MelissaH

OK, so there's hope for the group dinner. I know at least that it won't be any worse than what we did for the NYC meeting: Mars 2112, which has since been noticed by Frank Bruni in his Diner's Journal blog. On another and final note: can I get to Dekalb Farmer's Market by public transit? Their Web site's been down since before this thread started, and the MARTA Web site is next to useless for figuring out how to get somewhere, if you don't already know where you need to go. Thanks, and I'll be there tomorrow night! MelissaH

Lori, I dined solo there one evening in August. I told my waiter what I wanted to spend, and he brought me a beautiful assortment of dishes, one at a time, that made a phenomenal dinner. I'm now hooked on patatas bravas, and look forward to making some myself once we remodel our kitchen and get a hood that permits frying. And I'm not a coffee drinker, but their coffee set off the flan for dessert beautifully. However, it was a Friday evening and the restaurant was crowded, so I didn't read the book I'd brought, and I didn't linger. I don't know what it would be like at lunch. MelissaH

Off topic, but out of curiousity, is there a discrepancy between your findings and the caloric information given on the nutritional labels? ← Huge discrepancy. Like the experimental values we get are at most 10% of what the label says. Some of my students found that burning a Cheeto didn't raise the water temperature at all! This means you can eat the whole bag without guilt, right? It's more a case of poor experimental design: incomplete combustion, heat loss, and lots of things other than the water that need to be heated. In this case, it's not a technique issue either: when I tried it out myself last week, my results were comparable to what my students are seeing this week. And the lab manager tells me that the results for nuts were equally bad in previous years. I'm particularly troubled by the burning Cheetos not raising the water temperature at all. I don't know if this has something to do with the Cheetos, or if it's related to the fact that they're done in the hood. (It would be ideal for the students to do everything in the hood, but it's not practical with the setup available to us.) In my lab section today, we'll be testing this out: the students will burn only Fritos, and they'll compare the results in the hood with the results from on the bench. That way, I'll at least know if Cheetos only have no calories if you eat them while you sit in a fume hood. Between the lack of agreement between the experimental and label values and the calculations that are confusing to the students (too many numbers, apparently!), we're going to be looking at a more "traditional" experiment for future semesters. It's always nice when your experimental results match the theoretical values in a teaching lab. MelissaH

So, I finally got my meeting agenda book, which tells me where they're taking us all for the group dinner. What can you tell me about a restaurant called Azio? I found their Web site. I'm guessing we'll be getting something like their PRIX FIXE SAMPLE MENU 1 { INSALATE / salads } Insalata della Casa Insalata Cesare { SECONDI / entrees } Fettuccine Primavera Chicken Marsala Ravioli Florentine Penne Telefono Veal Piccata { DOLCE / dessert } Chef's Choice Dessert Platters. Anything I should be sure to ask about if it's not on the menu? Anything to avoid? Are their wines adequate? Or should I go with the group to be sociable but plan to eat somewhere on my own, either before or after? MelissaH

The lab my chemistry students are doing this week involves burning food items underneath a beaker of water, and seeing how much the temperature of the water rises. The point of this lab is to then calculate how many Calories of energy were released per gram of the food item in question, and compare that value to the value given on the nutritional info label. The lab itself doesn't seem to be working worth a darn, but to get this back on topic: The original lab from the manual called for using different varieties of nuts. Our lab manager and I discussed it, and together we decided that due to the potential allergy issues of nuts, we should use a different food item. (Not to mention, the stench of burning nuts is particularly nasty....) We're limited to things that burn well (as in burst into flames) and that can easily be speared on the end of a pin that's stuck in a hunk of playdough which is sitting on the bottom of another upside down beaker, to hold it underneath the beaker of water whose temperature is being measured. So we settled on good 'n' greasy snack foods: Fritos and Cheetos. When a Frito gets torched with the flame from a bunsen burner, it ignites fairly readily, and doesn't smell horrible. It gives off some smoke, but not enough for the smoke detectors to be a concern. But the Cheetos: oh my heavens. They give off black oily smoke, and they REEK! (We do these in the hoods, both to contain the stink and to make sure we don't set off the smoke alarms and evacuate the building.) But worse, as the Cheetos burn, they oooooooze a nasty orange oil, which then drips down the side of the playdough and the beaker holding the playdough. And this oil is not easy to wash off! I used to have a problem with Cheetos. After this week, I'm never eating one again! For next year, we're finding a different calorimetry lab to do. Probably one that doesn't involve food at all. MelissaH

