House Husbandry

It's cold, so it's time to make soup again. I made a Broccoli with Roasted Garlic soup yesterday that turned out quite well. 2 Heads Garlic 2 small onions 1 small potato 1 head of broccoli 4 cups of chicken stock Pre-heat oven to 400°F.  Slice the top off of the head of garlic and drizzle with olive oil.  Place on a baking sheet or in a garlic roaster and roast for at least 30 minutes.  Cool to handle. Chop onions and potato and saute in olive oil until the onions begin to get soft.  Coarsely chop the broccoli and add to the pot.  Add garlic now that you can handle it.  Add stock, bring to a boil and then simmer for 30 minutes. Puree the soup with an immersion blender or in batches with a regular margarita blender. Season to taste.  Wasn't that easy?

The better half and I moved again and we're nearly settled in.  It's taking most of my time.  This is a big place.  Lots to do.  Lots of husbandry.  Lots of things to figure out. The water here in Chicago is really hard and the prior owners never bothered to wipe the walls down after taking a shower.  Nearly every time I'm in the shower it's getting spritzed with one chemical or another and then getting wiped down.  It's slowly improving, I think.  I've used straight vinegar, Lime-A-Way and Barkeeper's Friend so far. There's been a bit of deferred maintenance, too.  I was shocked to hear that in the 8 years the prior owner (let's call them PO) was here, they never once had the exterior windows cleaned!  I could not believe it.  Since the house is four stories in total, with a two story window brightening the foyer, I wasn't going to get on a ladder to do it, but it was only about $250 to have it done.  What a difference cle...

We had a run of eating out due to being out of the house so much in the past few days. I spent last Friday seeing two movies with a friend, "Anomalisa" and "The Big Short."  We got a glass of wine and some fried calamari and by then it was about 3:30 and I wasn't in the mood to make juice.  Talked Sweetie into checking out a nearby Thai place, Star of Siam.  Ick.  They claimed to have Massaman curry, but it tasted like Jif with pineapple chunks.  What is this, 1976?  I was seriously disappointed.  The spring rolls even had some sort of syrupy-vinegary mess all over them.  Not sure what they were thinking. Saturday was spent house hunting.  We got home about four after neither of us had much to eat that day so we checked out a nearby Irish pub, Timothy O'Toole's, that had pretty good food.   No Irish beers oddly enough, other than Guinness, but they had some buffalo chicken rolls that were interesting.  Might have liked th...

Sweetie and I put an offer in on an actual house and it was accepted!  Inspection Tuesday.  It'll be fun to go from downtown condo living to actual city neighborhood house living.  Stay tuned for more updates and lessons to be learned from our experience.

Good morning.  Downtown Chicago here.  56 degrees in the condo this morning.  I won't turn on the heat.  -8 outside. So this is what they were talking about when people looked at me like I was crazed for moving from San Francisco.  Add another layer!  Made Sweetie breakfast this morning.  Used up the rest of the bacon and the last of the eggs. Dog got one, too.  I cook exclusively in All-Clad and you should, too.  Done right, nothing sticks. While my bacon was frying, I cleaned out the utensil drawer.  Too many things I hadn't been using that were just in the way.  Now that's set. Used just one pan for all of breakfast.  A quick and easy way to clean a pan is to just add some water to it, crank up the heat and scrape the bits away.  Pour out the water and the bits and it was good enough to fry some eggs without them sticking. Chores for today: get soap.  I need dish soap, laundry soap, dishwasher soap, and TP....