babim, personally I wouldn't go with all Miele despite the phenomenal 10 year warranty they are currently offering. There are some Miele appliances that are worth it such as dishwasher, speed oven and laundry pair; the hood fan, oven, and radiant cooktop you can get elsewhere. If you said induction, I would have said Miele. You didn't mention a fridge? If you are committed to Miele and having a consistent look (and using the warranty as a back stop to make sure that the appliances work in the long run), have you gone to a Miele Design Gallery and played with the appliances? I went to the one in Vancouver and the representative let me cook on the steam oven and speed oven, which was immensely helpful. Everybody's feedback is different so you might actually like a Miele oven (personally I liked it and it's large cavity). As to the speed oven, even getting the chef version with the knob is at least Canadian $2900 before tax and delivery. If you just re-heat items, then get a Panasonic microwave as it will do the job and they make a ton of versions. And get a Breville counter top toaster oven. Both of these cost a fraction of the speed oven. The best thing about the Miele radiant cooktop that I saw was that it was designed specifically to mount a Miele oven underneath without having it positioned too low. Usually most people have cabinets underneath a cooktop due to the space clearance. My brother has a Miele cooktop - it works, it looks nice, but nothing special for the price. You can get a great hood with Kobe (I think better than Miele but perhaps not as nice looking). If you are in Toronto, you can get it from Tasco or other dealers. Tasco also has a website that lets you filter the appliances that they distribute (tascoappliance.ca). Other hoods you can look at are Best and Zephyr. A good resource is ajmadison.com where you can filter appliances and read reviews. Have you given it a try?

Decisions, decisions! Those recipes all sound so good! I'm going to copy and paste this thread so I'll have them. The risotto recipes are calling my name, I think. I love cauliflower, and capers, and could probably get the specialty capers, but I don't want to brave our specialty grocery store on Christmas Eve. Central Market is claustrophobic even on an ordinary day, I don't even want to think about what it's like today. I will save that recipe to try soon, though. However, LPink, I'm liking your Rice, Lentil and Spinach Pilaf. It would be more like a protein, with the lentils. Hmmm, decisions, decisions! lol! Jesse, if you're still reading this thread, I guess you've figured out by now what I was asking. It would be funny, though,if I was asking a vegetarian for meat cooking advice! lol. Linda, maybe it's a regional thing, but to me and to DH, a pot roast is a roast that's cooked in or rather just over water, (braised, I guess?) with carrots, celery, and potatoes cooked right along with it in the liquid. What makes it different from stew is that the meat is still a big piece of meat, rather than cut up into cubes. I agree that there's not a lot of difference, if any, in taste from stew. When I was a meat eater, I thought pot roast was okay, but nothing special. I liked oven roasted beef much better, but Dh loves pot roast, the kids okayed it for themselves for Christmas dinner, so that's what they're getting. Y'all are always so helpful. I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and my stomach! Sally

Wow--what a nice space you have to work in, and you've obviously put a LOT of thought into it. In reading your list of things important to you, you said: Ability to interact with others while prepping/cooking, with space to cook with family/friends My first thought was that the people sitting at the island are going to be waaayyy too far away from you to be able to visit with you while you prep and cook. If your kids are doing homework there, it's gonna be a long walk for you to go around and offer help (and you know they'll be asking!), because you won't be able to see what they're doing from your spot next to the prep sink. I can say this with confidence, because my own island is 8'X 4.5 ft, and when people are sitting there, 4.5 feet away from where I'm standing, it's at the outer edge of being a comfortable visiting distance--sometimes, it's slightly hard to hear them speak. Also, you will not be able to reach to the center of your island, making anything that's in the middle too far away to use easily and also making it hard to wipe off. If you put something decorative there, it may well block the view between the seating and you--which again, makes it hard to socialize. If it's your heart's desire to have a huge island, go for it, but just keep some of these things in mind as possible drawbacks. The second thing that jumps out at me is that the oven door appears to open across the doorway to the covered porch. I'd consider putting the oven to the left of the cooktop/induction burner and moving your pantry cupboards to that wall instead. I'm sure that others will chime in with ideas on this, there are some really great design minds on this forum! I agree with your idea of moving one of the dishwashers, presumably the one to the right of the sink? It's awfully far away from the dining room and the prep area, two places where dishes are most likely to be soiled. Putting it closer to the butler's pantry might make it easier to dispatch dishes coming in from the dining room, and if you're going to store your china or "good dishes" in the butler's pantry, it will make it easier to put them away as well. One thing I did with my recent remodel was look at my layout (amply tweaked by the folks on this forum) and "mentally" cook a meal, getting everything I'd need, prepping it, serving it, cleaning up, loading/unloading the dishwasher and putting things away. This gives you a "mental video" of how the kitchen will flow, and will also help you place the things you use when you prepare a meal. Others are sure to chime in with more suggestions for you--as I said, there are some really talented people on this board. Best of luck, it's going to be a "wow!" kitchen for sure. Don't forget to post pictures when you're done! Cj

