Post-Holiday Juice Cleanse

I don't think I'm the only one who over-indulged this holiday season, but I do know that I entered into a serious food coma last night. After all the excitement we experienced this year - and ALL THE FOOD I consumed - I left the office yesterday, had a quick dinner, and fell asleep sitting up at 6:00.
That said, I asked for and received a juicer for Christmas from my grandparents - hopefully, a strong shot of vitamins and nutrients will help to shock me back into a diet that makes some sense!
I have done some reading on these sorts of cleanses, and I'm going to give it a shot to see what kind of difference it makes, if any. My first experiment was three medium-sized carrots and two Granny Smith apples. I have to say...it was delicious!

First Light

I had this past Saturday morning/afternoon to myself to putt around and do pretty much whatever I wanted. Not being content to sit around (at that point), I thought I'd try my hand at making a challah. Come to find out, it was also the first night of Hanukkah..so I guess that worked out pretty well. :)

Challah is a traditional Jewish braided bread eaten on holidays and the Sabbath. According to my quick Wikipedia search: each loaf has six strands...traditionally, two loaves are served with a total of 12 strands symbolizing each of the tribes of Israel. You learn something new every day! 

It doesn't taste wildly different than any other homemade bread I've ever had, but I didn't include poppyseeds or any of the other traditional toppings. I'm liking it toasted, and it makes really good French toast..but it also looks like it's really complicated, so people assume you're a genius if you make one :)
The recipe I used was really straightforward AND taught me how to braid it - No problem!
http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-challah-bread-cooking-lessons-from-the-kitchn-181004
Shalom :)

Food Post: NOT tomatoes and pasta!

Stir fry! ...I think?
I've never really made any Asian food, so I just kind of went with whatever sounded good. Ground beef, carrots, red peppers, red cabbage, bok choi, broccoli, leeks, onions, garlic, water chesnuts, and soy sauce. Pretty healthy AND I got to try some of the vegetables from my farm box that I hadn't had a use for!

Chilly outside = chili inside :)

Got to use some of the garden tomatoes from the freezer - love it when a plan comes together!

Dueling pies

Last night was pie night at the homestead. I’ve been eating out a lot lately because there’s not food in the house because I haven’t been there to MAKE anything. More to come on that in the next post.

Last night, I decided to do something about my lack of sustenance. I had some homemade pizza sausage in the freezer along with a leftover dough ball that would be just enough for a single serving pizza. I laid both out on the counter yesterday afternoon to thaw so they’d be ready to go by the time I was. Along with a little sauce and some mozzarella cheese (also both kind of leftover from a previous pizza..stashed in the freezer), I had myself a nice little pie in no time at all.

The last couple times I’ve made a pizza, I’ve been baking them according to something I read in an old cookbook: apparently the “pizza-maker’s secret” is to bake your pizza with the meat uncooked. I was skeptical at first because I’d never done that, nor had anyone in my family..and we’re pizza makers. So, I figured I’d chunk off fairly small pieces to insure they baked through in the short time they’d be in the oven. I have to say, both times I’ve done it I have really enjoyed it. It gives the pizza just the right amount of grease and the meat is so tender and moist that I don’t think I’ll be going back!

I have to say, it was not my intention to make it this dark. That said, it's got great flavor and looks like it came from a gourmet pizzeria in New York City..one of those with a big 700F brick oven :)

Also last night, I peeled, chopped, and seasoned a small bucket of apples from mom and dad’s neighbors’ apple tree. They have more than they know what to do with, so everyone around has apple buckets sitting around waiting to be used!

Apple has always been my favorite pie, but it’s hard to make a good one..at least I think it is. Whenever I make one, I make sure to use something sort of acidic in the apples to give it a little extra flavor. Fresh lemon or orange juice, or even vinegar works really well and it gives the pie a little extra something..another flavor sensation on another part of your tongue. Really good stuff!

Tomatoes, tomatoes, everywhere..

Remember my bowl of tomatoes? Quintuple that..this is my life.

With many of the tomatoes from the picture above, I hulled them, roasted them with garlic, salt, pepper, and sugar, and ran them through the food processor for sauces. I've got a couple quarts in the freezer. This is in addition to the multiple bags of tomatoes and peppers I cut up and froze for use in chili later in the year.

Another batch...holy crap.
See the "split" tomato in the front? I learned today that's due to inconsistent watering. The drought has been terrible for crops this year..especially those that need so much water. 

