Tandoori Chicken Wraps

Shredded carrot works instead of the julienne-cut, but they shrink more when cooked.

2 T low-sodium soy sauce
1 t ground cumin
1 t ground turmeric
1/2 t ground coriander
1/4 t ground red pepper
1/4 t orange peel
1 lb skinned, boneless chicken breasts, cut into strips
2 t sesame oil or vegetable oil, divided
Cooking spray
1 1/2 c (1 1/2-inch) julienne-cut carrot
8 (1-inch) sliced green onions
1/4 cup fresh cilantro leaves
Tomato-Curry Yogurt
4 (6-inch flour tortillas
1/2 cup mango chutney
Cilantro sprigs (optional)

1. Combine first 7 ingredients in a medium bowl, stirring to coat chicken. Cover and marinate in refrigerator 30 minutes.
2. Heat 1 teaspoon oil in a large non-stick skillet coated with cooking spray over medium heat. Add chicken; cook 8 minutes or until done. Remove from skillet, keep warm. Add remaining 1 teaspoon oil to skillet; place over medium heat until hot. Add carrot and green onions; saute 10 minutes or until browned. Stir in cilantro leaves.
3. Heat tortillas according to package directions. Spread 3 tablespoons Tomato-Curry Yogurt over each tortilla. Top each with 1 cup chicken mixture and 1/3 cup carrot mixture. Roll up. Serve each wrap with 2 tablespoons mango chutney. Garnish with cilantro sprigs, if desired. Yield: 4 servings.

Tomato-Curry Yogurt

1 cup plain low-fat yogurt
1/2 cup tomato sauce
3/4 t curry powder
1/4 t sugar
1/8 t pepper

Spoon yogurt onto several layers of heavy-duty paper towels; spread to 1/2-inch thickness. Cover with additional paper towels; let stand 5 minutes. Scrape into a bowl using a rubber spatula. Stir in tomato sauce and remaining ingredients. Cover and chill. Yield: about 3/4 cup.

Source: Cooking Light 1999 (Oxmoor House)

Day 1

Our kitchen is gone! Two guys showed up bright and early--7:40am--and had the dust barriers up and the appliances out by 9:30. The sink and cabinets soon followed. By 4:00pm, the ceiling and soffits were out. No more horrid green wallpaper!


A delivery truck showed up about mid-day. We now have a new sink, faucet, and disposal. In boxes. In the garage.


Did someone mention DUST? The dust barriers keep the airborne dust out of the rest of the house, mostly, but one dog, multiple cats, and two people can't help but track it everywhere. I think I will be dealing with plaster dust for months after the project is complete.


The old cabinets are going away today. We are donating them.


We are trying to convince ourselves it is like an extended camping trip, only a little more comfortable--at least we have heat, light, and it's not raining!

Dinner last night--Tandoori Chicken Wraps (leftover, of course)

The dismantling

I would have written yesterday but I was exhausted. Who knew packing up a kitchen was so much work? I can't believe I ever packed up and moved a whole house! This might actually have been harder. Instead of simply packing everything, we had to figure out what we would need over the next several weeks, and what we would not. There will be no baking or stovetop cooking, so all pots, frying pans, cookie sheets, cake pans, and big casserole dishes got packed. But how many dishes and glasses would we need? Measuring cups? Small casseroles for storage? Small appliances (like blender, coffee-maker, waffle iron, bread machine)?

Then there was the question of where to put it. We ended up moving the kitchen table into the living room. On it we've placed a small countertop microwave, toaster oven, and five purloined milk crates as a makeshift pantry.

The utility room sink will handle dishwashing duty. At least we don't have to use the bathtub!

But getting organized is not the same as staying organized. Reducing the size of one's house by two rooms is harder than it sounds. Whose idea was this, anyway?

Georgia Sally Lunn

Mom would serve this as a dinner bread, but its mild sweetness makes it great for breakfast. And...it freezes!

2 c sifted all-purpose flour

3 tsp baking powder

¾ tsp salt

½ c shortening

½ c granulated sugar

2 eggs, well-beaten

1 c milk

Heat oven to 400°. Sift first 3 ingredients. Work shortening with spoon until creamy; add sugar gradually, continuing to work until light. Mix eggs, milk. Add flour alternately with egg mixture to sugar mixture. Turn into 2 greased 8 x 8 x 2 inch pans (or round cake pans); bake in hot oven 20-25 minutes.

