MelissaH

Strange as it sounds, a totally silent dishwasher isn't a huge deal for us. Our house has a fair amount of ambient noise, particularly this time of the year, because the pipes that carry hot water through the heater system are apparently snaked through some very tight areas, and we get a fair amount of creaking and popping as they expand and contract. Once the weather gets nice enough that we can turn the heat off for the season, we tend to keep the windows open, so then we get some noise from the cars on the main road. And wind—there's always wind in Oswego! Our neighbors on both sides are generally quiet. Nobody is across the street, and behind us is the Newman Center, and they're quiet except for on Sundays. That said, if we can get something that's quieter for a little more money, and we aren't totally squeezed in our budget, maybe we'll be able to do that. How long do dishwashers last?

We haven't really decided, other than it needs to be big enough to hold our largest roasting pan, and big enough that washing a half-sheet pan would be easy. When the time comes that we have soapstone counters, a soapstone sink would also be nice. But for now, we're setting our sights on stainless. And big. That sounds like a good idea. We don't have a clue yet as far as local building codes. We should probably look into that before long! MelissaH

I actually saw factory-sealed bags of beet greens at my local supermarket yesterday, right next to the bags of kale and collard greens! I don't remember the brand name on the box, but someone's heard you. I usually chop the tops off, give them a good soak to get rid of the dirt, and steam. Meanwhile, I scrub the beets themselves, and bake them in a foil packet till they're done and the skins slip off. Then I slice the beets, and serve them with their greens and a bottle of vinegar. Yum! I wish I could find golden beets in this area. Cuts down on the stain problem. MelissaH

