Meg'sfoodandwinepage

Update!

After the protracted freakout and sleepless night I endured after posting the pictures below (friends coming, house dirty, floors not done, christmas shopping not done, baking not done, tree not up, bought my sister the wrong product for her birthdy after she Specifically Told Me EXACTLY WHAT PRODUCT TO BUY, dammit, why can't I ever get it right, must make good numbers for rest of month at work but how how how?) the news on the home improvement front today is quite optimistic.

The floor sanding (aka dust boming, especially with the convenience of forced air heating which can take up and recirculate sanding dust throughout the entire house, yay!!) should be done by Wednesday.  The finishing might well be done on Monday of next week.  Therefore, in theory, the fumes will have receded by Friday the 23rd.  On which day my husband will most likely drive 100 miles up to the house to commence cleaning in a probably futile attempt to save his marriage as I shop for Christmas Eve dinner that we planned to have at our apartment and which got hijacked by some other friends. 

Now the moving of the dinner, mind you, actually means less work for me (as we'll all pitch in and I don't have to see my best linens sullied).  But this also means I have to relinquish creative responsibilty and Total Control over the celebration.  Which, for me, = Big Effing Deal.  I mean, it's Christmas.  I WANT to break out all my good linens and china and be a total control freak and throw a great dinner party that goes off without any hitches!!!

However, I'm resolving to just focus on my One Appointed Dish (the Capon), take a deep breath and go with the flow on our very non-family-centered, slightly nomadic, house-cleaning-in-the-morning-included Christmas Eve Into Christmas plan. 

Oh, and for the record, it's Piedmont Wine Only (Barbera and then Barolo) for Christmas Day.  It's my party, I can serve Good Italian Wine to French People if I want to.  Especially if I have to dustmop everything first. 

Menus to follow.

I invited people for Christmas dinner

To keep this all in perspective, remember that in a fit of not-being-at-the-house-to-witness-it optimism, I (along with my Darling Husband) decided that we could safely invite people over for Christmas Day dinner. 

So here we have the progress on the current Home Improvement extravaganza:

The living room has a lot of (now very dusty) furniture and stuff in it:

While the dining room (where Christmas Dinner is rumored to be happening) has nothing in it but a lamp (soon to be removed) and a ShopVac:

Meanwhile, the kitchen counters look fabulous!!  Here they are in all their glory!

However, to put the glory into perspective, here is the wide-angle view including lack of flooring and lots of construction-related equipment:

So, the question is?  Will it all be done and can we clean up the attendant dust and construction wreckage in time to entertain for Christmas Day?  Let's just say I'm researching possibilities for dining out.

Or, maybe we can just come back to Manhattan and sit by the tree that I insist on setting up in our apartment because I'm sentimental like that and longing for piney smells and twinkly lights. 

Lest I sound negative here, the whole kitchen is actually such a vast improvement on what we had before (can't find a picture, but just picture red formica (slightly curling at the edges) on the counters with metal trim.  Everything very, very out of level.  Especially the floor.  Even this newly-laid subfloor is a vast improvement).  I am thrilled with the developments!!  (yay!) There is no longer a 20-inch Gaping Hole between the sink and the stove.  And soon there will be not only floors, but also a butcher-block table on the other side of the stove.  With dowels where dish towels can be hung.  Because there is, honest-to-god, no place to hang a single dishtowel in the entire kitchen.  Who designed this thing??  (Don't answer that, please).

However, the idea of having guests for Christmas?  Might just be a crazy pipe dream. 

Skiing the day after Christmas, given the good groundcover we already have, might not be, though!  I just ordered some ski pants, just in case.  We really hope the snow doesn't melt, not only for the sake of skiing, because snow heaped up on the straw bales we put around the foundation provides wonderful insulation for all the delicate things (like, say, water pipes and wine bottles) that we don't want frozen in the basement.

Absentee Home Improvement Rules! And, the Elk Meatballs.

