Cabinet doors, drawers and first meal!

We have been plugging away at all the little tasks that add up to huge advancements in functionality. Appliances came in the late afternoon Tuesday.  Alex worked on the dishwasher first because dirty dishes were piled up and clean dishes no where to be found.  It installed pretty easily.

The fridge ice maker and stove were another matter.  The handy installation kits failed to include critical parts in both cases, so another trip to Lowes was required.

(Aside: I counted on our credit card bill how many times we've been to Lowes recently.  Drumroll please: a whopping 22 times since 12/22/08.)

By Wednesday afternoon, appliances were up and running.  We made our first meal in the new kitchen Wednesday night.  The menu wasn't exciting because we didn't have much prep time, but it was so much fun to cook again.

In every spare moment, I have been building cabinet drawers, drilling holes, and attaching handles.  Finally this afternoon I had the whole wall of lower cabinets completed under the pass through!

Alex worked on upper cabinets today and now those are completed too.   We had another delicious home cooked meal tonight of chicken, goat cheese twice baked potatos, wilted local kale (from our CSA), and brownies.

Flooring is Cork!

On Monday night, we received our quote for purchasing sheet linoleum and installation.  It was 50% higher than we expected and plans wound up with seams running in front of both the sink and the stove.  :( After stewing about what to do for a few days, we visited Greenovate, a local green building materials company.  They had a variety of flooring on display, including cork.  Alex fell in love with this pattern:

We went back to Greenovate today after doing some more research.  This cork is engineered with a click and lock system that would be very easy to install ourselves.  It is durable, soft, anti-static, and that lovely merle pattern will hide dirt and scuffs well.  At a little over $8/sq foot it is equally expensive as the linoleum flooring would be.  Ultimately we decided that cork flooring was more interesting and beautiful than linoleum, and self-install allows us more flexibility when we actually begin to do the work of renovating the kitchen.  So, we placed an order!

In short, the new kitchen is coming very soon!  Cabinets will arrive this Tuesday or Wednesday, and the cork flooring is expected to be in late next week.

We celebrated by eating ice cream at the best local (and national, in my opinion) creamery, Jeni's.

Filling the larder

The past two days might be better categorized as mass consumption. Saturday, Alex and I went to IKEA to order cabinets.  We chose the tildaholm style door (pictured in this post) and antik drawer pulls.  It took 2 hours to complete the order, but I'm glad we were there in person as we found a cool deep stainless sink that allows for more drawer cabinets. They will be delivered via Ikea's local delivery service, so we got to pay a lot of money for only a long receipt.

Today, Lil and I drove out to Charlie's Apples to purchase more of his organic, local, great for storage Gold Rush apples.  I picked up some for friends too, a total of 3.25 bushels!  These keep for a long long time in the fridge.  We will dehydrate some too because Lil loves dried apples.

New Local Spot - Details Lounge

Thanks to Lisa the waitress we went to the soft opening of Details Lounge last night.  Because we read the website ahead of time, we went straight upstairs to see if there were seats open at the chef-side bar.

Lucky us, there were two bar stools right in front of Drew Garms, the Chef de Cuisine (I think he's the shadowy figure at right, pretty hard to tell from this angle).  We introduced ourselves and ordered a Rye Smile and a Singapore Sling.  All mixers were house made and delicious.  Garnishes were  real maraschino cherries and fruits.  Later in the evening Alex had a Zombie and I had a Pim's Cup.

Drew presented a plate of snacks (ruben with house made pastrami, toast point with cherry compote and foie gras, and puff pastry with butternut squash puree, seared duck, and apple/squash garnish) that we devoured before remembering to take a picture.  Later in the evening we scored a basket of the paprika potato chips.  These were perfectly crunchy with that well fried bubbled texture I love!

Details was serving just a few things last night but their full menu will be available starting tonight.  Tapas style dishes are $4 - $11, cocktails range from $6 - $13. Lunch service begins Monday.  I enjoyed it so much I'll be there again Tuesday afternoon to check out full service.

Oh, and just because I'm so happy with them, here's a picture of my new shoes.  Vegan leather-like from j-41 ordered with Zappos new VIP service including free express shipping.  Woot!

Winter Veggie CSA begins!

Here's our first week of the Athens Hills Winter CSA (community support agriculture).  For those not familiar, CSAs are arrangements where consumers buy a share of a farmer's weekly harvest.  We LOVE CSAs because we get fresh local vegetables every week, the variety inspires interesting cooking, and we support a local farmer. We are splitting this winter CSA with friend Lissi.

This week's share: lettuce mix, spinach, sunflower sprouts, sweet potatoes, garlic, and mushrooms.

This is our "local" citrus, a meyer lemon, growing in our potted lemon tree.  It is almost ready for picking but still a little green on the bottom.  This fun tree has been with us for 4 years and has given us the same amount of lemons.  Not a great harvest ratio, but the blossoms smell lovely and it always surprises people that we have a lemon tree growing in the house.  :)

Our personal blog begins

We cook a lot and most people don't seem to do that these days.  We'll blog about interesting food finds here, as well as updates to our kitchen.  We plan to renovate it in December 2008 - January 2009 to make cooking and eating even more enjoyable.