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It can be as simple as a new grill with some storage space and some attached counter space -- which can cost as much as $10,000 -- or it can be as luxurious as the outdoor kitchen Jack and Kristin Fusco constructed in the cozy backyard of their Annapolis home.
The Fuscos had three good reasons to invest in this outdoor living space: Anthony, 14, Chris, 12, and Mark, 3. The indoor kitchen is too far away to allow Kristin to watch over her sons while scrambling to keep their summertime appetites satisfied.
"The boys are at an age where I needed a safe spot for them and their friends and a way to keep an eye on them," she said.
"All I really wanted was a brick pizza oven like we had in California. It just sort of took off from there."
Like the most ambitious outdoor kitchens, the Fuscos' kitchen includes a first-rate grill for meats, burners for Kristin's tomato sauce, a refrigerator for chopped vegetables and an icemaker for sodas.
"All I need to do is bring out the dough, and we are all set," said Kristin, who bakes pizza three or four nights a week for the boys and their friends.
But the backyard haven also includes a pool with a pair of small waterfalls, a hot tub and a fireplace.
And that is not all homeowners are adding. As family vacation money is redirected toward bringing resort living home, outdoor kitchens have begun to resemble the trophy kitchens indoors.
Inspired by home improvement and cooking shows, homeowners are fueling an outdoor cooking industry that some estimates place at $2.5 billion a year, and growing.
The appliances they choose can be as simple as a gas-fuel fire pit fitted with a grill top. Or, their outdoor kitchens can include a pot burner for crabs, lobsters or corn. A rotisserie, an infrared burner, a smoker and warming drawers for meats. Cabinets for linens and seat cushions, as well as dinnerware and appliances. An outlet for a blender, as well as a wine cooler, and a beer keg cooler. Sinks -- even dishwashers. A restroom and a changing room, too.
Pergolas and other overhead structures can support waterproof stereo speakers, ceiling fans, lights or pot racks. Commercial style portable heaters can extend the cooking season late into the fall. But the crowning touch might be a plasma television that retracts into the countertop.
Outdoor kitchens, of course, come with their own set of design and constructions issues, said Steve McHale, co-owner of McHale Landscape Design of Upper Marlboro, which created the Fuscos' kitchen.
"The appliances we use have come a long way and that has made it easier," said McHale, who said this side of his business has grown from one or two kitchens a year to more than a dozen this year.
Viking Range Corp., of Greenwood, Miss., makers of the super-status kitchen range, saw this trend take hold in the mid-1990s and has produced an entire line of what vice president Robert Woods calls "bulletproof" appliances that can take a beating from the weather.
"People are remodeling and doing quite a bit on the outside," he said. "And builders are starting to offer outdoor kitchens as an option. It has changed the appliance industry."
Outdoor kitchens can require the coordination of a number of craftsmen: carpenter, electrician, plumber, stone mason, irrigation expert and pool builder. And, of course, the landscape designer.
"The idea is to not have it look like someone plopped a kitchen down in the middle of nowhere," said McHale.
These kitchens can cost as little as $5,000 to $10,000 -- not much more than a modest home improvement project -- or more than $100,000.
And just about anybody can claim to be able to create one for you: interior designers, kitchen and bath contractors, landscape architects. It makes sense for the homeowner to check credentials closely before signing on for such a complex project.
"If your kitchen is within easy reach of your backyard, you might not need more than a good grill, a pot burner and some counter space," said Mike Miller, who designs these kitchens for McHale's company.
"It can be hard for a homeowner to know when to stop," he said. "But I think people are using them more than they ever thought they would. They let you spend the whole day outside."
Outdoor kitchens mean the smoke and the mess stay outdoors, too. A spilled glass of wine doesn't mean much if it falls on the grass. Messy kids aren't a worry. And outdoor kitchens mean the hosts can be with their guests, instead of holed up indoors preparing food.
Debra Judge Silber, associate editor of Inspired House magazine, which has a cover story on outdoor kitchens in its August issue, said more and more products are making outdoor living -- and cooking -- more comfortable.
"We have all recognized that the kitchen is the heart of the home," she said. "We are just taking that concept and moving it outdoors."