I'll second Andie on her recommendation of the B&D waffle iron. Mine was a birthday present from my parents over 15 years ago, and it's still working perfectly. My favorite waffle recipe? I use the ingredients from Marion Cunningham's yeast waffle recipe minus the baking soda and about half the yeast, but I mix using the method from Cook's Illustrated's yeast waffle recipe. Basically, I mix up the batter as recommended, but I add the eggs right from the start and put the batter in the fridge to rise overnight. In the morning I preheat the waffle iron, stir the batter up, and use about 3/4 cup of batter per waffle. In the rare event that I have extras, I let them cool completely on a rack, toss them in a ziplock bag in the freezer, and toast them up another morning. MelissaH

My husband refuses to eat berries he didn't pick himself, at least in this country. When we were in Europe a couple of summers ago, and saw some small, very red strawberries, he went gaga over them and demolished a whole basket in short order. He let me have one, and I understood why: FLAVOR! When we got home, we went to one of the local pick-your-own farms, and stocked the freezer. They're miles better than any supermarket berry I've ever had. MelissaH

Yes it is. CLICK [Groovy Flash opening too!] A. ← Do you trust this? How much does it add to the cost of a laminate-plus-dropin sink arrangement? Melissa

Thanks for the vote of confidence. It's always nice to know of people who have done what you're going to do, and it's worked well for many years. And yes, budget is definitely an issue so we'll be checking out the Kindred sinks. (Their Web site isn't as easy as Blanco's to navigate and find the sink we're looking for, though.) If we're going to be replacing our countertops in a few years, we'll also be replacing our sink then. So we need something nice, and big, to get us through but we don't want to spend a fortune on something that we know isn't going to be a permanent fixture. (And if we can get it in a farmhouse sink, so much the better because that would make my husband very very happy!) But thanks even more for the IKEA Fan Web site. There's an incredible wealth of information on this site, and if I vanish from eG for a few days, you'll know where to look for me! MelissaH

The bigger issue is water. Laminate is glued onto a plywood surface. To undermount a sink, you'd need to cut a hole in the plywood, somehow run the laminate around the sides of the hole and onto the bottom, seal every last stinkin' crack so water can't get in and totally wreck the countertop under the laminate, and then somehow seal the sink up to the surface. It's the sealing that's the big problem. There's just no good way, as far as I know, to somehow completely seal the laminate up so it looks decent and keeps the water from rotting the wood underneath. With a solid surface, sealing isn't a problem because it's a solid surface. The sink is sometimes supported from underneath, but the only sealing that needs to be done is between the sink and the underside of the surface, which is pretty easy to accomplish. MelissaH

Wendy, I found eGullet to be a great resource in kitchen planning and designing. Go ahead and show us some of what you're thinking of, and we'll let you know what we think. You'll get all kinds of different opinions on every subject, but you're free to take what you want and leave the rest. You'll probably even learn something! MelissaH

