"long live broc"

For reasons I'm totally unclear on, I intentionally bought red meat for the first time in maybe nine months. I blame this on two things: one, I always get overwhelmed at the grocery and feel compelled to buy the most random, nonsensical things; two, I wandered in to the Safeway near my apartment in a haze of extreme exhaustion this past weekend. So the meat was tossed in my shopping basket along with one russet potato, a toilet brush, and some Ben and Jerry's (seriously, grocery stores of America, please stop putting ice cream on sale. I have no willpower, and my hips blame you when my pants don't fit, ok?). 

Anyways, I suddenly found myself too exhausted to cook said red meat over the weekend, meaning it had a date with destiny (aka a toasty skillet) for Monday dinner. I was too busy yesterday to figure out how exactly it would meet its ultimate end, so when I got home, I headed over to one of my standby sources: Dinner A Love Story. After cruising through their recipe index, I settled on a beef and broccoli stir fry dish that seemed simple enough, and was comprised almost entirely of ingredients I already had. Nevermind that it instructed the preparer to chill the steak in the marinade for two hours. I figured something just shy of the prescribed time wouldn't be a total show stopper.

And I'm so glad I decided just go for it, and to dash back to Safeway (for probably the bazillionth day in a row) and grab the sherry and sugar I was lacking. I made 1 1/2 times the prescribed marinade/sauce, because I like to have plenty of that to go around. I also added red and yellow bell peppers because, well, I felt like it. Being bold in the kitchen and all that. It was really, really "thank goodness I have enough leftover for lunch today" good!      

putting my new little ikea bowl into the dinner prep rotation



It's not that I think I'm that awful of a cook, it's just that I so rarely enjoy the food I prepare for some reason I have yet to successfully articulate. The same does not go, mind you, for the far less healthy baked goods I turn out. Nope, just the main meals. Which explains why I'm such a healthy person... 

But that is not the point. The point, friends, is that this is a perfect quick/easy/gratifying weeknight dinner. Sophie and I found, in fact, that it goes perfectly with a bottle of red, mindless tv, and that evil Ben and Jerry's.   

a (wide angle) tour

Ok, so, I have nothing new or exciting on the cooking front after yesterday's ramblings on the muffin/cupcake adventures. Hopefully I'll find some magical source of energy between now and quitting time, and will turn out something worth mentioning for dinner tonight. Until then, though, I figured it was time for a whole bunch of photos of the new place. These are all photos from the listing, and were mostly taken with a wide angle lens (it's surprisingly difficult to capture 850 square feet on film without such measures). I've since painted all but the kitchen, and (obviously) moved all my belongings in, as well as hung pictures and the like, so it looks a bit different now. But, it's been weird and overcast in DC lately, so I'm holding off on taking the "in progress" shots until it's sunny. Anyways, here's a little tour through the eyes of the listing agent's photographer!

You've seen this snapshot of the building's exterior before, I think, from my mourning of "the one that got away." Have we talked about how the one that got away came back? I can't remember. You'll hear the whole story soon, I promise. For now, join me in admiring its pre-war stately appearance...

 

This is, clearly, the little lobby. The desk is manned during the day by a couple of characters who'll give you your newspaper or packages.

 

This is maybe the weirdest wide angle shot of them all. It's my entryway. So if you were to walk in the front door, you'd be staring at that weird circular art the staging company put up. The open door on the far left is the bedroom, and the open door on the far right is the bedroom. The closed door on the near left is the bathroom, and the open door on the near right is the kitchen. My rough little hand-drawn floor plan is directly after the weird entry way snapshot (and yes, I'm totally an aspiring artist. How did you guess?).

 

 

The living area is narrow, but long-ish, and I'm happy to report that it comfortably accommodates all of my prior living/dining room furniture. As you well know by now, I'm a pack rat/future hoarder, so the idea of getting rid of any given piece really didn't sit well with me. 

And, as you've already seen, the new LKTC!

 

The bathroom is long and narrow, but has nice tile and newish fixtures. Oh and the tub is huge!

Speaking of huge, the bedroom, as you probably  noticed on the floor plan, is the major square footage hog in this apartment. It's the room that needs the most work on my part right now because it's feeling a little empty and cavernous. That door on the far wall is my closet, which as my mother says, and as you'll see, "is worth the purchase price all by itself."

Right hand side of the closet:

And the left:

 

Finally, a feature almost as welcome as a walk-in closet...a roof deck!