So, the elk meatballs turned out great!  I used what I guessed to be a pound of ground meat, two eggs – elk meat tends to be dry – a half cup plus a little more of fine baguette bread-crumbs, a half cup of grated romano cheese (ditto on the dryness, thought it could use some fat), one giant garlic clove, and a handful of freeze-dried parsley and chives plus some liberal pinches of home-dried oregano.  A dash of Worchestershire sauce, salt, pepper. . .  mushed up by hand, shaped into 30 balls, baked in oven for 20 mins.  Added roast tomato/garlic sauce to pan and heated while the pasta cooked.  The meatballs had a terrifically velvety texture.  They were delicious with the sharpness of the tomato sauce (made from tomatoes that ripened inside after the garden froze.  Kinda sharp, yeah).

They were also very, very filling.  So there was a healthy portion of leftovers.  Which I ate for dinner on Friday night.  Coincidentally, I had the end of a bottle of fabulously smoky/meaty but well-balanced Cornas left over from my work day (I tried to drop it off at my last stop, I really tried, but that customer wasn’t interested in Northern Rhone wines.  Ah, rats!).  The wine was the perfect match – being from a lighter vintage (2002) it has what I find to be a perfectly-drinkable (ie not too heavy, not too fruity) texture.  And being from old vines on the sharply pitched granite soil of Cornas, it has a wonderfully lively acidity that is balanced by the dark tar-n-spice notes that I so love in good Syrah.  The meatballs had gotten stronger over two days in the fridge, and they seemed to love that Cornas as much as I do. 

The elk meatballs also turned out to be unnecessary, strictly speaking.  I had thawed the meat in a panic of trying to empty the freezer in Taghkanic before it was unplugged for the floor project.  I don’t know why I thought the fridge couldn’t be plugged in in the mudroom, but it actually can.  So the fridge is running.  We have more time to empty that freezer than I thought!  Happy times.

And apparently the Home Improvement is going swimmingly. 

I wouldn’t know, because I have not had to witness any of it.  Which turns out to be totally fine by me!  Here I sit, albeit a little lonely, but in my relatively orderly and rather clean apartment (we finally bit the bullet and have hired someone to clean once a month!  Actually, our neighbors found someone to clean their place (the mother of a Slovakian friend of theirs) and suggested that she could also do ours. . . . she’s happy for the work, does a great job, and doesn’t charge a fortune either.)  I feel a little rich and over-privileged  having someone clean for me.  But, for example, this morning since I didn’t have to vacuum, dust, and mop the floors, I was finally able to wash down the greasy-grimy fronts of my cabinets, not to mention the top and sides of the fridge!  Next week I may even get to cleaning out the insides of them all!  You can see why I have been banned from participating in Home Improvement.  Dirt and disorder make me lose my mind. Clean apartment = happy me. (Jola, I feel for you!)

Reports from the Kitchen Project front are all positive:  the subfloor wasn’t in too-bad shape (just lots of old linoleum and lots and lots of mouse dirt under there!).  It was possible to do a bit of leveling without raising up the floor too much (as the last people had done) so the new floorboards will be closer to flush with the dining room floor but not noticeably crooked. We were afraid that there might be some real problems underneath judging from how they’d laid the floor.  Turns out that they just didn’t know what they were doing (which was also apparent, but you never know in our house.). 

The formica has been removed!  The one really-crooked counter has also been leveled!  Soon there will be tile (actually by the end of today it might be mostly laid!).  And this time our friend Steve can work during the week, so by next weekend (if I even go up then) there ought to be fully finished new counters and even possibly a floor laid.  Actually if the floor is laid we probably won’t go up, being as how it will not yet be sanded and finished and so not really great for walking on, y’know.  Also all the furniture from the dining room and kitchen is piled in the living room.  Making even hanging out by the fireplace just a little inconvenient, too.  P thought it was a great bachelor pad – for one night only!!  He’s making his way home tonight to join me in aforementioned neat, semi-orderly apartment.

In preparation, I’m making a leek pie from the penultimate pull of leeks.  We thought it was the last, but with all that rain last Friday the ground thawed again and P was able to pull out a few more we’d written off as goners.  Yay!

Now I have to actually shower and leave the apartment (staying in until it gets dark being the danger of these wintry Saturdays at home) to pour wine for a few hours. But, lucky me, this time at the wine store that is just at the end of my block!! Yay for having at least one client I don’t have to drive to get to. Or, for that matter, schlep a bag of wine up and down the subway stairs to get to, either  (lest I forget what a pain in the ass THAT was.)