The cabinet just to the right of the sink is actually a garbage can pullout drawer, which will hold both a trash can and a container for our recyclables. But I hadn't considered the disposal height issue, and if depth becomes an issue we can easily step down to a 10 inch deep version. I guess that means we should start looking at disposals, so we know how much room they'll take up. Pretty faucet you chose! For a while, I lusted after a restaurant-style sprayer with the looooooong hose that hangs from the ceiling, like the one my aunt and uncle have. But I was also a little bit afraid of them, specifically the mess you could make with one if you inadvertently pointed it in the wrong direction. I also wasn't sure what having something like that would do in terms of being able to hang a light above. The one here has the neato sprayer (which will make cleaning that big roaster much less of a chore) but with a little less danger, and certainly no obstacles to a pendant lamp. For us, we decided that it's going to be soapstone or laminate. My parents, when they built their house in 1988, spent $$$$$ on cabinets (and got what they paid for) but chose to only spend $ on laminate countertops. A few years ago, they swapped the countertops out for granite, and at that time put in an undermount sink. This is the route we're likely to take as well, just because we dream of soapstone (like the beautiful darkened soapstone you find in old chemistry labs) and don't want to spend much on something else for the interim. The only downside to laminate is the lack of an undermounted sink, but we've both gotten used to that, and figure that after so many years, we can live with it for another 10 or so (or till we win the lottery, whichever comes first) when we feel ready to make that last upgrade. We'd thought about ways to somehow put a solid surface countertop around the sink area, to make it possible to have an undermount sink. With the refrigerator in the impossible location across from the range, it might have been possible, because then the stretch of counter that included the sink wouldn't have been huge: just the area from the fridge all the way down the wall to the end to where the marble for the baking area begins. But with the dishwasher there, we don't have a good place to make a transition from solid to laminate, which means that we'd have to do the entire length of that wall in our solid surface. Furthermore, because we want the same surface on both ends close to the dining room, we'd also have to do the solid surface between the range and the end of that run. And once you're doing all that, you may as well also do the little bit more on the other side of the baking area, to the fridge...at which point you're talking about 30 LINEAR feet of countertop, which would mean more than 60 square feet of solid surface for standard countertop depth...and then you're running into serious cost issues. The other reason for laminate countertops is something I'd hinted at earlier. I haven't heard from anyone with an IKEA kitchen that's more than 10 years old. The IKEA cabinet warranty is 10 years. Not that we're distrustful, but we want to know what happens with these cabinets in the medium- to long-term: do they hold up well? If something happens and the cabinets don't hold up well and we need to replace them all in 11 years, that will be easier and slightly less painful if we don't have to destroy our dream countertops in the process. So laminate it will be, and laminates today are much nicer than they were even ten years ago. We've waited this long, and can wait a bit longer. This way, we'll still have something to look forward to. MelissaH

Well, the sink won't be 42 inches wide. IKEA's sink cabinets only come in 36-inch widths, so that's what we'll be using. (And consequently, we'll be able to add a little extra width to other base cabinets on the baking area side of the sink, and get a little extra space between the cabinets and the door to the deck.) The sink we're thinking of is nice and big, though, and will easily hold the big roasting pan or a half sheet pan. My husband was thinking that he'd want a double sink, with both tubs the same side, but when I asked why he could only come up with two reasons that didn't really hold water, so to speak: that was the sort of sink he'd always had, and it worked well for washing dishes because one side holds a drying rack nicely. But once we get a dishwasher, we won't be regularly washing dishes at the sink, at least not the dishes that will fit in a sink-sized drying rack. What we decided, after talking about it, was that if someone was cooking at the stove, there wasn't anything that would need to be loaded into or unloaded from the dishwasher that couldn't wait a moment or two. We decided that we couldn't live with the refrigerator there, but that it was a logical place for the dishwasher. We don't see it as a real issue. IIRC, we were planning to hinge it on the right side (as you look at the front of the cabinet). And we have a stepstool, stored very close to the kitchen at all times, so we can reach the upper shelves of the wall cabinets all the way around. Our plan is to use all those upper shelves for items that are not used as often, since neither of us is ten feet tall. But we can both reach the lower couple of shelves without a problem, including those in a similar corner cabinet in the existing kitchen. Cycle time is something we'll be looking at. But whatever it is, it will be better than our current dishwashers! MelissaH

