City Life, General, Home, The Apartment

Further Up and Further In

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So the other big house thing in the last couple weeks was something we’d talked about for a long time and finally decided to bite the bullet and do. We bought a piano.

The background: Ben is quite the musician; he attended LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts (what a mouthful) in NYC–better known as the Fame school–where he played piano and trumpet, and in college he minored in trumpet performance. He decided against a career in music because he likes stability (hee), but he still plays trumpet in a community band and whenever he has access to a piano he plays for hours at a time. We had talked and talked about getting one but were daunted by the expense and hassle or getting one into the apartment, but last month we decided it was time. He picked out a Boston upright 49.5″ piano (it only came in a really shiny black, not the matte I liked, but oh well) and we arranged for the piano delivery company guy to come visit and see how they could get it into our 4th floor apartment.

I called to leave him a message. The voicemail recording was: “Thank you for calling Allston Piano Movers! The Fine way to move a Steinway!” I laughed for about 5 minutes. In fact, I’m giggling now. Is that not an awesome slogan?

Anyway, Bobby came out to look at our stairs and windows and after one glance at the stairs he said he’d never move a piano up them. A crane it was! We spent part of the weekend taking the big front window apart, with the help of our very patient and kind neighbor who has redone all of his. It’s 44″ wide by 54″ tall, with curved glass, and I was SO nervous about the whole thing. While the window was out Ben took the opportunity to replace the broken sash cord on one side and the worn one on the other, so now that window opens and closes really well. The weights inside the frame weigh about 20 pounds each.

I had made Ben promise he’d be the one to supervise the delivery, since the mere thought of a crane+piano+our apartment made me feel queasy, but he ended up with a meeting he couldn’t change, so I was on duty.

The crane man, piano truck and police detail all showed up right on time.

The impressively bearded window man climbed around to remove the storm frame.

And then all of a sudden while I was taking the photos of the window, the piano was off the truck, on the crane, and in the air! It took about 3 minutes. I sprinted downstairs to shoot a photo:

And then ran back up to see the inside part:

There were a couple interesting minutes while the enormous men hauled the piano in the window.

But before I knew it they were wheeling it down the hall to the dining room!

*Poof!* It was just under an hour from minute the crane showed up (before the piano/police) to the time the window guy finished putting the storm window back in. Amazing. I highly recommend Allston Piano Movers–it wasn’t cheap but they worked fast and carefully and made all the annoying permit arrangements, etc.

So now while I cook, Ben plays piano! It’s the loveliest thing. He mostly plays American Standards (think Ella Fitzgerald–all the great old Porter, Gershwin, etc. stuff), but he’s working on some more classical things, too. Also, the Pride & Prejudice piano score. I shot a shaky little video while I was in the middle of making dinner last night and Ben was playing that (he would be appalled to see this if he knew, and would insist on mentioning that the piano tuner hasn’t come yet!):

The kitchen was only that messy until I finished cooking, I swear!

ETA: Ben actually read the post and watched the video. His comment: “The piano is SO out of tune. I’m calling them right now.”

City Life, The Apartment, Travel

Chair rehab

8 Comments

I am ashamed to think about, let alone admit, how little I’ve been cooking lately. I didn’t expect to experience the usual rush of activity come September, but we definitely have nevertheless. I hope in the next couple weeks that we can get back into a normal schedule and work our way through, say, the 900 bell peppers in the produce drawer. (A major upside to the CSA: Since I’m getting such very, very fresh produce, it lasts forever in the fridge! I know we should be eating it as quickly as possible but at least not much has gone to waste.)

There have been a few interesting additions to the apartment lately, so in lieu of any food today I thought I’d share some of the excitement. Part one: The chairs.