Watch HGTV's Great Outdoor Kitchens, today, 5 p.m. or visit www.HGTV.com.
For help finding a landscape contractor in your area, call the Landscape Contractor Association MD DC VA at 301-948-0810 or visit its Web site at www.lcamddcva.org and look under "Award Winners."
Visit The Appliance Source, 1823 George Ave, Annapolis, 410-267-7110.
High end digital pianos sound great, and have come a long way over the years, but ask any professional musician and they'll tell you they just don't feel the same as a traditional baby grand.
So Yamaha went to work on AvantGrand, an ingenious digital piano that uses strategically-placed resonators to pound the pianist with sound and vibrations, just like the real thing! In fact, the Yamaha CFIIIS concert grand was used to create the digital samples for this piano, and that is the real thing.
Even the pedals were tweaked to more closely resemble the mechanical feel of a traditional string and hammer piano.
Yamaha spokeswoman Alicia Keys demo'd the tech at the NAMM convention in LA on Saturday, and came away loving her vibrating piano, which she said was like a friend but better because it couldn't talk (seriously).
Mumbai: State-owned Life Insurance Corp. of India Ltd (LIC) may have bought illiquid debt paper, largely of real estate firms, worth at least Rs1,755 crore from its unit LIC Mutual Fund Asset Management Ltd (LIC MF) in October, according to people familiar with the matter.
The off-market deal was effected to provide liquidity to LIC MF to meet redemption pressure without resorting to distress sale of assets, an option not readily available to other mutual funds.
LIC, India’s largest insurer, had assets under management of Rs5.59 trillion at the end of fiscal 2007, the latest period for which figures were available from the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority, more than the sum of assets managed by the entire mutual fund industry in India.
The acquired debt included bonds worth Rs650 crore sold by BPTP Ltd, Rs543 crore by Housing Development and Infrastructure Ltd, Rs195 crore by Unitech Ltd and Rs117 crore by Sobha Developers Ltd, among others, said at least three people with knowledge of the matter who didn’t want to be named.
At the end of September, LIC MF held bonds of realty firms worth about Rs2,180 crore in its so-called liquid and liquid-plus funds, which are popular debt schemes among corporate investors and bank treasuries for parking surplus funds.
By October-end, when a liquidity crunch had taken a firm hold on the markets, the liquid and liquid-plus funds only had about Rs425 crore of real estate paper, suggesting that LIC MF had disposed of assets worth Rs1,755 crore in an illiquid market. A transaction between LIC and LIC MF would have been off the market and not reflected on the corporate bond market.
Neither Thomas Mathew, managing director of LIC, nor Sushobhan Sarker, chief executive of LIC MF, responded to emails and phone calls.
Large-scale early withdrawals since mid-September, after the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., plunged the global financial system into an unprecedented liquidity crisis which also hit Indian fund houses hard. Mutual fund investors redeemed at least Rs96,000 crore from debt schemes in September and October.
The turnover in the corporate bond market dipped to Rs7,803 crore in October compared to an average of at least Rs11,000 crore in the first nine months of 2008, according to data on the website of the capital market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India.
“Lack of liquidity and risk aversion killed the (corporate bond) market then," said J. Moses Harding, vice-president, wholesale banking, IndusInd Bank Ltd. “It has not improved since."
A flight to safety among investors further sucked liquidity out of the system. Despite the central bank extending a Rs60,000 crore credit line for banks to lend to mutual funds, debt managers working in an illiquid corporate bond market had a tough time selling bonds to meet redemption demands.
LIC is not the only firm to bail out its mutual fund unit. Housing Development Finance Corp. Ltd, India’s largest home loan company, and its partner Standard Life Plc. have taken a similar route. Standard Life holds a 40% stake in HDFC Asset Management Co. Ltd.
“The fund has certain property assets owned by Indian property companies and those assets have now turned out to be not as good quality as we thought they would be," said Gerry Grimstone, chairman of Standard Life, in a recent interview with Mint.
“The promoters have found a way of removing those assets from the fund to the benefit of the investors in the fund," Grimstone said, explaining that the firm has “substituted some of the assets of the fund which have a longer duration with high-quality short-term assets to make sure that the fund’s liquidity is preserved".
