Category Archives: The Apartment

Cooking techniques, Food, Home, The Apartment

Moved…

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Well, we moved. And now it looks like this:

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Actually that was on Thursday, and things are slightly better now, but the painter hadn’t finished when we arrived, so we have everything piled in the middle of the living and dining rooms. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to, say, unpack a few pots and pans. We’ve been eating a lot of bread (with peanut butter or butter and honey), but last night Ben grilled sausages (the ones from Whole Foods aren’t as great as the Coop ones, we’ll need to find a new supplier) and corn. The corn was delicious, incredibly sweet and a little smokey.

Peel back the husk and remove the silk.
corn

Spread the ears with butter and pulls the husks back up.
corn2

Grill…until done. Sorry, this seems really imprecise and recipes online didn’t help. The first time I did this, with Tom and friends, we undercooked it. This time I had Ben cook it with the sausages for about the same amount of time.
dinner

Yum. And I had it with a glass of Lambic!

Family, Food, The Apartment

Almost back

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I can’t wait to post all about the week my parents spent with us over Graduation Weekend, etc. As you can imagine, there was lots of great food to be eaten while mom was in the house. Unfortunately (forthe blog, anyway), for the last five days I was in Boston, where we have closed on our apartment, and I just haven’t been able to write everything up yet.

But Sunday night, the third we spent at the new place, I made us dinner for the first time: A simple We-Haven’t-Moved-In-Yet dinner; Rising Moon ravioli (made in my home town!) with butter and cheese, bread with oil and more cheese to dip, and red wine. Here is the sophisticated dining set-up for the time being:

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I accidentally bought vegan ravioli but they weren’t bad. A weird trace of curry in an otherwise italian-flavored pasta, but ok!

Up next: Packing! Wheeee. (Sigh.)

City Life, Home, The Apartment

Eating al fresco

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I have loved eating out on the porch this spring, on the few nights that it’s been warm enough. Somehow everything slows down when you eat outside–you drink a little bit more, but more slowly; dinner lingers on and the conversation flows. Our new apartment has a porch off of the kitchen, running along the side of the building. It’s covered but not screened, and is very long but narrow (19’x5′).

porch 1

porch 2

(That second one is through a screen door–why? Why didn’t I step outside to….never mind. Sigh.)

The narrow width means I have been scouring every website I could think of for long but narrow dining tables, and was thinking I might have to resort to a series of little 2 person café tables all lined up. But today I went to the Ikea site and up popped this:
table
The Bollö table, which seats 4 and is a folding table 44 inches long and 25 inches deep. Hurray! Two of these come in at $100, and we could fold them up and cover them in the winter. Now on to more exciting things, like getting little lanterns and planning a container garden!

City Life, Design/Living, The Apartment

Why we buy old

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Scrappy Girl asked today about buying real/knock-off vintage furniture, and it got me thinking about why we love old things. Ben and I are true suckers for old music, houses, furniture…You name it. Our wedding song was “I’m Old Fashioned.” The (big) band played only standards—the music Ben also plays on the piano. So of course when we started apartment hunting we focused on things built before 1940, and especially before 1920. The apartment we ended up with was built around the turn of the 20th century, and it shows. The layout is long and narrow, with the kitchen and maid’s room (my study!) at the back. The exterior doorknobs are brass, with beading details around each one. The inside knobs are either brass of painted wood, depending on where they’re located. The double crown molding ends in picture rails around every room, so I can hang art with picture hooks instead of making holes in the wall, if I want (the inspector was impressed that I knew what they were). And then there is that pantry that I already posted pics of… All those details are what make a house feel special to us, and we feel really lucky that we found something that is nearly perfectly intact.

At the home inspection on Tuesday, I took a closer look at the fireplace, which I was already in love with:

fp

That is….not a great photo. But the gorgeous mantel aside, the fireplace is surrounded with narrow green subway tiles, and a border of white ones. Tuesday I actually leaned into look at the interior, and here is what I found:

fp inside

Ooooh. I think it’s a cast iron liner? I cannot wait to see it with a fire lit!