Third Anniversary

We got a special bottle of wine for our anniversary:

Huge. Huge! Prunes, earth, olives, cherries. The finish lasts for weeks, I tell you.
I got some flowers, too.

While I was cooking, Lindz snapped some closeups of said flowers.


I was dealing with these guys:

After the meat met the heat:

I roasted some red potatoes on the Quantum Leap of Potato Technology Pan.

Medium Rare.

Among other important reasons, this is why you stay married.

Merry Christmas

Yeah, you read it right. I said "Merry Christmas," not "Happy Holidays."

This was my brother's first North Carolina Christmas. He has been elevated in status because my wife made him a stocking:

He made our Christmas Eve even more merry by bringing Ollie over, complete with a red collar. Christmas cat is a decadent yuletide treat.

I made some pain a l'ancienne, a delayed-fermentation bread from The Bread Baker's Apprentice:

The dough sits overnight in the refrigerator. I made boules for Christmas dinner.

Here they are, fresh out of the oven (by the way, these pics were taken with our new, impossibly tiny, fabulously feature-laden digital camera given to us by Lindz's folks):

And here is how the boules were used. Bryan made a rich seafood newburg (full of scallops, shrimp and crab), and we put it in bread bowls. It was delicious, and it brought back memories of Christmases past. We drank a tasty Rutz pinot noir with it.

Bryan, in his Christmastime extravagance, made the mythical Bee Pie. Lindz has heard about this pie for years now, and Bryan decided to bring forth the legend so she could actually have some.

She liked it. By the end, we were full and dazed in that old-timey Noel way.

Stollen

There's toasted walnuts, raisins and candied orange peel, lemon peel and pineapple in there.

3.141592654

Bryan hung out with us at our house today. We did some cooking. Lindz and I had bought a big bag of Bosc pears at Costco, so Bryan made a Pear Cranberry pie. It was delicious. The cranberries were a nice foil to the sweet pears, and the all-butter crust was textbook perfect- flavorful, luxurious and flaky. If the shortening in my pantry hadn't gone bad with age, we might have had a more ordinary crust. Shortening can be more predictable in pastry work, but butter has better flavor. In the middle of this day of cooking, we had a treat that reminded us of our childhood- we ate the scraps of pie dough, baked on a sheet pan with sugar and cinnamon. It was some goodass crap. We ate some pie after dinner- I made marinated salmon with roasted red pepper coulis and mushroom risotto, and Lindz made a salad of baby greens, pears, toasted pine nuts, feta and mustard vinaigrette. We drank a tasty Ripasso from Trader Joe's, and then we watched Anchorman- the Legend of Ron Burgundy.

Simple pleasures. A big shopping trip and a bunch of cooking. We live large here in Raleigh.

North Carolina Has Finally Achieved Statehood

Yes, indeed. Trader Joe's has opened in North Carolina. The value of our house has probably tripled because of it. Lindz and I went there directly from our respective jobs today. Here's dinner:


Look at the close-up! TRADER FRIGGIN' JOE'S IS OPEN!

Holy shit, they put crack cocaine in these:

I'm going to empty out my 401k tomorrow so I can buy A WHOLE HELL OF A LOT OF THEM.
Maybe it's the sugar and wine talking, but I feel pretty giddy about this.

The Fearsome Trident of Neptune

Happy Thanksgiving

Bryan took this photo; I was occupied cooking. I cooked all day and then some, and I had a great time. I was tired, stuffed and inebriated by the end of the day, infused with that fine Thanksgiving feeling. This was my brother's first North Carolina Thanksgiving. It's great to have him here; it was with Bryan that I developed a love of cooking for crowds, particularly for the eight Thanksgivings we spent together in San Diego.

The Menu:

Hors D'Oeuvres: Dates stuffed with cream cheese and walnuts (by Lindz), smoked oysters

Roasted Turkey (an ordinary $.79/lb bird from BJ's, brined and prepared according to The New Best Recipe)

Cranberry Onion Confit (from The Best Recipe, previous edition of the above cookbook) - I'm glad I kept the old edition; they took this recipe out of the new one.

Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes (prepared according to my own technique: unpeeled russets, three bulbs of dry roasted garlic, butter, half & half and salt & pepper)

Turkey Gravy (Tyler Florence's idea made sense to me. I used a few pounds of turkey wings and some aromatics and made this independently, instead of screwing around with the drippings.)

Bread Stuffing with Granny Smith Apples, Carmelized Onions, Bacon and Sage (from The New Best Recipe, and this is the third year I've made this one.)