Source: Mom's collection (original source unknown)

Pre-construction meeting

This meeting was for us to meet the lead carpenter who will oversee our project and the project coordinator, who is sort of an office liaison, and for them to view the site. Our start date is now Tuesday the 30th instead of Monday. This adds a little inconvenience as we will still have to dismantle the kitchen over the weekend, except for what we might need on Monday. It was not a long meeting, only an hour, which was what they promised. They just had to check off a few things:

1. Had we read and understood the various documents pertaining to the project? check
2. Did we understand the different kinds of addendums--additions, clarifications, and credits? No, but we do now.
3. Do we understand that we need to remove everything from the kitchen prior to demolition? Well, duh.
4. Is there room on the driveway to park a dumpster? As it turns out, no, not without blocking the garage. They will place a tarp on the driveway and pile debris on that, with a dumptruck retrieving it every week or so. Sounds like a recipe for a mess, if you ask me.
5. Is there a designated bathroom the workmen can use? check

And et cetera. Next they reviewed the dust protection plan (btw, did we know there would be DUST?). They will hang plastic barriers in all doorways, with zippered access between the kitchen and family room, and between the kitchen and utility room. They will also hang plastic over the shelves in the family room. They suggest not bothering to dust during the project...

Counting down the days

With the start date fast approaching--next Monday--we are counting down the days. Tomorrow is our pre-construction meeting. Then...we start dismantling the kitchen in preparation for Monday. Don't know whether to be excited or scared!

Only a handful of cycles left for this old dishwasher...













Hate this planning desk, can't wait to be rid of it. And look at that wallpaper!













Can't wait for the new floor....













new lighting...










A whole new kitchen!

Smoked Cheese Pasta Bake

Here is a rich and flavorful meatless dish that makes a lot! It freezes well which is what we need since we can't cook pasta or bake anything while the kitchen is out of commission.

1 lb. uncooked penne (tube-shaped pasta)
1 (26 oz.) jar marinara sauce
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1 (10 oz.) package frozen chopped spinach, thawed, drained, and squeezed dry
Cooking spray
1 1/2 cups reduced-fat sour cream
1 cup (4 oz.) shredded smoked farmer or mozzarella cheese (smoked Swiss works well)
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
1/2 cup (2 oz.) grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Cook pasta according to package directions, omitting salt and fat. Drain.
Heat marinara sauce in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add salt, pepper, and spinach, stirring until blended. Cook 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat, stir in pasta.
Spoon half of pasta mixture into a 13 x 9-inch baking dish coated with cooking spray. Combine sour cream, smoked cheese, and chopped basil. Spread over pasta mixture in dish. Spoon remaining pasta mixture over sour cream mixture, and sprinkle evenly with Parmigiano-Reggiano.
Bake at 350 for 25 minutes or until bubbly. Let stand 10 minutes before serving. Yield: 8 servings.

Source: Cooking Light 2008 (Oxmoor House, Inc.)

Appliance shopping

We shopped for our appliances in early January, and it was about the most fun there is. Like the proverbial kids in a candy store, we had a wonderful time.

We did not go to your standard appliance store like Sears or Lowe's, but to a specialty kitchen supply store that caters only to contractors and their customers. They do not sell to the general public.

Our first question was whether we could get a range that had gas burners but an electric oven. We much prefer cooking with gas, but felt an electric oven would bake and broil more consistently. The solution was not to do this with a single range but with two elements, a gas cooktop and a separate built-in electric oven. You see where people have done this, putting the cooktop on the island and the wall oven(s) somewhere completely different. Our kitchen's current work triangle is fine as it is, so we will have them in the same place as the standard range, just as two separate pieces.

The other question was whether a 36” cooktop would fit over a 30” oven. A standard range is 30”, but we wanted five burners which don't really fit on a 30” cooktop. The fifth burner is more like a “tortilla warmer,” which is completely useless. They will fit, but the oven will have cabinet spacers to take up the extra room below the cooktop.

Having settled all that, we found an oven that we both fell in love with. It's Electrolux, a brand that's known in Europe but starting to catch on here (I just saw a TV commercial for it last night). The interior is royal blue (I know, it will get dirty just as fast as the black/gray interiors!) and the racks slide smoothly on drawer-type rails instead of the usual fingernails-on-a-blackboard. It's convection, so we figure we'll have to learn to cook all over again. And we couldn't resist all the one-button controls like warming, bread-rising, and Perfect Turkey. Perfect turkey? Maybe we won't have to cook at all—just put the food in, tell the oven what it is, and let it do the rest!

Next was the cooktop with five burners. Might as well get everything to match, and Electrolux has a good cooktop—the largest burner has 18,000 BTUs, a far cry from the 10 or 12 thousand of our standard range. It will be nice for the big stock pot and saute pan. And the smallest burner is very small, so flames won't lick up the sides of the really small pots.