I can't help you with your question, since I brought my jar back from France. But since then, I've been wondering: what do I do with it? What do you have in mind for your jar, when you acquire one? MelissaH

I'm in upstate NY, far from any big cities. Our designer's plans cost $375. To go with the plans, we got some specifics as well: hoods she'd picked out, potential floor and wall colors, backsplash ideas, and the like. She also measured the kitchen for us, so we now have a set of professionally-done measurements. (We're still building a fudge factor into our cabinet runs, though!) It was a lot of fun to work with her. MelissaH

Baking powder already has the acid incorporated; it doesn't need any added acid the way baking soda does. MelissaH

I thought the neuro fuzzy was too expensive and got the regular zojirushi 5 cup for my wife and I. I regret it now, since the neuro has a timer and can make porridge. I really wish I could use the timer and have steaming hot steel cut oats waiting for me in the morning. Mine also has a tendency to spit up when I try to make brown rice in it. Not sure if this is common to all 5 cup zojirushi or a fluke with my model. That said, it does a great job with the Thai Jasmine rice I make 90% of the time, so there's no real reason I can justify replacing it. ← We've been known to plug our non-fuzzy rice cooker into an ordinary appliance timer, so the rice will be ready just when we get home. Didn't someone say they wanted another gadget? MelissaH

I can't speak for your area, only mine. But when we went into our Lowe's, we had a nearly complete cabinetry plan put together. We made the appointment stating that we had a plan, and just wanted to get a quote on the cabinets they could supply to us. When we started to work through the design on their computer system with their software, that's when the Lowe's designer gave us the very good suggestions. We found ours through the NKBA Web site. There's a place where you can put in your zip code and it gives you a list of designers in the area. Its default setting is for a 20-mile radius, but you can go in and change that. Once we had a list, we started making phone calls. I suspect prices may vary by area. The big thing here, as in so many other things, is to find someone who will listen to you. And the better prepared you are, the easier the process is. As Daddy-A suggests, definitely start a clipping file or scrapbook or something to record your likes and dislikes. I'm not saying that you need to start planning now for a renovation that won't happen for another 5 years (the way we did!), but the more you can figure out the specifics of how you'll use your space, your stylistic likes and dislikes, and what you want, the easier you'll make the designer's job because mind-reading is difficult at best. (Ask either my husband or my students!) MelissaH

This is a really important point. Thanks for making it Melissa. This is exactly how I work. I need to design to get an idea of price, and to see what is possible in your kitchen, and what is not. Keep in mind too that the layout portion of the design process is the most important. I always start with the design, then work on the style afterwards. ← And our designer was very forceful about this point! We could hang our eyes off the drawings, but we could not lay a finger on them until we paid. And we didn't mind. MelissaH

I was thinking that those cucumber slices looked perfect for tossing with coarse salt, Korean coarse hot pepper, a little rice vinegar, and a touch of sugar. Mmmm...must make some today! MelissaH

I should add here that the designer who we ultimately gave money to also showed us her plans (all 4 of them!) without us giving her any money. She came and measured and talked to us on one day, and then came back a couple of weeks later with the plans. She showed, but they belonged to her until we paid. Once we gave her a check, we owned the plans. MelissaH