Roasted tomato Caprese salad. Tomato off the vine, basil out of the yard :)

Tomato sauce base from the puree in the freezer, basil and oregano from the yard, onions and garlic from my farm box.
I didn't make the wine or the pasta...I feel like such a failure ;)

It's beginning to look a lot like..finished :)

So, I’ve been posting much shorter entries lately. Which, for long-time readers, is probably fine because there are a few over the past several months that are a bit lengthy. Anyway..for whatever reason, the shorter posts just seem more in line with what’s going on around the house lately. Little projects here are there being finished up – but the impact of those projects is pretty huge!

The last “little” project to be done was painting the inside of the house. The entire. Inside. Of the house. When compared to building a garage or rewiring the entire place, it’s not a huge project..but it took some time, nonetheless. Now that that’s been completed, we got back into trimming things out.

Last night’s project du jour was the quarter round in the front half of the house. When we tore out the plaster and lath and replaced it with drywall, there was a pretty good sized gap between where the wood floor ended and where the wall (and even baseboard, in some spots) began.

Remember these gaps? No more!

The solution I chose was a thicker, taller baseboard that would be more in keeping with the age and scale of the house, and a ¾” x ¾” quarter round strip to fill in the gap and give it a more polished look.

I bought the quarter-round preprimed - all we had to do was throw on a couple coats of the 'White Dove' paint, cut it, and pop it in place.

Over the course of a couple hours last night, we had pretty much everything done save for a few small pieces in the office, and it looks really great!

Much more finished looking!

A few days ago, I took the time to organize where all the ‘header’ pieces would go – because we’re working with salvaged stuff, nothing fits exactly over the doorways in my house, so I was trying to fit each piece to a door with as little cut-waste as possible. Once I had everything placed, we cut the pieces down to fit as needed and did the necessary cutting, sanding, and filling to make them look good once they were in place. As of last night, the laundry room was done and we were starting to think about the more complex cuts for the pieces over the bathroom doors.

Last Tuesday’s farm box came and I feel a little embarrassed that I haven’t used up much of the produce..especially because the next box comes today at 4! Anyway, last night I made up a batch of seat-of-my-pants eggplant Parmesan. I say seat of my pants because I had never had 1. Eggplant, or 2. Eggplant Parmesan. I knew the basics – after all, two of the ingredients are in the name – but had never done it before. Granted, mine was the quickie version – no baking, just skillet-quick – but it was really good and gave me the confidence to buy and use eggplant again in the future!

OK, I cheated..this is NOT a picture of my eggplant Parmesan. I scarfed mine before taking a picture.
And this one looks better.

The other thing I tried was much more by the book – I found a recipe online for a banana cake that looked and sounded really good. I can usually kind of take or leave banana cakes, breads, etc. but this one was quite good. Really dense and moist with lots of cream cheese frosting. (The frosting was not from the recipe..it was mine: 1# cream cheese, ½# butter, 1# powdered sugar, 1t vanilla. So good.)

Waiting for the oven.

Trimmed the rounded top off the bottom layer (and dipped it in frosting..nice snack :) )

Again..cheated..not mine. But mine was kind of crooked - I'm not a professional, get over it.

http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/2012/05/double-banana-cake

I brought the cake to work Monday, gave a hunk to mom and dad, and had a piece for dessert after my eggplant Parm..and it was pretty well gone! Which is fine..the last thing I need is a double-decker cake staring at me every time I open the fridge.

More trim tonight, I suppose – will post pictures as good things continue to happen! J

Almost forgot my trip (back) to Cedar Rapids! My friends were getting rid of a perfectly good twin bed that I will be putting in my office for visiting friends. We stopped off at Parlor City Pub & Eatery again this time and were very happy with it. Awesome beer selection and good food! http://www.parlorcitypub.com/

Around the House

My wooden spoons and cutting boards needed some attention. I sanded the spoons by hand (shown) and rubbed them down with board cream - a mix of beeswax and mineral spirits.

This should keep them from drying out and cracking. They were starting to look pretty neglected..especially the two on the far right. Couldn't believe the difference this made - the cutting boards look totally different too! (no pictures of the boards, yet)

The morning of the Fourth of July, we went to the annual antique market in Solon, Iowa. The only thing I found (that I had been wanting AND that I could afford) was this crock..perfect size for my wooden kitchen stuff!

