I discovered the best dessert that takes no time or effort:

Heaven

A while back my friend Luis got me onto affogatos – espresso over ice cream. Simple, delicious. But coffee isn’t for every flavor of ice cream, and sometimes I don’t want caffeine. True, I could have made decaf, but that’s not the way I think…

I turned to my bar.

I like Fernet Branca, straight even, but it’s a beast to mix because it is so strong and bitter. I thought, hey, if espresso works with ice cream because of the strong bitterness…

The challenge here is not in making the dessert – scoop some ice cream, pour on some Fernet, consume (definitely drink the end liquid, like peppermint crack) – but in finding the ice cream. If you live in Houston, go to Rice Epicurean. They have all kinds of out-of-season flavors.

This afternoon I’m doing some prep for the weekend, and R sent me the following email. The subject line is my favorite part. Can you guess Tessin’s plans?

Subject: Groceries

Limes. 30 A garnish? Sprigs of lavender or something?

Tomatoes. Campari are best. Roma or something next. Get lots like two boxes. Tomato juice if there’s a good one. A couple jalapeños

We’re also doing some gardening, our newest hobby/chore. Right now our driveway looks like this:

My path to the coffee maker is blocked this morning. Yes, that’s an egg without its white…

An extended family dinner ended with siblings, cousins, and associated significant others finishing the night with us. It was a lot of fun, the bar performed well, and we found my cousin a new drink:

Kinfolk

Bulleit rye (my fave rye)
Kumquat Ginger Liqueur (have to make it yourself)
Lemon juice

Shake it.

Ps, trying out an iPhone app to write this sorry if formatting is ugly.

On the one hand, I don’t love to cook. On the other, I do like good food. And I also like organization, logic, and having the right setting and tools for my work. Good kitchens make sense, and to me cooking in a good kitchen feels like taking a test to which I know the answers. It’s not exactly FUN, but it’s possible to enjoy the orderliness of the process, and the satisfaction of doing something well.

One of the things both R and I most looked forward to about eventually moving from a small, rented apartment to our own house was having a good kitchen. Sadly, the house we liked best had a particularly crumby one. The biggest problem wasn’t just that it was dated, or even that it was ugly. The problem was that it was lazy… off balance, messy. Poorly designed and poorly constructed. The more we tried to think about ways to correct it, the more it became clear that the whole thing had to go.

Here’s what we started with:

 The real estate photo (the room has great light!)

Maybe it doesn’t look that bad to you? I sort of agree, but let me point out some issues (clockwise from bottom left):

- That countertop with the stools doesn’t actually overhang the stools and create a nice eating area… even when they’re shoved against the cabinet (as they are here), they overhang the doorway to the laundry room and block the whole flow of traffic in and out of the busiest spot in the house

- That cabinet area under the counter isn’t actually an accessible cabinet. It’s cheap plywood that’s blocked from all sides. 100% wasted space (this is more clear in the next photo)

- That space over the microwave also isn’t a cabinet. More random, covered space

- To make room for the sink/dishwasher under the window, 2 bad things happened: the sink is shoved off center, which may not bother many people, but makes me crazy, and the dishwasher is shoved so close to the doorway (leading to the stairs, and dining room — another busy passage) that they made that weird angled corner, in an awkward attempt to create more walkway. The result was that there still wasn’t enough walkway, and there was also a weird angled corner.

- Note the wiring coming down from the upper cabinet to the light switch above the dishwasher? That was the only switch that turned on the only overhead light in the kitchen – that lone fixture above the sink. Despite the beautiful light on a sunny day, Houston does get dark at night. There was limited electrical leading anywhere, and fixing this alone required a pretty major overhaul.

- See the random, unfinished six inches of empty space above the pantry, where the current owners had shoved bowls, etc? Umm.

Here’s a photo of the other angle:

- What you can’t see well here is that the stove doesn’t actually touch the back wall. There’s about 2 inches of empty space back there, which I guess they were trying to cover with the cutting board? We kept the same stove… just had the new counters fitted to actually cover the back area.

- What you also can’t see well is that to the left of the stove, near the ground, is the second vent for the room, which was just totally covered by the floorboard, but then I guess discolored and warped by the air blowing against it all the time. So the room got pretty hot in the 9+ months of the year that it’s over 80 degrees outside.

