Ethan and Katie's Adventures in Living…Together

OK, so I’ve been talking about trying my hand at homemade pizza for months now, so much so that my mother even cuts out every article she sees re: pizza cooking. This weekend, Katie and I made a fateful (and unplanned) stop at Surfas just to show her what the store was like, and ended up with both a brand new cooking stone, AND a fabulous pizza peel! (the crazy tool REAL pizza makers use to take their pizzas from the oven)

Mozzarella and Tomato Pizza

First a bit on Surfas – if you live in LA and have any interest in food or cooking, you owe it to yourself to go. I hadn’t been to Surfas in about 5 years, and the last time I went they were focused on commercial and high-end cooking. Not any more – now Surfas has things for EVERY type of cooking imaginable, from baking to pizza to candy making. Not only that, they’ve got a gourmet meat and cheese counter, as well as every staple ingredient you can think of (the butters looked amazing). I wanted to share the site, but right now it looks like all they’ve got is this: http://www.culinarydistrict.com/. I’ll keep looking though, apparently they do weekly cooking classes every Saturday (this Saturday was Asian Street Food).

As for the pizza, I made the first attempt Saturday night. It offered a number of pluses in my book: 1) I got to utilize our new KitchenAid mixer for the dough 2) I got the try out using yeast (which is weird, terrifying, and fascinating at the same time – just watch your dough double in size in 2 hrs, it’s weird) 3) I got to make pizza, which I love.

Learnings:

1) Pizza dough is extremely sticky. It stayed together well, but at the same time it took serious work to get it to actually leave anything it was in contact with (bowls, paper, my hands).

2) I was told at Surfas that getting the pizza from the “peel” to the pizza stone in the over was all in the wrist – similar to a magician whipping a tablecloth off of a table. Well, first try didn’t work. It may be in the wrist, but it’s also in applying a BOATLOAD of flour under the pizza so that it feels like moving. It took one near catastrophe to learn that (which resulted in mozzarella burning all over the oven interior – waiting for Katie to clean that…)

3) Homemade pizza is way better than anything I’ve bought. Seriously. In the end, totally easy and way worth it.

NEXT STEP: Figuring out how to make pizza less than a half-inch thick. I honestly rolled out one tonight that was maybe 2 milimeters thick, still was almost 1/2″ by the time I pulled it out…oh well, good to have goals!

Last week, Ethan went to Europe for work and I found myself all alone in our house for the first time.  I survived, but throughout the course of the week I acted as if I had never been home alone in my lifetime.  As if those years I spent living by myself had never happened.  I did all of the stereotypical ‘freaked-out-girly’ things like sleeping with the lights on, checking the locks every hour and turning on the alarm each time I walked into or out of the house (even to water the plants in the back…never know who could sneak in the front.)  Every sound I heard, I was convinced was someone breaking into the house.  The ice maker, the washing machine, the air conditioning…all were out to get me.  And God forbid the front or back outdoor motion lights go on….

While Ethan was away, I also got to experience some fun aspects of the house that I don’t normally get to, such as scaling the electronic gate, in heels, at 11PM when it decides not to open…or killing a cockroach the size of Texas in our bathroom. 

Now that he is back, the washing machine isn’t as scary and I don’t have force myself to stay awake until my eyelids are so fatigued that they won’t stay open anymore.  I’ve also decided that dealing with gate and cockroaches are activities I will leave to him…he is just so much better at them then I am.

This past weekend, we took a break from working on the house to head to South Beach for 5 days with Ellie (Ethan’s sister for those who don’t know) and her boyfriend Derrick.  We all had the best time on the much needed break! 

We managed to pack a lot into the trip including snorkeling in Key Largo, an Alligator Farm in the Everglades (where they did an alligator feeding), lunch and cigar shopping in Little Havanna and cocktails in Coconut Grove.    Of course we hit our fair share of Ocean Drive, the beaches, the pool and Lincoln Rd. 

