Jodi Counts

Use up those extra Easter eggs (recipes)

Jodi Counts — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 20:22:23 +0000

Making Easter eggs that are decorative and delicious enough to eat — and love — begins with hard-boiling the eggs correctly. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times, Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times / April 7, 2012)

The Easter Bunny has come and gone, the egg hunt is over and the kids have overdosed on chocolate and jelly beans. You're cleaning up the last of the festivities when suddenly, reality in every shade of pastel seems to stare you down. What do you do with all those hard-boiled eggs?

No worries. We've got some ideas for you to nosh on:

Deviled eggs: This one's a no brainer. Halve some eggs and scoop out the yolks. Mash them up, folding in a little sour cream or mayonnaise to lighten, a little mustard, some chopped herbs, maybe a dash of Worcestershire. Dollop the filling back in the shell (or pipe it in if you're feeling fancy) and you've got stuffed eggs. To devil them properly, add a little heat with a dash of Tabasco or a sprinkling of cayenne pepper.

Egg salad: I like to think of egg salad as deviled eggs gone wild. After you've mashed and dressed up your egg yolks, chop up the whites and add them to the mix. Throw in some chopped onion or celery for crunch, maybe toss in some capers to brighten it with a little tang. Bacon bits work wonders here. The salad makes a perfect side dish, or spread it between a couple slices of dark pumpernickel for a quick meal.

Empanadas: What is it with hard-boiled eggs and ground meat? Add a couple hard-boiled eggs to your meatloaf before baking, or coat the egg with sausage, bread it and deep-fry it to make a classic Scotch egg. Or chop them up and use in empanadas: Spice ground beef or chicken with a little cumin, a pinch or two of paprika and some chopped onions, eggs, olives, even some raisins for an unexpected touch of sweetness. Place the filling in little pastry rounds (make your own, or use puff pastry) and bake or deep fry.

Anchovy, pepper and egg pintxos: Want to dress your eggs up a bit? Try them in a layered Spanish tapa. Spoon a little mayonnaise on a toasted baguette slice. Top with a slice each of egg and boiled, peeled potato. Place a strip of roasted green and red pepper over, then top with a couple anchovy fillets and a sprinkling of minced parsley.

Salads: Some salads are just not complete without a few wedges or slices of hard-boiled egg. Chop it up to add to a classic Cobb salad, or slice it as you assemble your next niçoise. A warm spinach salad shouldn't be without fresh crumbled bacon or some rustic egg wedges.

Sauce ravigote: For something a little different, try adding chopped egg to this sauce. Taken from the French "ravigoter," which means "to perk up," the cold version of this sauce is basically a vinaigrette decked out with capers, chopped herbs and maybe chopped onion or shallot. Chopped egg adds richness, especially when spooned over spring vegetables.

Sable cookies: Did the chocolate bunnies not satisfy your sweet tooth? These rich, buttery cookies are known for their wonderful "sandy" texture. The addition of crumbled hard-boiled egg yolks adds richness and helps to contribute to their final texture.

Go online to latimes.com/food and let us know what you're doing with your leftover hard-boiled eggs. Share ideas, recipes, even photos with us and other readers — we'd love to know!

noelle.carter@latimes.com

By Noelle Carter Los Angeles Times

1:05 p.m. CDT, April 5,

5 tips to freshen-up a home you want to sell

Jodi Counts — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 19:23:29 +0000

Follow these tips to help you get your home ready to sell without a lot of cost.

Home sales are slowly recovering, but it’s still a buyer’s market. Before you put your house on the market, you need to do a few things to make it more attractive to potential buyers.

“Most buyers aren’t going to have a lot of extra money, so they’re not looking for a fixer-upper,” says Angie Hicks, founder of Angie’s List. “Take care of the little things to get your house in tip-top shape.”

Hicks says there are five areas where you should concentrate your efforts.

