chilly

Once again, I'm not feeling particularly nostalgic about anything. I suppose that has a lot to do with life being too hectic and complicated for wistfulness (or dishes or cohesive ensembles or home cooked meals or laundry or...) lately.  

So, in the absence of any of that business, I figured I might as well turn my attention to an often-forgotten list: kitchen covets. I'm going to preface this post with the firm statement that no, I do not have a drinking problem, I just happen to have had my eye on two alcohol-related kitchen items for a while now. Please do not call a)my mother, or b)Betty Ford after reading this. My mother would say "you go Jenny!" and Betty Ford would say "that girl is way too poor to detox on our terms."

Anyways, now that we've established that I'm not at all rehab-bound, may I present the first thing on my list of eventual "to buys." Whiskey rocks. I'm not a big liquor drinker (minus holiday season 2011, in which all I drank was straight liquor, but, that's another story for another blog), but when I drink it, I want nothing muddying it. Definitely not soda, but preferably not even ice. Enter whiskey rocks, which keep your liquor chilly, but unmarred by other liquids. And I find them strangely stylish in a rustic way. Heaven.

photo care of uncommon goods' site

Speaking of keeping alcohol cold, but undiluted, I find this little invention fascinating and amazing. It's a corkcicle. As in, a cork with a faux icicle attached. You fill the faux icicle with water and freeze the whole thing. Then, once you pop open a bottle of white wine and pour a few glasses, you put the corkcicle in place of a regular cork, and it keeps the wine chilly. For those of us who live in shoebox apartments short on space and/or just do not have the patience for a whole ice bucket getup, this is perfect! I think this would be the perfect addition to my Monday night dinners with Sophie (which will hopefully resume when the busiest two to three weeks of my life conclude on/about April 30), and it's at the top of my birthday wish list. 

photo care of uncommon goods' site

And now, I will stop talking about booze and go consume just a little bit of it at girls' night with the coworkers. Happy hump day, everyone. 

patio picnic

On Tuesday, I went to the ballet with a few friends. As you'd expect, food and drinks are ridiculously overpriced in places like the Kennedy Center, and so while we've subjected ourselves to the price gouging before, we decided this time, we'd have a picnic in which be brought our own food. 

We weren't entirely sure of the Kennedy Center's policy on such things (we knew you couldn't take anything in to the theaters, but the lobby?), but decided to risk it. It just so happened that Tuesday and Wednesday of this week boasted temperatures in the high 60s, so we ended up enjoying our picnic on the patio and didn't need to worry at all about getting nabbed with mini bottles of champagne inside the lobby.

It was such a perfect day to sit on the expansive stone patio overlooking the Potomac, watching the last touches of pink fade from the sky. Once it got dark, you could see all the lights from the surrounding neighborhoods, and stare at the innumerable flights floating in to National airport. Although we're wearing our coats in this picture, it was actually beyond balmy by January standards. I love it.

 

I had a really busy few days, so I didn't manage to bring anything too creative to eat or drink. Instead I just picked up a pre-made noodle concoction from TJ's, and a few mini bottles of champagne and some OJ from a store near my building. I had every intention of a homemade touch coming in the form of these peanut butter nutella cookies, but they were a bit of a flop.

When I first found the recipe and read through the comments, I was aware of the potentially dry dough situation, but wasn't prepared for what I ended up with. My dough was a crumbly mess, even after the prescribed 15 minutes in the fridge. I tried my best to form the dough in to balls and press them on the parchment paper as suggested, but that's pretty much how the cookies remained. They never flattened out, and the resulting cookie was just...odd.

My friends ate a few and claimed they were tasty, but I was underwhelmed. Adding insult to injury, I also set off the smoke detector in my apartment for the second time in as many weeks, which is a horrifyingly harsh experience. I think the issue is the parchment paper, which I also used when I made the ginger spice molasses cookies and set of the smoke alarm. But really how do you get around that? Guess I need to add silpat mats to my birthday wish list...

occupy starbucks

The lazy weekend is a concept that's kind of lost on me. I'm pretty much biologically incapable of sleeping past 7 am, and I inherited my dad's unrelenting need to be a)in motion, and b)accomplishing a task. 


But for the past three or so weeks, I've been operating at an unsustainable pace. Life has been a blur of all day training sessions, happy hours, dinners, brunches, movie nights, nights out, shopping, and fretting (about my living situation). 