We're on spring break this week! That means we can think about the kitchen for a little while! So yesterday, we ran all sorts of errands in Syracuse and Oswego, including spending two hours or so in our local Lowe's store to get a quote on Kraftmaid kitchen cabinets from them. And along the way, we made some more tweaks to improve on our design. Behold, from the printouts we got: The major changes are all in the closed end of the kitchen. (And the sink we put in is not the sink we'd ideally want, but it's the one in the software that fit into the sink cabinet we used.) And the changes largely came about because of the refrigerator, the reason we deviated from the designer's plan in the first place. Our refrigerator is fairly new. It has a freezer drawer on the bottom, and a single door refrigerator up top (with hinges that can easily be reversed so the door will open whichever way it needs to). We love it. But it's not counter depth. Since our kitchen is fairly narrow, we have decided that the refrigerator cannot be opposite any other appliances, because there's just not enough room. In our original tweak of the designer's plan we'd put the refrigerator next to the side door: as you walked in from coming up the stairs, the refrigerator would be on your right. But because the refrigerator is deeper than a counter, we'd made the counters on the other side of the fridge deeper than normal, back into the baking area, to compensate. And as a result of the deep counter, the workspace that will be my baking area was narrowed because the whole back of the kitchen was narrowed, which meant that the area for our Lion of Flanders mural was also narrowed. When Charlie, the designer we worked with at Lowe's, saw what we'd proposed, the first thing he asked was if we were planning to get a new fridge. We've been asked that question enough that it might just be easiest to permanently relocate this refrigerator downstairs and give in to everyone and get a new one, but we don't want to do that for a few reasons. First, buying a new refrigerator, especially a counter-depth one in the equivalent size, would take the money away from something else that we don't already have a functioning equivalent of. Second, one full-size refrigerator is plenty for the two of us, even when we entertain. Third, looking at the fridges available at our Lowe's, the only counter-depth versions I saw were side-by-sides, which I absolutely could not live with. And fourth, this refrigerator was a gift from my grandfather, as part of a family tradition. So it stays, until it reaches the end of its natural lifespan. Charlie's next suggestion made a lot of sense. When we'd put together our modification of the designer's plan, we'd put in some extra cabinets, both up above and down below, to take up the space leading up to the fridge. But the designer suggested using standard-depth counters, for starters. His plan has the area up above completely empty along the side wall, although we plan to build some open shelves to give us some more storage space for pretty stuff and to help block kitty access to the top of the fridge. For down below in the corner, we learned that in addition to the symmetrical 33- and 36-inch turntable cabinets, Kraftmaid also makes a 33/36-inch asymmetrical corner cabinet. He put one of those in the plan, instead of the symmetric 36-inch version we'd used, and added a 3-inch filler strip (instead of an extra cabinet). The end result is that when the time comes and our refrigerator needs to be replaced, we'd be able to replace it with a counter-depth fridge up to 37 inches wide, just by taking out the filler strips, trimming the countertop down, and relocating or resizing the shelves to hug the new fridge. (We'd hinge the fridge on the right, so it would open fully.) And furthermore, because the counters are now the same all the way around, the baking area is widened back up, as is the mural area! And in any case, having the refrigerator (of whatever depth) there will serve the same purpose as the tall pantry cabinet in the designer's original plan: giving me a corner in which to hide my beautiful dark blue KitchenAid stand mixer that shows every grain of flour, as well as my well-loved, well-used, 1990-vintage food processor, from view of the dining area. Then we started the discussion of what to do with the cabinets in the baking area, across the short side of the kitchen. We preserved a symmetric look in the corner cabinets (symmetric 36-inch in the outside wall corner; the 36-inch leg of the asymmetric cabinet on the other side). According to our designer's measurements, the short dimension of our kitchen, from wall to wall, is 96.5 inches. If we wanted to, we could theoretically put in a 24-inch base cabinet to fit between the two corner cabinets with a half inch to spare. But since we're planning to do this ourself, and we don't install cabinets or remodel kitchens on a regular basis, the thought of only having a half inch of "wiggle room" made us nervous. Instead, we put a 21-inch cabinet, with appropriate (and equal) spacers on either side, so that we won't run into a problem if a measurement isn't quite perfect somewhere. We put in a 4-drawer unit, to hold many of my kitchen toys primarily used for baking, and could easily put in whatever dividers are necessary to keep things organized well enough that either of us can find what we're looking for. Up above the baking area also turned into an interesting discussion. We started putting in cabinets, trying to fill the area with the widest possible cabinets yet maintain the symmetry, working from the walls inward. And at one point we wound up with a 6-inch or so gap dead center. Slightly facetiously, I suggested leaving it as open shelves, which at 6 inches wide would nicely showcase some of our prettier handmade mugs. Well, the designer took that idea and ran with it: he narrowed the wall cabinets to 18 inches each, which left us with a more reasonable 12ish-inch space in the middle. Furthermore, he made those slightly shorter cabinets, so they'd give more height in the baking area (and more mural space!), and suggested making the shelves glass so that light could get through. This would again accomplish the goal of giving us some wiggle room. We'd also be able to put under-counter lights of whatever kind we wanted, as well as possibly something up above the open shelves, which would all then be high enough that my work area wouldn't get warmed too much. And the more we talked about it, the more we realized that these shelves would be the ideal place to put a small stereo system. One of the errands we'd run earlier in the day was a trip to the Apple store in Syracuse, since for my birthday, my wonderful husband gave me an iPod, both to use for myself and as a music source for the new kitchen. We were there to look at options for putting the iPod into the kitchen. Of the options, you either need to be able to sit the stereo on the counter so you can plug the iPod into the top of the stereo (where it plays music and also gets plugged into power), or you use an under-the-counter stereo, put the iPod on a shelf or inside a cabinet somewhere nearby so you can plug it in through an auxiliary audio cable, but run the iPod from its battery because it has no way to draw power. We looked at both the Bose and the iHome system, and while the Bose won't fit into this space, the iHome will. And in many ways, it's the perfect place for a stereo/clock in the room: the sound will go out into the rest of the kitchen, the clock would be visible from the whole length down into the dining room, and it would be safely out of the way of danger. So that's how we left things in the baking area: plenty of spacers below, and a gap to be filled with shelves above. This also gives us a way to use our existing refrigerator, but also be ready for a counter-depth refrigerator when the time comes for that. The only other interesting little tweak happened in the wall cabinets closest to the deck door. We'd put those as a stack of two 30-inch-long cabinets, each 15 inches tall with a door that hinges at the top, one on top of the other. (These would hold our glasses: the ones we use regularly in the bottom one, and the ones we don't need regularly in the top one.) We've also considered using a frosted glass in both those doors, although we didn't spec it in the plan. But because the other cabinets we'd been using up top were 36 inches tall, if we lined up everything at the top, we'd have a 6-inch difference. Kraftmaid has some 6-inch tall units that are 30 inches long, and we put one of those with five little dovetailed drawers underneath the stack, envisioning a place for napkin rings, chopstick rests, candles, and other little table "atmosphere" bits and pieces. The base cabinet directly next to where the deck door would be is a sort of kludge. It's in our quote as a microwave cabinet. But we still think we'd want something angled to ease the entry pattern for people coming off the deck into the kitchen, and this is likely something my husband would need to build himself. However, the exact size and dimensions (triangle? trapezoid?) are yet to be determined because whatever we do would need to be deep enough to accommodate a standard-size microwave such as the one we currently have, and we haven't measured that yet. So we just put a stock microwave cabinet there, so we'd have something. There are other spacers, on either side of the sink. These spacers serve a dual purpose. First, they give us some wiggle room in this cabinet run. And second, they enable us to be sure that our sink will be centered on the window. The sink base cabinet is another