Pages

Sunday, October 09, 2005

It's a beautiful day...

...but I'm feeling not-so-beautiful. I was up most of the night - partly my mind in a whirl and partly my stomach. I don't know what caused my stomach to act up - maybe the brownies - but I do know what has my mind racing....

This past April, we put our house on the market in an effort to upgrade to a bigger home across town. After 6 months on the market, we had finally resigned ourselves to staying in our small home (it's about 1800 square feet) as our contract expired at the end of this month and we did not want to keep it on the market over the holidays. Just when it looked hopeless, we got a showing, a second showing and an offer all within two days! So, we are now set to close on our new home on November 25th (not the best timing, but we can make it work)! Now my mind is whirling with all we will need to get done between now and then, what we need to buy for the new home, etc. It will be a hectic month and a half, no doubt.

Here's a view of the new house from the golf course. Our property ends over near the basketball court and spruce, so not all of that is our yard. I'll post more on the house later. It's double the size of our present house, but there are some things that will be an adjustment - like no fireplace and finding out if I can hook up a gas range. Please, please, please I hope so! Don't make me go electric! The kitchen is not exactly my style, but it's not bad. And it will have to stay "not bad" because we won't have the money to re-do it with our new, bigger mortgage.

Today we are grilling out steaks and making a grilled veggie-pasta salad as the side. I was originally planning to only do the pasta salad - I like to try to eat vegetarian at least once a week and preferably more. With the move, however, we'd like to use up as much meat in the freezer as possible, so we may be eating a bit more meat than we normally do. It's only across town, but there are still the logistics of moving our freezer, getting it cold, storing the meat in the interim, etc. Whew - makes me tired just thinking about it.

The salad we are making is a combination of two Cooking Light recipes that we really enjoy. Part Roasted Vegetable Pasta Salad with Grilled Chicken and part Summer Vegetable Salad with Grilled Bread. When I want to do this salad as a vegetarian main dish, I use grilled vegetables, pasta, beans, and feta or goat cheese. This makes for a very substantial salad. We always grill the vegetables, no matter which salad we make. It seems silly to roast the vegetables if you're going to grill the chicken, doesn't it? Besides, I think that grilled vegetables are soooo much tastier than roasted. Still, it's nice to have the roasting option for winter when it might be too cold to grill - you could roast the vegetables and do the chicken on the stovetop. My favorite vegetables for either of these salads are bell peppers (red, yellow and/or orange), mushrooms, asparagus, red onion and sometimes green and/or yellow squash. I also often add cherry tomatoes - usually raw as the boys don't like them grilled - but I forgot them this time.

I would have liked to have done a little baking, but it's no fun to bake and not have the appetite to sample. Another day......

11 comments:

  1. Good luck with the move, especially with the gas stove. Of course it can be done, it's just how much you are willing to pay. I would never be able to cook on an electric stove, although I hear they are better for baking.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Kalyn.

    The house has gas heat and a gas water heater, so the gas is there, I'm just hoping there is already a line running to the kitchen.

    I've heard that many people like duel fuel - gas for the cooktop and electric for the oven. Sounds great, but expensive, I bet.

    It'll all work out one way or the other....

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous9:11 AM

    hi Alysha! what a beautiful house!! I'm sure you'll have a great time there! good luck with the move! and the pasta dish looks yummy! Besos

    ReplyDelete
  4. I love spiral pasta! That looks so good! And I know how stressful househunting can be, though in my case it was apartment hunting in NY. ugh! It was disastrous getting there but we found an adorable AND affordable apartment in Manhattan-imagine that! Good luck with everything, I hope you sleep better tonight!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks Tattum and Mona.

    I'm not even stressed at this point, I just get this sort of adrenaline rush when these kinds of things happen, even if it's all good - I get charged up with lots of nervous energy - nervous enough to make it even hard to eat. I was so hyper at work today! It's bad when it carries over to bedtime though - keeps me up at night. Once I get used to the idea, I should calm down a bit. I'm just weird!

    ReplyDelete
  6. The house looks awesome! I love to move and see new parts of the country until it actually comes to the time of packing stuff. I much prefer unpacking because I end up finding stuff I totally forgot about.

    I can't wait to hear more about this house, it looks great!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous3:10 PM

    Congratulations on the house, I'm so glad you finally sold your house! And you'll be moving on my birthday, so it'll definetly work out!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Congratulations! And I totally hear you on the electric range- I soooo hat emine, and it will be a little while before we can afford the upgrade. I have been told, however, that if your house is already plumbed for gas, it actually is very minimal costwise to have the gas run to the stove. Hopefully it will work out well for you.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Thanks Joe and Linsley. I'm sure I won't be able to resist chatting about it during the move....

    Erika - that is so good to hear! We are doing an inspecting tomorrow and I'm going to be pulling the electric range out to inspect behind it! As I recall, the stove is on an inside wall - that's the only thing that makes me nervous. Our gas line in our current house runs along the outside of the house and then through to the stove which is on an outside wall - that would be easy enough - but I'm not sure about an inside wall.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous2:47 PM

    ALysha, our new house has the gas range on an inside wall. My husband just ran it up from the basement to the stove, no big deal at all. And the main is on the other side of the house, it just needed a switch off valve where he connected it to the stove.
    Should be something easily done by a plumber! Very exciting!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Thanks Linsley - sounds like it shouldn't be a problem - hurray! Now if only my DH were as handy as yours....

    Hope all is going well in your newly renovated home!

    ReplyDelete