I approach this not with regrets but with many happy feelings about how we took a run-down, bank-foreclosed property and made it into a home.

Remember this is what the house originally looked like! Yikes!

THE BIG RED MESS

This is what the house looks like now!

Yes, we still have a few projects to complete (after all it is a house that was built in the 1850’s!) but a few things have transpired which has given me inspiration to write about other things.

First and foremost, Lynn and I moved to the “Red House” permanently on June 27, 2019. Second, the point of The Red House Project blog was to describe in detail all the problems we had with renovations or contractors or just life on the property.  Over the years I also included some stories about our road trips or food-related articles, always trying to tie the stories into whatever project we were facing back home.

I loved writing about the house and the many challenges we faced throughout the renovation. I think I succeeded in making the blog a fun read. Hopefully, I also brought to life some of the characters I chose to write about as I tried to portray them as helpful, yet quirky, personalities. Going forward I have decided to write more about food and travel and anything that strikes me of interest in the Mohawk Valley.

The Red House Project blog will still remain online there just won’t be any further posts.

For the past nine years I have loved living in this Red House, even if it was only for long weekends or during the summer months. This passion, I hope, will never leave me.  That said, I’ve created a new blog, “Let’s Go!” that I hope will entertain you as I know the Red House did.

Here’s a link to my first post about the move.  So “Let’s Go.”

The lettuce grew so high it looked like I threw some really bad non-organic fertilizer (think: toxic) to make it grow. I didn’t. My mother says the leaves are bitter when they are that big but I don’t mind the taste at all.

Unfortunately the carrots and beets were mangled by a bunny rabbit or two or three or four. No worries, since we are surrounded by lots of farmer’s markets and quite a few Amish farm stands too which resulted in some very picturesque carrots! Perhaps it was the way the Amish farm wife wrapped the carrot tops in pretty red yarn.

Because when I unwrapped the carrots to prepare them for dinner, one of them decided to have some fun with me and “pose” for their fall carrot-themed jean line.

Since our first summer at the Red House Lynn has tried a couple of times to do pizza on the grill. The first time we simply threw the dough on the grill rack (big mistake), then scraped off the burnt but still raw (never could quite figure out how that could be) dough and threw it away.

I think we tried at least one other time, too but ended up using dough that wasn’t 100% and the pizza itself wasn’t worth writing home about let alone photographing.

When we moved out of the house on Long Island and into an apartment, I chucked a lot of stuff that I didn’t think we would ever use – a French coffee press and not one but THREE Italian espresso pots, ramekins of every shape and size and chipped dishes, cake pans, and pie plates, etc., etc.  Apparently I also threw out our stone pizza board, a wooden pizza paddle and an extra large spatula — all of course which I needed now even if we wanted to make pizza on the grill again.

I went to Walmart (I know, I know) but they had pizza “pans” for a mere 99 cents and I figured I would rather waste a buck than 10 bucks if the “pans” melted on top of the grill.

Lynn loves to roll out dough. My reaction to this is: BE MY GUEST. He also loves to hand grate cheese. My reaction to this is: GRATE AWAY. (Although for this pizza he just sliced up the mozzarella). I managed to open a container of pizza “sauce” that we picked up at the “fancy” supermarket in Syracuse even though I could have made my own for about $3.00 less. As you may have deduced by now I’m really big on making things myself rather than buying them. But suddenly I’ve changed. (Don’t believe those who say people can’t change, they can and do.)

He rolled out the dough on the new pans and this time  decided to “cook” the dough a bit on the grill first.

About 10 minutes later, he put on the sauce, the cheese and some fresh basil from the garden.

They did take a bit longer to cook on the grill than I expected but they turned out pretty darn good – thin crust that I like with blobs of fresh mozzarella and basil from the garden.

Back to the garden, I found a zucchini hiding underneath the leaves that was a monster!

Even when I cut him in half and filled the “boats” with tomatoes from the garden, I still had to figure out what to do with the rest. (Half went into a pasta dish and the other half was grated and made into zucchini pancakes!)

Unfortunately by the end of August when we came back up to the Red House, nearly all our tomatoes were gone, the weeds took up most of our garden and something is growing in one corner that may be squash or pumpkins or both.

