Showing posts sorted by relevance for query egg kitchen. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query egg kitchen. Sort by date Show all posts

05 April 2009

Lisa's Pysanka kitchen

So by popular request, here's a walk though the presentation Lisa from Massachusetts entered to win our much ballyhoo-d contest. As I mentioned on Friday, she chose for her theme the Pysanka school of decorative arts. And specifically a Pysanka Easter egg. I keep forgetting that we're a week from Easter, but her basing a kitchen design on a Ukrainian Easter egg is timely in addition to being brilliant.

I mentioned earlier that I'm a push over for ethnicity of any stripe, but in addition to that aspect of her entry, Lisa took two disparate things --an Easter egg and a kitchen-- and merged them into something fantastic. I'm really struck by her instinct here, it's design in every sense of the word. My idea behind this contest was togive people an excuse to dream up something for the sheer joy of using imagination. I was hoping that someone would run with it the way Lisa did. I wasn't expecting anyone to, but as soon as her entry arrived on Thursday I was thrilled to see someone had. You can click on these images and they'll expand to a size large enough where you can read her notes.

This is not a kitchen that's going to end up in Lisa's home any time soon, but the point of pushing into the realm of what's possible is to discover buried passions and ideas that will make it into her actual kitchen and home.

She's not a designer by the way. She referred to herself as a regular Jane in her entry. Well, I do this for a living and I have a lot to learn from this entry. All too often, it's easier to think of my limitations than it is my possibilities. I find her entry an inspiration and in showing the bulk of it here, I hope you can see how I made the decision I did. Many thanks to everyone who sent me an entry. I hope that in sitting down to write down your thoughts you were able to see something you wouldn't have otherwise.














24 February 2010

Texts, lies and a final escape: when contests go bad

A little more than a year ago, I joined up with a company called Metallo Arts to host a give away of a $3200 gift certificate for a Metallo Arts custom range hood. I publicized the contest and Metallo Arts like crazy for the five weeks that the Dream Kitchen contest went on. How it worked was that anybody who wanted to enter had to describe or draw for me their idea of a fantasy kitchen. I wanted people to be impractical and creative, this was an exercise in dreams.

On 3 April 2009, I announced a winner. It was a woman whose fantasy kitchen was based on the designs of a Ukranian Easter Egg. She really threw herself into her idea and what she sent in was a concept even more fully realized than the concept boards I put together for my own clients. Here are a couple of still shots from her entry.






Lisa and her family were gearing up to renovate their kitchen and this range hood was going to make the perfect focal point. They'd have it, use it and love it forever. It was a perfect ending.

My contact at Metallo Arts was Chris Plummer, who was one of the two owners of the company. I connected Lisa to Chris and put everything out of my mind.

Fast forward a couple of months and Metallo Arts dissolved in a flurry of pointed fingers and lawsuits. I don't know any of the particulars and frankly I don't want to know them. I assumed that with the company gone, so was Lisa's hood since they hadn't started making it yet. Chris assured me however, that he was going to form another company and that all of his outstanding orders would be fulfilled by the new company. I believed him.

I corresponded with Lisa from time to time during the months that followed. He would give her the run around and she'd write to me and I 'd hear about it. I'd then write to Chris and he'd tell me that everything was under control.

Aside from a single Tweet to one of his former employees, I had no contact with anybody else from the defunct Metallo Arts. What ever happened with that company had taken a nasty and personal turn and I felt bad about it enough not to ask.

In January I received a bunch of text messages from Chris. He accused me of  "passing along info to people bent on personal vendettas." Interesting.  Once I convinced him that I had done nothing of the sort we texted back and forth a bit. He told me that he had taken on five new partners and had started a new company. I asked him again what he planned to do about Lisa's hood and he responded, "Lisa's hood ships this week."

This was taking place on 17 January 2010, a Sunday evening. On a lark, I shot an e-mail to Lisa and asked her if she'd heard anything about her hood. Lisa responded immediately, "Regarding Chris, I did manage to get in touch with him directly,and he did promise to help me out, but I've been unable to catch him since December."

That was odd since I'd just been given a shipping date a moment before in a text message. I copied Lisa's email into a text message and then sent it to Chris. Silence.

I went back through my archives and I deactivated all the links I had to Metallo Arts. Then upon further reflection I went back and purged around 20 posts that dealt with the contest and Metallo Arts. I deleted them completely. Then I wrote a disclaimer on the top of the last remaining post, the one where I announced the winner. You can read it here.

Yesterday I was forwarded an e-mail from Lisa. The e-mail was from Chris' new assistant. here's the bulk of the message. I left off the opening sentence because it contained the name of Chris' assistant and I don't want to pull in anybody else.
I understand you have contacted our offices about a prize you won through Metallo Arts. As of June, 2009, Christopher Lee Plummer was no longer associated with Metallo Arts.  Shortly after Chris left, the business folded.

