“You Can’t Hold a Candle to These Filters”

From November 27 past the middle of December, our area underwent a prolonged unseasonal chill, with below-average temperatures every single day, save maybe one. It reached its nadir in the wee hours of December 15, when the house weather station recorded a low of 14°F. That’s certainly inhospitable, but the injury added to the insult was that the front of the house got down to 56°F, even though last February I had a completely new HVAC system installed.

When the tech from Webb Heading & Air Conditioning came out that Monday morning, his all-too-speedy verdict was that the filters on the new system (which were supposed to be good for 6 months; they’d been installed in August) were blocked by...candle soot.

This has long been a candle-burning household but this is also a house that’s almost 5000 square feet. I am having trouble wrapping my mind around two or three candles burning several days a week bringing my system to its knees in about three months.

But apparently that’s the price of progress, when looked at a certain way: advances in filtering technology mean a whole lot of stuff you don’t want blowing around your house, or passing through your system, might also include some trade-offs. The comfort specialist who did the original design of the new system and the service manager from Webb Heating & Air Conditioning came out just before Christmas and worked me through the options for striking a better balance on maintaining the system’s integrity and functionality while also living a normal warm-scented life in a candle-loving household.

We’ll have to experiment with less efficient filters and I’ll need to look at how to manage their cost better, but I appreciated the cooperation and collaboration to figure out how the dilemma could be navigated.

Meal No. 3800: Deep Dish Bacon Onion & Cheddar Pizza

Tuesday's drear and chill were utterly depressing. Pizza made me feel better. Especially because the dough had undergone a multi-day cold ferment which brought out a marvelous level of flavor that I don't always get to achieve. With pizza sauce already made a while back and vacuum-sealed to store in the freezer, it was a cinch to bring back to life with the sous vide immersion circulator. I haven't been to the grocery store in a surprisingly long while, but with what I had on hand I was able to serve up bacon onion cheddar deep dish skillet pizza. It was good.

It was also perfectly wonderful as leftovers the following evening, along with a very tasty salad left behind as extras for the film crew's craft service over the weekend. That's where I was extra glad to have homemade Thousand Island dressing at the ready.

Perhaps you're thinking, as I head into another topic within this post: replace the damn thing already. But yes: Tuesday morning I was greeted with a non-functioning downstairs HVAC system again. We tried the multiple resets of it and never got it going. So Wednesday I called Webb and of course it started right up for the technician.

And let's throw in for good measure this snap of Sumner in the kitchen after his dinner:

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Pizza Crust based on "Fool-Proof Pan Pizza," by J. Kenji López-Alt, culinary consultant for SeriousEats.com. [Updated 30 March 2023]

Sauce loosely based on "Homemade NY-Style Pizza Sauce," by J. Kenji López-Alt, culinary consultant for SeriousEats.com. [Updated 17 February 2023]

Thousand Island Dressing was an adaptation of "Beef & Cheddar Melts Sauce," a Roediger House creation.

Meal No. 3777: Ultimate Cream of Tomato Soup

This past Sunday was definitely a winter's day, complete with temps around freezing, a tease of lovely snow, and a steady cold mix of sleet and rain and flurries for a good part of the afternoon. That means a smart chef would turn his attention to a pot of soothing soup, no? Because I remain ultimately satisfied with it, I stuck with the ultimate cream of roasted tomato soup from the ever-dependable folks at Cook's Illustrated, which is never a bad idea.

But I hankered also to pilot a new bread recipe, with grilled cheese sandwiches in mind. And here came author Crystal Wilkinson to fill that need, with a generationally-tested recipe for a hearty loaf that came out just right. Incredible flavor and unbelievably soft, it was awesome bread...but it did not stand up as well to the buttering and griddling as my peasant loaves. Still: there were no regrets by this patron of his own diner.

