Sure! How's the ice cream going? The information about the shortening was in Loves2cook4six's thread about substituting for dairy in a tart recipe. Cloud Swift recommended Spectrum cold pressed palm oil shortening. I've baked a lot with the trans fat free shortening that used to be made by Smart Balance then seemed to be the same thing made by Crisco. It works fine in cakes and breads, but it separates when you try to melt it, and it's pretty stiff even at room temperature. The Spectrum is soft and kind of velvety at room temperature, and just becomes softer and looser when melted in the microwave. I think that's from being pressed rather than concocted. A couple of years ago I started researching matzah ball recipes for a vegetarian friend and found a lot that didn't sound good, but saved a file with ones that had potential. The only one I found that had shortening rather than oil (from mrfood.com) was very close to our old family recipe with the addition of water. Some of the better liquid oil recipes used seltzer. I thought that made them sound really loose, but my friend gave me a Soda Stream and I thought it sounded fun to include it. I have no idea if the bubbles actually help anything. :) The shortening recipe sounded best because the proportions didn't just say substitute liquid oil for schmaltz, one to one, which sounds goofy to me, but I waited until the end to add the water, to see if it needed it. In the end, I combined all the recipes and it came out really well. Here's what I made (which I already e-mailed to the friend since she still hasn't made any matzah balls, hence the extremely detailed directions): Vegetarian Matzah Balls Yield: 37 medium sized matzah balls Cooking time: 8-9 hours. No joke. • 12 eggs • 1.5 cup soda water • 1 cup vegetable shortening, melted --Spectrum cold pressed. • 1 + 1 scant teaspoon salt • 1 teaspoon black pepper • 1 teaspoon white pepper • 3-4 Tablespoons (one handful) of Fines Herbes • 3 cups whole wheat matzo meal (Yehuda) 1. Separate the eggs into separate mixer bowls. If you only have one mixer bowl, put the whites in that and the yolks in another large bowl. Add about 1/4 tsp of the salt to the eggwhites. Put the rest, along with the pepper and dried herbs in the matzah meal and stir well. 2. Combine the yolks, shortening, and matzah meal and mix well, alternating between shortening and mix about three times. If you're doing it by hand, use a heavy wooden spoon or use the paddle on the mixer. It should all be well stuck together. Add the soda water about a third at a time and mix well. Adding the water in stages helps you assess how wet you want it and adjust the amount of water you add. It could vary on things like how wet the eggs are. The end result should be about the consistency of chocolate chip cookie dough. Stiff but not rigid, and not loose and wet. 3. Whip the salted whites to stiff peaks with the wire whisk on the mixer. Don't worry if it's not perfect meringue. It'll still work. 4. Gently fold the whites into the yolk/matzah meal mixture, using a heavy wooden spoon. Add about a quarter of the whites on top, then reach under with the spoon, turning it over as you reach the top. The mix should seem to wetten, but don't keep folding until all the white is absorbed--you'll overwork the batter and squash all the loft out of the eggwhites. Just fold until the white is like a ribbon through. Add the rest a quarter at a time, gently folding. It should still feel kind of fluffy when it's all mixed, and have no big white spots. Stop as soon as you can. 5. Cover and chill 30-120 minutes. (Half to two hours). Don't leave it much longer, or all the loft will go out. 6. Fill your biggest, widest, pot (stock pot, bean pot) about 3/4 full of water and put it on to boil. You'll want a rolling boil, but even with induction that much water takes some time to boil. If it's ready before you are, turn it down. Bringing it back to the boil will be easy. 7. Put a bowl of water where you're working to rinse your hands and a tray lined with parchment paper to put the balls on. (You can drop them right into the water but this is easier for me.) A medium food scoop is a great help for portioning. Take a rounded scoop's worth (i.e, don't flatten, but get round like a scoop of ice cream, but measure with your eyes--don't try to make it any particular shape in the scooper. Use a soup or serving spoon to get a similar portion if you don't have a scoop. Handle and mush the batter as little as possible. Dump the scooped portion--the size of a walnut or golf ball--into your damp hands and very gently roll it to form the ball shape. Don't worry about the exact shape. Just give it one roll in one direction and one in the other, without pressing, and put it down. Rinse/wet your hands as needed. 8. When your matzah balls are ready and your water is at a rolling boil, lower the water to a fast simmer--the high end of low (probably number 3). Carefully place matzo balls in the boiling water trying not to get spattered. Simmer for as long as you can. Bare minimum, 4 hrs. They'll sink first, then they'll rise to the top. If you have more balls than room at the top, they'll kind of stack up and the top ones start to turn brown. Just bop them down with your wooden spoon so the brown parts turn under and to let lower level ones up. After they've floated for a long time, they'll start to submerge, though they don't go down all the way to the bottom. When they're all hiding under the surface they might be done, but you could leave them in for another hour or more. If they start looking waterlogged and fluffy floating away, as in falling apart, they're overdone, so aim for 5-7 hrs. Yes, other people make matzah balls that they say are done in less than an hour, but this is how we do them for firm, fully cooked, tender and bounce free matzah balls. 9. Drain the matzah balls well while you're dishing them up. I use a ladle with a built in strainer, but you could also fish them out with a slotted spoon or small strainer with a long handle. Nobody likes the matzah ball water in their soup. :)