interesting piece. It's not clear to us whether Kraftmaid has a 42-inch sink base for an apron-front sink. So that may need to go by the wayside, unless we juggle things again. But they do have a 42-inch sink base with a 5-inch deep drawer (or something that looks like a drawer) on top. And on their sink bases for apron-front sinks, the cutdown is 5 inches. So we may be able to modify the standard sink base to work with an apron front sink without too much trouble. We put the dishwasher to the left of the sink, if you're standing at the sink. This gets it closer to the table, as well as to the area we plan to store the dishes and glasses. The dishwasher is directly opposite the range, but neither of us could foresee a situation where both the dishwasher and oven had to be open at the same time. We don't see it as a problem. The 15-inch cabinet next to the range is full height without drawers up top, and we've put dividers in it so it can hold sheet pans and similarly shaped items vertically. We've also, in this design, not put anything angled on the end between the dining area and the range. However, we did discover that a 24-inch cabinet costs about the same amount as a wine fridge (which we'd actually use more for cheese than for wine, probably). So even though we're showing a 24-inch cabinet here, we're really thinking of it more as a wine fridge. And we're considering orienting the wine fridge to face the dining area rather than the kitchen, possibly using the corner space between as either open shelves or a cabinet door that faces on an angle. This, again, will likely involve some construction by my husband. But this is a decent starting point, and something that we could use to get a reasonable quote. Next, we discussed door fronts and drawer slides. For the latter, there was no question: full-extension, self-closing. This works out to be Kraftmaid's top-of-the-line upgrade. For the former, something interesting came up before we even started talking to Charlie about this. When we looked through the options, we knew we wanted something in natural maple finish, similar to the IKEA Adel Birch. We found what we were looking for in a design called "square" or something similarly uncreative. But we also found a design called "shaker" which is similar, the only difference being that instead of a single panel in the middle of the cabinet drawers, there's a stile in the middle and two panels inset. Neither one has any sort of molding or routed design. The interesting part: the "shaker" design was significantly less expensive! Charlie assured us that the construction was identical on the two; all we could figure was that the "shaker" design uses the same width rails and stiles as all the other designs while the "square" design needs wider ones, and between the wider rails and stiles and the larger panel, they need to start with bigger pieces of wood, so the price is driven up. Since we didn't have strong feelings about one or the other, we went with the less expensive "shaker" design for our quote. And finally we priced countertops. They didn't have a soapstone option, but we were able to get prices for laminate (based on the linear foot) and a solid surface (per square foot). And as we expected, the solid surface was about three or four times as much. The designer was a little surprised at just how much counter we had when he added it all up! So, what was the damage for the above plan? For the cabinets, with filler strips and toe kicks, and the top-of-the-line drawer slides, nearly $10,000 delivered to our door. And that price didn't include door pulls or tax. This morning, we went back to the IKEA software, to jigger things and include the new baking area/refrigerator arrangement. We also took another look at the pictures and re-read the catalog yet again. And we got a price on a comparable (but not quite identical) set of cabinets. That price tag, including some filler strips (we aren't sure of the exact number and sizes we'd need, but we threw in about 10 end panels of various sizes), and door pulls: about $5000. What we learned: *Kraftmaid cabinets have more flexibility than IKEA cabinets, especially in corners, because they have more options (including asymmetric cabinets) available. The Kraftmaid Super Susan corner cabinets are appreciably nicer than the IKEA turntable cabinets: a Super Susan has a lower turntable, shaped like a Pac-Man, and then an upper turntable that sits on its own shelf, also shaped like a Pac-Man. There's no post spearing through the center of the turntable, and it feels really solid, much more so than any other turntable unit I've ever seen. I'd have no hesitations about putting things like my flour bins on a Super Susan, but I'd worry about doing so on the IKEA turntable. However, as my husband pointed out to me, it should be possible to modify an IKEA turntable corner cabinet when we put it together, by building in a shelf and putting in our own Super Susan (or equivalent) hardware top and bottom. A quick search showed me that the hardware is certainly available, but about $200 for each turntable unit from the first place Google found for me (and we'd need a total of 4 for the base cabinets). The IKEA upper cabinets don't have lazy susans either, so I'd want to add those also. But since those come with adjustable shelves, it would be possible for us to make those modifications after-the-fact if the budget runs tight. With these modifications, my husband was able to make a kitchen design that was almost as perfect as the Kraftmaid design. And even with four Super Susans, the overall cabinet order is still much less expensive than Kraftmaid (at least without IKEA's shipping!) *IKEA cabinets with drawers have full-extension, self-closing hinges without any upgrades. *The construction on Kraftmaid might be a little nicer, and certainly more traditional, than IKEA. *The lead time on Kraftmaid is on the order of 5 weeks; if there are any problems, you typically get the replacement cabinet within a couple of weeks. *The one thing at this point that would completely kill the idea of an IKEA kitchen is if it's both impossible to put a wall oven in a standard base cabinet (down below a cooktop, not at typical wall oven height) and I find out that neither the GE Monogram nor the Viking 36 inch dual-fuel range has an oven equivalent to the GE Profile "true European convection" single wall oven. I should be able to find that out tomorrow with a quick phone call. If you bake in any of the abovementioned ovens, let me know what you think of them! (Of course, after my current and immediate previous ovens, anything that heats evenly and is big enough to hold two 8- or 9-inch cake pans on the same shelf is a miracle.) *While we both really like the idea of using a local cabinet dealer, the $5000 minus shipping difference is (presumably) a lot of money. Of course, we don't know what shipping will be, only that it will be more than the minimum of $105 to NY by common carrier. While working through all of this, I realized that I'll be in Atlanta for a conference at the end of next week, and there's an IKEA store in Atlanta. So I'm going to bring the IKEA software file with me to the conference, as well as printouts of both the design and the cabinet list, and hopefully I'll have a few hours to get to that IKEA and get a quote that includes shipping. If the price including shipping is still significantly less expensive than the Kraftmaid quote we got yesterday, IKEA's still a very strong possibility despite the lack of a local store. If the shipping jacks up the price to within a couple thousand of the Kraftmaid quote, for whatever reason, we'll probably stay local. I'll probably phone that IKEA up and make an appointment to talk with someone this week; if anyone can give me recommendations for a specific person to talk with, that would be great. However, we've also pretty much decided that either way, we'll probably be looking at laminate countertops for now. We might have expensive enough cabinets that we won't be able to afford our dream. Or if the cabinets are less expensive, they'd be IKEA, and by using a laminate countertop we won't have a huge investment should the cabinets not hold up to our use for whatever reason. (I don't really think this is going to be a problem, but to us, metal sides just feel a little lightweight compared to wooden sides, and we aren't quite convinced that the drawer slides IKEA specs are quite as robust as the top-of-the-line Kraftmaid slides. We generally trust what everyone here and the magazines we've read have said, but I also haven't heard from anyone with an IKEA kitchen that's been around for 10+ years.) Furthermore, if we do have to replace the refrigerator sooner than we'd planned, it would not be a problem to cut back laminate to make room for a wider counter-depth model. Even if we use laminate for the vast majority of the kitchen, we'd still put some kind of metal between the range and the doorway, so we have a place to put hot stuff, and we'd put marble (or other stone) in the baking area. Those are the two places where we need something to serve a specific function, not just to be a counter. We've both had laminate counters all our lives, and other than needing something different for specific reasons in those two places, we believe we can live with laminate for everywhere else, at least until we feel like we're ready to pay for our dream soapstone. So, now it's time for yet more agonizing: making sure I can live with the proposed IKEA kitchen, assuming the price break with shipping turns out to be significant. Otherwise, I'll just be agonizing over how much this is all going to cost! MelissaH