PS.  OF COURSE we forgot to take any before pictures of the kitchen.  And OF COURSE there are no during pictures, because the camera is right here, not up there.  So all I will have to dazzle you with are the pictures of a gleamingly renewed kitchen.  Oh well.

Bathroom Project Photos

I finally got around to posting the photos of our famous Home Destruction/Rennovation project from last winter.  God, did it ever seem to take forever.  We love the finished project though.

I say finished, except that of course there is still a little painting to be done (we ran out just before finishing the second coat, and since it was in a hidden alcove next to the toilet, we decided to remain in denial and pretend the project was done.  I hear that P plans to paint a little, today, bless him!).

By the way, see my irises? Aren't they pretty?  I wish I was looking at them in person, right now.  Hafta pour wine all afternoon instead, sigh.

You have no idea how happy this makes me

THAT, my friends, is my bathroom with working plumbing installed.  And even better than that?  With woodwork stained and finished and new tile and new tile floor and shelf and pretty new pedestal sink and even one coat of paint on the walls.

All that remains are a few touches -- a baseboard here and there, a final coat of paint, the installation of towel bars and the shower curtain rod, a couple of lighting fixtures. . . .and voila!  a bathroom again.

Actually, it looks so nice that we're thinking about maintaining it as a shrine to the home improvement gods and just going on using the birdbath sink downstairs in the laundry room . . .

NOT!

I'm half-jokingly thinking about throwing a party where everyone will need to go take a shower at one point -- no, nothing kinky, what are you thinking?! -- but maybe an outdoor food fight or something?   Can you see it?

Once we get it all done I can go back to regularly scheduled programming and write about grilling (chicken with mole sauce!) and Spring Fever wines (it's all about rose, baby!).  Can't wait. 

Just Thinking

There will no doubt be a time in the (nearish) future when I look upon this period of my life with longing and nostalgia for the "simpler times" it will come to represent.

All I can say until then?  1.  it's a good thing we don't have kids (because then I'd take out the onset of my Home Improvement Fatigue upon them, too.)  2.  it's an even better thing that vacation is a mere 10 days away!  I'm looking forward to being someplace warm where I can dazzle the natives with my white legs (and no, this vacation will involve no beach time -- what am I, crazy? a beach with this white skin!).

If I had remembered to bring back the camera from our house (also known as Rennovation Hell), which I didn't, you could see pictures of our shower with Gleaming Beautiful New Tile!  the walls covered with New Sheetrock! the beginning of Wainscotting! the alcove that will be my New Linen Closet! as well as Various Chaotic Shots of Plumbing Fixtures in Odd Places (the toilet in the hallway! the sink in the closet! and so on). 

We optimistically estimate that Hell will only continue for 3 weekends or so.  Then we will be in Purgatory (aka painting and staining).  Which, fortunately, involve less dust and general mayhem.  But which, unfortunately, fall into my domaine so there will be no rest for the weary (since I've taken to trying to work on the weekends as much as possible in order to escape the sight of dust settling on every surface and sawdust tracked from one end of the house to another.)

I escaped from the scene early this weekend to reconnect with the cat. . .  er, get ready for a big week at work. . . er, just get the hell away from all that dust.  Can I help it if my order-and-cleanliness-loving soul JUST CAN'T TAKE THE CONSTRUCTION DUST FOR ANOTHER MINUTE?

But did I mention that it is only t-minus two weeks on starting seeds for next summer's garden?   Fresh produce, here we come!

And also, I managed to get a little ski in on Saturday morning in our neighbor's woods on the freshly fallen snow that cooperatively held off until late Friday night and then just as cooperatively melted by Sunday afternoon.  March snow is almost welcome as long as it minds its manners, in my book.  Because Cross-Country skiing (or any skiing for that matter) is ever so much nicer with a bright sun shining and the temperature a balmy high-thirties.

Weather supposed to hold at that level or higher all week.  To which I say:  GOOD.  By the time I get back from vacation, I expect this weather thing to be sorted out and ready to head towards green grass, spring flowers, and gardening.  Thank you very much!