Awakening that morning to a 60-degree first floor wasn’t a shock, because I’ve been waiting for the heating system to once again blow its motor. Perhaps the cold snap was just the right stressor to this tenuous agreement, while the unit limps along into its nearing retirement (or euthanasia?). When Matt, who was on-call for my HVAC provider, got to the house mid-day, he was able to deliver good news: he got the system to re-start and it ran fine through a couple of cycles so that he could be satisfied it was back up and running. Just after he left is when it started to snow beautifully—outside, not inside!

Of course, the system being temporarily down made Sunday morning’s latest fire necessary (Fire No. 96 as these things are obsessively tallied). The ease of opening the chimney flue and simply striking a long match to the laid logs and lighter wood means there was a toasty warmth emanating in short order.

Losing the heat downstairs makes things harder but I don’t think I can rightly call it a hardship, and with the repair bill limited to the trip charge, I'll look ahead to some future day when the trigger is pulled on replacing the system—and I’ll cover that too. I’d best temper my urge to complain when I also know I can go where it’s not cold and still be in my home.

Count me on the exceptionally relieved side of the ledger, though, that we made it through all the holidays with all the company and events here before it acted up, even in this small way that was hardly inconvenient. An otherwise easy winter Sunday, a cozy fire, piddling kitchen pursuits, and a fresh loaf of bread...it was all good.

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"Ultimate Cream of Tomato Soup," from Cook's Illustrated, November 1999. Recipe can also be found online at Cookography.com.

"Hearty Sandwich Bread," from Crystal Wilkinson. In Praisesong for the Kichen Ghosts. New York: Clarkson Potter/Publishers, 2024, p. 98-99.

Meal No. 3662: Cheeseburgers!

We wrapped up the brutally hot month of July last Wednesday and marked the occasion with an iconic summer supper: cheeseburgers with diner sauce and an ample supply of crushed BBQ kettle chips (thanks, Walmart!!). With the burgers prepped and vacuum-sealed a while back, the sous vide did most of the work and I finished them off with a good pan sear in a skillet, and that’s where the glory of cheese comes in!

As that final day of July unrolled itself across the city, it brought with it strong hot breezes and a return to temps in the 90s. I managed quite a good sweat that morning with a quick mowing of the lawn, the first time in just over six weeks—it’s been so hot and very dry this month! I wanted to get that done before showering and settling in to a short introductory virtual session with Dakar Academy’s new teachers and administrators.

This was followed by the onsite visit of a comfort specialist with Webb Heating & Air Conditioning, as we look ahead to replacing both HVAC systems for the house.

Scarlett seems to be doing quite well following that necessary procedure on her ladyparts the day before—she had a trouble-free night and awoke with a spirited appetite so that getting her next pain pill was easy. She spent the day quiet and resting but still in good spirits. I didn’t know how hard it might be to corral her activity but she seems to be more than committed to her own careful and well-paced restoration. She is a marvelous young lady, growing into adulthood while retaining all her spritely puppy charm. And her attraction to staying sequestered in the dark cavern underneath the recliner’s footrest left me desperate for the following pun: she had it spayed in the shade.

Meal No. 3656 and 3658: Hamburger Supreme

The latest blower motor in the downstairs HVAC system only survived 7 months. As the kitchen reached the mid-80s Friday a week ago, I still very much wanted to bring out a last good meal for the final night of the summer visit by my brother-in-law. A favorite comfort casserole that we call hamburger supreme was the offering that night.

And in spite of the blistering hot kitchen, I did not want Beau to conclude his visit without his favorite dessert appearing: white wine coffee cake. It was always popular in my household growing up; it was a frequent treat to take in for colleagues or for my classes when I was on faculty at Wake Forest University; it is also a noteworthy addition to the Roediger House stable with a whole new cadre of fans. And the good professor is very much the self-proclaimed leader of that pack of cheerleaders, always making me feel good about the delight it brings when that's what shows up on the dessert plates.

