Stacey Ballis's Blog, page 3
May 1, 2016
A Little Love Letter...
Hello, Chickens!
I know you are all waiting on house updates, and I promise there is so much coming down the pike your heads will spin... but today I want to talk about the most important thing I've ever done to my house.
I moved this guy into it.
Charming Suitor and me at his niece's high school graduation party 2010Now you all know how I feel about this house, but let me tell you, after 20 years of living in it, it never looked so good or felt more like home than when my Charming Suitor moved in. And let me be clear, this was a big deal. At the time, I was still renting. CS owned a lovely arts and crafts bungalow in a beautiful and coveted neighborhood. He loved his house. Lucky for me, he loved me more. Or as he will tell you, "I knew that you and that house were a package deal.".
Five years ago today, this happened.
I can tell you that it has felt like five minutes and five lifetimes in all of the best possible ways. Not only do I love this amazing man more every day, but I LIKE him more every day, and that is the coolest thing ever.
In the past five years we bought our Chateau and sold his bungalow, and completed two and a half years of renovations. We have had travel adventures galore, both domestic and abroad, and special family memories and visits with friends. We have cooked a lot together, for each other and for loved ones. We've gained a brother, a niece and two nephews. We became dance school dropouts. We've seen great art and great theater and heard great music, and also the opposite. Our families have become family to each other seamlessly and effortlessly. We've eaten a lot of great food and have drunk a lot of great wine.
We have purchased an inordinate amount of kitchen appliances.
Nothing is easier, more comfortable, or more fun than us. Just ask us. We're cute as flipping bunnies.
One of the best gifts my CS gives me everyday is his support of my work. He is so proud of me, my biggest cheerleader, my personal PR department. And more importantly, he is enormously respectful...of my process, of my schedule, of the endless quirks that go along with being married to any full time artist. And he never thinks of it as not a "real" job. Being with him, having him in my life has made me a better writer.
So on this, the five year anniversary of our I Do's, it seemed only appropriate to take this brief moment to do two things.
First, and foremost, to publicly acknowledge the extraordinary man I was lucky enough to marry five years ago today and to thank him for still being my Charming Suitor. For being as demonstrative and romantic today as he was when we were courting. For being my rock, and letting me be his. I am without doubt the most blessed woman there is, and I am truly grateful everyday.
Secondly, since he would literally be annoyed if I didn't...
On May 3, my newest book WEDDING GIRL will be released.
What is more appropriate to promote on my wedding anniversary? I'm really proud of it, and I think you will love it, so I hope you will pre-order it.
But I also want to mention that if you have never had a chance to read my book OFF THE MENU, it is a love letter to my Charming Suitor, and was inspired by our real life romance. Essentially, I took about 80% of our courtship, including some of our actual email correspondance, and plunked it into a fictional story. So if you want to take a trip down memory lane with me and CS, it might be a good time to revisit this one.
Think of it as an anniversary present to us!
A very happy May Day to one and all...and a very happy anniversary to my Charming Suitor. I can't wait to see what the next five years bring!
Yours in Good Taste, (and madly in love)
Stacey
I know you are all waiting on house updates, and I promise there is so much coming down the pike your heads will spin... but today I want to talk about the most important thing I've ever done to my house.
I moved this guy into it.
Charming Suitor and me at his niece's high school graduation party 2010Now you all know how I feel about this house, but let me tell you, after 20 years of living in it, it never looked so good or felt more like home than when my Charming Suitor moved in. And let me be clear, this was a big deal. At the time, I was still renting. CS owned a lovely arts and crafts bungalow in a beautiful and coveted neighborhood. He loved his house. Lucky for me, he loved me more. Or as he will tell you, "I knew that you and that house were a package deal.".Five years ago today, this happened.
I can tell you that it has felt like five minutes and five lifetimes in all of the best possible ways. Not only do I love this amazing man more every day, but I LIKE him more every day, and that is the coolest thing ever.
In the past five years we bought our Chateau and sold his bungalow, and completed two and a half years of renovations. We have had travel adventures galore, both domestic and abroad, and special family memories and visits with friends. We have cooked a lot together, for each other and for loved ones. We've gained a brother, a niece and two nephews. We became dance school dropouts. We've seen great art and great theater and heard great music, and also the opposite. Our families have become family to each other seamlessly and effortlessly. We've eaten a lot of great food and have drunk a lot of great wine.
We have purchased an inordinate amount of kitchen appliances.
Nothing is easier, more comfortable, or more fun than us. Just ask us. We're cute as flipping bunnies.
One of the best gifts my CS gives me everyday is his support of my work. He is so proud of me, my biggest cheerleader, my personal PR department. And more importantly, he is enormously respectful...of my process, of my schedule, of the endless quirks that go along with being married to any full time artist. And he never thinks of it as not a "real" job. Being with him, having him in my life has made me a better writer.
So on this, the five year anniversary of our I Do's, it seemed only appropriate to take this brief moment to do two things.
First, and foremost, to publicly acknowledge the extraordinary man I was lucky enough to marry five years ago today and to thank him for still being my Charming Suitor. For being as demonstrative and romantic today as he was when we were courting. For being my rock, and letting me be his. I am without doubt the most blessed woman there is, and I am truly grateful everyday.
Secondly, since he would literally be annoyed if I didn't...
On May 3, my newest book WEDDING GIRL will be released.
What is more appropriate to promote on my wedding anniversary? I'm really proud of it, and I think you will love it, so I hope you will pre-order it.
But I also want to mention that if you have never had a chance to read my book OFF THE MENU, it is a love letter to my Charming Suitor, and was inspired by our real life romance. Essentially, I took about 80% of our courtship, including some of our actual email correspondance, and plunked it into a fictional story. So if you want to take a trip down memory lane with me and CS, it might be a good time to revisit this one.
Think of it as an anniversary present to us!
A very happy May Day to one and all...and a very happy anniversary to my Charming Suitor. I can't wait to see what the next five years bring!
Yours in Good Taste, (and madly in love)
Stacey
April 14, 2016
It Spins Me Right Round
Chickens-
Remember how I'm always telling you to make your lists of your need to haves, nice to haves, and would be like a little miracle to haves? Well I'm here to report that miracles do happen.
You might also remember that I was fortunate enough to have an odometer birthday right when we were finalizing appliance selection, and Charming Suitor gifted me with my miracle item.
The La Cornue Flamberge Rotisserie was our major splurge for this kitchen. A completely extraneous luxury, and would have been the first thing to get cut if we had needed to make cuts. But boy am I glad we did it.
Our Cosentino and Stone Masters team clad the tower in the same Dekton as the countertops, to make sure that nothing flammable was in the way. Our amazing contractors converted our old vintage freestanding butcher block to a fabulous rolling one with the help of some industrial casters, and an antique brass towel bar that poor CS had to strip 100 years of paint off of. Install was a breeze, and we decided that for our first dinner in the new kitchen, we would make a chicken.
Whee!!!
We decided for our first meal in the new kitchen, we would make a chicken.
Dancing chicken!
It comes with this porcelain tray to catch the drippings...you can also cook veggies and things in it.Oh my.
People? I did not do anything special to make this chicken. I did not brine or dry brine or make a rub or baste it. I took it out of the fridge, tied the legs and wings down so they wouldn't burn, sprayed it with a bit of grapeseed oil and sprinkled with salt. An hour later, this thing was done, skin fully rendered and crispy, meat so juicy that the breast meat was the same moistness as the dark meat. It was one of the best chickens we have ever eaten, and the perfect way to christen the kitchen.
Since then we have done several more chickens and one leg of lamb. Everything comes out perfectly, and it is the easiest thing in the world to use. We had friends over for dinner on a weeknight, and it made our lives so easy, just pulled two chickens out and set them up right before they arrived, and by the time we had finished our cocktails and nibbles, they were done. Our pals agreed it was one of the best chickens they had ever had.
One knob turns on the flame and adjusts the temp, the other turns the spits. The front shifts out for larger items, so next on the agenda is a prime rib. It can hold up to 12 pounds of meat at one time. The spits and tray can all go into the dishwasher. And since the wicks are made of ceramic fibers, they never need to be replaced! As long as we keep it clean, this thing should be making us chickens and other delicious dinners for the rest of our lives.
And the bonus part? Now that we have the magical Marvel fridge, there is actually room in the freezer for a stock pot scrap bag, so I've been saving all the carcasses of our lovely chickens and bits and bits of veggies so that I can make a big batch of stock...to store in the freezer! You wouldn't think this would make me so excited, but it is the little things.
I'll keep you posted as we try more different foods in it. I can't tell you how tempted I am to make a S'more...
More updates soon!
Yours in Good Taste,
The Polymath
Remember how I'm always telling you to make your lists of your need to haves, nice to haves, and would be like a little miracle to haves? Well I'm here to report that miracles do happen.
You might also remember that I was fortunate enough to have an odometer birthday right when we were finalizing appliance selection, and Charming Suitor gifted me with my miracle item.
The La Cornue Flamberge Rotisserie was our major splurge for this kitchen. A completely extraneous luxury, and would have been the first thing to get cut if we had needed to make cuts. But boy am I glad we did it.
Our Cosentino and Stone Masters team clad the tower in the same Dekton as the countertops, to make sure that nothing flammable was in the way. Our amazing contractors converted our old vintage freestanding butcher block to a fabulous rolling one with the help of some industrial casters, and an antique brass towel bar that poor CS had to strip 100 years of paint off of. Install was a breeze, and we decided that for our first dinner in the new kitchen, we would make a chicken.
Whee!!!
We decided for our first meal in the new kitchen, we would make a chicken.
Dancing chicken!
It comes with this porcelain tray to catch the drippings...you can also cook veggies and things in it.Oh my.
People? I did not do anything special to make this chicken. I did not brine or dry brine or make a rub or baste it. I took it out of the fridge, tied the legs and wings down so they wouldn't burn, sprayed it with a bit of grapeseed oil and sprinkled with salt. An hour later, this thing was done, skin fully rendered and crispy, meat so juicy that the breast meat was the same moistness as the dark meat. It was one of the best chickens we have ever eaten, and the perfect way to christen the kitchen.
Since then we have done several more chickens and one leg of lamb. Everything comes out perfectly, and it is the easiest thing in the world to use. We had friends over for dinner on a weeknight, and it made our lives so easy, just pulled two chickens out and set them up right before they arrived, and by the time we had finished our cocktails and nibbles, they were done. Our pals agreed it was one of the best chickens they had ever had.
One knob turns on the flame and adjusts the temp, the other turns the spits. The front shifts out for larger items, so next on the agenda is a prime rib. It can hold up to 12 pounds of meat at one time. The spits and tray can all go into the dishwasher. And since the wicks are made of ceramic fibers, they never need to be replaced! As long as we keep it clean, this thing should be making us chickens and other delicious dinners for the rest of our lives.
And the bonus part? Now that we have the magical Marvel fridge, there is actually room in the freezer for a stock pot scrap bag, so I've been saving all the carcasses of our lovely chickens and bits and bits of veggies so that I can make a big batch of stock...to store in the freezer! You wouldn't think this would make me so excited, but it is the little things.
I'll keep you posted as we try more different foods in it. I can't tell you how tempted I am to make a S'more...
More updates soon!
Yours in Good Taste,
The Polymath
April 12, 2016
A Chill is in the Air
Chickens-
So I figured the best way to handle the kitchen reno reveals, is to just remind you of the previous posts and then update you on how the choices are working out so far!
So today, we can revisit refrigeration! Remember the fridge post? Well all three of the Marvel fridges are installed and loaded and ready for a full report. And the report? Is awesome!
First, the big boy...
We decided to inset the fridge between the food pantry and the kitchen library, so that it would not stick out into the room, much as you might do if you were installing it within your cabinetry. We trimmed out the space with woodwork that matches the original woodwork from the house, so that it would integrate well. And we chose the glass door on the fridge so that it would break up the look, and not create a wall of stainless steel.
Here is the fridge side, opened. And yes, that awesome blue light is standard, and I just love it! Ditto the stainless steel interior, which is both easy to clean and looks terrific. You'll notice that there are four deep drawers at the bottom, we have designated one of these for vegetables, one for deli meats and other easy lunch items, one for raw meats, and one for fruit. The rest of the space is just open shelving, so I invested heavily in plastic trays and bins and organizers so that we could corral the rest of our stuff. We bought this fridge because it is very deep, so it holds a great deal, and is amazing for large entertaining platters and such, but it does require some forethought on the organization side, especially when you have a small condiment hoarding problem as we do. I have a tray for Asian ingredients, one for other condiments, one for salad dressings, one for pickles, one for jams and jellies. We've got the whole top shelf for beverages, the second one down for dairy, and we keep the bottom shelf fairly open for leftovers or other prepped items. I have to say, it has been a really amazing shift from our old small fridge to this one...everything has a place, and I don't have to completely pull everything out of a shelf to add or remove an item. Glorious!