What We Did This Weekend

Some people I know went skiing.  Others went off to Mexican beaches for R & R. Others just relished a 3-day weekend.  In our world?  Well yesterday we worked through the holiday and got our taxes done.  Oh, and on Saturday and Sunday? Here is the post-tile destruction.  Followed by the post-sheetrock destruction, followed by the destruction of the wall that divided the room-that-was-once-a-bedroom into a half-a-room-plus-bathroom.

What a big, messy, barrel of laughs!  (The words "don't try this at home" somehow spring to mind.)

Of course we (with our friend Steve, who is masterminding all the construction with admirable good humor!) managed to stay up late and drink copious amounts of wine, etc. while playing cut-throat Scrabble (anyone want to guess who won? Could it be. . . no. . . my husband?).  Because destruction with a hangover is twice as much fun! (I wouldn't know, I held my sorry head until I went down for a nap, but I'm told it's so).  Soon, perhaps, there will be reconstruction pictures and we all can revel in the beauty that will be the new bathroom!  The gorgeous new sink is in two perfect pieces in the next room, the new tile is lying all about, the shower walls have been insulated and re-covered with cement board, there is wood panelling and sheetrock and wall paint galore. . . .just waiting to be used! 

Home improvement:  it'll be worth it in the end.

I'm going to a Happy Place

Look at this house:

  How could you not LOVE this house?   

Oh, I don't know. . . maybe when you get that phonecall at about noon from your husband (who has valiantly used his last remaining vacation day to finish Painting the Upstairs Bedroom) saying "I think we have a leetle problem here."

"What kind of little problem?" you ask.

"Well, there's no water coming from the taps in the upstairs bathroom.  Neither from the one downstairs. . .  But!  the kitchen sink works, so maybe it's okay.  Maybe I'll just shut the pump off and leave. . . ."

It's a good thing ONE of us comes from the country, for god's sake! . . . because, no, there's no way that water not coming out of pipes is in any sense okay when it was Waaayy Below Zero, given the wind-chill, last night.  Especially when (well, of course!) all the plumbing in our house is located on the North side of the house (where all those arctic wind-chills issue from.  I mean, WHERE ELSE would you put the plumbing, c'mon?).  This means only one thing. 

"THERE IS A PIPE FROZEN SOMEWHERE IN THAT HOUSE.  DO YOU HEAR WATER RUNNING THROUGH THE WALLS?  NO? GOOD.  BUT CALL THE PLUMBER. YOU GOT HIS ANSWERING MACHINE?  CALL BACK AND USE HIS EMERGENCY PAGER NUMBER.  THIS IS AN EMERGENCY.  DO NOT THINK ABOUT LEAVING THAT HOUSE UNTIL THE PLUMBING HAS BEEN UNFROZEN AND DRAINED!!!"

(Why all this took several phonecalls and did not occur to my husband on his own eludes me; he's much smarter than me.  At least he had the good sense to call me, and I paged the plumber to call the house.  From New York City.  My smart husband is, at times, remarkably helpless.)

So, Dave the plumber (our hero, our honest plumber, a real good guy!) was summoned.  He actually abandoned doing his payroll to come over in half an hour flat and thaw the frozen pipes.  Meanwhile, during the hour + it took to thaw the pipes, Philippe tacked up some plastic over the drafty bits of the basement from whence the Freezing Breeze issued and solicited advice from Dave (hereby known as Saint Among Plumbers) for the bathroom remodeling project that's slated for next year. 

(If we have children, by the way, we want them to be plumbers.  That, or wedding photographers.  Or both!  they can moonlight!  Thereby we will be comfortably supported in old age.  We say this having recently met both the best wedding photographer and most honest plumber in the world.  Still, the amount of money we gave these two good men in the past year just boggles the mind.)

So, some more valuable lessons in owning an old house have been learned.  1.  Don't let that cozy insulation the attic fool you into thinking the house is not FREEZING BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES.  Put up some plastic sheeting against that north side of the basement every fall, whether it's needed or not! 2. if we happen to be in the house (meaning, the water is on) on a night when the frigid arctic winds are blowing, leave a little trickle running out of an upstairs tap to keep the water moving. 3. isn't it a good thing this house is in the Practically Tropical Hudson Valley and we only get this goddamn icy weather a couple of times a year, not all winter long (like in Vermont, where my parents' waterline from the well -- FROM THE WELL, LIKE BURIED IN THE YARD DEEP -- froze last year)?