Below are some pics, all from Little Havana.  The first group of pics are from Gomez Park, which is a member’s only dominos/cards area (the rules include “Don’t come drunk” and “Don’t bring guns”). We also went to a cigar store, which is where Schwarzenegger gets his cigars.  Also did a little shopping in a grocery, which was interesting – most of the produce was like nothing we had seen before (we bought something that looked like a mango that the guy swore was an avocado, turns out he was right), and there was a DEFINITE language barrier.  Despite that, the guy kept giving us these little “apple bananas” (which you can see Ellie eating in the picture)!

Domino Park

Domino Park

Cigar Shop - Back Inventory

Smelling Tobacco Leaves

Learning how to Wrap a Cigar

Market

Apple Banana

OK – I’ve been remiss in my posting, and I have very little in the way of excuses, other than a) I’ve been slammed with housework and travel, and b) I’m lazy and don’t have my desktop set up at the house yet.

I’ve got LOTS of new updates, most of which I’ll plan on trickling out over the course of the week (have to keep you coming back for more!).

That said, it seems like the most pressing thing to share is the paint job (hopefully you can tell that the top pics are the updated ones!):

MUCH improved paint job in the front

Back of the house after painting

After much debate, we finally decided to hire painters to do the outside of the house.  Hundreds of paint samples and mock-ups later, we landed on a dark tan with brown accents or as Sherwin-Williams calls it, Roycroft Suede.  We gave the painters the name and paint # and let ‘em loose.   That evening, Ethan texted me  “garage is painted”.  I responded “do you like it?”  Crickets…  So I called and asked.  He said “ummmm, I want to get your opinion on it.”  Not a good sign.   Here is what I showed up to…it’s DayGlo Orange.  We could walk out at night and feel safe since we had the sun in our backyard.

Shining Bright Through the Night

Our painters are obviously color blind, right?  That’s what we decided too.  Someone’s about to get fired for having to redo our garage at no charge.  After we peeled our eyes away from the giant Cheeto, we ran to the store to get the RIGHT paint samples mixed to test on the house, so we could prove to the painters that they should consider switching careers.  At the end of the day, our house looked like an artist’s palette, but we felt confident that the color on our garage, of the orange family, did not even come close to matching the one we wanted, of the brown family.

Next day, Ethan calls the painters to read them the riot act and after some back and forth we learn that the the color on our garage is…just a primer.  Sigh of relief (and cue tail between the legs).  But really…a) who uses a bright orange primer and b) doesn’t tell the homeowners?

Here’s a link to some pictures from the move-in – at least there’s an appearance that it’s progressing, albeit slowly.

Pics from the Move!

And one pic of me working hard (I’m sure Katie is somewhere slaving away here as I eat pita chips and hummus and gab on the couch):

Working hard - wondering what I'm listening to or watching (or eating?) that's making me make that expression...

Thoughts?

So over the course of the move-in, I discovered a lovely number of…let’s call them “endearing qualities” that the house has. Most significant among these were a LOT of leaks.

• The faucet leak in the garage? Not too big a deal – except that the plumbing fixture that someone installed seems to have not existed elsewhere in this dimension, making replacement parts a challenge…
• Leak in the hose bib out front? Doesn’t LOOK like a big deal, if only I could figure out how to isolate and turn off water to it…
• Leak on the shower valve? Not too big a deal, should be able to replace that…open up access door in back, look for shutoff…

WHICH is when I noticed Niagara Falls streaming down the inside of the wall.

This may be more challenging than I thought.

So I started getting contractor quotes – sudden expenditures in the 4 digit range never settle well with me, particularly when we’ve got other fixes and improvements on the horizon.

Who knew Realtor Matt would be my knight in shining armor? (as a man, can I call another man that?) Matt reminded me that the escrow company had bought this “warranty” for the house, which might just cover any little issues. I called the warranty company, and within 30 minutes had an appointment for the next day to have a plumber come and fix EVERYTHING (including the broken garbage disposal!), for just $60!!!

Now all I have to do is sit around for 5 hours today and wait for him to come.

Can I start telling people I’m going to meet them within a 4 hour window, see how that goes?

AND I’m debating whether to spend the $75 to have someone fix it, or just open up my handy Reader’s Digest How to Fix Everything book and have at it myself – what do you think?

As an aside, the new disposal is just sitting there on the dining room table, begging me to open it…