Kitchen Ideas and Confussion

I've been obsessing over what type of stove/oven/range I want in a new kitchen we are planning and feel like I want a 48" range. It seems more confusing with more education on the subject and so I haven't really settled on a final decision yet, but here are some of the pros and cons according to my apparent wants and needs.

1.  I really like the look of a colored range in leu of a stainless steel look, but the colored ones are either too expensive to think it would be worth it, too boxy and untested, or somewhat unavailable.

2.  Most of the 48" ranges have a 30 inch oven as well as a small oven although the expensive colored one has a small oven that the company claims will fit lots of food so I shouldn't worry about that.

3. As part of the stove top, I have been interested in a French plaque which is a large cast iron flat unit that is hot in the center and gradually moves through cooler temperatures as it reaches the outer rings of the unit. The concept is really great in my eyes, but I really have no idea if it works any different or easy than a regular gas unit.
Anyway... a few of the stove tops have one of these, and I think I'd like to have one, but don't really know.

4.  A couple of the ranges come with a warming oven, which would be nice as then I wouldn't need to place a warming oven elsewhere in the kitchen.

5. One of the ranges also has a steam oven which I also have been investigating and if I don't get that range, I do think I'll get a wall steam oven.

Cookie Placecards

 I've taken to decorating cookies lately. At Christmas I did some fancy trees, girls, etc., and this time it was for a little luncheon/tea that Debbie, Carolyn and I had for Laurie's daughter Jayne who is getting married.
We ate great food, toured Laurie's beautiful refinished apartment in the city and shared stories.
Here, I am just writing about the personalized cookies I crafted for the event.

Some of the cookies were iced with flood consistency royal icing in yellow followed by spokes of blue through the circle. You then drag a toothpick through the colors to marbleize them and then let the icing dry.
Starting out with pale yellow royal icing, I made a couple of styles of round cookies. This icing dries to a hard smooth finish if it starts out the right consistency. I basically copied this cookie from a tutorial I found on a Julia Usher site.

Literally used a rubber stamp from my stash and tapped it onto a paper towel that I had lightly covered with maroon colored gel food coloring. I then diluted some pink and green food coloring and  colored in the design lightly with a brush.

I personalized the cookies and placed bicolored dots of icing around each  after "glueing" a cookie frame to the top of the base cookie.  Then glued the double wide nameplate to the base with more royal icing. Learning all the time here. Next time I'll lessen the glue, and cut out the frame on a silpat so I don't have to move them around or touch them before cooking.

Here is a picture of the two girls flanking Carolyn at the tea. We loved getting to know Maggie and had a wonderful time eating and socializing with the group.

Not A Lot of Comfort Food Here

So ... I'm out in the garden gleaning this morning and I discover several things that I really need to address. I'll just talk about one of those things now.
The eggplants are a little bit out of control, and how many eggplants do we really need in any given year? We planted just one plant thinking we'd get a few for some Ratatouille, and other than that, I'm not sure what to do with them. In the back of my head I think, "Oh, (light going on) I wonder if it's easy to make Baba Ghanoush?"
Turns out - it is. I have all the ingredients right in my very own kitchen. (and garden I might add)

 I looked up, thanks to the internet, if I can use old Tahini. Turns out, it lives a long time so no worries.

The picture above, taken a few weeks ago, shows my pretty white and purple eggplant.
Todays crop featured some that were twice as big.
I grilled the eggplant on the BBQ because I was already using it to grill some other veggies. I just turned it to medium and put the eggplant on whole for about 40 minutes. Then I ran to my hair appointment which I was late for because I decided at the last minute to make Baba Ghanoush in addition to the White Gazpacho I was making for some friends tonight.
I fear this kind of activity is not being grown out of just because I don't have children at home anymore.
I wanted to miraculously become an on time person when I reached this stage in life. But .... I digress.

 Then after I came home several hours later, the eggplants were easily peeled and the ingredients blended together. I ate some of the wonderful spread with some of the grilled crook neck squash and it was wonderful.
I liked it anyway.

The people I'm taking dinner to tonight are probably not expecting weird food like I make, so I'm taking them a big variety. Hopefully we can hit on a few desirable tastes for them.
Wish me (them) luck.

What's for Breakfast?

I have been trying to eat more protein for my early morning meal these days. Eating an egg, protein infused green smoothy, or greek yogurt seems to keep my appetite in check when 3:00pm rolls around each day.
The Hubby has taken on the roll of fixing me a protein shake on Sunday mornings. While I'm getting ready for church he brings me a nice cold thick drink and I don't have to think about it at least one day a week. What a nice guy I married.
Saturday mornings are a little more up in the air and we often go to the Saratoga Farmers Market and decide what to eat from there.
But I digress. I just wanted to post some great looking/tasting yogurt parfait's here.
So a couple Saturdays ago, I brought the Hubby out some simple parfait for Saturday breakfast. Bu "out" I mean he was in the backyard cleaning up the pool and so we ate underneath the big arbor on the couch. What a great breakfast spot. REALLY great! Perfect!

 We had some fresh blueberries and strawberries in the fridge, and so I thought they would make a beautiful and tasty layer in my morning yogurt. I usually add a teaspoon of agave to my Fage 0% yogurt, but this week I had some cream cheese frosting in the fridge so I plopped a big tablespoon of that into twice as much yogurt ('cause I was making two today.)

 The first layer was crunchy granola and then yogurt blend, followed by berries.
Repeat.

 Good stuff, Maynard!

The outside couch also makes an excellent spot for answering a couple emails.

Wedding Food Pix

We hired a caterer that we used for Katz wedding in 2006. The daughter of the owner was a teammate of Stephanie in high school, and she ended up taking charge of our event.
So Desiree of High Five Catering was the girl. She helped plan, and took our ideas and ran with them. She did a really good job.