So, that's my little nest. I'm still absolutely in love with it, even though I'm quickly realizing life with window units is just a littttle bit different in DC summers than life with central AC.

i walk the line

Or rather, the muffins I made this weekend do. The line between "cupcake" and "muffin," that is. I've had my eye on this recipe for coffee cake muffins since I first saw it last fall, but didn't find an excuse, or the time, to give it a try until this past Saturday, which offered a plethora of reasons to celebrate via sugary cupcakes/muffins. The derby, Cinco de Mayo, friends' birthdays, and the annual open house of dozens of foreign embassies in DC...take your pick. Any, if you ask me, is worthy of these little guys. 

Since I failed to take a photo, I borrowed this one

I really hope you have a reason to make these yourselves soon. They're really, really good. Like "wake up at 2 am for a snack and beeline for these" good (what, you don't do that?) My ignorance to general baking/cooking chemistry means I'm not quite sure what the key ingredient or ratio is, but I'm too busy stuffing my face to question it. 


As previously noted, the muffins are definitely toeing the line between breakfast and dessert. The brown sugar crumble that sits in the middle and on top of the muffin is distinctly breakfasty. But the springy, light texture of the muffin itself has a bit of a vanilla cupcake way about it.


Serendipitously, though, I think that's the perfect type of thing to bake for a day like Saturday that is also having a bit of an identity crisis. 


Hope you enjoyed your weekend of celebrations, too. I'm off to have dinner on the roof deck with a friend, who is bringing me the best housewarming gift yet: dinner itself!       

the three b's

Warning: nothing cooking related here. Just general effusiveness and rambling.

My apartment and I are in the honeymoon phase of our relationship, no question. I embrace the constantly chirping birds outside my windows, the galley kitchen, the mysterious absence of a coat closet. It embraces my borderline hoarder tendencies, prolific shoe and clothing collection, and unpredictable happy hour schedule. Naturally I can only hope that we never leave this stage behind. If I get to keep having afternoons like yesterday's, I'd say we've got ages before the post-closing glow fades (especially since I haven't actually closed yet). 

You see, I spent yesterday afternoon surrounded by sun, beer, a baguette, and a book on the roof deck of my new building. The temperature was perfect, the roof was deserted, and I got to look at nearly a 360 degree view of the city, including a glimmer of the Washington Monument in the distance. 



(my roof view, borrowed from the listing)

Maybe this doesn't sound so exciting to you? I don't know, it's probably nothing special. I've just never had a roof deck before, and outdoor space is appealing when your life is confined to 850 square feet. Humor me.

Just when I thought I couldn't be more content, watching the beginnings of the sunset from the roof, my friend called me from a few blocks away and invited me to an impromptu happy hour with some of her high school friends. In ten minutes flat, I went from solitary relaxation to bustling happy hour socializing. And then, when we'd all had enough, it was only another ten minute walk (down a charming, row-house lined, leafy street) home. Not only would such spontaneous get-togethers be impossible when I lived at my old place, but it'd also take me about an hour (sometimes more) to get home from most places in the city.  

All of this to say that I'm enamored with my new set up. I'm sure I'll have my moments of panic about the weighty commitment of buying a place. And I'm sure the first time the sink leaks or the oven goes on the fritz, I'll be a basket case. But for right now, I walk around on a little cloud, feeling like everything is just as it should be. No, it's even better than it should be. For the first time in too long, I'm just plain excited about things again.

buttery birthday dinner

The new LKTC, previewed yesterday, is pretty much the only room in "the nest" (aka my new apartment) that isn't going to undergo any changes any time soon. I don't love the cabinet colors, the layout, or the flooring, but I'm young and poor, and the honest truth is that the kitchen is 100% livable as it is, so I can afford to wait. Actually I have to wait so I can afford to spruce it up. Semantics.

Anyways, much to my surprise, as we were moving in and unpacking, everything fit! That cabinet above the sink is fairly deep, and really long, so it held all my plates, bowls, cups, mugs, and some stemless wine and champagne glasses. The floor to ceiling cabinets that you can't see in the LKTC photos are on the right by the fridge and on the left hand wall, and they magically contain all my pots, pans, baking dishes, tupperware, cloth grocery bags, various small appliances, spices, and food. Even Fiona fits in there nicely, but Kitty the Kitchenaid Stripper is just too large and in charge, so she lives towards the back of my weird green counter. 

