Purge & Pack

Organized moves are an imperative for me. We've criss-crossed town and the country a few times to know that moving things you never really liked is not worth it. Our new motivation is also a desire to live a less cluttered life in the new place. We're not even close to ending up on an episode of hoarders, but we clearly have more stuff than we need.

So as we start to pack for our move this fall, everything is getting purged before it can be packed. The first victims during our Hurricane Irene weekend were the books. We've thinned our books every year and have at various points made substantial donations to the local library. However, our shelves always seem to still be laden. 

Said shelves are not making the move to the new place. Their slightly warped nature (courtesy of DH's law books-also not making the move) really makes them a prime candidate for purging. However, this will leave the books that did make the cut languishing in boxes until we resolve what to do with them. 

After the cut, we still have 11 boxes of books. Eleven. Seriously? That's post purge? This does not bode well. So a dilemma. Create a shrine to the books at the new place and take up precious square footage or slice again? 

What makes a book worth keeping? My first job was at a book store so I have some serious attachment to "real" books, but their sheer volume is running counter to our "less is more" plan. What to do?

Design Inspired

 As we delve into the fantasy land of how to decorate our first official place, I'm perusing a wide range of design blogs in search of inspiration. A few that I've come across that I really love at the moment include:

This photo grid with white frames may be very useful.

Design Sponge

Pure Style Home

House of Turquoise

Living It at Home

Sarah Richardson

Lovely Clusters

Material Girls

The Lettered Cottage

I'm definitely in search of other points of inspiration. 900+ sq. feet means we have to make every inch count. Other blog or site suggestions welcome.

It's a Mother @*&%ing Bake Off

Acquired haphazardly over weeks, bananas suddenly take over our freezer from time to time and demand to be made into banana bread. This evening as I reached for my trusted Betty Crocker recipe I thought perhaps the folks at Cook's Illustrated had a recipe worth trying. Sure enough, a taunting recipe appeared in my search called "The Ultimate Banana Bread." How could I not try this recipe? Intrigued that it required me to "juice the bananas" for extra banana taste I dove in.

Complete aside: every recipe I make from CI lately requires me to juice something that I would never conceive of juicing (see delicious Corn Chowder recipe) seriously, it has you juice the corn...

Cook's Illustrated Ultimate Banana Bread.

So, with more than enough frozen bananas to tackle both recipes, I began with the CI recipe and found it very simple to make. I did include the toasted walnuts. Sure it makes a few extra dirty dishes, but I figured why not. If it makes the "ultimate" bread it would be worth the toil.

My trusty BC recipe (see my tweaked version below), I made while the other baked and put it into three smaller loaves since I'd have to give some away. Two people can only eat so much banana bread in one week.

The result? The CI version cooked quickly in just 55 minutes. Using more than a cup less of flour than the BC recipe, the density of the CI batter eliminates one of the issues the BC recipe has with often not being finished in the center when the top of the loaf is already browned. The "shingled" banana pieces on top made it somewhat difficult to remove from the loaf pan, but are supposed to help with the loaf rising evenly. The BC recipe while it took 1 hour and 15 minutes to fully bake, the more dense loaf is more reminiscent of a loaf-style bread. In the end, we both agreed the BC recipe is still on top for us.  A first loss for CI and few less dishes to do next time the frozen bananas come calling.

Banana Bread (modified from the Betty Crocker New Cookbook version)

Betty Crocker Banana Bread.
The pans were slightly overfilled.

1 1/4 c sugar

1/2 c stick butter, softened

2 eggs

5 ripe mashed bananas

1/2 c skim milk

1 tsp vanilla

2 1/2 c all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 c chopped nuts

Set oven to 350 degrees, make sure the upper rack is in the middle of the oven. Grease bottoms only of pan(s) using shortening or spray.

Mix sugar and butter, stir in eggs. Add bananas, milk, vanilla. Stir in flour, baking soda, salt. Fold in nuts

Pour into pans. Top with a quick blend of finely chopped walnuts, sugar (and brown sugar too if you have it) to create a strudel-like topping. Bake 1 hour or until toothpick comes out clean. Check at 45 minutes depending on the heat of your oven. Cool on baking rack for at least 15 minutes before removing from loaf pan and allowing to cool further. 

Almost Home

Our new building. Only two units
inside and one is ours!

It's official. We have roots in the form of a mortgage. After arriving here 14 years ago, five apartments, and three states later we have a little corner to call our own. It will be fall before we move in, but it's ours and we're very excited.

To celebrate we're getting a new couch and vetting the rest of the apartment. We've got a lot that needs to go and certainly if it hasn't been unpacked in multiple moves, it's not coming with us.

So before the cardboard, bubble wrap and packing tape invade our current apartment (and before our first check is due) we're enjoying the idea of finally having a place to call our own.