Unfortunately, there is no way to collect the prize you won. I am sorry to break this news to you but we do not have any recourse as Metallo Arts no longer exists.  The sole owner of Metallo as of June, 2009 was Sheldon Gruber. You may want to contact him and see if he would be willing to honor his commitment to you.

Please accept our most sincere apologies as we are very sorry that you were impacted negatively by the closing of Metallo Arts.  As a newly formed company, we are not in a position to fulfill Mr. Gruber's obligation.
Isn't that interesting. Lisa's disappointed of course and frankly, it's Chris' prerogative to do whatever he wants. It's the lies and obfuscations that bother me.

I wrote to Chris' assistant and told her that I was writing this column and that it would appear today. I asked her for a statement either from the company or from Chris to run alongside this blog post. I heard from Chris via text message at 7pm. His statement:
Here is my statement hire a good atty...
This whole situation makes me sick to my stomach. I feel awful for Lisa of course but I'm really angry for having been played a fool through all of this. I get it that companies go under but what's the point of lying? This could have been resolved last summer by saying sorry, all bets are off. But that's not what happened. Lisa and her family renovated their kitchen as this has been unfolding and everything's done except for the gaping hole over the range. A hole that was to have been taken up by a custom range hood.

And so ends the year-long saga of the Metallo Arts Fantasy Kitchen Contest. I apologize to Lisa and to anybody else I may have hurt though this. I can't fix it, any of it, and that's what's so bothersome. So be careful when it comes to big ticket items given away on blogs. And bloggers beware anybody offering big tickets items to be used as give aways. Nothing's ever free. Nothing.

03 April 2009

And the winner is...

[This prize was awarded but never delivered. I was played the fool by a huckster. Please see my post Texts, lies and the final escape: when good contests go bad from 24 February 2010 for a thorough explanation. Do yourself a favor and read the comments that follow that post for an even more thorough explanation. Do not do business with anyone affiliated with Metallo Arts, past or present.]



After sorting through the contest entries for the last 18 hours or so I have come to a decision. I'll spare you the details of my agony, but know that I agonized over this.

The winner of a $3200 gift certificate from Metallo Arts and ten hours of my design time is a woman named Lisa and her Pysanka kitchen. Pysanka is the Ukrainian folk art of painting eggs and objects with meaningful and intricate geometric designs.

I am a sucker for ethnicity of any kind and Lisa pulled out the stops in her incredibly detailed vision of a kitchen based on a Pysanka egg. Here are some excerpts:




Congratulations Lisa!

28 April 2010

Elmira's Northstar series is now available in 10 colors


I've long been an admirer of Elmira Stoveworks' Northstar series of retro appliances. I've always thought they had a cool factor to them, but it's recently come to my attention that they are no mere novelty item.


Elmira's been at it since the early '70s in Elmira, Ontario. They know what they're doing and any company that can build a fully-functional, wood-burning cookstove in 2010 is OK in my book. I'll get into to their 1800s reproduction stoves in a later post. For now, I want to let you know that the Northstar series of mid-century-inspired appliances are now available in ten colors. Imagine, you can have a Candy Red, Buttercup Yellow, Robin’s Egg Blue, Flamingo Pink, Quicksilver, Mint Green, Bisque, Black or White suite. Sweet!


They're Energy Star-rated and they even have a custom color program.


So even though there's no such thing as timeless kitchen design, classics like these are always welcome. Check out Elmira Stoveworks' website for more info.

11 April 2010

Urban chickens? For the love of God no.

from Flickr
Stupidity is the devil. Look in the eye of a chicken and you'll know. It's the most horrifying, cannibalistic, and nightmarish creature in this world.
- Werner Herzog
I read an article on Re-Nest yesterday and it was about how to build a backyard chicken coop. Re-Nest is a website owned and operated by Apartment Therapy, an organization devoted to the propagation of inane ideas and harebrained schemes. Except of course, when they're quoting me.

Apartment Therapy and it's ideological me-too-ers seem to be driving the idea that it's somehow a good thing for urban dwellers to start raising chickens. It looks like a new form of eco-narcissism to me but I'd be willing to take a look at that if anybody else has a better idea. Whatever's driving it, it's pretty flawed for a bunch of reasons.

A hen in a quiet moment. It won't last. Poultry Ireland

For starters, you need a flock of quite a few birds to yield enough eggs to wean you from the grocery store. Even then, I'd hate to have to depend on a backyard flock exclusively. In order to keep a flock going, you'll need to keep a rooster around. Once there's a rooster around you'd better get used to eating fertilized eggs. Trust me, there are few things more surprising than cracking an egg into a cake batter only to find a bloody pulp in the middle of the yolk.

Not to mention that chickens are loud, aggressive, foul-smelling salmonella delivery devices. Why would someone want that in their life? On behalf of urban dwellers everywhere, please re-think the idea that a chicken has any place in an urban environment other than in a bucket from KFC. If you live out in the hinterlands, set yourself free. But let's keep cities chicken free zones please.

