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{the unkitchen} Kitchen Remodel Phase 2 – Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Karen — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 01:54:21 +0000

Last time we checked in the kitchen looked like this. Now here we are, just two weeks later, and I am pretty impressed with how much has happened since then.

First there was the electrical work, plumbing, insulation, and inspections…

Next came the messy sheetrocking process which coated the entire house with a fine film of ground plaster dust. Then, upon returning home from a weekend away… wood floors are in! And everything is primed! Wow!

Despite best intentions, the temporary “kitchen” is getting dirtier, dustier, messier, more trash-filled, and less appealing, so I haven’t done anything in there beyond make coffee. Luckily friends and family have been making us dinner, and we live in a good restaurant city, so the suffering is mild thus far.

Stay tuned!

{the unkitchen} Kitchen Remodel Phase 1 – In The Beginning This is what the kitchen formerly known as my kitchen...

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{video+wtf} You Are Sad. Your Dog Wears Glasses. Now Eat Potato Chips!

Karen — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:55:15 +0000

What the hell is going on in this Japanese commercial and why should it make me want to eat chips?!?!

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{the unkitchen} Kitchen Remodel Phase 1 – In The Beginning

Karen — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 01:20:01 +0000

This is what the kitchen formerly known as my kitchen currently looks like.

2 days ago I had a kitchen that looked like this:

It was OK, but it had some flaws. Like…

Not nearly enough storage. Dishes drying have nowhere to get put away!

Hardwood scratched beyond belief… abutted by the ugliest peach tile you ever did see.

A big ugly washer and dryer and no room for the recycling. Constantly shuffling things to get the laundry in and out!

Only 1 cabinet to store all the food. No Costco for me!

But, there were some good things too. Like,

the panoramic view of San Francisco.

The way it flows nicely into the living room.

And of course, all of the wonderful meals, parties, and other fun times shared with friends in family in this kitchen!

So what’s happening now?

Well, you already saw what the kitchen looks like… but the rest of the house is a mess too.

The guest room’s only guests are the living room furniture.

In the office, the Transformers are forced to commingle with the fine crystal!

And the current “kitchen” setup?

(I use the term loosely as you’ll see…)

:0 :0 :0

Please invite us over for dinner.

{the unkitchen} Kitchen Remodel Phase 2 – Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes Last time we checked in the kitchen looked like this....

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{recipe} Springy Super Salad

Karen — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:59:31 +0000

This salad is so super it will give you magical powers and you will be able to see unicorns and you will start pooping rainbows!

OK not really. That is what is known as “hyperbole”. What this salad will do for you is make you feel extremely smug about how healthy you are and how many vitamins and antioxidants and such you’re getting in one little salad, and make you really popular when you bring it to a picnic, and make you happy because it’s super tasty.

As for the unicorns, I guess you could cornify this recipe. You’re on your own with the rainbow poops. If you figure out how to do it, let me know.

Springy Super Salad

serves 2-3 as a main course, 4-6 as a side

Ingredients:

2 teaspoons + 2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
1 small bunch asparagus, rinsed, trimmed, and cut into 1 inch pieces
1 small bunch baby broccoli, rinsed, trimmed, and chopped (can substitute regular broccoli)
2 cups shelled edamame (soybeans), cooked, drained, and rinsed in cold water
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon nonfat or lowfat plain yogurt
2 teaspoons soy sauce
¼ cup parmesan cheese, shaved or grated
Salt and pepper

Method:

Heat 2 teaspoons of olive oil in a sauté pan over medium high heat. Add onions and ¼ teaspoon each of salt and pepper. Turn heat to low. Cook onions, stirring every few minutes, until soft, brown, and caramelized, about 45 minutes. Cool to room temperature.
Meanwhile, prepare the vegetables. Bring 2 cups salted water to a boil in a saucepan on the stove. Add broccoli and cook for 2 minutes. Add asparagus and cook an additional 2 minutes. Drain and rinse with cold water.
Make the dressing by combining 2 tablespoons olive oil, lemon juice, yogurt, soy sauce, and ¼ teaspoon pepper. You can do this with a whisk or fork, or put all the ingredients in a jar and shake well.
To assemble the salad, put broccoli, asparagus, and edamame in a bowl and mix well. Add caramelized onions, parmesan, and dressing to taste (you may not need all of it).
If you want to make this ahead, you can mix the broccoli, asparagus, edamame, and onions together, make the dressing separately, and store everything in the fridge. Before serving toss the vegetables with the parmesan and dressing.

