I did the research and knew what kind of stove we would replace Agatha with when the time came. It was ordered and delivered with extra days to spare (intentionally purchased that way) so we could prepare the area it would inhabit. Agatha was much larger than a traditional range (39 inches wide compared to 30 inches wide) so I knew there would be a decent gap to have to accommodate visually.

The easy fix was to replace the Agatha mosaic I had created in front of the stove and the sides, with the same mosaic tile we had used on the kitchen back splash. Except, as I learned, Home Depot now only sells it online instead of in stores. And I needed more, NOW. Their new offering, Treasure Trail, featured the same "rootbeer" tile as our back splash, but had opal tiles intermixed with it. It would have to do, the clock was ticking!

I bought 12 of those 12 x 12 mosaic tiles so I'd have enough to work with and didn't have to run back to Home Depot (using up more valuable time) and wouldn't you know, I end up using nearly every last one of them with one to spare! In the picture below, it doesn't look like they match-up well, color-wise, but trust me, they do.

But then when it came time to grout, my grout was a little too thin than it needed to be. UGH! In my defense, it had been 10 years or so since I'd last tiled and grouted anything. But, I made it work. It just took a bit longer to do so.

Or so I thought.

My grout, already softer after drying because it was unsanded, wasn't strong enough to even be grout and because of it's soupy consistency, crumbled out of my grout lines. (Sad face!)

But I found an article on fixing grouting errors and followed the instructions which included using a bamboo skewer to remove the crumbly grout. I vacuumed that up well, then sprayed the area I planned to re-fill with a mist of water, then re-grouted with a new batch of grout I had successfully mixed up. It was the consistency of thick but spreadable peanut butter, not really thinner cream soup as it had before!

My grout lines filled, smoothed and wiped, the grout looks A LOT BETTER than it did. Hurrah!

The next day, I mixed another couple batches of correct grout again and finally, after eight years, grouted the kitchen backsplash across from the stove and sink. I had loved the way the light reflected off the tiles without grout for years, but when you going to sell your house, you have to grout! It turned out pretty swell. The grout gods were definitely on my side that day...

But I now still had a 1/8 inch gap from where the mosaic tile joined the laminate flooring. We had put wooden transition molding around the new mosaic tile, but I even screwed that up by getting transition molding that was equal on each side. I needed one side sloped. Rats! But my fix was to get sanded silicone caulk that matched our grout color (Nutmeg).

Well that turned into an unforseen problem, too! Home Depot doesn't carry the Nutmeg color grout in their stores any longer, just like they don't carry my rootbeer mosaic tiles. But Amazon does and I was able to order a tube and have it delivered the next day.

Thanks, Amazon Prime!

I spent Friday morning taping out my floor and the kitchen backsplash with blue painters tape, and then wielding a caulking gun to apply a bead to all my edges, smooth it out with a wet finger, pull off the tape, clean it up, clean it up again. It's not for the faint of heart nor a week morning warrior. But, while I'm not quitting my day job (HA!) I think I did a pretty decent job knocking all this off the check list. We just need the house in attractive, sellable condition.

Next week, I pick up the custom hardwood transition to fill the gap between the new stove and the kitchen breakfast far. 

Stay tuned!

When we moved into our house we had been cooking on traditional ranges for our entire lives. And for one more year, before Agatha was installed. It's been 11 years of "alternative" cooking with her, and we're back to the traditional gas range and I have to relearn how to cook on one all over again. Agatha was always on and ready to go, so I never had to worry about "preheating" an oven. Cooking now involves lots of extra steps to create the same meals we used to eat before. Ugh! I have no patience for any of this, but I will find some.

If a stove had actual feelings, this one would be in serious therapy. None of us like it and vocalize that sentiment on a regular basis in front of it. Or, we talk about how much we miss Agatha and how we can't wait to get her up and running again once we get to Arizona, while in the kitchen. When I bang a spoon on the side of a pan, the whole stove gives me hollow echos. We never had that with Agatha. She was 900lbs of cast iron and stuffed with vermiculite and rock wool. I also have had pans be unwieldy atop of the burners and Eddie had a minor disaster trying to make popcorn last weekend.

To make matters worse, Lulu keeps forgetting to turn off the burner when she makes hot chocolate for herself before we leave for me to take her to school. I've come back home, after doing a couple errands, mind you, and there is the front left burner with a low blue flame going strong. Both times were within days of each other.

I've taken to making a sign for the back splash above the stove...We can all use the reminder!