So although I was extremely pleased at how well everything fit in cabinets, I worried that cooking/baking would prove to be a challenge given the drastically reduced counter space in the nest. Let's do a little comparison, shall we? Here's the most recent Arlington-based LKTC: 


There's easily 4 or 5 times the counter space here...

And here's the new LKTC again:

...than here!

And yes, I did actually intend to show you the new LKTC in this state of hot mess total disaster-ness. In my old kitchen, I could afford to do more meticulous, organized, well-spaced out preparations for various components of a meal. This one, however, is an entirely different animal, and I quickly had to relinquish my more type-A tendencies in favor of just using all available surfaces in rotating fashion as I tried to turn out dinner and a birthday-worthy dessert. 

Actually I also had to relinquish said tendencies in the gathering of supplies for the first Monday dinner in the nest. I love my new neighborhood, and the proximity of a grocery store to my apartment building, but it's a tiny one, and doesn't even stock beer or wine, or, apparently, corn flakes, all of which I needed, forcing me to bounce around the area sourcing supplies. 

Of course none of this would have happened if I hadn't gotten my mind so set on a handful of ideas. The first thing I knew I just had to try was cake in a can. As in cake baked IN a can. Why? you ask. Well...why not? Actually, the real answer is "because 1) two people don't need to eat an entire full sized cake, 2) I don't own cake pans, and 3) I saw it on this blog and was intrigued."

The original Ladies' Home Journal article suggests using boxed cake mix, which I was totally on board with...until I remembered that I recently saved a handful of cake/frosting recipes I'd been dying to try. One of which was a chocolate stout cake with vanilla bean frosting. And Sophie likes Guinness. And I'm generally averse to boxed baked goods. And...well, you can see how that one spiraled out of control, right? But of course the grocery didn't have beer or wine, so I was off to the liquor store. Where they only sell giant bottles of Guinness. Which was fine, because halfway in to this cake baking/frosting making/chicken cooking adventure, I needed a few sips of the stuff to get me through, and to help me forget that the tiny cake (+ half a dozen cupcakes) and the frosting contained two sticks of butter!!). In case you're curious, here are a few snapshots (of the can cake, not of my drinking straight from a large bottle of Guinness. I have some standards...).     



I used a 24-oz can of crushed tomatoes, the contents of which went straight in to my freezer for later use.



The fresh-out-of-the-oven product, which kind of looks like a giant cupcake, and which I tried to frost when it was just a touch too warm.

 

Which led to this kind of drippy icing phenomenon (I mean, it does contain a stick of butter...)

Dripping icing aside, we each ate two slices of the stuff. It was, as you  may've guessed, quickly deemed a success. I brought the cupcakes in the next day, and they got similarly rave reviews, although I do think this is a cake best eaten fairly soon after its made, as both the cupcakes and the leftover cake dried out a bit in the fridge. 

Anyways, after the can cake (and its siblings, the overflow cupcakes) were baking away in the oven, I gave Kitty the Kitchenaid stripper a rest and turned my attention to the main dish of the evening: pecan crusted chicken. Don't ask me where that idea came from (for once, the answer is not "Pinterest," "a blog," or the "dinner tonight" subscription). But again, once it was in my little head, it was stuck. And I thought to myself "I have pecans at home, so all I need is the milk and the corn flakes."

Turns out I had no pecans at home, and the grocery didn't sell corn flakes. The nearby 7-11 came to the rescue with their travel sized boxes of cereal, but I never did procure pecans. I had already bounced around my block enough to pick up the Guinness, the corn flakes, and the rest of the ingredients, and I needed to start cooking if we had any hope of eating before bedtime. Sophie was already bringing bagged salad, wine, and sponges (don't ask), so I didn't want to ask her to pick up anything else. Almonds would have to do, I decided. 

And then I realized I had forgotten to buy the dried cranberries for the salad. At that point, I decided to completely depart from the recipe, which, oddly, came from Good Morning America, and was written in extremely cheesy fashion. Since I'd already replaced pecans with almonds and nixed the cranberries all together, I felt no guilt about baking the chicken strips versus pan frying them. We were, after all, about to consume a tiny dessert made with two sticks of butter! and needed no more fat in our lives. Sophie and I agreed, though, that it came out just fine, and tasted pretty fantastic with the dressing whipped up from the same GMA recipe.


pecan-turned-almond crusted chicken

I officially deem the first meal cooked in the new LKTC a success. It's one of many "firsts" that I'm loving far more than any normal person would. First thunderstorm, first time using my tee tiny dishwasher, first take out dinner, you get the idea. If all goes as planned, the first brunch will happen this weekend before my friends and I embark on a tour of all the embassies having open houses on Saturday. Stay tuned!

nostalgia wednesdays: bread

There was this phase when we had not one, but two bread machines in the family. We had one at our house, and there was also one at the OBKB Lodge in Georgia. I can't remember when exactly this was, but I remember it fondly as the time before I worried about things like boys, wrinkles, and mortgages.

