MelissaH

If I were going to be in Amsterdam on the proper date, I'd willingly volunteer to stay up all night doing the dishes and cleaning your kitchen, just to be able to smell the aromas in your kitchen as you served everything! MelissaH

I like to use shallot in my salad dressing: mince a shallot, and let it sit in about a quarter cup of vinegar (I like sherry or champagne) for a bit. Add salt, pepper, and a blob of mustard. Whisk in about 3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil (or buzz it in with a blender-on-a-stick to make the dressing really thick). MelissaH

Here, if you want your trash to be picked up, you pay a small fortune. Far more cost-effective is to do what we do and buy a yearly pass and bring it in yourself! This time of year we can typically go 2 to 3 weeks between trips. But in hotter weather, we go every week, and anything with the potential to stink gets frozen until we get ready to head out. That said, I will never again head to the dump without double-checking the freezer for things that have been waiting for proper disposal for weeks, er, months! MelissaH

Ah, yet another drawback to the Magic Pasta Cooker: how do you know when it's done? I'd start checking no sooner than 9 or 10 minutes. Some energy's going to need to be expended to warm the inside of the thermos as well as the pasta itself, which will cool down the water to below boiling. I'm guessing the bigger problem will not be getting the pasta to soften so much as not winding up with a stuck-together lump of gunk. This thread reminds me of another bit of add-water-and-sit cooking I heard about a couple of summers ago: Sleeping Bag Rice. This is a recipe for camping: do this just before you're ready to leave your tent and sleeping bag behind for the day. Put the rice in a container with a lid that seals tightly. Add boiling water straight off the campstove. Seal the container immediately, and slide it down into the foot of your sleeping bag. The sleeping bag keeps the heat in, and allows the rice to cook. When you come back after a few hours, you supposedly have hot cooked rice without needing to (a) convince your campstove to maintain a simmer and (b) use all your precious fuel cooking the rice. We haven't tried the method, but if I planned to do this while I was on the trail, I'd give it a run at home first to see if it works. MelissaH

My in-laws were here over the weekend, for the two last regular-season hockey games in Romney Field House before the new arena opens next weekend. In addition, we also talked some about the new kitchen, and I looked at the kitchen designs again for the first time in a week. My scanner died and had to be sent in for warranty service, so I can't post the other design at the moment. But as I looked at the other design (Plan A), I saw some things that I actually liked better than in Plan B (see above post). The biggest difference between Plan A and Plan B is that in Plan A, the fridge goes in the short end of the kitchen (in the corner where the oven lives in the old yucky kitchen), which effectively means that we won't be able to have any countertops on the right side of the door as you walk in from coming up the stairs. I don't like that as much. There are tambour doors to hide the food processor and stand mixer on the wall right next to the fridge. (I can live with that.) But the baking area is down at the other end of the kitchen, on the same side as the range, and I don't like the idea of storing the mixer way down at the other end of the kitchen from where it's ultimately going to be used. Plan A will work fine if we need to keep the baseboard heater where it is; we'd just pull it out to the toeboard of the cabinets there. (Plan B may turn out to be unworkable if the baseboard heater needs to stay where it is, for whatever reason.) And Plan A feels a little more open along the outside wall of the house. We have two more sketches, with two other completely different ideas. One of the two moves the baking area to right in front of the window, an idea I like. (I don't remember where the sink moves to.) The other idea I don't remember very well, and the sketch is at home and I'm at work right now so I can't look. When I have scanner access once more, I'll scan everything in so you can see what I'm talking about. Our next task will be to look at the plans, and make notes of what we like and what we don't like in each. We'll also need to make that list of everything that needs to be stored in the kitchen, and see if everything has a logical place. Once we can finalize the plans with the designer and get our list of cabinets, we'll be able to see how much we can spend on other stuff right away, and what might need to go on the "Dream On" list. MelissaH

Does anyone out there have a thermos large enough to accommodate some pasta and try the experiment? MelissaH