If you thought the fridge was changing our life? Then the freezer is the Amen corner. Remember our other freezer?
AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!Hello, gorgeous....
can you hear angels singing?Because this door isn't glass, it gets these five great door bins. Four mesh drawers, and four perforated adjustable shelves make sure that air flow is keeping everything at the right temperature. More plastic bins and trays help again with organization, but I finally have room for all my baking supplies that can spoil or go rancid if left at room temp, frozen meats and vegetables, plenty of room for ice and everything easily accessible. I fairly well mist up everytime I open the door. Nothing hard and frozen has fallen on my toes since it arrived!
This model comes with an ice maker, but we removed it. We don't use ice in our everyday drinks, just for cocktails, and for those we like inch square clear ice cubes that we buy in bags. And we all know what happens if you don't use up your ice on a regular basis, it picks up off flavors and leaves little floaters in your drinks. It would have been difficult and expensive to get plumbing to this area of the room, and we decided that we would rather have the extra room in the freezer and continue to purchase our ice as we need it, but most of you would probably choose to keep it in and use it. Luckily, there is plenty of room for ice bags!
You might remember that we also were installing an undercounter wine fridge. This means that Charming Suitor can keep it stocked with the stuff that is perfect for everyday drinking, and the bottles that I can feel free to open when my girlfriends come over without worrying that I'm accidentally opening something really expensive!
I love the sleek look of this thing! The glass door again serves to break up the look of solid cabinetry, and echoes the look of the big fridge.
The drawers are super sturdy and edged in real wood, each one holds 9 bottles, so there are 54 bottles stored in here! It is dual zone, so you can keep your whites and bubbles slightly cooler than your reds. We are keeping the top drawer for vermouth and Lillet and port, and anything we need for cocktails so that they no longer take up room in the big fridge.
Now for the real kicker. The cheese fridge! I know, I know, the very idea of a cheese fridge is beyond luxurious. But we love our cheeses! Can't be helped. And perfect cheese storage is both warmer and more humid than your regular fridge. For most people, we recommend you simply buy cheeses as you need them, and eat them within a week or so. I also highly recommend you remove them from the fridge about 2 hours before you want to serve them, for optimal texture and flavor. For us, with the amount of entertaining we do, and the fact that we nearly always do a cheese course with our dinners, we thought it would be a really fun indulgence to have a special storage set up just for that purpose in the kitchen library, so we got the small 15" wine fridge.
Now, a wine fridge is the optimal temperature for long term cheese storage, but not the right humidity. To fix that required a little MacGuyvering.
First, I bought a little travel humidifier.
This takes regular bottles of water, and is a fairly small scale. The AC power cord is thin enough that you can snake it through the door of the wine fridge without affecting it's ability to close properly. I refill the bottle about once a week to keep things the proper level of humidity. We also had to alter the bottom three drawers by removing essentially one sixth of the back of those drawers so that they would slide around the humidifier, which is very small, but a bit tall. Our contractors did this with a small hacksaw, and we lost very little capacity, without losing any functionality of the drawers themselves. We then lined the drawers in black plastic mesh, the kind they use in bars to protect glasses, easy to cut to fit and make sure none of our precious little packages fall thru the openings.
Cheese and sausage are great friends, and they like the same sort of storage!
Hello yummies!
All three of our fridge choices are absolutely working the way we wanted them to, and making life so much more delicious. I continue to recommend Marvel products wholeheartedly, and hope you will check them out when you are doing your own kitchens, they are not the most famous name, but I really believe they are the best!
Stay tuned, much more to come :)
Yours in Good Taste,
The Polymath
So I figured the best way to handle the kitchen reno reveals, is to just remind you of the previous posts and then update you on how the choices are working out so far!
So today, we can revisit refrigeration! Remember the fridge post? Well all three of the Marvel fridges are installed and loaded and ready for a full report. And the report? Is awesome!
First, the big boy...
We decided to inset the fridge between the food pantry and the kitchen library, so that it would not stick out into the room, much as you might do if you were installing it within your cabinetry. We trimmed out the space with woodwork that matches the original woodwork from the house, so that it would integrate well. And we chose the glass door on the fridge so that it would break up the look, and not create a wall of stainless steel.
Here is the fridge side, opened. And yes, that awesome blue light is standard, and I just love it! Ditto the stainless steel interior, which is both easy to clean and looks terrific. You'll notice that there are four deep drawers at the bottom, we have designated one of these for vegetables, one for deli meats and other easy lunch items, one for raw meats, and one for fruit. The rest of the space is just open shelving, so I invested heavily in plastic trays and bins and organizers so that we could corral the rest of our stuff. We bought this fridge because it is very deep, so it holds a great deal, and is amazing for large entertaining platters and such, but it does require some forethought on the organization side, especially when you have a small condiment hoarding problem as we do. I have a tray for Asian ingredients, one for other condiments, one for salad dressings, one for pickles, one for jams and jellies. We've got the whole top shelf for beverages, the second one down for dairy, and we keep the bottom shelf fairly open for leftovers or other prepped items. I have to say, it has been a really amazing shift from our old small fridge to this one...everything has a place, and I don't have to completely pull everything out of a shelf to add or remove an item. Glorious!
If you thought the fridge was changing our life? Then the freezer is the Amen corner. Remember our other freezer?
AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!Hello, gorgeous....
can you hear angels singing?Because this door isn't glass, it gets these five great door bins. Four mesh drawers, and four perforated adjustable shelves make sure that air flow is keeping everything at the right temperature. More plastic bins and trays help again with organization, but I finally have room for all my baking supplies that can spoil or go rancid if left at room temp, frozen meats and vegetables, plenty of room for ice and everything easily accessible. I fairly well mist up everytime I open the door. Nothing hard and frozen has fallen on my toes since it arrived!This model comes with an ice maker, but we removed it. We don't use ice in our everyday drinks, just for cocktails, and for those we like inch square clear ice cubes that we buy in bags. And we all know what happens if you don't use up your ice on a regular basis, it picks up off flavors and leaves little floaters in your drinks. It would have been difficult and expensive to get plumbing to this area of the room, and we decided that we would rather have the extra room in the freezer and continue to purchase our ice as we need it, but most of you would probably choose to keep it in and use it. Luckily, there is plenty of room for ice bags!
You might remember that we also were installing an undercounter wine fridge. This means that Charming Suitor can keep it stocked with the stuff that is perfect for everyday drinking, and the bottles that I can feel free to open when my girlfriends come over without worrying that I'm accidentally opening something really expensive!
I love the sleek look of this thing! The glass door again serves to break up the look of solid cabinetry, and echoes the look of the big fridge.
The drawers are super sturdy and edged in real wood, each one holds 9 bottles, so there are 54 bottles stored in here! It is dual zone, so you can keep your whites and bubbles slightly cooler than your reds. We are keeping the top drawer for vermouth and Lillet and port, and anything we need for cocktails so that they no longer take up room in the big fridge.
Now for the real kicker. The cheese fridge! I know, I know, the very idea of a cheese fridge is beyond luxurious. But we love our cheeses! Can't be helped. And perfect cheese storage is both warmer and more humid than your regular fridge. For most people, we recommend you simply buy cheeses as you need them, and eat them within a week or so. I also highly recommend you remove them from the fridge about 2 hours before you want to serve them, for optimal texture and flavor. For us, with the amount of entertaining we do, and the fact that we nearly always do a cheese course with our dinners, we thought it would be a really fun indulgence to have a special storage set up just for that purpose in the kitchen library, so we got the small 15" wine fridge.
Now, a wine fridge is the optimal temperature for long term cheese storage, but not the right humidity. To fix that required a little MacGuyvering.
First, I bought a little travel humidifier.
This takes regular bottles of water, and is a fairly small scale. The AC power cord is thin enough that you can snake it through the door of the wine fridge without affecting it's ability to close properly. I refill the bottle about once a week to keep things the proper level of humidity. We also had to alter the bottom three drawers by removing essentially one sixth of the back of those drawers so that they would slide around the humidifier, which is very small, but a bit tall. Our contractors did this with a small hacksaw, and we lost very little capacity, without losing any functionality of the drawers themselves. We then lined the drawers in black plastic mesh, the kind they use in bars to protect glasses, easy to cut to fit and make sure none of our precious little packages fall thru the openings.
Cheese and sausage are great friends, and they like the same sort of storage!
Hello yummies!
All three of our fridge choices are absolutely working the way we wanted them to, and making life so much more delicious. I continue to recommend Marvel products wholeheartedly, and hope you will check them out when you are doing your own kitchens, they are not the most famous name, but I really believe they are the best!
Stay tuned, much more to come :)
Yours in Good Taste,
The Polymath
April 5, 2016
A Tale of Two Countertops
Chickens-
Hope that Spring is springing where you are, Chicago is experiencing days of 70 degrees with a chance of snow, and I wish that weren't true. The weather here is like watching time lapse video of the seasons. Its a bit unsettling, but we are taking the good with the weird and pressing onward.
Today it is time to share some exciting news...the countertops are IN! They are glorious, they are everything we ever wanted and then some. They are perfect. But it was a long haul and required the support of many extraordinary people along the way.
You know how I have been waxing poetical about our countertop folks, the amazing designers at Cosentino and the artisan fabricators at Stone Masters? I'm about to take that up several notches, because in the land of renovations, the only thing you can count on is that stuff is going to go wrong. Sometimes EPICALLY wrong. (See Moat post here.) And when the shit hits the proverbial fan, this is where you really find out whether your partners are the real deal. Any idiot can take credit when stuff goes perfectly. "Here is this thing that I recommended you purchase from me, and I have delivered it and installed it and it works the way it was supposed to, without any issues...you're welcome."
But I don't care about those guys. What I care about? Are the people who take as much pride and concern in customer service as they do in the products they sell. Whose level of commitment and care is as strong if not stronger at the back end as it is on the front. THOSE are the people you want to do business with.
If you missed the original countertop post, you can catch up HERE.
Our kitchen counters were, to say the least, complex. We were asking a lot of them.
As you may remember, the kitchen is divided into two sections:
There is the L shaped section on the left, which has a cutout for a sink. And then the U shaped section on the right, which has cutouts for the sink, induction cooktop, and steamer, and also needs to create the breakfast bar and slides INTO the window wells to become the sills for the windows for a truly seamless look and ease of cleaning and function. Not to mention that the scale of it is pretty large, so you are looking at long runs of counter. Plus all of the edges are beveled, which is to say that they have to apply a 2 inch section of the material around the edge so that it looks like the counters are 2 inches thick. (You don't want your counters to actually be 2 inches thick, the weight would make your cabinets collapse.) Then you add in the backsplashes, and the fact that the material we chose has a veining pattern that needs to be matched up both on the backsplashes and the edging...I believe it is probably one of the hardest countertop projects anyone could have designed.
One of the reasons we have been working with Stone Masters is that they are expert at this kind of complicated detailed work. And they are the only ones who have been working with Dekton, the material we chose. Dekton is a pretty amazing product, but it is brand new, and so very few fabricators have been working with it, and we, unbeknownst to us, were about to push it to its limits.
Cosentino sent the slabs over to Stone Masters and they got to work. We set an install date, and hired a scissor lift to get the countertops up to the second floor. Little did we know that we set the date for a day that would be 4 degrees with -12 wind chill factor. The guys loaded the truck. They arrived onsite. The L shaped piece and the small pieces for the island and the little niche between the gas cooktop and the oven tower came up and were installed easy peasy. Then they brought up the big boy, the piece that covers the back wall, creates the windowsills and makes the corner up to the gas cooktop. They rested it in place and brought up the peninsula piece. As they were sliding the peninsula into place, the worst. POP. A crack. Then a louder POP, and the other slab cracked.
So sad :(
You cannot imagine the devastation. I felt helpless, looking at these terrific guys who had taken such care to make the perfect counters, so many man hours, just destroyed. And of course, sad for us, because the day was supposed to be joyous, almost anyone will tell you that the kitchen renovation doesn't really start to feel like a kitchen till the counters go in, it is a magical moment, and now, after all that anticipation, we were going to have to start all over.
I did the only thing I could think to do, ran out to go get some pizzas, so that I could feed the guys and we could all regroup. And here? Right here? Is where the amazing happened.