We went to Brimfield at the beginning of the month, wandering out around noon for the last day of the fair. I was a little overwhelmed but had chosen to make it a scouting trip so that next time I didn’t have newbie jitters. For the most part I picked up a couple random bits and bobs: a gorgeous antique L-Square with a rosewood handle, a lovely folding ruler, some Czech glass buttons, clothespins, an alphabet block with K (for me), B (for Ben) and T (for Tom) on it…

I would like to make some sort of tufted bulletin board (in rough natural linen) with these someday:

At the very end I found a set of four chairs that I loved and Ben hated. They were super-sturdy and had padded seats so I can cross one leg under me during long dinners without that bony bit on the side of my ankle hurting (this is key for comfort, if not good manners). They were a pale color that I don’t love for our dining room, but I got the guy to sell them for cheap. Then I forced Ben to get on board. My plan is to stain them ebony and recover the seats. Of course, once I got home I started poking around and posted a Good Question at Apartment Therapy and Anna at Door16 and someone else both said they’re probably Heywood Wakefield. I spent a few days agonizing over whether to re-sell them or go ahead and strip them and re-stain them, thus removing pretty much any value they might have had. I couldn’t find any photos of HW chairs with this style of back, and finally I decided I would just go for it.

Here is one of the chairs (I got four):

I took the seats off and put some plastic sheeting on the deck, then started brushing on paint stripper (it’s the slightly-less-toxic orange goo; the guy at the hardware store wouldn’t even sell me the really toxic stuff, not that I wanted it). Once the varnish was bubbled I scraped it with a plastic scraper (later I used a small metal one for narrow spots).

Pre-stripper:

Post-stripper:

That took a while, but on the flat surfaces, at least, it was super-satisfying. The next day I did some final touch-ups with the stripper, then rubbed the whole thing down with (I think) denatured alcohol. Or Thinner, or something. I will check all the labels at home. That ate away the not-exactly-solvent-resistant gloves I was wearing, so I need to get a pair of good solvent resistant ones before I move on to chairs two through four. After it dried out, I sanded the whole thing.

Post-sanding:

You can’t really tell from the photos, but after the stripping process the grain of the wood was raised and rough. The sanding made it nice and smooth, though I think there might be some spots where I didn’t really get all the varnish all the way off, especially around the joints.

I am terrified to start staining. I’ve never used stain and everyone says it’s a blotchy nightmare, especially on hard woods like maple (which I think these are), plus once I stain this there’s no going back and maybe I will have ruined a valuable mid-century antique. Agh! But imagine that in a nice dark stain with a fabulous print on the seat! I should go forward, right?

Cooking techniques, Farm Box, Food, Recipes

CSA: Week 13, edamame and encores

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MMmmmm:

-1 bunch kale
-1/2 lb fresh edamame (!)
-1 lb carrots
-3 bell peppers (yellow and red)
-1 delicata squash
-1 bunch parsley
-1 bunch slightly motheaten arugula
-1 pound assorted small tomatoes
-1 head garlic

We are facing a major produce pile-up in the fridge, or we were (I took care of some of it this week; to be posted soon)–in the last couple weeks we’ve only eaten at home a couple times. Busy evenings, agh. But one day last week I looked at the eggplant slowly withering in the produce drawer and the fresh batch of tomatoes I’d received and thought I’d give my eggplant sauce from a couple weeks before another shot, since Ben liked it so much.

First, though, I boiled that edamame in salted water for about 5 minutes. Salt, bowl, yum.

It was a large and slightly woody japanese eggplant, so I peeled it carefully and decided to take a gamble that the seeds would be too bitter. I chopped up a lot of onion to keep it company.

Cooked those together in olive oil for a good bit–medium-low heat, with a lid, helped soften the eggplant up without scorching it. It sucks up the oil SO fast… Last time I started with the anchovy and garlic, which gave a nice flavor base. I forgot the anchovies this time and really noticed a difference.

I cut up the tomatoes but didn’t bother peeling or seeding them–I figured as much juice as possible would help make it saucier.

When the eggplant was pretty soft I tossed in the tomatoes and let all of it cook until the eggplant was really done and not at all spongy.

This time I did remember my too-much-pasta-to-sauce problem, so I added the pasta into the sauce gradually. I also ended up stirring in a bunch of grated parmesan to try to add the flavor that was missing from the anchovies. That did help, but next time I’ll use anchovies AND parm!

Stay tuned for a home project in progress and a new addition to the F—- household (nothing alive!)….

