My point, exactly

I just finished reading this article that a friend of mine had linked to his Facebook account:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704409004576146321725889448.html?mod=wsj_share_facebook

While I don't necessarily agree with everything the article says, I think she's probably on the right track..unfortunately.


So, in the meantime, I have to go back to work.. at my grown-up job.. and think about my house..the one I'm buying. Also, I don't play video games..or watch Cartoon Network.

..feel free to set me up with nice girls you may know :)

I bake because I'm a patriot.

Happy (late) President's Day to all!

I celebrated my day off by doing almost nothing. A nice luxury. Though, after a day of pretty much lounging around, I tend to get restless and usually end up making something good to eat after everyone else has gone to bed. For those of you who may be concerned, I always share with the "roommates."

Based on Ina Garten's Summer Fruit Crostata from her book "Barefoot Contessa At Home", my Winter Fruit Crostata was soooo good and pretty easy to make! (A crostata is to Italians what a galette is to the French - a rustic, free-form, pie-esque pastry. My dad noted that it’s actually just a pie without the pan. Point: Dad.)

I followed the pastry recipe to the letter. By the time the dough had relaxed in the fridge long enough, I was done peeling, chopping, and seasoning the apples and had time to do my happy dance around the kitchen a time or two.

I used Gala apples because that's what I had on hand. Ina recommends (and I agree) that you use a tart apple such as Granny Smith. This gives the crostata a little extra flavor. Alas, I had Gala, and it's nearly gone, anyway. Must not have been too bad..
For the seasonings, I just went with what tasted the best along the way. A good pinch of salt to bring out the rest of the flavors, a few big shakes of cinnamon and nutmeg, a clump of brown sugar, and enough sugar and flour to create the right amount of "goo" - a technical baking term. To loosen the mixture and contribute to the goo, I added water - though, orange or lemon juice tastes amazing and provides the right amount of zing which, again, keeps the apples from tasting like every other apple pie you’ve ever had.

Bake at 450F for 20 minutes and you've got yourself a tasty little President's Day treat. And because the tart is supposed to look rustic, no one will notice when you rip it completely in half while moving it to the cooling rack :)

The re-assembled result.

Waiting...

Well.. where to begin?

The joy of home ownership has already begun. Or, not begun..depending on how you view it. At this point in the game, I’m still waiting for legal issues to be resolved.

Storytime:

The man who lived in the house next door was very ambitious. He had big ideas of taking his older home and restoring it into something beautiful – much the way I do. Working by himself on the weekends, he would dive into home-improvement projects with the best of intentions. As anyone involved in these sorts of things will tell you, once he started one project he would invariably run into another..and another…and another. Before long, he had fixes and repairs started all throughout the house, with very few – if any – actually finished.

About that time, he suffered a severe stroke. By all accounts, he’s doing better, though not well enough to move back into his house. So, what’s left is something of an eyesore…which is putting it delicately. In the years since, his house has become what we in the insurance industry would call an “attractive nuisance.” Teenagers looking for a thrill, critters, and even building material scavengers have been through the house – all the while, breaking windows, spray painting graffitti on the walls… generally up to no good. The house sits there, open and exposed to the elements. With the rain and snow we’ve had this past year, you can bet any attempt to restore the place would be expensive and time consuming if not impossible given budgetary constraints.

And so comes the holdup. As I’ve said, my little house and my neighbor’s big house share a driveway.

When my house was built in the late 1860’s, it sat on a double lot. Presumably, the open lot was used for gardening…maybe even a carriage house at one time as several in the neighborhood had carriage houses or even full barns. Around 1915, the owners of my house sold off the open lot to members of their family who built a big, gorgeous house. It had a large formal living room, a grand paneled staircase in the entryway, leaded glass windows and doors, and a surprisingly spacious kitchen for the time. That said, there was a separate staircase off the kitchen for servants access to the upper and lower floors.

When this house was built, they also built adjoining garages at the end of their shared driveway and, because they were family, everything was hunky dorey. Fast forward a few decades, and the big house is owned by a new family. So, to keep everything on the up and up, the neighbors contact the folks who draw up abstracts and titles and other legalities to formally spell out who owns what. For me, that means my house owns about two or three feet of the driveway and all of my leaning, rotting garage. In order to insure everything stays on the up and up, my realtor, attorney, title company and banker have been working to resolve the issues created by the fact that the original easment inexplicably expired after 50 years.

By the way, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it, but my house has been in the same family since 1868 – how cool is that?! Which, also adds to the fun: my abstract hadn’t been updated since 1923…

In the meantime, we all wait for the ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ from a judge. I have been repeatedly assured by my banker that this is NOT the way the things normally go. Because of the conservatorship holding the neighboring house, we’re having to jump through hoops that wouldn't ordinarily exist. That said, with foreclosures at their highest levels, professionals in the business are seeing these types of situations play out more and more.

More generally – as we know – with old houses you really never know what you’re going to get.