Gratin of Braised Kale (my own interpretation of a couple of recipes in Saveur magazine, braised with smoked turkey wings and covered in bechamel sauce)

Wine: Georges DuBoeuf Beaujolais Nouveau 2006, kindly supplied by my in-laws, Hayman Hill Pinot Noir 2005 Santa Lucia Highlands, kindly supplied by Bryan, Andew Quady Essensia Orange Muscat, supplied by me

Incidental Alcohol: Lindemans Framboise Lambic, Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout and a bit of Bryan's Barenjager the previous night while brining the turkey

Dessert: Cranberry Apple pie and Pumpkin pie, by Lindz and her mother (accompanied by lattes made by myself and Lindz)

I have no pictures of it, but we rearranged the furniture and put the Gramma Table in the the middle of the living room. Seven of us sat around it, and a good time was had. I admit that I was quite pleased with myself; I made a big meal for others' enjoyment, and it was the best kind of cooking: slow and from humble ingredients.

Cranberry Onion Confit

The house smells like Thanksgiving.

Caution: Smugness and Self-Satisfaction in Use

The water is turned on, and it's not going where it shouldn't. The project can move forward. I didn't even set the studs on fire with my torch (thanks to a heat shield I fashioned out of a piece of sheet metal).

Vaya con Dios, Magic Chef

Old Magic Chef:

New Kenmore:

Just in time for Thanksgiving. The oven is considerably larger.

Ooh, Neat! There's a Little Tiny Man Arc-Welding in our Oven!

Yesterday evening, Lindz and I were in the kitchen. I had just handed her a beer, and she was telling me about her day at work. While she was recounting tales of her boss's amazing foolishness, I was baking pita chips for us to snack on. The conversation abruptly stopped when we heard a noise. It was something that resembled buzzing, humming and sputtering. Smoke and bright, white light was visible though the oven vent beneath one of the burners. I furrowed my brow and looked in the oven. Sparks and orange magma greeted my pessimistic expectations. "How about we turn that off, babe?" my wife suggested.
"Yes, I believe that's a wise notion, my cherry-cheeked goddess." I turned off the bake element, and we finished the last sentence of the interrupted conversation. I finished the pita chips with the broiler element, narrowly avoiding burning them.
"We're going to need something by Thanksgiving," Lindz said, wearing a hard-to-describe combination of smirk and grimace. It's the facial expression used by homeowners when confronted by something expensive that was working fine moments earlier.
"Yep," I replied, adopting the smirk-grimace.




Anyway, The biscuit-colored Magic Chef owes us little or nothing. I think it's 25 years old. It probably would have failed sooner, but the previous owner of the house seems to have been as afraid of cooking as he was of attaching anything with more than 1/2 the requisite number of screws. The new Kenmore range (model 94002, a nice, bottom-of-the-line coil top) arrives on Saturday. I didn't even look at radiant glass tops. I don't trust that there new-fangled stuff. Cheap ranges do everything I need. I'm not sure how much it would be to replace this bake element, but I'm not putting money into this old thing.

Foray into Plumbing

Well, I've soldered a few pipe joints. It's fun to use a propane torch. I originally bought the torch for doing creme brulee and roasting peppers. It seems that one can use it for this stuff, too. I haven't worked on the supply pipes yet (translation: I haven't shut off the water, screwed something up and necessitated a night in a hotel), but I built the riser to the showerhead, the elbow that goes down to the faucet (shown) and the wooden supports that will hold them. The previous work is unimpressive (that is, if you are impressed by watertightness and structural integrity). I want to pressure-test my joints before I start sawing supply lines in the wall, but my confidence has increased.

Misshapen Pizza

Friday night, I made this misshapen pizza with a crust of 75/25 bread flour/whole wheat flour. It's topped with sauteed mushrooms with garlic, arugula, feta, parmiggiano and mozzarella. Lindz and I drank a tasty Australian shiraz from Costco with it.

Whole Wheat Braid

Overdue Bathroom Status Report

Several weeks ago, we made some important strides in the bathroom project. We installed the vanity and its plumbing, and we reinstalled the toilet. I did some drywall work in there, too. Lots of trips to Home Depot and plenty of help from my father-in-law were involved. I would have posted a while ago, but Blogger refused to work.


Yes, that's a functioning half-bath you're looking at. Very satisfying. It was good to have when all of my siblings were staying last weekend. That's a whole other post, however...

Vanity Inversion

I purchased this vanity a few weeks ago. We like the vanity. Nothing can be too easy, however. Notice how the drawers are on the left?

The inexpensive, pre-built vanity cabinets that one sees in major home improvement stores (translation: the only ones we're willing to budget for) all seem to have the drawers on the right. The pipes in our bathroom don't give a rat's ass about that. We were thus obliged to move all the hardware to make this cabinet a mirror image of its former self. We still barely had enough room:

Lindz and I also put vents in the toekick (yet another customization necessitated by the layout of this bathroom):

The grout, done by Lindz, is clearly visible.

