Oven Accomplished!

For my umpteenth trip to Ikea, I wanted to do swift business - order my oven and leave.  I saw no reason to call upon a car favor for this quick trip, so I took the Ikea shuttle from Port Authority as early as reasonably possible for me on a Saturday morning.  Hopefully, I would avoid  standing in line for an hour for a five minute transaction.  A painless half hour ride on the bus, by noon, the store had some intense shoppers but nowhere near the afternoon throng.

I quickly checked out the three versions of the Mumsig oven - white, black, and stainless steel.  The white was surprisingly cute with it’s shiny finish and shorter abbreviated handle, but I was worried that it would be a near miss with the white cabinets, which would defy an “invisible” all white objective.  Black is so not my style, though my architect liked it, it’s too slick, the Drakaar Noir of the ovens.  So silver it would be, just like the DeLonghi, and tying in with all the other appliances.

I barely had to wait in line to order, service was helpful, and oddly enough, the oven was actually in stock at the store, even though I had checked the website (which allows you to see if items are in stock at your local store), and the tag on the display said “oversold”.  Maybe it’s luck for all the heartache I’ve endured with the oven, or I’m getting someone else’s lemon, or these big box stores are rife with misinformation.  I’m going to think positive.  I go downstairs to pay for it, and then arrange for home delivery later this week for an extra $100.  Ruefully, I think if I had only known that it was in stock, I would’ve called in a car favor, but I guess it’s better than wrestling with the box from door to door. 

To top off my feeling of accomplishment, I rewarded myself with lunch in the cafeteria.  I really do love the swedish meatballs, even though they are one step above a salisbury steak TV dinner.  For $5, I love it even more.  Throw in the view of Newark airport to watch the planes depart and land, it’s a unique dining experience.  I also stopped at the Market place for the “Good” muesli, which I’ve grown to really like, and the “Daim” mini chocolate toffees.  Daim they’re Good!

TRUMPED!

I still think that my kitchen is littler, but “The Littlest Kitchen Channel” on You Tube has the littlest chefs. Claiming to be “the most edible, incredible, eatable, treatable, littlest kitchen around”, it’s an instructional cooking show hosted by two kids making their kid food in six minutes of cute. Pizza is made with flattened biscuit dough and jarred sauce. Key lime pie is a quick spin of egg yolks, condensed milk, and key lime juice. They make it look so easy. And fun. Only two “shows”, these future foodies have loads of potential, with room to grow.

Philadelphia Freedom

It feels good to get away from the burdens of work and home for a few days. An overall feeling of freedom comes over me, and I can see things differently, open to everything that the world holds, instead of steely-eyed and focused. Discovery, adventure, and a few good meals are to be found in…Philadelphia.

1) Finding a couch
In my year old apartment, I have not thought about getting a couch until my renovations were done. Like the saying goes, you find love when you least expect it, and I found a couch where I least expected - Anthropologie. Small enough for my twee apartment, yet long enough to take a nap, it has a vintage look without the woes. Don’t get me wrong, I love vintage and fervently seek it out, I just can’t throw a couch into the washing machine. Oddly enough, I do go to Anthropologie quite often, and probably have seen this couch a million times, it just didn’t register until taken out of my usual environs.

This happened while trying to kill time before meeting friends at Lolita for dinner. An haute Mexican restaurant in Center City, it’s spare and modern environment provides a plain backdrop to the complex and richly flavored food that ensued. Simple guacamole has bits of jicama, and served with a variety of corn, plantain, and batata chips, along with a chiptotle salsa and Indian-like cilantro sauce. The mahi mahi was a layered tower of tastiness with a hominy stew, chorizo, and shaved fennel - a harmonious leveraging of flavors. The short ribs were meltingly good. Surprisingly for a culinarily ambitious restaurant, it’s BYOB, not that it’s a bad thing - they make the fruity margarita mix, you provide the quality and quantity of tequila. A selling point, really.

