The New Kitchen

In case anyone ever reads this poor dusty old food blog again, the reason for this hiatus has been the best possible for any cook: a new kitchen!

My last post was at the end of January, when final installation details and coordination and missing materials came to a crescendo. There was a panic about the range hood, delayed flooring, the redesigned island top, the missing sink front pieced, and countless other decisions and things to deal with.

Somehow we got through it all, and moved in to our newly remodeled house on March 18, 2009. And now, almost 4 months later, we're still hardly settled in -- most rooms still have boxes and all the crummy old furniture is still here. But I did set up the kitchen!

My careful planning of where every kitchen item would go mostly worked, with a few notable exceptions (such as the silverware drawer -- situated perfectly for setting the table, but poorly for the 1000 times a day you reach for a knife to spread mayonnaise or a spoon to scoop cottage cheese). I was concerned that the ovens being so far would present a problem, but an oven isn't something you get to frequently during a cooking session. The distance does complicate stovetop-to-broiler items like frittatas, but it's livable.

Did I really need two ovens and six burners? Probably not. Most cooks -- real cooks, not posers like me -- work fine without them. However, I've found some unexpected benefits to both. With two ovens, you don't have to shift racks around as much. The bottom oven has the racks spread out to fit larger items; the top oven for flatter things. My GE Monogram ovens have glide-out racks on rollers, and that is an expected fabulousness, I absolutely love that. I actually have had occasion to use all six cooktop burners at once, but quickly found a major drawback to that: you just can't keep up with six things on the stove! But I love being able to put the three items -- which I frequently do have -- all up front. And the teakettle can stay where it is.

Since moving in, I have done lots of fun cooking and even taken some photos, but putting it together into a post has been tricky. But I'm going to resume food-blogging now, because if there's one thing I can't stand, it's a poser kitchen. This one is here to be used.