Beau left very early Saturday morning, and I left for him several wrapped slices of that cake to go with him. It was a quiet and casual Saturday, with rain and sprinkles for most of it. I was glad to catch up with friends and colleagues Amy and Cile and to try out Heff's Burger Club, just up the way on Fourth Street, where the good food was surpassed by the even better visit. And lo and behold, the surprise visitor late evening was such a regular presence here a decade and a half ago and up he pops on a whim in the midst of delayed business travel: the all-grown-up Cubby. In another life, in another time, and with a long-ago love, Cubby was among the marvelous fun guests here for suppers and parties and movie nights and overnighters. It was great to see him and to make up as much lost ground and history as possible!

Here's the good news: Webb HVAC was able to get the blower motor—and the blown motherboard, it turns out!—repaired this past Thursday morning, and the downstairs again became habitable.

Update: After a work trip this week to Florida, and with no grocery shopping undertaken once I was home again yesterday, I used up the rest of my ground beef to make a fresh new pan of hamburger supreme for Meal No. 3658. It always bothers me to do too quick a repeat (in this case, exactly one week apart) of a meal, even though it happens from time to time, but I was more than happy to consume this delicious casserole, this time with a bit of corn, as the day's activities wrapped up.

And doggone, how adorable is this pair of pooches:

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"Hamburger Supreme," from the late Mrs. John T. (Glynn) Johnson of Buies Creek, North Carolina.

Vanilla Bean Pudding Cake

Oh my goodness: sometimes when I mess up a recipe just a bit, I actually get a result I like even better. That's what occurred Wednesday a week ago, when in the quiet of the evening when leftovers had sufficed for dinner, I returned to the delicious vanilla bean pudding cake for our sweet finisher of another hot day. (Hot because this heat wave finally brought the downstairs HVAC system to its knees, with a frozen-up air handler in the cellar. Hence: no cooking of supper!) Anyway...not so much a self-saucing cake with my slight deviation from the instructions, but what emerged instead was a moist spongy and light surprise of sweet goodness. While it's probably supposed to serve 4-6, the three of us cleaned the pan.

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"Vanilla Bean Pudding Cakes," from Susan Reid. Published by King Arthur Baking. Recipe printed July 2017.

Meal No. 3507: Tomato and Corn Pie

The evening meal on the Friday before Christmas is a testament to the appeal of a relatively new particular recipe: tomato and corn pie. I headed down this path during the summer abundance of cherry tomatoes, roasting those tomatoes and benefitting from the lush leaves of basil growing in the kitchen garden. When I came across an evolved recipe progression traced to a Gourmet magazine article, it proved to work just fine even with store-bought vine-ripened tomatoes and dried basil from the spice rack. So that's what we sat down to as last weekend commenced, together with salad and a creamy garlicky Caesar dressing. I stuck pretty directly to the instructions this time, even opting to make it a double-crust pie, even though that denied me the added pleasure of a roasting effect on the tomatoes. It was all quite good.

As we worked our way through a ninth morning without downstairs heat that day at the Roediger House, I was once again glad for the potent heat generated in the spacious fireplace in the kitchen, with an early morning lighting of Fire No. 89. I kept it fed till the middle of the afternoon, even as more prevalent sunshine helped push the downtown temps outside towards the low 50s. It was key to making my beloved kitchen hospitable enough for me to engage in a few joyous rituals of cooking and creations, even while I was wrestling with the frustration that the first floor HVAC system had been out of commission so long.

Ah, but then came the good news mid-day: a call from Webb Heating and Air Conditioning, Inc., letting me know the blower motor had at last arrived and a technician was dispatched here promptly. Cristina and Maria were already here cleaning but the tech and the ladies managed to work around one another, thank goodness. In the scheme of things, it didn't take him too very long to get the heat up and running again. By late afternoon it was feeling pretty warm...by contrast!