2) Finding Brooklyn
Expressing a desire to check out the Northern Liberties, our local friend described it as the “Brooklyn of Philly”. Seeing that I live in Brooklyn, it almost seems redundant. But I like Brooklyn, and the Brooklyn-ness of other cities - the creative community and early adopters. Northern Liberties, essentially N. 2nd Street between Girard and Spring Gardens, has all the up and coming components - a revived downtrodden area where the galleries sell clothes (Art Star), the clothes stores sell art (Conspiracy Showroom), the food is good (A Full Plate Cafe), and nary a big box store in sight.

Stopping in at A Full Plate for a midday meal, it’s a homey place that doesn’t seem to belong in the new minimall complex where it resides. For that matter, neither does the rock ‘n roll corset shop or the retro candy store that are there. A Full Plate serves comfort food with a southern bend, much more comprehensive than expected from its casual coffee shop appearance. Fried food is an art with deep fried pickles, fried green tomato salad, and fried chicken and waffles. Crisp and greaseless, it leads to an overindulgence that didn’t hit me until later, feeling stuffed for hours. Their tangy macaroni and cheese must have also had its effect.

3) Finding Surprises
Walking through the South side to get to the Antiquarian Market on 6th Street, we were struck by all the mirrored mosaics scattered onto the sides of random buildings. The work of local artist, Isaiah Zagar, who outfitted his own building and garden, transforming it into “The Magic Gardens”. A folk art visionary, Zagar can be seen at the garden, toiling away at his mosaics made from mirrors, tiles, broken plates, bottles, and whatever interests him. Truly a magical place, it’s hard to believe that it’s in the middle of a formerly rough hewn area, now with a Whole Foods across the street.

And, a great little bouge restaurant up the street, Supper. At first, I was annoyed with its small plate, tapas-like brunch, but I was quickly won over, giving in to trying almost everything. Banana beignets, baked eggs in a creamy mushroom sauce sopped up with their homemade ciabatta, eggs benedict with swiss chard and Serrano ham on a potato pancake, and sweet corn pancakes with huckleberry sauce, all excelled and topped my expectations. Maybe this bite-y brunch is the way to go, less likely to start off the day in a food coma.

It seemed sort of irresponsible to make a getaway during the crucial countdown to renovations, but I feel refreshed with a renewed sense of optimism. I may even go to Home Depot again.

Hell Depot

I must be a glutton for abuse to go to Home Depot as often as I do. Not just a masochist, but a downright idiot. I should know by now that the store, for all its showy stock, never has what I want, let alone what I need. Thinking that I knew exactly what I wanted and seen at the 23rd Street store, I mistakenly assumed that the same stuff would be at the Brooklyn store. So with the support of my good friends, I naively set out to buy a sink, tiles, and paint, in one quick fell swoop. Wrong.

First, the sink. I had seen the Elkay sink on display for $279 at the store, but on line, could only find the more expensive models even thought the dimensions were the same. The difference is the gauge. The lower the number the heftier the sink. As one friend put it, in regards to the Elkay, “That’s the sink you put in a rental.” My design friends also didn’t like the more rounded corners of the sink, there must be better. In the Kitchen design section, where there was only one person working on this early Sunday afternoon, there is a catalog of kitchen sinks and fixtures that can be special ordered. We looked, we picked a Moen Lancelot for its more angular corners, we were done. With no one to help us out. I stayed put, patiently waiting for that one person to finish with her customer, a couple who was designing their entire kitchen - flashbacks of the day before at Ikea played out in front of me. Another friend searched far and wide for someone to come over and help. No one could, because it wasn’t their job to special order, only that one person who had been helping the couple for what seemed like an eternity. The only other alternative, we find out after waiting almost an hour, was customer service, which did it in five minutes.

Needless to say, I’m plenty steamed at this point, and I barely have the tolerance to look for the tiles. Again, searching and searching, not to be found. I ask an orange apronned employee, searching and searching for him too, who takes us down the same aisles we’ve just looked through - not in stock, you can special order. No way was I going to go through that again. I ask if the store is particularly underemployed on a, at this point, Sunday evening. He says, “No, it’s like this all the time.” This place sucks.