We had already decided on a French-door refrigerator with the freezer on the bottom. That just seems much more efficient, not just for fuel efficiency but for our own bending and stooping. And the double doors on the upper part avoid blocking the traffic the way a wide single door would. Electrolux has one of those to match as well.

Finally the dishwasher, also an Electrolux. Our main priority was a quiet dishwasher. With the kitchen such an integral part of the family room, especially once the peninsula is gone, we do not want to have to turn up the volume on movies or television to a deafening level just to hear them over the dishwasher. To get a quiet dishwasher, it turns out, you have to go with a steel interior. The plastic ones are, by their nature, going to be noisy. So it's steel, which of course also means dollars.

The microwave is the only appliance not Electrolux. We went with GE on that because they have one that is shallower and will fit better with the cabinet layout. The only place we could have put the deeper Electrolux microwave would have been in the island, which our contractor discouraged and we didn't think worked very well either. Who wants to stand on their head to get things in or out of the microwave?

So, a very fun shopping experience. The Electrolux is a bit spendy, about the same as a high-end GE. At least we didn't fall in love with Viking or Wolf!

Today we are one step closer to Construction. We are having a pre-construction meeting next week, then Construction is tentatively scheduled to start the following Monday, March 29^th. Yow!

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cake

This cake is easy to make and goes anywhere—like the freezer, so we'll have some nice desserts while the kitchen is under construction and we can't bake anything!

1 ¾ cup boiling water

1 cup uncooked oatmeal

1 cup lightly packed brown sugar

1 cup granulated sugar

½ cup margarine

2 extra-large eggs

1 ¾ cup unsifted flour

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

1 Tbsp cocoa

1 pkg (12 oz.) semi-sweet chocolate chips

¾ cup chopped walnuts

Pour boiling water over oatmeal. Let stand at room temperature for 10 minutes. Add brown and granulated sugars and margarine. Stir until margarine melts. Add eggs and mix well. Sift together flour, soda, salt, and cocoa. Add flour to sugar mixture, mix well. Mix in about ½ cup of the chocolate chips. Pour batter into greased and floured 13” x 9” pan. Sprinkle walnuts and remaining chocolate chips over top.

Bake in preheated oven at 350 degrees for 40 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Source: Mom's Collection (original source unknown)

Blue Pearl

I was wrong--still one more decision! Actually, more of an approval.

We chose Blue Pearl granite for our countertops many, many years ago at Lowe's, and designed the whole kitchen idea around it. It has been a constant throughout the whole process, so there wasn't much choosing to do. Until we went to the stone and tile company the first time and discovered there was a light shade of Blue Pearl and a dark shade. They didn't have enough of either one at the time, but we definitely preferred the dark shade.

They got more of the dark shade in and we went today to approve the lot (we will need at least two full slabs). It didn't seem very dark, but the dark slab she had from before didn't look very dark this time either. Seems that on a sunny day, the shiny granite all looks much lighter!

Unfortunately, walking around the granite yard was like walking through a candy store. It was all beautiful with the sun shining on it! We almost changed our minds when we saw a very dark stone with intense pieces of blue mica in it. More contrast than our Blue Pearl, but also, potentially too dark. We don't want the counters to look black. It was more expensive which helped us return to our first choice. So, Blue Pearl it is!

Search for a Contractor

This was the scary part. We've heard the nightmares—workers that take the money and disappear; work left half done; work done poorly; projects taking months to finish instead of weeks; unforeseen delays... We were going to turn our kitchen over to strangers to be destroyed, and it's not like we had a spare!

We started with a list of priorities. We planned to give this to every prospective contractor so they would all be on the same page. Based on our goals (see previous post), they were as follows:

1. Remove or modify the soffits

2. Replace/redesign lighting

3. Upgrade cabinets

4. Install granite countertops

5. Replace peninsula with island

6. Hardwood floor

7. and so on...

The first place we contacted had a beautiful showroom. In fact, that's where I discovered the Medallion brand of cabinets and fell in love (more on that later). They assured us they were a full-service remodeling company and did it all, including laying floor, etc. Two guys came to the house and took some measurements and they had some great ideas. I was so excited after their visit I was about to burst!

About a week later they presented preliminary drawings and a proposal. Only it wasn't so much a proposal as a simple list of things they would do. The list specified “modify soffits to new layout,” but the drawings showed the soffits still there! They did not paint or remove wallpaper (so much for being full-service), and though they dealt in Medallion cabinets, they wanted us to go with a more expensive custom brand because it “fit” better in the plan. The overall budget was great but we left the meeting very underwhelmed.

