It was my dd18 who first discovered this.  Fortunately when ds11 was making oatmeal cookies he remembered that there was an alternate to make brown sugar since he needed some for his recipe, and I would have just told him to use an equal amount of sugar instead.  Making your own brown sugar is such a money saver and is so incredibly simple that I have to share it with you – try not to be overwhelmed by how easy it is!

• 1 c. granulated sugar
• 1 T. molasses (for light brown sugar) or 2 T. molasses (for dark brown sugar)

Mix until thoroughly combined.  Use as called for in recipe.  That’s it!

(For those of you wondering, since moving to Israel I’ve begun using white sugar, since the alternative sweeteners I had been using for so many years are either not available here or are way out of my price limits.  We’re able to mostly limit this to Shabbos and holidays and skip making the healthy breakfast bars, muffins, etc that used to be staples here.)

Avivah

Our kitchen has been coming along beautifully – most of the work was finished in the first week.

To recap, here’s the kitchen before:

Below, the top cabinets have all been taken out, and the first new cabinets going up.

There were a number of features I liked about our new cabinets, but a couple I really disliked.  One was that the cabinets were all hung at staggered heights in the original kitchen.  I had them all rehung to be at the same height since I find that more visually appealing.

The next thing was the amount of display cabinets.  I’m not really a display kind of person, and certainly not in the kitchen.  I want it to be functional and look neat.  I thought the large open display cabinet to the left and the clear glass cabinet doors on the right made the kitchen look too busy.

After the entire kitchen was installed, I looked around at the pieces left over.  In order to make room for the built in oven – the original kitchen seemed to have had just a microwave or toaster – I asked them to take off a door in the standing unit and then move the shelving to fit it.    When I looked at the now unneeded door, it occurred to me that it might be the right size for the non-standard sized open shelf.  I held it up, and voila!  A perfect fit!  Really amazing since this is the only door in the entire kitchen that would have fit, and when I had it taken off I didn’t have it in mind to use it at all.  In order to install it, I had to order special hinges that open wider than 90 degrees since it’s a corner cabinet, but the guys who put the kitchen in bought them for me at their supply place so it was cheaper than if I had bought them retail, and installed the door when they came with the hinges.  (Then we used the original hinges from that door to replace a set of hinges over the sink that were rusty.)  You can see the now closed cabinet it in the picture below.

As far as the clear glass display doors, I’m planning to take them into a glass place downtown and have them replaced with frosted glass to match the other doors.   First I want to see if I can find the right shade of contact paper, since that will be a cheaper and easier solution.  Though I don’t love how it looks right now, it’s not urgent so whenever I get around to this I’ll do it.

The original kitchen had the sink installed in the corner, a feature that I thought was fantastic since the corner tends to be mostly dead space.  While it was an excellent use of space, this meant an extra cost for new plumbing, so I went back and forth about if this was worth it.  I decided if we were going to make the investment in having all a new kitchen installed, then it was foolish not to spend a bit more when it would make the kitchen so much more usable.

It totally was worth every penny!  I really like how functional the set up is now.  Not only that, the cabinet above the sink has a built in drying rack for dishes, so it’s easy to wash dishes and keep things looking neat.  I just shut the cabinet door and let things drip dry; the counter stays neat and no one’s the wiser.  🙂  Before I had a drying rack on the counter and no matter how clean the kitchen was, the counter always looked cluttered with clean dishes stacked up.

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The area below is the one that has delayed my posting!  Between the built in oven on the left and the burners on the right, there’s a cabinet.  When the kitchen was originally installed, there was nothing.  To me it looked unfinished and I deliberated about what to do about this.  Since we have to retile the backsplash – you can see the tiles that were torn off below when the old countertop was removed – I was thinking about tiling all the way down to the ground, then hanging a towel rack against one of the cabinets. The advantage of doing this was it was a cheap solution and it would have looked fine.