We are taking Agatha with us and it is a big deal taking her apart and putting her together. No worries, though, I took copious notes and lots of pictures!

Our last meal was on Thursday and we all settled in for a family selfie before we turned her off.

It takes her about 24 hours to cool down, so by Saturday morning, we were ready to get busy with the dismantle process.

How things looked when we began...

And here's what it looked like when we were finished.

Yes, we removed the mosaic tile of her name, too. Once I've repaired it, we'll frame it and I'll put it on a shelf above her this time once we're settled in our new home. It was funny, when Eddie was trying to pry it out of the floor without damaging it, he realized that he had screwed it into the floor ten years ago. "Why did I do that?" he asked rhetorically..."Oh yeah, because we never planned to move, we were going to die here!" he answered. That has become our joke now when we come across something in the house we hadn't anticipated or we realize we have to fix up or make better since we're going to sell.

Eddie has been working diligently on perfecting his pizza prowess. This past weekend, he knocked it out of the ballpark! This pan-style pizza is called Mama Pizza. The closest thing I can compare it to is Pizza Hut pizza where the bottom of the pizza crust is crispy and fried.

This pizza Eddie made, was WAY better than Pizza Hut. And the bottom of our pizza crust was lightly fried in a little bacon grease. OMG, so good!!! The crust was this perfect combination of soft, chewy, sweet and crunchy.

We devoured it Saturday night and then Eddie and I devoured leftovers on Sunday for lunch. The girls were "meh" on it, mainly because they have issues, it's come to light, on square cut pizza slices. I think it's the same issue people have with brownies. Everyone wants an edge, no one wants the center cuts. Interestingly, Bean is not a big fan of crusts, whether on her sandwiches or pizza, always discarding them unless I threaten or bribe her with something she wants afterward. I would have thought this was perfect, she could have a center piece (no crust!) and Lulu could have an edge piece. 

But no, our kids are weird that way. (Eye roll...)

Here is the pizza cookbook Eddie now swears by. I originally found it at the library and we very quickly realized, it was worth owning for ourselves. The author owns a very popular and long-time pizza place called Ken's Artisan Pizza here in Portland. The book is written very conversationally, like he had a blog and decided to pull it together as a book. No matter, it's a keeper! Eddie is working his way through the different varieties of pizza doughs. While he was sad that Agatha can't create the thin and crispy Napoli style he loves (she doesn't get hot enough like fire heated pizza ovens can) he is now happy to buy Napoli style pizza up the street from Pizza Otto and continue making Mama Pizza, which does cook up beautifully in Agatha, at home.

This is a favorite recipe from Food & Wine July 2008 and is excellent either over pasta as shown or used as a filling for tamales. I originally posted a link to this recipe a few years back on this blog, but since I make hard copies of this blog by year for each of the girls, a link to a recipe doesn't help anyone. 

Also, we use the blog as a back-up recipe holder when at the grocery store looking for ingredients or what have you. Now, we're finally up-to-date with this one. It's a fantastic recipe, too, I encourage you to try it! Very easy to make and quite impressive.

Ingredients

• One 2-pound piece of boneless pork shoulder
• Smoked sea salt
• 2 tablespoons canola oil
• 1 Granny Smith apple, cut into 1-inch dice
• 1 medium onion, cut into 1-inch dice
• 1 carrot, cut into 1-inch dice
• 1 celery rib, cut into 1-inch dice
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 3 thyme sprigs
• 1/2 cup tomato paste
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 2 cups chicken stock or low-sodium broth
• 1/3 cup Champagne vinegar
• 3 tablespoons honey
• 3 tablespoons mascarpone cheese
• Freshly ground pepper
• 1 pound pappardelle
• 1 tablespoon chopped flat-leaf parsley
• Extra-virgin olive oil, for drizzling

How to Make It

Step 1    

Preheat the oven to 300°. Season the pork with 1 1/2 tablespoons of smoked salt. In a medium, enameled cast-iron casserole, heat the canola oil until shimmering. Add the pork and cook over moderately high heat, turning, until browned on all sides, 15 minutes. Transfer the pork to a plate.

Step 2    

Add the apple, onion, carrot, celery, garlic and thyme to the casserole and cook over moderate heat until beginning to brown, about 6 minutes. Add the tomato paste and cook, stirring, until it deepens in color, about 2 minutes. Add the wine and bring to a boil. Add the chicken stock, vinegar and honey and bring to a simmer. Add the pork, cover and transfer the casserole to the oven. Braise the pork for about 3 hours, turning once halfway through, until very tender.

