Contemporary Houses: Madison, WI Edition

I've been looking at applying to graduate school at various different places, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison is home to one of the places that I think is a good fit. Now, the program I'd be applying to is a PhD program, so I could be spending 4+ years of my post-college life there. It's not entirely impossible that I'd end up staying in the area. So I figured I'd do a round up of houses in the area.

Madison is actually extremely cheap. Like, originally I thought that the Roanoke area was probably cheaper, but I find that actually in terms of quality, it isn't. [The house to the right is, at 300k, more expensive than most things because it's actually in the city proper. The inside is not as nice as some of the Madison examples but at 300k it'd be legitimately a "starter home".] The houses I found that are the nicest are in the 300-400k range, which is really amazing. Plus points to the University of Wisconsin.

The first house I like the best is a really modern home in Madison proper. At 389k, I could buy it pretty much as soon as I got a job and saved up a down payment. It's custom and pretty much EXACTLY what I'd personally want. Of course, not everyone agrees on my style tastes so the disadvantage could be that it'd be harder to convince a significant other to go with it as well (as compared to a more hybrid, normal contemporary home) and at 26/27, a S.O. might be a relevant concern. Also, since I don't know anything about Madison, who knows about the area that it's in, and the lot is pretty small. But you know, since I doubt this exact house will be available in 6 or 7 years, it doesn't really matter.

Another really nice house comes in at 319k... that's 15o0 a month with a really insubstantial down payment. So, the moment I save up a down payment, that could definitely be bought. It's on more than 5 acres, and the lot looks really beautiful, so the big windows and what not will look really nice. It seems pretty far out of Madison proper, about 20mi, but that might be close enough to get good value for the land.

The point here is that there's an insane number of awesome houses for sale in the Madison area. Additionally, while these houses aren't that great, there're a lot of acceptable 2br+, 1200 sq ft + places on decent lots in not bad areas for 100k or less. That's $500 or less a month if I could come up with 10k in a year. That's much less than the cheapest rent in the DC area near schools I want to go to. Plus, I'd get some of it back when I resold the place 4+ years later. Originally, I really didn't want to get stuck somewhere like WI, but you know... it would definitely be a better experience, monetarily and house speaking. I could own a place in less than a year and a half! Wow. Anyway, a few more 300-400k places.


Okay... this last one is a house I designed in the Sims 3. (There is actually a roof on top of that window'd layer.) It probably would not cost 400k or less. But then, I don't really know about that in Madison, WI.

Green Pie for Saint Patrick's Day.... Totally Traditional Right???

Key lime pie is definitely my favorite type of pie. And while key limes weren't available at Kroger, and even if they had been, they would have stretched my budget (and March's money is already on its last leg), I decided that I wanted to give it a shot. I missed out on Pi Day this last weekend, so when Saint Patrick's Day came around I wanted to make key lime pie. Yes, it's not actually green, but as someone said when asked what the difference between lemon and lime is, "lime tastes green."

The recipe I used was really simple and here. The only thing I changed about the main recipe was that I added a little bit of confectionery sugar to the pie filling. Additionally, I added a topping. Some people like to put meringue on it, I don't.

Ingredients:
1 cup Ricotta Cheese
1 1/4 cup Whipped Cream
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup confectionery sugar
a splash of Kahlua

Combine all ingredients. Alter to taste. Whip together until creamy.

My final topping was a little runny, which is why I specify whipping. I just mixed it, but I feel like beating the product to put air into it will make it better. I put it in the center of the pie with a garnish of lime and around the edge. I will say though that when I ate the pie the cream did a really good job of balancing the tartness of the lime so either putting more on the pie or garnishing the plate with it when it's served is a good idea. I felt I needed a little extra.

Another thing to note is that four egg yolks called for in this recipe leaves you with four egg whites. This just happened to be exactly the amount I needed to make meringues though! So, if you have some extra sugar and vanilla, and some cream of tartar, you can make them too. However! If you don't have an electric beater, get ready to whisk the egg white mixture forever! (Like I did, haha).

In any case, I was afraid to try the pie afterward, because I'd had problems with lemon lime bars in the past where they taste somewhat eggy, and I was afraid this would happen again, but it actually tasted really amazing! I got a lot of compliments on the crust as well as the pie as a whole. I'm really happy!!

Those Biscuits from Red Lobster?

I was at Red Lobster with my boyfriend and waiting for our food, we got into a debate over what the flavors in the biscuits were. I guessed it was garlic salt. He continued to insist that it was something else. Of course, with the internet, we had a plethora of imitation recipes to confirm that the only spices were garlic, garlic salt, and oregano. The recipe I found was this.

I've made these twice so far. The first time, I followed the recipe linked. The biscuit base was just Bisquick and in the first attempt, I found the base (not the flavoring or anything else, but the Bisquick part) was a little bland? dry? They had a strange taste to them... The other two people I served them two liked them a lot anyway, and they were gone very quickly. So a couple days later, I made them with a different biscuit recipe. It ended up being a combination of a couple things. It was too flat actually, but I found out why-- I melted the butter and that means there weren't big enough air pockets, so they didn't rise properly, but once again people still loved them. So the end recipe ended up being this:

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3 tablespoons butter (cubed into small pieces)
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup milk
1 1/2 cup cheddar cheese (medium to sharp)
1/2 tsp garlic powder
2 tablespoons butter (melted)
1/2 tsp oregano
1 tsp garlic salt

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 F. Mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. If you have a sifter, sifting these dry ingredients would make the biscuits more fluffy. Add the small cubes of butter, and mix into the dry ingredients. Mix in the cheese and garlic powder and mix. Then, add milk to make a soft dough. Feel free to add a little more milk to the mix in order to make a soft mixture, but the result should be firm enough to form rough balls of dough.

Spoon teaspoons of dough onto a greased cookie sheet and put in the oven for 10 min. During this time, melt the remaining butter and mix with the oregano and garlic salt. (If you don't have garlic salt, add 3/4 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp garlic powder-- I did this both times I made the recipe.) When you take them out of the oven at 10 min, brush the butter mixture over the biscuits generously and then put back in the oven for 6 more minutes. When you take them out, brush more of the butter mixture over them and then serve as soon as possible while nice and warm. They're also good leftover, just keep them in a sealed container so they don't get stale.

Notes: The seasoning is really the shining aspect of these biscuits. It's better to air on the strong side with the garlic powder and garlic salt, rather than under-seasoning. If you try them and there isn't a distinct salt/garlic salt taste (that flavor we were trying to pinpoint in Red Lobster), add more garlic salt to the remaining butter mixture (or melt more butter if there's none left) and brush another layer on the biscuits.