Kitchen!

So yesterday while I was baking focaccia Nick stayed home and dealt with our awesome handyman. Now look, we have more shelf/storage space in our kitchen!

It feels like a home!

Blogging About Bread

Today was an important day for me at work for several reasons-- the most important being, I learned I could make bread! Yes, I can join Jesus at the table and break bread with Him that I myself made.

Grape Focaccia Bread, to be precise.

To be less incendiary, let me explain myself. My best friend Keagan's cousin Oakley, who is also my friend, shared with me a link to this cooking website/blog called Smitten Kitchen. I was immediately in love. The writer/chef takes excellent photos, writes out great recipes, and gives some really insightful tips. I can't wait to try out more of her stuff.

The one that immediately caught my eye, however, was her recipe for Grape Focaccia With Rosemary. I decided to give it a try.

Sure, I had never baked bread before, and sure, I was a little scared. The recipe called for water at precise temperatures and active yeast. But I've been baking "professionally" for half a year now, and I figured it was time to step up my game.

That night at work, I got the necessary active dry yeast (I don't just have that lying around). Then I worked until nine PM, where Nick and I took a quick (relatively) detour and saw/met Jon Stewart and his crew at a book signing. That was neat. They were all really nice. I told Jon Stewart that Nick would one day be working for them and he was super cool and asked "when" and then said The Onion was stealing all the funny people. Mr. Oliver and I talked about rainbows. All in all, it was a successful event.

Anyway, back to bread!

As you can see by the recipe, it involves a lot of kneading and a lot of patience. After I made sure the yeast was good (it involved this foaming/sugar test) and I added flour and kneaded, etc, I covered the mixture with a ton of good quality olive oil and let it rise for another two hours.

The bread, rising:

Then I slathered it some more with olive oil and such, let it rise some more after splitting the balls in half

, and then got it ready to go into the oven!

Look at all the sliced grapes, coarse sea salt, and sugar on the bread! How beautiful!

There is something so relaxing about kneading/touching uncooked dough. It feels like nothing I've ever touched before. I loved it. Also, the scent of fresh rosemary baking with olive oil reminded me of childhood visits to Italian restaurants. This made me so happy.

It was really invigorating, making all this bread-- a basic human sustenance -- successfully. I felt really whole. Which is strange, I know it's just food, but still... this wasn't some baked dessert where throwing extra sugar in covers any mishaps. This required me to be precise and good at my job. And I did it.

AND THEN IT WAS DONE! AND I SUCCESSFULLY MADE FOCACCIA BREAD!

Mmmmm, Yummmmy!

Nick The Builder

So I've been working so much over time at work I had to call in sick today due to exhaustion/a cold that took hold of me.

However, an amazing thing happened on Tuesday. I stayed at work late, and Nick built the cabinet for the bathroom! It's beautiful!




The home is coming together. Huzzah! Our landlord visited today (I thought he was going to have a heart attack) and kept saying how beautiful our apartment was! Now I'm just doubly worried he will die.

Em

Notes on Living Together

So Nick and I have lived together for almost three weeks now (soooooooo long. sarcasm.) and I've already learned a lot of interesting tidbits.

1. Just because you live together doesn't mean you see each other all the time.
- This is especially true considering my job. As head of client services at the 5th Avenue Sound Lounge location, I work from eleven am to at least eight pm. Often I'm here closer to ten or eleven at night, depending on how late a session will go. Meanwhile, Nick has a more "regular" work schedule that requires him to be there by nine or ten and means he gets out at five or six. This, in turn, means he has around five hours alone at the house before I show up. By the time I'm home, I'm exhausted and wanting a shower, and he's mid-way through work/listening to an album/watching Friday Night Lights on Netflix Instant Watch. Often I'll retreat to the bedroom and he'll come join me. Last night he had me watch Sunshine, a sci-fi slasher flick I appreciated but didn't necessarily enjoy.

2. When you live together, you can't conveniently forget things
- For example, Nick noticed I have yet to read two of the books he gave me to read. He, bless him, has meanwhile read my beloved Then We Came To The End. I gave it to him about six months into dating. I don't think he liked it because he conveniently forgot to ever mention having completed the book.

3. Living together means getting out of more shit
My beautiful boyfriend won't go to my cousin's kid's baptism in Jersey. So I guess we give and take on what's important to us. And Nick hates God.

4. The bed is somehow smaller
According to Nick, my big ass keeps taking up room on his side of the bed. We never thought my double too small before... but now I'm seriously considering investing in a queen.

5. You see each others gross eating habits
Nick has discovered I love to eat like six sugar free popsicles in a sitting. And I always manage to spill popcorn kernels everywhere. I've discovered Nick drinks a beer before bed. That doesn't count as gross, though.

6. You learn how much you love each other.
I love that adorable boy.

Twist and Shout

Well, I expected the weather to change with the season but not this drastically.

So, there was a tornado in Park Slope! Ahhh! Alert the media. Oh wait, gawker, gothamist, and apparently everyone with a twitter account has been reporting this news. I feel like this is the new "Ground Zero Mosque" thing, only actually far more interesting. And hopefully Tea Partiers won't find a way to ruin this.

