…where jack sometimes does stuff, but mostly not

We’re trying to buy a house in Champaign / Urbana IL, since Holly’s going to start her doctoral program there this fall. We haven’t actually sold our house in Iowa yet, so we can’t really proceed.

But we’ve found a couple of places we really like in Champaign. Interestingly, we like them for almost totally different reasons. Which should we buy, if we had our choice?

THE CAMBRIDGE HOUSE

The Cambridge house is smallish, but exquisite — it’s been worked over by someone with good taste and a sharp eye. It’s nice from the outside, but stunning inside.

The kitchen is a marvel — a cooking show should be filmed there, really. In addition to seating at the center island, there’s seating to one side at a bar, which contains a small bar fridge and a wine fridge as well.

The master bathroom has a shower, but also a deep whirlpool tub. Oh, geez, that bathroom. Wow.

Here’s the ad copy:

Extensive upgrades! Entertain in a new gourmet kitchen with custom cherry cabinets, marble countertops, breakfast bar, and island. Relax in a huge master suite with double vanity, travertine tile, whirlpool tub, custom glass shower, walk-in closet with floor-to-ceiling shoe rack, and French doors opening to a stone patio in a beautiful backyard. Roof new in 2006 and high-efficiency AC new in 2007.

There are a couple of potential problems though. First, we need a bigger place than we are in now, particularly since I’ll be working from home. I’m told it’s really important to have a separate working space, and I won’t have a room for that here — there’s a third bedroom, but it’ll have to double as an office and a space for things like the futon and Wii, etc. Not ideal.

I’m a little worried about reselling it in the future. The neighborhood is decent but not great, and it only has a one-car garage; therefore the selling points have to do with how beautiful and well-kept it is. Will we be able to keep it so nice? Maybe not.

Pros:

• Gorgeous
• nice stone facade
• awesome cabinesque wooden interior walls
• floors are wood and ceramic
• kitchen is huge, with tons of marble countertop and an island with seating
• huge master bathroom with deep whirlpool tub
• nice backyard with fire pit, stone patio, shed, small swingset/slide combo
• Neighborhood with kids

Cons:

• No separate office space for moi
• No separate living room/family room
• one-car garage
• nearest school has less-than-stellar rep
• not small (1900 sq ft) but use of space makes it feel smallish, somehow
• not so close to anything (University, parks, shops)

THE BROOKSHIRE HOUSE

The Brookshire place is larger, and older. It has a nice layout, with 3 bedrooms upstairs and a single bedroom on the first floor with its own half-bathroom, and a door to close it off from the rest of the house — ideal office space.

Along with a living room/dining room combo, it has a separate family room with a nice fireplace, and patio doors opening to a screened porch, which is not quite 4-season but pretty well constructed.

The yard is awesome: half a dozen mature trees and a nice garden area as well as a sizeable lawn (which needs some attention and reseeding, but isn’t in terrible shape).

Here’s the ad copy:

Great neighborhood, mature trees, LOW COUNTY TAXES, custom built one owner home, poured concrete partial basement, first floor bedroom or office, lots of hardwood, completely repainted inside, maintenance free exterior, large park-like back yard, screened in porch off family room, patio is equipped with a natural gas line for your grill, replacement windows throughout the second floor, upstairs half bath has room to install a shower, 6 year old furnace and 4 year old water heater. Did I mention the LOW COUNTY TAXES?

This house was clearly a custom-built job, and it’s clearly been loved, but is not immaculate like the Cambridge house. It does have nice wood floors in some rooms, but other areas are carpeted and the carpet is a little worn. More worrisome, the roof looks old; it’s a 42-year-old house so it’s probably near the end of life for its second roof.

Pros:

• large, usable space
• separate living room / dining room
• first-floor office with door, its own bathroom
• 3 bedrooms upstairs; one can be an office/reading nook for Holly
• 2-car garage
• 3-season rear porch, and a small porch in front
• beautiful yard with mature trees
• pretty neighborhood
• LOW COUNTY TAXES lol
• somewhat close to a park, shops, etc.