Lucky you! It's a beautiful part of the country, and one that we've always loved. We haven't lived there, other than for a week at a time of camping. You're actually going to be lots closer to Las Vegas than SLC. In fact, if anyone's looking to come visit you, the Las Vegas airport may very well be the airport of choice, since there are lots of flights there, the flights are relatively inexpensive, and the drive's not bad. And you're going where there's a lot of nothing. But that's part of the joy of living there. Plan to buy an annual pass to Zion National Park so you can visit as often as you like, and acquire a good pair of hiking boots...and a pair of sandals that you can get soaking wet without repercussions, because there's a lot of beautiful walking to be done through the river up the canyon. You'll need to develop a very different mindset than you'd have living in a city, because it's a completely different environment. Plan to get a city fix every so often, though: take a long weekend (or equivalent few days off) and visit somewhere good-sized. And joiei's right: Western distances are on a different scale. An hour's journey somewhere is nearly insignificant. Get in the habit of keeping a cooler in your car. It gets hot in that area, and depending on where you live, it might be a bit of a drive to the grocery store. A cooler (even a little soft-sided one) helps immensely in allowing perishables to survive the journey home. Nightlife? Sure: pack your trash up tight or the nightlife will get into it. MelissaH

Joy! Our kitchen designer has found a local soapstone fabricator, twenty miles down the road from here! MelissaH

I also wonder about looking through older cookbooks for "War Cakes," made during wartime when eggs, sugar, and other food products were rationed or hard to get. I don't know how they'd work with non-wheat flours, but they might give you another place to start looking. I seem to remember that many of them are spicy or gingery. Here's a recipe I just googled up. For the fat, it says you can use bacon grease! MelissaH

What he said. My husband and I both enjoy Project Runway much more than the other "reality" shows, I think in part because it's really based on the competitors' talents, not how much backbiting and game-playing they can do. I'm hopeful that the new chef show will be along the same lines, where the best person (or maybe that should be stated as "the person who consistently doesn't have any really bad days") wins. MelissaH

After my sad experience with a propane-powered smoker, I'm planning to purchase a WSM once I get my act together and let my life settle down after the first-week-of-the-semester mad rush. MelissaH

Just wanted to let yunz know that I've been quietly sitting here in the cheering section, rooting you on. I'll now go back to quietly sitting and observing. MelissaH

And around here, many convenience store-type places have lists posted of their "acceptable" IDs. Passports (US or otherwise) are not on the list, which aggravates and amuses me. MelissaH

Anything you'd do differently? Anything you're really glad you did? MelissaH

Actually, I teach. I haven't been a student for quite a few years. But I do have access to a university library, and I'll check it out. MelissaH

My thoughts/needs/wants in a dishwasher are pretty simple, I think: it's gotta clean the dishes well and use less water than I'd use to wash those same dishes by hand, have a stainless interior, and NOT have a long tube pointing up from the bottom rack. I want a relatively open interior, so that I don't have to worry about my large bowls fitting. And I want to be sure the top rack has enough space to hold my cheapo IKEA wineglasses so I don't need to wash them by hand. (That said, when we go looking I'll be bringing some of my large and tall items with me, to see if they go in without a problem.) Noise probably isn't as big an issue to me as it is to other people. I like the idea of LindaK's model (the post just below Jambalyle's post referenced above), with the adjustable top rack. LindaK, if you don't mind saying, how much of a premium did you pay to get this feature? What model do you have? We're getting our thoughts together so we can go back to the designer, firm up the cabinet plans, start to get cabinet and appliance quotes, and figure out whether our desires fit within our budget. MelissaH

Did you ever give any thought to coating the walls with a high-gloss polyurethane? That's one idea we've been tossing around, although we would definitely want to do some test panels to see if it works and if it will hold up to cleaning. MelissaH