In the meantime, I have to fight my way through the weeds and dig up the garlic. Yes, it’s that time again.

I have quite a list of projects I would like to be completed by the end of the year. Not being a total pessimist, I’m hoping we get at least half of them accomplished.

This past spring we finally got a new roof for the main part of the house. The shingles on the house were so old that while I thought they would simply have flown off at the touch of the tool the roofing guys were using to remove them, instead they held on as tight as can be so stripping the roof down to the rafters was a struggle.

Here’s our shingle delivery as well as the start of the project.

There was a ton more debris than I anticipated but then again the main part of the house has a huge roof so what did I expect?

And then of course it started to rain.  It took about 1.5 weeks to finally finish the roof because of the rain delay but now that’s its done, the roof looks quite nice.

We also ordered a granite counter top to finish our kitchen island. I’m reluctant to admit that the one piece of granite cost more than it did to install all of our kitchen counter tops! Even before we got our kitchen counters installed last summer, we survived nearly 4 years with a handy metal cart we inherited from our son.  It served us well.

In the meantime, leftover backer board comes in very handy to cover up the kitchen island until the counter gets here.

We also covered some kid’s cushions we got at Ikea with some red fabric to make the benches and backs of the benches pop a little more in a kitchen that’s primarily black and white. While neither of us can sew, we figured out a way to wrap the fabric around the foam cushion with some heavy cardboard. For now the fabric is in place although Lynn swears whenever he sits on the bench a staple is pinching his ass! (I think he’s imagining being pinched but whatever.)

This is what the cushions looked like before and our finished dining nook. (We had originally wanted a German “Stube” and even bought some church pews to try and make benches but the pews were too long and curved and simply didn’t fit.)

I’m reluctant to admit that we are currently in the process of hiring contractor #3. I promised myself that he will be the last one we work with and since he’s affiliated with a big box store that will replace him if he fails or bows out of the project, I’m pretty confident that at least this way the house renovation will eventually be finished.

Ironically, the project he is working on first was at the bottom of the list. What happened is as follows. If you remember, last fall we were left with a master bathroom that wasn’t finished, ditto for some odds and ends in the kitchen and a room that is totally gutted that I want to turn into a closet. These were the three projects I wanted to be finished ASAP.

As a reminder here’s a shot of the bathroom that can’t seem to get done!

But, big box store management wasn’t keen on finishing a project that someone else had started citing liability issues. They did, however, offer to work on the downstairs bathroom/laundry room since nothing had been started there.  That is how the last Red House renovation project suddenly got bumped up to be the first Red House renovation project for the summer of 2016.

We start in less than 3 weeks.

Lynn has spent the past few days working on the main staircase into the house. The plaster was torn off (actually it looked like someone at one point simply put their fist through it – the previous owners perhaps knowing they were being foreclosed on?).  He thought about sheet-rocking the wall but the angle was so strange and the moulding a bit weird, too, that we decided to try and put up some wainscoting.

We bought some panels that have a “wainscot” look. Was it easier than putting up drywall? Probably not since each panel had to be cut to size and then each of the primed 1×4’s had to be cut, too.

In the end, I think it came out really nice – it just needs to be painted, and the other side of the stair done too!

In the meantime, I’ve had a family of rabbits on the property who have managed to get into my garden and have eaten all of my green beans, peas and even my broccoli! They were good natured enough to leave me the Romaine, beets, carrots, cauliflower as well as the tomatoes. They also apparently don’t like garlic since my scapes were quite pretty and artistically shaped.

Although the weather has been beautiful, both the field and the garden desperately need some rain. We have a timer set up in the house that waters the garden every two days for about 20 minutes and that seems to be enough to keep my flowers looking particularly colorful this year.

Food-wise – I will be grilling this summer and frequenting as many farmer’s markets as possible. I’ve already made some delicious salads from the lettuce in the garden and pick the asparagus to throw in a pasta dish whenever I see a stalk peeking out from the ground. When the tomatoes are ready, I know they will be perfect with some burrata or oven roasted with a piece of fish.

Oh yeah, just as I was finishing this story, our counter arrived. It’s absolutely gorgeous! And perfect to roll out dough if I want to make pizza or Christmas cookies or Hungarian Kolach! Hint: Kids time to come visit Mom and Dad! Even though I hate baking, I love that they eat everything I bake.