Step 3    

Transfer the pork to a plate. Strain the sauce into a large bowl, gently pressing on the solids. Pour the sauce back into the pot. Using 2 forks, shred the pork; discard any large pieces of fat. Transfer the shredded pork to the sauce and stir in the mascarpone. Season the sauce with smoked salt and pepper. Cover and keep warm.

Step 4    

Meanwhile, in a large pot of boiling salted water, cook the pappardelle until al dente. Drain the pasta and transfer to the casserole with the sauce. Toss the pasta with the sauce and the parsley over moderate heat until well coated, about 1 minute. Transfer the pasta to warm bowls. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with smoked salt and serve.

Make Ahead

The sauce can be refrigerated for up to 3 days.

Bean wanted a Chi cat cake for her birthday. I made vanilla cake and tinted the batter bright pink.

I also had plans to do something a little different with the cake, which involved giving it some crunch (like a KitKat bar, I hoped). I found a recipe for a coffee crunch cake where they did something similar using sugar wafer cookies. However, full sugar wafer cookies are hard to find. I looked just about everywhere and finally found what I needed at a Win-Co. We never shop at Win-Co (there isn't one close to where we live, anyways) but boy, what an interesting shop and clientele as far as PDX is concerned...

Anyhoo, I drew a template of my cake area using the cake pan on parchment paper and cut my cookies to match. Cutting sugar wafers is like cutting styrofoam blocks, but less messy than styrofoam and bonus, you can eat your cuttings from the cookies!

I spread a layer of raspberry preserves to hold the cookies in place and add another delicious layer of filling.

Time to put the cookies in place!

I put a layer of chocolate frosting on top of the cookie layer before placing my second cake layer on top of that. I made things easy on myself and bought store brand icing. I tinted one can dark grey and left the other the ivory color. The cat ears are made using jumbo sized marshmallows cut on the diagonal and then the cut side dipped into pink sugar that I tinted myself. I got this marshmallow tip from a really cool cupcake decorating book Lulu has. I frosted the outer part of the ears, too, with grey frosting...

I was worried the ears would slide down, especially on the trip to the party, so I put toothpicks under each ear to stabilize everything.

I had tinted more sugar dark dark grey using black icing tint (which I'd used to create grey frosting, too). I cut two sliced of jumbo marshmallows thinly to make the eyes. I used more of the pink sugar to fill in the cat mouth.

Licorice candy made whiskers under the ears and a nose. Black sparkle writing icing filled in the eyes and outlined the mouth. The cake traveled well and was a big hit with the kids! I was surprised at what were the "coveted" pieces that they wanted from the cake: the ears and the mouth. Who knew?!

It should be noted, however, that sugar wafer cookies do not refrigerate and then come to room temperature well. The cookies became really chewy and did not work out as a crunch center. I think if you made your cake and served it immediately, you would be able to keep and preserve the crunch. Lesson learned!

Pickled Red Onions



3 smaller red onions, sliced into half moons
3/4 tsp. salt
1 cup water
1/2 cup cider vinegar
4 tsp. sugar

Add the sliced onions to a clean, warm, wide-mouth standard sized Mason jar.

Combine remaining ingredients in a saucepan over medium high heat, until salt and sugar dissolves. Pour mixture over onions in jar, loosely place lid on jar until cooled to room temperature. Put lid on tight and place in fridge, chilling at least 1 hour.

From Cooking Light Magazine, May 2016

Mushroom & Charred Corn Street Tacos



1 cup finely chopped, stemmed, seeded fresh Poblano chili's (about 2 medium)
2 tbsp. olive oil
3/4 tsp. salt
4 cups mixed sliced mushrooms (cremini & shiitake)
1 bag frozen charred corn from Trader Joes, thawed (about 2 cups)
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 package corn street tacos
Crumbled Cotija cheese
1/4 cup Mexican crema**
1 tbsp. adobo sauce (from canned Chipotle chilies)

Fresh guacamole
Fresh cilantro leaves

Add oil to a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Add minced Poblano and saute about 4 minutes. Add garlic, saute 2 minutes. Add 3/4 tsp. salt; add mushrooms and saute until most of liquid evaporates. Add thawed charred corn, mix well, cover and heat until corn is hot, stirring occasionally as needed.

