Category Archives: City Life

City Life, Food

Breaking in the dining room

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So far we’ve only eaten in the dining room a few times: With Ben’s mom and brother, a couple dinners for just the two of us… But the house is at least semi-unpacked now, and last night we had our friend Kabir and his girlfriend Nicole over for a casual dinner while Nicole is in town for a visit.

First of all, take a look at my workspace, the only “counter” in the kitchen.

counter

I should have put my hand in there for scale; it’s a little butcher block from Ikea. Better than nothing, but not a ton of prep space! Luckily since it’s summer I kept everything very simple and didn’t need too much room to work. I continue to be very underwhelmed with the “Whole Foods” (formerly a Bread & Circus, and definitely not 100% up to the standards of the bigger WF I’ve shopped at) near our apartment. The produce is a very mixed bag–yesterday there were no salad greens that looked usable, and this in July! There were some good-looking peas, though, and I picked up a carton of what looked like lovely heirloom cherry tomatoes, all different colors. That got me excited about another tomato salad, this time very colorful and lush-looking.

Sigh.

I got the tomatoes home and all the non-traditional varieties were hard as rocks, and bitter. They looked amazing, though:

tom

tom2

I got them into a dressing of oil and sherry vinegar, with plenty of salt and pepper, as soon as I could, hoping they’d soften up a bit with help. (They did, but only a bit.)

Next I cut up another ball of local mozzarella and marinated that in olive oil, salt, pepper, and basil. When it was time to serve the first course, I dished out a pile of each, which looks nice enough in photos but wasn’t great in person. Next time I wouldn’t do this unless I could get my hands on bocconcini, which would have mixed in better with the tomatoes. I think serving it on some greens would have helped hold everything in place, too.

basil

For a main course I made my standby oven fries again, this time in the extremely high-heat environment of the new-old oven. (Its dial goes up to 600 DEGREES!). They cooked fast and souffled a bit; Julia Child would be proud. The key to getting them not to stick seems to be placing the fries skin-down on the tray the whole time. I did them at 425 or so (though I can’t find my oven thermometer so who knows…) and they browned and crisped nicely. I also made my mom’s peas with shallots, which was really easy and delicious. I posted her method a few posts down, but basically I minced a shallot, cooked it in olive oil very slowly so it was nice and sweet, and then stirred in barely-cooked fresh peas and added salt and pepper. (I like beans and peas just a couple shades off of raw, so they’re really crispy.) I served those at room temperature, and I could probably eat a whole bowl of them by myself. Happily I’d bought a huge bag of them so we have leftovers for tonight!

peas

Sirloin was on sale at WF and I let it rest for a while with garlic and pepper, then took off the garlic and salted it before Ben grilled it. Very tasty, though next time I think I’ll marinate it?

plate

For dessert I grilled a peach and a nectarine. Super easy, though they stuck a bit–I just cut them in half, placed them cut-side down on a medium-high grill, cooked for a while, flipped, cooked a while longer, and served them with ice cream. Incredibly juicy and so simple.

peach

peaches

P.S. Notice how much better the lighting is in the new kitchen?? There is double-bulb fixture overhead (with no shade, yikes), another bare bulb over the sink, and Ben brought in an old desk lamp to put on top of the fridge for warmer lighting. It looks awful in person but at least I can get it plenty bright for photos!

P.P.S. Sweet Germi over at the Domino Blogs posted a couple photos of the monstrous and hilarious ivy that lives outside our building. If you have any gardening questions you should hit her with them–she’s so helpful and responsive, and her blog is always fun.

City Life, Cooking techniques, The Apartment

A peek into the pantry

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Yesterday I managed to get the oven turned on! This is big news and a big relief. There is actually an active oven pilot light, I found out when I took apart the bottom of the oven. It just doesn’t do anything unless you turn the oven dial to 400 or so, get it lit, THEN turn it down. Of course!

Last night we spent the evening wandering the aisles of the Container Store rather despairingly, and brought home a large number of items aimed at imposing order on the pantry. The kitchen doesn’t have a single cupboard or counter–not one–but there is a lovely butler’s pantry and a regular pantry right off the kitchen. I had heaved everything out of boxes and onto the shelves, and it looked pretty awful. I also had no way to organize all the sort of gadgets you’d normally keep in a drawer, like peelers and graters and measuring cups, since I don’t have any drawers.

Here are the results:

Before:

b

After:

a

I promise the difference is more striking in person.