Our Backs are Sore

Lindz and I tiled the bathroom floor on Sunday. It's deeply satisfying, but we understand why people pay contractors to do it for them. I had finally gottem a tub and a vanity on Friday (items crucial to the project but delayed by my lack of a truck).

We broke a few tiles until I figured out a technique for neatly snapping tiles on the diagonal. We laid out every tile, cut tiles as necessary, and numbered every one. We took a photo of the layout to give ourselves a map. The fun really began at that point.

Mixing thinset mortar is quite a thing. I was amazed at how much fun it wasn't. An electric drill emits quite a lovely odor and smoke when it's asked to mix mortar. I set the drill and paddle mixer aside before it burst into flame, and I switched to mixing with an old closet rod.

Anyway, Lindz and I are an effective tile-laying team. We feel good about our marriage; we spent an entire day on a laborious, detail-oriented project without an unkind word spoken (or shouted).

It's our birthday present, and we likes it very much

Yep, I'm quite pleased. Lindz gave me the Seiko Orange Monster for my birthday. It's preciousssssss.......

Concrete Board

The bathoom smells like a room now, as opposed to a musty cave.


We need to find a vanity.

Bathroom Floor

My inlaws gave me an extra heapin' helpin' of construction aid this weekend. Lindz had chiseled out the granite on the floor, but concrete board remained under that. Her parents unleashed the full fury of a couple who enjoy home projects and were recently rejuvenated by an Alaskan cruise. They busted out the old concrete board like a couple of game show contestants who have been put in a room with money nailed to the floor.

Next, we removed the toilet (always enjoyable). The flooring under and behind it had been rotted by a water leak that had occurred long ago. It had been fixed the old fashioned way: covered up with more boards and crap. We ripped out the offending boards:

We got a big piece of 3/4" plywood and made some cuts for the toilet and shower drain. The floor is now stronger than it has been in decades:

At this point in the project, we reached the turning point from demolition to construction. Everything old and undesirable is gone, and we have begun adding new material.

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Sandwich

I made it with the bread I baked earlier today. I warmed it on a cast iron griddle, and I posed it beside some Jamaican rum on the rocks and On Food and Cooking, the Science and Lore of the Kitchen, by Harold McGee (open to the page about peanut butter).
Since it's on the internet, everyone is free to view this. But it's for my sister, and she'll know it as soon as she sees it.

Got Crap?

Lindsey's aunt has moved recently. She was kind enough to drop by with three boxes of old stuff. It was actually pretty interesting to me, given my nostalgic bent. Lindz was quite annoyed at her aunt's lack of regard for our time and any plans we might have. The phone call began with "I'll be by in about an hour with some stuff. Some of it's family stuff like silver; some of it's kitchen stuff." Hmm. Super. Anyway, it was interesting. We were the proud recipients of several silver platters (age and value unknown), an old aluminum chafing dish set, a couple of iron skillets, some old glass bowls and a stuffed cactus. Here it is:

What, I might ask, do we need with a stuffed cactus? Now, a macrame owl for the wall, that would be desirable. But a cactus?

And how about a bunch of old, stale spices? Among these items was some 1978 meat tenderizer. I can safely say that our household had been lacking that.

You'll also notice not one, but two bottles of Angostura Bitters there. In addition to the fact that we've already got one, I found it interesting that one of the two bottles we received yesterday seems to have been manufactured before the days of tamper-evident packaging. My sister-in-law is pregnant right now. That child, even blessed with a centenarian lifespan, will not outlive our supply of bitters. There's some alum in that array of items, too. I had never seen that stuff except in old Tom & Jerry cartoons.

Here's where my nerdy kitchen interest seized control of me. Among the boxes of stuff was an old Pyrex casserole dish. It's on the left. The dish on the right is a Pyrex dish which I purchased two or three years ago at the most.

I'm curious about how old the one on the left is. Notice the tighter corners and different handle styling on the ends. And take a look at the writing on the bottom. It mentions microwaves, so it can't be too many decades old:

And this is the font on the newer dish (it's backwards because they reverse it for legibility when viewed from the top down):

There was a Pyrex bowl that might be of the same vintage. I intend to use them. The stuff lasts for ever, and it works great.

And here's a funky brass bottle opener, posing next to a loaf of bread I baked this morning:

I like the bottle opener. Not surprisingly, however, we, um, didn't exactly keep everything.

More Preparations for Bathroom Renovation Fun

It's called Orizzonti Dawn.
To put a perfectly clear, specific idea in your heads as to what it looks like, it's sort of, uh, beige.

I'll tell you this: the shit is heavy.