Finally, let's note the dessert from that evening, a much-loved family favorite for almost a half century: chocolate pecan pie. Retaining just enough pleasant lingering warmth once dinner was dispensed with and dishes all washed and downtown walk undertaken, this pie is one of my favorites. It's why I'm surprised I didn't make it for the first time in the new kitchen until 2013, and in the intervening decade, it's only shown up five times prior to this year. Thus far in 2023, this is its second appearance.

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Pulled together and based on the following evolving recipe history:

• "Tomato Pie," from the Swamp Rabbit Café in Greenville, SC.
• "Tomato and Corn Pie," from Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen. [Published 27 August 2009]
• "Tomato and Corn Pie," by Maggie Ruggiero in Gourmet, August 2009, p. 42-43. [Published Online 15 July 2009]

Based on "Easy Lemon Caesar Salad Dressing," by Kim Hardesty of lowcarbmaven.com.

"Chocolate Pecan Pie," a Jones Family favorite since at least 1980, if not before. Also known as "Blender Pie," the recipe came from the late Lib Keith, whose hair-cutting business at her house was where our hairs got clipped for quite a few years.

"All-Butter Pie Crust," from King Arthur Test Kitchen of King Arthur Baking. See also "Butter vs. Shortening: The Great Pie Crust Bake-Off," by PJ Hamel of King Arthur Baking. [Published 23 November 2013]

Bojangles-Style Cinnamon Biscuits with Eggnog Vanilla Icing

Another new treat has found its way to the Roediger House: tender sweet cinnamon biscuits adorned with an eggnog vanilla glaze. Inspired by what was once a much-loved offering from Bojangle's before they opted instead for the quite-inferior "Cinnamon Twists," these amazing sweet somethings had to be enjoyed as pairs...there was no stopping at just one. This was the evening sweet treat last Thursday, on a day when I had a lunch meeting and did not cook dinner.

Within the endeavor was good advice for biscuit-making that the recipe author credited to my own faithful guides and mentors from Cook's Illustrated. I suspect I'll have to dig that back out and use it for some future batch to go with a tasty breakfast or perhaps dinner sometime.

Late that Thursday afternoon, as the kitchen area remained in the mid-50s, I struck a match to the season's first fire, perhaps a fitting tribute to the Winter Solstice. This was Fire No. 88 since the kitchen addition was built. By 8:30 pm, it was a more endurable 64°F in that space, helped quite likely by the hot oven that baked up those amazing treats. I do love a wood-burning fire, but I prefer for it to be an added delight instead of a fundamental and basic need (as in: 8 days without heat downstairs). Still, to be able to work and function freely, fully focused on the joys of a new kitchen creation, was a salve for the stresses of the moment!

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Bojangle's Copycat "Cinnamon Biscuits with Vanilla Icing," by Whitney Reist of SweetCayenne.com. [Published 03 November 2021 / Updated 11 March 2023]

Meal No. 3505: Moroccan Bistro Chicken

With an eye to easy and mostly-hands-off preparation last Tuesday while the downstairs was a super-chill 54°F, the dinner was what I've come to call Moroccan bistro chicken. Nicely spiced, long-simmered in chicken broth along with diced onion, served over quinoa, joined with roasted broccoli florets: the warm plate of goodness offered comfort while the premature wintry chill ruled an otherwise sunny day.

In the earnest spirit of giving credit where it's due, the source of last Tuesday's simple supper is friend and former student Brendan, who will probably not be reading this anytime soon because he and his marvelous wife are quite busy right about now with their newborn down in New Zealand. What an incredible early Christmas present for them! It made eating that meal that he once served to me all those years ago all the more special.

Meal No. 3502: Simple Beef Chili with Beans

Last Friday night’s gathering of five centered on a dinner of beef chili and sweet southern cornbread, served at the bar in the 3rd-floor man cave and eaten while balanced on laps in the tv sitting area. That’s what’s required if the downstairs HVAC system is once again on the blink. But it's a forgiving and accommodating crew that regularly gathers here at the house and everyone made it yet another great night to be together.