 We had the drinks set up on the bar for the outside kitchen. Lots of soda's, water, and a pineapple punch in a beautiful silver punchbowl that I borrowed from a dear friend.

 Kathryn did the chalk art including this menu sign. We chose not to have printed menu's at the place settings.

 The caterers set up things pretty well with us gone to Oakland for the wedding. The blue tablecloth was wrong side out, and the chair covers for the head table weren't put on, but it was really because I thought I'd have time in the morning to tackle this project before I left to the temple.

 A little fruit and bruschetta to start us off. The hit of the appetizers was the sushi rolls that the groomsmen seemed to wolf down. I had told the caterer that sushi was a favorite of my DD and her husband, and they did it up well. Passed hors devours were on silver platters that I had borrowed from various friends of mine. Thanks to all of my wonderful friends.

We served the main meal family style, and had strawberry salad, salmon, beef tenderloin, grilled asparagus, roasted fingerling potatoes and focaccia bread. The food was all very yummy and we got a lot of compliments. We did have issue with having just one thing at a time delivered to the tables. I was nearly finished with my salmon before receiving anything else to eat it with. I think if we ever serve a meal like this again, I will make sure that each respective table receive their full meal to pass around the table at the same time. 17 tables can't all be served at once and I'd rather each table have their full meal than have all the steak delivered to all the tables, then all the asparagus, etc.

 Not a lot of pictures of food were taken, but here's a lovely one of the salad.

The cake was done by our friend Jen of Jen's Cakes in San Jose. She had her wedding reception at our home in May.
We also served yummy chocolate covered strawberries that my friend Cindy made for us. She did a great job.

 And cotton candy, which the caterer had to figure out after my request for it. We used sturdy paper straws to put the little cotton candy lollipops on, and they were flavored two ways with raspberry and coconut. Both white.

Food did turn out really well. Thanks everyone.

Wedding Shower

quiche, chicken w/peanut sauce, butter lettuce salad, shrimp

My friend Lois and I threw a shower for a long time friend of our daughters. I personally have spent many days and nights with this cute girl and her mother at volleyball tournaments throughout Stephanie's middle school and high school years, so wanted to show my support and love for her as she enters the realm of married person.

I made pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, and chocolate coconut filled cupcakes with whipped chocolate cream frosting. We also served "Icing on the Cake" banana cupcakes.

We had the party at Lois's home and I decorated and helped with food, etc. Here is my new paper wreath deco. Just made paper cones and dipped the edges in blue glitter. Finished it off with cake cutouts and medallions of various colors and sizes.

Leslie and Jolyn with "pretend" Stephanie in the middle. She couldn't come to town for the shower, because of a coaching obligation.

Here's out cute bride to be.

Lois (L's mom), Jolyn, me, Leslie, Debbi (J's mom)

And all the mothers with daughters too.

Fun time was had by all.

June Backyard Update

This thing is actually coming together and even though it is SO LATE in being completed, I am now at least getting excited to have it finished.
Here is the run down.

The planters next to the house and all through the back are filled with good potting soil and amended very well (I hope.)

Here is the next phase of the fire pit out to the right of the pool area. First the cinder block then the rock veneer cover.

The "bunker" as we are calling it, for the pool equipment is up and fully stucco'd with all the equipment in place. There are still some electrical units to finish and place on the inside walls such as the irrigation clock and increased amperage for the outdoor lighting.

Pit with Aromas rock in place.

Grass area.

Side yard storage cabinets being completed.

Flow through areas from the hot tub to the pool. We changed this up a bit adding one more spill over, and making the rocks gradually go down for more of a trickle effect. We didn't like them at first and after tweaking them with the mason, we think they are better.

This shows the pool coping around the hot tub and the planter next to the back left fence.

From the back corner looking toward the house. This area that I'm standing on while I shoot is going to have another smaller arbor in the end.

We chose this granite that is mined in Brazil. The name of it is Betulaurie and it matches great with our other rock and such.

Here it is being installed for the outdoor kitchen countertop. Looks AWESOME. One of my favorite items yet. It also reminds me of Michael who can't be here right now because of his mission service in Brazil, so he sent us some rock. (not really - but he's my kid right?)

We bought 2 of these planters to flank a door near the kitchen. They are made from the same material that our front porch planters are from, and so I think it makes for a continuous flow from entryway through family room and outside to back yard.

Beginnings of fireplace to the side of the new covered patio.

With interior brick installed.

Struggling to move the hearth stone from the front yard to the back.

Alas, it was on a dolly whose wheels fell between the 2 ramps and injured one of the masons finger. 

YIKES.

This 6 inch thick rock sat here for a couple days before they attempted to move it into place again.

Meanwhile, the stucco guys did some patching around the newly installed posts and also the lower edge of the original termite infested house.

Which they then re-stuccoed.

Pool equipment.

Stucco installation.

and finally hearth inhalation. That heavy stone is finally moved out of our driveway where it had taken up residence since about March. There is still its sister stone for the mantle out there, but it isn't as thick and heavy. There is the issue of moving it to the TOP of the fireplace instead of just 15 inches off the ground. We shall see.

It's all level and pretty good. Masons are going to have a little chiseling to do on the front face of the stone as there is some scarring from tools of some kind.

Final stucco coat.

Are you getting the idea that the contractor is actually getting things going here?

Miles of electrical wiring for lights, irrigation, pool equipment, kitchen equipment, heaters, and even a car charger in the garage. Can you say "Snowball affect?"

One of the workers under the sink pulling his leader rope with wire attached to it. They had to be really organized this day as they were helping the electrician get things set up.
Next month update is going to have plants in it. WOOHOO!!!
It could also have a pool completion. The pool man is no longer MIA.