That's certainly a possibility: use that stack of drawers to hold the silverware, as well as the serving pieces, and put the dishes . One question we keep going back and forth on is whether it's better to schlep clean dishes from the dishwasher to where they get stored, or to schlep clean dishes from where they get stored to the table where they're ultimately used. (No debate: definitely better to not have to schlep dirty dishes to the dishwasher.) We currently store our dishes in a cabinet that's the equivalent of just above the dishwasher, and the schlepping distance isn't onerous by anyone's count. Certain things will definitely be better in other places, though. For instance, the baking dishes should be near the baking area, and the stovetop pots and cooking utensils should be near the stove. We have a bunch of beautiful ceramic serving dishes that my mom made for us, and I'm not sure where they'd be best kept. I certainly envision the higher shelves everywhere for the things that don't get used often, like the gravy boat and the extra wineglasses. (There's only two of us. We have enough cheap IKEA wineglasses to serve sixteen of our friends, but they don't all need to be in easy reach all the time. We only have half a dozen champagne flutes, so it would be nice to keep them available.) I need to make a list. MelissaH

Here are the scans of the kitchen design we liked better, of the two our designer, Jane A. June CKD, did for us. Overhead view I realize the writing is tiny, and probably not readable. I decided to include the top view anyway, because it shows how things will fit into the kitchen. I like that the design is significantly different than what we came up with on our own, and I also like the fact that she listened to what we wanted and what we didn't want, and came up with not one but two designs based on our desires. To help clarify, here are the three elevations of the kitchen. (No need for a fourth elevation, because the dining room's there.) Wall with doorway (interior wall of the house): Short wall (in the old yucky kitchen, where the stove and oven are): The design on the wall is a Lion of Flanders, rising out of the counter. It's not so easy to see here because I scanned a photocopy of the original vellum drawing, and the lion was sketched in pretty lightly to begin with. (If I kicked up the threshold on my scanner to make the Lion more visible, everything else got too thick and dark.) The Lion itself is inside a pair of black arcs, which would form a circle if the cabinetry and countertop weren't blocking the top and bottom of the circle. Back wall (outside wall of house): Now, for a little explanation. Working around from the sliding door out to the deck, the small section of counter was left open on top, to give us a place for some art or a clock or something like that, as well as a place for light switches. The fridge should relocate here quite nicely if we don't have a problem removing the baseboard heater that's along this stretch of wall right now. (If our local inspector doesn't like that, we'll need to go back and start from scratch...or maybe just trade the range, or more likely in that case the cooktop with underneath oven, and the fridge positions.) The sink (possibly apron-front) stays in front of the window (if it's apron front we'll add a towel bar to the front; if not we'll put a tip-out to hold the sponges etc.), and the drawing shows a pendant-style light over. Dishwasher on the other side of the sink. On the other side of the DW, we have space for some more drawers and a cabinet in the corner. The back wall of the kitchen is the baking area. Accordingly, it has a countertop lower than standard, so I don't need to bake wearing stilts. We haven't gone through this plan yet to figure out what gets stored where, but I'm presuming these cabinets and drawers will be used to hold primarily baking goodies, both hardware and software (to borrow terms from Alton Brown). Note to self: how tall are my flour containers? Must fit in drawers. Stand mixer and food processor will tuck into corner, but not be hidden behind a garage. The tall cabinet next to the door not only will serve as a pantry cabinet, but also to hide said appliances from dining room view. We've already debated a little bit about whether it would be better to leave this cabinet tall, or to do separate upper and lower to gain another two feet of countertop space. My gut instinct is to get the countertop space, which could then be extended across the doorway with a swing-up if need be. We're planning on leaving our hall closet as a pantry closet, and before long we should have a shelving unit that hangs on the door to help us organize that. On the other side of the doorway, the design specs a 36-inch range with a 42-inch hood. I'm guessing we'll need a blower that sucks to carry the air up to the ceiling and then across to the outside wall, unless we could instead just go straight up all the way through the roof. We need more time to sit down and digest this. For one thing, we aren't sure where things will get stored, and if we have the right amount of the right types of storage space. We also aren't sure where the microwave and toaster oven will go. (The tambour to the right of the range is to hold the water boiler and coffee maker.) And finally, we aren't sure if the angles and the lowered counter over the baking area will make IKEA cabinets impossible to work with. But I do like the general concept, as well as the ability to use different countertop materials in different places. And I like the fact that there are relatively few places for the cats to get into countertop trouble! More thoughts later. MelissaH edited to clarify slightly