New Summer Salad Favorite

Cooking through everything we purchased in one week ended up stretching into two week, but I am happy to say that we actually did it. No leftovers were thrown out. No limp celery was discovered at the bottom of the drawer. And this couscous salad recipe may be my new bomb-digity go to recipe for summer. It calls for making the veggies on the grill, but given our lack of ready access to a grill, I decided to roast them.

One note: This recipe makes a lot of salad. I mean enough to take to a picnic with 20 of your closest friends, so cutting it in half  or more would be a good way to go if you don't want it for every meal for five days. That being said, it is delicious cold and at room temp so it makes the perfect office lunch item.

I also doctored up a quick peach cobbler with very ripe peaches from the fridge. Yum.

Now I need to come up with recipes for the quinoa, jasmine rice, and navy beans in my cabinet. My orzo is going to be made into this (thanks to M for the idea!). Ideas welcome.

Underneath this Pile of Paper

We've read and reread all of the documents, emailed back and forth so many times I think even my gmail is tired, and texted with the various parties and vendors all to reach the same conclusion that in a few days we'll finally own something.

A tiny place to call our own that is metro accessible, has garage parking (gasp!), a little balcony, and requires no actual work to be able to inhabit it (beyond of course my our OCD tendencies to change things). Once the ink is dry more on our new little place.

However, what I have been thinking about is how not simple mortgage paperwork is for consumers. Seriously, Truth in Lending Act, there might be truth in there, but you did not make it easy to find.

Forget market euphoria driving people to make delusional decisions about how much house they can afford. Let's talk about how dense and complicated we've made the purchasing process.  I've lost count of the number of times we've stopped someone in the process and said "Can you explain that again?" "Why do these numbers not actually add up to this other number?" "What does that mean exactly at it relates to this other item?" "What are the ramifications of doing this vs. that?"

Given that people often just smile and nod when you explain something to them, even when they don't understand, I can only imagine how this paperwork tsunami washes over folks and leaves them gasping for air.

Of course you say, for important decisions like this they'll pay attention. Really? And while I'm not alleging that the banks can make consumers read the paperwork, the paperwork could be more legible.

It's more examining the process as a whole and considering people who are far more intimidated by this process, unsure what they can and can't ask, and who feel rushed. Why would we feel the need to rush people into something they have financial obligations on for the next 30 years? Surely with all of the fees we're now paying to process all of the paperwork the new Lending Act requires, someone could actually say, "hey, we should think about the consumer in this process and not just try to rush them through the paperwork."

We're indebted to our realtor for filing in gaps of knowledge along the way, but what about the people who have representation that isn't as knowledgeable and they don't even realize it. The fact that people are staking their financial futures (in part) on sometimes a leap of faith is disconcerting to me. I'm beginning to have a new appreciation for all of the stories of people saying they didn't understand what they were signing. I'm not willing to accept it as a blanket excuse for bad decisions, but it certainly points to a continuing need to figure out how to greater empower and educate consumers.

No Good Very Bad Waste

Sticky, icy, mysterious, stinky, and abandoned. All of these could be used to describe food in my fridge at one point or another. Visions of rigorous weekly refrigerator cleanings do not always manifest themselves. As a result, from time to time an unaccounted for container or more often abandoned veggies or fruit in a drawer are extracted and found to be less then edible.

This food waste is a regular red flag for budget keeping. If you spend the money to buy the food, why on earth would you keep wasting it by letting it rot. DH points this out constantly. No one ever goes through the produce section and picks out broccoli with the ambition of not steaming it. I don't stand their and handpick green beans only to extract them frosty from the fridge later, rendered tasteless by the days spent in the veggie drawer.

Yet, my very first world problem keeps rearing its ugly head. And this New York Times piece notes that it could equal $40 a week totally $2,275 a year of wasted food and cash.

As I blissfully wandered through the store this week, I was determined to not only stick to my shopping list, but to also not buy more than we can consume before it expires.

In theory, all of the produce sitting in my fridge at this moment, will be consumed this week. As in the next 7-10 days. No veggie or herb will be left behind.

In addition, my meal planning this week focused on using things I already have in my pantry. I've enacted a self-imposed dry carb purchasing ban for the moment. No more purchasing of dried pastas, grains, legumes, etc. until I've put a serious dent in what's already in my pantry. Why on earth do I keep amassing new types of rice when I have four already on a shelf at home. What are we stock piling for? An emergency 30 person dinner where we can only use what we already have in the house?

Hello Thai Chicken Skewers and the can of coconut milk you'll use up from my pantry and Toasted Israeli Couscous Salad with Grilled Summer Veggies that will clear out some couscous and stock.  And, waiting in the fridge already made for tonight's dinner is what promises to be a tasty Corn Chowder that used up some bacon and onions from the drawer.