Has anyone done a kitchen with the Atlanta IKEA store? Do you have a person to recommend, when I call to make an appointment (so I can find out how much shipping our cabinet order to NY would cost) later this week? MelissaH

Thanks for answering one of my other question, therese: cab availability. I like that our national meetings move around through many different cities, but sometimes I wish that some of these places were more in tune with what visitors might be looking for. As for carrying things back: anything I get's going to need to fly home with me, and I'm allergic to checking luggage under most circumstances. So I'll probably limit myself, and only get little stuff that isn't fragile. Maybe cutting boards, since we can always use more of those and IKEA has nice but inexpensive ones. The real reason for the trip is to get answers to some of our questions, particularly the one about how much it would cost to get the lot of cabinets shipped to us, since that's not so easy to do without being at a store. Maybe dinner on Monday night will wind up being Swedish meatballs. MelissaH

And another one, which my friend made for dessert just last night: a chocolate icebox cake. You know, the one with the Famous Chocolate Wafers that you sandwich in a long stack with whipped cream, then use the rest of the whipped cream to spackle the outside, and put in the fridge overnight until it turns into a soft cohesive mass of goodness, and slice on the diagonal to get the stripes? My husband (from Michigan) had never heard of such a thing until last night. We'll be rectifying his ignorance of Famous Chocolate Wafers when we go food shopping later today. MelissaH

