Ethan and Katie's Adventures in Living…Together

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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!

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

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…

OK, so I KNOW we haven’t posted over the weekend, but we’ve been busy with the move. Saturday was a LONG day, starting around 6:30AM and finishing late in the evening (with a much deserved bourbon on ice – Basil Hayden, if you must know). Sunday was similarly long, with trips to Costco, Target, and the Farmer’s Market, all designed to stock up the house.

In between, we found many new “projects” we’re going to have to work on, as well as a number of “fixes” that will need pretty quick attention (e.g. there appears to be a leak inside a wall, behind the shower – more on this later).

So I PROMISE a more lengthy post later today or tomorrow, which will include pictures from the move-in, and how the house looks now (generally disheveled, but livable – much like my grunge days).

In the meantime, I hope you’ll settle for these pics from Costco…Costco, you say? Yes – have you ever seen Costco right before it opens? I hadn’t…but apparently there is a daily melee that occurs just as the rolling entrance doors open up…

This is what Costco looks like JUST before it opens - something like the start of the Tour de France, only with shopping carts

Quick lunch trip to Lowe’s – this is what I came to buy:

Not thrilling...a doorstop and a garage clicker

But this is what I REALLY wanted to buy!

It will be mine, OH YES, it will be mine!