I’m baking this cake again.
Tomorrow is L’s birthday (shhh – don’t talk about it, he refuses to age) so I’m baking him a cake of his choosing. (Usually I’m the one who chooses cakes).
He chose the coffee almond crumb cake. Quelle surprise! It has coffee so the mister loves it.
Now let’s just hope it comes out right, as I might’ve slightly overbeat the butter-sugar-coffee mixture. I bet it’ll save itself in the oven though.
Happy almost birthday L!!!!!
So from the disclaimer under my Reunion Food post, you probably already understand that we were on vacation for a couple of weeks. We had an awesome time and I got a lot of shopping done while there.
For some odd reason stores like Michael´s and Hobby Lobby don´t exist in Holland. Big time crafting never hit off here. The same goes forother ´domestic arts´ like those in the kitchen.
Sure there are enough wonderful home cooks here, who are inventive and will go the length to get the supplies they need, but generally that brings you to crazy expensive specialty stores.
Not in the good old USofA. The kitchen and-or craft loot is everywhere to be picked up and enjoyed. So I had a blast. Just look at the picture here to see what wonderful items I scored. Some I bought in shops there, some I ordered online, and some I got as gifts from family members. I’m incredibly happy with ALL of it!
And the fact that I’ll soon have a nice, new, big kitchen, will actually give me room for my stuff!
I didn’t post any before pictures. Didn’t take any either. Which I really regret by now. But oh well, I have the realtor’s pics, from the listing. It shows the house with the previous owners’ furniture, which is everything but my style, but it also shows the way the house looked ‘before’.
The room which will become the master bedroom is situated right nextdoor to the full bathroom. (We’ll have 1 full bath, with a double sink, a toilet, a separate shower and a big bathtub, then we have two other half baths. One being half in the sense that it’s just a toilet and a small sink, the other half bath is a shower and a sink. And then there’s the sauna, but that’s no bathroom – it’s a no-bath-room!)
The to-be master bedroom is a nice large, light room. However, 2 of the walls were wallpapered by this IMNSHO horrible/tacky wallpaper. It was kind of a damask white on white with glittery pattern. A definite dyi job, where the pieces of wallpaper didn’t always touch and sometimes revealed part of the bright red wall hidden behind it.
Yes, the wallpaper and the red walls had to go!
Now besides painting the walls, we’ll update this room by adding a walk-in-closet. We’ve pretty much figured our what we want with that closet, now D just needs to let us know if (that) he can do what we envision. But even if the design needs to be re-done, eventually there’ll be a closet, that’s for sure!
And yes, yes, I know that I could transform one of the ‘spare’ bedrooms into a w-i-c, but what if we want to use it for something else. And wait, it’s not in my own room, if we have guests I’d feel weird about walking in and out of there barely dressed. Plus, our room is sizeable enough that we can include a w-i-c. And a vanity next to it!
On to the Kitchen.
So in my last post I talked about the door that wasn’t there. Today I’ll talk about the range that isn’t there anymore. I have this awesome awesome stainless steel 5 burner full on stove. It’s a thing of beauty. The kitchen of our new home however did have a gas line installed, but at the same time an electric (induction) range.
First off, I know nothing about cooking with anything but gas, it freaks me out.
Second, you need a whole new special set of pans for induction. Now I don’t mind buying new pans, but the ones I like aren’t suitable for induction.
So the range had to go.
And now the range is gone! The empty spot there is a thing of beauty. To me at least. Now I’ll just need to get on Ebay to sell the range and hood, as they are perfect and expensive, but just not what I need in my kitchen.
Saturday morning we went back to the house again, and then Saturday afternoon and Sunday afternoon. We’re actually starting to do stuff there ourselves too. Saturday morning we showed my parents the house (they’d just arrived from Colorado). Again there’d been a bunch of visible progress done. A lot of plastering had been done.
Then that afternoon we came back to put industrial style toilet bowl cleaner in the toilet bowls. We then met out next door neighbors and talked to them for a little bit before going home.
Today (Sunday) we went back to actually clean the toilet bowls after they’d soaked in the cleaner overnight. The downstairs bathroom came out sparkling. Very nice! I now feel comfortable actually going there. The upstairs one is a whole different story. You really learn things you do NOT want to know about people when you buy their house. The amount of calcium deposits that’d turned brown/black is insane. I scrubbed my arms out for at least a half hour (after it soaking for 24 hours) and I barely made a dent in the brown grossness. I decided to dump even more of that cleaner in the bowl and leave it overnight again. Tomorrow will be turn nr 2 and hopefully some white will start showing. If not, I guess we have no choice but to replace the thing. I want my new house to be beautiful and sparkly and wonderful, not filled with darkened calcium deposits containing who-knows how many bacteria and such.
On to the yard. I read up on conifers yesterday as there’s a conifer hedge between our and the neighbor’s yard. I clipped away some of the overhanging branches and decided I need to buy a bigger hedge trimmer to shape it completely and get it ready for winter and next year. Never thought the yard work would start before we’d actually live there, but I don’t want to end up having to take them our because I didn’t pay attention immediately. Apparently conifers are very sensitive!
So again, the news is that an amazing amount of work has been done. I’m so friggin excited by the progress D and J are making (oh and D’s daughter (also D) was there to look around as well on Thursday). I guess we’ll need to start figuring out which moving company we want to use, when to pack and what day to ask the movers to be there. If it keeps going at this speed, we can move in before the end of the month!