By the time I got home with pizza and pop for everyone, the kitchen was bustling. The owner of Stone Masters and his right hand man were there, along with their best fabricators. The general manager of Cosentino was there with his team. Everyone had dropped everything to come to the house to see what had happened and to brainstorm together how to fix it.
You guys? I cried. Not because my beautiful countertops were ruined and the kitchen project stalled. But because the moment things went sideways, everyone came rushing in to figure it out. No one laid blame or cast aspersions. No one got angry or snarky or poked fingers. They just all came together in an extraordinary show of professionalism to support each other and find a way to make things happen. Cosentino put a rush on to get new slabs over to Stone Masters. Stone Masters started calling the Dekton guys in Spain where it is manufactured to talk to their experts about what might have happened. They all treated it like a teachable moment, and wanted to learn as much as possible from what had happened, while still figuring out how to get us countertops ASAP. It was one of the most amazing things I had ever witnessed.
Those are the people you want in your corner. The ones who step up when stuff doesn't go as planned to create a fix.
And then? It got even more incredible.
Within a week? Two representatives from Cosentino headquarters from SPAIN were in my kitchen to look at what had happened, and to visit with Stone Masters to advise on the project. What the WHAT? Our project was so unique and the cracking was so surprising, that they felt the need to really come see what was going on. It made me happy to know that everyone was so invested. We knew when we agreed to use a really cutting edge brand new product for this project that it was a risk, and they had assured us that it was a risk worth taking, and now that the risk had turned out to be an issue, everyone was really on top of learning what they could learn.
Here is what the team figured out. If possible? Do not take a high tension product with a lot of cutouts and inside corners and complicated edges out of a 65 degree shop into a van and then exposed into 4 degree cold and then into a 70 degree kitchen. It don't like it. POP.
We all decided to go for it with the Dekton one more time. As a backup plan, we still had the pure white Silestone that had been in our original plan before Dekton came on the scene, and Cosentino said they would send enough slabs of that material to Stone Masters when they sent the new Dekton so that if things went wrong again, they could immediately change gears and not lose any more time.
Cosentino had the new Dekton slabs (specifically from a different production batch, just in case) and the backup plan Silestone slabs to Stone Masters in record time. Stone Masters worked practically round the clock to remake the two counters that had cracked. We all watched the calendar and the weather. And then, a gift. A rare 60 degree day was going to hit Chicago. They set the shop temp for 65 degrees. We set the house temp to 65 degrees. We rented the lift again. The Cosentino team and the Stone Masters team all came over on install day, there were literally eight people here in addition to the install team. They loaded up the counters and brought them in. My blood pressure was through the roof, I could barely watch. But Stone Masters were cool as cucumbers. The counters were set into place. Leveled. An invisible seam connected the two. The sinks were mounted and faucets installed. The cooktops were set into place. We all sat and watched the artists at work.
Deep breath, here we go...
I made the Cosentino people take these pics, I couldn't watch...
Do you see that incredible matching of the veining on the edge? So talented.
Ugh, my heart could not take this one.
There is the L counter, perfect from day one.
All getting settled into place.
Starting to work on seams.
Induction cooktop and steamer in place safely!
Sink mounted!
Gas rangetop installed...can't wait to use this baby!
Island, just waiting for the butcher block.
I had vodka in the freezer and Champagne in the fridge and the pizza place on speed dial, so we were set for either celebration or commiseration.
We popped the Champagne.
Today, I tell you that we could not be more delighted with our choice. Yes, it was a long and frustrating process, mostly because we felt so terrible for the men who had worked so hard to make us perfect counters only to have them become garbage and have to start all over. But everyone kept such good spirits about the whole thing. Cosentino got new product without issue, and Stone Masters just kept assuring us that it was important to have this opportunity to find out the best way to work with a new product, and that it was, in the long run, a very good thing for everyone involved to have this kind of project as sort of a little Dekton master class. They all made us feel special, like our kitchen was part of something bigger, and never once asked us to make design changes to make the fabrication less complicated or to immediately shift to the backup plan. They all wanted the challenge, and I know that everyone is really proud of how it turned out.
We've been slowly beginning to use the new kitchen, it is still not 100% complete, but it is complete enough to play, and I have to say, for all the stress, these counters are incredible. The matte finish is easy to clean, and is a dream for thing like kneading bread, practically no extra flour needed. We can take things out of the oven and put them right onto the counters with no worry of scorching, so the endless search for trivets is over. We have officially spilled red wine, coffee, and even dropped a cooked beet onto the surface, and not a stain to be seen. Apparently, once you actually have them in place and installed is when the whole indestructible thing kicks in. And the fact that they are freaking gorgeous doesn't exactly hurt my feelings.
As you can see, I am even more in love with both Cosentino and Stone Masters after this harrowing project. If you are doing anything involving countertops, these are your guys.
Do I still recommend Dekton as a material? Yes, absolutely, but with some caveats:
If you have super complicated counters, as we did, you might want to work with a different material. We stretched this stuff to its limits, and saw the consequences. We got very lucky, but it was literally 50/50 that the second install would go well. So while I would absolutely suggest it for simpler designs, the first easy three pieces that came in were solid as rocks from the get go, I would hesitate if you have a lot of cutouts, or inside corners to deal with.
I would not recommend it if you are on a very tight timeline, since obviously, stuff can happen, so if you have a calendar without any cushion in it? Might not be for you. We were lucky that we had enough other stuff happening in the house that it didn't hold us up too badly, our guys just shifted gears and focused elsewhere, and we still had a full kitchen functioning downstairs to use. But if you have scheduled a month for kitchen reno and are staying with your in-laws with your three kids while the kitchen is demolished? Perhaps Silestone will be a safer choice, just in case.
I would also say that I would especially recommend it if you are not doing beveled edging, but just letting the edge of the material be the edge. This is starting to be the trend in kitchen design, and I really like the look, the only reason we didn't shift to that after the first install was because the cabinets had been designed around the beveled edge, and there would have been no way to alter that.
If you are in the greater Chicagoland Area, I would not work with any fabricator other than Stone Masters, the guys who came from Spain said that they had never seen anyone else who could do with Dekton what our guys did, not anyone anywhere in the world. If you are not in Chicago, be sure of a few things with your fabricators...make sure they do all the underside laminations with Dekton, and not quartz or other products and make sure that you arrange installation when you can really control temperature variations.
Stay tuned, the kitchen and other spaces are really coming together over here, and there are going to be some finished pics in this space very soon!
Yours in Good Taste,
The Polymath
Hope that Spring is springing where you are, Chicago is experiencing days of 70 degrees with a chance of snow, and I wish that weren't true. The weather here is like watching time lapse video of the seasons. Its a bit unsettling, but we are taking the good with the weird and pressing onward.
Today it is time to share some exciting news...the countertops are IN! They are glorious, they are everything we ever wanted and then some. They are perfect. But it was a long haul and required the support of many extraordinary people along the way.
You know how I have been waxing poetical about our countertop folks, the amazing designers at Cosentino and the artisan fabricators at Stone Masters? I'm about to take that up several notches, because in the land of renovations, the only thing you can count on is that stuff is going to go wrong. Sometimes EPICALLY wrong. (See Moat post here.) And when the shit hits the proverbial fan, this is where you really find out whether your partners are the real deal. Any idiot can take credit when stuff goes perfectly. "Here is this thing that I recommended you purchase from me, and I have delivered it and installed it and it works the way it was supposed to, without any issues...you're welcome."
But I don't care about those guys. What I care about? Are the people who take as much pride and concern in customer service as they do in the products they sell. Whose level of commitment and care is as strong if not stronger at the back end as it is on the front. THOSE are the people you want to do business with.
If you missed the original countertop post, you can catch up HERE.
Our kitchen counters were, to say the least, complex. We were asking a lot of them.
As you may remember, the kitchen is divided into two sections:
There is the L shaped section on the left, which has a cutout for a sink. And then the U shaped section on the right, which has cutouts for the sink, induction cooktop, and steamer, and also needs to create the breakfast bar and slides INTO the window wells to become the sills for the windows for a truly seamless look and ease of cleaning and function. Not to mention that the scale of it is pretty large, so you are looking at long runs of counter. Plus all of the edges are beveled, which is to say that they have to apply a 2 inch section of the material around the edge so that it looks like the counters are 2 inches thick. (You don't want your counters to actually be 2 inches thick, the weight would make your cabinets collapse.) Then you add in the backsplashes, and the fact that the material we chose has a veining pattern that needs to be matched up both on the backsplashes and the edging...I believe it is probably one of the hardest countertop projects anyone could have designed.
One of the reasons we have been working with Stone Masters is that they are expert at this kind of complicated detailed work. And they are the only ones who have been working with Dekton, the material we chose. Dekton is a pretty amazing product, but it is brand new, and so very few fabricators have been working with it, and we, unbeknownst to us, were about to push it to its limits.
Cosentino sent the slabs over to Stone Masters and they got to work. We set an install date, and hired a scissor lift to get the countertops up to the second floor. Little did we know that we set the date for a day that would be 4 degrees with -12 wind chill factor. The guys loaded the truck. They arrived onsite. The L shaped piece and the small pieces for the island and the little niche between the gas cooktop and the oven tower came up and were installed easy peasy. Then they brought up the big boy, the piece that covers the back wall, creates the windowsills and makes the corner up to the gas cooktop. They rested it in place and brought up the peninsula piece. As they were sliding the peninsula into place, the worst. POP. A crack. Then a louder POP, and the other slab cracked.
So sad :(You cannot imagine the devastation. I felt helpless, looking at these terrific guys who had taken such care to make the perfect counters, so many man hours, just destroyed. And of course, sad for us, because the day was supposed to be joyous, almost anyone will tell you that the kitchen renovation doesn't really start to feel like a kitchen till the counters go in, it is a magical moment, and now, after all that anticipation, we were going to have to start all over.
I did the only thing I could think to do, ran out to go get some pizzas, so that I could feed the guys and we could all regroup. And here? Right here? Is where the amazing happened.
By the time I got home with pizza and pop for everyone, the kitchen was bustling. The owner of Stone Masters and his right hand man were there, along with their best fabricators. The general manager of Cosentino was there with his team. Everyone had dropped everything to come to the house to see what had happened and to brainstorm together how to fix it.
You guys? I cried. Not because my beautiful countertops were ruined and the kitchen project stalled. But because the moment things went sideways, everyone came rushing in to figure it out. No one laid blame or cast aspersions. No one got angry or snarky or poked fingers. They just all came together in an extraordinary show of professionalism to support each other and find a way to make things happen. Cosentino put a rush on to get new slabs over to Stone Masters. Stone Masters started calling the Dekton guys in Spain where it is manufactured to talk to their experts about what might have happened. They all treated it like a teachable moment, and wanted to learn as much as possible from what had happened, while still figuring out how to get us countertops ASAP. It was one of the most amazing things I had ever witnessed.
Those are the people you want in your corner. The ones who step up when stuff doesn't go as planned to create a fix.
And then? It got even more incredible.
Within a week? Two representatives from Cosentino headquarters from SPAIN were in my kitchen to look at what had happened, and to visit with Stone Masters to advise on the project. What the WHAT? Our project was so unique and the cracking was so surprising, that they felt the need to really come see what was going on. It made me happy to know that everyone was so invested. We knew when we agreed to use a really cutting edge brand new product for this project that it was a risk, and they had assured us that it was a risk worth taking, and now that the risk had turned out to be an issue, everyone was really on top of learning what they could learn.
Here is what the team figured out. If possible? Do not take a high tension product with a lot of cutouts and inside corners and complicated edges out of a 65 degree shop into a van and then exposed into 4 degree cold and then into a 70 degree kitchen. It don't like it. POP.
We all decided to go for it with the Dekton one more time. As a backup plan, we still had the pure white Silestone that had been in our original plan before Dekton came on the scene, and Cosentino said they would send enough slabs of that material to Stone Masters when they sent the new Dekton so that if things went wrong again, they could immediately change gears and not lose any more time.
Cosentino had the new Dekton slabs (specifically from a different production batch, just in case) and the backup plan Silestone slabs to Stone Masters in record time. Stone Masters worked practically round the clock to remake the two counters that had cracked. We all watched the calendar and the weather. And then, a gift. A rare 60 degree day was going to hit Chicago. They set the shop temp for 65 degrees. We set the house temp to 65 degrees. We rented the lift again. The Cosentino team and the Stone Masters team all came over on install day, there were literally eight people here in addition to the install team. They loaded up the counters and brought them in. My blood pressure was through the roof, I could barely watch. But Stone Masters were cool as cucumbers. The counters were set into place. Leveled. An invisible seam connected the two. The sinks were mounted and faucets installed. The cooktops were set into place. We all sat and watched the artists at work.
