lenzai's Profile

Warm potato and green bean salad with mustard/parmesan dressing. Boiled little or larger red potatoes, sliced in rounds, sliced radishes, blanched green beans. Mustart vinaigrette. After tossing everything (potatoes just slightly cooled), add 1/4 cup of grated parmesan over everything, it's a great combo of warm, crispy and tangy. I make it so it's 1:1 green beans to potatoes volume wise and 1/3 radishes.
A panzanella is always great, with whatever veg is in season. This one is from Smitten Kitchen (and those croutons are amazing by themselves too)
http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/04/spring-panzanella/

shelving is a good idea if your landlord is ok with that. If you do shelves these:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=bl_sr_home-garden?_encoding=UTF8&node=1055398&field-brandtextbin=JA%20Marketing%2C%20Inc.
are amazing (expandable) and fit onto wire shelves or wooden ones. And when you move you can take them with you!
A modular wine rack is also a great idea.

The fireplace really pops in the after and that's great. I really wish Before and Afters of rooms took pictures from the same angle! Additional photos would be great too, but for a comparison it would really help (even if the focus points of the rooms changed so the old angle doesn't work as well to showcase the changes)

I use a veg peeler and peel them before I roast them. Yes that takes some of the nutrients away but then you can roast them cubed and it takes less time and you can serve straight out of the oven.

Don't let them stay wet for a long time and definitely oil them. I had a butcher block one on the counter between the sink and the stove and i left drying knives/dishes on it sometimes and it cracked in a couple of places right along the lines of the "blocks". It was not a cheap board either. Learned my lesson.

poaching pears (mix the port with water and or lemon juice), a great deglaze for roasts. Port mushroom sauce (doesn't have to be a sauce, just a sauteed mushroom side dish). You can take a full cup and let it simmer in a small pot until all thick and pour over chocolate cakes or cookies or even a spinach salad.

For a change you can grate them into a spinach salad (also grate some carrots)! Sauteed radishes are lovely (esp if you use butter). You can also slice them and put them on top of ramen/soba noodles and they'll get a little squishy from the hot broth.

You can make a raisin compote and store in a glass jar in the fridge to go with meat.
http://www.recipeturk.com/viewing-recipe-13-281/drinks/raisin-compote.html

Or you can make a warm winter "juice", pour hot water and some honey over raisins, prunes, dry apricots, let sit, add a fresh slice of lemon and drink. I had this when i was a kid and we had no fresh fruit juice, warm, comforting, the mushy fruit is tasty and promotes digestion.

Feta cheese and green onions and parsley can dress up a chopped up roasted squash into a delectable side/main veg dish.

I got this really cool chair that folded into a step stool off Craigslist. It was bright shiny and dirty green, so I thought I'd strip it and either go natural wood or repaint. The stripping agent dried out way too fast in the hot summer heat on the balcony and the 4 layers of paint underneath would not come off. Also did not account for the impossibility of stripping paint off the vertical dowels on the back. Total disaster. It found it's way back on Craigslist (at a discount for the horrible unpaint job). Also got the green paint flecks all over the cement balcony with no luck removing them.