Next we looked at the professional remodelers' association for members. One in particular had been featured in a 2007 remodeling magazine and I liked the writeup on them and the pictures of the featured project. A phone call later and the company's principal came out to talk to us, take preliminary measurements, and show us his company's brochure and what they could do. A week or so later he came back with his proposal, and boy what a difference! It was professional, detailed, understandable, and seemed to include all that we were looking for. He gave us a price range, to be determined by what they found inside the soffits. In other words, he addressed our main priority with a high level of attention to detail, and made no promises but suggested various solutions.

Their cost, range or no range, was well outside of our budget. It did not include the appliances or decorative light fixtures, for a major thing, and they charged an extra design fee (in case we went through the whole design process and then decided against doing the work). Trust and confidence being vastly more important than budget, however, we gave a nod toward the “you can't take it with you” philosophy and signed the agreement to proceed.

We were on our way! And in case you think we were exceptionally foolish to trust this company without checking their references, we have since talked to their competitors who praised them, the principal is a member of the board of the BBB, and their work up to this point has been without peer. If that weren't enough, the guy's favorite TV show is “Holmes on Homes” (HGTV), a program about remodeling nightmares and the guy who fixes them. So...here's hoping it all works for the best!

The Plan

Before finding a contractor, we needed to figure out what we wanted. After 10 years of thinking, dreaming, and discussing, we pretty much had that down. We prioritized our wish list as follows:

The number one goal is to lighten and brighten. With one small window and a screened porch shading the sliding door in the adjacent eating area, natural light is at a premium. It needs plenty of artificial help, and the current lighting system is feeble at best. Removing the soffits will give the perception of higher ceilings and more space, and improving the lighting will add much-needed illumination.

Goal number two is to upgrade and update. The range and dishwasher are original equipment—22 years old! New appliances are a given. The cabinets are decent builders' grade with solid wood doors, but have plywood carcasses covered in cheap veneer that's not even as good as vinyl shelf paper. It's peeling in several places. New and better cabinets and hardwood floor throughout will complete the upgrade.

Goal number three is to improve storage, workability and traffic flow. To that end, the peninsula will be replaced by an island. That will not only open up the kitchen to the eating area, but free up an entire corner of currently unused space.

With these goals in hand, we went in search of the perfect, trustworthy remodeling contractor. Oh, and we decided on a budget, too. Just picked a number out of the air, really, but it was a start.

The final, final decision (?)

Ahhh, the excitement! The anticipation! Weeks and weeks without a kitchen...!

Yes, one more decision today. We had to return to the stone and tile company to choose a color for the metallic accent tiles that will go in the backsplash. For some reason, these silly little tiles need an extra long lead time for ordering, so NOW was a good time to make that choice. Not a big deal - it was between dark bronze and darker bronze. So... done! Order them! (BTW, the tiles will not have the New Orleans Saints' logo on them!)

Why a blog, why now

After watching the movie “Julie and Julia,” I was inspired to write this blog. Julie Powell took on the challenge of cooking all 524 recipes of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days. In a tiny apartment kitchen. And wrote a blog about it. That is not what I am doing here. We are not DIY kinds of people, so other than deciding on tons of details, I am only recording it. And it had better not take 365 days. But it seems like an interesting project to report on the progress of our kitchen remodeling on a daily or semi-daily basis, as it's happening. So there is the parallel with Julie's blog.

Of course, a kitchen remodeling project does not start with Day 1 of Construction. We have been working towards that day since last September, and probably thinking and dreaming about it for 10 years before that. So many decisions! So many details! So much money!

Our house was built in the late 1980s, and the kitchen design reflects the times. When we moved in 12 years ago, it was wonderful. Well laid out, big enough for two cooks, plenty of storage. As the years went by, however, its faults began to emerge, or maybe we just got older and more particular. It is a bit too country for our tastes, and looks smaller and darker than it should because of overhanging soffits sporting hideous dark green wallpaper. We never removed the wallpaper because we thought we'd remodel one day, so why bother?

Today I can say we are very close to Day 1of Construction. The design is finished and we've made our choices. We signed the final contract last week and put down a hefty deposit. We are committed! I hope you'll join me on our journey over the next couple of months. Whether or not you're planning to remodel a kitchen some day, it should be interesting!

What's a kitchen blog without recipes? Over the next several weeks, I'll share a few of our favorite dishes (not from Mastering the Art of French Cooking). We would not be doing this if we didn't enjoy cooking—and eating!