Deep breath, here we go...
I made the Cosentino people take these pics, I couldn't watch...
Do you see that incredible matching of the veining on the edge? So talented.
Ugh, my heart could not take this one.
There is the L counter, perfect from day one.
All getting settled into place.
Starting to work on seams.
Induction cooktop and steamer in place safely!
Sink mounted!
Gas rangetop installed...can't wait to use this baby!
Island, just waiting for the butcher block.I had vodka in the freezer and Champagne in the fridge and the pizza place on speed dial, so we were set for either celebration or commiseration.
We popped the Champagne.
Today, I tell you that we could not be more delighted with our choice. Yes, it was a long and frustrating process, mostly because we felt so terrible for the men who had worked so hard to make us perfect counters only to have them become garbage and have to start all over. But everyone kept such good spirits about the whole thing. Cosentino got new product without issue, and Stone Masters just kept assuring us that it was important to have this opportunity to find out the best way to work with a new product, and that it was, in the long run, a very good thing for everyone involved to have this kind of project as sort of a little Dekton master class. They all made us feel special, like our kitchen was part of something bigger, and never once asked us to make design changes to make the fabrication less complicated or to immediately shift to the backup plan. They all wanted the challenge, and I know that everyone is really proud of how it turned out.
We've been slowly beginning to use the new kitchen, it is still not 100% complete, but it is complete enough to play, and I have to say, for all the stress, these counters are incredible. The matte finish is easy to clean, and is a dream for thing like kneading bread, practically no extra flour needed. We can take things out of the oven and put them right onto the counters with no worry of scorching, so the endless search for trivets is over. We have officially spilled red wine, coffee, and even dropped a cooked beet onto the surface, and not a stain to be seen. Apparently, once you actually have them in place and installed is when the whole indestructible thing kicks in. And the fact that they are freaking gorgeous doesn't exactly hurt my feelings.
As you can see, I am even more in love with both Cosentino and Stone Masters after this harrowing project. If you are doing anything involving countertops, these are your guys.
Do I still recommend Dekton as a material? Yes, absolutely, but with some caveats:
If you have super complicated counters, as we did, you might want to work with a different material. We stretched this stuff to its limits, and saw the consequences. We got very lucky, but it was literally 50/50 that the second install would go well. So while I would absolutely suggest it for simpler designs, the first easy three pieces that came in were solid as rocks from the get go, I would hesitate if you have a lot of cutouts, or inside corners to deal with.
I would not recommend it if you are on a very tight timeline, since obviously, stuff can happen, so if you have a calendar without any cushion in it? Might not be for you. We were lucky that we had enough other stuff happening in the house that it didn't hold us up too badly, our guys just shifted gears and focused elsewhere, and we still had a full kitchen functioning downstairs to use. But if you have scheduled a month for kitchen reno and are staying with your in-laws with your three kids while the kitchen is demolished? Perhaps Silestone will be a safer choice, just in case.
I would also say that I would especially recommend it if you are not doing beveled edging, but just letting the edge of the material be the edge. This is starting to be the trend in kitchen design, and I really like the look, the only reason we didn't shift to that after the first install was because the cabinets had been designed around the beveled edge, and there would have been no way to alter that.
If you are in the greater Chicagoland Area, I would not work with any fabricator other than Stone Masters, the guys who came from Spain said that they had never seen anyone else who could do with Dekton what our guys did, not anyone anywhere in the world. If you are not in Chicago, be sure of a few things with your fabricators...make sure they do all the underside laminations with Dekton, and not quartz or other products and make sure that you arrange installation when you can really control temperature variations.
Stay tuned, the kitchen and other spaces are really coming together over here, and there are going to be some finished pics in this space very soon!
Yours in Good Taste,
The Polymath
March 9, 2016
Counter Intuitive: Part 2
Chickens-
Damn its cold outside. Sorry, just needed to clarify that.
But it's warm here inside the Chateau, and it is time to revisit countertops! Remember way back when, when we talked about countertops? And I extolled the virtues of Cosentinomaterials and the extraordinary craftsmanship of Stone Masters? Well we have now lived with the products and installation for nine months with nothing but joy and no problems, so of course when it came time to look at countertops for the second phase of the project, we wouldn't go anywhere else!
The countertop project for the second phase breaks down like this:
Kitchen: A U-shaped section that contains two cooktops, one drop-in appliance, and a sink. A small island. An L-shaped section that contains one sink.
We needed this material to be more than just durable, we needed it to be indestructible. The kind of surface that is impossible to damage with heat or scratching or staining, but is also easy to maintain.
Kitchen pantry: small shelves for spices, one shelving unit insert.
The pantry has a nook where we will have 13 (yes, lucky number 13) little shelves where all the spices will live. It also is wall to wall wire metro-shelving, and we needed one shelf liner that could also serve as a little countertop if necessary.
Kitchen Library:
If you don't know about my kitchen library, you can check it out here. This is essentially moving upstairs almost wholesale, but with a couple additions. We are not bringing up the two antique cabinets, since they are gorgeous but we lose storage because they are short. So we are replacing them with two new metro shelving units, one of which will have a countertop insert where the microwave will live. We are also adding a buffet to this space, which needs a countertop as well.
Bathrooms:
There are actually two bathrooms in this phase, one on the second floor, off of the kitchen, one on the first floor through the library. They will be getting their own design posts soon, but in terms of stonework, the upstairs bathroom needed ledges and sills for the shower, and the downstairs bathroom needed those plus a vanity top. (we'll go into details there when I talk about bathroom design and install!)
So we took what we knew about our design, grabbed our amazing Poggenpohl cabinet designer Marcy, and headed for the Cosentino showroom. Now, you know us, we have some clear ideas and opinions about design, and always head into a project with a lot of research under our belts. And we had already chosen (we thought) a lovely quartz product that Cosentino carries for the kitchen countertop. The quartz we used in the basement in the media room and laundry room were functioning beautifully and looking amazing, and we had been very impressed with the product, so we were certain we would use that material again.
Cosentino? Had other ideas. They had just released a brand new product that they were very excited to show us, because they knew that we were in the market for something that would look terrific, timeless, and also last forever. This is when we were introduced to Dekton. (can you hear angels singing? I can...)
Dekton is the newest available countertop material, and it is a product made of a combination of quartz, porcelain, and glass, compressed under extreme pressure to make a surface that is damn near impossible to damage in normal usage. And I'm not just talking in countertops. You can use this stuff indoors AND outdoors, as flooring, wall covering, anywhere you could use tile or stone, you can use Dekton. You know how diamonds are the hardest material on earth, because they are created in high pressure? Same principal. You get the hardness and durability of quartz, intensified by the glass fusing the material, and the gorgeous look from the inclusion of the porcelain. It's truly amazing.
The lovely folks at Cosentino were once again honest with us about why they thought this material was a good match. While they certainly agreed that quartz would work wonderfully well for us, the Dekton is just a slight step up in the durability factor, and they know that this is a kitchen that will be getting an enormous amount of use, so they thought we would want that extra layer of protection. It also came in a wonderful matte finish, and they knew I was concerned about the look of so much shiny countertop.
They had heard me say I loved the look of white marble, but would never use it in a kitchen for myself because it is so difficult to maintain. We had been toying with the idea of white quartz, but had abandoned it because we felt it would be too stark and sterile looking at the scale of countertops we have in the space. Dekton has a couple of versions that have the look of white marble with lovely veining, so that we could achieve the look we preferred, but without the maintenance.
Charming Suitor and I were tentatively sold, but we needed to see the slabs, because the whole "fake" marble veining thing can go sideways really quickly.
But not at Cosentino. And not with Dekton.
They took us into the slab room to check it out.
Trust me, in person? Flawless. This is one with subtle brownish gray veining... 
This is more veined, and slightly more gold toned to the veining. 
And this is the more dramatic gray veining.And these were just our options in the white marble family! They had a dozen different marble looks, solid colors, some that looked like wood. There was the classic matte finish, which felt lovely to the touch and was just what CS and I had envisioned. (yes, we fondled the slabs with abandon, and no, we are not ashamed.) But they could also do amazing high gloss for people who like that look.
For the kitchen we decided on Kairos, the most subtly veined of the three. Marcy had brought a sample of our cabinet material with her, and the brown-gray veining in the Kairos was a terrific match to the color of the lava teak. She recommended a mitered edge of five centimeters, so the counters would essentially look like a two-inch thick slab of marble.
It came as no surprise to discover that our friends at Stone Masters are the single top fabrication house for Dekton, not just in the greater Chicagoland area, but pretty much in the whole country! Because the one thing about this stuff? It is complicated to fabricate. The very reasons it is so indestructible make it a really hard material to work with, especially for fine edges and complex patterns. Tom at StoneMasters spent months developing his proprietary methods for working with this stuff, till he found the perfect way to make the material really sing.
We had been concerned, because there are a lot of difficult things the countertops needed to do, in addition to more cutouts than for a usual kitchen, and long expanses, we were also requesting that the countertop extend into both windows and become a seamless windowsill behind the main sink. So there weren't a lot of just straight lines to cut! We wanted as few seams as possible, which is another reason Dekton was great for us, because the slabs are oversized, 56" wide and 126" long! That is over ten feet before you need a seam.
Tom and Robert at Stone Masters assured us that they could do the kitchen in Dekton no problem, not that we had any doubt, and we were so excited to be working with them again.
Then it came time to talk about the little bits for the pantry and the kitchen library. Again, CS and I thought we would just do more of the Dekton, to keep everything cohesive, but the Cosentino team had another thought. They knew we were doing the BlueStar ovens in deep orange to have that pop of color in the kitchen. Then they took us over to see another slab.
And it was orange.
Not just any orange, the EXACT ORANGE OF THE OVENS. Not kidding:
Color sample for ovens on the left, orange Silestone Quartz on the right. I mean, right????We couldn't believe what a perfect color match it was, especially since orange is notoriously hard to match under the best circumstances. Since the Cosentino designers knew that the pantry and kitchen library were both being painted a deep brownish gray, with just steel and wood, the orange wouldn't be too much, and it would nod to the ovens in a cool way.
We were sold. Dekton Kairos for the kitchen counters and Silestone Orange for the pantry and kitchen library bits and pieces.
We also went with Silestone for the two bathrooms, more on that next week when we chat bathroom design.
Your takeaways for countertops? The usual Stacey Commandment about knowing both how you plan to use a product and what your budget is...but also, I cannot stress enough how much easier your life will be if you spend some time researching the best showrooms and fabricators in your area. Once you trust the people on your team, you can have confidence in their guidance. We knew from our first experience with both Costentino and Stone Masters that when they all said that Dekton would be a great fit for us and how we planned to use the kitchen, we knew we could absolutely count on that being a great decision. And with Marcy there to help us keep a keen eye on the design elements, we also knew that all the products would work beautifully together from an aesthetic perspective.
Stay tuned, because believe it or not, there is still one appliance to discuss, and those gorgeous countertops are getting installed very soon!
Yours in Good Taste,
The Polymath
Damn its cold outside. Sorry, just needed to clarify that.
But it's warm here inside the Chateau, and it is time to revisit countertops! Remember way back when, when we talked about countertops? And I extolled the virtues of Cosentinomaterials and the extraordinary craftsmanship of Stone Masters? Well we have now lived with the products and installation for nine months with nothing but joy and no problems, so of course when it came time to look at countertops for the second phase of the project, we wouldn't go anywhere else!
The countertop project for the second phase breaks down like this:
Kitchen: A U-shaped section that contains two cooktops, one drop-in appliance, and a sink. A small island. An L-shaped section that contains one sink.
We needed this material to be more than just durable, we needed it to be indestructible. The kind of surface that is impossible to damage with heat or scratching or staining, but is also easy to maintain.
Kitchen pantry: small shelves for spices, one shelving unit insert.
The pantry has a nook where we will have 13 (yes, lucky number 13) little shelves where all the spices will live. It also is wall to wall wire metro-shelving, and we needed one shelf liner that could also serve as a little countertop if necessary.
Kitchen Library:
If you don't know about my kitchen library, you can check it out here. This is essentially moving upstairs almost wholesale, but with a couple additions. We are not bringing up the two antique cabinets, since they are gorgeous but we lose storage because they are short. So we are replacing them with two new metro shelving units, one of which will have a countertop insert where the microwave will live. We are also adding a buffet to this space, which needs a countertop as well.
