Belated Return of the Prodigal Blogger

Hi! I've been out of the loop for almost a year (egads!), but I've thought of you often. And I've been taking pictures ever since I started cooking again, so I'm sitting myself down to catch up tonight. I'm planning on buying a domain and making a new website for all this, but in the meantime, I ought to just keep on with it as is.

I did finally get an apartment and then eventually get my all my stuff to it. But I didn't really get to cooking again until I committed to a FreshDirect membership. New Yorkers, you have to do it. Unless you live in an amazing neighborhood with great groceries, in which case, I hate you and don't bother. But for the rest of us who live in aptly named "food deserts", FreshDirect is a godsend. As it is, I'm waiting on my most recent order to show up between 10-11:30 tonight, at which point a very nice delivery man is going to bring me a couple boxes of food directly into my kitchen. All for $10 delivery fee per month! You can't beat it. No, they're not endorsing me, I'm just that thrilled. If not for FD, I'd be grumpily lugging bags home from Trader Joe's once a month and otherwise continue my steady diet of raisin bran from the corner bodega. It wasn't good, folks.

So here's a live picture of the kitchen. I love the open shelving so I can see my beloved kitchen treasures: retro blue kitchenaid mixer, grandmas nesting mixing bowls, Bulgarian bowls, and basic ikea dishware. However, they're a pain to keep clean and now often feature cat hair, so envy me only insofar as you also wish you had to clean everything you use every time.

Otherwise, that's about the majority of the kitchen (and, to be honest), living room. I've got a cabinet of spices, basics, and baking goods, and a lower cabinet of pots and flour and sugar. Glamorous NYC life!

It's not much in terms of provided storage, but the extra shelves help a lot and with the kitchen also being the living room, I at least have space to move and use the table. And I'm more than happy to have this over a tv and other comforts. It's kitchen or bed for me the few hours I spend here. 

On to the cooking! 

spices

I'm not sure whether or not I mentioned this before when I talked about how I stocked my new kitchen, but I thought I would go ahead and write a quick post about my spices. My mom's friend told my mom who told me about getting spices in bulk from stores like HEB. Luckily for me, HEB is the grocery store a few blocks from my house. So I went the bulk section when I first moved in and just beyond the granola and dried fruits and nuts and all that were spices. They had about 30 jars of various spices that you could scoop into little baggies. The first time I just got a few basics and the next couple times I went back to the grocery store (I try to go once a week and get what I want to cook that week), I kept adding spices as I thought of them or saw them in a recipe I wanted to try.

Here's the greatest part about it: I paid about $4 total for all the spice baggies, if that. My guess is probably a lot less since most of them came up, after being weighed, as like 5 cents or 10 cents or something. A few of the more expensive ones were about 70 cents. But really, it was amazing considering the a few aisles over the spices sell for like $4 each in the glass containers. And how often do we completely use one of those? This way, I can just get it as I need it and still pay less. My mom even had the idea (I don't know if she actually did it yet) of cleaning out some of her spice containers, getting spices in baggies, and storing the spices in the old labeled jars. For now, for me, I just have labeled baggies in a bag in my pantry, but hopefully I will figure out a nicer way of doing it. Maybe I could get some of those like 7-day medicine containers (you know, for people who take a drug cocktail everyday, it has little boxes for each day) and label those and it would be a small, scoopable container. Noted.

my new kitchen

As mentioned in the previous entries, I am in my new apartment in Austin and thus have a new kitchen. Unlike the past two years, where my kitchen was outfitted more or less by the school and what previous residents had left behind, this time I had to get everything myself. My family really came through by having a lot of extra things they could share. There are a few things I still need to get to really be able to make everything I want to (a big soup pot, a hand mixer, a heave duty pot for the oven), but overall it is really well stocked.

I took some pictures and thought I would also make a list of what I have just to give an idea of the kind of tools I am working with. Mostly it is just another step I wanted to take to show that I just work with what I have and things turn out pretty well even though I don't have a impressive, top of the line kitchen. I also have quite the teensy pantry but I still feel like I have more food than I can eat in a week (well, than I should eat in a week).

