Kitchen Upgrade Status: Backsplash Tile

You guys, I just spent the last 5 days tiling my kitchen backsplash. For starters, this is a peek into what I went with:

I haven't grouted yet, but boy am I HAPPY with how things have turned out so far.

Why did it take me 5 days to do this? I had A LOT of area to tile, not to mention that I still have to work a full-time job during the day and try to keep me and my husband fed, although we have been eating a lot of take out. That and you kind of need a oven and stove to cook, amiright? Well, almost...

I mean, take a look at this kitchen!

I went with Grecian White Interlocking marble tiles from Home Depot instead of the trendy glass mosaic tiles that are hot right now. After some thought, the glass mosaic tiles looked too busy and came across as something that would date the kitchen after time. I wanted something classic, yet modern. I love how the tile picks up the white and black from the cabinets and counter, as well as the browns from the tile floor in the kitchen.

It helped that I didn't have to do a lot of creative tile cutting, just a lot of straight, straight lines that put my closeted OCD tendencies into overdrive. It's a good thing too because if I had to go one more day inhaling fumes from that mastic adhesive, I would set myself on fire.

There were a few hiccups, mostly with figuring out what to do with the pre-drilled hardware anchor holes that we determined for the range hood before tiling. We decided to tile around them, as we didn't want to drill holes into the tile.

We also had to do several dry fits with the range hood to make sure all the anchor holes were in the right place and the exterior chimney fit where it was supposed to. Turns out it didn't, so we had to learn how to cut stainless steel with a cut-off wheel. Thank god for the internet!

After grouting we move onto the upper cabinets and facade build-out above them. Bye-bye orange paint forever and we're on the home stretch! It's already a HUGE difference from what it used to look like, no?

Winter Sowing Status

This week is dedicated to tiling the kitchen backsplash and so far I am over the MOON on how it is turning out. I will post pics when we are done.

In the meantime, I thought I'd update on this year's winter sowing status. So far, it's been much less successful than last year when I grew my seeds in individual styrofoam cups. I'd say I've had about a 40% success rate to date;

The tomatoes have done the best (thank god) with about a dozen sprouts. I only have 2 zucchini sprouts and 4 cucumbers. My flowers didn't do so well either with only 1 borage, 5 oriental poppies, 1 columbine, and 5 hollyhocks.

There are a lot of things that could have impacted what happened. For instance, last year I used a soiless seed starting mix and this year I used a potting soil mix. Last year I had fresher seeds (for some) and grew them in individual cups versus a big growing bin. I decided to try the bins this year, as last year the seedlings dried out very easily and others have had great success growing in large containers. I could have also planted some of the seeds wrong...who knows. Maybe next year I will try a mix of different growing mediums and techniques to see what works for me.

In the meantime, I will need to resow some more seeds and hope they catch up.

In other garden news, everyone else seems to be doing well. The fava beans are up and are taking off like rockets:

The garlic is doing well too!

That big green bed of lushness behind my winter sowing tubs is a cover crop of hairy vetch. I am going to till that under this week and will plant my tomatoes in that bed when they are ready. Of course, I panicked again and bought 6 Big Box Store plants of "Early Girl" just in case my winter sowed sprouts didn't make it.

Even my Russian Fingerling potatoes are up! I have two 2'5" x 2'5" boxes of these this year with a few extras tucked into one of the beds. We'll see how it goes!

In sad news, my rhubarb didn't do well from last year and I have only 1 measly sprout coming up. Oh well, maybe that will turn into something. Some of my perennials didn't make it or are struggling and I've done what I can to help them and only time will tell.

That is part of the fun of gardening, every season is an ongoing lesson in what works and what doesn't.

Kitchen Upgrade Status: Ducting and Wall Vents

See that big hunk of metal coming out of my kitchen wall...see it?

I've never been so happy or excited about a big hunk of metal before. But more importantly, check out this super sexy wall vent cap that it is attached to on the outside...

You don't know how much I have fretted and researched about that wall vent cap. I've learned MORE than I've ever wanted to know about vinyl siding, j-chanels, mounting blocks, and j-blocks these past few weeks.