Bathrooms:
There are actually two bathrooms in this phase, one on the second floor, off of the kitchen, one on the first floor through the library. They will be getting their own design posts soon, but in terms of stonework, the upstairs bathroom needed ledges and sills for the shower, and the downstairs bathroom needed those plus a vanity top. (we'll go into details there when I talk about bathroom design and install!)
So we took what we knew about our design, grabbed our amazing Poggenpohl cabinet designer Marcy, and headed for the Cosentino showroom. Now, you know us, we have some clear ideas and opinions about design, and always head into a project with a lot of research under our belts. And we had already chosen (we thought) a lovely quartz product that Cosentino carries for the kitchen countertop. The quartz we used in the basement in the media room and laundry room were functioning beautifully and looking amazing, and we had been very impressed with the product, so we were certain we would use that material again.
Cosentino? Had other ideas. They had just released a brand new product that they were very excited to show us, because they knew that we were in the market for something that would look terrific, timeless, and also last forever. This is when we were introduced to Dekton. (can you hear angels singing? I can...)
Dekton is the newest available countertop material, and it is a product made of a combination of quartz, porcelain, and glass, compressed under extreme pressure to make a surface that is damn near impossible to damage in normal usage. And I'm not just talking in countertops. You can use this stuff indoors AND outdoors, as flooring, wall covering, anywhere you could use tile or stone, you can use Dekton. You know how diamonds are the hardest material on earth, because they are created in high pressure? Same principal. You get the hardness and durability of quartz, intensified by the glass fusing the material, and the gorgeous look from the inclusion of the porcelain. It's truly amazing.
The lovely folks at Cosentino were once again honest with us about why they thought this material was a good match. While they certainly agreed that quartz would work wonderfully well for us, the Dekton is just a slight step up in the durability factor, and they know that this is a kitchen that will be getting an enormous amount of use, so they thought we would want that extra layer of protection. It also came in a wonderful matte finish, and they knew I was concerned about the look of so much shiny countertop.
They had heard me say I loved the look of white marble, but would never use it in a kitchen for myself because it is so difficult to maintain. We had been toying with the idea of white quartz, but had abandoned it because we felt it would be too stark and sterile looking at the scale of countertops we have in the space. Dekton has a couple of versions that have the look of white marble with lovely veining, so that we could achieve the look we preferred, but without the maintenance.
Charming Suitor and I were tentatively sold, but we needed to see the slabs, because the whole "fake" marble veining thing can go sideways really quickly.
But not at Cosentino. And not with Dekton.
They took us into the slab room to check it out.
Trust me, in person? Flawless. This is one with subtle brownish gray veining... 
This is more veined, and slightly more gold toned to the veining. 
And this is the more dramatic gray veining.And these were just our options in the white marble family! They had a dozen different marble looks, solid colors, some that looked like wood. There was the classic matte finish, which felt lovely to the touch and was just what CS and I had envisioned. (yes, we fondled the slabs with abandon, and no, we are not ashamed.) But they could also do amazing high gloss for people who like that look. For the kitchen we decided on Kairos, the most subtly veined of the three. Marcy had brought a sample of our cabinet material with her, and the brown-gray veining in the Kairos was a terrific match to the color of the lava teak. She recommended a mitered edge of five centimeters, so the counters would essentially look like a two-inch thick slab of marble.
It came as no surprise to discover that our friends at Stone Masters are the single top fabrication house for Dekton, not just in the greater Chicagoland area, but pretty much in the whole country! Because the one thing about this stuff? It is complicated to fabricate. The very reasons it is so indestructible make it a really hard material to work with, especially for fine edges and complex patterns. Tom at StoneMasters spent months developing his proprietary methods for working with this stuff, till he found the perfect way to make the material really sing.
We had been concerned, because there are a lot of difficult things the countertops needed to do, in addition to more cutouts than for a usual kitchen, and long expanses, we were also requesting that the countertop extend into both windows and become a seamless windowsill behind the main sink. So there weren't a lot of just straight lines to cut! We wanted as few seams as possible, which is another reason Dekton was great for us, because the slabs are oversized, 56" wide and 126" long! That is over ten feet before you need a seam.
Tom and Robert at Stone Masters assured us that they could do the kitchen in Dekton no problem, not that we had any doubt, and we were so excited to be working with them again.
Then it came time to talk about the little bits for the pantry and the kitchen library. Again, CS and I thought we would just do more of the Dekton, to keep everything cohesive, but the Cosentino team had another thought. They knew we were doing the BlueStar ovens in deep orange to have that pop of color in the kitchen. Then they took us over to see another slab.
And it was orange.
Not just any orange, the EXACT ORANGE OF THE OVENS. Not kidding:
Color sample for ovens on the left, orange Silestone Quartz on the right. I mean, right????We couldn't believe what a perfect color match it was, especially since orange is notoriously hard to match under the best circumstances. Since the Cosentino designers knew that the pantry and kitchen library were both being painted a deep brownish gray, with just steel and wood, the orange wouldn't be too much, and it would nod to the ovens in a cool way.We were sold. Dekton Kairos for the kitchen counters and Silestone Orange for the pantry and kitchen library bits and pieces.
We also went with Silestone for the two bathrooms, more on that next week when we chat bathroom design.
Your takeaways for countertops? The usual Stacey Commandment about knowing both how you plan to use a product and what your budget is...but also, I cannot stress enough how much easier your life will be if you spend some time researching the best showrooms and fabricators in your area. Once you trust the people on your team, you can have confidence in their guidance. We knew from our first experience with both Costentino and Stone Masters that when they all said that Dekton would be a great fit for us and how we planned to use the kitchen, we knew we could absolutely count on that being a great decision. And with Marcy there to help us keep a keen eye on the design elements, we also knew that all the products would work beautifully together from an aesthetic perspective.
Stay tuned, because believe it or not, there is still one appliance to discuss, and those gorgeous countertops are getting installed very soon!
Yours in Good Taste,
The Polymath
February 23, 2016
The Cherry on Top!
Chickens-
Welcome to the FINAL appliance reveal for the new kitchen! I know, I know, you are all thinking...they have put every appliance known to MAN in that kitchen, what could be left?
And I'm here to say that 1) no, shockingly we did avoid some of the appliance options available to us, including a built in deep fryer, indoor grill, and teppanyaki griddle, to name but a few. And B) the one thing left was the one thing your Polymath wanted like it was her job.
I won't bang the travel gong too much more, but I will say that one of our favorite things about visiting other places is visiting markets. Open air markets, enclosed marketplaces, watching the locals buy ingredients, haggle over prices, kibitz and joke and share the news of the day with the vendors is always a treat for us. Exploring the delicacies, usually wishing we had access to a kitchen, and always picking up some of the prepared foods to eat on the go.
And pretty much everywhere we go? We are instinctively drawn to the rotisseries. Usually large versions on trucks, laden with chickens, rolled sausages, pork roasts. The good ones? Have small new potatoes cooking in the meat drippings in a trough on the bottom. You order your protein of choice and you get a hefty portion of the crispy fatty potatoes with your selection on top. All you need is a stack of napkins, your handy pocketknife slash wine opener, and a park bench and you will feast like a king.
There is something about meat on a spit that just hits us where we live in a primal way. And while we love pretty much any hunk of animal that has been spinning in its own juices for a period of time, the thing we dream of?
Chicken.
Yep, the perfect roasted bird is like our holy grail. A good one is great, and a great one is transcendent. Even a mediocre one from the grocery store still makes for a satisfying weeknight dinner. Sure, an oven does a fine roasting job, but roasted chicken is different than rotisserie chicken. Rotisserie chicken gets a skin that is both extra crisp and slightly sticky, naturally glazed in its own juices. The meat is beyond moist, the seasoning manages to make it all the way through even without brining or marinating. The fat renders out (making those amazing potatoes) but keeps the chicken constantly basted, so even the breast meat is succulent and perfect, and won't even dry out on a quick reheat for lunch the next day. It is better cold than some chickens are hot. We have at least one a week.
Since we both love it so much, and it actually is healthy for us, we have the rotisserie attachment for the Weber grill for outdoor cookery, and Charming Suitor supported my acquisition of not one, but TWO ancient Roto-Broil 400 machines from the mid 1950s for inside jobs. If you really want to know why in a meaningful way, read THIS ARTICLE by Mark Bittman. The short of it is, these machines quite simply make amazing rotisserie chicken. And provided you don't get third degree burns from how hot the outside of the unit gets (likely why they were discontinued), you can get some terrific meals out of them.
But there is a small problem with the Roto-Broils. Chickens were different in the 1950s, smaller. So while these things will rotisserie the heck out of one small 2-3 lb chicken, or two cornish hens, you cannot fit two chickens in it, nor a larger roaster. So perfect for just me and CS, but not so great for dinner parties. And while you can par cook potatoes and put them under the chicken, they just sort of get greasy, and not crispy, because the heat element is on the top.
When we did our original list of the must haves, nice to haves, and splurges for the kitchen, the last thing I put on the bottom of the list? A La Cornue Flamberge Rotisserie. I know I don't have to explain La Cornue to any of you, the brand has been the dream of cooks for over 100 years. If we had an unlimited budget, we'd have gotten one of their amazing stoves, however, they cost more than a fully loaded BMW, although the mileage is much better. But they make the only home rotisserie on the market, and boy are they amazing. These built-in units are the size of a small oven, and are gas controlled. A wall of wicks on the back of the unit flames to life, and the generous capacity can accommodate up to four chickens at once! It can also do a leg of lamb, or a porchetta roast or a turkey or prime rib or several fish...it is glorious.
Are you starting to feel me? Think about a whole pork belly, cooking low and slow all day to juicy perfection. Or even a couple of whole pineapples, getting caramelized on the outside, to be sliced and served with thick vanilla Greek yogurt and some toasted almonds for a healthy but still decadent feeling dessert?
Yeah. From the moment I saw this baby it was deep down in my heart in a serious way.
This is when it is a really nice thing to turn 45 in the middle of a kitchen renovation, because when your amazing hubby asks you if you would like to add in the rotisserie as your birthday present? You say yes really fast!
I cannot tell you how excited we are to start using this baby! From a design perspective, we are giving it it's own tower of glory, next to one of the ovens, clad in the same Dekton material as the countertops. Many of the installations we saw while researching, showed a slide-in butcher block of some sort below the unit.
We loved the potential functionality of a setup like this, and especially loved that it would give us a use for the vintage butcher block we have in our current kitchen. The rotisserie tower will have a nook like the one above, and we are adding casters and a handle to our butcher block, and it will slide in and out of the way, but be right there when it is time for carving!
Some things to note if you are thinking about one of these for yourself:
They will tell you that they take 14 weeks to build, since they are all custom. And by 14 weeks they mean 26 weeks because, you know, France, and also, math is hard.
They put out some serious heat, since there are no doors on the front of the unit, so you need a 5 foot clearance in front of it with nothing flammable. I would say definitively that if you have small children? Wait till they leave for college before installing, there are no child locks on the controls, and when you turn it on you create a wall of open flame that could spell disaster without adult supervision. You will also want to be sure there is plenty of good ventilation in the room, or you will need an extra venting system. Ours is in a location that is pretty open, and is right next to the door to the back porch, and on the same wall as our massive powerful hood, so we didn't need to do special venting for it, but you will want to err on the side of caution.
Stay tuned for some upcoming installation posts on all of the appliances, things are really heating up, pun intended, and we may be getting close to some glamor shots in the next couple of weeks!
What would be the one thing that would be your fantasy splurge item in your dream kitchen?
Yours in Good Taste,
The Polymath
Welcome to the FINAL appliance reveal for the new kitchen! I know, I know, you are all thinking...they have put every appliance known to MAN in that kitchen, what could be left?
And I'm here to say that 1) no, shockingly we did avoid some of the appliance options available to us, including a built in deep fryer, indoor grill, and teppanyaki griddle, to name but a few. And B) the one thing left was the one thing your Polymath wanted like it was her job.
I won't bang the travel gong too much more, but I will say that one of our favorite things about visiting other places is visiting markets. Open air markets, enclosed marketplaces, watching the locals buy ingredients, haggle over prices, kibitz and joke and share the news of the day with the vendors is always a treat for us. Exploring the delicacies, usually wishing we had access to a kitchen, and always picking up some of the prepared foods to eat on the go.
And pretty much everywhere we go? We are instinctively drawn to the rotisseries. Usually large versions on trucks, laden with chickens, rolled sausages, pork roasts. The good ones? Have small new potatoes cooking in the meat drippings in a trough on the bottom. You order your protein of choice and you get a hefty portion of the crispy fatty potatoes with your selection on top. All you need is a stack of napkins, your handy pocketknife slash wine opener, and a park bench and you will feast like a king.