I think it's amazing this thread went on so long with no mention of St Augustine. UC Verde and all the other buffalo and prairie grasses are for full sun. Kikuyu is one of the most invasive imported pest plants short of kudzu. The others mentioned are ground covers that do not repair themselves. Dichondra will die annually from flea beetle. They wipe it out faster than you can diagnose it, but it returns from seed. Fescue, in my opinion should be formally outlawed in CA unless you live west of the 5 in San Diego and Orange counties and west of the 405 in LA. North of the 10 it can be grown on the west slopes of the coastal range, but not in the valleys. St Augustine is a real turf grass, unlike many of the alternates mentioned. It spreads to repair itself under the dog feet, is very shade tolerant, also sun tolerant, and it will crowd out other grasses when mowed at the mower's highest setting. St Aug comes as pieces of sod on a pallet. Cost is about a dollar per piece covering about 2 square feet. It spreads 10 to 15 feet per year in all directions, so if you don't cover the entire area at one time, it will take over and cover for you. St Aug takes as much water as any turf grass if you want it to remain green. If you stop watering it for more than a month, it might die completely, so it differs from other grasses in that regard. But I have revived it from beyond the grave at my my new residence in the Texas Hill Country. St Augustine is considered to be a water hog, but that is pure myth. All grasses need 1 inch of water, once a week, in the hottest heat of summer. This goes for the cool season grasses in the north and the warm season grasses in the south. In Phoenix both bermuda and St Augustine need 1 inch every 4-5 days, but in the rest of the country it only needs it once a week. This time of year in your area you should be watering 1 inch, all at once, every 2-3 weeks. The problem with fescue is it needs water 3x per week in the summer and that dries up your aquifers and lakes. Not sure why you think you have clay, but you likely don't. I don't recall any brick factories in your area, so I'm skeptical. After 12 years of moderating three lawn forums, fewer than 10 writers really had clay. Your soil might have clay like properties, but those can be fixed. Even real clay can be fixed, but you have to have a good soil test along with a good reading of the soil test before you can fix it. 9 times out of 10 people who think they have clay have no clay at all but they do have fine silt and a salt imbalance (calcium, sodium, magnesium, and potassium). You can't know what the problem is without the chemistry test. A secondary issue causing hard soil is allowing the soil to dry completely such that the beneficial microbes in the soil are depleted and unhealthy. That can be fixed by spraying the soil with any clear shampoo at a rate of 3 ounces per 1,000 square feet. Follow that with 1/2 to 1 inch of water and let it go for 3 weeks. At the same time feed the soil with an organic fertilizer like alfalfa pellets, corn meal, soybean meal, or even Milorganite. Compost and/or manure won't do the same thing as the fertilizer. The deep moisture creates a perfect environment for the microbes. The organic fertilizer feeds them. Hard soil is easy to fix. The best soil test in the US is from Logan Labs in Ohio. Yes, it's been tested against all the other labs. Get their $25 test and post the results on the Lawn Care forum and you'll get about $250 worth of free advice from people who know specifically what to apply, when, how much, how often, and where to get the stuff. If you want to see some alternate grasses in action, visit Descanso Gardens and the Huntington Library in Pasadena.