Construction Continues with Dad's Helping Hands

We have now been working on our house since July of 2010. With any luck, and the helping hands of our family and friends, we may almost finish this project by July 2011! Rowan and I keep chipping away at finish work around the house. Here are the photos with some commentary of our work and also what has been accomplished during my dad's 2 week visit.

We have been plugging away at getting the trim in the house finished. It seems like a never ending job as all of the wood must be primed first and then painted again with the finish coat. This task will be perfect as the weather here gets warmer (into the 90's) as summer comes. Working inside is where we will want to be.

We are having a hard time getting the outside of the house painted. We had almost 12 inches of rain in May so it was nearly impossible to paint anything outside. It was raining almost every day. We decided to start priming the cedar trim inside the front porch so we can at least start the finish painting inside that space soon.

I finished staining the two 4x8 ft maple bookshelves for the living room and worked on building them in and attaching them to the wall.

We will add on to the shelf unit ourselves by building in more shelves to the right and over the doorway. This will end up being our library wall in the living room.

Our last bit of outside construction was to get the steps to the side door built so we could stop leaping from the door to take the garbage out. We kept having to remind ourselves to watch that last step, it's a looloo! Our builder built this out of cedar for us between rainstorms.

My daddy came to visit us the last 2 weeks of May. Just in time for all of the exciting weather you have seen in my last post. We did have a couple of sunny days in a row, so he got to work putting the sealer on the new cedar steps to the side door.

Our daddy wish list was long, so we got right to work on assorted projects. Here we are adding some extra shelving to the service porch/wash room.

Rowan assisting dad on the table saw.

We also had dad help us do some improvements on one of our rental properties. He helped us install an exhaust hood over the stove. Being the expert sheet metal man he is, the job was done with exceptional quality. We definitely had the man in his element.

This next project was really cool. We decided to save some of the original framing timbers from the house as the demolition was under way. I saved back a bunch of 1953 douglas fir 2x6 boards from the original roof structure. They were in such perfect condition, we couldn't just throw them in the dumpster. We thought we might build a piece of furniture out of them down the road. Well, when dad got here we pulled all of the nails out of them and took them out to the lumber mill where we had our wood floors and trim made. They planed them down for us and they came out just down right beautiful. We brought them back home and decided to make a dining table for our new front porch out of them. Here are the photos:

Dad, Rowan and I with a nearly finished table. He worked right up to the last minute before we needed to head for the airport to send him back to California. Rowan and I will have to trim the board ends on the table and route the edges and legs and do the finishing.

Rowan doing the sealing and weather proofing

It took only 24 hours after we finished the table for us to try it out for a memorial day cook out with our neighbor Alex as our first guest at the table. It is going to be a perfect addition to our new porch and a nice piece of history from the house to eat off of.

I will end this post with a picture of a very happy cat. This is Fergus showing you how content he is in his new and improved house. :o)

More food and travel coming next..............

Destruction & Construction, oh my!

First, some immediate news about the wonderful weather we are having here in the upper mid-west. If I had an Auntie Em, I would have been yelling her name over the past few days. :o) To make a very long few days of story very short, we had 6 tornado's within a 40 mile radius around B-town and one that hit the west side of our fair city, destroying a trailer park (surprise!) and it appears to have skipped along the tops of the trees in our neighborhood, not actually touching the ground but ripping up enormous trees and throwing them around like sticks. Of course we were in our basement for the excitement watching the American Idol finale (Lauren was robbed!). The power went out the second after they announced the winner (right after I heard that wind that sounds like a train. Auntie Em!!!). That is when we knew something outside wasn't very good. The paper the next day said we had winds between 80-115 mph. We have had power companies and tree removal guys from other cities and states here for the last 48 hours helping to put things back together for us. We just had our power restored about 2 hours ago after a 36 hour outage. Here are some of the amazing photos of what our neighborhood looks like:

This enormous maple tree fell on the street behind our house blocking the street. The children who live in the house where the tree belongs had stuck a sign to the tree to let the guys who will remove it know that there is a family of raccoons who live inside the tree and to please not hurt them. A very sweet human gesture during a very trying time.