Cons:

• probably needs a roof, or will soon
• somewhat dingy carpet (in carpeted areas)
• sliding door (and some windows) old and sticky to move
• can already tell it will be a PITA to clean the gutters; there’ll be lots of yard maintenance
*

SUPER BONUS ROUND

This last house isn’t even on the market, but a little birdie tells us it will be in a week or two. It was the first house we researched online when Holly was applying to her doctoral program. It was purchased in January, but the purchaser never moved in and is now selling (health problems or something).

THE URBANA HOUSE

I don’t know the footage, but it’s fairly spacious — 3 bedrooms upstairs, plus a bedroom / office downstairs (basement office, nice and cool! I like it!). There’s also a downstairs family room.

It’s all-brick on the outside, built in the 1940s, and has a two-car garage separated from the house by a breezeway, which I love. The yard is not big, but it’s close to two parks.

Perhaps the best feature is the neighborhood: it’s in Urbana, surrounded by quite nice houses and super close to the University — even a pretty part of the University (tree-lined picnic area and tennis courts). Some of you know what I mean when I say it looks like some parts of Iowa City’s east side; it’s not on a cobbled street, but the cobbles begin about a block to the north. :) It has picturesque streetlights.

No photos, which is a bummer, because it’s a nice place to look at. This is maybe my favorite one, even though it’s not even available for sale yet. ::sigh::

Pros:

• Plenty of space
• downstairs office
• downstairs family room, separate from living/dining area upstairs
• extra bedroom upstairs for Holly’s office/reading nook
• two car garage with awesome breezeway connection
• close to two nice parks
• in Urbana, so it’s possible to predict which school Daphne will go to, which is absurdly impossible for Champaign
• the two closest schools have good reputations
• lots of lone female joggers when we drove by, which says to me “safe neighborhood”
• well-kept; doesn’t appear to need, say, a new roof or major work anywhere
• beautiful neighborhood with mature trees, etc.
• 4 blocks from campus
• 8 blocks from Campus Recreation Center East

Cons:

• not actually, uh, for sale right now
• we’ve seen a video walkthrough but have not actually been inside
• no idea if there are kids for Daphne to play with

ZOMG that was tiring.

So, uh. What should we do?

I’ve been trying to hunt down a decent peanut soup recipe; the last one I tried was sort of wan, and most of the ones I’ve seen online don’t look like they have enough peanut butter in them.

Soooooo here’s the one I’m trying tonight. It’s an adaptation of this one.

4 ripe tomatoes
2 sweet potatoes
a bit of olive oil
1 onion (diced)
1 large carrot (peeled and diced)
1 red pepper (diced)
1 poblano (seeded and diced)
1 jalapeno (seeded and diced)
2 cloves garlic (minced)
4 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup natural chunky peanut butter
leftover chicken (optional)

Start by roasting the tomatoes and sweet potatoes.

Heat the oven to 400F, then prep the tomatoes by scoring them, blanching for 60 seconds in boiling water (remove promptly!), and then peeling off their skins. It’s supposed to help if you shock them in cold water right after you pull them from the boil, but I’ve never bothered.

Core and halve the peeled tomatoes, and place them cut side up in a roasting pan. Don’t bother seeding them; you’ll want the extra liquid anyway.

Halve the sweet potatoes as well; brush the cut sides with olive oil, and place cut side down in the roasting pan. Sprinkle some olive oil over the tomatoes, and roast the whole mess for about 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, chop your onions, carrot, and peppers. I’m such a klutz that this takes like 30 minutes anyway, so the timing is great. I was meticulous with the hot peppers, and my reward was NOT getting capsaicin in my eye afterward. Alton Brown would be so proud.

Heat a bit more oil in a soup pot and saute the onions, carrot, and peppers for a few minutes, until they soften. I like to do this on medium heat; it’s more forgiving. Add the garlic for the last minute or so.

Pour in the stock and then add the roasted tomatoes, then scoop out the soft caramelized guts from the sweet potato skins and add those too. The guts, not the skins.

Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer for 20 or 30 minutes. Hit it with a stick blender until it’s mostly smooth but still chunky enough to be interesting. I aimed for like 85% blended.