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{easter} Lots O’ Peeps For My Peeps

Karen — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 14:17:30 +0000

Apparently, marshmallow peeps have become their very own art medium. Here is an exhaustive list of peeps-related weblinks, which includes things like porno peeps, how to make your own peeps (why?!), the best way to use peeps as fishing bait, peeps performing scenes from Shakespeare, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings (er, Lord of the Peeps), and much, much more.

My favorites are, in no particular order:

This highly sophisticated Salon.com article about the birthplace of peeps.
PeepHaiku.com.
A tutorial from Serious Eats on how to make “Peepshi” – sushi from Peeps and Rice Krispy bars.
This amazing news article from San Diego in which the “investigative reporters” did things like shooting peeps with 9MM guns, crushing them with a crane, and the like- in an attempt to prove that they are indestructible. (Um… slow news day, perhaps?)
The Peep Research site which explores the effects of smoking and alcohol on peeps, and performs scientific and medical experiments on them- well-documented and hilariously presented, including the example below.

So how do you feel about using peeps as a medium for your art? What’s your vote for best use of peeps?

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{atonement and new beginnings}

Karen — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:03:30 +0000

So! I have been a rather neglectful blogger of late, and I wish to atone and be re-born, like a phoenix. You know, that bird who hangs out with Dumbledore. It’s true, a mythical dead bird on fire is what I aspire to. The funny thing is I have BRILLIANT (I tell you frickin’ crazy brilliant!) ideas for this blog all the time. The pictures, the stories, the witticisms, the recipes, they dance in my head and pause on my lips. But then, I sit at the laptop and I’m like, oh shoot, did they just put Season 1 of “The O.C.” on Hulu yesterday? And the rest is just… dead bird. No fire. No ashes. No rising. Just, you know, reliving the good years with Ryan and Summer, and, god, after all this time I still hate Marissa! The show was SO much better when Tate Donovan was on. But I digress.

You see, the thing is, I never really started this blog thinking that people would actually READ it. I mostly just wanted a place to store recipes and stories for myself and like 3 other people who always ask me for recipes. So If you look at my 1.0 version of Off The (Meat)Hook you will see that it’s very… um… experimental. Partly that’s because I had basically only even READ like 3 food blogs before I started so I didn’t even know what to do with it. I know, hubris, right? Who DOES that? Apparently me. HUGE learning curve there. It’s so great though, because I have learned to love taking pretty pictures and I have gotten about a million times better at doing it. I have been able to share travel stories and suggestions that used to just live in my mind or in the ether. I have gotten to codify food experiments that I would otherwise never be able to re-create. I have actually MET other food bloggers that I like and became friends with? I put a question mark because really, I never expected that at all and I’m still happily surprised by it. The food blogging community pretty much poops rainbows. With very few exceptions they are some of the nicest and most welcoming, supportive, helpful people in the world. If they were a$$holes I would have given this up looooooooong ago. Seriously. If you meet one, try to be their friend. Not only are they nice and stuff, remember, most of them are pretty good cooks too.

ANYWAY… let’s not let this become a “Jerry Maguire”-style manifesto, because I freaking HATE that movie, but that’s for another time. While it’s not like there are legions of screaming fans, I have reason to believe there are literally TENS of people reading this site. Sometimes, dare I say, even DOZENS. When I do something super cool that can get to HUNDREDS. Are you kidding me? Hundreds? Sheeee-it. That’s some pressure. So here is what I’m going to do:

Take your post suggestions from facebook and twitter (there are some doozies! Prepare yourselves for embarrassing stories. Everyone wants embarrassing stories.) And feel free to send more along as you think of them.
Post recipes from the 1.0 site but new and improved-ly, along with new recipes.
Post more photos without feeling the need to add lots of text and context.
Post more kitchen how-tos: suggestions welcome for what you want to know.
Post more about restaurants and cool places to go. I always WANT to do this but it seems overwhelming so it’s a rarity. I’m brewing a plan though so stay tuned.
Post more random stuff. You can’t pin me down, man! I won’t do it anymore!
Post more pictures and recipes of things made by other people, like when I go to their house for dinner and such. This will mean I might be one of those d-bags who brings my camera to your house and then the next day emails you to make you send me the recipe. In exchange I promise to bring a slightly better bottle of wine than I would normally bring. Which means I will up my price ceiling from $10 to maybe $12.99. But $12.99 at BevMo is really like $15.99 somewhere else so, in advance, you’re welcome for the great wine I brought and by the way may I please have your recipe from last night?