I wish I could report that we’ve made progress in renovating the Red House but unfortunately at this stage in the game (meaning the complicated stuff), we’re very dependent on our contractor to finish our upstairs bathroom. This means while most of the plumbing has been installed, the insulation needs to be put in the walls before the sheetrock and then tile are applied. As you can see not much has changed in this room since the last time I photographed it!

Apparently since our contractor has a lot of outdoor jobs that he’s scrambling to get finished before the weather takes a turn for the worse, I do have to give him some slack. He has assured me that I’m #1 on the top of his list when he finishes with everyone else. Being me (frighteningly straightforward and to the point), I also reminded him that last winter he complained that he couldn’t get into the house without shoveling a path to the door because of all the snow. (I don’t have anyone who plows for us and don’t intend to incur that expense either!)  I also suggested since he obviously didn’t want to spend half of his day shoveling when he could be inside working on a room, he may need to speed things up a bit.

I would also love to start working on the dining room. But since all the materials he needs to complete the bathroom are sitting in the dining room, this room, too, has to wait.

While the leaves are turning, the marigolds seems to be thriving in the garden, the weeds even more so and with all the asparagus ferns cropping up, I’m thinking I’ll have a very nice asparagus harvest in the spring indeed. I’ve decided however, after planting two seasons of garlic in the fall, I’m going to wait until the spring to do it this year and see how that turns out. Reason being: Lynn is busy trying to finish our master bedroom (that means even though he took off all the moulding around the room and put everything back up, there is still a lot of patching that needs to be done as well as taping, spackling and finally painting.

To pull him away from this to get out the tiller (I’m afraid of the tiller it kind of drags me across the field) to plant some garlic seemed dumb. So the garlic will wait until the spring to be planted along with whatever else we can manage to grow in hopes that the deer, rabbits, squirrels and even a local cat or two won’t devour everything we’ve planted.

What is particularly nice about living up here especially in the fall are all the farmer’s markets as well as field after field filled with pumpkins in lovely shades of orange.

Last year I was lucky enough to grow a couple of pumpkins. This year I had to buy one.

Since the weather is turning colder (it was barely 55 degrees when we arrived this Columbus Day weekend), I’m also thinking of food that will warm us. That would be soups (pea and lentil), stews (goulash and chicken paprikash in particular) and lots of carbs like mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese! And while I do try to stay away from sweets as much as possible – I have been thinking of making cinnamon rolls (no, not the kind you bang out from those icky cardboard containers in the refrigerated section of the supermarket) but cinnamon rolls made from scratch.

For those readers who have children or other instances where your household size shrinks from 4 to 1 or 2, I can say that I’ve finally mastered cooking for just the two of us without a huge amount of leftovers. And if we do have have leftovers, it’s because I’m usually trying to make sure at least one of us has something to take to work for lunch the next day.  The problem with this cooking for 2 instead of 4 (or more) thing though is that there are simply dishes (particularly desserts) that just don’t get made anymore. Why bake a batch of brownies or oatmeal raisin cookies if there aren’t any teenagers around to eat them all in a single sitting? Did I mention I’ve been craving cinnamon rolls?

In the meantime, I picked the last of the tomatoes (still green) from the Red House garden.

And admired not only the meadow but how pretty the marigolds still looked in the garden.

And since it was rather chilly, I also decided to make some Braciole stuffing the meat with slices of mozzarella and some smokey ham.

I managed to find a few (albeit slightly bruised) leaves of basil still growing in the garden and found a bag of potato gnocchi we buy at a little Italian deli near the Red House for under $3 a bag that was still in the freezer from the summer.

Did I mention even as I was cooking the gnocchi and Braciole I was craving cinnamon rolls?

On a completely different note. We have a neighborhood cat who shows up like clockwork between 5 and 5:30 on the weekends we are here. He or she slowly meanders to the back of the property seemingly looking around for maybe a tasty little mouse or some other morsel to eat. Now, this cat is really the slowest cat I’ve ever seen so it was particularly funny when I tried to take a picture of the cat and suddenly the cat took off at an amazingly fast pace.