However, I had another idea that I thought would look better, though it was more work and an additional cost.  We had one bottom cabinet left over because we didn’t have enough space to put it in, and I thought that perhaps it could be cut down to fit the remaining space.  This would also mean an additional cost of having the remaining piece of granite countertop cut down to fit, and I was reluctant to spend more money than I already had.  However, not to do it would be pennywise and pound foolish – again, it would be a shame to spend so much to have the kitchen done, and then for a relatively small sum not finish it off.  I had already paid the crew and the job was officially finished, so it wasn’t fair to call them back to do more work, even though in our original agreement we had included that they would cut down one top cabinet and one bottom cabinet (which they didn’t end up doing) so technically I wasn’t asking for anything beyond what we had agreed upon.

I asked a neighbor who is a carpenter if he thought the cabinet door would look right if it was cut down, and in response, he took apart the cabinet and told me he’d resize the entire thing for us (I was planning to cut down the cabinet ourselves to save on costs and just have a professional cut the door).  After he finished the job he told me he wasn’t going to charge me anything!  Not only that, he has a friend who cuts countertops, and he had his friend cut the piece for us as a favor to him (he said he’s done a lot of favors for this person), so my concern about the added cost ended up being a non-issue!  This made the kitchen look more finished, gives us more cabinet space and it’s a perfect place to put hot pans when they come out of the oven!

When we retile, I’d like to create some kind of subtle framed design between the above top cabinets, and also plan to add a matching length of wood as a sort of bridge between these two so that there will be a better visual flow.  Right now it’s a bit choppy and disconnected.  I might wait until my husband comes back to do this part of the project.  I didn’t want to leave any work for him but he said that we did all the hard work and he’d be happy to do the tiling.  🙂

I miss the ease of hopping in the van, driving to Home Depot, buying the tiles, supplies and any tools needed for the job in one place, and coming home.  Now I have to go to one store for tiles, another for supplies (without a car) and find someone who can cut the tiles for me (since there’s nowhere to rent a wet saw and I’m not going to buy one for just this project), which means premeasuring and prefitting them all and then keeping track of what’s what.   It makes a not so complicated tiling project more involved than I feel like dealing with right now.  Another reason that I’m lagging a bit on this is that the design consultant at the tile store was very abrupt and told me that it’s a terrible idea to have any kind of design in the tiling; she was very impatient and I don’t think she understood what I was describing so I’m not sure how much weight to give her opinion.  I also don’t really like the tiles that are popular now.  They’ll probably look great but it’s not what I was picturing and it’s hard for me to figure out how to make a design out of them.  So I haven’t decided about this.  

Due to the color of the granite countertops (dark reddish streaked with grey) and the frosted glass doors, there’s already a lot going on visually so I have to do something very simple and understated for the tiles.  It could be I’ll have to forget about any kind of design.  That would definitely make for a straightforward tiling job.  But doesn’t it seem like a picture or some kind of visual accent would add a nice touch?   The original kitchen had a stainless steel thing that looked like a round chimney for a venting fan above this area, but when we put it up it didn’t look as nice as I expected (it had two glass shelves on it that we couldn’t hang since we moved everything around, so that also detracted from the look of it), so we took it down.  I don’t need a fan there, so the only reason we put it up was to fill the space.  (If you have ideas or thoughts on this, please share them – I’m open to suggestions!)  

Here’s a picture of the almost finished kitchen – in the foreground you can see the matching kitchen table.  It’s nice to have another surface to eat or work on, which will be particularly nice when we’re homeschooling but helpful at any time.  With the fridge moved to the place where it is now, it feels bigger and more light in the kitchen than it did before.

Below is a picture in the evening.  I appreciate the built-in lights below the upper cabinets so I don’t have to keep on the bright ceiling lights at night; it’s a softer feeling that matches the quieter evening mood in the house.

Although the kitchen isn’t yet fully finished, I’m so happy with it!  The countertops are slightly higher than my old kitchen, which is nice for a tall family like us.  The sink is deeper and wider.  The top cabinets are slightly deeper and taller than the old ones so they’re more spacious, and bottom cabinets are all drawers.  I love drawers for the way they maximize space and make it easier to keep things well -organized.  There’s so much more storage space than I had before!  Two bottom cabinets are still empty in addition to the display top cabinets mostly being empty.  It’s a nice thing to have more space than what I need.  The space is well designed and it’s a pleasure to work in the kitchen; everything is just a step or two away and it’s easy to find what I need.  I was concerned about losing counter space but there’s actually more usable space.