But first, if you are ever looking for some high-quality exterior bling for your house, check out the AWESOME products offered at Luxury Metals. Do yourself a favor and don't buy those cheap, aluminum things they sell at the big box stores, or else you'll end up with something like this:

It may not seem like much, but there is a right way and a wrong way to attach something to the outside of your house if you have vinyl siding. The vent cap that is in the upper left of this picture is the WRONG way, my new, sexy range hood vent cap is the RIGHT way. BTW, the vent cap shown in the video above is also the WRONG way to do this. You see, you are not supposed to just slap something to the outside of your siding, screw it in, caulk it, and hope for the best. Ideally, you want to have a flush surface to mount to in order to prevent future water leaks and your siding should be cut away to allow that to happen. In addition, that framing around the vent cap is called a j-channel, and that allows water to shed away from the hole you just cut into the outside of your house.

Unfortunately, many contractors don't go this route and many homeowners do not understand there is more involved. Doing something right often involves a lot of forethought and inconvenience, but I believe that it's better to do something right than to have to pay the price and do something over.

I am SO glad I didn't have the original HVAC company install this; I had a siding company come out to make sure it was done correctly. I have a feeling the HVAC company would have slapped this on the side of the house and walked away.

As you can see in the first pic, the sheetrock is back up under the cabinets and I am mudding and taping this week. Next weekend is tile and I'm so excited! After that is done, I'll actually be able to hang the range hood, hook it up, and see if all this hard work has paid off.

Washington D.C. Cherry Blossoms

This is the time of year when the cherry blossoms are in full bloom in northern Virginia. When we first moved up here, I made visiting the tidal basins to see the cherry blossoms in D.C. a priority. It's pretty much up there with seeing the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Whitehouse as things to see and do in D.C.

Of course, I couldn't just go see the blossoms, I wanted to go at DAWN to take pictures. My husband, a very patient man, agreed to get up with me at 4 a.m. on a Sunday to drive into D.C. to do this. When he mentioned that he was doing this to one of his coworkers, his friend laughed and said, "I can see it now, the pictures are going to be: cherry blossom, cherry blossom, MUGGER, cherry blossom."

Turns out, downtown D.C. isn't as safe as you would think, especially during weird hours of the morning, and BTW the only way you are going to find a public parking space in downtown D.C. is at 4 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

Well, we weren't mugged and it was a wonderful experience. I'm glad we were able to see it before it got crowded.

The flush of spring flowers everywhere right now is simply breathtaking. Forsythia, cherry blossoms, dogwood, ornamental cherry.,,sooo pretty.  It almost looks like a Disney movie set, no?

It wasn't long before it got really crowded and it was time to go. I hate crowds! I also hate the congested city traffic associated with such crowds. God, that makes me sound old!

The cherry blossom festival is pretty much a "been-there-done-that" one-time thing as far as I'm concerned and we haven't been back. I liken it to seeing stalactites and stalagmites...if you've seen one, you've seen them all!

Still, it's a beautiful thing and I highly recommend anyone who is in the D.C. area this weekend to see the cherry blossoms if they can.

Kitchen Upgrade Status: DIY Electricity

"I've got the power to energize..."

I've had this song in my head all morning. Man, Midnight Star waz da bomb back in the 80's. Sigh.

Anyway, the electricity portion of our kitchen was finished this morning. This gives us the green light to go ahead and finish installing the sheetrock and backsplash. But first, my kickass undercabinet lights...

You can also see they moved the power outlet/junction where the range hood will be installed to the left of where the old electrical socket was. This will be hidden behind the range hood chimney.

Next, we had the electrician put an outlet into my pantry so we could move our counter-top microwave in there and get it off the counter...

Why is it whenever you are trying to take a room photo, cats always seem to think they need to be in the picture? This is the best I could do at the time without losing my patience.

When doing DIY projects, it's best to know what you're capable of doing and what you should contract out. Electricity most often falls under the latter unless you are certified to do electrical repairs. Keep in mind that someday you MIGHT want to sell your home and electrical work that is not up to code can prevent a sale from happening until its fixed, not to mention dangerous.

Tomorrow, our ducting is installed. STOKED!

Refurbished Mid-Century Brass Chandelier

Sometime last fall, I spotted this amazing beauty on Craigsligst for a mere $100:

That picture of it on the table doesn't do it justice; it was AMAZING! And those herringbone glass light guards? AMAZEBALLS!

The lady I bought it from said that she never actually wired it up, as her bedroom ceiling was too low, but she said that she saw it hanging, lit up at the antique store where she bought it. The hardware was all brass, which made the chandy heavy as it was, but it also came with this weird thing-a-majig, which was used to wire it up:

Turns out, it was a transformer to covert electricity into low-voltage for the low-voltage lights, and the chandy couldn't be directly wired into 120 volts. That transformer looks small, but let me tell you, that thing weighed just as much, if not MORE than the chandy itself. I think my husband got on the scale while holding it and it was 6 lbs.!