There is something about meat on a spit that just hits us where we live in a primal way. And while we love pretty much any hunk of animal that has been spinning in its own juices for a period of time, the thing we dream of?
Chicken.
Yep, the perfect roasted bird is like our holy grail. A good one is great, and a great one is transcendent. Even a mediocre one from the grocery store still makes for a satisfying weeknight dinner. Sure, an oven does a fine roasting job, but roasted chicken is different than rotisserie chicken. Rotisserie chicken gets a skin that is both extra crisp and slightly sticky, naturally glazed in its own juices. The meat is beyond moist, the seasoning manages to make it all the way through even without brining or marinating. The fat renders out (making those amazing potatoes) but keeps the chicken constantly basted, so even the breast meat is succulent and perfect, and won't even dry out on a quick reheat for lunch the next day. It is better cold than some chickens are hot. We have at least one a week.
Since we both love it so much, and it actually is healthy for us, we have the rotisserie attachment for the Weber grill for outdoor cookery, and Charming Suitor supported my acquisition of not one, but TWO ancient Roto-Broil 400 machines from the mid 1950s for inside jobs. If you really want to know why in a meaningful way, read THIS ARTICLE by Mark Bittman. The short of it is, these machines quite simply make amazing rotisserie chicken. And provided you don't get third degree burns from how hot the outside of the unit gets (likely why they were discontinued), you can get some terrific meals out of them.
But there is a small problem with the Roto-Broils. Chickens were different in the 1950s, smaller. So while these things will rotisserie the heck out of one small 2-3 lb chicken, or two cornish hens, you cannot fit two chickens in it, nor a larger roaster. So perfect for just me and CS, but not so great for dinner parties. And while you can par cook potatoes and put them under the chicken, they just sort of get greasy, and not crispy, because the heat element is on the top.
When we did our original list of the must haves, nice to haves, and splurges for the kitchen, the last thing I put on the bottom of the list? A La Cornue Flamberge Rotisserie. I know I don't have to explain La Cornue to any of you, the brand has been the dream of cooks for over 100 years. If we had an unlimited budget, we'd have gotten one of their amazing stoves, however, they cost more than a fully loaded BMW, although the mileage is much better. But they make the only home rotisserie on the market, and boy are they amazing. These built-in units are the size of a small oven, and are gas controlled. A wall of wicks on the back of the unit flames to life, and the generous capacity can accommodate up to four chickens at once! It can also do a leg of lamb, or a porchetta roast or a turkey or prime rib or several fish...it is glorious.
Are you starting to feel me? Think about a whole pork belly, cooking low and slow all day to juicy perfection. Or even a couple of whole pineapples, getting caramelized on the outside, to be sliced and served with thick vanilla Greek yogurt and some toasted almonds for a healthy but still decadent feeling dessert?
Yeah. From the moment I saw this baby it was deep down in my heart in a serious way.
This is when it is a really nice thing to turn 45 in the middle of a kitchen renovation, because when your amazing hubby asks you if you would like to add in the rotisserie as your birthday present? You say yes really fast!
I cannot tell you how excited we are to start using this baby! From a design perspective, we are giving it it's own tower of glory, next to one of the ovens, clad in the same Dekton material as the countertops. Many of the installations we saw while researching, showed a slide-in butcher block of some sort below the unit.
We loved the potential functionality of a setup like this, and especially loved that it would give us a use for the vintage butcher block we have in our current kitchen. The rotisserie tower will have a nook like the one above, and we are adding casters and a handle to our butcher block, and it will slide in and out of the way, but be right there when it is time for carving!
Some things to note if you are thinking about one of these for yourself:
They will tell you that they take 14 weeks to build, since they are all custom. And by 14 weeks they mean 26 weeks because, you know, France, and also, math is hard.
They put out some serious heat, since there are no doors on the front of the unit, so you need a 5 foot clearance in front of it with nothing flammable. I would say definitively that if you have small children? Wait till they leave for college before installing, there are no child locks on the controls, and when you turn it on you create a wall of open flame that could spell disaster without adult supervision. You will also want to be sure there is plenty of good ventilation in the room, or you will need an extra venting system. Ours is in a location that is pretty open, and is right next to the door to the back porch, and on the same wall as our massive powerful hood, so we didn't need to do special venting for it, but you will want to err on the side of caution.
Stay tuned for some upcoming installation posts on all of the appliances, things are really heating up, pun intended, and we may be getting close to some glamor shots in the next couple of weeks!
What would be the one thing that would be your fantasy splurge item in your dream kitchen?
Yours in Good Taste,
The Polymath
February 20, 2016
Winner announced!
Congrats, "fgirl" you have won the big Valentine's giveaway!
Please send your shipping address to me at staceyballisinfo (at) gmail (dot) com and I will get the team on sending all of your prizes!
In the meantime, stay tuned, this week there are some big house updates coming!
Please send your shipping address to me at staceyballisinfo (at) gmail (dot) com and I will get the team on sending all of your prizes!
In the meantime, stay tuned, this week there are some big house updates coming!
February 18, 2016
Bonus Travel Post
Chickens-
Before I go rogue over here, I just want to remind you all that it is not too late to enter to win the huge Valentine's Day Giveaway! Just CLICK HERE and comment to win on the post. Entries still possible till 11:59PM CST Friday Feb. 19!
Okay, so today I'm chatting about something a bit different. This is not a travel blog. And while Charming Suitor and I love to wander the world together, our travel adventures are just not something that I write about. We don't publicize our trips on social media, we only really tell close friends and family when we are going to be away, it is just one of those things we protect for ourselves. As such, you'll notice that while I might recommend a cool piece of travel gear or equipment on this blog, you don't really see me touting places to go or things to do. There are many many terrific travel blogs out there, and it just has never seemed cogent to this space to write about tourism stuff.
Which is usually fine, except every now and again you have an experience so wonderful, and so unexpected, that you want to give a little shout-out. I rely so much on people who enjoy my books to tell their social media circles about them, even if they don't have a "book blog", so when CS and I had a surprising and fantastic experience on a trip recently, I decided that this time, it was worth taking a moment to acknowledge it publicly.
CS travels a tremendous amount for work. Sometimes this is domestic, but lately a lot of it has been to Europe. And since my job is eminently portable, and my boss is super nice about giving me freedom to roam, occasionally I get to burn some frequent flier miles and accompany him! Recently he had a meeting scheduled in Amsterdam. This is a city neither of us had ever been to. So it seemed like it would be fun to test it out for a few days, to see if it should be on our list of places to come back to and explore more in depth. To be honest, our expectations weren't exactly sky high. We knew there were some great museums we wanted to see, and that it would be very cool to check out a city built on canals. But as neither of us are interested in cannibis in any meaningful way, ditto legal hookers in windows, we sort of figured it might be a "one and done" city for us.
And that? Could not be further from the truth. And a big part of that has to do with two businesses that I want to tell you about.
First off, I can say unequivocally, GO TO AMSTERDAM. It is a super fun little city, chock full of wonderful cultural experiences, and quite simply the nicest people we have ever met. Seriously the Dutch? Amazing. Sweet, funny, easy going, helpful, fantastic people. The food is varied and extraordinary. The little shopping boutiques have really cool stuff, the architecture is like nothing either of us had ever seen before. The three days we had there were not nearly enough, and we will definitely be going back.
And when we do, we are staying at The Hoxton again. We got the recommendation for this sweet little boutique hotel from a friend who used to live in Amsterdam. It is right in the middle of an area called the 9 Streets, which is essentially SoHo. 9 streets full of adorable boutiques and shops and fantastic cafes and restaurants, you can wander this area for a full day and never get bored or hungry. And from the moment we checked in, they took such good care of us, with such clever amenities, we knew that this was a special place.
Let me be clear. CS and I have stayed in a LOT of hotels over the years. There are some we love for location and function, and some we love for their romantic essence and luxury, and some we put up with because they are the best of what is available in our budget for where we are going. But The Hoxton? Made us fall in love a little bit.
For starters, the staff is amazing. So helpful and accommodating, so genuine and warm, every one of them. The rooms are quirky and comfortable, with really great beds and linens, and some fun local products in the bathrooms. They give you a fridge in your room instead of a mini bar, and then at the front desk you can pick up anything you might want, handmade potato chips, local artisanal chocolates, wine and booze. As they said, why stock your fridge with a ton of stuff you probably don't want, when you could customize it for yourself. They have as much bottled water as you want or need for no charge. Heading out for the day? Stop at the desk and pick up a water to take with you, no problem.
They have a quirky and fun sense of humor, so the do not disturb sign essentially says "Don't come in, I'm naked", and the little sticker on the extra toilet paper says "Wipe Away!". They have local graphic artists do custom maps for them of the area that they put in your room, with recommendations of places to visit and eat. Lotti's, the restaurant and bar in the lobby is clearly a place the locals love as much as guests, it is bustling and lively, with really terrific food. No boring lobby cafe this, this is just a great restaurant that happens to be in a hotel. It was fun to come back on Friday night to find the place full of vibrant people all eating and drinking and having a great time, it brings really nice energy to the place.
And no, there was no special deal or anything, it was just a place that a friend recommended that was in the price point for CS's company, so it was like finding a magical unicorn.
Thank you Hoxton Amsterdam for taking such good care of us, we will be back!
The second business I want to give a shout-out to is Hungry Birds. Since we had so little time, we decided to do a half-day foodie tour of Amsterdam. I did some research online, and Hungry Birds seemed to be the perfect fit, four hours, tours limited in size, incorporates the big Albert Cuyp market that we had wanted to see anyway. And it was fantastic. Our guide, Ester-Hanna was fun and funny, and incorporated some history of Amsterdam into our tour. We had a terrific group of people, and explored all sorts of delicacies. They focus on small, family-run businesses, so every stop we met amazing proprietors who shared their personal stories with us, which made the food even more delicious. We tasted everything from Indonesian and Surinamese food, to old school Dutch specialties, to funky fast food! There was a custom organic yogurt bar that blew us away. (yeah, game changing yogurt, who'd have thunk THAT?!) Well balanced with sweet and savory, and even a couple of stops that included drink as well as eats, we spent a wonderful four hours and left feeling like we had a true sense of the food culture of Amsterdam, and a list of places to return to.
So, my little Chickens, if you have opportunity, CS and I cannot recommend Amsterdam enough, and if you are lucky enough to go, stay at The Hoxton and take a Hungry Birds tour. Tell them we sent you. And no, cynics, this is not a sponsored post, they have no idea who I am or that I'm sharing this with you...I just like to give credit where it is due, and these are places that deserved more than just recommendations in passing :)
Please take this moment to share in the comments a business or product that you just love and think the rest of us should know about!
Yours in Good Taste,
The Polymath
Before I go rogue over here, I just want to remind you all that it is not too late to enter to win the huge Valentine's Day Giveaway! Just CLICK HERE and comment to win on the post. Entries still possible till 11:59PM CST Friday Feb. 19!
Okay, so today I'm chatting about something a bit different. This is not a travel blog. And while Charming Suitor and I love to wander the world together, our travel adventures are just not something that I write about. We don't publicize our trips on social media, we only really tell close friends and family when we are going to be away, it is just one of those things we protect for ourselves. As such, you'll notice that while I might recommend a cool piece of travel gear or equipment on this blog, you don't really see me touting places to go or things to do. There are many many terrific travel blogs out there, and it just has never seemed cogent to this space to write about tourism stuff.
Which is usually fine, except every now and again you have an experience so wonderful, and so unexpected, that you want to give a little shout-out. I rely so much on people who enjoy my books to tell their social media circles about them, even if they don't have a "book blog", so when CS and I had a surprising and fantastic experience on a trip recently, I decided that this time, it was worth taking a moment to acknowledge it publicly.
CS travels a tremendous amount for work. Sometimes this is domestic, but lately a lot of it has been to Europe. And since my job is eminently portable, and my boss is super nice about giving me freedom to roam, occasionally I get to burn some frequent flier miles and accompany him! Recently he had a meeting scheduled in Amsterdam. This is a city neither of us had ever been to. So it seemed like it would be fun to test it out for a few days, to see if it should be on our list of places to come back to and explore more in depth. To be honest, our expectations weren't exactly sky high. We knew there were some great museums we wanted to see, and that it would be very cool to check out a city built on canals. But as neither of us are interested in cannibis in any meaningful way, ditto legal hookers in windows, we sort of figured it might be a "one and done" city for us.
And that? Could not be further from the truth. And a big part of that has to do with two businesses that I want to tell you about.