So I put a moratorium on making any sort of plans past dinner time yesterday. After dinner, I went home, watched a little bit of football, and went to bed at an hour that most people my age would just be gearing up to leave for the night. And then I slept for an amount of time that I'm not entirely clear on (that whole fall back thing perplexes me more than I should admit). 


When I woke up, I decided to compromise with my overactive self, and spend a lazy morning at Starbucks (along with the rest of Arlington, it seemed). This has as much to do with my need to at least feel like I'm accomplishing something as it does with my recent frustration with my coffee pot (pictured below in an old LKTC photo). 

I've had the little 4-cup machine for probably two years now, and it makes decent enough coffee. Normally I'm not too discerning when it comes to brew quality, as I'm normally not conscious until after a full cup. But, the machine's output is veering from "acceptable" to "ick" pretty quickly. I'm finding more and more grounds in my coffee every day, and it just tastes blah. There have also been a few occasions in which the machine has tricked me in to thinking it was done brewing, then peeing coffee everywhere when I tried to remove the carafe to pour a cup. Tisk tisk. 


That is no way, I've decided, to treat the illy coffee that I brew every day these days. High quality beans demand a decent machine. I'm not sure what the best replacement is, though. I don't want something large, since I rarely, if ever, drink four cups of coffee, especially in the amount of time between alarm clock and departure. I'm thinking about going the super convenient (if a bit unnecessary) "pod" route. I know the Keurig machines are the most popular, but I have my eye on this guy (after all, he's RED!):  

sold by amazon

I know single serving coffee machines aren't the most economical, but, a girl can have her wish list, right? 

Speaking of wish list, in the spirit of having a plan-free, frivolous, lazy weekend morning (with a ground-free cup of Starbucks coffee in hand), I've been playing on Pinterest, adding things to my boards, including the "kitchen covets" one. If you've never been on Pinterest, I imagine I sound like I'm speaking in some sort of code. I have to admit, I heard of the site long before I actually allowed myself to explore it, so I'm a bit late in touting its virtues, but I'm here to tell you now that you should check it out. Be fully prepared to lose a few hours of your life, because it's like a black hole of recipes, creative ideas, and pretty pictures (which is precisely why I tried to hold out on exploring it). 

It's totally worth it, though. After all, it's a lazy Sunday... 

the best part of waking up

Is this stuff in my cup. 

(from here)

Today, I am especially tired. On days like this, I think about how amazing it would be to have a lifetime supply of illy espresso. It is, hands down, my favorite way to caffeinate. In addition to its high quality, it plays to my obscenely nostalgic nature by reminding me of the good old days in Venice. Apparently the company offers an "illy a casa" program, which involves recurring delivery of the good stuff straight to your door. Some day when I win the lottery...


Since illy will suddenly seem cheap when I strike it rich, let's also throw in one of these guys, because they are shiny, beautiful, and make great espresso...

(from here)

Isn't he just so charming and Italian? In what is becoming a LKTC tradition, I'd name him Massimo. I'm such a sucker for shiny, pretty things. Never mind that I'd need extensive training just to learn how to use it without blowing my kitchen up...

Anyways, due to my exhaustion, I've spent most of the day watching football and getting my life in order, so I don't have any great cooking-related tales to relay. I'm optimistic about the roasted aparagus and red pepper I'm going to eat along side spinach couscous, but it's nothing particularly creative, so, I'll leave you instead to ogle illy in the first "kitchen covets" post in far too long. 

the weekend waffle routine

I always go to sleep Friday night really looking forward to the idea of sleeping in. After a week of 5:30am alarms and the subsequent mad dash to get from bed to bus in less than an hour, sleeping until after the sun rises is all I want to do. 

But then, some time before 7am Saturday (or Sunday), I wake up, look at my phone to check the time, and hatefully curse my inability to sleep in. I think it's partially because my body is so used to waking up at 5:30. It's also due in large part to two highly obnoxious noises that are completely out of my control. One is the garbage truck that picks up my building's trash before 7am on Saturdays. The other is the barrage of flights that depart from Reagan beginning around 5:30 every day. Five days a week, that doesn't bother me, as I'm already up. The other two days, it is obscenely obnoxious to be woken up before 6 by the roar of jet engines. 