- Then there’s the random cabinet to one side of the doorway to the end, and the random chair occupying more wasted space on the other side.

So we ripped the kitchen out! This made refinishing the floors and much-needed ventilation and electrical work much more efficient. And THEN we thought about what we wanted next (and researched it, graphed it, and hired a contractor to make it happen). Kind of an awkward timeline.

But here’s what we have now!

We’re still playing with accessories, including bars to hang pots and pans on the wall next to the stove, and maybe some art for the walls next to the window (though I’m loathe to drill into the tile), but we’re thrilled with the result. I’m particularly happy with the clean flow from the kitchen to the laundry room, all our recessed lighting on dimmers, and the vent hood that sucks heat and cooking smell straight outside. And of course R loves his bar.

And here’s a bonus, in-the-middle pic, AFTER they did major clean-up because we had house guests coming for the weekend.

Walkin’ in my backdoor…

It’s time. I’m back.

There have been some challenges. For a while I had no kitchen, much less a bar. What booze there was lived in the fridge just to stay safe. Now I have my corner of the kitchen, and it is a beautiful thing.

Now I have space, but a different mandate: mocktails. EE gave herself over to bearing my child and became unable to imbibe just as the new space came into being…

I’m going to strip the blog down a bit. No more links page. No more tags. No silly garnish.

I’m still stocking up, not quite ready to roll up that shutter to evaluating eyes, but we’re on our way.

I have a policy of not apologizing for not posting, but just so you’re all clear, yes we’re still drinking. The bar is simply still in utter basics mode as we’re still working on a kitchen where I can house my bar.

This may well not be new, I have no idea, but I love it: Drinkify.

You type in a band you’re listening to and the site gives you a drink. I think it has a good sense of humor, and it respects the fact that not every drinking experience needs to be complicated.

Many thanks to Jedder and whatever blog this is on which he found Drinkify for us.

Hello Tessin fans,

Many appreciaters of TR cocktails have been asking for updates from the homefront…. We are doing our very best to make our Houston home as cool as we possibly can. And rest assured, in the meantime we are absolutely welcoming visitors and serving cocktails of many sorts.

Some of the moving process is kind of glamorous and exciting, at least for those of us who enjoy domestic adventures: choosing wallpaper, hanging artwork, planting herbs.

Some of it is not glamorous or exciting at all: fixing broken toilets, replacing 1930s electricity, installing insulation, & painting, painting, painting. Luckily we are not doing all of this ourselves, but we’ve done our fair share. The guy who loads large purchases at Home Depot recognizes me, R, both our cars, and says the next time he sees me he’s “giving me an apron.”

When we first toured the house, I saw everything I liked about it (still like). The symmetry, the clean proportions, the beautiful light. The location. I loved the things that are really hard to change, which is why we bought it. The second time I toured the house, I saw all the issues, and there were many of them. It seemed everything was filthy; everything was broken; 87,000 things needed to be fixed/replaced/improved. Between buying the house and now, I’d say we fixed about 70,000 of those 87,000 issues.

In the first installment of Before and Mostly-Afters, I present: the laundry room.

The laundry room (I guess you could also call it a mudroom?) of our house was a major selling point, despite its relatively decrepit state under the house’s former neglectful owners. I think lots of people can appreciate the convenience of a big utility sink and full-sized washer/dryer right off the kitchen, but for us, moving from Manhattan….. this felt like a HUGE luxury.

Here’s what we toured when we first visited the house. I wonder what it looked like before all the cleaning and staging to put the house on the market? Eek.

And here’s what it looks like now:

(pardon photos from iphone b/c we can’t find our camera charger, weekend t0-do list on the chalkboard)

The key improvements:

• Refinished the hardwood floors (we did the whole house, but the laundry room was in  especially bad shape)
• Found the original cabinet doors that had been ripped off to make room for the wine fridge and reinstalled them
• Built a counter over the washer/dryer
• Put in marble countertops. You can’t see in the photos, but the bizarre Formica, faux-butcher block counter that was around the sink was split and rotten, because the faucet was also broken/leaking all under and through those cabinets. 
• Painted everything
• Installed new hardware/faucet/chandelier, put down new rug, etc.