Mix Mexican crema in a small bowl with 1 tbsp. of adobo sauce. Serve on the side with fresh guacamole in small corn street tacos, topped with Cotija and fresh cilantro.

**you can also mix adobo with sour cream, instead!

Recipe from Cooking Light Magazine, May 2016

After nearly 7 years of 24/7 service, we turned Agatha off and gave her a long overdue cleaning and service. It took about a day for her to cool down completely and then we knew we needed a day or so to get her cleaned up and ready to go back into service.

Below, you can see how dirty the interior liner was on the simmering plate!

This little contraption controls the natural gas that is on 24/7. I don't know why they make a plastic housing for it, with the constant heat from the stove, it breaks down and gets brittle really fast. If you looked through that tiny rectangular window, the sight glass lets you see the natural gas flames coming through the burner. Bean calls that Agatha's "heart" and delights in seeing it through there.

Also, because of the constant heat, the spring for the pilot ignition button popped out several years ago. We had to replace the whole valve unit and if we had bought it in the states, a small fortune per unit. Luckily, I found a parts supplier in the UK I could buy directly from and for a fraction of the cost. Not having the pay the astronomical mark-up of the states-side service department for Aga, meant I could buy duplicates of key components to have on hand for the future. When all was said and done, I got all our parts necessary for sprucing up Agatha, shipped from the UK (the order arrived amazingly quickly!) for less than the cost of one of these gas valves had I bought it in the U.S.!

We also needed a new thermometer. You ca see all the grease build-up from steam and cooking over the years...

I used baking soda and elbow grease to clean the top of the roasting oven door. Baking soda is my favorite go-to cleaner whether I'm cleaning grease off of something I don't want to scratch or damage or if I'm polishing my silver jewelry. It's gentle and doesn't hurt my hands or the environment. Win!

We replaced both the inside hob liners, even though just one really needed it. 

This is what Agatha's heart looks like! Okay, it's the burner. We cleaned off all the soot build-up from the burner (all those tiny little holes the gas flames come through) to help her burn more efficiently. 

This is the inside of one of the heat reservoir chambers for Agatha...

She was only off for three days but it felt like eternity! We're glad to have her back up and running again. Water, I relearned, takes FOREVER to boil on an electric hot plate for morning coffee...

Yesterday was Lulu's pinball themed birthday party. I made her cake and was so happy with how it turned out! Wanna take a look?

I normally don't take pictures while I make stuff, but tried to do so this time. A few weeks before her party I sketched up what I wanted her cake to look like. There are some pinball cakes on Pinterest, but not a lot, surprisingly. I decided to make her cakes theme all the things she loves: Nunu, swimming, music/singing, reading, art, math and of course, pinball.

Lulu has some cupcake cookbooks that I consulted because they show lots of ways you can be creative with lots of different candies and cookies and confections. It's fascinating, really! I started playing around with caramels, Laffy Taffy, and Starbursts...Below, I used a caramel softened and rolled out to make book pages (the covers were Laffy Taffy and Starburst) and the bottom half of the swimmers body was caramel with a Starburst bikini bottom. I cut large marshmallows in half to make the scoreboard numbers and tried to copy the squarish shape of the numbers using black glitter icing. It's sticky stuff to work with and a little harder to manipulate than I realized. The paint brushes were made from Starbursts (rolled out then rolled into tubes between my hands) with caramel bristles. The flippers for the machine were out of Circus Peanuts with a large candy Confetti sprinkle decoration.

Lulu had requested banana cake which is a family favorite and a great way to use up bananas that get too ripe to eat. You can throw the bananas in the freezer until you need them, thaw in a bowl in the fridge (they get super mush and leak) and then you just squeeze the mushy contents into the cake batter and mix it all up. I made two batches of batter and make the bottom later (below) flat and made the top layer, slanted, so it looked more like the angle of a pinball machine. I put a spoon under the pan within a pan and baked it that way to get the batter to stay slanted. The great thing about cake making is you don't care how pretty or ugly the cake part comes out because you'll hide everything anyway with filling and frosting. :D

Below, I decided to make cocoa krispies into an exterior shell for the cake to sit inside. My original plan of having the sides and bottom of this shell being krispies but the sides kept sliding down the glass pan I was trying to use as my krispie shell mold. I ended up putting the krispies in a larger pan with sides and pushing the glass cake pan inside to make the shape and size I needed. Then, my krispie shell was too thick on the bottom which would cause my cake to sit up higher than I needed it to.  So, I cut the bottom of the shell out with the idea of placing the cake inside and it would all "adhere" better to the cake tray I'd bought at the craft store. This worked, but the cocoa krispies were too freshly made so they had a tendency to droop outward on the sides. I tried to get it to set up in the fridge (cool air dries out marshmallows!) but I didn't have enough time to properly do this. 