3 mixing bowls (white with green)
4 mixing bowls (orange/yellow with flowers)
2 skillets
1 cast iron skillet
2 silver saucepans
2 porcelain (?) saucepans
6 pyrex glass dishes (circular)
1 pyrex square dish
1 loaf pan

target utensil set (30 pieces with all sorts of spoons, spatulas, graters, clips, measuring tools, etc)

cuisinart hand blender (with a whisk attachment, immersion blender, and chopping attachment)
stand mixer
electric tea kettle
crock pot

measuring cups
measuring spoons
storage containers

ikea dishset

6 big plates

6 small plates

6 wide bowls

6 silverware

6 tumblers

6 wine glasses

4 anthropologie bowls

4 small anthropologie bowls

4 bulgarian bowls

1 big bulgarian bowl

4 blue tumblers

Pantry:

Flour

Sugar

Powdered sugar

Brown sugar

Baking soda

Baking powder

Cocoa

Vanilla extract

Olive oil

Canola oil

Balsamic vinegar

White vinegar

Salt

Pepper

Cream of tartar

Basil

Curry

Cinnamon

Garlic

Rosemary

Honey

Syrup

Mustard

Ketchup

Jelly

Cheddar cheese

Parmesan cheese

Milk

Salted butter

Unsalted butter

Eggs

Tortillas

Bread

Peanut butter

Goldfish

Pasta

Canned tomatoes

Granola

Fresh vegetables and fruit

and kat, don't you cook somewhere, too?

I have become obsessive and a little insecure about making sure my English spelling, punctuation, and grammar are always correct. I am sure that they are not, but since I am now a teacher and taking colored pens with flourish to everything my kids write, I feel obliged to hold up my end of the deal and be damn good at English. At any rate, I am particularly aware of commas and am trying to use them appropriately and when grammatically correct, but I suspect that I often over- or under-do it (not that that's a word). Also, my brain is a little fried as I have graded 54 papers, 36 tests, 36 test corrections in the past 5 days and still have 18 papers to go to finish out this batch of assignments and get new ones in on Friday. I now understand why teachers desks are always full - I have three full trays of papers, stacks for each section and assignment, plus a range of textbooks that I use for lesson planning and fiction books that I have for my students to check out from me for outside reading. But this isn't my personal blog, so let's get back to the kitchen.

In the previous entry, Katie posted pictures of her kitchen so I thought I would do the same. I also think I might follow this up with another entry reflecting back on SK recipes that I have made and linking up. My sister commented on a post asking for more of my actual recipes, so I edited some posts and added a couple at the bottom of them (Courtney's scone recipe and Pia's tomato sauce), and will be sure to include recipes or links to future posts.

Here are some images of the Pink House family kitchen. I love the house that the school provided for the 4 of us on campus, even though my room has the quasi-faulty heater. It is a very homey space and I am instantly at ease and comfortable as soon as I cross our threshold. I really love our kitchen and while I miss my granite countertops from Morocco, both for utility and aesthetics, I like this kitchen much more for its wealth of appliances and the space and presence of our dining table in the kitchen. Without further ado:

Our kitchen... 

pretty straightforward - electric oven/stove, sink, microwave (to my left on my roommate's shelves), the dryer is the appliance opposite

the housekeeper came today and I cleaned up especially well after dinner for the picture, but it generally looks fairly nice but maybe with a little more evidence of our cooking exploits (each of us has a dinner that we cook one night a week plus Abby and I often bake)

Pantry that I share with Kristina - 

top two shelves are mine and in the fridge, I have the second shelf and left bottom drawer

My pantry shelves house things like:

• flour
• oats
• dark brown sugar (light brown isn't available here)
• dried papaya (for snacking)
• rice cakes
• honey
• homemade jam from Koprivshtitsa
• chai tea
• sugar
• yeast
• rice
• pasta
• granola

My fridge has:

• butter, several unsalted for cooking and 1 salted for my toast (oh, what an indulgence!)
• jelly/jam
• greek yogurt
• eggs
• mustard
• pesto
• cyrene cheese (Bulgarian cheese similar to feta)
• fresh basil, sage
• parmesean
• bread

I don't really keep that much in the house - I shop once a week and buy only what I need to make my weekly dinner, anything I plan on baking, and my daily breakfast and lunch. I keep flour, sugar, oats, and honey stocked so I can bake, but most things I buy on an as needed basis.

