4 posts tagged “kitchens”

QotD: What was your biggest cooking disaster?

That honor is tied between:

• attempting to boil an egg, still in its shell, in a bowl of water, in the microwave, and
• attempting to roast chestnuts in a toaster oven that I hadn't bothered to preheat. 

Both attempts resulted in explosions, one which was unbearably stinky and the other which ruined a toaster oven.

Here's to slow food.

Dear Mom,

John just called to tell me he had the sensation that you are pleased with the place I'm buying.  Are pleased, not would have been pleased.

I wish I could tell you about it.  Maybe, somehow, you already know. 

I'll miss being on the phone with you when I'm unpacking my new kitchen in July.

I miss you today.  

Love,
Beth

and while we are on the subject of kitchen appliances: 

http://noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com/

(note: I am sharing this simply 'cause I love the presentation format of this site!  but must confess I haven't yet read anything by this writer.  do you recommend her?)

Cookbooks:  an ancient Fannie Farmer, stuffed with recipe clippings, cards handmade by her children, and other things that made her smile.  Joy of Cooking, ditto.  A three-ring binder of recipes from Family Circle, Woman’s Day, Bon Appetit.

Corelle dinnerware and Revereware pots and pans.

The bean pot cookie jar, often filled with homemade chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin cookies.  She could always hear that lid come in contact with the jar, no matter how gingerly I replaced it, and always made it known that she had heard.

Floral-patterned Dixie cups from the dispenser.

Collaged food imagery clipped from the aforementioned magazines that entirely covered the walls, coated in polyurethane varnish.  The wood moulding and cabinetry she painted barn red.  It was kind of a dark kitchen. 

A table that had had a previous life in a school library, which I later inherited and have since regretted giving away.  It had a small drawer in which pens and pencils, a calculator, and various odds and ends were stashed.  Its surface (also varnished in polyurethane.  She varnished quite a few things in that house. We must have been very messy kids.) was alternately illuminated by a small electric bedside-style lamp and a seasonally-scented pillar candle.

A crock pot, often fragrantly stewing away while she was at work during the day. 

An am/fm radio, usually set to an easy listening station.

The smell of coffee.  As I recall it was usually Folgers, and instant. 

Her cigarette in the ashtray on the table.

Her denture cup beside the kitchen sink.

The portable dishwasher that was the only spoil of war gained from her brief second marriage.

The uni-pet food bowl.  Heidi, our German Shepherd, was partial to Purina Cat Chow and shared a dish with the cats.

The rat that got caught (electrocuted?) in the innards of the back of the stove, and over two or three days produced the worst mystery stench I’ve ever experienced in a kitchen.

Tearful confrontations with an adolescent girlchild.  (I rather regret some of these, too.)

The warmest hugs.