Cooking techniques, Disasters, Farm Box, Food, Recipes

CSA: Week 12, fortune favors the foolish

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OMG, you guys. First of all, I’m only 1 week behind once I finish this post! But more important to note is that this is my biggest PSA post ever. I almost got pretty badly hurt but lucked out and am just fine, so READ ON to find out how not to be a jackass.

First of all, the week’s goodies:

-1 bunch basil
-1 enormous (slightly overgrown) japanese eggplant
-3 bell peppers; 2 red and 1 albino
-1 large, 1 medium, 1 small heirloom tomatoes, including a stripy Green Zebra
-3 onions
-1 hot pepper (I didn’t use it, ooops)
-1 head garlic
-1 pound potatoes

I had half a loaf of rather dull french bread sitting around getting stale, which led to a hankering for panzanella. I was on the phone with my mom, so she gave me a recipe for dressing that she usually uses; I dug out a cucumber that was still languishing in the produce drawer, and I decided to adapt her recipe by replacing fresh bell peppers with roasted. Because….I thought it would be fun, I guess.

I fired up the broiler, which in the Viking all-gas stove is quite a sight to behold. It’s infrared or something, and gets CRAZY hot, with a solid panel of tiny flames, etc. I daydreamed about croutons while I washed my peppers and popped them in a dish.

Does anyone spot the oncoming apocalypse?

Into the oven they went, where they blackened a hell of a lot faster than I expected–I think instructions that say to place your peppers 4 inches from the broiler do not take into account the CRAZY FLAMES of my oven. Next time I will stick to the middle rack so the peppers can soften a bit more before totally blackening.

I checked them a couple times, flipping them around to turn sooty on all sides, and then when they seemed about right I pulled them out, set the pan down on a baking sheet that was waiting on the stove for croutons, and stepped back towards the counter to grab my tongs.

And then:

Note that one pepper is missing. That is because it blasted a few feet away in the explosion. Seriously, you guys. EXPLOSION. HUGE shards of glass were scattered about 6 feet out to the left; tiny splinters coated everything within reach; Ben came running from the front of the apartment unsure of what he’d find… And what he found was me standing barefoot and perfectly still a few feet away from the stove, completely in shock at the fact that I wasn’t even scratched. He got my flip flops and the vacuum and we spent 45 minutes cleaning before I was able to return to making my humble little salad.

Anyway, I’m sure some of you have done this before, but a note from the idiot who did it most recently: PYREX DOES NOT GO IN THE BROILER. NO NO NO. IT WILL EXPLODE AND SCARE THE LIVING CRAP OUT OF YOU.

I’ll have you know, however, that after careful inspection I found that the peppers were salvageable, dammit! I peeled them and chopped up most of one of them for the salad (which would have been better off with the fresh, I think!) and sliced the other one up and put it in olive oil in a ziplock in the fridge for future consumption.

ANYWAY, the salad. The dressing included anchovies, capers, garlic, red wine vinegar and olive oil (and salt/pepper, of course), and I made it in the little mini-prep attachment to my stick blender, which worked great.

In the salad I included a cucumber, the three tomatoes, some finely chopped onion and the stupid roasted pepper (not pictured here).

I cut up the bread and started by pan-frying it, per mom’s suggestion, but I got bored and the croutons weren’t hardening enough so I threw them in the oven to dry out more. Added them to the vegetables (which I’d prepped first and salted so they’d get nice and juicy), holding back enough vegetables and croutons (separately) for lunch the next day, since you don’t want to mix them too far ahead of serving.

Yum:

Quite soothing after the stressful and ridiculously prolonged prep.

I must say, I felt slightly better about my ridiculous mistake considering that Ben had acquired a new dome for the exposed light in the kitchen while I was in London, and when I came back I said “Um, I don’t think that is big enough; also won’t plastic melt if it’s pretty much touching light bulbs?” and he said “No, no, it’s fine,” and the same night as the pepper incident we looked up and the dome looked like this:

Merp.

Common sense, you guys. I recommend it. And I’m looking for some, if you have extra.