It was a round brick. It was a 50 year-old round brick with Italian instructions written on it. Great!

So, we were faced with a strange conundrum, how do we wire this thing up, and would a typical ceiling electrical box support all that weight? Would we even WANT to use a 50 year-old transformer without worrying about our house burning down?  Umm, no. We were back to "if I do this, then I must do that" problem solving.

We went back and forth on whether to either re-wire the chandy for 120v and regular incandescent bulbs, or find another transformer that would work and keep it low-voltage. We even consulted with 2 professional lamp restorers in the D.C. area and they were stumped. So, this baby sat in our basement  for 5 months while we pondered and researched.

One day, I got lucky and stumbled upon a image that looked like my transformer. I discovered I had what was called a magnetic toroidal transformer. Once I knew what I was dealing with, I was off.

We eventually found this very likely candidate at Pegasus Lighting:

After speaking with their customer service about what we were trying to do, they felt confident that it would do the job, not to mention it was a fraction of the old transformer's weight. They were right!

We had to also do a little Macgyver-ing with the mounting hardware to custom fit the new transformer to the ceiling electrical box, but it worked and I could not be more happy! Isn't she gorgeous?

As you can see, I have decided to glamourize my laundry room. I'm going with a wallpaper accent wall, this chandy, and some rustic wooden shelves with brass brackets. It will be some time before I get to finish this due to the kitchen, but so far I am thrilled!

Kitchen Upgrade Status: Paint!

The orange paint is gone and has been replaced with Benjamin Moore's "Revere Pewter"! It's amazing how a different paint color can completely change the look and feel of a room. It's mostly a mess right now, but it's getting there. Sorry if the pic is a little blurry...

In other news, the bottom cabinets are done! It took me about a month to just paint these cabinets (in stages), as there was SO MUCH SANDING involved. Degrease, sand, prime, sand, prime, sand, first coat, sand, then 2nd and final coat. Imagine doing that twice for each door and drawer front and we have 10 lower doors with 7 drawer fronts! I'm exhausted just thinking about it, but the end result is gorgeous.

As you can see, the drywall is off and we are waiting for the electrician to come and re-install the electrical junction box (center) for the range hood and my under cabinet lights! I'm so excited.

After that, it's rehang new drywall, install the new backsplash (pics coming soon), install the range hood ducting, and then build up and paint the upper cabinets. A lot of work, but it will be worth every minute of it when we're done.

Preserved Meyor Lemons

Every winter/spring, a huge variety of citrus makes a glorious reappearance in the grocery stores. Honeybells, satsumas, tangerines, you name it. I do find this bittersweet, as not too long ago I could literally walk out my back door and pick my own Meyer Lemons. And if I wanted anything else, I would just go visit my friend Mary and "shop" at her orchard! Those were good days!

I do get to exchange some local produce goodies for citrus up here in Virginia, and it's worth it, but I still miss my Meyer Lemon tree and I still make these pickles every spring.

Now, these aren't the type of pickles you eat out of the jar, they are only brined with salt and lemon juice. You tuck these babies away in your refrigerator to macerate and then be used as such:

Tips from: The Kitchn

1. Grain Salads: This is my favorite. There's something about tender little nubs of preserved lemon in a bite of farro salad or barley pilaf that makes me hum with happiness. Any time you'd normally add some lemon zest or a squeeze of juice, you can swap in some preserved lemon with confidence in the result.

2. Salad Dressings and Sauces: Chopped pieces of preserved lemon make a fantastic addition to a salad, but I really like to whizz them into my salad dressing. You can also experiment with blending preserved lemons into pesto or into a sauce for grilled fish or meats. (Bonus tip: preserved lemons and fish are total best friends forever.)

3. Salsas and Dips: Want something new to spice up your salsas and dips this summer? Yup, preserved lemons will serve you very well. Just chop them up into little pieces and add them to your normal recipes. Guacamole, hummus, spicy salsas — it's all fair game. And all delicious.

4. Pasta Dishes: A really simple pasta dish with good olive oil, some garlic, and slices of preserved lemons is a beautiful thing. Top it with seared chicken breast or fish for a full meal.