First off, I can say unequivocally, GO TO AMSTERDAM. It is a super fun little city, chock full of wonderful cultural experiences, and quite simply the nicest people we have ever met. Seriously the Dutch? Amazing. Sweet, funny, easy going, helpful, fantastic people. The food is varied and extraordinary. The little shopping boutiques have really cool stuff, the architecture is like nothing either of us had ever seen before. The three days we had there were not nearly enough, and we will definitely be going back.
And when we do, we are staying at The Hoxton again. We got the recommendation for this sweet little boutique hotel from a friend who used to live in Amsterdam. It is right in the middle of an area called the 9 Streets, which is essentially SoHo. 9 streets full of adorable boutiques and shops and fantastic cafes and restaurants, you can wander this area for a full day and never get bored or hungry. And from the moment we checked in, they took such good care of us, with such clever amenities, we knew that this was a special place.
Let me be clear. CS and I have stayed in a LOT of hotels over the years. There are some we love for location and function, and some we love for their romantic essence and luxury, and some we put up with because they are the best of what is available in our budget for where we are going. But The Hoxton? Made us fall in love a little bit.
For starters, the staff is amazing. So helpful and accommodating, so genuine and warm, every one of them. The rooms are quirky and comfortable, with really great beds and linens, and some fun local products in the bathrooms. They give you a fridge in your room instead of a mini bar, and then at the front desk you can pick up anything you might want, handmade potato chips, local artisanal chocolates, wine and booze. As they said, why stock your fridge with a ton of stuff you probably don't want, when you could customize it for yourself. They have as much bottled water as you want or need for no charge. Heading out for the day? Stop at the desk and pick up a water to take with you, no problem.
They have a quirky and fun sense of humor, so the do not disturb sign essentially says "Don't come in, I'm naked", and the little sticker on the extra toilet paper says "Wipe Away!". They have local graphic artists do custom maps for them of the area that they put in your room, with recommendations of places to visit and eat. Lotti's, the restaurant and bar in the lobby is clearly a place the locals love as much as guests, it is bustling and lively, with really terrific food. No boring lobby cafe this, this is just a great restaurant that happens to be in a hotel. It was fun to come back on Friday night to find the place full of vibrant people all eating and drinking and having a great time, it brings really nice energy to the place.
And no, there was no special deal or anything, it was just a place that a friend recommended that was in the price point for CS's company, so it was like finding a magical unicorn.
Thank you Hoxton Amsterdam for taking such good care of us, we will be back!
The second business I want to give a shout-out to is Hungry Birds. Since we had so little time, we decided to do a half-day foodie tour of Amsterdam. I did some research online, and Hungry Birds seemed to be the perfect fit, four hours, tours limited in size, incorporates the big Albert Cuyp market that we had wanted to see anyway. And it was fantastic. Our guide, Ester-Hanna was fun and funny, and incorporated some history of Amsterdam into our tour. We had a terrific group of people, and explored all sorts of delicacies. They focus on small, family-run businesses, so every stop we met amazing proprietors who shared their personal stories with us, which made the food even more delicious. We tasted everything from Indonesian and Surinamese food, to old school Dutch specialties, to funky fast food! There was a custom organic yogurt bar that blew us away. (yeah, game changing yogurt, who'd have thunk THAT?!) Well balanced with sweet and savory, and even a couple of stops that included drink as well as eats, we spent a wonderful four hours and left feeling like we had a true sense of the food culture of Amsterdam, and a list of places to return to.
So, my little Chickens, if you have opportunity, CS and I cannot recommend Amsterdam enough, and if you are lucky enough to go, stay at The Hoxton and take a Hungry Birds tour. Tell them we sent you. And no, cynics, this is not a sponsored post, they have no idea who I am or that I'm sharing this with you...I just like to give credit where it is due, and these are places that deserved more than just recommendations in passing :)
Please take this moment to share in the comments a business or product that you just love and think the rest of us should know about!
Yours in Good Taste,
The Polymath
February 14, 2016
Happy Valentine's Day!
Hello, Chickens, and a very happy day to you all! I hope that you are spending the day in some sort of celebration. If you are attached, I hope you and your darling are indulging in romance aplenty, whatever that looks like for the two of you. And if you are single, I hope you are unapologetically celebrating your freedom, and toasting with like minded pals.
Charming Suitor and I are, as it should surprise no one, pretty romantic on a day to day basis. I think we both know that finding each other in, let us acknowledge, the second act of our lives, so to speak, we are aware of both the time behind us that we missed not knowing each other, and the need to not waste a moment of the gift we've been given in each other.
Romance means different things to different people, so I don't mean to imply that the way we do it is right or better, just that it works for us. There are the little things. Every night before bed we have small glasses of champagne, to toast the day, to toast our love, to send us to sleep with little tickly bubbles in our noses. It is the perfect nightcap, and a wonderful tradition.
Gifting can be complicated with couples, but luckily for us we are pretty much on the same page. We believe in happy presents, those little random gifts, small things you find along your path that make you think of the other person and know it would make them happy. We don't wait for holidays or special occasions for these, we just find, and give. Because sometimes an unexpected treat on a Tuesday is just the thing. For the holiday season, we don't give to each other, we make donations to causes that are near and dear to loved ones hearts, and give each other the gift of time. We both take off the week between Christmas and New Years and spend it lazily at home together, indulging in naps and afternoon movies and complicated meals that we can cook together. No work, no "have tos", no projects, just us together is all we need and the best gift we could either of us ask for.
While the Chateau is under construction, birthday and anniversary gifts tend to be of the practical household variety. Did you know that the Fourth year anniversary gift is appliances? Well, it was in this house!
For those of you who know us, you know that both Charming Suitor and I are Francophiles. We have both been fortunate to spend a lot of time in France, both separately and together, and went there for our honeymoon. So ever since we bought our house, since it looks like a little castle, we've been calling it The Chateau. More specifically, Chateau de Pamplmousse.
Pamplemousse is my favorite single word in French. It means grapefruit, which is one of my favorite flavors, but I think even if I didn’t like the flavor of grapefruit, I would still love the word. Just say it once, out loud. C’mon, no one is listening. Pamplemousse. Pronounced POM-PLA-MOOSE. Isn’t that fun? Don’t you want to say it again? I always thought if I ever had a restaurant I would name it Pamplemousse. Except your Polymath does not want to work that hard.
Pamplemousse is also Charming Suitor’s favorite word in French, something we discovered early on in our courtship. He has spent years trying to get his friends to name their pets, and alternately children, Pamplemousse. He will occasionally look me in the eye and say “You had me at Pamplemousse.” which I am sure is making you throw up a little in your mouth right now, but it literally makes my heart melt every time.
My license plate is PMPLMUS.
So, in celebration of Valentine's Day, and the progress on the house, I thought I would do a special pamplemousse themed big giveaway for all of you! And I've got some wonderful partners on this one.
First and foremost, as I have said before on this blog, It is important to know something about me. I think most sparkling flavored waters taste strongly of furniture polish. But I do like fizzy water, and have been avoiding pop for a while now, trying to stay away from artificial sweeteners as much as possible.
So when LaCroix came out with a grapefruit version of their flavored sparkling water a few years ago AND called it Pamplemousse, I had to try it. I don’t know if I love it as much as I do because I was psychologically pre-disposed to like it based on the name, but the fact is that we now drink about two to three cases of it a week since CS loves it too, as do some of my closest friends, so I believe it is really just tasty. Very lightly flavored, and oddly great with most food. No artificial colors or flavors or salt or sweetener, so it is good for my program.
And the lovely folks at LaCroix have sent me some vouchers for free cases of their products to pass along to the lucky winner! You don't HAVE to use it for Pamplemousse flavor, but I do strongly recommend it.
I also do eat quite a bit of grapefruit in season, but as you can imagine, once I needed to reduce my added sugar intake, I needed to do a bit of research to find the grapefruits that are sweet enough on their own so that I didn't miss that little sprinkle of sugar. Enter Wonderful Sweet Scarlett's, a new brand of Texas Red Grapefruit that I have become really fond of. I have to be honest, I never really looked for a specific brand of grapefruit before, and came across these because my local grocery store had them and they looked good. But when I tasted them, really sweet punchy grapefruit flavor with almost no acidity, I checked that little oval label and remembered it.
The folks at Wonderful Sweet Scarlett's have put together a terrific gift basket for you!
This basket has some delicious Wonderful Sweet Scarletts grapefruit, a circular bamboo cutting board, an apron, a grapefruit spoon and grapefruit bowl, as well as a Valentine's heart shaped cookie cutter. And I've got some fun recipes below to use those grapefruits to their fullest, sweetest potential.
Last but not least, we had some guest soaps custom made for the house in a delicate grapefruit scent, so I will be sending a personalized signed copy of Recipe for Disaster and a bar of the official Chateau de Pamplemousse soap to the winner as well.
To enter to win, leave a comment below on your favorite way to celebrate (or not)Valentines Day by 11:59pm on February 19, and I will announce the winner on the 20th!
Here are some of my favorite grapefruit treats:
Oleo Saccharum is a wonderful bittersweet grapefruit syrup that is classically used for cocktails, but once you have some on hand, you'll find all kinds of uses for it. I love it drizzled over vanilla Greek yogurt and sprinkled with toasted slivered almonds for a light dessert, splashed into chamomile tea for a sore throat, or as a fun substitute for maple syrup on french toast. But I've given you a recipe for a cocktail...
Peels of 8 grapefruits, removed with a peeler with minimum pith1 c sugar
Place all of the peels in a Ziploc bag with the sugar and press out the air. Mush around to begin to release the oils. Let sit at room temp at least 6 hours to overnight dissolve the sugar, smushing it around occasionally, then strain into a bottle for use.
Makes about 1/3 c
The Chateau de Pamplemousse Fizz
1 1/2 oz gin1 oz Aperol1/2 oz Dolin white vermouth1/2 oz oleo saccharum1 oz LaCroix Pamplemousse
Mix the gin, aperol, white vermouth and oleo saccharum in a mixing glass over ice, and stir to combine. Strain into a rocks glass with ice cubes, and top with the LaCroix. Serve with a half-slice of grapefruit to garnish.
Grapefruit Cornmeal CakeServes 12
1 ½ sticks unsalted butter, melted and cooled1 ½ c all purpose flour½ c medium grind cornmeal1 ½ c granulated sugar2 t baking powder½ t kosher salt3 large eggs1 T grapefruit zest ¼ c fresh grapefruit juice
Glaze:2 c confectioners sugar¼ c poppy seeds1/3 c fresh grapefruit juice
Preheat oven to 350. Butter a 9 in cake pan, line bottom with parchment and butter parchment.
Whisk flour with cornmeal, sugar, baking powder and salt. Whisk melted butter with eggs, zest and juice. Add butter to dry mixture in slow steady stream while whisking constantly. Scrape into pan and bake 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Let cool on a rack for 10 minutes, then remove from pan and invert on the rack, peel off parchment paper and carefully flip cake right side up. Let cool 30 minutes.
Mix glaze ingredients until smooth. Pour glaze all over still warm cake and spread over top and sides. Let stand until set, 30 minutes. Store in airtight container for up to three days.
Yours in Good Taste,
The Polymath
Charming Suitor and I are, as it should surprise no one, pretty romantic on a day to day basis. I think we both know that finding each other in, let us acknowledge, the second act of our lives, so to speak, we are aware of both the time behind us that we missed not knowing each other, and the need to not waste a moment of the gift we've been given in each other.
Romance means different things to different people, so I don't mean to imply that the way we do it is right or better, just that it works for us. There are the little things. Every night before bed we have small glasses of champagne, to toast the day, to toast our love, to send us to sleep with little tickly bubbles in our noses. It is the perfect nightcap, and a wonderful tradition.
Gifting can be complicated with couples, but luckily for us we are pretty much on the same page. We believe in happy presents, those little random gifts, small things you find along your path that make you think of the other person and know it would make them happy. We don't wait for holidays or special occasions for these, we just find, and give. Because sometimes an unexpected treat on a Tuesday is just the thing. For the holiday season, we don't give to each other, we make donations to causes that are near and dear to loved ones hearts, and give each other the gift of time. We both take off the week between Christmas and New Years and spend it lazily at home together, indulging in naps and afternoon movies and complicated meals that we can cook together. No work, no "have tos", no projects, just us together is all we need and the best gift we could either of us ask for.
While the Chateau is under construction, birthday and anniversary gifts tend to be of the practical household variety. Did you know that the Fourth year anniversary gift is appliances? Well, it was in this house!