Last Wednesday, about midday, the downstairs filled with an acrid smell, and a quick sniff at a couple of HVAC registers confirmed that once again the blower motor was blowing up. Although the tech from my dependable folks at Webb Heating & Air Conditioning found it was still functioning, and could not source the odor to any mechanical issue, we awoke the next morning to zero heat and 61°F in the front of the house. The next tech to come Thursday confirmed another blown motor and a replacement timeline of 3-5 days.

By Friday, it was 56°F inside. (Activities and where they occurred adjusted accordingly!) For the record: The latest trio of blower motor issues started with a blow-out in July 2020; the second was in June 2022; and now 18 months later, it's come around a third time. It is proving to be not just inconvenient but awfully expensive for my friends from Webb to continue not figuring out the issue.

When I undertook my first major renovation and addition project on the house in 2008, the HVAC subcontractor who designed and installed the entirely new system for the whole house was Barnette Heating & A/C, Inc. from Mocksville, NC, and it has been a 15-year problem-plagued journey, and the issues have not been small ones. I just realized that the first blower motor that had to be replaced was less than two years after the original installation.

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"Simple Beef Chili with Kidney Beans," from Cook's Illustrated, Number Sixty-One [March-April 2003], p. 10-11.

Sweet Southern Cornbread adapted from "Golden Sweet Cornbread," from bluegirl on AllRecipes.com.

Meal No. 2910: Peruvian-Spiced Chicken Breasts

Friday night's dinner: sous vide Peruvian-spiced chicken breasts, because that was the slip drawn that morning from the freezer-item-reduction jar. I also roasted Brussels sprouts and had a pan of roasted spiced sweet potatoes, as a small variation on my usual starch theme. After dinner, though, I realized that it was getting pretty stuffy up in the attic and found that the temp had climbed to 83°F. So I had to make an after-hours call to the folks at Webb Heating and Air Conditioning and was delighted when our regular technician John was on call. He came about 8:45 pm, and it looks like there's a leak in the coils of the air handler up there. It was still 92°F outside at 9 pm that night, so I guess it isn't too surprising that the attic reached 85°F before he got it up and running again.

It reminds me of yet another one of the issues that I ended up with when the horrible Barnette Heating & Air Conditioning folks from Mocksville, NC, installed the first coil unit in the attic...and it was so beat up and busted with leaks (that I guess they did not check for) we ended up with mold in the walls and floors from leaks around the cooling lines.

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"Roasted Sweet Potatoes," from Chelsea Lords of ChelseasMessyApron.com. [Published 04 March 2019]

Meal No. 2625: Lamb and Mushroom Meat Loaf

I don't know how it works at your house, but I'm of the opinion that it will be the end of the workday, a Friday, or a holiday weekend when one of the two house air conditioning systems decides to go on the blink. It was right at 5 o'clock last Friday when I had come in from working outside and passed through an 82°F kitchen...which led me to investigate the unit down in the cellar hoping it was just frozen up again. Alas, that didn't seem to be the explanation, so leaving it shut off didn't take care of things. I decided not to bring out the on-call guy over the weekend, and all the sleeping was done up in the attic guest nook over the weekend, which made Sumner extremely happy since he can bed down there with human company, instead of crashing in his crate as per usual. Yesterday, my longtime technician John came from Webb Heating & Air Conditioning. It was a relatively quick fix but not without a higher price tag: the motor was blown and had to be replaced. Now things are humming along...pretty cool.

Although the kitchen was 87°F while I was in the midst of making dinner Sunday night, which was even worse than I was expecting it to be, I still pressed forward with my meal plans...with a 450°F oven working hard for about an hour just so we could sit down to delicious Tupelo Honey Cafe-inspired lamb and mushroom meat loaf. With creamy homemade mashed potatoes, overloaded with butter (as they should be), and a homemade brown gravy, it was the kind of meal I worked hard in the yard to earn.

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"Lamb and Multi-Mushroom Meat Loaf" (p. 150), in Tupelo Honey Cafe: Spirited Recipes from Asheville's New South Kitchen, by Elizabeth Sims with Chef Brian Sonoskus. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC, 2011.