5. Tagines and Other Stews: Chicken tagine with preserved lemons is certainly the most well-known dish for these lemons, but there's a great big world of tagines out there. I love preserved lemon in chickpea stews and anything with lamb. Even if your tagine or stew doesn't call for preserved lemons specifically, I fully support a little recipe tweaking.

See? Doesn't that all sound divine? 

Here's how you do it:

Take about 5-7 small Meyer Lemons and cut them into quarters. Put about a tablespoon of Kosher salt in the bottom of a pint jar and stuff in 3-4 lemon quarters. Top with more salt. Keep doing this until the jar is almost full. While doing this, push down on the lemons in the jar to extract their juice. 

Once full, take whatever lemons you have left over and squeeze their juice to cover the jarred lemons in juice.

Put a lid on the jar and stick in the refrigerator to brine. Once in the refrigerator, give the jar a shake every now and again to distribute the salt. After 3-4 weeks, the lemons are ready to be sliced or minced into whatever dish you'd like, but be careful, a little goes a long way! 

See, wasn't that easy?

Kitchen Upgrade Status: DIY Tap Dancing

Well, as DIY projects go, I’ve run into a barrier for my range hood. Turns out there is a ceiling joist that is blocking the duct pipe from being able to be run straight up into the ceiling. And, upon inspection of the space where a duct pipe could go between the ceiling and 2^nd story floor, there is wiring going across the joists that would block the pipe from being thread from the outside to where it would make a 90-degree turn down to the range.

We even tried to go straight back through the wall and into a closet that is on the other side of the kitchen, but there is a stud in the way. Grrrrr! I was SOOOOOO bummed! The install guys tried everything they could, but I'd rather them walk away than cutting a bunch of holes in my walls and ceiling.

So, it looks like I am going to be doing some fancy tap dancing.

I am going to do what Remodelando la Casa did on her cabinets to fill in the empty space above them.  I had planned to do something similar to her approach, but just not go all the way to the ceiling, but now it looks like I am going to have to. Isn't it gorgeous?

Gorgeous cabinets from Remodelando la Casa!

I am going to use her approach and nice trim-work to do something similar to this, with the range hood ducting running behind the cabinet build out:

Great work around! (source unknown)

The range chimney won't go all the way to the ceiling with this, but I will tile all the way up to the bottom of the cabinet build out. Ugh, I was hoping to be done with trim-work!

2015 Garden Plans

As most northern gardeners at this time of the year, I am anxious and excited to get things going. Yesterday, I winter sowed all of my heirloom tomato varieties, zucchini, cukes, and I’m giving the exotic tiger melon another stab. I already have sprouts from my January winter sowed flowers!

This year’s conquest looks like this, with a few return favorites:

Veggies:

• Broad Windsor Fava Beans
• Arkansas Little Leaf Pickling Cuke
• White Wonder Cuke
• Fordhook  Zucchini
• Wild Garden Lettuce Mix (again)
• Parris Island Cos Romaine Lettuce
• Russian Banana Fingerling Potatoes
• Kelloggs Breakfast Tomato
• Soldacki Tomato
• Brandywine Sudduth’s Strain Tomato (again)
• Black From Tula Tomato (again)
• Druzba Tomato (again)
• Supersauce Tomato (again)
• Jerusalem Artichoke
• Toy Choi Pak Choi
• Tivolli Spaghetti Squash
• Blue Lake Bush Beans (again)
• Mammoth Melting Sugar Snow Peas (again)
• Paris Market Carrots (again)
• Covair Smooth Leaf Spinach (again)
• Garlic mix (both Nootka Rose and Inchelium Red again)
• Other greens that I can’t remember… J

Flowers/Herbs:

• Outhouse Hollyhock
• Nigra Hollyhock
• Borage
• Coral Reef Poppy
• Fruit Punch Poppy
• Columbines (Wild, Yellow, Black Barlow)
• Nasturtium
• Queen Red Lime Zinnia (and another, but I can’t remember)
• Red and Yellow Torch Tithonia
• Bunny Tail Grass

This year, I also “hope” to have something to show from all the horseradish I planted last year and the Victoria Rhubarb. I’m not holding my breath on the rhubarb, as I’m suspecting that it may have rotted. A gardening friend told me last year that in order to successfully grow rhubarb in Virginia, it has to be grown from seed and not root starts.  I also transplanted all but one large pot of the Bristow Blackberry into the ground, so we’ll see how that does.