Wendy, First: get cabinet names, and then look on line. When we were starting our planning process, we were amazed at the amount of information that was available. Second: don't discount IKEA's kitchen planning software as a planning tool, even if you don't think you want to go with their cabinets. It's a free download (if a little limiting), and it makes juggling cabinet arrangements really easy. The 3D visualizations really helped us when we were trying to figure out where to put appliances and the cabinetry around them. And you may find something in IKEA's line that could work into your idea of what you want to see in your home, either as is or with a few mods, and their cabinets are so inexpensive compared to others that you'll then have more money to spend on other things in the kitchen. Third: when you say you want "a little more style," what exactly does that mean? If you have the time, measure out your kitchen as best as you can, make an appointment with their kitchen department (this is important), and let them tell you about what they have. The people at these places definitely vary, but you may discover a gem at yours. If you talk and they listen, you may find that they have some ideas that will get you what you're looking for, as we did. (Of course, you may also get what a friend got: someone who doesn't listen to you also. But we came in with nearly completed plans, and our friend went in with next to nothing. This seems to be a situation where chance favors the prepared.) If you have an idea of the sorts of things you're looking for, bring them along. When we were beginning our planning (and we have been planning to remodel a kitchen now for going on 5 years!) we started to keep a notebook of the things we wanted in our kitchen: everything from lists of the things we didn't like about the current kitchen and the things we liked about other people's kitchens to pictures from magazines and books (the-cabinets-here-but-the-paint-color-there sorts of things). The post-it note "flags" were particularly helpful for me, so I could make a note of a title and page number, and then stick a flag on the edge of that page to make it easy to find again. We got lucky and were able to find a designer who works independently. After we'd juggled things for ourselves, and had a bad experience with a designer who made most of his money by selling cabinets, we found a designer who makes her money by designing. We paid her because we wanted to (1) make sure we didn't miss out on something just because we didn't know that a product was available or that you could do something (like in our case that you could put a range hood on an inside wall but vent it to the outside) and (2) make sure we didn't do something really stupid. For her fee, we got two complete designs and two other roughed-out drawings, each with completely different ideas. In the end, it looks like we're taking most of one of her complete designs, with a few tweaks described here. (That thread contains all my agonizing throughout the process, from the time last June when we realized that this project would become a reality over this summer.) And in the end, even though we took some and left some of what she gave us, we thought it was well worth the money we spent. Good luck, Wendy, and keep us posted! MelissaH

I take it your cats are past the stage of "let's see if I can fit in here"? Mine know how to open cabinets, even. The glassware sits in a tall closed hutch, out of feline reach. ← For some odd reason, they've never been interested in that shelf, for which I'm eternally grateful. Two of them love the cabinet where I store my Le Creuset and some other cookware, though. They've figured out how to open it, and go in it frequently. But there are worse things, I guess. ← Smithy read my mind, and asked the question I was going to ask. Absolutely nothing is safe in our house, because our boys go through phases. This week for us, the cabinet under the cooktop (which holds many of our pots) is irresistible. Last week, it was the dining room tabletop, which is *much* worse than in the cabinet, almost as bad as the kitchen counter. Do you ever have problems with your boys getting interested in what you're making in the kitchen? My husband claims that he could probably set our cat Lyon up on the counter right next to the cutting board, just so he could see what was happening, and he'd be very happy to just sit there and watch everything without getting into trouble. I dared my husband to try it. He didn't. At the time, he was prepping a tuna steak! (I should add that our boys are both very good about not getting in our way as we work in the kitchen. The single thing that our boys are most interested in is glasses of milk, especially chocolate milk.) MelissaH

Yup, I have. Check out the last post. My husband talked more about kitchen cabinets last night. At this point, we've pretty much decided that IKEA cabinets are the way to go. We'd really like to go with something more local, but when you consider that the cost difference would nearly cover the cost of the range we're considering, we just can't justify spending the extra $$$ just to get something local. So, to New Haven we'll be traveling. Furthermore, we've also decided that we'll likely let IKEA deliver the cabinets for us. When you compare the delivery cost to what it would cost us to go pick them up (including the 2 days' time spent to drive 350 miles there, spend a night somewhere, sit in their store and open every single box right there in the store to see if there are any problems (which I'm sure they'd love , reseal all the boxes with umpteen rolls of tape, load everything onto the truck, and then drive 350 miles home) it's a wash even if the delivery charge is $1000. By the time we're ready to have boxes of cabinets sitting in our garage, we'll be too busy with other facets of the remodel to be able to take two whole days off. And that way there's no question about getting replacements if something doesn't arrive in perfect shape. Unlike jongchen, who started the thread linked to above, we don't have the option of visiting the store 5 different times to pick up missing parts. My husband's currently playing with options to make an angled cabinet to hold our microwave at the end of the counter. We need 12 inches of depth to go from the back of the microwave to just in front of the front set of feet, and the microwave is 20 inches wide. If someone has a trigonometry student in the family, here's a real-life problem for them to work on: we have space for a 24-inch-wide cabinet at the end of the run. If we just lop off the cabinet from corner to corner, leaving the back and one side, will our microwave fit in the cabinet and be stable? If not, and we therefore need to leave a bit of the other side in place, how much of the other side would we need to leave there, to get the microwave to fit? (I'll be working on this myself, but I need to make some lecture notes for next week first!) Anyone have experience with Blanco sinks or faucets? This sink and this faucet caught our eye. Much as we'd love an apron-front sink, it wouldn't really work without undermount capability, and we have such a gloriously huge amount of counter space planned that we really can't afford the dream soapstone countertop to make an undermount work, at least for now. (At least we'll be able to put in a sponge holder tip-out or a towel bar on the front. I don't think both would work?) MelissaH