We closed on the new home yesterday. I’m so friggin’ excited about it. We went for the inspection at 10 (and found that the sellers had left all kinds of stuff of which they consequently asked us ‘you wanna have it’ — uhm… no!) and then to the notary (which in Holland is a serious legal job for which you’ll need to specialize for a while after attending law school) to actually close. The house became our property at 11.20 am exactly. Yes, the time is specified in the legal document. We then proceeded to sign over our life/paychecks to the bank for the next 30 years and at 11.40 am to the minute, our mortgage contract was legally signed as well.
Instead of celebrating or going back to the house, we then walked to the tram to get to our offices, where I had to rush into a meeting completely unprepared the minute I got in there. (I hadn’t gotten the agenda and underlying memo’s until that morning, while I wasn’t at the office. I don’t usually go in unprepared, I just didn’t have anything…)
After work, at 7.30 pm we met up with our contractor (who happens to be a friend) to walk through what needs to be done. The sellers came by too to pick up some of the stuff they left. (There’s still stuff they’ve left in the house, but I guess that’s our property now, I now have 3 extra tv’s I don’t need… and some bath sponges…)
After we did the walk-through with D (our contractor) he asked when we wanted him to start. We joked and said, well, tomorrow, or yesterday, why aren’t you finished yet. D responded with “sure, we’ll start tomorrow” which totally surprised us, but made us very happy.
Today after work we decided to stop by the house to look at it. We didn’t expect to see any progress. We figured they might’ve just put some stuff in the house which they’d work with later. We figured they’d needed to go shopping first, or do whatever. We really had no idea what to expect, but we surely didn’t expect to see a wall broken through and a door placed instead and another door taken our and the beginnings of it being closed off. WOW, they sure made progress.
I was very sad that I didn’t bring my camera. Now I not only didn’t have before pictures, but I’d miss the in-between-pictures too. So L took 2 pictures with his iPhone. Thank goodness for him being the geek he is, he makes me very happy!!!
Some days you’ve just gotta say ‘screw seasonal’. Sure, the seasonal veggies are better, but why can you only eat heavy potato dinners or chicken and dumplings or chicken and noodles when the weather is cold and dreary? Why would it be unacceptable to eat something like that on a nice summers day?
You don’t know?
Good!
Exactly, there is absolutely no solid reason to never swim against the stream. I mean, salmons do it all the time, and they’re wildly popular. Right? (Well, okay, not with me, but the fact that they swim against is good, that’s cool, I like that… Now go away fishy, I don’t like you!)
What you read above plus 25 million-zillion other random thoughts went through me as I bought chicken and soup-veggies (lazy me) while declaring that I was going to make chicken and noodle soup.
Sure, I realized I wasn’t sick. And I knew it wasn’t fall or winter. And I voiced that concern to myself.
And then I dismissed all that and proceeded with my grocery shopping with the knowledge that I was going to eat chicken noodle soup that night.
Things like this happen to me quite often. I don’t know why. I can’t help it. (And as long as my beloved doesn’t complain about the food he gets, I’ll keep on doing it – for sure!)
As soon as I got home from the store – and put away all my groceries, I got started on the noodles. Then I got started on the chicken stock. Using the cheater’s way – I combined pieces of bone in chicken breast with some chicken bouillon cubes and threw in some seasonings.
While throwing in the seasonings I decided chicken noodle soup didn’t have to be wintery if I didn’t want it. If I’d keep it a light, thin soup. No cream of something, no milk added, no flour, just broth with chicken, some summer veggies and noodles. I made it a summer soup. Or at least a not so wintery soup.
And there we had it. Chicken noodle soup in summer. With home-made noodles (as that’s the sole reason why I want chicken noodle soup, I jsut want the from scratch puffy, slippery and oh-so-tasty noodles. The chicken soup is just an excuse.
Despite the heat that’s become a little too much for me to bear at times, I’ve really been enjoying summer. At the same time, I’m thoroughly looking forward to fall too. I can’t wait until I’m ready to eat the heavy stuff again. To eat my noodles with mashed potatoes. To make thick, heavy stews, and chicken with stuffing instead of on the grill. Yes I truly love all the different seasonal foods. I just don’t always stick to the right season.
[print_this]Valerie’s summer chicken noodle soup
- 2 cups Flour
- 4 Egg yolks
- 1/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- some bone-in chicken
- seasonal thin cut soup veggies
- summery-seasonings
- enough chicken bouillon cubes/powder to make a broth
You just mix the flour, salt, baking powder and egg yolks until everything sticks together. Roll it out and cut thin strips from it (whatever size you like, just kindof similar in size). Let them dry on a kitchen towel. If you have a pasta maker, things get even easier, just put it on the widest setting and pull the cough through, then cut it. – No hand-rolling needed!
In the mean time put as much water as you need (measure please!) to make your soup in a pan and add the bone in chicken. Add half the bouillon cubes you need and let it get to a simmer. Let the chicken simmer until the meat practically falls of the bone (If you buy relatively small thigh parts or so, this shouldn’t take too long).
Remove the bones, but leave the chicken in there, then add seasoning and the rest of the bouillon cubes to taste. Bring it back to a simmer and add your noodles. They’ll puff up a little. Once they’re puffy, (this goes away again) add your soup veggies, and let it stand until the veggies are as tender as you like them. Serve and enjoy![/print_this]
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