I'm giving cukes and zuchs a try this year from seed. I still have a ton of pickles from 2013's harvest, but you know me and pickles! I am also curious about the fava beans and Jerusalem artichoke. The beans will be started this month, as they prefer cool weather, and the artichokes will be grown in recycled bourbon half barrels, as I've heard they are invasive. And I'm "planning" on having enough energy in July to start some spaghetti squash seedlings. LOL! Usually, I'm so over the veggie garden come August that I'm ready to pack it all in, so this will be my first attempt at renewing for a fall veggie.

My gardening notes from last year tell me that I planted all my spring greens around March 20^th, so it looks like I will be jumping on that soon!

Kitchen Upgrade Status: DIY Cause and Effect

One of the things about DIY projects, or any major remodel for that matter, is what I call “cause and effect”.

• If I do THIS, then THAT will happen, or
• If I do THAT, then I need to do THIS first.

Something as simple as picking out a light fixture can throw a big, ol’ wrench in your project. For example, take the light fixture I want from Shades of Light:

Perfect, right? However, that fixture is limited to 1, 60 watt bulb.

And, my current fixture above my sink has 2 bulbs that are anywhere from 60-100 watts each. What I definitely DON’T want to do is reduce the lighting footprint in my kitchen.

Also, you’ll notice that I have a 2^nd ceiling fixture that currently matches the one above the sink. I don’t want mismatched lights either.

SO.

One of the thoughts that my husband and I had was to replace that 2^nd ceiling light with a small radius, ceiling-hugger fan. Like one of these cutie patooties:

However, if I do THIS, then I need to call in an electrician to install a ceiling fan electrical mount box, as a standard electrical box is not strong enough to withstand the vibrations of a ceiling fan.

And if I do THAT, then is there anything else I want the electrician to do while he is here, since there is a $200 minimum work order requirement with our electrical company?

How about under cabinet lights to compensate for the lower wattage lighting over the sink? GENIUS!

BUT, if I want THAT, then I had better get the electrician out here to do it when the tile is removed from the wall, and do I need to skip ahead and paint the underside of the cabinets FIRST before they install the lighting?

Mind blown.

Kitchen Upgrade Status: Cabinet Paint and Beadboard

If I never see another piece of sandpaper, it will be too soon, but I'm really happy about how things are coming along:

Of course, in these pics I haven't tackled the other half of the bottom cabinets, but I am working on them right now.

My new Whirlpool 30-inch range hood from Lowe's came in over the weekend and I have scheduled the installation with the ducting to the outside for next week. After that, the painter will come in to paint the ceiling white (maybe?) and that horrible orange to Benjamin Moore's Revere Pewter.

And sometime between getting the range hood installed and hopefully before the painter shows up, I need to remove the tile and install the new backsplash. The good news is that whoever the clown was that did the crappy tile install around the counter did the same crappy job on the walls. I think he/she basically used Liquid Nails instead of thinset or mastic.

So, the few pieces I test-removed from the wall (to see what I was dealing with) came off without taking big chunks of drywall off with them, only some of the paper. So, if I'm living right, I won't need to replace the drywall and can just patch with joint compound! Whoo-hoo!

Ground Cherry Fail

I tried, I really tried.

I grew these babies from seeds, to harvest, and then peeled and froze them until I had enough to make an exotic jam. To be honest, their flavor had never completely won me over and was convinced they would turn into something beautiful once ladled into a jar. But you know what they say about lipstick and pigs.

To me, they honestly smell better than they taste. Their smell is a haunting cross between a ripe pineapple and mango. Their taste, well, when they are fresh they do have a kind of pineapple-ly/mango flavor, but really it's more of meh to me. When frozen, their flavor dulls even more and they taste like...cotton candy. No real distinction, just cloyingly sweet and a hint of vanilla.

So, I tried to make Rosemary Gound Cherry Jam and it tasted like Christmas tree flavored cotton candy. Then, thinking I needed something more bright, I tried Orange Ground Cherry and it tasted like an orange flavored Otter Pop. Bleh!

My rule-of-thumb when it comes to canning is, "if I don't love it, I don't can it". Otherwise, it's a waste of time and effort because I won't want to share something I don't love myself. So, this huge, gallon sized bag of frozen ground cherries went into the garbage. I didn't want to throw them into the compost pile, as I'm sure I already have no less than 1,000 ground cherry seeds waiting to sprout as it is.

You win some, you lose some, right?

