Cooking with Small Portions

S.O.S. surprised me with a cabinet he made and effectively quadrupled my kitchen counter space.

How did we manage a surprise in our home others have called a well equipped closet? All day long we kept the curtain closed leading out to our patio. I was inside wondering in curiosity to the sounds outside of drilling and sawing and the words of a preoccupied man talking to himself.

And I returned from a trip to the grocery store, and... WOW!

664 square inches of counter space.

I don't know if you have ever had this happen to you... the quadrupling of kitchen counter space in the span of one Saturday, but I tell you it can be a heady thing.

It can make you believe that cooking a meal for 25 people is no great problem. (Someone else volunteered to provide the dining room.)

Hey, who knows? When my other new counter goes in, maybe S.O.S. and I will open a cooking school!

Neighborly Advice

I met a neighbor in the hallway as I tried to wrestle my laundry basket in the door. Of course, you can see the entire place from the doorway and she helpfully remarked "My husband and I made the choice to not have any furniture so we could move around."

Living a simple life we are not.

Utilize "use" don't use "utilize"

Buzz words drive me batty.

In my informal survey of how a word becomes a buzz word, I have mapped out the approximate path below:

1) Find a word most people don't know the meaning of
2) Make sure the meaning has obscurities and shades of meaning which makes it difficult to translate and impossible to explain to second-language learners.
3) Assign some very important value to the word
4) Use it every time you possibly can to convey the utmost importance to your communications

Yum, Yum, Yum,... um...

When we bought our cozy little condo, there was a definite color scheme in place. From the door frame at the front door, through the kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom, anything that could be painted was painted either black or dingy beige.

Anything and everything: hinges, electric outlet covers, circuit breaker box (painted shut), phone jacks (painted over), ceilings, cupboard doors and drawer faces.

Well, maybe not everything, as the shutters weren't painted shut like they were in the unit across the hall we briefly considered. But needless to say, paint was a top priority as soon as we signed the papers.

Now truth be told, you already know the rest of the story because chances are you have at least six stories just like it about choosing paint colors. And I could insert here any obvious statement about paint chips not being entirely reliable and this blog post would be nudged along in the direction I intend it to go.

With names like Sparkling Cider, Air of Mint, and Spiced Nectarine, it sounds like a harvest party and you can't help but be happy. Of course, the colors on the wall turned out to be vanilla and mint ice cream with a side of orange sorbet, but this isn't a great tragedy since we've already learned that a house is not quite a home without ice cream.

I should have known better than to veer away from food-themed colors, but the bathroom still needed a color other than black and dingy beige and I chose Gardening.

AKA pea soup.

Iron Chef: Remodeler's Challenge

I look up from my place at the computer to see my husband squatting in front of two stools, carefully separating out egg yokes into a series of bowls perched on the bar stools. Good thing we registered for the mixing bowls with anti-slip bottoms.

He asks where he might find a measuring cup, and since I can't readily direct him, he pulls out the stack of paper cups we are using, notes they are nine ounce cups and calculates how full he needs to fill it in order to arrive at the proper measurement.

The microwave beeps over by where it is plugged in, smack-dab in front of our only door. At least we still have a box long enough and wide enough to rest it on. Very much longer and we may decide to add wheels to the box.

Speaking of resting on boxes, S.O.S. and I have been doing that for some time. 15 uniform boxes set side-by-side makes an excellent bed frame for an air mattress. And when it comes time to add spices, we know where they are by what position they held in the boxes grid. It's like playing Battleship only without the sunken ships.

The knife block sits on the step stool and the stove does double-duty as heat source and counter-top. Paper towels are on top of the bookshelf behind three rows of boxes; napkins are still providing padding.

It turns out to be a good thing we haven't yet added wheels to the box beneath the microwave... the flat surface laying idle and exposed in front of the door is too much to resist, and that, too becomes prepping space.

All those fancy kitchen shows start off with a pristine kitchen fully stocked, with acres upon acres of counters. What kind of a challenge is that? I want to see what happens when you give one of those chefs 120 square inches of counter, all of their supplies in boxes, and a pantry that is twice as deep as it is wide.

Well... I must go. I am the judge of this Remodeler's Challenge. (But insider's note: This Chef has already won, no competition necessary.)

The Nomad's Domain

My dear S.O.S. remarked recently that he has moved more times in the four months of our marriage than ever before in his life. Poor man.

But he may prove just as influential on me as I have proved to be on him: we bought a house. Maybe the term "house" is too generous, but it is a domicile we intend on occupying for as long, if not longer, than any place I have previously lived.

One of the best things about our little condo is that because of the mirror which fills the largest wall in our home, I can eat a meal sitting next to my sweetie and across from him at the same time. Here is a picture illustrating this (don't you hate it when the photographer gets you with your mouth full?)

When we make enough room for a third person to sit on the carpet next to us, maybe you can come over for dinner.

Traveling

The staycation is all the rage these days, but here in the Slowlane we've mixed it up a bit. Instead of staying home and doing all the things you would do on a vacation, we are spending a couple of nights in several beautiful locations, traveling from place to place, all the while going to our jobs. It is kind of the opposite of the staycation. For our purposes we'll call it the workadayroadtrip.

Similarly to a vacation, packing is critical. During our workadayroadtrip we will be staying in four or five guest bedrooms, one hotel room, tent camping, traveling by plane, car, and possibly bus, attend a beach wedding and at least one baby shower (where to stow gifts?), and show up smiling and professional looking for the nearly normal work schedule (iron mysteriously not included).

Try packing for that workadayroadtrip. Before you credit me with super-human packing skills, let me tell you that I trusted summer stupor to keep people from noticing that I wore the same outfit three times this week.

Good preachers will warn you that you can't take your stuff with you when you leave this world.

Dear readers, take it from me: that is good news.