« July 2006 | Main | September 2006 »

August 29, 2006

Craziness

So a tree fell on a car a couple blocks away. Someone must have put a curse on the neighborhood. We just spoke to our downstairs neighbor -- he seems to be holding up okay. Some updates to the fire post are below. Also, a friendly reminder: don't use extension cords with air conditioners, k?

Posted by csageday at 12:42 AM | Comments (0)

August 27, 2006

Long Island?

We went to a wedding in Long Island yesterday, after which we drove up to Oyster Bay and Bayville, since we know nothing at all about Long Island and thought we should educate ourselves. We found a beach-side parking lot and strolled along the beach for a while in Bayville. Though it was a bit chilly, it was nice enough, but it seemed very odd that we were able to walk along a beach at 6:30 p.m. on a Saturday evening in August and see not one person. Nobody was grilling on a beach house porch, no couples were strolling along the beach. We just saw seagulls and a dying crab. Maybe everyone was on vacation in the Hamptons?

The circuitous drive back to the LIE took us by some very tony and secluded houses and some horse farms, which was entertaining, but I think we're still pretty clueless about the island.

In other news, friend and co-blogger Lloyd is now the father of a very cute Orlando. Orlando is joining the ranks of babies-that-Derek-and-Cindy know, along with Asher (who already has a blog), Keith, and Xander. Congrats Lloyd and Kathy!!

Posted by csageday at 10:38 PM | Comments (0)

Bacon-Wrapped Anything is Good, Really

...At least the bacon part is. One of our upstate activities involved grilling outdoors, naturally, and because we had fantastic local peaches and untold amounts of bacon in the house (my family is addicted), I decided that we really needed to try bacon-wrapped peaches. I announced this to guests and family members and got disgusted looks in return. Fine, I said, I'll just make a few and you don't have to have any. Derek says he supported me all along, but I don't believe him. I also don't know what the problem is -- bacon-wrapped fruit is not a foreign concept -- bacon-wrapped dates, after all, are not unheard of. Peaches are also sweet and delicious, so isn't this a natural progression? I have a friend who believes that you can throw just about anything in some bacon and it'll work out. And really, doesn't there seem an urgent need for bacon-wrapped things in today's culinary scene?

So I packed a bunch of peach halves with strips of bacon wrapped around them and secured with toothpicks. Then, at the lean-to where our friend John had built a banquet-worthy fire, I quietly slipped in a rack of the bacon-wrapped peaches. Actually, I don't think it was quiet -- I think someone said, "What is that, anyway, and why is it near the steak?" I had a little trouble getting prime space, but the things got cooked, and eventually I took one specimen over to the picnic table to cool off so I could try it.

Five minutes later, it was nowhere to be found, and my previously-disgusted-by-the-concept mother announced that it was delicious. A protracted discussion about who ate what and who was entitled to the small number of remaining peaches ensued. I was inclined to favor those who gave pre-dinner endorsement to the project. Suffice it to say that they were goooood. And because we still had about three pounds of bacon in the house, I got to experiment indoors, too -- I tried again with peaches, but unless you have really ripe, sweet peaches, it's not as good. We had "donut" or "saturn" peaches the first time. Those are the flat-looking peaches that are wonderfully sweet and usually horrendously overpriced in the city. I also tried it with dates, and was hooked. The salty-sweet, cripsy-soft combination is heavenly.

Posted by csageday at 04:47 PM | Comments (2)

Unsettling, to Say the Least

Usually I structure blog posts around some sort of theme, like, Figs and Date are Good, or Eat Tomatoes Now, or somesuch. Recent events don't fall into an easy category. The only word I can think of to describe what we found on coming home from upstate is "unsettling".

We had a great week in the woods, doing the same woodsy and watery things we usually do, but with a good dose of baking thrown in this year, since I was in a baking mood. I was a little worried about our place, in my little paranoid way, but that's normal. The weather upstate had been wonderful (except for a rainy weekend), so we'd been able to do lots of lake swimming and some hiking and boating. We came home Monday night at about 11 p.m., feeling ready to unpack the car and go directly to bed.

As we were hauling bags up the stoop, our neighbor met us at the door. "There's been a fire," she said, "and your apartment is damaged." I think we stared at her blankly -- there's really no way to know from that sentence exactly how to respond -- I just wanted more information. I also felt one of those "I knew it," feelings -- not about the fire specifically, but about having things too good.

