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

Any suggestions for somewhere to grab an inexpensive bite of lunch on the way from Centraal Station to the Heineken factory, at the end of May? I'm looking for somewhere that would appeal to university students on a tight budget towards the end of a 10-day trip. Most of the group has adventurous tastebuds, although sandwiches are always good. I'm disappointed that poffertjes won't be in season any more by then! MelissaH

Yay! Klary's blogging! Happy birthday, and I can't wait to read more! MelissaH

Full details forthcoming shortly, after I go out to get fertilizer for the lawn. But over last weekend, we visited our friends in Connecticut, and paid another visit to the IKEA store in New Haven. We've pretty much finalized our cabinet order, cleared up a few details, AND even visited a flooring store to lay eyes on the Marmoleum click floors. (We still like it.) We're currently finalizing sinks. We've barely even started to think about paint colors. And the electrician was in to give us some good news about our electrical system: we won't need to replace our whole breaker box! MelissaH

I'll let you know when we're done with ours by the end of the summer. The pieces are coming together nicely, though, and we've pretty much finalized our cabinet order from IKEA. Island? No room for one in a kitchen that's 8 by 18 feet. But ours (like Bruce's) is open to the dining area, and I'm *so* looking forward to being able to cook with my husband! MelissaH

Chad, Anything special about keeping a cleaver sharp? Should it be treated differently from a normal Western knife in that respect? MelissaH

We've used my husband's "turkey fryer" burner (never used for turkeys, but many times used to make beer!) on many occasions for wokking. It works beautifully, and always garners attention from the neighbors because it gets used out front on the driveway. We've gotten so used to the heat that thing cranks out, we didn't even consider anything special for the kitchen reno we'll do over the summer. Anything for indoor use available to us pales in comparison. MelissaH

Is there anything near JFK that's readily accessible if you don't have a car of your own? In late May, 4 or 5 of us will be flying JetBlue in from Syracuse in preparation for catching an international flight that evening. We don't want to cut it at all close timewise, so we'll probably have at least 6 hours between flights. We're open to suggestions for things to do, both at the airport itself and nearby. Oh, we'll be hauling our luggage with us, since it will all be carry-on. MelissaH

Fried ham, fried ham Cheese and bologna! After the macaroni We'll have onions, Pickles, and peppers, And then we'll have some more Fried ham fried ham fried ham! Save some second verse, _____ talk, much much worse! MelissaH

I'll be very interested to see how the stuffers from Northern and Grizzly hold up. However, I'm holding off on acquiring any major new kitchen tools until after we finish our kitchen remodel. Those of you who have had stuffers for a while now: how have they held up? How are they for ease of use and ease of storage? Are there any maintenance issues I'd need to be aware of? MelissaH

We view a floor the same way we view cabinets: something we don't want to have to replace any time in the near future. Durable is good. As far as a sink: when we go looking, I'll be bringing my largest roasting pan and a half-sheet pan along, to be sure they can fit inside for easy cleanup! MelissaH

And we had people commenting that they missed NOT having grits! Azio wasn't horrendous, but the service left a lot to be desired. It looked like they had a number of parties other than ours, judging by the large tables in curtained-off areas. The basketball game that night probably didn't help much. But I asked for a Coke to drink, and it never came. Furthermore, at about 10:00, the staff came by and loudly started to dismantle the curtains around us. And then they pretty much threw the check in the face of the person who was paying. It was like they couldn't wait to throw us out...although do people really dine out after 10 PM in downtown? None of us was happy about that! I think lamb would probably have worked better in the sandwich. It needed something a little more gutsy than pig. It wasn't bad, but the pork might as well have not been there, for all I could taste it. And no, I didn't get to Dekalb Farmers Market. I wound up with only a small opening in my schedule on Tuesday morning after my focus group, and with a car I might have been able to squeeze it in. Oh well, gives me something to look forward to next time. MelissaH

We think we've found our floor. We were originally thinking of the Armstrong brand commercial vinyl tile like this (or in another color, or putting a couple of colors together to make a pattern). I liked the durability, the ease of installation, and the ease of care. I didn't care so much for the feathery pattern within each tile, and the fact that it looks like the floors in many institutional-type buildings including the one I work in. And then we watched This Old House, and saw the episode on which they were putting in the kitchen floor in the house they're renovating in Washington DC. It was a click-together linoleum floor. And as my husband and I watched them set the floor in place on TV and listened to them talk about it, we just looked at each other, thinking the same thing: "That's our floor!" We liked the overall look, and when they showed us the side view we liked that it looked robust, and we liked their blue color although it probably won't work in our kitchen which will have yellow and red accents. We also liked that the linoleum is considered a much "greener" material than vinyl. So we watched the credits, and saw a line for Marmoleum floor. There are places around here that sell it, and we'll be going to look in person. But this looks like a prime candidate. In other news, we know about what we'll be looking for in lighting, and we know what we'll need to do for the utilities. My husband has a preliminary calendar of events, and if everything goes as planned, we'd be done by the end of July. Which is good, because we need to be done by the end of August when classes start! MelissaH