Well, it sounds like there's definitely going to be no shortage, and it's a good thing I enjoy walking around cities, especially if I'm with a friend or two since it looks like I'll be doing a fair amount of that. Now, as if I don't already have enough to do at the conference, I just added one more errand to my to-do list: pay the local IKEA store a visit. The background: as some of you are aware, we're planning a kitchen renovation. For quite a while, we've been agonizing over one issue in particular: whether to get our cabinets locally, or to use stuff from IKEA. I'll spare you the details here, but the short story is that local cabinets would be maybe a little bit better in quality, give us a little more flexibility particularly in the corners, avoid distance-related issues, and cost about 40% more than ones from IKEA. But there are a few things I need to check out, and that's going to have to happen either on Monday morning before lunch or on Monday afternoon/evening after my last meeting. I looked on line and discovered that the Atlanta IKEA store's a little unusual in that it's not located near the airport, as many of them are. Can I get to IKEA by public transportation? Or should I just keep telling myself that no matter how ridiculous cab fare is, it's still cheaper than a mad dash weekend trip somewhere? Thanks, MelissaH

Very cute boys, and even cuter dishes to feed them from. Could we possibly get a face-on view, or are they camera-shy? I'm looking forward to this. I too was carless, for a 9-year period (college and grad school). I used some public transportation, but for me a bicycle was more convenient. The hills of Boulder and Fort Collins, CO, are a little different than those of SF, though! The biggest repeating shopping challenge for me was the stuff that's bulky, although not necessarily heavy, like toilet paper. What are your biggest challenges in shopping without a car? MelissaH

i've personally seen a lot of famous chefs do this. i thought they were just making a fuss because its on camera. ← I have the show on my Tivo; I hope to get around to watching it tonight. But reading about this, and other gross things, reminded me of a really nasty instance on the first series of Charlie Trotter's PBS cooking show. It was the show about fowl, and there was a little segment where he was talking about all kinds of birds. This particular segment was done in one continuous camera shot, so everything happened in order. First, Charlie T caressed some raw birds (quail or something like that), cupping them in his hands, stroking their breasts and wiggling their feet. Then, without even wiping his hands on a towel, he turned to some cooked birds that were resting, and touched them with his dirty mitts! (We'd eaten at his restaurant a few years before we ever saw this on TV. And I can safely say that after seeing that, if it's the sort of thing that goes on in his kitchen, I'd never eat there again!) MelissaH

The Girl Scout cookies that I always look forward to are the Samoas. At least, that's what they were called when I was selling them in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, PA. Here in upstate NY, they're called Caramel Delites. Whatever you call them, it's a cookie with caramel, coconut, and a drizzle of chocolate. Divine! MelissaH

We finally got to it on Monday night. And yes, it was amazing, and will be making repeat appearances on our table at some point! I let my husband make the mashed potatoes (one advantage of waiting for a night he was home) and I made a warm brussels sprout slaw (thinly sliced the "little brains," as my husband calls them, sauteed them in a touch of olive oil with S&P, added the zest and juice of a blood orange, and served) and some green beans to go with. It was a very nice birthday dinner for me, although not even close to the last birthday dinner you cooked. MelissaH

I'll do that. But then again, we usually make a point of buying the "select-a-size" versions of paper towels, because that makes it very easy to use only a little bit. And if you just need a small piece, say to wipe off a little dribble on the floor, there's no reason to waste a large piece. If you need more, you just take more! One of my husband's older relatives didn't particularly care for or appreciate the select-a-size, though: they asked for a paper towel to clean up a biggish mess, and someone brought them one select-a-size piece, which is about half the width of a traditional paper towel. They got upset at the person bringing the paper towel. I find that hilarious because that person was only following (inspecific) directions! ETA: My husband also will use only the amount needed for the job. Great minds think alike, ghostrider! MelissaH

I finally made a batch of butter-braised beef. The house has smelled heavenly all day. As I graded exams, I daydreamed about eating it later this afternoon, when my husband gets home from his conference this afternoon. I have green beans to nuke and potatoes to mash. I also have brussels sprouts, which my husband thinks he doesn't like so I'm planning to turn them into a sort of hot slaw with ginger and OJ (since I have a blood orange, that's what I'll use) to go with, so maybe he won't be totally repelled by them. And then my husband called about an hour ago...he's stuck in National Airport because his flight was cancelled. The next plane heading this way doesn't leave until 9 PM so he won't be home in time for dinner, and I'm thinking if he's not going to be home to share it with me, it might be a good night for takeout. What's going to be the best way to keep the beef till tomorrow evening, when we can both enjoy it with all the proper accompaniments? MelissaH

So that begs the question: what's the difference between a great cupcake and a great slice of a bigger cake? How do you tweak a recipe to optimize for one or the other? MelissaH