No one had been hurt, but there had been a fire in the apartment below ours, and everything in that apartment, she said, had been destroyed. In ours, they had to make holes in the wall to see if the fire was climbing up the beams, but the fire miraculously hadn't made it up there. She also said there was no power, and we should leave our stuff in the hallway before bringing it upstairs. I don't think all of the information she gave us really sank in one way or another, because it really wasn't clear what state our apartment was in. I'm very attached to my home -- I feel reassured when I'm there -- calm and settled. I've finally created a living space that's comfortable and comforting -- having that suddenly in jeopardy would be like losing my grip on reality for a bit. As I've been explaining to people this week, my stuff is my home, and it grounds me. Furniture from my great aunt's house, or the nicer-than-usual futon, or my computer with all of my photos, or the one nice piece of artwork we own, given to me by my mother for my 25th birthday... all of these things help convey who I am, or who I'd like to be. It has taken years to assemble a living space that feels like a real home and not a dorm room, too.

Still a little bit shocked by the whole thing, we followed my neighbor and her flashlight up the stairs. There was a sooty black mess all along one wall, and the door to the apartment with the fire looked like this:

The whole building smelled of smoke. Our door and our next-door neighbor's door both had new locks, since the doors had been forced open by firefighters. Inside, we saw this:

Which freaked me out a little, because I didn't understand at first that the table that's usually there was just moved to another room (it seemed like furniture might somehow have been reduced to rubble or something). Once we had walked around a bit, we realized that while there was a lot of plaster on the floor and some unsightly holes, we hadn't lost anything. The firefighers had carefully moved stuff out of the way before opening up the walls.

We were extremely, extremely lucky. Lucky that neighbors were home to call the fire department, lucky that the fire didn't get hot enough to climb up into our place, lucky not to have any water damage, etc. Five more minutes, and our apartment would have looked more like the one downstairs.

We also found that we had electricity and running water, so it seemed more feasible that we could stay there. Once we had figured all of this out, we got the rest of the story from our neighbor -- thank goodness she was there to explain it all.

The fire started at about 10 a.m. that morning. It allegedly started because an air conditioner was using a regular extension cord, and that cord ran underneath a mat and a box of kitty litter. A substandard extension cord for an air conditioner is unsafe to begin with, but the added insulation of the stuff on top of it meant the heat had nowhere to go. No one, aside from three cats, was in the apartment when the fire started. Our downstairs neighbor heard noises in the backyard and thought someone was throwing stuff out the window. When she went out to see what was going on, she saw a red-hot beam of wood upstairs. She called the fire department, which had just received a call from another neighbor, and then ran to get everyone out of the building.

The fire department arrived in three minutes (three minutes, god bless them). I don't have many details from this part of the story, but I know they hosed down the place and then went all over the rest of the building to make sure the fire hadn't spread. They had to knock out our bathroom window, and they brought out one of the cats from the apartment where the fire started. They went up to the roof, and they kept people outside of the building until it was safe.

It must have been terrifying to watch, especially for those with pets still inside. I'm not sure when the owner of the apartment with the fire came home, but I'm sure he was devastated -- he's a nice guy, and he's lost what we came so close to losing. Apparently he had a roommate, too, so he's also lost stuff. They were able to salvage some things, I think, but I don't think it could have been much. [Update: We just talked to the guy, and he seems to be coping pretty well. Some important things, like photography and artwork, were salvaged from a room that wasn't too damaged. The microwave and light switches "melted," though, and it seems like work on the place will take quite a while.]

Of the three cats, I know that the one rescued got attention immediately -- they had a pet-sized oxygen mask -- but died soon after. Another cat was outside of the apartment and was under a car on the street, but was foaming at the mouth and wouldn't drink or eat. At 6 p.m., the owner was convinced to go back upstairs to look for the third, and found him burned badly. The two that were found alive were taken to the vet, but I don't think either made it [Update: The two taken away might be okay]. For me, the loss of pets -- and the trauma they endured -- seems horribly depressing.

Our downstairs neighbors didn't have power afterward because the water damage made it too risky to turn on. She got power back 24 hours later, but it sounds like the ceiling is a mess and is probably making things very difficult for them.