This tree slammed into an apartment house, ripping one side of it away. No one was hurt. This was 4 blocks from our house.

This guy was in his car driving when this beauty came down on him. Luckily he was not hurt. I bet he had one stiff drink when he got home! Hell, I've had three just looking at the picture! This was 1/2 block away from our house.

Ouch! Another street blocked by a fallen tree. We had two rounds of storms, the first one on Monday night the 23rd and the second one on Wednesday the 25th. It was impossible to go anywhere in our neighborhood for quite some time from Tuesday morning right on through today, the 27th. And, they are still cutting up trees, removing debris and trying to restore power to many who are still in the dark.

This MONSTER tree fell on a road going through the IU campus. The campus had dozens of very old majestic trees fall in a wide area. Many fell against old limestone buildings and blocked roadways making it extremely difficult to get through campus.

This is one of our favorite houses in our neighborhood, just around the corner from us. No, that tree is not supposed to be laying on it.

OK, so this is the scariest one we came across. Look at the size of this tree!!!! When we saw it we knew what was on the other end of it just couldn't be good..........

Here it what that monster had fallen into! It sliced this apartment house clean in half!!! It was a miracle that no one was killed! This is about 4 blocks from our house.

This is the mess 3 blocks from us on 1st street. This street is a main thoroughfare, but not today.

Ouch again!

This poor guy is trying to figure out how he is going to get his gold SUV our from under this tree. Can you say 'chainsaw' Mr.?

This house had it's front porch knocked away.

We are so thankful no one was killed during all of this. Our neighborhood suffered most of the damage except for the trailer park on the west side that was completely destroyed.

All of this was quite exciting for my dad who has been here visiting for the last 2 weeks. He has definitely had his Wizard of Oz experience on this visit, as we all have.

AUNTIE EM!!!!! AUNTIE EM!!!!! ...........

Next post, the construction we have been doing while dad was here.

What's Cookin'

It hasn't taken long for me to get my cooking mojo back now that our kitchen is together enough to make cooking enjoyable. We also have taken possession of a nearly new Kitchen Aid convection cooking range. Our dear neighbors across the street just got a fancy new Wolf range and want us to have their 3 year old Kitchen Aid. WHAT A GIFT! With all of the money we are spending on the remodel, it was going to be a while before a new range was in our cards so we are very lucky indeed.

Here is what has been cooking.........

It is wild mushroom season here in the upper midwest, so that means our friend Sally can be found roaming around in an undisclosed location finding her secret stash of morel mushrooms. This is serious business in these parts an no one, NO ONE ever tells you where their secret place to find these treasures is. Folks will go to the grave with this secret. Just like every year in May, there is that knock at our door and an outstretched had greets us as we open the door. There we see a huge container of morels begging for an immediate trip to a frying pan. YUM!!! This year we chose to make chicken scallopini with the bundle of deliciousness.

After cleaning the bugs out of the morels (remember, they are the fungusamongus and always need some funky poopy moldy soil in order to prosper), we chopped them up with some fresh shiitake mushrooms from the local farmers market, then put them in a saute' pan with shallots, butter, olive oil, salt & pepper and sauted until tender. Remove the shrooms from the pan and set aside (the morels are the dark ones in the front row of the photo).

We then prepared some chicken thighs (you can use breasts too, but we like the dark meat :o)

Make sure to cut away as much fat from the boneless/skinless thighs as possible. Add a pad of butter to the pan and more olive oil, add the chicken and saute' until brown on both sides.

Remove the chicken from the pan and set aside. Add the shallots and brown. Add 1/3 cup chicken stock and 1/4 cup white wine to the pan and bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer. Scrape up any brown bits. Simmer until liquid is reduced by 1/2. Stir in 1/2 cup half-and-half.