Another view, since I’m pleased with my creativity in….shelf organizer selection:

Before:

b

After:

a

Note the in/out box trays used for gadgets in the lower left. It’s hard to see the desk-top cd box holding various boxes (brown sugar, corn starch). I’m very pleased with the different extra shelf thingies we got–smaller ones for the top shelf (there is a lot of space above the top built-in shelf; I may eventually put in another shelf or two for long-term storage) and a big one to use on the floor under the bottom shelf. I also used a big one on the lowest shelf, which is quite large. And the cleverest gadget I found was the thing that clips onto a shelf above it and gives you a place for sheet pans or other flat wide things. At last, I won’t have to unload every single other pan I own to get to the quarter sheet.

In case you think I’ve stopped cooking….you’re almost right. Hmm. I did make a nice pasta dish the other night, and Ben’s family was in town this weekend so we had a barbecue. I made caprese for that, look!

Mediocre tomatoes, sadly–I was hoping they’d be good but they let me down. That’s a BIG letdown, since caprese is only worth it with great tomatoes and great cheese. Luckily the mozzarella, a Vermont-made one, was extremely tasty.

t

I drizzled it with a dressing I made very quickly by pureeing a bunch of basil with olive oil, salt, and a dab of balsamic vinegar.

t

I want to try again with awesome heirloom tomatoes!

Coming soon: A whole slide show of house before and afters! Also a very tasty lunch.

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, Family, Life in the Big Woods

Distracted by Bikes

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Something I never thought would happen…has happened. I have bikes on the brain, and want to go out riding. You should know that my dad has bike commuted since I was a kid (I remember watching for his bike light out the window when I was 6), and my brother is really into alternative transport and bike building/repair. I, meanwhile, learned to ride when I was 8 or so, had an ok mountain bike out in Oregon, but never rode with much pleasure or regularity.

Ben loves to bike, but has ridden a totally inadequate bike from high school for years (more than 10 years), and we finally decided to get him a new bike, and to look for something for me as well. I had seen the Electra Amsterdam in Blueprint and shown it to Tom, who gave it a seal of approval, to my utter shock. (I expected him to say it was a marketing ploy, designed to suck money away from unsuspecting rubes who….well, it’s usually something along those lines; you should hear him on beginners who ride racing bikes!)

Behold, the object of my lust:
bike
Note the chain guard, wheel cover, lovely blue shade… It is styled after the bikes used for commuting in the Netherlands, and sports a 3-speed internal gear thingy. (Very technical, right?) I also like Electra’s “flat foot” design approach–the pedals are pushed forward a bit, so when you are stopped you can put your feet on the ground.

But when we went to the bike shop they didn’t have Amsterdams, only the cruiser styles, which aren’t what I want. And they started telling me about some other options, and asking if I really wanted a 3-speed or if I’d want to be able to go up bigger hills eventually. I don’t know! Here is the 24-speed they recommended, the Suede DX w by Giant:
bike2
Hmm. More retro-styling than the other Giants I tried, and it has a cute seat, but it doesn’t conjure up images of me biking along looking extremely adorable and European, does it? Reminds me more of a little kid’s bmx bike or something. (…I don’t even know what that means.)

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!

City Life, General

Home sweet home

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Well. We found an apartment this weekend; we have a signed, accepted offer, and if all goes according to plan (inspection pending, etc.) we will close in mid-June and move to Cambridge, MA that month. The apartment is enormous and in nearly mint condition; it’s an an apartment building from 1901 and the current owner updated the bathroom but has otherwise left it completely alone. The kitchen is the original: Ancient sink and stove, not one counter or cabinet, but you don’t really need cabinets because….drumroll….There is a PANTRY as well as a BUTLER’S PANTRY with glass cabinets and loads of storage:
butler1 butler2
pantry

We will have to do the kitchen, but I’m excited to get to do it my way, instead of buying a place that a developer has slapped a new kitchen into as quickly as possible. Many, many more photos will follow, I’m sure.

City Life

Horn?

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There was a party just out of sight tonight. Maybe it was on the carriage house roof deck on the other side of the neighboring brownstone? Every so often someone played a line or two on a sax or trumpet (I kept noticing just as it stopped, so I’m not sure), and there were more people talking than usual.

Oh, a roof deck…. I was at a party on Josh’s roof on Saturday, and at some point after the hot sun had slipped behind clouds of light rain and then the rain had tapered off and we were back on the roof, chilly in the dark, I held my plastic cup of decent white wine and smelled sausages on the grill and realized that this was my idea of a perfect city party. A spacious roof on the Upper West Side, music not too loud, a dozen or so people draped around chatting. The grill going. Of course, all those things could happen much more often in the suburbs, but that’s the magic—a deck, a grill, IN the city, with the guy across the street earning hoots and hollers when he strolls by the window with his shirt off, with the next door neighbor sitting in a lawn chair on his side of the roof, separated by only a foot-high ridge, invited to come get a hot dog if he gets hungry. Who needs a lawn?

Of course, in the fantasy it isn’t 50 degrees in mid May, but I’ll take what I can get.