Basement Renovations

Happy New Year everyone! Life and a lack of cooking are my two excuses for my absence from blogging. Plus, Giz has been doing a good job holding up the fort.

In the life department, we've been busy with household renovations, namely updating the basement. The goal is to turn what has been a mish-mash of storage and guest room into a comfortable, appealing living space.

I started with painting our white fireplace.

I prefer a more natural look. So, I purchased some Brick-Anew paint, in taupe. 

Here's a step-by-step pictorial of the progression after each coat:

Step 1:

Step 2: 

Step 3: 

Step 4:

So far, I'm happy with the result.  I may tinker with the colours a bit more to even out the colour a bit more.  Plus, the hearth and mantel look kind of ridiculous. So, I plan to plant them a dark brown colour so that they look more like wood and not something out of a bad 80s paint job.

I actually think it looks better from a distance:

Next, we moved on to dealing with the floors.  We started out with about 6 different types of flooring to deal with. There was a rug (cut to look like a carpet), with who knows what bacteria growing in it.

Under the rug and (I'd estimate) 30 year old ceramic tiling, there was VCT (vinyl composite tile...or quite possibly, given the age, vinyl asbestos tile; VAT).

We soon became experts in the downfalls of adhering your VCT to the cement floor with black tar, something installers used to do "back in the day." Namely, getting the stuff off would require some heavy toxins and scraping.

We opted to just keep it on, but that limited our options for covering it. Our initial plan to put in new ceramic tiling was foiled. Instead, we opted for a floating floor using Vinyl Allure.  Here it is, part way through. The black layer is a waterproofing layer, recommended (but perhaps not essential) for basement installations.

It sort of looks like tile, but it's joined by sticky edges. Installation basically involved an xacto knife, a ruler, pencil and tape measurer. We used an offset pattern, which was recommended by the guy at Home Depot to avoid showing imperfections in the alignment of 'tiles'. But, it required some focus and mental rotation to figure out where to mark for the cut (particularly when working around doors).

In addition to the 80s tile and VCT, there was also some sort of sticky tile on the perimeter of the room over top of the VCT (you can see it in the next picture). I can't quite figure out why it was put there.  Any theories on that?

We also had laminate flooring throughout part of the basement. It was in good condition, but not at all part of the design plan (let's just pretend that I have a design plan).

Since the stairs already had carpet on them, we R removed it so that there would be consistency between the stairs and the basement.

We had briefly debated what to do for flooring throughout. The basement is a pretty cold space, so something warm on our feet was a must. I really like the feel of plush carpets. But, in the end, R's preference won and we went with berber carpet. I'll admit, the maintenance is probably easier since it doesn't show footprints the way plush carpet would. The carpet people said that men tend to prefer berber and women tend to prefer plush carpets. Who knew?

Carpet installation was a bit of a fiasco. We were told by the guy that came to do the measurements that we didn't have to remove the VCT/VAT. Turns out the people that do the measurements for things don't always provide accurate information. After about 10 minutes of installing the tack strip, we were told that they couldn't continue to do the work until we remove all of the VCT and sticky tile. That was frustrating because it basically meant that the time taken off from work, to be home while the installation took place, was for naught.

It may have worked out for the best though, because the smell of the carpet was pretty strong. So, getting the installers to come back a day before we left for vacation gave us about 10 days of airing out time without being home to smell the off-gases.  Plus, I'd rather take an extra day off work and have the installation done properly.

So far, I'm satisfied with the carpet.  It's soft on the feet and the colour is pretty much what I expected.

It's pretty close the original carpet we had picked out, which was no longer available when we were finally ready to make the purchase.   I prefer the non-patterned, slightly more natural (in my opinion) look of the sample, below.  But, the carpet we went with is softer.  

So, now I've got a pretty neutral canvas to work with. I don't want the room to be boring. So, I think it's going to be a bit of trial and error. Suggestions are more than welcome (as long as it doesn't involve changing what I've already done)!!!

Next up:

- paint the walls (including a feature wall or two)

- paint the baseboards and install new quarter-round

- switch out the light fixtures

- decorate (I'd love to put shelving around the fireplace -- not that I have any carpentry skill, mind you)

- figure out what to do for window coverings

We're not exactly the fastest with renovations. But, I'll post an update as soon as possible/available.

Camarones Fritoes with Mexican Cocktail Sauce

After spending the past couple of weeks of 2011 cooking, eating, celebrating, eating, relaxing, eating and of course, eating, I feel like I'm ready to get back on track. A smart person once said to me that we can chose to live life consciously or unconsciously. So no, I'm not going to stop eating, but I'd like to be living my life a little more consciously with more assurance about outcomes. Actually, I think that smart person was Psychgrad.