Today a young married woman, excited about being pregnant, can present to her doctor for her first prenatal appointment and be asked about whether she 'wants' the pregnancy as a matter of routine.
Interesting article, I think it shows how abortion defines western civilisation.
Tour attitude can be summarised in the one sentence where you write "making every woman 'choose' ".
Your kind has been forcing women to do what you want for too many years. Now they are freely choosing to do what 'they' want and not what 'you' want, you are crying foul.
Get over it, you lost. Women can chose to have a baby, or not. You are simply "anti-choice". Now go away.
"When the nature of abortion coercion has become so insidious"? No evidence of any coercion in this article, just a couple of anecdotes and a whole lot of unsubstantiated allegations. Author might like to look up the definition of 'coercion' - providing information or even a recommendation isn't included. Asking someone if their pregnancy is wanted merely provides an opening for the woman to discuss her situation if she wishes and explore her options.
What a strange article. It is almost as if the author believes that doctors are forcing women to have abortions when they don’t want to. Perhaps this is just the author projecting their own views of wanting to force women to maintain the pregnancy when they don’t want to.
It is also odd that someone who wants to take choice away from women keeps banging on about choice.
And then there are the unsubstantiated assertions: “Doctors behave as though abortion is the default response to every pregnancy” Uh evidence needed Debbie.
Thanks Stezza and Candide for reading the article, however your comments typify the kind of ideology that fails to hear the real experiences of women.
Stezza, not all women experience 'choice' when it comes to freely choosing to have children, just as they don't all experience 'choice when it comes to abortion. When a woman is told she will not be supported if she continues a pregnancy, and sees abortion as her only option, that is not choice. If abortion advocates such as yourself are going to ever demonstrate concern for all women, you need to stop dismissing the stories of women whose experiences have resulted in grief and trauma. They have a right to be heard.
Candide, the fact that you see no coercion in the examples in the article is the very reason why we need to keep presenting them. When a woman is told she cannot continue her education unless she an abortion, what would you call that? When a parent withdraws support for their daughter unless they have an abortion, what do you call that? The 'anecdotes' are real women's stories.. only 3 of hundreds.
"When a woman is told she will not be supported if she continues a pregnancy, and sees abortion as her only option, that is not choice"
Yes it is. She clearly has a choice to continue the pregnancy without the support of whatever person demands otherwise, or, to not continue the pregnancy. There are consequences for either choice, but a choice none the less.
Seeing that you are actually responding to comments (I respect that). Could you please answer the following simple question.
Do you support the right for women to chose to have an abortion in any circumstance?
The invitation from Apple. Photo via cnet.com.
Just hours after Microsoft’s price announcement of Windows 8, Apple has just announced a media event for next Tuesday, Oct. 23 to likely show off a much-anticipated mini iPad.
Apple sent out invites that read “We’ve got a little more to show you.” We wrote about the potential little Microsoft/Apple tablet collision course last week and it certainly looks like that may happen.
The event will be held at the California Theatre in San Jose, Calif. at 10 a.m. Pacific time.
The rumored mini iPad would be more directly competitive with Amazon’s 7-inch Kindle Fire than with the larger Microsoft Surface, which is more of an alternative to the original iPad. But limited consumer budgets mean that every high-profile tablet is competing with all the others these days.
Apple’s event comes three days before the Oct. 26 launch of Windows 8 and the Surface tablet.
Prices for the iPad Mini have been rumored to be anywhere from the low $300’s to the mid-$800’s for the top end models.
Earlier today, 9to5mac.com received a list of mini iPad SKU’s and it appears that Apple will release four models of its newest tablet. The website also reported that Apple will unveil a new 13″ Retina Macbook Pro and new Mac minis at Tuesday’s event.
12:47 a.m. -- A motorist was arrested at Isabella and Smith streets for drunken driving.
12:48 a.m. -- Police were dispatched to a loud party in the 6000 block of Jefferson Avenue.
9:19 a.m. -- A $65 garbage can was stolen from an Ingersoll Township home.
12:39 p.m. -- Gasoline was stolen from a Greendale Township gas station.