Cooking techniques, Farm Box, Food, Recipes

CSA: Week 11, ratatouille for the win

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[Argh, until I work out a solution please imagine another third of each photo off to the right. Annoying.]

The goods:
-3 ears corn (I cut off the kernels and froze them)
-1 delicata squash (!!)
-3 bell peppers, red, yellow and purple
-1 lb orange carrots
-2 onions
-1 ginormous yellow tomato
-1 regular-sized red tomato

I find heirloom tomatoes entertaining. This one had some issues–I failed to notice that the bottom was torn up, so I had to do something with it right away but most of it wasn’t really that ripe, so the less said the better. The colors, though:

Anyway, I looked at those peppers and eggplant and thought “ratatouille.” Which is hilarious to me, since as a kid ratatouille was one of the very few things I refused to eat. I remember calling it out as the most disgusting food of all time, one time when I was asked about favorite/least favorite foods–I hated the name, I hated bell peppers, I hated the idea of it. I really did eat nearly everything as a kid, but ratatouille just grossed me out. Now, though, I find anything with zucchini and eggplant cooked in tomato sauce with olive oil so deeply, deeply appealing… Something about the way olive oil soaks into those soft vegetables, and then they get so silky and flavorful?

For the second or third time since June, I did have to go buy some vegetables–zucchini is long-gone from the CSA at this point–but all the rest of it I had on hand:

I basically made a half-batch of the EveryDay Food recipe, which is very simple:

Ratatouille, from EveryDay Food
1/3 cup olive oil
2 medium onions, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 large eggplants, (2 pounds), peeled in strips and cut into 3/4-inch cubes
4 to 5 medium zucchini, (2 pounds), cut into 1-inch cubes
Coarse salt and ground pepper
3 yellow or red bell peppers, ribs and seeds removed, cut into 3/4-inch cubes
1 can (28 ounces) diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon dried thyme [I didn’t have any, so I used a pinch or two of herbes de provence. Sadly mine are the type w/ lavender flowers in them, which lent a bit of an odd note to the bites containing it!]
1/2 cup chopped fresh basil

Directions:
In a Dutch oven (or other heavy 5-quart pot with a tight-fitting lid), heat oil over medium heat. Cook onions, stirring occasionally, until soft, about 5 minutes. Add garlic; cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Stir in eggplant and zucchini; season generously with salt and pepper.
Add 3/4 cup water; cover, and simmer until vegetables are beginning to soften, stirring once, about 5 minutes. Stir in bell peppers; simmer, covered, until softened, 5 minutes.
Stir in tomatoes and thyme; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low. Partially cover; simmer, stirring often, until vegetables are tender, 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from heat. If serving immediately, stir in basil. (If freezing, leave out basil.)

It did feel sinful to use canned tomatoes in august, but I didn’t have fresh ones and I did have a can of Muir Glen. Still, next time I’ll definitely blanch/peel/chop up a couple pounds of tomatoes instead of using canned, if I can.

Ben grilled sausages and I toasted some oiled bread on the hot grill, then rubbed it with garlic. A simple and delicious meal: It was perfect for the chilly evening that night; still summery with all the vegetables, but also warm and comforting.

Plus, even making a half batch I had enough for lunch the next day AND a big ziplock full to freeze.

I was reminded, eating that night, that I always meant to make the Ratatouille-the-movie version: The NYTimes published the recipe back when it came out, and I still need to give it a shot… How pretty is that?


(Image from the movie, via inuyaki.com)

Cooking techniques, Farm Box, Food, Recipes

Next time, shred it.

2 Comments

A couple weeks ago I got lovely multi-colored carrots in the CSA share, and since I’d seen Jamie Oliver’s “Carrots & Beets” Jamie at Home episode a few days before, I was inspired to make carrot ribbons for a salad.