I’ve heard the sayings that I’m sure that you’ve all heard, that when you get a quote for home improvement work, double the cost and double the time they say it will take, and it will be close to on target.  I had a good bit of anxiety about this, particularly when they pulled out the cabinets and discovered that the way the plumbing was would necessitate changes.  I was concerned they were going to tell me that they hadn’t bargained on this and it’s more work than we agreed on, so they need to charge more.  I did several relaxation and visualization exercises before I went to sleep the night this happened to release the tension I was feeling and kept picturing everything going smoothly.  Everyone was feeling tension about this situation because it had potential to get complicated and the solution that was worked out required flexibility on all of our parts but was something we were all happy with it.  The crew we worked with was a pleasure to deal with, and I called the head a couple of days after they finished the job to thank them again and told them they’re welcome to use my name and number as a reference.  It’s so nice to work with people with a good work ethic who honor their word.

Avivah

Our kitchen renovations are going along really well, but there are some still some things left to do so you’ll have to wait a bit longer for final pictures.  For now, I’ll share the earlier part of the process with you.

This is our living room/dining room right after all the kitchen cabinets were delivered.  It looks more spacious in the below picture than it felt.

Here’s a different angle and this is more reflective of how crowded it felt.  When we had to eat Shabbos dinner here, we felt very, very squished.  Yes, I was wishing for a Shabbos invitation!  We were very fortunate that we were invited out for a Shabbos meal (for lunch) for the first time in the eleven weeks that my husband has been gone, and the person who invited us didn’t even know all we had going on!  Amazing timing!

Everywhere we looked were signs of the new kitchen waiting to happen!  Ds5 playing with Yirmiyahu on the stairs – notice the new built-in oven below, prior to installation.

We had to move our largest couch to a different place to accommodate all the cabinets.  Our living space became very cramped, especially when the contents of the kitchen were packed into boxes that further crowded our space.  But when your kids all play in a radius of a few feet from each other regardless of how much space you have, they don’t mind so much.

Back to the kitchen.  Below is a before picture of my kitchen.  As I said before, it was functional but not incredibly attractive.  The space allotted for the fridge and oven on the left side of the kitchen was big enough for a standard size fridge and oven, neither of which is what I have.  So we left our huge oven in the original space and moved the fridge to the opposite wall which worked out well.

However, the fridge also partially blocked the window behind it, as you can see below.  I had two main goals in doing kitchen renovations, one of which was to open up this space by moving the fridge to one of the two main walls where the cabinets were.  I felt this would not only make the kitchen feel more spacious, but would improve the airflow and light.

My second goal in renovating the kitchen was to create more usable space, which was a challenge since I lost counter and cabinet space by moving the fridge to the wall where the main length of cabinets were.  Even though we’re not done – we still have to retile the backsplash and cut down a cabinet and countertop so they’ll be custom sized to the remaining space – I’m very encouraged by our progress on both fronts!

Avivah

I’ve been meaning to share with you my latest miracle, but today has been a tiring and stressful day so I’m afraid I won’t give it over with the enthusiasm it deserves.  But since this directly relates to my stressful day and the busyness in our house right now, I’d better explain!

Since we’ve moved in to our apartment here, I’ve had it in mind that I’d like to put in new kitchen cabinets.  The bottom cabinets are original to the apartment, and the top cabinets, though good quality, are a different color than the bottom cabinet and don’t fully use the wall space available.  Since my kitchen is functional though not beautiful, this hasn’t been a high priority.

When my husband left to the US ten weeks ago, I took the opportunity to get some things around the house taken care of.  My husband works really, really hard and it’s not relaxing for him to have a list of projects to work on when he gets home.  So I try not to even mention my thoughts about the things I’d like to do around the house!  I decided with him away it’s the perfect time to get some things taken care of.

One of these things was to see about improving the way space is used in my kitchen; I’ve been preparing for homeschooling by doing some things to make our home feel more homey and to make the space more efficient for our needs.  About two months ago I began scouring the internet looking for used kitchen cabinets.  As some of my long term readers know, we’ve done a lot of renovations in the past ourselves, including putting in a new kitchen in our house in the US.  When we did that, I bought a high quality used set of kitchen cabinets in excellent condition for a great price, and this is what I wanted to do now.  Of course, the savings aren’t just in buying the materials inexpensively, but in not having to pay for labor costs.

