You need to make this: skillet-broiler pizza

Try to follow this slightly convoluted chain of searching and websites that brought me to a delicious discovery that I'd like to share with you, my few readers. One day I was searching for a photo of the amazing food at Pizzeria Posto and I came across a photo of it and a homemade recreation at this blog: Pie Oh My, which then led me to the pizza-centric Slice, which is a must visit for any pizza lover.

I started scanning Slice, and found it full of all sorts of awesome tips. But what I hadn't yet found was a way to solve a perpetual problem for me: getting a nice char on the top of my pizza and a crispy bottom without turning my crust into the texture of a giant cracker using my bottom of the line apartment oven. Then I found THIS. The skillet-broiler method for making pizza at home. I won't copy and paste anything from there, I will just tell you that it is a revelation. I don't think that I'll ever touch my pizza stone again to make pizza. The results are dough that is crispy and as charred as you like (keep an eye on things, or you'll burn them :-P ) and still has a bit of chewiness on the inside, so it's actually like real pizza crust, not a cracker! You will believe the second you hear the crunch of the crust when you cut it.

Now, summer obviously isn't the best time of year to try this if you don't have air conditioning, as the broiler cranks your oven temp up to 500+ degrees, but if you do have AC, or it's cool where you are, get out and try this NOW. If you don't, bust out the grill and go that route instead.

Below are my results, topped with some of my favorites: salame, rosemary, mozzarella, caramelized onions, etc. Eat it with your eyes!

The stretched out dough placed in my cast iron skillet and topped. Note: tuck anything you don't want charred (caramelized onions) under things you do (cheese and salame). I fixed that the second time around.

The finished product!

nice, charred bottom

check out that crust! I'm just holding the very end, and it's staying in place. Just how I like it!

topped off with arugula, and polished off before you had a chance to finish reading this. EAT IT.

Decorative Concrete in Phiadelphia

This smallish apartment building on S. 20th Street in Philadelphia is otherwise rather nondescript in pale brick with little ornamentation. However, the street-level entrance is housed in a nice little treat of Art Deco concrete, that I'd like to share with you:

New Apartment! etc.

So, lack of inspiration here leads to lack of blog posts. Apologies to those of you who care to know about my everyday life, but it's been a little lame lately (in between an awesome Atlantic City bachelorette weekend, and an amazing Maryland wedding) so I haven't felt much like writing, and let's be real, I doubt you all really want to hear about my adventures in bad re-runs and house cleaning in a 90 degree apartment.

However, things are about to get a little more exciting in the next few months as I relinquish my couch-based lifestyle. Upcoming events:

1. trip to Omaha with the family
2. packing up and cleaning my apartment, along with selling a few things I don't want to take with me to PA
3. paying movers to pack my third floor apartment into a Penske truck (YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS)
4. SARANAC! (if you don't know, it's one of the best weekends of the year, where thousands (?) of rugby players descend on a small town in the Adirondacks and proceed to play lots of rugby and wreak lots of havoc.) This will be my 7th (I think) year going, and I couldn't let a little move from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania get in the way, so I'll be driving my 16' Penske truck there on Friday, and then onto Philadelphia on Sunday or Monday.
5. Unpacking into my new apartment in the Graduate Hospital neighborhood of Philly.
6. Attending a wedding back in New England
7. Decorating my new apartment
8. Starting orientation August 22 (!!!!)

So, onto that little apartment. Last week, after said Maryland wedding, I traveled to Philadelphia to apartment hunt with my sister. It was...not amazing. This was my fourth apartment hunt since college (ughh) and I've seen plenty of shitty, junky, gross, etc. apartments. However, when you cram a whole lot of those uninhabitable (by me, at least) apartments into a few days, rather than a few weeks, it becomes a little overwhelming. I was ready to call up Penn and ask if I could get my money back, or if I could have more in order to spend way more than I wanted on a much nicer apartment. Now, not all the places were awful; we saw some that I would have been OK with living in, but did I want to? No. I wasn't about to relinquish my red oak floors for laminate and blue industrial carpet (WHAT possesses owners to use blue carpet, I will never know.) I know that some people don't really care about where they live, as long as it's pest free and has a roof and hot water. However, I am not one of those people. I need to actually want to live in the apartment, or I'll be uncomfortable and miserable, which isn't really something I want to come home to when I'm working my ass off in grad school.

