Oh Hai

Remember me?  What's been going on with you?

I have a kitchen reno post all spooled up, an epic book review post, and now this general catch-up post.

I lost track of time and then all of a sudden December was upon us, with all that "December" entails - frantic gift buying, cookie baking, friend visiting, and memory-making - made all the more challenging by the fact that all our stuff is currently in Momma D's basement/garage.  Compounded by the fact that we just spent an ungodly amount of money (that we don't have, per se) making a giant litterbox for our cats in our basement (at least, that's how they're thinking of it) and it was only going to be sealed up with concrete yesterday.

All that being said, here is the latest from my renovation diaries:  I can't recommend my Underpinners enough.  They BLASTED through the job.  What usually takes them 6 weeks took them 4.  Yesterday we got our concrete pad poured which means we'll be able to walk on the floor today.  As of right now, the staircase is short about 4 steps and we've been going up and down on it into the basement, using a pallet leaned up against the wall as the last 4 "stairs."  I'm a little confused how a staircase minus the bottom third can even support any weight, but I guess wood is a magical substance?  That's how I'm rationalizing it anyway.  I basically HAVE to believe that wood is a magical substance after seeing the state of the 100+ year old joists in my home.  Bonus points to this text exchange from one of the guys on my underpinning team:

Steven: "...the concrete pour went smoothly."
Me: "Is that a pun? Cuz if so, I like it."
Steven: "I was hoping you'd catch that."  

Obviously, the sexual tension is unbearable.  J/K J/K J/K.

We've had a contractor in to quote us on HVAC and framing, drywall, and finishing.  As I've mentioned, I'm acting as the general contractor on this job so I'm scheduling my own drains guy, a plumber (who is different from a drains guy, as it turns out), and an electrician.  I'm learning a LOT about building code and permits and I'm feeling pretty good about the contractor we've hired.  He's worked for a friend of ours and according to my friend, the contractor and I will be a match made in heaven.  He's VERY cheap and I basically just need him to be my hands.  With my design vision and his labour, we should be able to make a beautiful space together.

We bought our Xmas tree this weekend.  Even though the Dotytron is 6'4" and WE KNOW THIS, we saw that the tree was towering over him and still convinced ourselves we could get it into the house?  I don't know why.  We ended up lopping off about 2 feet and the point is scratching the ceiling.  The Dotytron gets super-angsty about the tree every year.  He has very specific tastes and they are never appeased.  This year, we bought off some dude who owns a farm, sets up shop in the Canadian Tire parking lot, and lives in a trailer for the month of December, probably subsisting on the Canadian Tire chip truck fries, which isn't a bad life, if you ask me (they are hands-down the best chip truck fries I've ever encountered).  We bought a white fir, which has a lot of breathing room between the levels of boughs.  This is good for decorating - lots of boughs for hanging decorations on.  However, the bark seems soft and I think the tree is leaning.  The memory of our tree falling over last year is still fresh in my mind, so I feel like I'm walking around with a nervous weight in my chest as I await the call from our caregiver that the tree fell on one/both of the babies and (even worse) all my vintage ornaments got smashed to pieces.

In preparation for the furniture rejigging that's going to occur once the basement is done and our official family recreation room goes subterranean, I've been trawling Craigslist and Kijiji for furniture deals.  I found a Thonet-style chrome rocker for $40.  FORTY!!!  I'm probably going to end up re-selling it for more.  Another find was two Bertoia style diamond chairs (even the knock-offs go for $450 EACH!) for $260 (total for both).  I bought two sheepskins to throw on there and I finally unpacked them the other night and let's just say, the bliss of lying on a fluffy sheepskin was so nice that it resulted in me and the Dotytron looking up queen-sized sheepskin blankets, which obviously spiralled into looking into fur blankets.  I was so taken with my sheepskin that $3000 for a red fox comforter suddenly seemed like a sound idea (within the YOLO framework).  Anyway, get a sheepskin.  They are AMAZING!  I laid on one and put the other one upside down (so that the fleece was touching me) so I was in a sheepskin cocoon and basically had the best nap of my life.  I bought them online - they were $60 each, which I think is a pretty good price.

Both Wonder Twins are now walking, with the Quincess having made up for his earlier deficit.  He now walks more often and confidently than Lindsay Lou-Lou, and is a big fan of giving himself a round of applause after a display of upright prowess.