When we were in Amsterdam in January, we visited the Heineken brewery. "We" in this case means me and my husband, as well as our colleague Jeff and his oldest daughter Erinn. My husband and Jeff will be teaching a course on fermentation science during the second half of this semester, and the course will have a study-abroad component. This will be the first time they've taught the course, and the trip (which will take place just after the end of the semester) will be to Belgium. Our trip in January was to scout out locations, and most importantly get the lodging set for the class trip in May. But it's much easier to get flights to Amsterdam than to Brussels, hence our visit in January. The brewery open to visits is not currently used for beer production, since that's all been moved to a facility outside of town somewhere. This building has been turned into a museum of sorts, and of all the beer facility tours we did, this was the most fun, if a little commercialized. It reminded me of what would happen if Disney ever got a hold of a beer factory...oh wait, wouldn't that be Busch Gardens? Make no mistake, this tour is all about beer. You enter and pay your 10 Euros, and in exchange you get one orange drink token, two green drink tokens, and a white prize token, as well as the opportunity to walk through the facility. Early on, you see this diagram of the beer-brewing process. And you get walked through the beer-brewing process in general, although with a Heineken-specific slant: the Heineken water, the Heineken yeast, the Heineken grain, the Heineken hops, the Heineken logo, the Heineken label, the Heineken bottle.... One room was wallpapered with print ads from over the years. Another wall was covered with bottle caps. We particularly liked the water room. Heineken is proud of their low (relatively speaking) water usage for a commercial-scale brewery. The architecture in the room where they talked about water (everything on the walls was printed in English and in Dutch) was really neat: there was a suspended ceiling made of plexiglass, filled with a thin layer of water, with lights above the suspended ceiling. Above the lights (so you wouldn't see shadows) were a series of nozzles that slowly dripped water into the ceiling, and the lights would then cast shadows from the waves (constructive and destructive interference!) on the floor and ceiling. I could have done without the audio "drip" effects, but the visuals were way cool, something we briefly considered doing in our kitchen when we remodel, but decided would probably be better in the wet bar area of the family room. The old copper brew kettles are still intact, and they use them for all kinds of demonstrations (with small TVs mounted in holes cut in the sides). Our favorite part of the first half of the tour was a ride, in which you got to "be" a bottle and go through the bottling line. The seats shook and jiggled in synch with the video, but we didn't get blasted with water the way the bottles on screen did. We all thought, though, that a bottling line would be a terrific inspiration for an honest-to-goodness rollercoaster, though: you get shaken up, spun around and upside down, several times, and in an amusement park you could even include the jets of water! (We decided that although you might find something like that at Busch Gardens, you'd be unlikely to find anything as beer-related at Disneyworld.) The first half of the tour concluded in a room with many of these copper kettles, but that wasn't the highlight of the room. See the staircase going down that's blocked off with a velvet rope? At the bottom of the stairs is the stable! Anyone who's watched a Super Bowl in recent memory knows about the Clydesdales that pull the Bud wagon. Heineken is associated with Shires, a different breed of draft horse. They're big and black with white blazes on their faces, and about a dozen of them live right there in the old brewery and get taken out every day. Erinn's a horse lover, and this room was a real highlight for her. After we watched the horses for a bit, we went to the bar in the middle to redeem our orange drink tokens. One token gets you one drink, and you have a choice of beer or something non-alcoholic, 25 cL of whatever you choose. Immediately following the bar in the middle, there was a setup where you could take photos or even a short video of yourself, and e-mail it to people around the world. We were there at a slow time, and were able to spend plenty of time having fun. The second half of the tour was less about beermaking and more about entertainment. We did another ride, this one "delivering the beer" on a horse-drawn cart through the cobbled streets of Amsterdam. We sat in special chairs with audio and video, and watched vintage Heineken commercials. And we played in the party room, at the DJ bench running the music and lights. Finally, we went through the gift shop (had to get through that before you could leave) and then spent our green tokens at the bar at the end (same choices as before). Finally, we claimed our gifts at the end: it turned out to be a 25 cL Heineken glass. Educational? Sure, especially if you've never seen a large-scale brewery before. Fun? Absolutely! A good deal? Yes, especially if you're a visiting American and the thought of getting three (small) beers plus a glass to take home for the equivalent of about $12 (at that time) seems like a good deal; it was also a great couple of hours of entertainment if you don't mind being bombarded by ads for one specific beer. It wound up being a perfect break from the other more "serious" museums we visited, and is well worth a visit. MelissaH