I too have Bianco Antico. It's faaaabulous. It really goes with a lot of colors. You can put pear green with it (which is my accent color in my house), chocolate brown, creams, whites, silver, gray, taupe, etc. etc. It is one of those granites that although it is busy, it is really open to a variety of decorating ideas. I struggled with my backsplash for quite some time with this granite. Yes, I think I'm close to being blacklisted on GW for all of my questions. But as I was closing in on the final tile--a miracle happened--I won a backsplash after entering my kitchen in a contest. The tile I won is perfect for my space. Bianco Antico varies from slab to slab--no matter what the fabricator says. I did not want one that had a lot of black and taupe in it. Mine is primarily brown, with taupes and grays in it. Here's a picture of mine: oh and another:

Thank you all for continuing to help me. I totally understand the clearances for 90 degree corners. But for 45 degree corners ... when I look at my peninsula angles I don't see how the doors could bump into each other any more than a straight run. Door hardware is knobs for the doors and typical cup pulls for drawers. However, those parts of the doors/drawers would never be near each other when opened at a 45 degree angle, unlike actual 90 degree corners. The KD does not seem to be very knowledgeable. When I questioned her during the design phase because it didn't make sense to me then either, she just said fillers are required on all corners on two sides and they can't be cut down because cabs come in 3" sizes. There was no distinction made between a 90 or 45 corner. At the very most it seems one 3" on one side would have been the most needed, such as gr8day (thx for the pic) and Shannonz's. Here is an example of one of the pics I found online w/no fillers it appears on 45 corners. It seems like this would work fine, unless I'm missing something here. Again, we paid a lot of money to these people and I feel like it lowers the aesthetic look of the cabinets, not to mention if I could have had 3" larger cabinets on one or both sides of the two 45 degree angles.

Oh...one other change to all of them...increase the seating overhang to 15", even if you stay with a raised counter. With a raised counter, there's a good possibility that things will be accidentally pushed off the counter and down to the counter (or sink) below. Having a deeper counter gives you more room on the top for things like plates, glasses, serving dishes, etc. You might consider an 18" overhang on the sink run so there's less of a chance of splashing someone sitting at the counter (or 24" with 9" deep cabinets under the overhang facing the other rooms for seasonal or other seldom-used items.) This applies for both raised and one-level counters. (Splashing goes "up" as well!) Raised counters, while not the "rage" they were a few years ago, are not necessarily out of style now. It all depends on why they're used and how they're done. Yes, raising a counter does reduce the amount of work space that's available, but in your case you will have a separate island that will offer the "great expanse of workspace" so you're not robbing yourself of that advantage. Raised counters offer a small bit of "hiding the mess", but not much. The only people who won't see the mess are those sitting down or shorter than the counter height. Anyone standing, walking by, hanging out at the counter, etc. will see the mess just fine! In fact, having seating behind a cleanup sink (like yours) means dirty dishes, etc. are in the face of anyone sitting there. The deeper the overhang behind the Cleanup Zone, the less "in the face" dirty dishes will be for those sitting there....so consider 18" to 24", if you can swing it. BTW...if you stick w/a raised counter for seating, then be sure there's plenty of room directly behind the sink for the faucet you want. Often, when there's a raised counter or window sill behind a sink, there's reduced space behind the sink for fitting a faucet or other items. If you have a raised counter, I recommend you mock it up like Cloud_Swift did b/f you finalize your layout. (See the link below to see how Cloud_Swift mocked hers up.) Here is a link that might be useful: Thread: Faucet Behind Sink???