Office with a fresh coat of "Greyhound" paint. Still more trim over the door top and across the bottom of the built in bookshelf. The library ladder is still in the "someday" category.

Pretty sweet setup: computer with speakers feeds the floor speakers and the surround sound in the living room. Party! Still looking for the right stand for the receiver/BluRay, but it will come.

I had a few friends over and actually cleaned the house..INCLUDING the floors! The place doesn't look too bad! There's a home-grown cucumber in that wooden bowl..I think I've got, like..45 more on the way. :S

Farm Box Soup

Did I tell you I signed up for a CSA membership?

Well, I did.

For those who haven’t heard of it, a CSA is Community Supported Agriculture and basically gets me my percentage of all the crops harvested from a local, organic family farm! I’ve read a lot about them, and known people here in town who have bought shares before, but never been in a position to do it, myself. Not having a kitchen will do that..

Ahh..the good old days. Er..

I took the plunge this summer, and have been very happy with it so far! I only ever really know what I’m going to get on the day I go pick up my box full of goodies..the farmers send out an email to everyone letting them know what will be in the box, new developments around the farm, how they’re doing at the market, etc. It’s a really cool way to stay in touch with what’s happening around you, AND the farmer gets a much larger chunk of your food dollar than they would if you bought the same produce from the grocery store.

It’s also way fresher (picked right before it goes into the box), local (less fossil fuel to transport AND it helps you develop higher tolerance to local allergens..a big selling point for me because I really suffer through the fall allergy season) and chemical free (never a bad thing).

http://www.bluegatefarmfresh.com/

The cost of a big box of goodness once a week throughout the growing season was $460 – kind of a big chunk of change to drop all at once, but it’s not that much more expensive than buying the same foods from the grocery store over the same time period.

Plus, it’s delivered to the bookstore near my house (http://thenextchapterbooks.wordpress.com/) so I don’t have to drive across town..I can pick it up on my walk home from work! It also forces to me try new things..otherwise I waste food and money, neither of which I want to afford to do right now.

Anyway – I got my ‘farm box’ on Tuesday and took it home to see what I had to work with.

Two different kinds of summer squash, snap peas, Swiss chard, new potatoes, hard-neck garlic, lettuce, beets, squash blossoms, assorted herbs, and a few other things. You can purchase an egg option, extended herb option, honey, or goat cheese through the program..I went with the base share this year.

Another cool thing: I haven’t been exposed to a lot of the things that come in this box. I’m learning so much, and experimenting with new things all the time! Up until yesterday, I had never eaten or cooked with a summer squash before..I decided I like them a lot!

Anyway, as I said, I had no idea what I would do with some of these things so I decided I’d make something up: Farm Box Soup..or CSA Soup, which rolls off the tongue nicely.

I large-diced the new potatoes, squash, and a few carrots I had in the fridge and spread them out on a big sheet pan. Didn’t even peel anything..very colorful..very hippie-healthy. Olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast these at about 375F until they get to be fork tender..kind of al dente, I suppose.

In the meantime, I started warming a quart of store bought chicken stock that I mixed with a little homemade chicken stock I had in the freezer. I plopped a few cloves of farm garlic into the stock to infuse a little more flavor..and let that come to a slow boil. The homemade stock used all kinds of herbs and you could really smell them all at this point.

(http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/chicken-stock-recipe/index.html - I never follow the recipe completely. She uses way more chicken than I do..because she makes millions of dollars. Also, what the hell is a parsnip going to add? Cost.)

I pulled the roasted vegetables out of the oven and scooped them into the stock to soak up all that flavor. I also mounded some chard and leftover fresh spinach into the pot and stirred that in to wilt.

At this point, I also pulled out a couple old parmesan cheese rinds from the freezer. I keep the rind to use for sauces or soups because there’s a ton of flavor left in them. I salted and peppered a bit and let everything simmer away.

About this time, I minced up some green onion for a little more flavor and pulled some pesto (that I made with the basil from last week’s farm box) out of the freezer and dropped those into the pot.

Cubed up some homemade bread from earlier in the week..use the leftover olive oil on the roasted vegetable sheet pan and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and Parmesan and toast in the oven. Homemade croutons are better than anything else you’ll ever eat. Ever.

After all of this, I still wasn’t totally sure it would be any good. Like I said, I’d never had a summer squash, and I’m still pretty new to chard. I had tasted things along the way to make sure I wasn’t going to screw up a huge pot of vegetables and I felt OK about things..but whoa.