So normally around 7, I finally give in to the non-stop departures and the extreme hunger I seem to develop overnight. And without fail, I open the fridge to discover that I've run out of milk. Which leaves waffles as my only option for breakfast (or breakfast in my apartment, anyways). 

I'm not very fancy when it comes to waffle prep, so usually they're made from the Aunt Jemima boxed mix ("just add water" is highly appealing when your overnight hunger is raging out of control). But the really sad part of the whole process is my waffle iron....

It's not even that old, it's just cheap and falling the heck apart. I can't really expect much, as it was a bargain (for a mere $10) at Target a couple years ago. But it barely crisps up the weekend (chocolate chip) waffles....

So I think it's time to suck it up and think about buying a new one (or adding it to my Christmas list), because I like my consolatory 7am waffles cripsy, dang it.

earthquake-proof caffeine

Yesterday, maybe twenty minutes after I told you about drunken noodle deliciousness, we had ourselves a little earthquake here in Virginia. Although I have to say, it seemed anything but little at the time.  

My floor in this office building has been undergoing air conditioning construction (yes, we've gone an entire southern summer without functioning central air), so initially many of us assumed that construction was to blame for the shaking.  But we quickly realized there was way, way too much swaying/shaking for the construction to be at fault.  The next natural thought for many of us was that it was something sinister (although I think it's sad that so many of our minds immediately made such an assumption). The earthquake buzz circulated around the office, and while we were all busy contemplating that possibility, we were ordered to evacuate.  

I say "we" like I was at my desk when this happened and was able to immediately confer with colleagues.  But that's a little misleading.  See, internet, I was in what I have decided is one of the worst places to experience a mild earthquake (or major one for that matter).  The bathroom.  And the bathroom here is small and dark.  While I was nowhere near hysterical, I definitely had a moment of mild panic and thought I do NOT want to die in the bathroom on the 9th floor of an office building!!

When I rushed out to see what was going on, that's when the earthquake buzz had already started. Most people were surprisingly nonchalant about the whole thing, but this being my first earthquake and all (and having thought I was going to die in a 9th floor dark, dingy bathroom), I was thinking something more along the lines of just an earthquake? JUST an earthquake? EARTHQUAKES DON'T HAPPEN HERE! 

After the evacuation and some frantic head-counting in a nearby park, we were dismissed for the day at 2:30ish.  I opted not to join the thousands of people on the roads and on the trains, and instead had a late lunch and drinks with a coworker down the street.  Not a bad deal all said and done, and we were lucky enough to snag an outdoor table, so we could watch the hoards of people generally acting like idiots while swapping earthquake stories. Note that from now on, any time we talk about this seismic event, I get to say "well, I was in the bathroom alone at work." Cute.

I decided, though, that for any future earthquakes (or, say, looming hurricanes...), I need a hardier travel coffee mug.  You know, if the building is going to start swaying again, I need something that's going to stand up to the job.  And I really just have found myself enamored with this tiny little eight ounce travel mug from Bodum. I always end up tossing half the coffee from my 16 ounce travel mug out each day, and while I could just fill it halfway full, how could I turn down something so (wait for it....) cute? 

   

stew(ing)

I have had a strange and not awesome week.  So even though it's still steamy and sweltering outside, I want nothing but cappuccinos, soup, and stews, preferably in front of a large fireplace.


While I have a generic dutch oven that came with my other pots and pans, I'm craving a more serious stove top to oven piece.  Cliche as it is, I find this Le Creuset "french oven" calling my name.  

Possibly I have a slight addiction to all things even remotely in the turquoise blue family.  If you've seen my bedroom in my parents' house, you'd understand. Anyways, I visit the "french oven" often, debating whether or not it's worth its slightly frightening price tag.  


Of course after I visited it at Sur la Table this weekend, I wandered in to World Market, where I spotted this guy.  Similar shape, larger capacity, fraction of the cost/guilt.  

I doubt I'll invest in either pan any time soon, but I have my eye on both as legitimate soup/stew weather approaches.

ps-I made salted caramel ice cream this weekend with Fiona, and it was incredible.  Stay tuned!

introducing fiona

My office is a giant, messy construction zone, I'm super sleepy, and I'm preparing for a week away from work (for a training session), so my ability to focus and articulate myself is compromised.  (As I type this, a tattooed, hard-hatted man is gingerly removing the ceiling tile directly above my head.  I'm a little concerned about my lack of hard hat here, fashion statement aside)

So instead of cruising amazon.com to tack items on to my new "kitchen covets" list, I'm crossing a few off.  