I just peeled the carrots, then kept using the peeler to make strips of carrot:

Made a tangy dressing to counteract the sweet carrots, and voila. It was tasty, but I think shredding the carrots would have made them juicier, as well as easier to eat. I’ll try again soon! They sure looked pretty, though…

By the way, that’s a stuffed pepper (made using some CSA peppers and onions) that I took a major short cut to make. Mom, avert your eyes. Trader Joe’s sells, ahem, vacuum-packed precooked rice. I only found wild, brown or flavored varieties, so I used brown. One package was exactly as much as I needed for the recipe. You can’t tell the difference between white and brown in this, since there’s so much else going on, and I loved the convenience. (Last time I used cooked white rice from the Whole Foods hot bar–this was way cheaper.)

General

Save Andrea!

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We’ve been watching the conventions. We won’t be talking about that here. But Ben and I were CRYING laughing last night during the extended balloon release, as poor Andrea Mitchell tried solemnly to report while being buried under 8 trillion “Republican Balloons,” as Tom Brokaw called them. Brokaw slayed us, all “I’ve seen Andrea “Boom Boom” Mitchell report through sniper fire! She will not be stopped by balloons!”

Thank god for video clips. Unless someone can tell me why WordPress doesn’t accept the “embed code” from MSNBC, you can check it out here (sorry about the ad; it is worth it though). Sadly I don’t think the clip includes the section where they added one of those news tickers at the bottom saying “Andrea Mitchell under attack by balloons.”


(Screenshot from the video)

Cooking techniques, Farm Box, Food, Recipes

CSA: Week ten, bean bungle

2 Comments

First, the goods:

-3 ears corn
-1 cucumber
-1 japanese eggplant
-1 pound….beans
-1 bunch lovely small leeks
-1 enormous heirloom tomato
-1 bunch sage
-1 pound red potatoes

So shortly before I picked up the bag full of goodness, I read that article in the NYTimes food section about slow-cooked green beans. And then I sent it to my mom, who has loads and loads of everything in her garden right now, and she cooked them and e-mailed something like “OMG, those were great,” and when I got the bag of beans I thought “Perfect!!”

Ok, so. I won’t lie, I’m pretty confident in my vegetable-identification skills. I’ve been eating farmer’s market heritage-style vegetables since I was a kid. My mom cooks all SORTS of things that you see on trendy farm-to-table restaurant menus. And yet it didn’t occur to me that the slightly tough-looking bag of beans I’d picked out (I grabbed biggish ones because I was going to slow cook them!) were, um, not string beans. They were….some other sort. Shell beans of some kind. As evidenced by the giant bulges in their sides, I realize as I look at the photos. But being an IDIOT, I didn’t work that out until they started to shell themselves while cooking, when lavender beans started tumbling out like a pinata prize. A starchy pinata prize. But more on that in a moment.

The recipe is a starting point: Basically the idea is to cook beans slowly, in liquid, until they are tender. I caramelized shallots and then used a bit of dry vermouth instead of wine. Again, as I think back I probably should have tried using the recipe (with tomatoes, etc.) the first time, but oh well. I did add water to keep the liquid level up, as she recommends.

That first batch of shallot met a truly tragic fate when I stepped away for, I swear to god, 20 seconds and they burned to a crisp. Dammit.

“Oh Kate, those don’t look so bad! Definitely salvageable!” Yeah, sure. Tell that to the bit I tasted, which I think is STILL stuck in my teeth. (Gross, not really.)

Ok, much better.

I don’t have photos of the intermediate steps, because I panicked. The pods started opening up and revealing those gorgeous purple beans inside and I didn’t know what to do, so I cooked the whole mess until the beans were at least edible. Maybe not quite how I’d have cooked them if I had realized in advance, but not so startchy they couldn’t be choked down.

And they looked lovely (the chicken was leftover; I sliced it and tossed it with the beans to warm it up):

And as a matter of fact the pods were awfully tasty–do you usually throw away the pod from shell beans? Are these even shell beans? Mom or Germi, can you help me out here?

We also had that One Pound Monster of a tomato in a very simple salad:

(I don’t believe in mucking around with a tomato that lovely–a drizzle of sherry vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper, and some basil.)

Those beans really were tender and delicious, in the end. I can’t wait to try again with actual green beans. And next time I luck into shell beans I want to make bruschetta!

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