Wow, thanks for all the suggestions! It looks like I won't be short of ideas, at any rate. I do have one more question, which hasn't been addressed before because I didn't mention it in the first place: what about breakfasts, or late® night? I'll be leaving home on Friday evening in the late afternoon, and supposedly arriving on the ground a bit after 9. My committee is feeding me breakfast on Saturday and Sunday, but I'm fending for myself on Monday and Tuesday mornings. My flight out is a bit after noon on Tuesday, and I'd like to get enough food in my system that I won't need to worry about anything else until dinner. You guys are amazing! MelissaH

Oh, man! The hotel we stayed at was right near Rembrandtplein, and we somehow missed out on this! Guess this means we'll need to return to Amsterdam, in the not-too-distant future! MelissaH

Any chance this might be suitable for a group (30ish people) dinner? I'll be subjected to one of those, and the last few haven't been anything to write home about. MelissaH

The clementines we ate in Belgium and the Netherlands in January. Something changes when they're carried across the ocean from Spain. MelissaH

We've hit a possible snag, and definite frustration. Last night we were looking at the kitchen plans, both A and B, as well as the not-fully-fleshed-out C and D, discussing cabinetry in detail. We were coming to the conclusion that with the way things were set in Plan B (which we much preferred over Plan A), we'd be headed down the road towards multiple semi-custom or completely custom cabinets. We based that on the IKEA catalog and also the Kraft-Maid catalog my husband found on line. But then my husband noticed something odd. We still plan to keep our existing refrigerator, which is not a cabinet-depth refrigerator. And in Plan A, which I haven't posted plans for, the cabinets around the refrigerator were specifically moved out from the wall to give us a 30 inch wide countertop, so the front of the cabinets would be more or less even with our fridge. But in the drawings for Plans B, C, and D, the refrigerator is also set to be even with the cabinet fronts, but the countertop is just 24 inches wide! This in itself isn't a huge problem to us: so the refrigerator sticks out a few inches in front of the cabinets. The bigger problem is that in Plan B, which we liked in general, the refrigerator is directly opposite the range. According to the GE Monogram catalog that I had handy, the 36-inch range is also about 30 inches deep, which means that the range would also protrude slightly from the front of the cabinets. And with the refrigerator and the range directly opposite, each sticking out half a foot in front of the cabinets, the walkway between the two is narrowed by a full foot, to only about 3 feet. This seems like a really narrow space to us, especially between two appliances that would likely get relatively heavy use. But worse, the refrigerator is about 33 inches wide. I'm concerned that we wouldn't have enough room to open the fridge door without bashing the oven handle. And that's a huge problem! We've e-mailed our designer, to be sure we aren't overlooking something. And until we hear from her, we've come up with a workaround. Our workaround is to move the refrigerator to the other side of the kitchen, so that as you walk in the side door to the kitchen the refrigerator is immediately to your right, where the tall pantry cabinet was in the original drawings. Then, next to the fridge heading back into the corner, make the countertop next to the refrigerator 30 inches wide, so it's more or less level with the front of the fridge. We also considered relocating the dishwasher to the other side of the sink, so it's closer to the dining area. In this rearrangement, between the edge of the refrigerator and the front of the baking area, there's enough room for a 12-inch-wide base cabinet. That's not a problem, per se. But if we lower the countertop in the baking area, we'd probably end up with a dead corner space or an expensive custom cabinet. Furthermore, with the six-inch-wider countertop on the refrigerator side, to accommodate the refrigerator depth, we'd have to shorten the baking area's lowered countertop by half a foot. And I'd be worried about having my rolling pin bash into the non-lowered part of the counter if it got shortened. So I went looking a little more, and found this post from Dave the Cook's kitchen renovation thread, which describes the "rule" for countertop height: measure the distance between your bent elbow and the floor; subtract 3 inches for normal tasks and 6-7 inches for kneading and rolling out dough. So I had my husband measure the distance between my elbows and the floor last night, and we came up with 39 and a half inches or so. This means that a standard 36-inch counter should be fine for normal tasks (and it is), but for kneading and rolling I should be a couple of inches lower than standard. I was in bare feet at the time we measured. But my favorite most comfy clogs add about an inch and a half to my height, so if I put those on before I roll out my dough, I'd supposedly be very close to the "ideal" counter height. (Hmmm: might need to try that recipe for potato-stuffed parathas in Mangoes and Curry Leaves this afternoon and see how it goes. Part of my current rolling issues come about because my rolling surface is a wooden board that I put on top of the counter; it has a lip to grab the front edge and also a built-in backsplash; it makes the surface about 2 inches taller than the countertop itself. Maybe I should learn to roll in stiletto heels? ) But this got me thinking: maybe the baking area countertop would be just fine at standard height, especially if I wear shoes to roll my dough. (Shoes in the kitchen probably aren't a bad idea in any case.) And if we put the baking area counter at standard height, we'd be able to put in a non-custom corner cabinet next to the fridge and not lose the entire corner space. The tall refrigerator would also serve the same purpose as the tall pantry cabinet in the original design: blocking the view of my potentially-floury dark blue stand mixer and food processor, which would live in the corner of the counter when they weren't being used. We'd still have landing space countertop next to the fridge. An added benefit of relocating the refrigerator to the end of the kitchen is that we wouldn't have to worry about whether or not the baseboard heater could be removed: if it needs to stay put, we just bring it forward to the toekick of the cabinet. And that would work even if we put the dishwasher to the left of the sink (rather than the right, where it is in the drawings). We don't see a real problem in having the range and dishwasher directly opposite each other: for one thing, the dishwasher is standard depth, so you have an extra six inches of aisle space compared to the fridge. And it's unlikely that we'd be doing anything at both the dishwasher and the range at the same time, especially compared to the likelihood of using both range and fridge at the same time. And another big bonus: by relocating the refrigerator, it looks like the space got juggled enough that we'd be able to use mostly stock cabinets, from either IKEA or KraftMaid, which will help us stay within our budget. We're working on the assumption that our appliances (range, hood, DW) will cost on the order of $8k. We're also working on the assumption that the cabinets (without countertop) will run on the order of $5-6k. And those are the big things that won't be easy to change out afterwards, so we want to get them right from the start. In playing around with things, we've discovered that we should have the room to put a wine fridge under the counter to the right of the stove (if you're standing at the stove cooking), facing out to the dining area. This is a fun idea, if the budget allows! The original plan didn't explicitly show a place for the microwave. We use the microwave for two things, mainly: reheating leftovers for us, and heating up the cats' afternoon portion of canned food after it comes out of the fridge. (Yes, they're pampered.) Other than the fact that we need to plan for leftovers (this semester, both of us get home late on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which means that dinner on those nights is leftovers, nuked and eaten at whatever time each of us gets home), we think we could manage quite nicely without a microwave. So it makes sense for us to put the microwave down near the dining area rather than the cooking area. And we're considering a location facing the dining area in the cabinets on the sink side of the kitchen. We haven't quite worked out the details, particularly whether the existing microwave will actually fit down there, but we're hoping to do so. First, we need to see what our designer has to say about the refrigerator depth issue, and her ideas for workarounds (if it is, in fact, a problem). In the meantime, we've compiled a list of cabinets we'd need from IKEA, and an equivalent list of cabinets we'd need from KraftMaid. This will enable us to do an apples-to-apples price comparison, and should let us know whether IKEA is a viable possibility, especially in light of the long-distance vs. local factor. We'll try to talk with our local KraftMaid people this week, since IKEA's easy to do ourselves on line. MelissaH