Here you can see the bottom layer of cake in the cocoa krispie shell. I put a layer of fresh bananas on the bottom layer and then (not shown) covered this with a Nutella buttercream filling. This was easy to make and tasted way better than I thought it could! Pretty much, a large jar of Marshmallow Fluff, two cubes of softened butter, powdered sugar, vanilla extract and Nutella all mixed together.

Now it was time to make the scoreboard/backboard part of the cake. I did this the morning of her party because I was still not certain how I'd accomplish this but also because I needed the scoreboard to sit out exposed to the air overnight. With this, I ended up cutting off the sides that came down so it was level all the way across when I attached it. I also used a bunch of Popsicle sticks to support it on the cake. I ended up using A LOT of Popsicle sticks when all was said and done with this cake!

Next, I had one more major decoration to make before I got to assemble the cake. First,  made a huge batch of real vanilla buttercream frosting. I had taken some of the regular rice krispies when I made the backboard and I made a square, cut out the bottom and then mapped on a piece of paper what colors I needed and where. Then I drew a grid on the frosted rice krispie to match. Using pure gel food coloring and a toothpick, I painted each square the color it needed to be. In the end, I had Stampy Cat's head (from Minecraft!) I had to use a bunch of Popsicle sticks to support that on the cake, too, the krispies were too freshly made no matter how long I tried to speed up the drying process in the fridge...

Now it was time to start decorating the cake! I had made "hinges" for the corners using rolled and trimmed Tootsie Rolls then studded them on each side with large silver dragees. (I'd seen this done on one of the pinball cakes on Pinterest along with the coin and coin slot I copied, too!) A piece of tin foil over an unwrapped Tootsie roll pop made the plunger. Fruit By The Foot made the pinball track.

Here is the finished cake! I used large silver gumballs for the pinballs. The blue candy waves are Laffy Taffy. I used mini marshmallows to build up the upper left corner of the cake so I could have the Fruit By The Foot make two ball ramps. At the bottom of one ramp is a Teddy Graham cookie to be a Nunu along with a pink Laffy Taffy Heart (the star on the top of the score board is Laffy Taffy, too). Not shown in this photo, the star shaped candles and star shaped "1" candles (I got two to make an 11) at the Dollar Store when I bought plates and silverware for the party. There are also Rolo's and red Twizzler ropes, plus gold star cake sprinkles.

Lulu's party at POP (Pinball Outreach Project) started at 1 pm. Eddie carefully drove us all while I very carefully held the cake. Eddie had made pinball score sheets as Lulu wanted to have a pinball competition for those who wanted to participate. Below, scene's from the party (POP is not very large inside...)

It's a good thing we'd decided to sing Happy Birthday and have cake 45 minutes into the party. The backboard was starting to pull apart because of gravity and my cocoa krispies being too freshly made!

There are strict food & drink rules at POP because of the small space and the pinball machines potentially being damaged. We just had cake in the corner of the room and I brought small ice cream cups for the ice cream, that have the small cute wooden spoons on the underside of the lid. Assorted juice boxes from Trader Joes!

We had a total of ten kid guests, plus Bean and Lulu. A pretty equal mix of girls and boys! The cake was a big hit and the sugar rush was evident in nearly everyone...At the end of the party, I handed out goody bags to each kid that contained more chocolate gold coins, more pinball gumballs, a small bottle of bubbles, smoothie flavored lip balm and a POP jacket button. For the pinball prize winners, we had gift certificates we got for POP for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place.

What was left of the cake near the party end! POP was closed to the public during Lulu's party and reopened when our party was over. The volunteer, whom we'd given a piece of cake to during the party (she LOVED it! and posted pictures of the cake on her FB which garnered rave reviews, she said) was happy to let us leave the cake remains for anyone who came into POP after we left. There was a back row of cake left and then all that krispie treats (made with butter, not margarine so it was extra delicious!). When we left, there were three adults helping themselves and obviously enjoying what we'd left behind. Oh, the power of free cake!

Lulu had a great, great celebration. This is definitely one for the birthday record books! And I will be happy, happy, happy to not have to make rice krispies for the foreseeable future...ENOUGH!!!