So, on the last day of our search, the last apartment we saw had fate written all over it. It was in a spot that we both liked: just 4 1/2 blocks from my sister's current place, so the same commute for her, more or less; and 1.3 miles from school, meaning I could walk, bike, or take the Penn shuttle to campus; the pictures on Craigslist looked nice; it had pretty much all the features we wanted; it was owned by individuals, not one of Philadelphia's many notorious slumlord management companies; and the address even ended in 6, which is the case for every apartment I've rented (726, 36, 56, 26.) Well, it was fate! We were the first people to put an application in, and signed the lease this week, and my decorator juices are already flowing. I can't wait to move in and rework the items I already have for the new space, as well as add items to make the space unique and our own. I can't wait to head to the Brimfield Fair in mid-July to scope out a night stand and some accessories.

Here's the new place in its current state; I can't wait to get my hands on it August 1!

This is the living room, looking mostly original. What you can't see in this crappy photo I took is the cool plasterwork on the ceiling and the paneling below the windows, which is mostly blocked by those curtains. In an ideal world, I'd like to situate my couch facing the windows to create a faux foyer, as the front door is on the left, and the coat closet is on the right. However, I didn't take measurements, so I'm not sure if this is feasible. The floors in here and the kitchen are original fir, something I'm very familiar with from my first two Boston-area apartments. It's very lovely, and being a softwood, was less expensive than hardwoods like oak, and therefore very common in working-class early 20th century buildings.

The awkward kitchen-in-a-pantry/closet/original bathroom(?). BUT, it has a full size gas stove, woo! It's also got this nice big dining room attached to it, so it has plenty of space to add more storage and workspace, which we plan to do. This will definitely be where we have the most projects to do to make it functional for two people who love cooking, and one person who doesn't like staring at boxes of food out in the open.

I didn't take a photo for some reason, but that door in the kitchen leads to the pathway to the back deck! Outdoor space! I'm so excited to use that space during nice weather.

This is, by a fairly wide margin, the nicest rental bathroom I've had to date. Everything is very new and nice, and my shower curtain even goes well with that wall color: bonus! I think we might add a shelf in here for spare towels and such, like the ones I have in my bathroom now. They've been really useful, and each one cost me a total of $7.

This will be my sister's bedroom. I'm not thrilled with there being carpets (you know I prefer wood in all rooms!), that said they're neutral, newer, berber, and will be cleaned before we move in, so I'll live :-P. I have no explanation for the awkwardly different sized windows.

And this will be my room. Big sister gets the bigger room :-P. The closet and another window are on the left, again awkwardly a different size than that strange small window. The closet creates a sort of nook in the corner with that window, which I'd like to use for my desk if it'll fit, or as a reading nook with my Craftsman chair if the desk won't work.

I won't bore you with a photo, but there is also a basement with our own washer and dryer and lots of storage space.

A Minimalism Update

You may or may not recall that back in late 2010 I purchased these traffic cones, also known as the Saucony ProGrid Kinvara.


When I started running outside this winter, I would run the majority of my route in my regular Brooks motion control shoes, then stop by my house and switch into the Kinvaras for a short mile-ish loop. In addition to that, I brought the sneakers with me on my trip last month and spent a few long walks in them.

If you know me, or follow this blog, you might know that I've struggled with IT band issues for, I think, almost four years now. I had absolutely no issues last summer, when I was training for the Warrior Dash, or for most of this winter when I was enjoying running outside. Unfortunately, that didn't last, and I started feeling some pain and tightness in my knee again. Therefore, lately I've been going on much shorter runs, and usually I have to stop and walk the rest of the way around 1 1/2 miles into the run, which is exceedingly frustrating!