Weapons of mass destruction. Paul Midler

We had chickens when I was a kid. The very spawn of Satan they were. Hens are aggressive and roosters are downright dangerous. That's a slight exaggeration, but not really. Chickens are not pets. You can attribute as much human emotion and intelligence to them as you want to, but they will not respond to you, they will not be affectionate and they will not look at you as anything other than an irritation at best.

A rooster catches his breath between violent outbursts. Poultry Ireland.

Roosters do not crow at dawn. They start crowing before dawn and they crow all day. Very loudly. Your neighbors will hate you.

Hens form flocks and use their hive minds to plot murder and mayhem.

We had a hen house when I was a kid and my brothers and I had to feed the chickens every morning before school. They figured out that there was a ledge over the door where they could roost. It took a day or two for them to then realize that the ledge was the perfect launch pad for an aerial attack. So it went every morning. Whoever's job it was that week had to go down to the chicken coop to feed the chickens. The second that he opened the door and entered, they'd pounce --spurs first. There's nothing quite like having blood drawn by a "domestic" bird at 5:30 in the morning, let me tell you.

These hens are scheming, don't be fooled. Whoever wrote the Velociraptor in the kitchen scene from Jurrasic Park raised chickens. Gardening without Skills

Due to chickens' foul dispositions and even more foul habits, this is trend with a built in expiration date. Knowing that makes it easier to read about. But still, save yourself the trouble, the expense, the physical and emotional scars. Chickens belong on farms.

The happiest day of all when you raise chickens. Cool Creek Farm

26 November 2009

An Itch to Bake from Scratch: Butternut Chai Cheesecake

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! This is David Nolan, here to express gratitude and give thanks to Paul for inspiring me this year to contribute to Kitchen and Residential Design. I haven't had the opportunity to write much, but I am a daily reader who is constantly surprised by the wit and variety of the content found here. Thanks a lot Paul - you ceaselessly provide me with entertainment and enlightenment.

The latest inspiration I received came from the post about scratch baking. In my childhood home, my mom baked many things - bread, cakes, and especially pies. She would not want me to tell the secret to her pie crusts (lard) but they were always the best. Everyone in my family still begs her to make pies when they come to visit, whether it is the holidays or not. My mom begrudgingly fulfills the requests, and everyone swoons at the end result of her hard work.

Unfortunately, the genes for baking were not inherited by me. Baking is a leap of faith that a control freak like myself just cannot bear. You mix up a bunch of ingredients into a runny gooey mess, then plop it in a pan, and pray the oven gods yield a delicious harvest. I am a cook - I taste as I go, adding layers of flavor as the food progresses, all under my constant supervision. Baking requires letting go of the control and trusting the recipe; baking also requires that you adhere to the recipe. The idea that what goes in the oven tastes and looks nothing like what comes out scares me, and the fear of following directions and letting go of control keeps me from baking.

Cheesecakes are the one thing I do bake and I bake them a couple times a year. I still cannot follow the directions though and this Thanksgiving was no exception. I set out to make a Pumpkin Cheesecake from a tried and true recipe but ended up with a Butternut Squash Chai Cheesecake. I fretted about the flavor due to the untested butternut squash and an overpowering cardamon perfume. Last night I brought the final product to a wonderful potluck dinner with some of my friends and the cheesecake was consumed with gusto and compliments.

Here is the recipe. Please let me know if you try it, and especially if you give it your own personal twist.

Butternut Chai Cheesecake
enough for a 10" spring form pan plus a little extra for a tester

Crust:
1 package graham crackers (1/2 box)

15 ginger snaps

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 stick of butter

Finely crush crackers and snaps, a food processor works well. Mix in sugar and add to spring form pan. Melt butter and drizzle in pan while stirring. Press the crust into the bottom of the pan, coming up the sides about a 1/4". Refrigerate crust for 1 hour.

Filling:

4 packages cream cheese, room temp

1 cup dark brown sugar

1 15oz can butternut squash puree (pumpkin works also)

4 eggs, room temp

2 T sour cream

1 T cornstarch

2 t vanilla extract

1 1/2 t cinnamon

1 t ginger (extra fine grated fresh or 1/2 t powder)

1 t allspice

1/2 t each powdered cardamon, nutmeg and cloves

1/4 t each cayenne, black pepper, salt and coriander

Mix cream cheese and sugar, then mix in butternut squash. Add 1 egg at a time, constantly mixing. Add sour cream, cornstarch, vanilla and spices one at a time. After crust has cooled, pour in cheesecake filling. Place spring form pan in a hot water bath for a creamier no-crack cheesecake. Place carefully in preheated 350 degree oven. Bake for 50 min and do not open oven.

Sour Cream Topping

Mix 16oz sour cream with 3 T brown sugar

Remove cheesecake from oven. Spread topping over cheesecake gently. Place back in oven for 10 min. Turn off oven and open the door a crack. Let the cheesecake rest in oven for 1 hour. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely. Refrigerate overnight.



garnished with plumeria, abutilon and Eucharist lily flowers