A couple of phone calls later: The cost to ship $5000 worth of IKEA cabinets to us will be on the order of $900, give or take $100, depending on exactly how heavy the order is. I don't have that information at my fingertips, so I wasn't able to get an exact number. We'd only pay state sales tax (4%) if we did this option, since there are IKEA stores in NY (although none even close to locally). On a hypothetical $5000 order, with 4% tax the cost would be $5200. I just visited the U-Haul Web site, to see what a one-way truck rental would be, if we pick the truck up in New Haven, load up the cabinets, bring them home, and drop the truck off here in Oswego. The delivery wouldn't cost us anything if we have the cabinets shipped to the New Haven IKEA store (although we'd pay the local sales tax; I know CT has a state sales tax of 6% but I don't know if New Haven has anything added on top of that), but we'd have to pay for the truck to move the cabinets ourselves. With 6% sales tax, the cabinets would be $5300 plus whatever it costs us to get them home. The price on a 17-foot truck, with a capacity of 849 cubic feet (dimensions 14'1" x 7'7" x 7'2", which U-Haul claims means 2 to 3 bedrooms), for 3 days and 364 miles, is $367 plus whatever taxes apply. For the 14-foot truck, with a capacity of 669 cubic feet (11'4" x 7'5" x 6'9", or 1 to 2 bedrooms), the price drops to $344 plus tax. I'm guessing the Mass Pike and Thruway tolls would also be a touch less on the smaller truck, although not significantly lower enough to make a difference. If we pick the truck up in Mystic, where we have friends, the price increases by $14 on either truck, and the free driving distance is upped to 395 miles. This is a less expensive option unless the price of truck fuel goes up an order of magnitude, even if we do a one-way car rental (on the order of $60/day) to get down there so we only have one vehicle to drive home. IKEA's Web site claims that their delivery service happens 1 to 3 weeks after you place the order, or longer than that if you set a later delivery date. They say that if you have a problem with cabinets that are delivered, you call them and they get a new one to you "as soon as possible." I don't know what would happen if we picked up the cabinets ourselves, other than we'd probably spend quite a while at the store, opening every box to be sure that nothing was damaged before we loaded it all into the truck to drive it home, unless we could talk them into giving us the same deal as their delivery customers. So, if you include the increased sales tax ($100) and the cost of a rental car (probably 2 days, so call it $120) and truck (call it $350) as well as gas for both (figure $100), bringing them home ourselves would cost probably on the order of $500 to $600, which is still $300 to $400 less expensive than having them delivered. However, picking the cabinets up would probably cost us 2 days of work time (although we'd get a chance to at least have lunch with our friends). Should we do IKEA cabinets, we'd want to go to the store and place our order in person. If need be, we could do that on an ordinary-length weekend, but that wouldn't be much fun. We do have a long weekend coming up for Easter, which would give us a month to make up our minds. MelissaH