This video is long and only appeals to people related by blood to the Wonder Twins.  I no longer have time to edit the videos I'm throwing up on here.  However, video footage of kids is the best.  We went down memory lane and checked out video footage of the Big Yam from two years' ago, this time and it was heart-rending.  Also, if you stick around to the 2:20 mark you see Lenny's crip-crawl and at the 3:19 mark you can hear the disgustingly adorable way Quincess says "peeakaboo."

Here is what I've been cooking lately:

Homemade sticky buns!  I subbed out 1/2 the flour called for in the recipe with whole wheat flour.  The sticky sauce is delightful - a bit of honey adds some depth and acidity to the sweetness.  I only used half the amount of the sticky sauce called for, but drizzled a bit on each bun as they were warmed and eaten.  Recipe here.

Brisket!  I love making brisket because it means we have brisket braising liquid in the house, which means that our shepherd's pies, mushroom pastas and the like are considerably enriched.

This was freezer pozole I warmed up one night when I was manning the dinner mayhem solo.  This was a lifesaver.

Biscuits!  I'll also post my go-to biscuits recipe below.  It's a little fussier than most, but I do love it - the results are tender and flaky, with a good burnished crust.  Sturdy enough to take being sandwiched around eggs and bacon, and delicious on their own with butter and jam.

I don't think I've made a double-crust apple pie in over a decade.  I made this one and instantly questioned why I had avoided for so long.  Based on this recipe from Joy the Baker.  Overall, I was happy with all elements of the recipe except I would dial back or omit the nutmeg entirely, and my apples shrunk down a lot so there was huge gap between the top lid and the filling.  Possibly due to my choice of apples (granny smith).  I might try golden delicious next time and see if it yields better results.

Rice cooker one-pot meals!  Soy sauce chicken rice with Chinese sausage (lap cheong), chicken thighs, dried shitake mushrooms, brown basmati rice, and some stir baby bok choy added at the last minute.  I used low sodium soy sauce and this was a HUGE hit.  

I feel like I eat a variation on this meal about once every two weeks.  "Slop on a plate topped with a fried egg and served with guacamole."  In this case, we have black bean and sweet potato migas.  Traditional migas has you stirring scrambled eggs into the mixtures along with the crumbled tortillas chips.  I wasn't sure how that would be received by the younger folk, so I added the eggs on the side.  

Last night we had my mom over for dinner so we had a classic Sunday night lasagna with caesar salad. I made two, so we have one for the freezer.  Each lasagne got a layer of 1lb of frozen chopped spinach incorporated, which means the kids got some vegetables in there as well.

In terms of kid eating habits, I can say that one of the good points of having a nanny is that the babies pretty much only eat my food, and are thus maintaining their ability to be good eaters.  They obviously have their favorites - yogurt, hot dogs, and sweets - and we have definitely been more lax about letting them have the odd treat than we ever were with the Big Yam.  They also have their preferences - they will rarely touch raw vegetables (save avocado, and the odd grape tomato), but they eat cooked ones fine.  The Quincess loves his carbs, hard.  We have been referring to him as the "rice queen" (tongue in cheek, of course) because he loves rice so much.  They will also eat anything in a pie shell - so a spinach and ricotta pie or a quiche loaded with vegetables goes down the hatch easy, to the point where one 9" pie isn't enough for the whole family.  This is frightening.  The Big Yam is a bit more resistant.  He eats baby carrots, and loves cooked beans and peas.  Other vegetables are a bit of a crap-shoot, but we can make him try, with reasonable success.  One of the things working in our favour is his lack of numeracy skills.  When we're negotiating the number of bites he has to eat, he frequently overshoots.  "How many bites do you think?" "TWENTY TWELVE!"  

As we enter the holiday season, here are some fun gift suggestions for kids the Big Yam's age.  This is all spurred by this awesome birthday present my sister got him, which is a logic/reasoning game called "Rush Hour Jr.":  

Different levels require you to block the ice cream truck in with other vehicles and the kid has to figure out how to get the ice cream truck out  the opening, while only moving the other vehicles as their orientation/path dictate.  It's super-fun, and the Big Yam has a great time playing it.  This lead me to other games made by the same company, Thinkfun.  They're all kind of nerdy, fun, logic/reasoning games.

