Category: In the Kitchen

Affogato

Affogato usually takes the form of a scoop of vanilla gelato or ice cream
topped with a shot of hot espresso. (Thanks, Wikipedia!)

I surprised my dude with an especially nice dinner the other night which consisted of garlic-butter tilapia, garlic angelhair, and steamed veggies. Looked pretty on the place, tasted even better.

Now, after having such a great dinner, one must follow it up with an equally great dessert. Cue a last-minute run to the grocery store to get vanilla bean ice cream for affogato.

How to make your own delicious affogato. Easiest thing ever, I swear.

  1. Scoop ice cream into bowl or mug.
  2. Pour freshly made espresso over ice cream. (We use the Marimba stove-top espresso maker. I suppose you could use drip brewed coffee if that’s what you have–just make it extra strong!)
  3. Enjoy.

PS: we used small bowls here but I recommend using mugs because there is usually espresso left over after the ice cream has been eaten, and it is easier to drink out of a mug.

Silver Rim

Bad news, my friends.

I haven’t seen Mad Men but I know it’s insanely popular. The bad news part is that in my searching online for glasses like I blogged about recently, they’re all labeled “Mad Men Chic” or something like that. Meaning people (other than me) want these. Meaning the price will go up and they’ll become more scarce. Man!

Oh well, I found several:

Still hoping to stumble upon some of these at a thrift store for like a dollar apiece, however :)

Kitchen Nook Progress!

One of the more “done” sections in the house (if you can call anything “done” after just two weeks) is the kitchen nook. We put together our kitchen carts from IKEA which turned out to provide much-needed storage and work space. It has served us well for several meals so far, with some minor tweaking as to where we’d originally placed items. I found that leaving the cart on the left a little more sparse leaves me more room to work, and putting some more utensils on the right is handy (easy to grab since we’re both right-handed)

In this photo you can see the aftermath of preparing a meal. Not bad! I love it–when I cook, Doug tries to take care of the dishes. Score one for me–I hate dishes!

Here’s the nook from a wider angle.

Aaaaand here’s a big deal! The vantage point from which these photos were taken. My MIL got us some bar stools for our birthday(s). Since our birthdays are only 23 days apart, it’s easy to do combo gifts ;)

They are absolutely perfect. I just LOVE them! I did some research and discovered that since our bar is abnormally high (like 45 inches, whereas between 36 and 40 is more normal) we needed to get the taller stools. They are the perfect height and the seat is a good generous size–I don’t feel precarious or wobbly nor do I get tired of sitting there quickly. We’ve eaten the past two dinners there as well as breakfasts.

Well, at least one section of the new house is in order. I’ll keep you updated as far as progress goes!!