Meal No. 1052: Chicken Caesar Salad with Restored AC

This was dinner this evening, and it was really, really good. I'm glad it was a simple meal tonight because I had a frantic late afternoon combo of meeting with an engineer to look at the attic space at the same time I had to have Webb HVAC return because the downstairs system had shut itself down again. Not sure what's going on, completely, but the technician this time wanted to say it was simply all the dust from the renovation work in the house at present.

'Sup with the Sump Pump?

The visiting Tim Schwarz and I caught an afternoon movie today, The Edge of Tomorrow, but when we returned to the house, it was noticeably stuffy and warm in the kitchen. The thermostat showed it was about 84 degrees, well above the temp set for the AC, and it purported to be in a cooling cycle of the system. The outside unit wasn't running, however, and all my attempts to diagnose the problem (check the fuses, reset the system, check the power to the sump pump) all resulted in no change.

That meant an after-hours high-dollar call to Webb Heating and Air, who have faithfully and excellently taken over my HVAC service after Barnette Heating and Air Conditioning, Inc., of Mocksville botched so many aspects of my system. Turns out I had the same technician who came out previously to fix something Barnette had royally screwed up, and he worked quickly and smartly to get the problem figured out and remediated.

Since the Barnette crew left an ineffective filter in the cellar air handler/furnace and also didn't seal that unit, there was a build-up of dust and trash that had clogged the condensate drain pump. Once that was cleared, everything was back up and running.

In the meantime, this kept me from whipping up any supper so Tim and I enjoyed more of that leftover chicken from the kamado grill.

Duct Die Nasty: Dryer Vent was a Lie-r

The blog is a lot more fun to write when I'm describing some fun meal or a gathering of good friends or a social shindig or some interesting dessert. It is a delight when I can use it to post pictures of the progress on the yard, for those who are interested to see what's going on. I like that it is a treasure-trove of images for all kinds of stuff connected to the house.

But accurately chronicling the Roediger House world also means having to talk about the downsides and undersides. And that includes the frustrations of disappointing results from hired services. I don't think I'm being my better self when I suggest that the punch-guy who does follow-up on cabinetry installation might be an idiot, although his performance makes it a reasonable question to raise.

And the complete disappearance (now going onto three years) of the general contractor for the renovation and addition project is brought up from time to time.

Today I need to share with readers yet another example of how absolutely horrible Barnette Heating & Air Conditioning, Inc. of Mocksville, NC, actually is. They were the sub-contractor for the HVAC replacement, and also for vent and ductwork in the addition built onto the original house. They are the reason, for instance, that the exhaust fan in the master bedroom really does not work, because they chose to run the fan's ductwork from one side of the house to the other and so it does not create enough push to force moisture and odors out of the external vent. That leaves the fan working way too hard and it's noisy as hell.

Ever since the new laundry room was built, I've puzzled as to why the louvered vent cover for the dryer exhaust (on the exterior of the house) was never open when the dryer was running. The easy answer to this dilemma finally got its proof when I ventured into the crawl space and made the predictable discovery that the duct was not attached to the vent. For the last four years, all my dryer lint has been blowing into the crawlspace under the house instead of exiting out of the cut wall of the subflooring.

Here's what it looked like on a recent Saturday afternoon:

You can see where it's supposed to attach to the vent.

I don't have the tools, the technique, or the patience to work up into that tight space and try to figure out how to reattach it properly...that'll have to wait until when and if Pete LaRoque ever bothers to come back and "stand behind his work." I pushed it back up to rest in the hole for the vent louver/cover, though, and I hope it will remain there as securely as it can.

UPDATE: About a week after I took these pictures of the unattached dryer exhaust ductwork, I did laundry. This was a welcome sight:

I can also report that I am a fool for not checking this out sooner. My clothes are now coming out dry after just one full cycle.