That was the snag with my scenario this time around.  My husband is in the US, my oldest son is in Jerusalem and doesn’t have vacation until mid-July, ds14 isn’t home until 7 pm most nights, and to top it all off, we don’t have any power tools.  But where there’s a will, there’s a way, so I kept looking and trusting that somehow we’d be able to upgrade our kitchen for a budget friendly price.

After a month of looking, I hit pay dirt!  I found a two year old kitchen, great quality, nice looking, being sold by the person who had just purchased the home that this kitchen was in – his wife wanted to renovate.  The price was good, he was willing to negotiate with me and was pleasant to deal with.  We set a date for me to come by to check it out in person, and then pushed it off for two more weeks because he wanted to wait until he was living in the house.

About fifteen hours before I was finally set to look at this kitchen, I got a call from a friend who is a real estate agent.  She just sold a home and the sellers want to give away the kitchen that is there because they’d like to put in a new kitchen.  Did I want it?  I thought it was unlikely the measurements and features would suit our needs but it was worth taking a look.  At 11 pm I headed over to check it out, and since there was a short with the electricity, was able to see it by the dim light of my cell phone’s flashlight.  Very surprisingly, the kitchen had all the features I was looking for, though it was a very different look than what I was intending.

There were removal costs for this set of cabinets that the first one didn’t have, but it would still be cheaper than buying them.  Not only that, it would leave money in the budget to pay others to do the labor, and this was a really appealing feature of this kitchen!  It was a decision in line with something I’ve been working on but haven’t had time to share with you, be being conscious and taking active steps to value my life energy and make life as simple as possible for myself!   So for the first time ever in our family, none of us will be more actively involved in the physical renovations.  Dd16, ds14 and I are all very happy about this, since we know from previous experience what’s involved in a kitchen renovation.  Hashem is so good to us!

Right now my kitchen is partially dismantled and my house is a disaster, stacked with all the kitchen cabinets, the contents of the previous cabinets in boxes all over, the old cabinets on my porch….There is a big snag that was discovered after they had begun putting the cabinets in that affects how the kitchen will be assembled and is requiring me to mentally be flexible and consider different possibilities than what I had painstakingly planned based on repeatedly working out the exact dimensions of the space involved.  So I’m going to go to sleep and hope that some amazing solution will come to me when I wake up and that the kitchen will look even better than I planned, since the alternative is to be really stressed out!  Somehow it’s all going to work out so I have to keep trusting the process and not get caught up in the pressures of the moment.

Avivah

Before Yirmiyahu was born, we were given some baby items, including a high chair.  At the time, I was told the high chair was missing some screws, but since the factory of the company (Keter) that makes this high chair is located in Karmiel I planned to buy the missing screws from them.

Fast forward to just a couple of weeks ago, when we pulled the high chair out of storage to put it together and put it to use!  We noted the missing screws, and I headed to the Keter factory store in the industrial zone to buy some.  When I arrived I was told that this is the older model so they no longer have parts available for sale.  I began thinking how ridiculous it would be to have to throw out the entire chair just because of some missing screws, but they are made in a specific way and it would be extremely difficult to find a substitute at the hardware store.

Then it occurred to me to ask them if they could order the screws for me.  They initially didn’t think so, but I asked them to check on this and after asking someone in a higher position they told me they could.  I was told they would order an entire set, enough to replace every screw and small part on the high chair.  I didn’t need all of that but this is the only way they could order it.

When I asked how much it would be, the woman in charge smiled at me and told me they weren’t going to charge me.  I wasn’t expecting that but of course I was very appreciative!  (My kids have asked me why it seems that so often nice things like this happen to me, but I believe that we all have wonderful things happening all the time – perhaps because I try to be conscious of it and share it with my family, my kids get this impression.)

The moral of the story?  If you have an item that needs a part that is hard to buy, try contacting the manufacturer for a replacement.  Usually you’ll have to pay for the parts but generally it will still work out to be a lot less expensive than buying a new item!

Avivah

Last week someone offered me some free fish, which I readily accepted.  He said something about some heads, so I thought he meant the fish had heads or some heads were included.