Anything with chicken soaked croutons, though..right?

This stuff is good!

And wicked nutritious. It’s so different from the chips and salsa dinners with an M&M dessert I had eaten the previous days..

The difference food like this makes is really amazing. I don’t get to sleep as much as I’d like, but I don’t feel tired when I eat this way. There’s so much good stuff in this soup it makes me feel...good!

Anyway..highly recommended made-up soup here. Exact proportions should be decided on-the-fly..that way you can’t blame me if it doesn’t turn out right J Give it a go!

It's a kitchen! And color! Whoa!

So, “beeswax polish night” turned into “beeswax polish week.” It turns out, the beeswax I used made the counters look like someone had peed all over them..just kind of generally yellow with bright yellow spots where the grout holes are.

I will say this, the countertop was super smooth and shiny after the beeswax. It just had that...urine..tint to it I wasn't crazy about :)

Not what you’re 'going for' in a kitchen.

I’m still confused by that because everything I’ve read has said beeswax is the way to go – all natural, food-safe, blah blah blah. So, I don’t know if I got the wrong kind of beeswax, or if there’s more than one type? Again, because nothing out there is really specifically marketed to concrete countertops, no one at any hardware store knows ANYTHING about making them or what to sell you to finish them.

My giant beeswax. I chopped it up and melted it down so I could remove any impurities, many of those were just stuck on the outside, though. I wonder if there's a lighter colored beeswax that wouldn't yellow? I should have known this one would - being yellow to begin with and all.. 

Oh well. A little wax remover and a couple days of random, half-hearted sanding here and there and it all worked out.

We set the tops in place a few days ago and I’ll seal them in the near future. Not as convenient this way, but the show must go on.

Speaking of the show going on: I’ve got cupboard doors and drawer fronts! I’ve even got knobs and pulls! And a sink! And a dishwasher! Holy freaking moly!

Giving everything a test fit. Of course, it had nothing to do with my need to take pictures of everything..

Coming together!

A place for everything! Now I'll just finish painting the cabinets and we'll really be in business!

I called my favorite local plumber – the crew that installed my new furnace/AC/water heater – and he had all of the above knocked out in a couple hours. He also installed a new outside spigot for my hose, and hooked up the garbage disposal. For the first time ever, I was really happy to be doing dishes J


The maiden voyage. I was making sure the dishwasher wouldn't explode and figured I'd get the hang of my giant faucet in the meantime. Big fan of this sink!

 I’ve also picked out some paint – I’m just in the process of deciding where it will go. My friend Anna is coming over this afternoon to paint. She volunteered, I accepted. Things are going to start looking a lot different very soon! :D

The brown in the upper left will go in the living room, the blue in the dining room, and I haven't totally decided on the other colors. Suggestions?

Walls closing in...

Busy weekend!

So busy, in fact, we were able to have all the cabinets hung and set by the time Sunday afternoon rolled around... even after taking Saturday off. Thanks to the adjustable cabinet legs my parents picked up at IKEA on their Texas trip, installation was pretty easy! All you’ve got to do is set the box in place and check it for level and plumb every which way. Check that each face is in line with the adjacent cabinet’s face, lock it in place with a couple screws and you’ve got it made.

I'm road-testing an island. I like the added prep space, but I wonder if it's too big?

All set! Making counter tops, cabinet doors, and drawers over the next few days.

It’s been so long since there have been cabinets in this kitchen – it’s starting to look so small comparatively! That said, it will be a good day when I don’t have to look at all of my groceries out in the open all the time J

CABINETS!

So, you’ve seen pictures of the cabinets during assembly out in the garage… how about one up on the wall?

That's a bad mamma jamma-sized cabinet.

Yep, last night was a pretty big night in my kitchen. No food was made, but I learned how to hang a cabinet and prep for the under-cabinet lighting I bought at IKEA a while back. More on lighting to come.

I’ll admit, I haven’t been terrific about taking pictures of the cabinets throughout the process. I blame this on the fact that their construction goes pretty quickly and I don’t have many opportunities to take pictures. That said, I will have plenty of updates as we hang more of the upper cabinets tonight.

I'm keeping the same basic layout (the new sink will be centered on the windows, though). Notice the older upper cabinets didn't reach all the way to the ceiling; I hope the taller uppers will look more in keeping with the age of the house, while providing more storage.