So, now, as long as the Herrington's Fuel guys (and I love the Herrington's Fuel guys with the other half of my heart left over from loving Dave the Sainted Plumber) actually come tomorrow like they said they would to hook up the new oil tank that is Inside the Basement on the South Side (an improvement in so many ways!), and which they filled up today in preparation, hopefully it won't matter that tonight's icy wind has most likely frozen up the old oil tank (yes, located on the North side, because, well, what a good place to put your oil tank and the hole in the foundation to let its hose in!).  Yes, that old fuel tank will most likely freeze up tonight and the heat will stop working (except that my smart husband, who is smarter than I gave him credit for, left the heat at 60 degrees thinking -- smartly -- that if it runs more, it has less chance of freezing.  And, hell, we're trying to burn down the fuel in that old tank anyhow.  Let 'er rip!).  What can we do.  At least the pipes won't burst. Maybe.

If you made me a reasonable offer on my beautiful house (newly painted upstairs bedroom!) I might take it, just for today.  Slightly precarious Christmas tree in that gorgeous bay window in the dining room included.  ;->

Wine notes?  Well, what would you drink after a day of dealing with frozen plumbing, when the wind-chill is BELOW ZERO IN NEW YORK CITY, FOR GOD'S SAKE?  We drank some Gigondas.  It was very warming.  And I cooked lamb shanks.  With tomatoes canned from the garden from that time of year when our house was so lovely with its cosmos and zinnias blooming out front. 

Random Thoughts. . .

When I write the best-selling book "Meg's Guide to Home Improvement" there will definitely be the following chapters:  Insulation -- it's your friend!  Buy the Better Materials -- you'll thank yourself later! and Primer -- why it's a good idea.

Number 1 above arises from the fact that it is actually bearable to spend time up in our house when these Artic cold fronts come in (brrrrr).  Amazing how having some insulation in the attic means your furnace actually HEATS the house.  Amazing.  Or is it more amazing that there was no insulation up there for, oh, 150 years? 

The only downside?  The mice don't like fiberglass and have found new and better places to nest than the attic.  Let's name a few:  between the mattress and boxspring of our bed (could it be true that we have two-dimensional mice?).  In the pocket of my bathrobe that was hanging over a chair (??).  In the towels that were in the cupboard in the bathroom (they've been washed and now are packed in plastic bags -- take that, mice!).

Anyhow, we spent the weekend painting our bedroom.  Painting a ceiling is not much fun.  But, now it's done.  Last-minute color-plan changes mean that we'll have a little to do next weekend, (also we ditched painting the closet and the trim) but at least we can put all the beds in their proper rooms again.   The downside to painting, and using good primer and paint, is that now we see how dirty, scratched, and badly painted the rest of the house is.  I wonder how long it will take us to forget what a pain in the ass this weekend was before we start again?

But, for now?  Christmas can come!!  We put up a tree (that's a whole 'nother story. . .) and we're ready to feast and have two days of cooking, virtually uninterrupted by work and/or home improvement.  Is it Friday yet?

They Sheetrocked. . .

. . . I cooked.

This turned out to be the division of labor this weekend, once our friend Steve arrived (just in time for the rain to start, good thing we had a chance to get the sheetrock onto the porch first!) on Saturday.

The world knows of my Farm Wife ambitions, apparently ;->

So apart from a couple of stints standing on a ladder and holding some of the larger, more awkward pieces of sheetrock, I got off easy this weekend.  (Aside from cleaning up sheetrock plaster that had tracked all over the place -- and doing so not once, but twice.  Nasty stuff.  Thank god we don't have carpets, and thank god for Murphy's oil soap!)

So I did what any other girl would do, in my position, and slow-roasted a duck.  Because what else would take 6 hours, but require like 20 minutes of actual work?  (This scenario sort of reminds me of my job, but that's another tale for another place and time).