10:35 p.m. -- A deputy was called to a Hope Township home for a report of disorderly boy, age 14.
2:05 a.m. -- Deputies were sent to a Lincoln Township home to investigate a domestic assault. A 55-year-old woman was arrested on a Gladwin County warrant, and a report on the assault is being sent to the prosecutor's office.
6:06 a.m. -- Police made arrests for domestic assault and assault by strangulation at a Russell Street address.
11:55 a.m. -- A Midland woman, 74, reported a vehicle sustained $100 damage in the City of Midland.
11:55 a.m. -- Officers responded to a report of domestic violence at a North Saginaw Road address.
4:33 p.m. -- A deputy investigated a domestic assault in Midland Township. A report is being sent to the prosecutor's office for review.
5:45 p.m. -- Deputies were sent to a report of trespassing in Ingersoll Township.
4:13 a.m. -- A Larkin Township man, 22, was arrested in that township for drunken driving after a traffic crash.
11:31 a.m. -- Police investigated a hit and run traffic crash in the 2300 block of Isabella Street.
12:03 p.m. -- Deputies assisted probation agents by checking a Porter Township home for a 17-year-old woman who is wanted on a fugitive warrant. The woman was not found.
2:48 p.m. -- A deputy secured a dead bat for animal control. The bat was captured in a home in the City of Midland. The animal will be sent for testing, and it is not believed to have bitten or scratched anyone.
3:23 p.m. -- An Edenville Township woman, 54, reported someone in Israel charged $1,254 to her Paypal account, and the money ultimately was taken out of her credit union account.
3:53 p.m. -- A report of a personal protection order violation was forwarded to the Coleman Police.
4:27 p.m. -- A motorist was cited for driving without insurance after a crash at U.S. 10 and Sturgeon Road.
5:06 p.m. -- An Edenville Township man, 30, was arrested on a Gladwin County fugitive warrant at an Edenville Township home. He was turned over to Gladwin County deputies without any problems.
7:35 p.m. -- Gasoline, valued at $30, was stolen from a Greendale Township gas station.
8 p.m. -- Officers made an arrest for second-degree retail fraud in the 900 block of Joe Mann Boulevard.
8:41 p.m. -- Police were sent to a case of retail fraud in the 900 block of Joe Mann Boulevard.
10:27 p.m. -- A Warren Township man, 30, was arrested in Larkin Township for drunken driving.
Last week, we posted a video that showed off the upcoming iPhone 5C being tortured tested in a Ziploc bag with a bunch of coins, followed up by a thorough mauling by a car key. It appears that the guys over at Jailbreak Nation wanted to get in on the fun as well, and took their recently acquired champagne colored iPhone 5S to the chopping block for a portrait test of its own.
In the video above, both the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5S are pitted against each other in a torture test designed to mimic normal wear and tear by a scratching and tapping both cases with a quarter. As expected, the iPhone 5S scratches just as much as its predecessor. To really give things a thorough testing, the video's author then utilized a pocket knife to scratch the surface, and again as expected, the anodized finish quickly wore away leaving permanent scarring.
Of course, all of this is expected, as the the anodizing process creates a protective oxidization layer on the surface of the aluminum. While this layer is technically harder than the bare aluminum below it, when compared to other harder metals such as nickel and steel, it stands no chance at not being removed. It turns back to silver when scratched because the metal has not actually changed color during the anodizing process, but it has been dyed after the process was finished to take on the desired hue.
President Donald Trump pointed the finger Wednesday night at Democrats and the news media for the turbulent national political environment, on the same day explosive devices were mailed to the Obamas, the Clintons, CNN and other public officials.
Trump took no responsibly for the tone of the political discourse.
During a rally in Wisconsin, the President promised to bring those responsible for mailing the explosive devices to justice.
"Any acts or threats of political violence are an attack on our democracy itself. No nation can succeed that tolerates violence or the threat of violence as a method of political intimidation, corrosion or control, we all know that. Such conduct much be fiercely opposed and firmly prosecuted," he said.
"We want all sides to come together in peace and harmony. We can do it. We can do it. We can do it. It'll happen."

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