Recipes and Reviews

I did it again. I waited too long to put in an order with one of the local heritage turkey farms. Even though more farms are raising more turkey this year than they have in the last half century, demand as far outstripped supply.

This time, I'm putting my name in right now for next year's bird.

The kitchen is all unpacked and we created our punch list with the kitchen designer.

First here is a collection of pictures taken from various points around the kitchen.

View across the kitchen from the stairs up to the loft.

View toward the back door from the stairs up into the kitchen from the garage. These stairs are right next to the stairs up to the loft.

View toward the main sink from the stairs up into the kitchen from the garage.

View toward the range from in front of the freezer.

First a quick Q&A:

- Will we sign up with the CSA again? Yes
- What did it cost up front to sign up? $325
- What would the food have cost in the grocery store? about $440
- How did the food compare? Mostly better. When an item was bad - it was really bad.
- How many bad items were there? 3 - A head of lettuce, a tomato, and an ear of corn.
- How were store prices determined? Taken from New Seasons market web-site each week.

- If you have other questions, just let me know and I will update this section as best I can.

Now on to the review:

Getting closer to being done unpacking the old kitchen. We had a few issues with placing some of our pots and pans into the new cabinets. We have a few more linear feet of storage in the new kitchen but some of the cabinets are not as wide or deep as the old design. So we had to revise our storage plan a bit to make more efficient use of the new design.

I got a copy of the parts list for the refrigerator that we ordered and found that we are missing one shelf. I got the new shelf on order but it may take a few weeks to get here since these are new models.

We moved out of the old Amana refrigerator/freezer into the Frigidare side-by-side all-refrigerator/all-freezer units. We are still working out where things will be placed in these new appliances and we are thinking that we need to purchase another shelf for the refrigerator. We were able to empty about half of the chest freezer. We will have to eat our way through the rest of the items in that appliance before we can stop using it - I am not sure that I want to get rid of it yet.

Pictures from day fifty-one of the remodel.

It is done! Well, almost done. The kitchen designer wants us to move in and use it for a couple of weeks to see if there is anything that we need fixed, tweeked, or touched up.

View across the kitchen from the stairs up to the loft.

View across the kitchen toward the stairs up to the loft.

The second dishwasher finally got its front panel and toe-kick.

One view down from the loft.

Another view down from the loft.

Pictures from day fifty of the remodel:

View across the kitchen from the stairs up to the loft.

View across the kitchen toward the stairs up to the loft.

Hood is unwrapped.

Light covers and louvers are installed.

Baseboard trim in dining room is installed.

Baseboard trim in entry way is installed.

Pictures from the fourty-nineth day of the remodel.

View across the kitchen from the stairs up to the loft.

View across the kitchen toward the stairs up to the loft.

Under shelf lights above second sink are all finished. They look dim from the sides because of the egg crate louvers.

Finally got the correct coloured electrical piece in for the rail light so that went in today too. Now just need to get the shades and louvers.

Pictures from the fourty-eighth day of the remodel:

Refrigerator (right) and freezer (left) installed.

Baseboard trim near back door.

Trim around slider to dining room and baseboard trim.

Trim around linen cabinet in dining room. This cabinet goes into the dead space corner to the right of the range and the left of the main sink.

Pictures from the fourty-seventh day of the remodel:

Cabinet toe-kick trim to the left of the range.

Cabinet toe-kick trim below the main sink.

Cabinet toe-kick trim to the right of the main dishwasher.

Cabinet toe-kick trim to the right of the second dishwasher.

Cabinet toe-kick trim along the backside of the peninsula.

Pictures from the fourty-sixth day of the remodel:

View across the kitchen from the stairs up to the loft.

View across the kitchen toward the stairs up to the loft.

Shot across the freshly sealed granite counter-top.

Another shot across the freshly sealed granite counter-top.

Freshly sealed slate threshold out the back door.

Freshly sealed slate threshold out the front door.

A few pictures from the fourty-fifth day of the remodel.

View across the kitchen from the stairs up to the loft.

View across the kitchen toward the stairs up to the loft.

Low-voltage transformer for overhead lights installed and boxed.

Exhaust chase trimmed in cherry.

Main dishwasher installed.

A picture from the fourty-fourth day of the remodel.

The range is in.

The floor also got finished but it was all covered up before the range went in.

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One picture from the fourty-third day of the remodel.

Floor started going down in the kitchen.

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Pictures from the fourty-second day of the remodel.

View across the kitchen from the stairs up to the loft.

View across the kitchen toward the stairs up to the loft.

Low voltage light transformer under second sink.

Low voltage light transformer under main sink.

All three low voltage over head lights over second sink.

Dining room floor is down.

Pictures from the fourty-first day of the remodel:

View across the kitchen from the stairs up to the loft.

View across the kitchen toward the stairs up to the loft.

An outlet is now in to the left of the second sink.

An outlet is now in to the right of the second sink.

The floor is going in starting in the dining room.

Pictures from the fourtieth day of the remodel:

View across the kitchen from the stairs up to the loft.

View across the kitchen toward the stairs up to the loft.

Lights over the main sink are installed.

Under cabinet lights to the left of the range are installed.

Fan & light installed in the loft.

Kitchen/diningroom sliding door pull installed.

Pictures from day thirty-nine of the remodel:

View across the kitchen from the stairs up to the loft.

View across the kitchen toward the stairs up to the loft.

Backsplash to left of range is grouted.

Backsplash next to main sink corner is grouted.

Backsplash to the right of the main sink is grouted.

Backsplash in the second sink corner is grouted.

Pictures from day thirty-eight of the remodel:

View across the kitchen from the stairs up to the loft.

View across the kitchen toward the stairs up to the loft.

Tile threshold at back door into kitchen.

Tile backsplash and second sink.

Disposal and water filter under second sink.

Tile backsplash and main sink.

Disposal and water filter under main sink.

With the wet summer, most of the garden got a slow start this year, but August and September provided us with a lot of fresh produce. The cherry tomatoes have been going gangbusters, loads of chiles set, but few turned their mature color. Tonight is supposed to bring the first frost of the year, so after school, both me and Laurie spent a lot of time out in the garden picking just about everything that is frost sensitive. There just isn't room in the garage this year to pull and hang the tomato plants, so we picked every tomato that has even a little bit of color and put them in paper bags. Laurie picked our last couple pounds of pole beans, and I picked about 10 pounds of tomatillos.