This game allegedly teaches kids coding and programming and is "the most backed boardgame in Kickstarter history." It's won a tonne of awards.  

Bug Trails is a colour-based dominoes-type game.  I tried to find it for a stocking stuffer, but no luck.  

Mighty Mind is a classic, Montessori-type "toy".  It allows kids to make the shapes/figures outlines on the cards using shapes.  Kids learn dexterity and geometry and develop their spatial reasoning.  This was a component on the gifted test, and I have always nerdily been into IQ test type "games" - so this is right up my alley.  They make a magnetic version which would be good for travelling/road trips. I bought this as a stocking stuffer on the pricier side of things.

Magformers are a magnet-based building system that allows kids to do non-directed building and construction of three dimensional objects.  The fact that the sides of the shapes are magnetized is a big plus for me - not only is it cool, it's also handy for clean-up purposes.  For reasons I can't quite fathom, Magformers are RIDICULOUSLY expensive.  Like, the standard set is $100.  That's crazytown.  This reminds me that I should start looking online on Craigslist or Kijiji to see if I can find anything used.

For kids who like BopIt! (which my kid does), then Simon is the classic.  It's a pattern matching game - Simon shows you an increasingly complicated sequence that you have to match.  They apparently make a pocket-sized one (again, this would be good for travel) that I've heard retails for $9.99 but for some reason Amazon.ca is listing it for SIXTY FIVE DOLLARS, which is bananas.  I'm not sure why it's so expensive, unless there's been a run on them?

We kept it fairly simple (?) for the Big Yam this year.  We got him a robe, because our house is always cold, a fact that should be ameliorated once we get all our ducts connected.  One of the good things about the basement reno is that pulling everything open and apart revealed that  we have entire sections of HVAC that aren't connected properly, which we will have rectified and then maybe our house won't be an icebox all the time.   I bought him some books.  We got him the magnetic Mighty Mind and my mom bought him the Robot Turtle game.  I also got this Thinkfun dice game as a stocking stuffer, alongside some boxes of Smarties (which he loves), a magnifying glass, and some cheap wind-up toys.  The babies are being given the gift of life, in addition to a set of jammies that matches a set we got for the Big Yam.  I also bought a set of second hand gears for them, which should go along with a hand-me-down gear set that I gave my nephew ages ago.  

What are all you parents getting for your wee ones this Xmas?

Fin.

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Buttermilk Biscuits

4 2/3 c. all purpose flour

1 1/2 t. cream of tartar

1 1/2 t. baking soda

1 1/2 t. salt

1/2 c. cold vegetable shortening

approx 2 c. buttermilk

1 stick unsalted butter, cut into chunks and softened at room temperature

1 T. unsalted butter, melted.

- stir together dry ingredients, then blend in shortening with your fingertips or a pastry cutter until no big chunks of shortening remain.  The mixture should look like a crumbly streusel.

- add 1 3/4 c. buttermilk and stir, adding the remaining buttermilk a bit at a time if the dough seems dry.  You want a soft, sticky dough.  Dump the dough onto a lightly floured surface and pat into a flat rectangle, about 1" thick.

- Take 1/2 of the butter and spread it on the top 2/3 of the dough.  Fold the dough in thirds like a letter, and then turn the dough letter 90 degrees.  Pat it out again into a 1" thickness and repeat with the remaining butter.

- Pat out the dough 3/4" thick and then use a circle cutter to cut out the biscuits.  Brush with the melted butter and bake in a preheated 450F oven until golden brown, about 20-25 minutes.

Kitchen Reno Times

We are approaching the finish line (she jinxes herself) on the basement renovation, so what better time than now to take you through our kitchen renovation?  Our new kitchen is nearing the 9 month old mark, and we are starting to take its beauty and organization and blessed, blessed dishwasher for granted.  It feels like we've always had it, and so a Lil' Ugmo kitchen retrospective is in order, lest we forget.

NEVER FORGET:

This is what we bought.  Laminate counter in a weird burgundy/blood/black marble patina, faux wood laminate cabinets over solid wood frames (talk about BUILT IN!  Those cabinet frames were basically fashioned from 2x4s), a disgusting, cracked mirror held together with packing tape hiding lord-knows-what.  Outlet covers yellowed with age and cooking, congealed oil taunting us from the oil wells of the ventilation hood that didn't work in the five years we lived pre-kitchen reno.  It was a bit much.