Add the peanut butter and stir to combine, then add the chicken if you’re using it (I had a cup or so of leftover roasted chicken on hand). Simmer on low for a few more minutes. Salt and pepper to taste.

This turned out pretty well, but predictably, I added too much peanut butter (more like 3/4 or maybe 1 cup, not the 1/2 cup I listed above). The peanut butter ended up dominating more than you’d probably want. Lesson learned! Apparently those other recipes knew what they were talking about.

It’s still quite tasty, though. When I make it again, apart from holding back on the PB, I’ll probably keep a bit more of the seed and membrane of the hot peppers; this time I threw almost all of it out, and they ended up contributing fruit flavor but hardly any heat.

No pics. Somebody (ahem) took my iPhone to Champaign for a couple of days, and I can’t find the actual camera.

This recipe contained no butter, which may mean I’ve voided the warranty on the huge Paula Deen stockpot I got for my birthday (thanks Mauria and Bryon!)

The current national discussion of health care has been marked by awful lies and incredible stupidity. Trying to keep up with the debate is a mentally punishing task. I mean, who can stand having to listen to stuff like this?

This is the level of deep thinking displayed by opponents of healthcare reform.

Elsewhere, other health care reform opponents are engaged in flat-out lying and fearmongering about universal health care systems elsewhere in the world, and making absurd declarations that our current system is “the finest in the world”.

Our health care system is not the best, nor even close, on any objective measure.

• We have shittier outcomes for things like life expectancy and infant mortality than any number of other “civilized” countries
• We have hordes of uninsured people without regular access to preventive care, which is of course cheaper than emergency response care
• We have even more middle-class folks who are underinsured and can be driven to bankruptcy and family disaster by medical costs
• Even people with wonderful health insurance (like me) are constrained from changing jobs or starting small businesses because health insurance is tied to employment, and you often can’t change insurance if you have a “pre-existing condition”.

For the privilege of maintaining this shitty, unfair, godawful system, we pay twice as much for healthcare as the rest of the world.

Don’t mistake me for a fan of the currently proposed reforms; they don’t go nearly far enough, and any serious attempts at reform will be blocked by craven “centrist” Democrats, not by the universally despised Republican congressional minority. This is not a Democrats-vs-Republicans, liberals-vs-conservatives question; neither group wants to upset their corporate donors by disrupting the profit flow to HMOs and the like.

The question is: will we build access to health care into the basic infrastructure of our country, like roads and schools and law enforcement? Or will we punt and keep our terrible, unfair system in place for another 15 or 20 years before reform can be considered again?

Why can’t a fella buy some non-stupidified kitchen tools, huh?

I’m trying to make some quark and I need a nice sterile place to put 5 quarts of fermenting milk. I have a few 5-quart bowls, actually, but I’m going to use 5 quarts of liquid and it needs some sloshing room, so I really need a 6 or 7-quart vessel.

I can’t use my 6-quart pot because it is still recovering from something incredibly dangerous and very stupid that I did to it the other day (that would be another story).

This would be a good time to get an actual stockpot, thinks me. Easy peasy.

You’d think!

Sears had bupkis (lovely sale on flat, cast-iron prybars, though).
Kohls had any number of N-piece kits (8 < N < 15) for between $99 and $300, plus a standalone Paula Deen-branded stockpot for something like $175.
Gordman’s had a $13 stockpot that wasn’t worth $0.13; the inner surface was flaking off and seemed to involve paint, or some other coating so cheap and nasty as to seem paint-like.
Wal-mart had a perfectly serviceable set of options. So I ended up spending my money at the Wal-mart.

This is all to my chagrin since I am, theoretically, opposed to Wal-mart. I mean, yeah, shady employment practices, union-busting, destroying local businesses, homogenization of local culture, etc., but I really just can’t stand how slowly their checkout lines move.

Anyway, my milk products are happily fermenting now. But I am still wishing for the opportunity to buy kitchen junkses without grinding my teeth to nubs in the process. Alton Brown keeps telling me to shop at restaurant supply stores, but I can’t find any such thing around here. I guess that’s why they invented the webternets.

Also: where the hell do I buy cheesecloth?