Restaurant Review: The Fly Trap

So you're driving down Woodward through Ferndale and you notice a tiny green building. On the front, it says "The Fly Trap: A Finer Diner". You're intrigued. So you pull in to the public parking behind the place ( I always put in an extra quarter or two in the meter; Karma, you know) and go inside. More often than not, you'll have to wait a few minutes, because the customer to seat ratio is somewhat unbalanced in this very small but extremely popular establishment. So you take a minute to look around. It's charming. Brightly colored walls, vintage novelty salt and pepper shakers at each table, bar towels for napkins, a friendly staff, cute fly-themed accents to go with the name (including posters for the 50's B movie, The Fly, in the bathroom). You expect to sit down and get a nice greasy burger and maybe some onion rings. Usually, you don't have to wait too terribly long, so you sit down and peruse the menu.

That's when you realize you're not in any normal hole in the wall and you're not going to be getting a greasy burger and onion rings. 

Not that there's anything wrong with greasy burgers and certainly nothing wrong with onion rings, but when the folks at The Fly Trap say they're a "finer diner", they're not kidding. You can start off your meal with coffee from a local company that sources fair trade, organic beans from all over the world. Or perhaps you'd rather have some fresh squeezed orange juice? Do you want breakfast? How about their egg scramble specials that change daily? Like the one I had with smoked salmon, cream cheese, and dill? Top it off with whole wheat or sourdough toast with one of their house made jams, which also change daily (I had quince).  For lunch, you can get a salmon burger with ginger lime aioli. Or maybe you do want that burger, which is a half pound of perfectly seasoned beef on an onion roll. They also have a steak sandwich which is literally a rib-eye on bread that is to die for. 

If you want, you can smother your eggs or fries with their house made hot sauce, cheekily called "swat sauce: a habanero concoction" and served in glass apothecary jars. This stuff tastes like heat and spice and everything nice. Let's put it this way, I'm not a huge fan of hot sauce, but I actually bought my own jar to bring home.

For me, this place is a reason to be excited that I'll be in the city twice a week to go to school in the Fall (though not the only reason). I'll be about twenty miles closer from school than from home. It's a reason to take Woodward instead of the expressway whenever I'm going downtown and have time to stop. Hell, it might be a reason to move to Ferndale. If you live anywhere in Southeast Michigan, it's worth the trip to check out this unexpected, quirky little joint. Be sure to buy yourself a bottle of hot sauce.

You can also head over to their website and check out the menu.

Sorry for any confusion...

This blog began as a purely organizational blog. I wanted to document my quest to declutter my life and live more simply, greener, etc. Then that was sort of derailed. I stopped posting. I simply wasn't making progress or coming up with new ideas fast enough to sustain a blog. So I've decided to expand the scope of my writing here. I'm at an exciting and, admittedly, a little frightening time in my life. I recently earned a BA in Art History and will soon be starting my MA. My brother and his wife, who married in 2007, are expecting their first child (about which I'm deliriously excited). I'm starting to feel like such...a grown up. Which is a strange feeling. I still hesitate calling Art History my degree and not my major.

This blog will still hold it's original capacity, as clutter and general disorganization is still something I struggle with. However, it will also include everything from restaurant and book reviews to recipes I've tried and musings on this new chapter of my life. I think I'll enjoy writing it a lot more, and I hope you enjoy reading it.

A word about Recycling...

I think it's a slightly misunderstood. When I was a kid, I remember it was extremely inconvenient to recycle. I remember it being taught in school but not being implemented in the homes of anyone I knew. When I was really young, one even had to crush pop cans and put them in the bin. You also had to separate each type of plastic, and that had to be separate from paper, ect. There was a list of things you couldn't recycle. You couldn't use staples or tape on paper that you had to recycle. It was not, in any way, something that was fun or easy to do.

However, we've come a long way.

I encourage everyone to do a little research. You can recycle pretty much anything these days. I was amazed when I started researching just how much trash we were making that could be recycled. My magazines, for example, can now be put in the curbside bin. I started putting empty ketchup bottles, milk cartons, and those silly advertisements that come every day in the mail in there too. I've been taking cans and bottles back to the grocery store for years. I also found out that I can take ANY number plastic to the local recycling center. That means even hard plastics like the cups from fast food joints and those red plastic cups from Costco. We've recently started replacing all of our lightbulbs with CFL's, which require proper disposal, but can be taken to a Home Depot or Lowe's (this is Michigan; there's one every five feet). Batteries and ink cartridges can be taken to Best Buy. The list goes on and on.

When you can't find the info online, don't hesitate to call your recycling company! I called mine and found out that shredded paper, when placed in a brown paper bag, would be collected from the curbside bin. This solved my quandary over whether to shred all those receipts.

The only problem is this: there's not a convenient place in the garage for the recycling bin. Right now it's outside with the garbage cans, and winter is coming. And this is Michigan.