So, last week I had to run to the post office to send my passport renewal via certified mail, and on a whim decided to use my traffic cones instead of the the Brooks. The post office is about a mile from my apartment, and after dropping off the mail, I still felt good. So I continued my run, and ultimately made it home after about 3 miles. I took a couple walking and stretching breaks, but overall I was totally surprised to find that my IT band felt pretty great after the run, yay! In addition, my feet have gotten used to the sneakers, and I no longer have foot pain when trying to run in them.

If you're thinking about trying minimalist shoes, I'd definitely recommend it! But take it slow! When your feet are used to traditional running shoes, it takes a while. I'm easily frustrated, but I'm happy that I stuck it out, because it seems like I may have found shoes that my IT band actually likes.

A Sad Weekend for Long Island

It was a sad weekend for Long Island, as the beautiful Land's End mansion, designed by Stanford White, of the storied firm McKim, Mead & White, was demolished to make way for a subdivision of McMansions. Progress is one thing, several McMansions that are likely to stagnate on the market are another.

(source)

(source)

35 Day Challenge Recape and a New Goal

Long story short: I actually managed to lose bout 3lbs during my 35 day challenge. I won't say that I didn't cheat, because I did. There were a few times when baked goods were just uncontrollably delicious looking and needed to be baked/consumed. I also drank more than I said was I going to. Shoot. I did, however, rock out nearly every planned workout or run, which I am very proud of. Another thing that I took away and have been great with continuing is keeping my walking levels high. Spreading out errands that aren't urgent has been a great way to get me on my feet most days.

Trouble is, I'm pretty sure I ate all those pounds right back onto my love handles while I was away. We did a lot of walking, but pretty much every day was a morning till night kind of day, and I was tired enough as it was, so getting up at the crack of dawn to exercise, just didn't really happen. Unfortunately, I then got sick directly after I came home, and that combined with my lack of exercise on vacation and stress over making a decision about grad school left me totally unmotivated to get off my butt.

I do have motivation, though: I am not at all happy with my body. I can celebrate the small victory of losing 3lbs, but the truth is that I'm still very uncomfortable with the way I look both in and out of my clothes, save for those few pieces of universally flattering clothing I own. Truthfully, I was happy that I never got a chance to wear my swimsuit while in Florida. Both summer and my friend's wedding are rapidly approaching, and I want to get back the confidence I had last summer in a swimsuit, and look awesome in my bridesmaid dress.

Therefore, the new goal/challenge, whatever you want to call it, is to lose 7lbs in the just under 8 weeks that are left before the wedding. I've never lost that much weight in that short of a period of time, so I don't know that I can or will actually reach my goal, but that won't stop me from chasing it, either. The plan will be much the same was it was for my 35 day challenge, with a few modifications/additions:

• Biking! I don't think it's any coincidence that when I was at my lowest weight last year I was biking at least 8 miles, 2-3 times per week. The weather has turned, at least in the right direction, so my tires are getting pumped and I'm hoping to spend lots of time on my bike doing everything from running errands to longer rides.

• Limiting the carbs: painfully, I know this works. I'm not saying no pasta meals ever, but I will resist the urge to buy delicious loaves of bread and eat half of them, and will try to limit most dinners to carbs of the vegetable form only.
  

• Smart cheating. I will not shove my face full of an entire order of spicy fries on a regular basis and be OK with it.

• I am actually going to commit to less alcohol. I absolutely love beer, so I am sad about this one. I just don't need the liquid calories that aren't milk. But hey, if I lose the lbs now, that means I can feel less guilty about the outdoor beers in the middle of hot summer nights!

• And, to keep me more active and make me less of a veg, I'm making an effort to get out more and do more, especially free things! All of Harvard's museums have times when they are open free to Massachusetts residents...I'm all over that! Spending an afternoon walking to and from a museum, and being on my feet for a few hours, is much better than spending it on the couch!
  

Thumbs Down

This is what happens when a city is priced into a market where only rich people can afford the historic homes available for sale. Rich people want what they want and they can afford to get it, and if that means tearing a house down to the outer walls and basically constructing a new building, then so be it. As soon as the "For Sale" sign comes down, the building permits go up. Shame. And this is something that I will not miss about Cambridge.