I followed the cat as it walked the length of the property and found myself staring at the stainless steel rolling cart we’ve been using in the kitchen as a table/work counter since we still don’t have countertops for the kitchen cabinets. Wouldn’t that surface be just fine for rolling out dough?

Since I also don’t have any cookbooks up at the Red House (I know that’s old school but I still use them!), I dragged out my laptop and followed a recipe from the Pioneer Woman for Cinnamon Rolls 101 online.

And yes, I already did have all the ingredients on hand so this was a really easy recipe.  I mixed everything together and tried to follow the instructions but the dough just seemed a little bit too wet so I added more flour than called for. The dough rose, I rolled it out, layered it with melted butter, sprinkled on some sugar and lots of cinnamon just like the picture online.

Except I wanted to add some apples to my cinnamon rolls so I did just that.

Really, doesn’t this just look yummy?

I rolled the dough into a log shape, cut the log into slices, and arranged them in a pie pan. The dough seemed a bit wetter than it probably should have been but I figured it would “correct” itself when baking.

I’ve always had a problem with every oven I’ve ever owned and this one is no different. I read a recipe and it suggests a cooking time of say 15-18 minutes and when I peek at what I’m baking, 9 times out of 10 I need double the amount of baking time indicated. Since I was convinced that the thermostat in this new oven wasn’t working properly, I actually went out and bought an oven thermometer. I’d like to say the oven was off, but actually the temperature was exactly what it was supposed to be.

So back to the cinnamon rolls. The recipe called for adding “maple flavoring” to make the frosting. Ha Ha Ha. Living in Upstate New York, I don’t need “maple flavoring,” I can use the real stuff. So I did, mixing maple syrup together with some powdered sugar and milk.

The rolls came out of the oven, I frosted them, and here’s what they looked like.

Yes, they looked delicious but when we ate them in the morning for breakfast (after sticking them back in the oven to warm up a bit), they were a tad too gooey inside! So even after following the recipe and adjusting the baking time and having for the first time ever a second thermometer inside my oven to make sure the temperature was correct – these rolls needed to be baked a bit longer. (We ate most of them anyway, no worries!) So like the cat that prowls our property looking for tasty tidbits, I got mine too this weekend.

Finally, knowing that winter is literally around the corner up here, it’s awesome to drive a mere 5 minutes from the Red House and see the leaves changing, some late summer flowers still blooming and the water in the creek flowing so beautifully. What we’ve learned up here the last 4.5 years is to enjoy every minute of it.

Once unearthed however, the German “reds” were tinged the exact shade of purple they were supposed to be. I’ve saved some cloves to plant in October but I think I’ll also have to pick up some more hearty varietals from a roadside farm market, too.

What’s left in the garden are tons of zucchini blossoms but only a few very large zucchini.

I picked the zucchini but also in error picked what I thought might be acorn squash which my newest contractor told me was pumpkin.

I contemplated putting the pumpkin back in the garden for the bunny to chew on but decided instead to take it back to Long Island to see if even after it’s picked it turns orange or simply rots. (My guess it will be the latter.)

The more exciting news to the end of the summer is that finally, my kitchen is underway. The walls have been stripped down to the studs, new framing has been put in, with insulation and new sheetrock to follow.

I also suddenly have electrical outlets.

And an indication where the fridge and dishwasher will go.

Unfortunately, while Lynn and I have been putting off thinking what type of floor to put in the kitchen, we suddenly had to make a very quick decision this weekend and pick out some tile.  Now, we had picked up tile samples of things we liked over the course of the summer and decided on a simple brown, but when we went back to the store to buy it, they had discontinued the exact shade of brown we had agreed upon. Which is how we ended up with this:

Ironically Lynn is the “fussy” one with things related to the way the Red House should look but when push came to shove (as in you need to make a decision now), he was actually kind of cool about the choice.

There’s still much plumbing to be done not to mention the painting we ourselves have to do, but at least it’s a start in the right direction.

I’m already thinking of next summer…when hopefully all the painting will be done and the appliances bought and installed.

Meanwhile, because of the crazy weather this summer, my bamboo, flowering madly on the property, seems to be confused. Normally this time of year it’s actually turning brown not lush like this.