My one experience with fresh water chestnuts convinced me that the best thing to do with them is leave them in the grocery store. Their taste and texture weren't much different from jicama, which is much easier to peel, slice, and use in general. MelissaH

I'll second what Klary said about the goat sate, as we helped her eat it that night! One of the things we most enjoyed on our trip was eating poffertjes. On Klary's suggestion, we stopped at the poffertje place that was by the skating rink set up on the Museumplein. (I think; correct me if I've got either my geography or my Dutch incorrect.) We ate them with just butter and sugar, and they transported all of us back many many years. For my husband, they reminded him of the aebelskivers served in the town he grew up in, which has a large proportion of people with Danish ancestry. For me, it was like the way we'd sometimes eat regular American-style fluffy pancakes, when we didn't have any maple syrup. And for our friend Jeff, it was like when he was a kid in Milwaukee and visited the woman in the apartment upstairs. Absolutely transporting, and we agreed that we could have easily demolished at least twice as many as we did. This was our lunch, after doing the Heineken tour and spending an hour or so in the Rijksmuseum...but that's another post! MelissaH

I"m wondering just how one can have both 'no fragrances' and 'no stinky sweat' at the same time?[...] ← Try rubbing alcohol on your underarms after you shower. Seriously. ← Obviously, you've never shaved your armpits! MelissaH

Anyone who gave me a Borders card would be at the top of my list! No experience with Costco here; they don't exist in this neighborhood. But we do have a choice of warehouse stores. Last year, instead of renewing our Sam's membership, we defected to BJ's. I liked the idea of putting the money into someone else's pocketbook, and I haven't heard the employee horror stories about BJ's that I have about the Walmart empire. Furthermore, of the two stores in our area, the BJ's locations are nicer to shop in, and have more of the products we get on a regular basis. Because of that, when the time comes, we'll probably stick with BJ's. I have been to a Costco: the one my sister in Tucson uses. Their selection of produce was to die for, compared to what we see here, but that's possibly more because she's in Arizona, closer to where it's all grown. MelissaH