Monday was a good eating day in Atlanta. I had brought along a Cara Cara navel orange, and that served me well for breakfast. I was up fairly early, so I could meet a friend at the aquarium doors at 8:30. We waited on line for half an hour until the doors opened, and spent a couple of hours looking at beautiful things that could potentially be food. If you go, don't miss the whale slide. And if you go down first, you can take photos of your friends as they come down. The slide even has baleen in the mouth, just like a real whale! (Teeth are food-related, right?) My next food-related stop was back at the hotel to grab my friend Sam. We hopped Metra to Decatur, and lunched at Watershed. We had no trouble finding the restaurant, arriving there at a little after 1. We shared a platter of artisanal cheeses, which came with a small pile of pecans drizzled with honey from North Georgia, and toasted thin slices of bread. I can't remember what these are anymore, but I do remember that the soft white one was a goat cheese coated with a vegetable ash, because that was my favorite of the three. One of the others reminded me of a mild swiss-type cheese, but the flavor was pretty well lost on me. The other was something like a cheddar, but it didn't light up my taste buds quite the way the goat cheese did. Next was the main courses. I got the roast pork sandwich with fig conserve, fresh cheese, and dijon mustard. Sam got the white truffle chicken salad sandwich, which he declined to share. We each got a side of the new potato salad with bacon and sour cream dressing. From the moans that Sam emitted, I deduced that he enjoyed his sandwich. My sandwich was also quite good, but the pork didn't seem to have much flavor to me, and I didn't taste much of the cheese either. What I did taste, though, was the bread, the sweet fig conserve, and the potent pungent mustard. And that combination was tremendously enjoyable. I wonder if the sandwich would work any better with thinly sliced smoked turkey breast in place of the roast pork, or possibly even a smoked pork in some form. (Bacon, anyone?) I think I'd probably leave any cheese out, because the butter on the bread did the trick to mellow the mustard just a touch. Might have to experiment with this one, if I can ever find figs or fig conserve. The potato salad was a winner. I'll need to look for that recipe; a reasonable place to start would be in The Gift of Southern Cooking. Or if anyone else has a recipe, please share! For dessert, Sam had to do the carrot cake. I had to do the apple cake. I only ate about half the whipped cream. Sacrilege, I know, but I didn't feel like it needed any additional gilding beyond the caramel sauce. And thus ended the notable eating on the Atlanta portion of the trip. I discovered that a MARTA Breeze card can apparently nuke a hotel key card's magnetic strip. I found that the usual spots for good grazing were generally good spots for good grazing in Atlanta. And I discovered that the Perimeter REI store is reasonably easy to get to by MARTA also. Never did get to IKEA, since the choice was between that and REI, and REI was more urgent (but not at all food-related). We've decided to do IKEA over the Easter weekend, which is a long weekend for us. Thanks again for all your help, everyone. You made my wanderings through Atlanta much easier and less stressful than they might have been otherwise. I'd actually look forward to returning, should the need arise! MelissaH

I'm back. And most of the food I ate was provided by the Marriott Marquis, where the bulk of my activities took place. Friday night's dinner was eaten on the airplane, courtesy of Wegman's deli. Much better than the crackers offered by the flight attendants. Saturday morning started with EGGS and BACON! Mounds and mounds of bacon, cooked crisp and ungreasy and salty and delicious. Those of us who eat pig ate an absolutely obscene amount of bacon. The eggs were scrambled, and between them and the bacon we got the protein that we'd been asking for the last few meetings. No grits, though, or sausage gravy, or biscuits: we were a little disappointed. The pineapple slices were also killer. And they had chocolate milk in boxes and hot chocolate, which made my day. Saturday lunch was stuff at the hotel again: roasted veggies with vinaigrette, green salad, bread and cheese and meat and condiments to build your own sandwich, some kind of soup that I wasn't hungry for, and brownies that looked more chocolaty than they tasted. The roasted veggies were the lunch highlight for me. Saturday dinner at Azio wadn't bad. It was a quick walk from the hotel, which is always a plus after some of the death marches we've been led to dinner on. The food was OK, nothing special. Choice of house or caesar salad, five choices of entree (3 pastas, veal milanaise, and chicken something-or-other), and dessert. Half my table, including me, had the caesar salad and the ravioli florentine. The salad was nicely green and the dressing inoffensive. The ravioli, which was stuffed with walnuts, spinach, and romano, was fine. The sauce on the ravioli (mushrooms, asparagus, and sun-dried tomatoes in butter) was also fine. But a few of us agreed that the sauce didn't really seem to go well with the pasta. And dessert wasn't bad either: it was trays of bite-sized pieces of cheesecake, brownie, lemon meringue pie, and a few other things, with blackberries and strawberry halves. But I got the distinct feeling that the dessert bites were the sort of thing that could have easily come from a warehouse club and been plated on the big silver tray to look fancy. People said the sushi place nearby was good, but I didn't go there myself. Sunday breakfast was a repeat of Saturday. Sunday lunch was unremarkable (Champions, the sports bar in the hotel) and Sunday dinner was grazed from various receptions. The highlight of Monday was a trip to Decatur for lunch at Watershed. But that will need to wait for another post, as I have a student waiting for my help right now. MelissaH

I am so ready to get on an airplane. Now. MelissaH

Well, if it's not taboo, how about something featuring one or another of Cantillon beer? Preferably in the proper glass? MelissaH