Wouldn’t it be lovely if summer could start all over again? On second thought, no. I must admit though, we learned a lot of “skills” this summer. #1 being how to make sandbags, fill up gaping holes in a basement wall and not panic when you’re standing in 6 inches of water.

When I woke up this morning, our last day of summer at the Red House before we head back to Long Island, we found a sparrow in the house. Apparently we have many holes in the recently demo’d kitchen that need to be plugged since it appears that’s how the bird got inside. We opened all the windows in the living room and it managed to fly outside.

For those readers who remember my garlic story that I wrote this time last year in relationship to our daughter Rachel, you might be pleased to know that she is going to school in Florida next week. She had completed a trimester last spring and is now heading back to hopefully a productive and successful year. Like the sparrow, she’s managed to escape and for that Lynn and I are very very happy.

We didn’t work on the Red House all summer. We managed to take some time off to do a few things we really wanted to do: a short trip to Montreal, a couple of trips to our favorite lake, and lunch at a new winery. It’s the little stuff that makes me happy, really. Oh yeah, and the thought of next summer and a finished kitchen.

So when we arrived late on July 3rd, everything appeared to be okay (granted it was dark). We had power so I was able to warm up a roast chicken with some potatoes I brought with me and then made a simple salad with cubes of  feta cheese. After dinner however I realized there was no hot water to wash the dishes. We went down to the basement and there was a puddle of water where it always is. The furnace appeared to be on but when I tried to turn up the thermostat to make sure the heat was working the radiators did not heat up.  Which meant we had no heat or hot water and if I wanted to wash some dishes I would have to boil water.  Taking a frigid shower wasn’t my idea of the perfect way to start off a holiday week but I managed.

In the morning I got on the phone with National Grid who didn’t want to tell me that they themselves might have cut the gas until the flooding in the area subsided. They weren’t going to turn it back on they informed me unless we hired a plumber who certified the inspection in writing that our equipment (furnace and hot water heater) was A-OK.

Problem was it was the 4th of July and we knew no plumber was coming to the Red House to do us that kind of favor.  So we got in the car and just went to the lake instead.  First however, we drove through the county and looked at the havoc this storm left.

The debris lying on the street, from 1st floors and flooded basements I presumed, reminded me of the last storm we endured, Sandy.  Except while Sandy left sand, this storm left mud.

Our community field was pretty much ruined also, although the pool seemed to be okay.

We were also not prepared for the turbulence of the Erie Canal.  Here are a couple of shots of what is normally a very calm body of water.

That said, all this water wrecked havoc on my garden.  There were weeds everywhere and the ground was saturated.  What made matters even worse was the fact that we had the sprinkler on a timer the last two weeks we hadn’t been at the house so besides the abundant rain fall, the garden was getting soaked by the sprinkler, too!  So while the lettuce seemed to thrive under these conditions, the tomatoes definitely did not.

The peas that had been so prolific last year appeared to be chewed off exactly where the pod should have been.  Since I saw at least two if not three rabbits hopping away from the fence (guess the fence didn’t work), I can only assume they had themselves quite a feast.

I did, however, learn my lesson from last year and cut off the scapes from the garlic.  I think I might have been about 2 weeks too late, but I cut them anyway and plan to make a garlic scape pesto from them.

Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking about how much of my day up at the Red House goes into preparing food.  Now with no hot water to bathe or wash the dishes, I’ve resorted to boiling the water in pots, actually, a pot (singular) is more accurate since I still only have the one electric burner and a small pot to make pasta in.  I found myself the day after the fourth of July spending an enormous amount of time prepping (I wanted  to make cole slaw), and cooking (followed by pulled pork sandwiches).

This summer I decided I couldn’t live without a food processor. Now, during the late 1850’s,  I realized the women living in the house before me had neither running water (hot or cold) and if they wanted something resembling cole slaw, they were chopping all the ingredients by hand.  Truthfully, if I had to choose between a hot shower and a food processor, my food processor would win hands down.

But of course even the set-up wasn’t that simple. I had to put the food processor on a coffee table in the living room in order to plug it in, then walk through three other rooms to get to the kitchen sink to wash it out with cold water from the tap with a bit of hot water I had boiled in a pan.  I will admit I was already exhausted from the amount of time and steps it took to make and clean up this simple side dish! The only thing that didn’t make me totally lose my mind was that since it was roughly 87 degrees both inside and outside the house at least I wasn’t in a long skirt and a petticoat!