This all happened a week ago. Since then, insurance assessors have been through, and our landlord kindly cleaned up the plaster mess. It was still pretty gritty, so D and I have been giving the place a good scrubbing. I've also been introduced to the miraculous Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. Our friends, who have two great danes with projectile drool, told us months ago that it was great for cleaning stuff off the walls. Since seeing the black mess on our hallway wall was depressing to come home, to, I finally picked up the stuff. Those black streaks in the photo above -- they're pretty much gone. It's been cathartic, cleaning everything up.

I'm still feeling unsettled -- it's odd to have your private space suddenly seem so fragile. For the first few days I felt like I was in the twilight zone.

It still smells like smoke, and we have a boarded-up bathroom window and some holes in the walls, but in general, the place is feeling like it's back to normal. That will probably change when we start to have contractors in here working on the place, but that I can deal with.

Fires happen with much greater frequency than I'd understood. We're all packed into small spaces in the city, so fires in other places are more likely to affect more living space than one. The fact that we live in a brick building saved us, too -- a frame would have been a different story.

I felt like sharing the story with people right after it happened, mainly so that I could understand it in a larger context, because I was having a little trouble coming to terms with how close we came to a disaster. It just felt strange, especially when our landlord reminded me that five minutes more of that fire would have burned our place. Sharing it here also seems like a helpful thing to do, since it's a good cautionary tale about air conditioners and extension cords.

And just so you're not traumatized by the photo above and worried about us, here's a photo of that same spot today:

I'll be posting more uplifting stories about kayaking on secluded lakes and learning how to bake good sandwich bread soon, I promise.

Posted by csageday at 03:46 PM | Comments (4)

August 10, 2006

Food Finds

This is likely my last entry for a while, as we're headed to the land-of-no-internet shortly. I have been cooking away, and thought I'd share my latest acceptable-to-the-public dishes. I'm beginning to feel more comfortable in the kitchen. A year ago, I was not all that confident about whipping up a presentable dinner for more than two with whatever was in the fridge, but I feel like I have more options now. Experimenting is coming a little easier.

First, since it's hot and nobody should be eating anything warm, I made tabbouleh. I used the recipe from Joy of Cooking, thinking it would be standard enough, and was surprised at how easy it was. Aside from soaking the bulgar wheat in boiling water, there's no cooking. There is lots of chopping, but that I can handle. I wasn't happy with the excess of onions and parsley in the recipe, but it taught me the basics, so I made it again last night with some variations (less parsley, no mint (none left), cucumbers instead of onion), and was very pleased with the result. It's a great summer picnicking extra or a take-to-work lunch.

Here's the basic idea, for the uninitiated. Take a cup or so of bulgar wheat and put it in a bowl. Pour in twice as much boiling water, cover with a plate, and soak for half an hour. Then chop parsley, tomato, scallions, and cucumbers to taste. When the wheat is soaked, strain it in a sieve, pushing out the excess water with a spoon. Put it a clean bowl and add the chopped ingredients. Whisk together 1/3 a cup of lemon juice with 1/3 cup olive oil and add that. Add salt and pepper and mix and refrigerate. Voila. If you're not satisfied, there are ten billion variations of this online.

I also picked up Israeli couscous at the co-op recently, mainly because of the colorful label on the bulk bin. I thought it might make a nice alternative to bigger pasta. In a rush to make something with it later, I went to one web site, read that it can be cooked like risotto, and proceeded to use it that way. Since my risotto-making habits are extravagant, this involved lots of good ingredients and lots of stirring. The result was decadent -- a lot like risotto, but not great as leftovers (it congealed quite a bit). The site I checked said that it could be simply boiled as well, so I might try something simpler next time.

I've been making this banana bread at every available opportunity, since I love the recipe and have felt compelled to be a good hostess and make it for house guests. Last weekend, since we had some perfectly ripe plums on hand and only 3 bananas, I added two of those, and they added an extra bit of moisture and subtle fruity sweetness. Still, the recipe is fine (and impressive) all on its own, as long as you use four ripe (not overripe) bananas.

The plums came from a farmer's market in Warrensburg, NY, which is only open for three hours a week. Still, we happened to be driving through just as it opened, and we made out like bandits. We got great sweet corn (picked that morning), plums, peaches, tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, etc. It's worth seeking out these places during summer trips. We got some donut peaches (also known as saturn peaches), which we'd seen at the co-op for exorbitant prices. We weren't sure if they'd live up to their promise, since they were hard as a rock, but when they ripened OH MY GOD they were good. Like peaches, but ... better. Try some if you get the chance.

Posted by csageday at 01:40 AM | Comments (2)