When I was home last weekend, my Mom told me that my Dad had been searching for an egg separator for me ever since they read about my frustrating baking day.  (Side note: not to brag, but they're pretty much the greatest) When we took a family trip to a nearby outlet mall to stay out of the rain, he managed to find one at a kitchen supply store.  

Look how adorable this thing is! 

 (you can buy one here)

And, it's little name is "Yolky." Too cute.  Cuteness overload? I'm sorry, but I really hate raw eggs, so if I'm going to have to touch them, the more I can be distracted by my fun little egg separator, the better.  Bonus: it clips to the edge of mixing bowls.  How much more functionality could you possibly want?

Yolky is going to be my new best bud in the kitchen, because a sweet friend of mine read my first "kitchen covets" post and sent me the ice cream maker as a surprise!  What's the connection, you ask? Many of the ice cream recipes I've found call for plentiful egg yolks.  The bowl of the ice cream machine is in the freezer getting nice and cold, and I'll be able to use it starting tomorrow morning. I'm like a little kid, I'm so excited to give it a whirl. In case you're curious, The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz is apparently the go-to instruction manual/cookbook hybrid. I'll let you know how well Mr. L and I get along...

In addition to Yolky  and Fiona (the oh-so-cliche name for my new apple red ice cream machine), I've added a silicone pastry brush to the arsenal of the LKTC. If it had cost me more than about $3, I'd feel more guilty about what might appear to be a superfluous tool.  But it, in fact, cost me less than $3, and means I can now brush butter or oil on things without using a craft paintbrush from my art supplies drawer.  

It looks just like this guy, but is red.  (The LKTC is mainly black, white, and red, in case you hadn't picked up on that trend).

(image from here)

The brush also came from the kitchen supply store at the outlets this past weekend.  Once Mom, Nanny, and I heard of Dad's egg separator discovery, we had to explore the store ourselves.  I could've spent a good chunk of change in the store, but I was flying back to DC the next morning and my tote bag was already burgeoning from the clothes I'd packed for the weekend (and rent was due the day of my return). 

I'll be back in a few days with ice cream updates and to introduce you to my family's "slopover" tradition. I know you're on the edges of your seats.   

semantics

As you've possibly noticed, I am totally slacking on the whole posting thing.  (Well, all four of you who read this blog, anyways)

I've gotten maybe a third of the way through a spirited post about my spice rub kick and spat with George, but just don't seem to have the heart (or the time) to wrap it up completely.  And I haven't even started describing this past Sunday's amazing dinner.  Shameful, really. 

Somehow I have found the time to do some online window shopping, which has led to the creation of a totally self-indulgent new feature: kitchen covets.

Before you even ask, no, you cannot use "covets" as a noun in this way.  The only recognized noun form is coveter (you better believed I looked it up--no false information on this corny blog, friends). But the minute it popped in to my head, it stuck.  Kind of like Mom's name for my mixer (Kitty the Kitchenaid [stripper]).   

So if intentionally un-impeccable grammar is a dealbreaker, you're going to want to avoid the (maybe) weekly "kitchen covets" series.  If you are my family and in need of holiday gift ideas, however, this is your scene.  

First up? A shiny apple-red ice cream maker.  See, isn't she pretty?

(image from here)

How did you decide you needed one? you might ask.   

Well, I don't know if you remember the three-part belated birthday dinner a few weeks ago, but that's where it all began.  See, I had made the peanut butter squares before meeting a few friends at a fundraiser/happy hour.  Upon arrival to said happy hour, I was describing the squares (and the rest of the eventual Sunday dinner) to my friends. One of the friends ended up mentioning the salted caramel ice cream he was making. 

Naturally I immediately invited him to Sunday dinner, wanting to get my hands on that ice cream (and enjoy his company, of course). Sadly the ice cream was bound for some sort of potluck and/or competition.  And ever since then, I haven't been able to get (salted caramel) ice cream off my mind. 

So if you draw my name for Christmas this year, hint hint :)