Meanwhile, back upstairs, Lynn was relying on the help of a 20th century tool, (a drywall lift) to help him get the sheetrock in place for one of the bedroom ceilings.

Luckily, he managed to do this project without my help which gave me time to keep boiling pots of water to do all the pans and dishes. (I did at one point consider paper plates but I just hate the way food tastes on paper….)

We have been eating much of the lettuce that’s been growing in the garden — one salad comprised of Greek feta, cucumbers and grape tomatoes, the other simple lettuce leaves with big chunks of Roquefort cheese.

Since we still have NO SUPERMARKET IN TOWN, I’m happy to bring up the cheese and even happier that I have lettuce growing in my garden.  Looking at how little they’ve accomplished on the site of where the supermarket should be, it’s difficult to even guess when a supermarket will be built and open for business.

So right now I’m waiting for the plumber who hopefully will tell us the hot water heater and furnace is OK and then I can place a phone call to National Grid to get them to turn the gas back on.

The reality is that every time it rains up at the Red House, we have water seeping into the basement. Luckily we do have a sump pump but it doesn’t seem to handle the amount of water pouring in.  There could be a leak in the foundation or there could be water seeping in from someplace we can’t see or get to.

Lynn and I never minded the rain in our many years together and often would find ourselves forging ahead (especially when we were traveling) to see everything we wanted to see — bad weather or not.  Let’s hope our storm-related problems at the Red House end on a happy note, too.

P.S. The rainbow after yesterday’s storm is faint but visible in the upper right hand corner of the shot.  A fitting tribute since the plumber just left. He simply lit the pilot lights in both the furnace and the hot water heater. He figured there had been about 4 inches or more of water in the basement but both very expensive pieces of equipment were just fine.  No call to National Grid would be required….

First, while I mentioned things that motivated “me,” I need to say “us,” because the truth is my husband Lynn has been doing nearly all of the back breaking renovation work (with the help of a really cool contractor, too) and I’ve just simply been working all hours of the day (and night) trying to earn $$ to make it happen.

This winter has been a real pain. First we had Sandy, then a Nor’easter, then a snow storm (10+ inches) and this past weekend temperatures hovered in the teens but felt like negative numbers because of the wind chill factor. Consequently, cooking as an art form and as a heart-warming endeavor has been put to the way side.

Thus, on those Friday nights when we make the journey up to the Red House from Long Island/Manhattan, I’m still hauling up food to heat up on my handy little one burner guy.  Yep that’s him.

Which leads me to this. We are now approaching our third season without a kitchen and Lynn and I both came to the same astonishing conclusion — eating out is just a hell of a lot easier than eating in! A part of this decision was based on that fact that since December the town lost its only supermarket! Now, we do have a gas station that’s open 24 hours and is well stocked with basics such as bread, eggs, cheese, cigarettes, condoms, beer and of course a milk shake in any flavor, but unless you’re 18…these items don’t really have that much appeal if you’re trying to make dinner.

Now, it’s not that the supermarket we had was particularly great, it wasn’t, but at least I could manage to put together a meal if I had to during the cold weather months when there was nary a farmer’s market in sight. And, since it was small and old school, it had some items that you don’t find in big box stores like maple syrup that was made by a guy just outside of town. And they also had ham at the deli counter that I really liked because it tasted well, like real ham!

The word on the street is that a bigger, better supermarket will be taking over the space. But, two months, later this is what we’re still looking at.

A Slow Supermarket Renovation

Yes, no sign of a supermarket, no sign of activity, no people shopping, no food, no nothing. Just a big ugly tractor sitting there looking like it was going to make way for the new…but actually was just kind of killing time.

Obviously, living on Long Island we have lots and lots of supermarkets so shopping and making dinner is never a problem. One of the reasons I also cook nearly ever night is that we actually rarely eat out on Long Island. Since we find most of the restaurants around us mediocre and overpriced, we try to save our “dining out dollars” for high end restaurants in the city (as in NYC) a couple times a year.  I hate to confess this but eating out near the Red House has enabled us to eat out more frequently for a fraction of the cost.