For those of you who know us, you know that both Charming Suitor and I are Francophiles. We have both been fortunate to spend a lot of time in France, both separately and together, and went there for our honeymoon. So ever since we bought our house, since it looks like a little castle, we've been calling it The Chateau. More specifically, Chateau de Pamplmousse.
Pamplemousse is my favorite single word in French. It means grapefruit, which is one of my favorite flavors, but I think even if I didn’t like the flavor of grapefruit, I would still love the word. Just say it once, out loud. C’mon, no one is listening. Pamplemousse. Pronounced POM-PLA-MOOSE. Isn’t that fun? Don’t you want to say it again? I always thought if I ever had a restaurant I would name it Pamplemousse. Except your Polymath does not want to work that hard.
Pamplemousse is also Charming Suitor’s favorite word in French, something we discovered early on in our courtship. He has spent years trying to get his friends to name their pets, and alternately children, Pamplemousse. He will occasionally look me in the eye and say “You had me at Pamplemousse.” which I am sure is making you throw up a little in your mouth right now, but it literally makes my heart melt every time.
My license plate is PMPLMUS.
So, in celebration of Valentine's Day, and the progress on the house, I thought I would do a special pamplemousse themed big giveaway for all of you! And I've got some wonderful partners on this one.
First and foremost, as I have said before on this blog, It is important to know something about me. I think most sparkling flavored waters taste strongly of furniture polish. But I do like fizzy water, and have been avoiding pop for a while now, trying to stay away from artificial sweeteners as much as possible.
So when LaCroix came out with a grapefruit version of their flavored sparkling water a few years ago AND called it Pamplemousse, I had to try it. I don’t know if I love it as much as I do because I was psychologically pre-disposed to like it based on the name, but the fact is that we now drink about two to three cases of it a week since CS loves it too, as do some of my closest friends, so I believe it is really just tasty. Very lightly flavored, and oddly great with most food. No artificial colors or flavors or salt or sweetener, so it is good for my program.
And the lovely folks at LaCroix have sent me some vouchers for free cases of their products to pass along to the lucky winner! You don't HAVE to use it for Pamplemousse flavor, but I do strongly recommend it.I also do eat quite a bit of grapefruit in season, but as you can imagine, once I needed to reduce my added sugar intake, I needed to do a bit of research to find the grapefruits that are sweet enough on their own so that I didn't miss that little sprinkle of sugar. Enter Wonderful Sweet Scarlett's, a new brand of Texas Red Grapefruit that I have become really fond of. I have to be honest, I never really looked for a specific brand of grapefruit before, and came across these because my local grocery store had them and they looked good. But when I tasted them, really sweet punchy grapefruit flavor with almost no acidity, I checked that little oval label and remembered it.
The folks at Wonderful Sweet Scarlett's have put together a terrific gift basket for you!
This basket has some delicious Wonderful Sweet Scarletts grapefruit, a circular bamboo cutting board, an apron, a grapefruit spoon and grapefruit bowl, as well as a Valentine's heart shaped cookie cutter. And I've got some fun recipes below to use those grapefruits to their fullest, sweetest potential.
Last but not least, we had some guest soaps custom made for the house in a delicate grapefruit scent, so I will be sending a personalized signed copy of Recipe for Disaster and a bar of the official Chateau de Pamplemousse soap to the winner as well.
To enter to win, leave a comment below on your favorite way to celebrate (or not)Valentines Day by 11:59pm on February 19, and I will announce the winner on the 20th!
Here are some of my favorite grapefruit treats:
Oleo Saccharum is a wonderful bittersweet grapefruit syrup that is classically used for cocktails, but once you have some on hand, you'll find all kinds of uses for it. I love it drizzled over vanilla Greek yogurt and sprinkled with toasted slivered almonds for a light dessert, splashed into chamomile tea for a sore throat, or as a fun substitute for maple syrup on french toast. But I've given you a recipe for a cocktail...
Peels of 8 grapefruits, removed with a peeler with minimum pith1 c sugar
Place all of the peels in a Ziploc bag with the sugar and press out the air. Mush around to begin to release the oils. Let sit at room temp at least 6 hours to overnight dissolve the sugar, smushing it around occasionally, then strain into a bottle for use.
Makes about 1/3 c
The Chateau de Pamplemousse Fizz
1 1/2 oz gin1 oz Aperol1/2 oz Dolin white vermouth1/2 oz oleo saccharum1 oz LaCroix Pamplemousse
Mix the gin, aperol, white vermouth and oleo saccharum in a mixing glass over ice, and stir to combine. Strain into a rocks glass with ice cubes, and top with the LaCroix. Serve with a half-slice of grapefruit to garnish.
Grapefruit Cornmeal CakeServes 12
1 ½ sticks unsalted butter, melted and cooled1 ½ c all purpose flour½ c medium grind cornmeal1 ½ c granulated sugar2 t baking powder½ t kosher salt3 large eggs1 T grapefruit zest ¼ c fresh grapefruit juice
Glaze:2 c confectioners sugar¼ c poppy seeds1/3 c fresh grapefruit juice
Preheat oven to 350. Butter a 9 in cake pan, line bottom with parchment and butter parchment.
Whisk flour with cornmeal, sugar, baking powder and salt. Whisk melted butter with eggs, zest and juice. Add butter to dry mixture in slow steady stream while whisking constantly. Scrape into pan and bake 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Let cool on a rack for 10 minutes, then remove from pan and invert on the rack, peel off parchment paper and carefully flip cake right side up. Let cool 30 minutes.
Mix glaze ingredients until smooth. Pour glaze all over still warm cake and spread over top and sides. Let stand until set, 30 minutes. Store in airtight container for up to three days.
Yours in Good Taste,
The Polymath
January 24, 2016
Soup. Because, winter.
Chickens-
Just a brief pause in the house updates to say that I hope everyone in the storm's path this weekend is safe and warm! Even though winter has not exactly slammed Chicago with the white stuff, it is still plenty chilly out there, and in weather like this, I turn to soup. Usually I like to begin a meal with a salad, some good fiber and veggies, a little bit filling to help me not overdo it with the entree. But while I don't abandon my salads completely in the cold months, I do tend to prefer to have soup on hand for everything from easy lunches, to a warming afternoon snack, to a replacement for my dinner salad.
In terms of the whole dieting plan, healthy soups, especially ones that are veggie focused, can be a really useful tool for me when I'm craving comfort foods. And this one is an old family favorite, amped up a bit for my palate.
First off? Please do not confuse this soup with the "Cabbage Soup Diet" soup. Yes, it is a cabbage soup, but it is the sweet and sour cabbage soup favorited by my Eastern European ancestors, and it has some oomph, not that watery wan sad stuff promoted as a way to quick weight-loss.
This has sweetness from fresh orange juice, agave nectar, and thick sweet black soy sauce. It has acidic punch from fresh lemon juice, tempered with a mellow sherry vinegar. It is rich in fiber and super good for you, and with some of the optional add-ins, can be a meal unto itself. The recipe as-is is vegan, fat free, and clocks in at about 70 calories a cup, so it is a total guiltless pleasure. But even if you thicken it up with rice or barley, add beans or lentils, give it a twirl of olive oil, or even toss in a bit of leftover beef or chicken you have floating about, you are hard pressed to make it either unhealthy or horribly caloric.
I make mine in the slow cooker, because it makes the house smell fantastic all day, but a large stockpot over low heat is fine too, ditto a big covered Dutch oven at about 250 degrees for several hours in your oven. The key is to cook it low and slow so that the veggies retain a bit of substance while getting soft and giving up all their goodness. If you boil it, it becomes mush. Delicious mush, but mush nonetheless. I usually make this big batch and freeze half of it for the next storm.
If you have a favorite cold weather recipe, be sure to share in the comments section!
Sweet and Sour Cabbage Soup
makes approx 24 cups
1 medium head white cabbage, chopped into one inch pieces
1 large onion, diced
1 lb. carrots, peeled and chopped into half inch chunks
6 ribs celery, sliced
1 28 oz can whole peeled plum tomatoes (I use scissors to chop them up in the can, use juice and all)
3 T tomato paste
1 T demerara sugar or brown sugar
2 T kecap manis or sweet black soy sauce (you can substitute 1 1/2 T of plus 1 T of soy sauce)
4 T sherry vinegar
1-3 T agave nectar
juice of one orange
juice of one lemon
1/2-3/4 t red pepper flakes
salt and pepper to taste
Dump everything into a 6 qt slow cooker and add 7 c cold water. Turn slow cooker on high and cook 8 hours, stirring occasionally and tasting for seasoning. It should have a mellow sweet and sour flavor with a bit of heat on the back and some savory richness. Use the sherry vinegar and either sugar or agave to adjust to your taste. If you like it with more umami, try replacing the water with chicken stock. Serve hot with a sprinkle of chopped parsley. Approx 70 calories per cup.
Some wonderful add-ins to make it heartier, use 2-4 c total of any combination of the following:
Canned beans
Cooked lentils
Cooked barley, brown rice, farro or wheat berries
Cooked orzo or other small pasta
Cooked meats, like shredded chicken, small chunks of steak, ground beef, or even frozen meatballs!
Chopped mushrooms.
Yours in Good Taste,
The Polymath
Just a brief pause in the house updates to say that I hope everyone in the storm's path this weekend is safe and warm! Even though winter has not exactly slammed Chicago with the white stuff, it is still plenty chilly out there, and in weather like this, I turn to soup. Usually I like to begin a meal with a salad, some good fiber and veggies, a little bit filling to help me not overdo it with the entree. But while I don't abandon my salads completely in the cold months, I do tend to prefer to have soup on hand for everything from easy lunches, to a warming afternoon snack, to a replacement for my dinner salad.
In terms of the whole dieting plan, healthy soups, especially ones that are veggie focused, can be a really useful tool for me when I'm craving comfort foods. And this one is an old family favorite, amped up a bit for my palate.
First off? Please do not confuse this soup with the "Cabbage Soup Diet" soup. Yes, it is a cabbage soup, but it is the sweet and sour cabbage soup favorited by my Eastern European ancestors, and it has some oomph, not that watery wan sad stuff promoted as a way to quick weight-loss.
This has sweetness from fresh orange juice, agave nectar, and thick sweet black soy sauce. It has acidic punch from fresh lemon juice, tempered with a mellow sherry vinegar. It is rich in fiber and super good for you, and with some of the optional add-ins, can be a meal unto itself. The recipe as-is is vegan, fat free, and clocks in at about 70 calories a cup, so it is a total guiltless pleasure. But even if you thicken it up with rice or barley, add beans or lentils, give it a twirl of olive oil, or even toss in a bit of leftover beef or chicken you have floating about, you are hard pressed to make it either unhealthy or horribly caloric.
I make mine in the slow cooker, because it makes the house smell fantastic all day, but a large stockpot over low heat is fine too, ditto a big covered Dutch oven at about 250 degrees for several hours in your oven. The key is to cook it low and slow so that the veggies retain a bit of substance while getting soft and giving up all their goodness. If you boil it, it becomes mush. Delicious mush, but mush nonetheless. I usually make this big batch and freeze half of it for the next storm.
If you have a favorite cold weather recipe, be sure to share in the comments section!
Sweet and Sour Cabbage Soup
makes approx 24 cups
1 medium head white cabbage, chopped into one inch pieces
1 large onion, diced
1 lb. carrots, peeled and chopped into half inch chunks
6 ribs celery, sliced
1 28 oz can whole peeled plum tomatoes (I use scissors to chop them up in the can, use juice and all)
3 T tomato paste
1 T demerara sugar or brown sugar
2 T kecap manis or sweet black soy sauce (you can substitute 1 1/2 T of plus 1 T of soy sauce)
4 T sherry vinegar
1-3 T agave nectar
juice of one orange
juice of one lemon
1/2-3/4 t red pepper flakes
salt and pepper to taste
Dump everything into a 6 qt slow cooker and add 7 c cold water. Turn slow cooker on high and cook 8 hours, stirring occasionally and tasting for seasoning. It should have a mellow sweet and sour flavor with a bit of heat on the back and some savory richness. Use the sherry vinegar and either sugar or agave to adjust to your taste. If you like it with more umami, try replacing the water with chicken stock. Serve hot with a sprinkle of chopped parsley. Approx 70 calories per cup.
Some wonderful add-ins to make it heartier, use 2-4 c total of any combination of the following:
Canned beans
Cooked lentils
Cooked barley, brown rice, farro or wheat berries
Cooked orzo or other small pasta
Cooked meats, like shredded chicken, small chunks of steak, ground beef, or even frozen meatballs!
Chopped mushrooms.
Yours in Good Taste,
The Polymath
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