To solve this problem, I'm going to clear some old junk from a place near the can receptacle and make something similar to this recycling center from Martha Stewart. Not exactly the same, because I have different needs than those shown, but I love the pegboard idea. This would be a major clutter buster, since right now these things, especially the stupid ink cartridges, don't have a home to stay in between the printer and Best Buy. I also plan on making a chart showing everyone which items can be put in the bin, which have to be taken to the recycling center, and which have to be taken somewhere else (such as the CFL's to Home Depot).

Don't worry, I have no delusions that anyone but me will read this list, since all my parents will have to know is where I am so they can say, "Hey, Kate, go put this in the recycling." :oP

Storage equals not organization, Mmmmm.

Listen to Master Yoda.

When we moved into our house nine years ago, we tripled our space. We marveled at all the cabinets and closets. It wasn't until we had lived here a while that we realized that our organized storage dreams would be much more difficult to actualize than we had hoped. I've now come to the conclusion that more space to store things doesn't mean they'll be organized or easy to find. In fact, in some cases, it makes it worse.

For example, in my bathroom I have three medicine cabinets and two vanity cabinets. In a room used only by me and a girlfriend who spends the night a lot. Oh, sure, should be organized, right?

Never in my life have I wished so ardently for a freakin' DRAWER!

Problems like these are the reason that stores like Bed, Bath and Beyond exist. And the Container Store. And California Closets. And...well, you get the picture.

BUT beware, because buying products that are meant to contain clutter without first knowing EXACTLY what you're going to use them for only leads to more clutter. I can't tell you how many half-empty plastic bins of miscellaneous stuff are in our basement.

One of the most important things about trying to clean and green this house is using storage products effectively, which also means occasionally using them creatively. You'll be surprised what you can do with photo boxes and sock organizers.

Stay tuned.

Magazines, Magazines, Everywhere...

I LOVE magazines.I subscribe to...5? 6? Something like that. And that's not counting the ones I buy off the newsstand when they strike my fancy. While I thoroughly enjoy reading these periodicals and would never give them up, they do present some problems.

First of all, there's a lot of them and they take up tons of space. I mean, I have five years worth of issues stacked up in boxes, which are sitting in the middle of the room. This is not an acceptable storage option. Also, it's impossible to find the article or recipe that you're looking for unless you have a photographic memory. What's the use of keeping all these magazines if you don't know what you're looking for? Finally, you do get a bit of Eco-guilt if, like me, you're trying to live a greener lifestyle.

Solution? Well, there are two options, really. You could get a photo album or binder and keep cut out articles and pictures, but that only solves two of the problems. Yes, the binders take up much less space and you can recycle the unused portions of the magazines, but it's still darn hard to find anything when you need it. The better solution is to use your scanner to save the articles onto your computer. That way, you can tag and label the articles so that you can find them simply by searching your documents.

Think of it this way: let's say you have a couple of chicken breasts and need one of your many chicken recipes. You could search through a bunch of magazines and binders. OR you could simply type "Chicken" into the search field and see all of your recipes pop up. It's a wonderful thing.

I save the articles into one of four general folders, Recipes, Holidays, Home, and Personal Care. Then I broke them down into more specific ones. I also copy and paste recipes and tips from websites into word documents (along with a link to the source) and scan pages from my favorite cookbooks so that all my recipes are in one place.

Receipts are Evil

I hate receipts. With a passion. I think that they should be phased out of existence. With the database capabilities that we have now, no transaction with a card is in need of a paper receipt. Yet they're a necessary evil, especially if you have to keep track of your expenses for work or tax purposes. I buy a lot of electronics and media, which is occasionally DOA and needs to be returned or sent in for repairs. Which means, I need the receipt.

Shoeboxed is a service that allows you to scan your receipts and catalog them, as well as forward e-mailed receipts that you get from online stores. For 9.99 a month, you can even mail the receipts to them and they'll scan them for you, then shred and recycle them. There are also special scanners that you can buy that come with software, but I prefer the online option since you don't need an extra piece of machinery. I signed up for the $9.99 plan, but will probably end up doing the free one after the free trial is over (30 days).

Clutter Buster: Huge Honkin' Hard Drive

Ah, paper. A staple of Western Civilization. Did you know that paper was a major contributor to the Renaissance? Along with the development of fresco, the mass production of paper (which made it less expensive) allowed artists to create several, or even dozens of, sketches before beginning their final work. This level of experimentation simply wasn't possible with the expensive and hard to repair tempura method and led to the advent of new techniques which would change Western art forever. The availability of paper also led some to pursue the development of a machine that could mass produce books. The result? The printing press. This is all true.

However, it's also true that paper causes a LOT of clutter and just as paper replaced hand-made parchment, digital storage is quickly usurping paper. I think it will be a long time before we're "paperless", if that ever even happens, but you can clear up a lot of paper clutter with a nice big hard drive (properly backed up, of course) and the internet. Oh, and a scanner.

The next few posts will deal with ways I'm using my computer to reduce clutter.