We visited The Tailor & the Cook last spring a few months after it opened and my review at the time waxed eloquently about the fish I had that night.  We’ve had many dishes since then, taking a cue from one of my online editing jobs that people still had something called “date night,” a word combo I was not familiar with until now! Geez, people actually go out and enjoy each others company and a meal too on a Saturday night?

Therefore this past Saturday night found us once again enjoying the creative cooking geniuses of Chef Tim Hardiman and his sous chef Steve Arbogast at The Tailor & the Cook in Utica, New York.

Three years ago when we first bought the Red House, I met Suzie Jones at a farmer’s market where she was selling beautifully crafted little goat cheeses.  As I got to know Suzie, her husband Peter, and the farm, she also was able to sell me some chicken but most importantly little packages of chicken livers at a fraction of what I would normally have paid for a container at the supermarket.  These livers, since they are from the farm’s organically raised chickens, have nearly no fat on them or any of that slimy green stuff you frequently encounter when trying to clean them.  So imagine my surprise when Chef’s Tim and Steve had concocted a special chicken liver risotto appetizer that evening made from Jones Family Farm liver!

Set before us was a plate of creamy arborio rice, still-pink-in-the-middle chicken livers simply seasoned (so I was told) with ground pepper, fresh ginger, and a little cheese, then served up piping hot. I love liver and I love risotto, so this was a real winner for me.

The house salad that I wasn’t crazy about in my initial review, remains, but since they know my tastes, now when I get the salad, it comes with extra dressing on the side that is not only heavy on the vinegar (which I love) but just makes the salad that much better!

Seeing really fresh fish on a menu in Central New York is difficult. Finding a chef who really knows how to cook it in any part of the country, is even more of a challenge.  Chef Tim who I had complimented the last time about his fish cooking skills, did not disappoint this time either. On the menu that night was a lovely piece of arctic char coupled with a quinoa salad and a green pea shoot pesto. My only complaint? The skin which is great when it’s cooking in the pan and technically holds the fish together, I think with a quick flip of a spatula could be tossed (as in the garbage)  and not plated, too.

I did have another thought (sorry chefs, humor me here) of what to do with the fish skin. Lynn and I had dinner at Jean Luc Figueras in Barcelona many years ago where an amuse bouche of fried fish crisps (fried cod skin actually) was brought out to the table. At first glance the shape alone (a long thin cylinder) reminded me of those French cookies (pirouettes) that accompany many a bowl of glace or gelato in Europe. It was salty and sweet and crunchy at the same time. Thinking back on my arctic char, could the dish have been elevated ever so slightly with something whimsical (i.e., fried skin) on top?

While the shrimp and grits had been on the menu for a while, we had never tried it. And I have to admit, although it was technically Lynn’s entree that night, I ate at least half of it! Calling a shrimp a shrimp, isn’t fair if you’re cooking up fresh prawns (heads and all) that have been beautifully grilled and seasoned and serve them with fried okra and an adorable dollhouse-size frying pan filled with the aforementioned grits.

Ripping off the heads of these delicious crustaceans and sucking out the bodies, well, had a yacht cruised by the front of the restaurant rather than the hourly snowplow, I could have sworn we were having dinner on the Cours Saleya in Nice. Which I think is the whole point of good cooking, if a chef or two can rustle up a dish that is absolutely delicious and reminds you of eating a similar dish someplace else, wow, that’s real talent.

Which brings me to this part of the story. We think the kitchen will be done this summer. In order to at least believe it will happen, we’ve started picking out floor tiles. We laid the color tiles we’ve chosen so far on the (dirty) rubber mats that are currently lining the floor and all weekend we debated the merits of each and every one.

Kitchen Tile Project

I know ultimately there will be more colors added to this arrangement so hopefully when the time comes we will choose wisely. Because after this long of a wait, the Red House kitchen is only being done once in our lifetime.

And if you think I remembered the name of the restaurant in Barcelona where we ate the crispy fish skin that easily, I didn’t.  What I do have are old school composition books where I usually record nearly every single thing we eat when traveling!

Travel Composition Notebooks

I thought maybe one day I’d manage to weave into a Red House article the time Lynn waited for me at the Milan (as in Italy) train station for 16 hours so we could have a meal together. This story, I think, can be told now.

