Niagara Visitor wrote:The decision on granite was very unexpected, and very quick. I thought that I was happy with the laminate that I have now, but my son took me to the place where he and DIL picked their granite, and I fell in love with a slab. It is black with white veining. My floor is a grey/beige mix, there are ceramic tiles in the kitchen, hallway and both bathrooms, and I am not replacing those. I have a black sofabed, a red leather chair, and a chair in a zebra fabric. Black IKEA glass fronted tall cabinets, shiny black laquer dining chairs and an area rug that has red, grey, and white in a sort of abstract Mondrian look.
The paint for the walls took me longer to find than to decide on getting married, it is a soft grey, and the kitchen cabinets will become a darker grey. I have a lot of copper and red accent pieces, so I needed to tone things down a bit with the paint colours! I like strong colours.
Sounds really nice, Lore. I love black granite. My BIL is renovating one third of his triplex and getting it ready to rent again. Before my sister passed away, she picked out medium grey cabinets and they look fantastic, even though Ed was unsure about them before they got installed. She always had better "vision" than I did -- she could "see" something before it was done whereas I seem woefully inadequate in that regard. I think they call it lack of a spatial sense. She also selected a very light grey/blue glass small tile backsplash that Ed installed all the way up to the ceiling -- it really looks super. He painted the wall a soft grey as well, so I'm having no problems picturing your kitchen -- it really sounds pretty. He put in those super inserts inside the lower cabinets, too, which turn all the way around so you can see and get to everything on the upper shelves.
Re the subject of stuffed artichokes, the leaves of the artichoke are stuffed with flavored filling, usually Italian; you pull each leaf out, including the stuffing, put it in your mouth and run each leaf between your teeth and get the artichoke "pulp" (for lack of a better word) that is in the base of each leaf along with the stuffing. They're really delicious. Lots of people use a spoon to stuff the leaves but I learned many years ago from someone to mix my stuffing dry in a large bowl, put each artichoke in the bowl, "fanning" the leaves of the artichoke so the dry stuffing falls in. The longer you do it (almost like fanning a deck of cards), the larger the artichoke gets (hence, more stuffing gets in front of each leaf). As I steam them, about every 15 minutes, I pour a thin stream of olive oil all over each artichoke, which moistens the stuffing and the entire artichoke. You get a lot more flavor out of the artichoke, IMO, doing it this way, and it's a lot easier than using a spoon to stuff dampened stuffing behind each leaf. And you're right about the heart: As you pull off and eat each stuffed leaf, you finally get down to that delicious heart, which is also nicely flavored with the Italian stuffing. I wish I had a camera so I could show you a picture of one of them...
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