So feel free to keep suggestions for posts coming. I want to do more “how-to” posts so tell me what you want to know and I will do it. I actually know a surprising amount about cooking and such. And please tell me what you want to know how to make and I will make it. I didn’t expect you, but now that you’re here I want to please you. Help me be the dead bird on fire which is so much less gross than just a dead bird, like, on the sidewalk. By the way, have you ever run over a pigeon and then cooked it and ate it? Me neither but that would be insanely gross. Don’t suggest that. I’m not doing that. Keep it reasonable. And if you’re still reading this- gold star! I owe you a dollar, and 10 minutes of your life back. But also don’t suggest I make a time machine because a lot of people have tried that, and it doesn’t usually work out too well.

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{ugly} Say Hello To My Little Cheetah Friend

Karen — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:18:36 +0000

My friend Michelle from the salty site Thursday Night Smackdown (she curses like a stevedore!) is having an ugly potholder contest. When I first read about the contest, I thought immediately of my cheetah mitt, but someone else said they submitted a mitt from a prison and I didn’t think it can compete with a prison mitt. But then I really looked at it closely. It’s extremely ugly. I always think of it as cheetah print, but in fact there are multiple cheetah heads on it. The part where you put your thumb is a disembodied cheetah head. Right under that, there are just some perpendicular whiskers and a nose that’s not on a face. It’s pretty creepy.

On the back, the cheetah’s head is ringed by a cowboy rope pattern, like a noose, which isn’t found anywhere else on the mitt. The head is cut off in such a way that it looks like he’s bald and that his right eye is missing or rolled back into his head, perhaps a result of the noose. It’s highly unsettling to see a disfigured one-eyed cheetah being hanged as you pull a pan of brownies out of the oven.

I ironically admired it this mitt at my friend Sasha’s house and he said “oh GOD I hate that thing, it’s so tacky, PLEASE take it home with you.” It doesn’t even work. It’s too thin and always burns me. But I think the worst thing about it is that cheetahs and cheetah prints just really don’t go in a kitchen aesthetic. I can’t think of a single person’s kitchen that wouldn’t totally clash with the black, the putrid peachy orange, the animal print and faces. It’s totally incongruous with food, cooking, and eating.

I won’t throw it away, I don’t know why. I didn’t buy it and it wasn’t a gift, it was a reject. I hate it but I can’t quit it. Why can’t I quit it?

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{video} Bananas: The Atheist’s Nightmare!

Karen — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 22:50:26 +0000

Even a recent visit to Kentucky’s Creationist Museum couldn’t sway me from my atheist ways, but NOW, I mean NOW, with this irrefutable banana evidence…

Seriously where do people come up with this stuff? Talk about grasping at straws… “God made the peel biodegradable.” Uh yeah, really astute observation that plants biodegrade. “It curves towards your face.” Because you’re pointing it at your face, dude. This is some great stuff, what a crack team of investigators we’ve got here!

[via Serious Eats]

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{1 mullet, a set of oiled abs, + some bread} Weird, Awesome 80’s Bread Video

Karen — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 22:44:00 +0000

I know this has gone around in the past, but I don’t care. I can’t stop watching it. This is the BEST BREAD-MAKING VIDEO EVER, hands down. I mean, it doesn’t teach you how to make bread or anything- it’s just an 80s dude in a sweatband/wifebeater combo, dancing around, doing splits in the air and gyrating his pelvis most hilariously while sort of pretending to make bread. Look out for the part where he puts a pitcher of water on his head and does a pirouette. Just, WOW.

[via Serious Eats]

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{bacon} Bacon Luggage Tags, + I’m Getting Sick of Bacon Things

Karen — Mon, 18 May 2009 22:23:52 +0000

Look! It’s another bacon thing that’s not food-related: bacon luggage tags!

And with this, I am officially DONE with bacon-everything except for, of course, the actual eatin’ kind of bacon. That kind is still OK. But please stop already with the bandaids, the air freshener, and yes, the luggage tags. It’s old. It’s over. Move on to pork rinds or something.

Here you go: I made you a Venn diagram to express my position more clearly.

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