I cranked up the oven to 450, threw the duck (salted and peppered and with an onion and its neck stuffed inside to help it stay moist, covered with aluminum foil) in for 15 minutes.  Cranked the oven down to 225 and walked away for 2 hours.  Two hours is enough time to hold some pieces of sheetrock up against the ceiling, fold 2 loads of laundry, and read the bad story in the New Yorker, it turns out.  Then I peeled some carrots and beets (the last of the garden pull!) plus some inferior store-bought turnips and parsnips and pearl onions.  I tossed these with salt, drained off the fat that had rendered from the duck (saving just enough to barely coat the veggies) and threw them in the pan.  Recovered the whole thing and put it back in for 2 more hours.  Two hours is also enough time to do the NYT Friday crossword, hang out with the guys for the lengthy cheese and wine break they took before commencing taping and plastering (which requires less motor skill than screwing in sheets of sheetrock overhead, apparently), and make a salad and dressing for dinner.

The aforementioned break apparently wasn't figured into the Estimated Finishing (ie dinner) time.  So I moved the vegetables out of the duck fat and into a coverable le Creuset, drained the fat, and uncovered the duck so it would brown.  Started a fire in the fireplace, started finishing the Pouilly Fuisse (as an aside, how adorable are two men who can do a construction project and then come downstairs and debate philosophical points while eating camembert and drinking Pouilly Fuisse?)  Took a little snooze by the fire.  Turned the oven to the minimum and re-covered the duck.  Finished finishing the Pouilly Fuisse.  Sauteed some zuchini with shitake mushrooms. . . set the table. . . . We finally sat down at 9 pm -- yes, 7 hours later.  What a strenuous day I had ;->

Some more winedrinking ensued with dinner, and sitting by the fire.  Needless to say we left all the duck-dish greasiness in the sink and the plaster-dust dustiness tracked all over the place until morning.  At which point (second cup of coffee time) my parents called, saying they were on their way back from New York to Vermont and should they stop by (we're exactly halfway).  I, delighted, said "sure!"  Then took a look around.  Uh-oh, and Steve is on his way back to finish the plastering and they'll ALL get here just in time for lunch and we'll want to strongarm my folks, and Steve, into staying for lunch because they'll get along so well and we'd love my folks to stay for lunch anyhow so they don't have to get home at 2 pm hungry with an empty fridge.

So, I took another jar of ratatouille out of the freezer, threw it in a bowl of lukewarm water in the sink, dispatched Philippe to go get more bread, and tackled the dishes and the tracked plaster dust (did I mention how Murphy's is my friend?).  By the time everyone arrived (at about the same time!) we were ready to strongarm the whole crew (after P and Steve had to go to the hardware store) into having some sausage and ratatouille and more salad (the arugula refuses to die!).

It turns out that ratatouille actually freezes pretty well.  Since I wasn't sure, I just froze the two jars, alas.  But next year I'll freeze more.  This will also help take care of the problem that we get awfully sick of ratatouille when its ingredients are in season.  In November, of course, it's wonderful, and you wish you could make/had made tons more. . .

Another culinary hurdle was passed this weekend, too, in that we ate the first of our canned tomatoes.  I'm always a bit afraid that someone will die from eating my home-canned food (despite my stringent selection of tomatoes, copious boiling, and 30-minute processing time).  But it gets easier once the first jar is out of the way. . . I threw the tomatoes into the lentil soup I made while the guys were putting the second coat of joint compound on, upstairs.   (during which time I, um, napped some more, yeah.)   Later, we ate soup in front of the fire -- How I love eating soup in front of the fire!  And we felt like we were playing hooky, too, since it was Sunday night and there we were in front of the fire, not dodging deer on the Taconic to drive back to the City.  Never mind that that only meant we had to get up crack-of-dawnish to get back to work this morning. . . .

Actually, there was NO traffic this morning. Most people seem to be already focussed on Thanksgiving.  Any my customers?  Suddenly the "if they need wine they're bound to call" rule comes into play.  They call, I place their orders, that's the deal.  I'll return to the Mad Scramble for Business Share next week.  This week, they're too busy to want to talk to a salesperson unless they need something.  Which I feel (sort-of, guiltily) okay about.

(ps, the tool set was a big hit; the drill, at least, was in constant use all weekend.  P started thinking about some other home improvement he can do himself!  Next stop, redoing our bathroom -- that is, with a little help from our friends/an electrician/a plumber. . . .)