For a while there, we were making fresh, homemade bread pretty often, if for no other reason than to test out the various recipes that came in the little booklet with the machine. I think we made everything from sandwich bread to pizza dough to cinnamon rolls with that thing. I don't remember much about the mechanics of the operation, but I do remember the drool-inducing scent of the bread as it was baking away in the little white machine.

I've made rosemary olive oil bread a handful of times, and foccacia bread once, but the scent just isn't quite the same for some reason. But a couple Sundays ago, in my worry-propelled flurry of activity, I made whole wheat bread in an attempt to put something on my pantry shelves that would feed me until the move. Almost as soon as it started baking, the smell immediately transported me back to the bread machine days. 

The recipe was super-simple to make, and everything happened in the bowl of my Kitchenaid, which is good, because Kitty the Kitchenaid Stripper was feeling neglected after Fiona got all the love when I made toasted almond gelato for (F)easter dinner a couple weeks ago. 

The bread comes out on the denser side, it is whole wheat + flax after all, but it's been perfect for snacking, and for healthy(ish) breakfasts. I had been subsisting on pastries and granola bars during the busy cycle at work, so yes, I consider wheat bread healthy(ish). And at least for me, the nostalgia factor is totally worth the hour or two time commitment on a rainy Sunday. 

Oh and yes, I still have so much to tell you about my new place, which I've started thinking of as "the nest" given its strategic position amongst several courtyard trees, making my nosiest neighbors a whole slew of chirping birds. But for now, there's work to do, so I'll leave you with a preview of the new, DC-based Little Kitchen That Could, which is, in fact, the littlest kitchen to date. I might be the only one, but I'm pretty excited about the adventures to come, in and outside the kitchen...

    

"we can pack dirt"

For someone whose family has moved roughly six times (so far), I'm horribly averse to the whole ordeal, especially because all of my Arlington moves thus far were within the same building, rendering packing unnecessary. Thankfully my mom swept in to town last Tuesday, and helped me pack up my life. In the event you haven't met me, or haven't set foot in my many apartments, I have a lot of stuff. Not quite hoarders level or anything, but let's just say no shelf or closet goes unused in my life.

So while I grew annoyed/weary/frustrated at the seemingly multiplying possessions in my old Arlington apartment, Mom was an indefatigable force of bubble wrap, packing paper, and organization. In a day and a half span, we managed to box up everything in my life, including a planter that had, you guessed it, dirt, still in it, stopping pretty much only for food, more supplies, and sleep. Then, Friday morning, three guys from "Two Guys and a Truck" (yes, I was also confused by the math there) showed up, and spirited away every last thing (save for my clothes). 

Even though turning over full control of my possessions to strangers was stressful, the fact that my parents and I barely had to lift a finger thanks to the movers was easily the best decision we made throughout the entire move. Even when some jerk parked in the "emergency no parking zone" in front of my DC apartment, partially blocking the moving truck's access to the loading dock, I barely flinched. I just called to have him towed, and carried on pointing out where I wanted my various pieces of furniture to go. 

By lunch time Friday, the movers were gone, and Mom, Dad, and I were left with dozens of boxes to unpack, pictures to hang, walls to paint, and decisions to make. Several trips to the local True Value hardware were involved, and the weekend was a flurry of little projects and closet/pantry/shelving logistics. I sitll don't technically own the apartment, but that's another story for another post, because I'm still exhausted by the whole adventure. I now have internet in my life again, so expect prolific posts with before and after photos and the like. For now, though, here is my move in photos, mostly captured by my Mom, who is a closet paparazzi-corps member.     

This literally isn't even the half of it...

Basement staging area

Leaving the old apartment behind

Unloading at the new apartment

Mom had plenty of time to capture this moment, given my herculean struggle with the 100 year old lock

Weary from the move (and still ignorant to the fact that all the boards my Dad is holding are the wrong size)

Trip #3 to True Value

I love having a neighborhood hardware store  (and dry cleaner, and liquor store, and grocery, and...)

Celebratory "we survived!" prosecco