I am thrilled with it. After years of shared laundry machines in freaky Manhattan basements with maybe the occasional dead roach in the corner, taking laundry out of my own dryer and folding it on a clean, marble counter in a sunny room feels like a miracle.

Right now the utility sink is doing double (triple? quadruple?) duty since we ripped out our kitchen and we wash our dishes there. But it is also perfect for the main activities I originally envisioned: arranging flowers, washing Dahlia’s paws, and rinsing out paint brushes. And I’ve been doing a lot of painting.

Other rooms soon…

We made it to Houston! We promptly had a cocktail!

The picture is a bit misleading at this point. First, we worked on an empty house for a week (cocktails and lodging on the parents, thank you parents) and then our stuff arrived on schedule. Nope, just kidding! Actually, we went back to work and then our stuff arrived late and we stayed at the house two weeks after we got to town (thank you again Mama for meeting the moving van).

The picture was taken that first night and we have since improved a great deal. I’m not willing to post all kinds of house pics without EE approval, though, and she’s off being a consultant.

I will leave you with a thought on cocktails. Specifically, the margarita. The pervasiveness of the Margarita in Texas is amazing and wonderful. It just opens everyone up to the fact that someone might drink something other than beer or wine. My more important insight is that Mandarine Napoleon is a poor substitute for Cointreau. I read some article that made me think it would be more like my homemade orange liqueur, but it’s just not right.

A NYC scene I’ll miss – firehouse on our block, dalmatian and all

Bertessa is leaving Manhattan (EE and Dahlia are coming too), and the time has come to close the bar. Actually, the bar is the last piece of the apartment getting shutdown, but it is looking pretty picked over:

Yeah, there are bottles left, but note how low they’re running

EE’s beautiful living room, obliterated

We’re decamping for Houston where the bar will be re-born bigger and better than ever, in a customized area of the kitchen. Just as soon as we get around to installing a kitchen, anyway:

No more cabinets, but the floors are purdy

The old one wouldn’t do, so it had to go while we were getting the floors re-done. We figure it won’t matter much since we’ve gotten in the habit of not cooking anyway. We’ll have a microwave and fridge; what more could one need?

I’ll let EE glory in the details of design, remodeling, etc. I’ve come here to lament my bar.

The bar started as a little cart with some bottles, but the cart couldn’t handle the expanding load. I customized the utility closet/pantry and got a stunning amount of bar space in the deal. EE made it look spiffy with some paint and good light. It’s a special space. Hidden behind the seemingly mundane door. Still a bit rough around the edges. Cozy. My first bar.

Originally designed to share space with a cat, the bar outlived the cat and presided over a motley collection of toiletries, laundry supplies, dog food, and tools. It enabled grand visions of cocktail making and dabbling with infusions and liqueurs that were critical to allowing this blog’s development.

The final days of a developed bar are strange times. Open liquor doesn’t do so well in such a hot truck for such a long time. Plus, many of the bottles are stoppered with re-used corks or other innovations. The challenge of consuming the remainder is in the variety. It’s all well and good to make a margarita with the remaining tequila, but what happens when the Cointreau runs dry before the tequila? The bar quickly fell all out of whack, and the whole goal was to avoid replenishing it. This led to some odd drinks (trying to do summer coolers with a surfeit of whiskeys) and to one great realization: make the missing ingredients myself.

This realization of self-creation shall be the First Principle of the new bar. In order to handle the Cointreau dilemma, I bought a bag of juice oranges for $1.50 and used excess brandy to make my own. It is fresh, light on the tongue and amazing. Even better is the orange-ginger liqueur I made at the same time. I used the peels and moonshine to make wicked orange bitters. We still can’t drink everything, but I’m inspired to buy only the bases that I need and certain specialties I can’t infuse or distill myself.

There is not currently a Second Principle. I’m just not very principled.

Ouch – this will equal some serious trash stink in NYC

It’s been a long while, but I wrote this right after Memorial day and it seems like the world could use some more hot weather drinks as it goes over 100 degrees here in Manhattan…

As always, a visit to the Virginia countryside tends to inspire cocktail creation. Maybe the area’s history of moonshine has a role, but I think it is more about having lots of fresh ingredients and weather that dictates what one should drink.