Pre-hanging. You can kind of see the paneling on the exposed side of the cabinet - this is something I've seen in magazines for the last couple years. It looks older, but also a little more "custom." Hopefully it will look like someone built these by hand...in a GOOD way!

 On my lunch break, I went out looking for countertop-making supplies. My boss – the same guy that tought me how to lay tile – has made concrete countertops before, and I’ve wanted to learn for quite a while. In the next few days/weeks, I hope to be building forms and working through that process, so stick around and learn with us!

"Roughing It"

When I titled this entry, I knew I was completely full of it. I am in no way roughing it, as the name would imply. Though I have to make do without some of the things you might expect in a house…namely, a kitchen.

The kitchen has been somewhat delayed because my cabinet maker may or may not be going to prison. Which is interesting..

Initially, we thought we would build the cabinets ourselves because my former roommate/Dad has experience doing it. Then the jailbird..excuse me: potential jailbird stepped in and said he could do it better, faster, cheaper..blah blah blah. I don’t know how many times I’m going to fall for that line.

To (hopefully) put you at ease: he isn’t going to jail for butchering children or small animals. (For your own future reference, there is apparently a limit to the number of times you can get pulled over while driving and reeking of whiskey.) I trust the work he does..just not the personal choices he makes. My main concern was that he shows up when he said he was supposed to and do the work he said he was going to do. Now that I know that won’t happen, I get to regroup: He called the other night and said he didn’t want to start on it this close to his court date.

There is no shortage of interesting circumstances, is there?

I’ve looked at buying stock cabinets from IKEA, but I’m just not sold on that idea. I know they’re reasonably good cabinets for their price, but the styles aren’t what I’m looking for and the sizes are what they are..No customizing.

I’m also going to look at purchasing cabinets from a home store. To this point, I haven’t looked at stock cabinets at all because I’ve been on the build-my-own track for a while now.

Anyway, as I said, I’m doing without a “kitchen” and have since made my own. While washing dishes in the bathroom sink isn’t as convenient, the cooking setup isn’t horrible.

I have a big cutting board and a toaster. Who needs more?

I made a roast beef with vegetables and mashed potatoes the other night, and an apple crisp Monday night. Anytime I’ve ever lived on my own I’ll make these big family-sized meals and eat the leftovers for a week. Most of the time I’ll make two different meals so I can eat one thing for lunch and the other for dinner. That’s my solution to cooking for one. Plus, if someone comes over around dinner time, I have plenty of home-cooked food to offer them!

My "pantry" in the laundry room all ready to go. I've never had a spot like this before, and so far I'm really, really liking it!

Oh! Tomorrow is my birthday – the big 2-5. The number itself isn’t that big of a deal..I won’t be paying that additional fee to rent a car. But I never rent cars anyway..  No, this birthday will be a big one because I’ll be spending it with friends in my new, old house J

This just in: ONIONS

Earlier this spring, I stopped by a little greenhouse not far from home and picked up a few bunches of onion sets. I’m pretty sure you could grow them from seed if you had A) any time, B) any space, or C) the equipment..benches, grow lights, etc. Since I don’t have any of those things, I buy sets.

These sets are tiny little onions waiting to be unleashed. By the time you buy them at the nursery, they can be anywhere up to the diameter of a pencil. Once the soil is warm enough, plant your mini-pencil-onions about 6 inches apart from one another and cover with dirt. We’ve learned that the spacing really is important, and for a very simple reason: if your onions are planted too close together they won’t grow to be very large. Which is fine – that way you can use an entire onion all at once rather than have half of a giganto onion floating around in the fridge.

Anyway, our old neighbor (the one I wrote about a while back) always said that your onions should never see the August sun – otherwise they start to get hot. Which means – in light of all the work we’ve been doing on the house – July 31^st was harvest day!

We had white, red, yellow, Texas sweets, and a variety called candy. Because I am a master gardener, I completely neglected to label the different varieties. Red and white I’ve got; otherwise, as far as I’m concerned, there are three different sizes of yellow onions. J

Because we planted so many, we had so many to give away. My grandparents got a batch; my bosses took several; the couple helping with my house got a bag full.. And we’ve still got onions. Lots, actually. Which is awesome because they’ll keep in the basement through the winter. Leave them dirty in a cool, dark place and they’ll keep as long as we need them to – usually they’re gone before any have the chance to spoil.

Happy Tuesday!