Best cookbooks of 2013

kaye16

If anyone's interested, I've started a Pinterest board for all the cookbook lists that come around this time of year.
I think it should be visible to all, whether or not your have a Pinterest account.
http://www.pinterest.com/fallchicken/booklistingcookbooks-2013/
(Santa is definitely bringing me Kitchen Things. :-)

Queezle Sister

lovely pinterest! I'm following you.

friederike

Good idea! I followed you too.
I saw that you have boards over sink lighting and kitchen tiling - are you planning to renovate your a kitchen?

kaye16

We're finishing what we started when we moved in. Starting with reflooring, which made all difficult. We didn't like the floor when we bought the house (8.5 yrs ago), but thought we could live with it. But the longer we lived with it the more we disliked it. So we laid "floating" cork tiling over the old ceramic tiles, moving all the cabinets and shelving around in the process. Ed insulated and flattened the old wall by the sink, in the process discovering a 1/4" gap above the double-paned window above the sink. Why someone put in a double-paned windows and didn't seal around it remains a mystery. But the pleasant result is that the kitchen is no longer any colder than it should be. :-) The sink and its counter were replaced with stainless steel -- hooray! The rest of the counters, which were "temporarily" (i.e. for several years) salvaged from the sides of some old free-standing closets, have been replaced by beautiful silestone. We admire it every morning. :-) We still have to tile the wall behind the sink and a few other places; think we've finally decided, but I have to count tiles and order. And so far we haven't found THE lighting for over the sink. In NL there are lighting stores on almost every corner (slight exaggeration, but we used to laugh about how many lighting stores there were), whereas in FR one suspects people might still be using candles. :-) Lighting stores that you can walk into are few and far between. And we still need a new table, and the lighting above that. Next year ...

Queezle Sister

I'll have to take a look at your kitchen stuff! I am just starting on my remodel, first thing to go is a load-bearing wall. Will probably go with a quartzite countertop, walnut cabinet doors, and essentially no upper cabinets. Right now grappling with the question of one or two ovens.

kaye16

I vote for two ovens!

friederike

The joys of a new kitchen, right? Looks like we should start a photo thread of our kitchens... I vote for two ovens, too (just think of Thanksgiving!)
We moved in 3 1/2 years ago, and the kitchen really needed to be replaced. I think the oven might still have been from the 1930's, when this building was built - seriously! One thing I'm superhappy with are our walls. We just painted them in a bright colour (somewhere between yellow and orange), and then added a layer of transparent lacquer (the type normally used for wood) - this makes the wall water and oil proof, and it's really easy to wipe down, even easier than tiles as the surface is completely flat. We also removed an unnecessary built-in cupboard, and a completely superfluous pillar (inside it was a pipe that lead to nowhere, no idea why) to create more space, so we know have a very nice, comfortable kitchen with dining area.

Queezle Sister

Yea, I'm sure I would use two ovens. But it gives me pause when considering that a second oven means less storage space.
Your kitchen, friederike, sounds amazing!

kaye16

When we bought our house in Houston many many many years ago, it can with a stove that had two ovens, one big, one smaller. At the time I thought having two ovens was a silly idea. But I loved it! Big meals take a lot more planning when you can't have two spaces at different temps. That was a requirement with our stove here.

Friederike, I love the clear lacquer idea. We will "freshen" our paint at the end of this exercise and I'll definitely consider that. I also love the pipe that went nowhere. These things always make me wonder about the history of the building. Why was that there?

BethNH

We did a very low budget, unfancy kitchen renovation a few years ago. We replaced a brown ceramic kitchen sink - seriously who would have thought that was a good idea? We also replaced our broken oven with two ovens. Our space for oven/ovens was not very wide but it was tall enough for two ovens. I LOVE having two ovens. The ability to bake or roast things at two different temperatures is a wonderful thing.

kaye16

Brown ceramic sink -- that what we had! Ugliest thing I've ever seen. Ed took great pleasure in smashing in before the trip to the dump.

Queezle Sister

Brown, sheesh! We are about to replace a white ceramic sink. Sounds OK, but its so beat up that everything stains it. We will replace with a large stainless undermount.

BethNH

I feel better knowing someone else had a brown ceramic sink. Who thinks of these things?!? Our house was built in the 1980's - how about yours?

kaye16

Our house was built in 1900. (Excepting ones built in the last 10 years or so, it's probably the newest house in the village.) The sink was probably from the previous owner who did his renovations in the 1980s or 90s. Probably there was no indoor plumbing before that. He used a lot of "recycled" materials. I'd guess that the sink came out of another house before being installed here. The original front door and door between the entry and the living room came, I suspect, from an office or store, wider than normal, brushed aluminum uglinessess. But the brown sink -- ugh. It must have been briefly fashionable at some point. Now we have stainless steel sink/counter all in one and love it.

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