I knew something funky was going on because while at work the sky darkened and there was sleet and rain that went horizontal. And this was in MANHATTAN. And then I learned that there was a tornado in Park Slope, and I saw the video linked above. And this spooky picture (that is apparently from 1976?). Then Nick called and informed me that there were fallen tree branches/trees all over our route to and from the subway. Gothamist has pictures!

Things Nick and I learned: our "fixer-upper" apartment is not 100 percent fixed. The windows are cracked/open at the top (it didn't help that we left them open either), which of course allowed rain to get inside and drown Nick's Ninja Turtles DVD. And some furniture. And the floor.

Then we found out that our fridge is leaking.

So much to be done! But at least we have a roof over our heads... so far.

Bookslut

I grew up with parents who had a library. We're not talking like one bookcase, we're talking at least three bookcases-- LARGE ONES -- confined to a room that was basically dedicated to their ownership of books. When I was little, like ten, I used to love standing on the ledges of the bookshelves (they were built into the walls/super strong) and pulling books that looked interesting and asking my mom if they were appropriate. If they weren't, I'd get to a "sexy part" and ask my mom to skip forward. I was one prude kid.

[Random fact: the first time I got so into a book's story that I kept reading through a "sexy part" was the rape scene in THE THORN BIRDS. I was terrified of the idea of sex for a long time after that.]

When we moved to La Canada Flintridge, where my parents still preside, the library expanded. Not only did it have my mom's books from when she was a teen (we're talking 49 cent romances), but her books from college, and then my books from middle school along with my dad's science shit. An entire room was nothing but books! As this was where the "work computer" was for me and my little brother to do our homework, I spent a lot of time in that room. It was also basically sound proof, so thus the location of many a movie night with my louder friends.

Thus, I took way more books with me to college than was normal, and I took those from college to my first apartment, where I added books, and added more books, and then shipped all three bookcases worth to Brooklyn, where I had another bookshelf built so I had four bookcases, plus a bookcase for DVDs. Seriously. That's all one wall of my old apartment was:


And I love owning books. Lots of books. It's a point of pride. I like being able to say "oh, you want to read that? Well I own it, let me lend it to you." I love having people over and looking through the bookcase and talking about our similar likes or dislikes. I love recommending new books to people, and often to do that I have to peruse what I already own. It's my collection.

So, moving with Nick was wonderful but also hard in that I suddenly had to get rid of a lot of books. Not a ton, Nick, while mocking my book collection, didn't like forbid me or anything from having them. After all, the guy owns a shit ton of records. They're just able to be confined to one spot because they're thin.

But, for basic reality's sake, I had to get rid of some books I didn't read as much as I thought, or didn't really NEED to have around. And I had to get rid of two bookcases. They were shitty ikea ones anyway. So when Nick and I moved in to our pink house, we found that I had still six medium boxes full of books while the two bookcases I HAD brought were brimming.

Thus, I began the search to find a bookcase that could hold DVDs AND books. Thanks to Keagan's tip, I found the great site homedecorators.com (which I guess is part of Home Depot) and found this bookcase:


Pretty, right? Funny-- there's a REASON they don't show the books sitting straight up. Ends up the shelves barely hold them.

How did Nick and I find this out? Well, after going to Home Depot and purchasing a power drill-- my new favorite toy--


Nick and I spent two hours trying to BUILD said bookshelf. This is after we found it propped downstairs in its packaging. As the warning labels all over the beat-up package warned us, the thing was over 70 pounds. Thus, Nick and I had to individually carry up each piece of the bookcase.

I, deciding I was the next Wonder Woman, took a crack at the bookshelf. All was going swimmingly-- Nick had The Simpsons on as background fun -- until I got to the part involving hinges/the bottom cabinet. I could NOT figure them out. Then Nick got involved and did, but it took us an hour of wondering why the pictures were so poorly drawn.

But then we succeeded! And I filled the bookcase (and the below cabinet, double the times in the cabinet) with books and DVDs! And then Nick added his DVDs! Success!

So while now all of my bookcases in the apartment are double-stacked with books, we are box free. Huzzah!

Note: building the home decorators bookcase was a helluva lot easier than building the piece of shit hanging wall unit Target sent us for the kitchen.



In other news, my stitches are out! Now I just have a bandaid on my chin. So I guess I grow beards?


Em

Home Sweeter Home

So I thought some of you might want to see what we've done with the place so far. There's a good deal left to do-- cabinets for the kitchen, some sort of flooring for the kitchen, another bookshelf for my leftover five boxes of books, a dust ruffle to be put on the bed... but we're getting there. Below are some photos of our home in progress!

View from the kitchen of the left corner of the den. That's Nick's "study" area. The den looks over Garfield Place and gets a ton of light.


The other two windows to the right of the window by Nick's desk. There's a lot more light than my iPhone camera shows. There are our beloved armchairs, and the couch I inherited from my parents which faces the fireplace/TV stand.


The fireplace/TV stand and my blue hutch filled with only "pretty" glasses and plates, much to Nick's annoyance.


The bedroom. It looks so dark in this photo! The bed faces the second fireplace. There are still boxes in here to be unpacked, all mine. Sorry sweetie.

More photos coming soon! This weekend we put up cabinets, bookshelf, and get a dust ruffle on that damn bed! Wooohooo!!!!