. And those two items are the two biggest chunks of money we'll be spending---everything else is small in comparison. So then: With all that taken care of, we've been pinning down the final details. Which brings us to the trip to Syracuse yesterday. Our first stop: floors. We were originally thinking Serene Grey to go with the Bleecker Street red, but now we're thinking more along the lines of Silver Shadow, because with dark countertops, we're afraid of making the kitchen too dark. We have two options for how to use the red accents. One possibility is to run a border of red just along the edge of the visible portion of the floor. (Because the IKEA cabinets sit on the floor, we'll be flooring the entire area before the cabinets go in.) The other possibility is to use the red to make a series of V shapes down the middle of the floor. Fortunately, we have a little bit of time before we need to make up our minds here, because the lead time on a floor order is only a week or so. Before we put the floors in, we'll need to complete the demolition, take care of the utilities, and paint the walls. We'd brought our Lion of Flanders flag to the store with us, as a color check, and we both liked the lighter Silver Shadow color with the flag. (We'd previously checked them both against the cabinets, and thought either would work well.) Then, a stop which had nothing at all to do with the kitchen: dinner at the Korean restaurant down that way. We got to introduce our friend Bruce, who accompanied us on the jaunt, to the pleasures of dol sot bi bim bap. He got his with shrimp and I got mine with beef. My husband got kimchi jigae. Well fed, we headed next to Home Depot. First, we looked at dishwashers, since that's the one appliance we haven't totally settled on. We liked the LG in the display, which is "semi-integrated" but had the adjustable top rack, stainless tub, and fold-down tines on half the bottom rack. Later today, we may go out to Lowes in town here to see what they have, since we haven't actually looked at Bosch yet and Consumer Reports prefers Bosch to LG. (I'm not the only one who complains about the CR rating system, though: my husband was looking through the article this morning, and commented that they came out with numerical ratings that put the LG 17th out of 40-odd dishwashers, despite the fact that in all but one category it got the top rating, and in the one category it got the next-to-top rating. But in the article, they didn't specifically say how they assigned the rating!) We looked at sinks, and found an Elkay one-tub 20-gauge stainless sink that should be fine as a temporary sink, for less than $200. We know the sink's only going to be in there until we have the funds to redo the countertops, and we really don't want to spend a whole lot of money on a terrific sink that's going to be orphaned before too long. We also looked at faucets. The Home Depot we went to had mainly Pegasus brand faucets on display, and we didn't care much for them. The big flaw, to us: lack of hose length on the sprayer. That's another item on the Lowe's list. Next up: tiles for a backsplash. The IKEA countertop we've chosen doesn't have anything integrated, so we wanted to look at what was available with a cove edge to make a bottom, and a bullnose for the top. We found what we were looking for, and it comes in a whole bunch of colors and both matte and shiny finishes. We've decided that we really need to wait to make our selection until we have samples of both flooring and countertop to bring along. This shouldn't be a problem because the backsplash will be one of the last things to get done in the kitchen. I have my eyes on a soft gray color, but until we have the countertop and floor pieces with us, we won't know how well it will work. We're also holding off on paint colors until we have countertop and flooring in hand. My husband prefers to work with the paint from Home Depot over the paint from Lowe's or anywhere else for that matter, so we'll probably get the paint from Home Depot. And since the floor place isn't far from a Home Depot, we shouldn't have a problem borrowing a floor color sample for a couple of hours to help us find exactly the right color. The countertop should be here early on (more on that later) and we should have enough to be able to bring a piece along with us. Right now, we're thinking something off-white, possibly leaning towards the floor gray color. Unless we do something leaning towards Lion of Flanders yellow. We didn't buy anything at Home Depot. Bruce got a gallon of paint for his bathroom, and a few things to go along with. From Home Depot, we headed to BJ's. Our mission: get paper plates, plastic silverware, and the like, to get us through a couple of months without a real kitchen. It's bad enough washing dishes by hand in a kitchen-size sink, but it's going to be even worse washing dishes by hand in a bar sink. Therefore, we've decided to minimize the amount of stuff that will need washing. Ergo, disposables. I also foresee lots of grilling. (During the summer, we tend to bring our trash to the transfer station more frequently anyway, usually before the bag is full, so the increase in volume won't present a problem. With gas prices high and getting worse, we'll probably start combining our dump runs with other east-side-of-town errands more than we already do: the supermarkets, Lowe's, Aldi, BB&B, and Walmart are all out by the transfer station.) Anything left over, we'll probably use at the party that will undoubtedly be thrown in the fall to welcome the new school year and celebrate the new kitchen. It's really kind of scary. After years of planning, there's very little left to plan, and a whole lot to start doing! MelissaH

Oh, no! You've mentioned vla, my all-time guilty pleasure when I'm in the Netherlands! It doesn't exist here, and I don't know when I'll get my next fix. It's in every grocery store where you are, but the one time I tried to make it, it was more like a pudding to eat with a spoon than the slimy, voluptuous goodness we always drink straight from the carton. (It's almost a rule with us: must share a liter carton, drink it all at once, and never get a glass dirty. That dates back to our first experience with it, on a bike camping trip without refrigeration.) And then in January I discovered stroopwafels. I think I should just give up and move. MelissaH

I think I've pinned down, a little, why Project Runway was more enjoyable for me to watch than Top Chef. (I cook, just for the pleasure of it, and so what if I shed a little blood for the cause? If I sew at all, it's because there's something that needs to be done, not because I relish the experience of stabbing my fingers with a needle.) I think what Top Chef needs, badly, is a Tim. By that, I mean that in Project Runway, Tim was an impartial mentor, doing whatever he could to help the contestants make the best garment they could. But Top Chef only has Tom, who is apparently judge, jury, and executor. If Tom would stay in the kitchen more to help, he'd probably make more reasonable complaints in his blog and we wouldn't wonder what he'd been smoking. The overall dishes would improve, most likely, and whoever the judges are would be happier. Hell's Kitchen was more enjoyable for me to watch than this nonsense. MelissaH

[soapbox] Not to be nit-picky, but I taught this to my students not long ago: the correct formula for calcium chloride is CaCl2. Because calcium forms cations with a charge of 2+ and because the chloride anion has a charge of -1, in order to make a neutral formula you need to use 2 Cl anions for every 1 Ca cation. [/soapbox] MelissaH the chemist