I seem to remember Gale Gand using tea as a liquid with flavor in some of her desserts. I don't have any cookbooks on campus, though, so I can't check. MelissaH

Not quite what we had in mind either. On a serious note: something we're trying to figure out is a way to get a Lion of Flanders into our kitchen. This is a symbol we first became aware of as cyclists: it's nearly impossible to watch TV coverage of a cycling race without seeing a Flemish flag. Then, when we spent some time cycling in the region during the summer of 2004, we absolutely fell in love. Our recent trip back solidified that even more. So, we'd like to get a Lion of Flanders into our new kitchen somehow. Here's what it looks like, on a flag flying on the city hall building in Brugge: One way we thought of was to do a mosaic, with lots of tiny tiles. In our designer's plan, the Lion would go on the wall backing my baking area. I tend to carry a fair amount of entropy wherever I go, and I'm concerned about keeping a mosaic in good shape. So we've also come up with the possibility of just painting it onto the wall (borrow an overhead projector one evening, to get the design up there, maybe?) and then somehow seal it in so we can sponge the wall down without a problem. Those of you with tiles, does your grout get disgusting-looking? (Light grout is almost a must, to me, with a bright yellow background.) Is there another way to get a fairly intricate design into a wall? Of course, if we could find someone making a tile with the design already there, our problems would be solved! MelissaH

We were lucky enough to be in markets in Brugge, Belgium, and Amsterdam last week. At both markets, we saw stalls selling live poultry of all kinds, as well as rabbits. I never did get up the heart to ask whether these were intended as pets, food...or both. MelissaH

Absolutely no help from me. We've all but ruled out the possibility of tile in our range backsplash, in favor of something that we hope will be easier to clean, without pesky grout lines. MelissaH Really, I am working on getting those pictures of the new plan posted!

Aaah, one of the great mysteries from when I was a kid! They came as flat sheets of translucent plastic, with designs printed on them. You'd cut them out, punch a hole through if you wanted, and color with colored pencils. When you baked them, they'd shrink and get very thick, and the colors got much brighter than your original colored pencils. We'd make them into necklaces, suncatchers to hang in your windows, and whatever else you could think of to do with a little plastic ornamenty-thingie. Click here to see what the manufacturer says.... MelissaH

It's not exactly a food usage, but we find that clementine crates work wonderfully to start fires in our woodstove. Put a bit of newspaper inside, turn it upside down, pile some small wood pieces on top, light a corner or two of the newspaper, and away you go! We, too, cannot recycle the yogurt containers. They're typically #5 plastic, and around here we only recycle #1 and #2. But in the event that you buy Dannon brand yogurt, there's still something really cool to do with them, or at least with their tops. Dannon brand yogurt comes covered with a foil seal, and then a clear plastic cover with a colored rim on top of that. Cut off the colored rim, and then sand one side very lightly with fine sandpaper. (Don't do this on a nicely finished surface.) Get out your colored pencils, and draw on the sanded side. Punch a hole through if you want. Then bake on a foil-covered tray at 400 degrees F (we use our toaster oven; my MIL doesn't have a toaster oven so we used her regular oven but found that we had to preheat the pan as well as the oven) for 10 to 15 seconds. Voila---homemade Shrinky Dinks! Are yogurt containers microwaveable? I've always been concerned about freezing them because I've had too many non-freezer plastic bags crack and spill their contents all over the deep freeze. But if they're microwaveable, I could see using them for short-term fridge storage. (Of course, there's nothing to say that I couldn't freeze my stock or whatever in the container, and then pop the frozen cylinder out and bag in a freezer bag for later use! Why didn't I think of that before? ) MelissaH