Add mushrooms and chicken back to pan to reheat. Sprinkle with freshly chopped parsley.

We made a wonderful fresh greens salad from greens we purchased at our local farmers market. Lettuce, spinach and baby kale are the greens being used. Tomatoes and sliced almonds finish it off. Simple and delicious.

You will see that chicken is a theme in our house in spring. It's light and easy to cook and great with fresh spring greens and root veggies. For our Easter celebration we decided on Herb, Garlic & Lemon Roast Chicken. This will be our first real test of the new convection oven so that is why there are no guests here for this one. Serving a charred football for dinner is a horror I just cannot bare (that would be me naked :o). So here goes...........

Get a whole fresh chicken, and not one of those huge steroid & water filled monsters that look like a small turkey. Nothing bigger than a 4 pounder. I always use the free range organic chickens and they REALLY DO taste better. The first thing you have to do is prepare the herb butter. Take 1/2 stick butter (softened) and put in a small bowl. Add minced zest of a lemon, 2 T minced fresh thyme, 2 T minced fresh rosemary, 2 T minced fresh sage, 5 pressed garlic cloves. Mix herbs & garlic into softened butter with a fork.

Herb butter

Once herb butter is ready, wash and dry the chicken. Use your fingers to get between the skin and flesh around the breast meat and do the same around the legs, etc. then start smearing the herb butter under the skin and onto the meat. Do the same inside the cavity. Use the lemon you grated the zest from and cut it in half and squeeze over the outside of the chicken. Then, put the two lemon halves inside the chicken cavity. Now sprinkle a little dry white wine over the bird and rub the entire outside of the chicken with soy sauce and then sprinkle with salt & pepper. I also sprinkle a few mixed herbs over the top of the chicken too.

Throw this beauty into a 375 degree F oven, uncovered for about 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 and cook, basting about every 15 minutes. Cook about 1 hour or until juices run clear. Your family will beg you for more!

I serve this with simple roasted vegetables. Use whatever variety is in season. Here I used butternut squash, red potatoes, parsnips and carrots. Simply chop them up into a big bowl, add salt, pepper, herbs, onions if desired and toss to coat the vegies with a combination of olive oil and canola oil.

Pour veggies onto a large baking tray and roast for about 45 minutes in the oven along with the chicken at 350 F. Stir vegies about every 15 minutes. The magic of the convection oven is you are able to stack items in the oven and they all cook evenly. If you don't have a convection oven, you will have to do these dishes in shifts or make room for them side-by-side to cook.

The YUMMY roasted herb chicken as it comes out of the oven.

Our only green veg for this meal is baby kale. It grows like a weed here in early spring and has an amazing green hearty taste. I saute it very briefly in olive oil with kosher salt and pepper. You still want it to be a little crunchy. That's it!

Here is our finished Easter meal. Absolutely delicious served with a nice semi-dry french rose'.

Oh, and I must tell you we love, love, LOVE the new cooking range.

So, those of you who know us know that we can get pretty silly. Well, for the rest of you, here is proof. Oh dear........

You can tell that Lulu is really enjoying this moment. It's OK. I gave her some chicken scraps for being such a good sport.

And there is more..............can you say 'laaaaaaamb shaaaaanks'?

Rowan went away to a conference in Florida the first week of May, so........I always get to eat what I want when she is away :o) The first thing that came to my mind was the bits of lamb we have left from the one we had slaughtered last winter (I know, its cruel..... but delicious!). I dug through the freezer and found a couple of lamb shanks. I couldn't resist, so here they are in all of their garlicky, rosemary, lemon zest, olive oil encrusted wonderfulness just after they were browned and as they went into the oven.

Is it wrong for me to eat this way when I am home alone? I don't think so. It really isn't baaaaaaad! It's good! :o)

More home improvement developments in the next post. Stay tuned......