Picking up the paint was the easy task, but in my fury, I picked up the wrong finish - sateen, not eggshell. The final insult to injury, cherry on top of the dysfunctional sundae, was the check out line. One cashier and a half dozen self-serves that don’t work. I’m never going back again. Except to pick up my sink. Curses.

The High Cost of Cheap

What started out as a quick trip to the Greatland Target and Home Despicable in Jersey City, turned out to be an all day affair with a detour to Ikea. It’s foolish to think that any trip to Ikea would be quick, even it was just for the Swedish meatballs. So many things to purchase! So many dreams to be had!

I decided to get my kitchen sink fixtures there, especially since I was with my two trusty design consultants. It was agreed that the Holvstad, which I originally wanted, did not live up to the dream with its brushed nickel finish, so we went with the Bagvik instead. At only $89.95, it was well designed, and even substantial, a bargain compared to Kohler and other such brands. But what I saved in dollars, I painfully paid for in precious time. Forty-five minutes spent in line in the kitchen area just to order the single fixture, while everyone before me was planning every detail of their kitchen with a sales person. Another hour through the one way labyrinth of the store to shop. Another ten minutes in line at check out. And finally, another twenty minutes to pick up the fixture from the stock area. Clocking in the traffic to get home, four hours of my time - and that my dear friends’ - is worth more than $90. And we didn’t even make it to the Home Despisable.

Foot Pedal Sink!

After reading about Dave Arnold’s mad cooking inventions in this week’s Time Magazine, I became intrigued with his idea of a foot pedal sink. A hands-free sink enables a minimization of running water, which is great for us water watchers. I haven’t been able to wash my dishes California style - only running water for rinsing - since moving to The Littlest Kitchen, with its separate hot and cold faucets and no room to spread out soaped dishes. And what a boon for germaphobes - how can your hands be really clean when you’re touching the same faucets that were touched by dirty hands? These sinks can be found through medical equipment manufacturers, hospitals being the real place of need for godliness cleanliness. Kitchen Source also has one, catching wind as something useful in the kitchen. A fantasy that can be a reality.

Bye Bye Blueprint

Traveling brings about the obligatory raid at the newstand. I had to get the Rolling Stone with Britney Spears - consumed before getting in the air, the new Dwell for its homes under 1000 sq. ft, and the final issue of Blueprint, the hipper, quirkier version of Martha Stewart Living. It’s always sad to see the demise of a magazne, Blueprint makes me sadder still since it had good solutions for the budget home enthusiast, a possibly un-lucrative demographic, as witnessed by the ill-fated Budget Living. This month’s kitchen makeover story transforms a drab 30’s 10′ x 10′ kitchen into a vibrant retro space. The ideas are really good and simple - colorfully painted cabinets with punches of contrasting utensils, a milky white corian counter and sink, and sleek, streamline fixtures - dramatic differences that come at a small price. I even like that they kept the twee stove in the corner, made cuter flanked by so much color and shine. An appealing layout with clear and intimate details makes for nice eye candy. Going to show that fresh ideas don’t require a lot of money, but to keep a magazine running does.

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

When I first saw the new black bucket carts at Whole Foods, I thought that they were genius. Deeper than the standard handbasket, yet half the size of a shopping cart, these buckets on wheels (!) with their telescoping handles, were the ultimate, scaled down, New York invention. Until you go to the Whole Foods in Union Square, where they are an inappropriate and rude blight onto a small space. Traffic jams of snarled carts teem up and around the congested aisles. People carelesslly drag around their carts, which creates an extra two feet of space around them. Anything below the knees becomes fair game of attack by these mobile weapons. Like their predecessor, wheeled luggage, people become thoughtless and downright retarded in maneuvering their stuff on wheels. Luckily, humans, being an adaptable lot, are adjusting to their new toys and I’ve noticed that more people are carrying the oversize basket instead of rolling them. Genius.