Orange You Glad We're Upgrading Our Kitchen?

So I've been busy these past 2 weeks. When we moved into our house, the original kitchen color was an 80's salmon pink...bleh. I had it painted to a favorite terra cotta/burnt orange and now I deeply regret it.

Our oak floors and oak cabinets, with the orange walls....TOO MUCH ORANGE! What was I thinking?

In addition the previous owners installed a dark, slate-colored 6"x 6" tile as a backsplash and around the counter. The final push to start this project was when the entire cap of tiles on the end of the counter fell off last year. Not only did the previous owners choose a crappy tile, the person who installed it did a bad job.

Everything is just too dark and too orange and it's been driving me nuts.

This is my Photoshop inspired upgrade. I downloaded a kitchen image from Pintrest that had the exact layout as mine, but a little smaller, and made the changes I wanted. If this is your kitchen, I apologize and thank you for the inspiration.

Basically, I am:

• Removing the tile from around the counter and installing bead board. 
• Painting the cabinets white and installing new hardware. 
• Removing the old backsplash and installing glass tile. 
• Installing a ducted and vented range hood. 
• Raising the top trim of the old cabinets to where there is less space between the top and the ceiling (no more dust farms). 
• Removing the cabinet to the left of the window and installing open, rustic shelving
• Repainting the whole room to BM's Revere Pewter
• Installing a new light fixture above the sink

I am doing all of this on my own with the exception of installing the range hood ducting in the ceiling and painting. Chances are there will be pieces of ceiling cut out to install the ducting to the outside and I am hiring a painter to patch the ceiling, which will then need painting, and then painting the room. I figure that I will be out of steam at that point and it's important to get drywall patching right. 

So far, things are coming along...updates coming soon!

Spanish-Style White Bean, Kale, and Chorizo Soup

I received the most awesome surprise gift from my friend Mary at Two Sisters last week. She sent me a sausage package from Pig-Of-The-Month that contained: 2 Lamb and Orange Salamis, 1 package of Andouille sausage, 1 package of chorizo sausage, and 1 BBQ piece of Pork Shoulder.

Is that an amazing friend or what? I am a very lucky lady!

Immediately I started searching around for a good recipe for that chorizo and came across the Spanish-Style White Bean, Kale, and Chorizo Soup recipe at the Cooking Channel. This sounded like the perfect dish to eat on a cold winter evening, so I went for it.

The chorizo was AMAZING and quite spicy in the heat department. It really was the primary flavoring profile for the entire dish. Lots of cumin, oregano, and red pepper. The soup came across as more of a white bean chili and it was great with a piece of cornbread and a Corona beer. I would definitely make this again.

Spanish-Style White Bean, Kale, and Chorizo Soup
Recipe source: The Cooking Channel
recipe adjustments made by me

1 1b. dry white beans (I used Cannelloni)
8 1/2 cups chicken broth
1-2 bay leaves
1 pinch saffron threads
2 tablespoons of olive oil
4 Spanish Chorizo sausages (either chopped or removed from casings)
1 large onion, medium chop
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 red-bell pepper, medium chop
1 tablespoon sweet paprika
1 bunch of kale, about 3/4 lb., tough stems removed, washed well, and coarsely chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
Sherry vinegar to taste (about 1/2 tablespoon)

Soak the beans overnight in a bowl, covered by at least 2-3 inches of water.

The next day, drain the beans and place them in a large pot. Pour in 8 cups of the chicken broth, add the bay leaves, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer the beans, partially covered, for approximately 2 hours or until tender. Remove the bay leaves.

Pour the remaining 1/2 cup of chicken broth in a cup and add the saffron threads to soak.

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. If your chorizo is an aged, harder style, chop it into 1-inch pieces. In my case, my chorizo was fresh, so I simply squeezed it out of the casings. Saute the chorizo in the oil, stirring often, until lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to transfer to a plate.

Add the onion, reduce the heat to a medium, and cook, stirring often, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook 1 minute longer. Stir in the red-bell pepper and the paprika. Cook for 2 minutes longer, then transfer the contents of the skillet to the bean pot. Feel free to deglaze the saute pan with some ladled chicken broth from the beans to get all that yummy fond on the bottom of the pan! Add that to the bean pot too.

Stir in the saffron soaking with chicken broth to the bean pot. Add the chorizo and the kale. Bring back to a simmer and cook until the kale is wilted, about 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper, stir in the vinegar, and serve hot.