Week 2

In spite of the fact that we had a little frost during the past few nights, the contractor went right ahead and poured the concrete into the wooden crate that will hold our entire house in the future. It was strange looking at that surface, imagining in less than a year we'll be sitting on our couch in that same exact spot! But it is interesting to see how things are prgressing a little every week. we've never spent much attention to houses being built and don't know much about it, but now, we're even interested in the time it takes concrete to thoroughly dry and harden, heh :o). In the meantime, we've been looking at bathroom sinks, tubs, faucets and tiles, and the choices are overwhelming. Also, after looking at that, we once more changed the set up of the bathroom (the architect will be so happy...). Drawing rooms on paper and shoving paper furniture and items around in it makes you see things differently! We did the drawing thing for the living room as well and were both kind of shocked to realize we don't have a lot of furniture to fill the space. But oh well ;o). We'll deal with it when the time comes to haul things into the room!
Below is a picture of the concrete floor, taken on a quite cold Saturday morning. It looks so peaceful, even with all the construction activities going on. I can't wait to move in ;o).

Construction - week 1

It's official! The hole has been dug and filled with stones and sand, the fences have been put in position, IT HAS BEGUN!!
Within the next 6-8 months, the drawings will turn into a (hopefully) lovely home, with a spacious kitchen to bake lots of goods in :o). We're very busy running around from one vendor to the next, then back to the architect and back to the drawings, because it's like dozens of decisions have to be made every day. But we're beyond excited and very much looking forward to the whole proces. Just to start of, here are pictures of me and M. standing on our lot. The snow has left in the meantime, making the weather more building-friendly ;o).

Accept defeat

I have to confess I did. Accept defeat, that is. I really, really tried to make this oven work for me, and it just won't behave.
Last week was my husband's birthday, and I wanted to make some pies for us to enjoy with our families together. M. requested rice and apple pie, and I used my T&T recipe for the first, and a new one (at least to me) for the latter. I was excited about the apple pie recipe, as my fellow student in the English course I'm taking shared it with me as her absolute favorite. It is an old fashioned recipe for Dutch apple pie, that directs you to cook the apple filling before baking the pie. As I feel apple pie often tastes a bit 'raw', I was excited to try it.
I made sure the oven temperature was right and stable (I got it to do that at least). I baked the rice pie that I baked a 100 times before. It looked gorgeous, all seemed well although the bottom was a little too brown for my liking. The apple pie behaved too, and came out gorgeous looking.

My husband decided shortly after everything was out of the oven, that a 'test tasting session' was in order, so I cut intot he apple pie. The bottom looked a little too brown as well as did the rice pie, but I didn't think anything of it (yet). My husband took the first bite, and when I asked him how it was he answered very politly 'it's a tad dry'. He was just being kind, let me tell you that. We then cut into the rice pie, which was like eating sand. Yuck! this is supposed to be a creamy, smooth conconction, and it was just sand-dry. I threw it out. I ran into the kitchen and made another dough to bake an apricot crumb cake (I thought this was something that wouldn't fail even if the oven collapsed in the middle of baking it) and baked it the next morning for back up. It looked somewhat funny, it was like the crumbs had all melted together for the most part. Ugh...

When our families came I served them the pie (my husband suggested saying we had bought them at the local bakery, which admittedly is pretty bad, LOL) and even though the apricot cake was presentable my sister mentioned that it was 'different'. I thought so too. All in all, I threw out most of the rest and felt defeated. Very much so. So I've decided to lay low on baking for the next couple of months, until our home is built and the new kitchen is in place. I hate it, but I hate throwing everything in the trash straight from the oven even more :o(.

In the meantime, I'll use this blog for updates on the construction of the house.
I am so very excited to day that the hole has been dug, fences have been put in place, and things are really starting to happen right now, whooohoooo! I'll be back with progress pictures :o)