Well, I got home and to my dismay (initially), the entire bag was salmon heads.  My first thought was that I had no time or inclination to deal with them, and to give them to the stray cats.  Then my frugal-try-something-new-and-see-how-it-goes instinct kicked in.  I did a quick internet search for what to do with fish heads, and was interested to learn that in some cultures the head of the fish is the favored part due to being the most nutritious.

I didn’t like the looks of any recipes that I found – too labor intensive. But I decided it would be a shame to feed the outdoor cats before seeing if any of the fish would benefit my family!  The fish heads were all from salmon, and were large.  We put about eight into a pot with some water, brought them to a boil, then let them simmer for a long time.

My plan was to debone them and use the salmon meat for some kind of fish dish.  My first thought on opening the pot was that the cooking liquid looked just like the liquid in canned salmon.  And my second thought when I began deboning the fish, was that minus the tip of the head, it looked exactly like the canned salmon I used to buy!  The same skin, bones, and the way the chunks of fish were – same physiology.  It makes economic sense that the filets are sold at a higher price, then the leftover heads are canned and sold for less.  Realizing this definitely shifted my perspective on using the salmon heads from viewing it as a less desirable leftover to a lucky find!

However, the taste is what the biggest ‘wow’ was.  It was tender, flavorful and delicious!  I made two 9×13 pans of salmon loaf using the meat from these heads and when we had them for lunch, my kids were like, “Yum, this is sooooo good!”  The flavor was much richer than canned salmon, really tasty.  And to think that at first I almost gave it to the stray cats!

Avivah

Tonight I got some great buys on chicken and meat, and it reminded me that I haven’t written about the potential advantages of shopping towards the end of the day.

At this late point in the day, I’ve found that you can often get reduced prices on bakery goods as well as poultry and meat.  At this point, bakeries want to get rid of whatever they have left because no one will buy day old baked goods the next day!  Since we baked from scratch, even reduced bakery prices are more expensive than what it would be to make it myself.  So if we buy the bakery goods, it’s only as a small amount as a special treat (eg to treat the  child who comes along with me to be my shopping buddy).  If you have a bakery section in your local supermarket, check it out – in the supermarket that I shop at, every night a couple of hours before closing they announce that the prices are being marked down by about 50%.

Tonight I was at the supermarket when I heard an announcement over the loudspeaker about something being marked down 50%, but both times I didn’t understand what it was that was being reduced.  The second time I asked the woman cleaning the floor if she had heard, and she told me it was the rotisserie chicken.  I right away headed over and scooped up the last chicken – too bad I didn’t understand the message the first time around!  The rotisserie chicken was less expensive than the whole chickens on sale at the same store, and to buy the sale chickens I would have been limited to buying just four kilos and only then if I bought 150 shekels of other non-sale items.  The manager told me that any night that they have rotisserie chickens that are still left, they mark them down.  It’s nice when you can get ready made food for less than it would cost to cook it yourself!

I also got ground meat and chicken wings on sale, both marked down 30% because it was the end of the day.  Usually really good sales are limited by a minimum purchase necessary and a limited quantity that can be purchased at the sale price – usually it’s a four kilo limit where I shop.  Four kilos is only about two chickens, so this isn’t really a substantial amount.  However, when I go at the end of the day or on Friday afternoon, I can get unlimited quantities at sale prices.   One time I bought about twenty chickens because the price was amazing (that was the maximum that my freezer could hold); I had to take a taxi home since there was no delivery service at that time of day, and the taxi driver exclaimed over what a great deal it was once he heard the price!

Not only are there often lower posted prices, there’s more flexibility in the pricing.  For example, last week I asked the butcher how much the chicken bones were.  (I make a lot of broth so I buy a lot of these.)  The butcher asked me how many I wanted – I told him how much I would buy depended on the price.  He told me it was the same for him, the price per pound would depend on how much I bought. When I said I would be interested in buying all that he had left, he was motivated to mark them down by 50%.   This doesn’t take hardcore bargaining; I’m not much of a bargainer but later in the day all you have to do is comment that you’ll buy if the price is right.  Earlier in the day these kinds of deals are harder to come by.

Avivah