Paint the place
“This is a great thing to do and it will really freshen-up the house,” Hicks says. “It will make it seem a lot brighter and potentially bigger, especially if you’re transitioning away from dark colored walls.” When choosing a color, don’t go too wild. Hicks says earth tones are popular choices for both the interior and exterior walls.

Use landscaping to boost curb appeal
Most of us don’t go in our front door anymore. Potential buyers do. You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars to create a whole new landscaping plan. But make sure the grass and flower beds in the front yard look really nice. Add mulch. Remove weeds. Hicks’ advice is to keep it “simple, clean and neat.” She says a well-landscaped yard can add 7 to 14 percent to the value of your home.

Spruce up the kitchen
If you’re going to make improvements to the house, this is a good place to start. Hicks says you can typically get an 80 percent return on investment for kitchen remodeling. But again, keep it simple. You don’t want spend tens of thousands of dollars on a lavish kitchen makeover. She suggests updating cabinets and countertops. New cabinet fronts are about 30 percent less than replacing the cabinets.

Bathroom makeover
This is another area that can turn off potential buyers because a bathroom remodel is expensive. Consider making simple improvements that have a good payback. For example, re-glaze an old tub. “That can make the bathtub look like new again without having to replace it,” Hicks says. And it should only cost a couple of hundred dollars.

Clean or replace carpets
Obviously, you’ll want to clean a dirty carpet. But if it’s badly worn or there are stains that won’t come out, you need to consider replacing it.

The bottom line
You want your house to be as good as or slightly better than the neighbors’ houses. But don’t go overboard. The most expensive house on the block is often the hardest to sell. In this market, a house that appears to be neglected is even worse.

By Herb Weisbaum, The ConsumerMan

2012 VOTED BEST REAL OFFICE

Jodi Counts — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 18:19:25 +0000

We are so pleased to learn that for the second year in a row, Windermere/Cda Realty has been voted 2012 BEST REAL OFFICE by the North Idaho Business Journal. We live in a great area and work with the best clients. Thank you for your vote of confidence.

Windermere Market Review 2011

Jodi Counts — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 20:39:26 +0000

Home prices ‘bottoming now,’ BofA Merrill Lynch analysts say

Jodi Counts — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 18:48:17 +0000

Things look better on the home front now compared to late last year, notes Bank of America Merrill Lynch ($9.82 0%), which revised its home price forecast Thursday to say “prices are bottoming now.”

In November, BofA Merrill Lynch analysts forecast home prices would fall another 8% from the second quarter of 2011 through the first quarter of 2013. But home prices only dipped 3.2% during the second half of 2011, implying they’d need to decline another 4% to 5% to reach the original estimate.

BofAML doesn’t think a drop that big is likely.

In fact, it now predicts roughly flat prices this year and next with modest growth in 2014, according to a forecast update from strategists Chris Flanagan and Ryan Asato and economist Michelle Meyer.

“But along with the earlier bottom is a slower recovery, and hence a flatter profile,” the analysts said. “We still believe prices should accelerate in the later years once the majority of the foreclosure inventory is absorbed, allowing prices to snap back to the trend in income.”

In the chart below, the first column of percentages represents the new forecast and the column to the far right shows the old forecast:

Analysts said a protracted bottom, which will last about two years, is due in part to policy initiatives such as the administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program, aimed a preventing foreclosures, and principal reductions that will be granted through the national attorneys general mortgage servicing settlement. The pilot program to rent out government-owned REO, for which BofAML has previously expressed support, and changes to the Home Affordable Refinance program also will have an impact.

“We do not believe any of these programs represents the ‘silver bullet’ for housing. However, taken together, they represent a positive step forward on the policy front,” the report said, noting that the AG settlement allows servers to move forward to more effectively service loans, foreclose when appropriate or originate new loans.

From 2012 through 2020 BofAML predicts cumulative growth of 42% in home prices — 4% on an annualized basis — comparable to its prior forecast.