One of my new efforts this year is being the newest member of the Cooking Light Virtual Supper Club. I join a formidable group of fellow bloggers; Jerry of Jerry's Thoughts, Musings and Rants , Val from More Than Burnt Toast , Sandi of Whistlestop Cafe Cooking and Roz of La Bella Vista . Based on the philosophy of Healthy Foods - Cooking Light , each month one of the members selects a theme and each of us participates by selecting a recipe based on the theme. Each blogger selects a course to prepare and submits their choice to the group. If I choose an appetizer, the next blogger must choose a different course until we fill the entire meal. Posting is generally the first Wednesday of each month.

This month's theme is "Dreaming of a Summer Mexican Fiesta". The dreaming part and preparing Mexican dishes is about as close as I'm getting to Mexico especially when it looks more like this here.

The fun is both in the challenge of the theme and also in the blog hop to see what everyone else has done. Happy blog hopping.

My choice for the Fiesta is a shrimp appetizer - Camarones Fritoes with Mexican Cocktail Sauce

Ingredients

Shrimp:

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 cup low-fat buttermilk

1 large egg white

1 (5.5-ounce) bag baked potato chips (such as Lay's)

1 1/2 pounds medium shrimp, peeled and deveined

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Cooking spray

Use the coating and crisping technique for different fillets of fish, such as halibut or catfish. It will also work in making chicken fingers. Garnish with lime wedges, if desired.

Sauce:

6 tablespoons ketchup

1 tablespoon fresh lime juice

1 tablespoon hot sauce

1 teaspoon prepared horseradish

1/2 teaspoon grated orange rind

Preparation

Preheat oven to 400°.

To prepare shrimp, lightly spoon the flour into a dry measuring cup; level with a knife. Place flour in a shallow dish. Combine the buttermilk and egg white in a medium bowl, stirring with a whisk. Place potato chips in a food processor; process until finely ground. Place chip crumbs in a shallow dish.

Sprinkle shrimp evenly with salt and pepper. Working with 1 shrimp at a time, dredge shrimp in flour; dip into buttermilk mixture. Dredge shrimp in crumbs, shaking off excess. Place shrimp on a baking sheet coated with cooking spray. Lightly spray top of shrimp with cooking spray. Repeat the procedure with remaining shrimp, flour, buttermilk mixture, and crumbs. Bake at 400° for 10 minutes or until done.

To prepare sauce, combine ketchup and remaining ingredients, stirring well. Serve sauce with shrimp.

Holiday Memories

This year's holiday celebration was one of the most memorable on record. The only thing that creates a hold back on perfection is that Psychgrad and "R" were out west with "R"'s family. We were a collection of family and friends who shared the non commercial joys of the season.

We were at my brother's home and I love that he's a foodie and also pays attention to detail.









We decided to not go with the traditional North American dinner and opted to have a cultural celebration. Everyone had a contribution to bring so you could say it was a pot luck dinner.

I was excited to learn about traditional Venezuelan Christmas foods. The first is call Pan de Jamon, a ham, raisin and olive bread. A sweet, soft dough is rolled up around savory ham, sweet raisins and pimento-stuffed olives.




The dough is deliciate and soft and the filling, as unusual as it sounded to me initially just works. The Pan de Jamon is something that I'll definitely try. I was lucky enough to have it made for us by our friend Carlos of Empanada fame. Not only is he a great cook, he also shares his knowledge enthusiastically.



If you're in the Toronto area you could also do this the easy way and give Jose of Pimenton a call.

Jose is also known in our circle for his boozy gluten free Christmas cakes, great food and fun cooking classes.

My next fascination is with the Christmas Hallacas, kind of a tamale; served either as an appetizer or a main dish. To say tamale really minimizes the effort it takes to make this dish. Some make it at family gathering that takes a full day with all involved or for Carlos who didn't have alot of help, it was a 4 day ordeal. A Masa corn dough filled with a stew and wrapped in either corn husks or banana leaves, the finale is in placing them in a pot of boiling water for an hour to marry all the flavours together.












and of course a vegetarian one for "A"



I've included a recipe in the links below. I suspect that each region has it's own version with variations in the spice mixture. The one thing that's for sure, the hallaca is a labour of pure love and I savoured every mouthful.

There was a fully stuffed Tofurkey complete with vegetarian gravy. I had no idea vegetarian gravy could be so good.


For the poultry lovers, we had Chicken Scallopini stuffed with Fontina Cheese (one of Giada's recipes - see below)



and a Quinoa Everything Salad



Of course, by this time you're on overload already but somehow just have to find a little more room for desserts.







We generally finish off with a round of table musicians - oops...we forgot all about it.



Suki was on guard through the whole thing just to make sure that if anything dropped, it didn't hit the floor.



Disclaimer: I just couldn't include EVERYTHING - this post would have been 3 days long :)

Links:
Pan de Jamon
Chicken Scallopini