We went in there, and took all the cabinets down, and painted them in the backyard of our old rental.  The Dotytron went to TOWN that summer while he was looking for a gig in the school board and cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom.  He found a rotting mouse carcass in one cabinet and we found cockroaches INSIDE our fridge.  We hired an exterminator, and then in the most cost-effective way imaginable, built a kitchen WITHIN the kitchen, by lining all the shelves with adhesive shelf paper and putting storage containers inside so our stuff wasn't touching anything.  

Even at that, before moving in, I vowed that I would never cook in there.  I tried to think of ways that I could avoid the stove and oven entirely and just fashion meals out of the slow cooker, a toaster oven, the panini press, and the microwave.  Five years of lovingly documented dinners on this blog belie my conviction to the cause.  This is how the kitchen looked a few months after we moved in:

And that's how it remained for five years, and the birth of our first son.  We washed countless baby bottles, so many dinner parties worth of dishes, and so very many pots and pans by hand.  I used to say that when the oil in the hood overflowed, then I would reno the kitchen.  We made do, and it wasn't so bad.  It's never so bad when you're living in it.  It's your home, you know?  You see that aluminum, patio door that's frozen shut and is the colour of dried blood?  That's our patio door, dammit!  I also miss the sight of all my mason jars lined up like little soldiers, out in the open.  It's so orderly and pleasing to my pioneer/faux homesteading soul.

When the time came that a kitchen reno was looking like a possibility, I spent countless hours on the Ikea kitchen planner site.  I'm not kidding you: HOURS.  So, when I tell the Dotytron in no uncertain terms that this is MY house, I mean it.  Technically, yadda yadda, his name is on the title, blah blah blah.  Details!  When it comes down to it, this house is MINE.  My decisions, my thought, my hours and hours of MY precious time went into thinking things through so that it everything has a place.  So that the tone of the backsplash tile goes with the floor tile and the cabinet finish.  So that our edge pulls on the cabinets were NOT placed vertically on cabinet uppers as my then-contractor thought.  Things I never pay a contractor for: telling me how things should look.  I just need you to be my hands, man.  If I had the time, I wouldn't even need you to do that.

This is how our kitchen looks now (or it did, 5 months ago, when there weren't a million fruits and boxes of Cheerios piled on the counter).  Ikea Akurum (now discontinued, thanks Ikea!) kitchen with Applad fronts and Berenson edge pulls.  Wolf 36" range (my precioussss).  KitchenAid fridge and dishwasher.  Vent-a-hood range hood.  

EFF Yeah, pull out pantry times!

Our fridge remained carefully curated for about 1 week.  Now you can barely find the fridge handle through the cover of letters from school and random photos.

I bought some reclaimed barnboard and my contractor made floating shelves out of them.  I love these.  They really warm up all the white.  Faucet is a Grohe, sink is a Blanco, divided sink.

New patio doors!  These have built-in blinds that are sandwiched between the glass - they never get dusty, huzzah!  You control the tilt and bring the blinds up and down with a sliding magnetized pull on the side.

I love my backsplash tile.  It has an off-set raised three dimensional pattern.  I had the tiler alternate the orientation so the pattern is more pronounced and you get some new planes and lines.  

There are some people who advocate the "save your pennies and then do the renovation/trip/whathaveyou when you can pay for it with your savings" approach.  I say, boo to that shiz!  Then you end up like the first 10 minutes of the movie Up.  You keep smashing that jar for all the little stuff and you never get to Paradise Falls.  This kitchen is our Paradise Falls.  It has made SUCH a difference in our lives.  Also, with the way house prices are going in downtown TO, we're never, ever leaving.  Unless we happen to luck out and capitalize on the 3 months of the only downtown in Toronto history, like we did when we bought Lil' Ugmo.  At this rate, semi detached houses our size, in our location, that already have the basement underpinned (full height) and have the second bathroom (check!) are going in the eight hundred thousand range.  EIGHT HUNDRED.  That is the definition of unsustainable, folks, unless our real estate market/transit infrastructure starts to change muy rapido.  

To be honest, I'm up for doing a size upgrade and doing the renos.  The Dotytron very much is not.  He thinks I'm sick in the head for even contemplating it.  I may very well be.  I should have been a general contractor.

Fin.