Another view of the kitchen, from my pantry (my GRE study book on the table, *sigh*)

Like I mentioned above, we have an electronic stove and oven (I think I am a bigger fan of gas, but I am adjusting), microwave (though I rarely use it and don't plan on starting, I found it easy to live without), and a lot of appliances after years of single girls moving in and out of the house - immersion blender, a variety of knives (though I generally stick with the ones Courtney sent me in Morocco), a rolling pin (I bought it because I cook enough with dough that using wine bottles was driving me crazy), slotted spoons and whisks and spatulas, four cutting boards, an electric tea kettle (I never would have suspected that I would use it so often), and many other little doodads that I find thrilling after the dearth of appliances in Morocco but no one else would be as excited to see. 

so katie, what does your kitchen look like?

This is my kitchen.

Notice the old lady linoleum and the lack of counterspace (and the chili cooking away on the stove during the Michigan v. Michigan State game). We have no dishwasher, but fortunately our oven is relatively new and works pretty well. The birch-colored ikea table is home to our microwave and toaster for now, and has yet to be adorned with bar stools (so there is no seating in the kitchen). We are on the first floor, and lighting isn't super great, so we'll see how pictures go moving forward.

This is the corner of the kitchen where Eric has promised me more counterspace will go.

I’ll believe it when I see it.

This is the pantry. And the view to our paved "backyard".

The pantry contains mostly baking stuff and dry goods, such as:

• Brown, white, and confectioners sugar
• White and whole wheat flour (King Arthur brand always)
• Spices: salt, pepper, cumin, oregano, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, chili powder, allspice, poultry seasoning, thyme, curry, etc etc (way too many for me to list from memory)
• Semi-sweet chocolate chips (Ghiardelli)
• Nutella
• Maple syrup from Holiday Farm (Dalton, MA)
• Hot chocolate
• Rice vinegar
• Soy sauce
• Vegetable oil (olive oil is above the stove)
• Cans of tuna
• Whole canned tomatoes
• Fire roasted diced tomatoes
• 3 jars of Molte Bene tomato and basil pasta sauce (from Whole Foods, best pasta sauce I have ever had)
• Granola
• Couscous
• Rice
• Oatmeal
• Pasta (shells, fettuchine, spaghetti, angel hair)
• Annies Mac and Cheese
• Rice Chex, Honey Bunches of Oats, Special K
• Wheat crackers
• Candy apple kit
• Reusable shopping bags

This is the refrigerator.

It’s pretty empty now, but contains:

• ½ bushel of apples from apple picking in Boxford, MA last weekend at Smolak Farms
• Apple Cider
• Milk
• Lemonade
• Beer (Ipswitch Harvest, Wolaver’s Pumpkin, Ithaca Brewing Company, Harvest Moon, and assorted leftovers)
• Eggs
• Salad dressing (Hidden Valley ranch and basalmic vinagrette)
• Jam (four fruit, apricot, and strawberry)
• Coarse grain and regular Dijon mustard
• Organic Chicken Stock
• Butter (salted and unsalted)
• Shortening
• Cheese (port salut, jarlsburg, gruyere, tallegio, parmesan)
• Heavy cream
• Yogurt
• Heritage tomatoes, picked at Smolak Farms
• Frozen leftovers: Ina Garten’s Mac and Cheese, Chili
• Frozen Ground beef
• Frozen peas and frozen corn
• Frozen lemonade
• Ben and Jerry’s Mint Chocolate Cookie Ice Cream
• Soco Lavender and Honey Ice Cream
• Pumpkin Frozen Custard

The fridge is a little empty—usually it has far more vegetables and usually some more fruit or leftovers—grocery store trip is in the works. My tea collection and cinnamon streusel muffins that Eric's girlfriend made last Sunday are on top.

This is where we eat! The “Kandinsky Dining Room.” (There’s another Kandinsky on the opposite wall.

…and this is where all our non-beer wine and liquor lives.

As for tools, I have all the knives, cutting boards, pots and pans I could need. However, I do not nearly have as much as I want. If I had my druthers, I’d have a:

• Candy thermometer
• Full Cutco knife set
• Food processor
• 3 more baking sheets
• Tons of cookie cutters
• Food mill
• Cheese cloth
• Bundt pan

And most importantly, more counterspace.

Next up, homemade applesauce!