Why would anyone wait 16 hours to have a meal with a girlfriend one might ask? Well, first of all this was back in the Dark Ages when we didn’t have cell phones, computers, or Facebook, etc., etc., and thus, no way of communicating with each other. So, you either waited for the person or you didn’t. When I finally arrived, parched and starving, everything was closed. We ended up spending the night (on the floor no less) of the Milan train station and got the first train to Florence in the morning. And what may you ask was the meal we had when we arrived? Pasta carbonara of course! Which is the very first “real” dish I hope to make in the Red House kitchen this year. Unless, of course, I can convince one of the T&C chefs to make it for me!

Yep, true to his word, my contractor finally decided my stove had to go.  Reason being, since we are tearing out the sixth bedroom (I mean really who needs that many bedrooms?) we decided that by eliminating the space over the kitchen (the aforementioned) sixth bedroom, we could have a really awesome, double height kitchen.  Since he actually couldn’t rip out the sixth bedroom with the stove in the way, it had to be removed.

A Very Sorry Stove Indeed

Now, last summer when my sweet son, Nick, came up to visit, he, of course, claimed the sixth bedroom as his because even though it was remote and had no access to a bathroom, unless you went through four other rooms, it had the best view.  He’s not an idiot.  And because he thought this particular bedroom would be his forever and ever, he also decided to start painting the room in the colors that he liked.  At the time, those colors were purple and black.

Wow, A Purple Room!

Looking at the picture now, it doesn’t look that bad, kind of quaintly Victorian with the black trim and such, but painting or no painting, the room had to go. The room before the purple room (a.k.a. the 5th bedroom) had been the previous owners smoking den.  The walls were stained with nicotine and since even the 5th bedroom is not very convenient to get to, I actually can’t even imagine exactly what anyone would do in there.  Well, I can imagine, but since I do try to keep this site borderline R-rated,  I won’t fantasize about the possibilities.

Smokers Den

So, the dormer room is stripped down to the rafters as is the room that’s going to be demolished.  That’s when we found some really cool beams.  Kind of like the beams you see in 5th grade when you’re visiting a house that George Washington slept in!  Well, maybe not that old but you get the idea.

But since the guy who is working on this project is really cool about this house renovation (really), these were his exact words, “Jules, we’re saving that right,” he said pointing to a beam that in my opinion was probably Smithsonian-worthy.  A type of beam one would find in a George Washington-era dwelling? These beams looked like they came over with Christopher Columbus!

Really Cool Beams

But enough history. I didn’t realize how dependent I was on a stove.  Without a stove, you can’t make scrambled eggs, or saute a lovely piece of fish, or steam some vegetables!  Nor can you boil water for all those good things I like to eat – like pasta or mashed potatoes.  I’m not weeping…yet.

When I came up last summer for the first time to try my hand at camping up at the Red House, I rummaged through the garage on Long Island before I left and found some discarded houseware items that Nick had stashed after moving from one apartment to another. For the Red House I was able to claim dishes, pots and pans, and low and behold a toaster oven that an ex-girlfriend’s father had given him when he had been kicked out of the family home for whatever reason.

This is the toaster oven I was dealing with.  It was old and whenever I plugged it in at the Red House, my ceiling lights started flashing on and off.  Cool, I thought!  So, what exactly was I going to make for dinner with that one basically useless appliance?

Toaster Oven Cooking

Well, I brought up some leftover chicken rollatini and put it in the toaster oven to warm up. Unfortunately, I didn’t plan for any other meals and after I ate, I was well, still pretty hungry.  Things didn’t get any better the next day.  I had brought up some hard boiled eggs, stuck a piece of toast in the toaster oven and had some coffee.  Lunch was a yogurt, a banana and when I was hungry a couple of hours later, I made myself a pseudo grilled cheese; two slices of American on white bread in the toaster oven.  I ate it not because it tasted good but because it was hot when I took it out and I was trying to pretend I was eating soup.  Not really, but whatever.

So going forward, yes, we do have the summer to look forward to where grilling will be a viable option, but since the purchase of a new stove to outfit a new kitchen is still Far Far Away, we’ll have to be creative.

Stay tuned.