BofAML expects the widely watched Case-Shiller home price index to fall 2% this quarter, reaching bottom at the end of March, with seasonal gains expected over the spring and summer and price declines over the winter. It cautioned against overacting to the choppy pattern.

The monthly inventory of available homes tumbled lower recently, reaching 6.4 months in February, down from 9.3 months in July 2011. In addition, the share of distressed sales also is on the decline. The revised report noted levels on both variables will be lower going forward than BofAML previously believed, although they expect them to modestly tick upward over the next two years.

kcurry@housingwire.com

@communicatorKLC

Is There Lasting Value in Remodeling Trends?

Jodi Counts — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 21:47:16 +0000

When you’re spending thousands to remodel a kitchen or bath, you want those updates to last a while.

To help you get ahead of and sort out the kitchen and bathroom trends — pity the last fool to install an avocado appliance in the 1970s — HouseLogic.com went to this month’s trend central, the International Builder’s Show. Our takeaway: For gosh sake, enjoy your home; remodel so that you love where you live.

Still, with a couple of exceptions, these five kitchen and bath trends offer lasting value:

1. Kitchen cleanliness.

By clean, we’re talking design, not germs. Kitchens are going clean, contemporary, and horizontal (open shelves, long and horizontal pulls, thick countertops). Even in a classic kitchen, go with simple, flat cabinets rather than highly carved cabinet details, says designer MaryJo Camp of Design Camp, Denver, N.C.

HL tip: This is a trend to get on board with. A simple, tidy, fresh appearance will have broad appeal if you decide to sell.

2. Color is out.

This year, colors are cycling out, Camp says, except for black and white used together.

HL tip: Practically speaking, black and white are hard to keep looking good. Black kitchens show every scratch and white cabinets show every speck of dirt.

Regardless, color is fickle; choose what’s best for your space.

3. Dark wood is where it’s at.

If you’ve had white cabinets, you know they show every speck of dirt, which can drive you crazy unless you have a cleaning fetish. Combine those white cabinets with another up-and-coming trend: dark wood. Or if your budget can handle the hit, go with specialty woods like mahogany or zebra wood that can make an island look like a piece of furniture.

HL tip: Alternatively, you could invest your money in more kitchen storage and functionality than trendy decorative elements that might not stand the test of time.

4. Appliances that blend in.

The more open our kitchens get, the more we want them to look like the rest of the house. That’s fueling a trend away from the big pro range and ginormous stainless-steel refrigerator and toward concealed, high-performance refrigerators and dishwashers. Induction cooktops, which use less electricity than electric cooktops, are growing in popularity, Camp said.

HL tip: When you buy appliances, look for the Energy Star label or go even deeper on energy performance ratings with Consortium of Energy Efficiency.

5. Ageless design gets easy.

What the Baby Boom wants, the Baby Boom gets. And Baby Boomers want to live in their homes forever. That’s led manufacturers to create DIY remodeling products with built-in universal design features — like toilet paper roll holders strong enough to hold your weight as you arise from the throne.

If you wanted a no-threshold shower five years ago, you had to have it fabricated as a custom piece, said Mary Jo Peterson, a Brookfield, Conn., designer. Today, companies sell no-threshold shower kits with trench-style drains covered with grills so you can roll yourself right in.

HL tip: We love the trend to universal design-ready remodeling products. To get started, check out our four universal design product ideas from anti-scald valves and door handles.

Which of these trends will you incorporate into your remodeling plans? Do you worry about staying ahead of trends?

By: Dona DeZube

Published: February 21, 2012

Lowest Interest Rates Since 1989

Jodi Counts — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 23:44:04 +0000

I hear from home buyers/seekers all the time that homes are too expensive and they are going to wait until the bottom drops out of the market. If they continue to wait interest rates will go up and they will actually be paying more for their home in the long run. Look at how interest rates have changed since 1989! If you need any help finding a home, let me know and we can start searching today!