AFTER

Yup. There it is. Greatest. Kitchen. Ever.

It's been done for the past three weeks, expect for the microwave, which was installed a couple days ago (anyone need a big, silver microwave, less than a year old?).

There will be more pics later, mostly showing the insane amount of storage space. I think I'm going to start keeping my fabric stash on some of those high shelves (we have 8 more inches of vertical space, you know).

Also, that is, in fact, a new range. It boils water in about 3 minutes and most certainly did NOT cost $3,000. It's a regular old Best Buy range that is super-awesome and discounted thanks to Mr. Schrenk's mad bargaining skillz.

Yeah, the white fridge and dishwasher are a little out of place, but we're not going to replace appliances that are less than five years old for purely aesthetic reasons.

In case you've forgotten, here's the before, as a reminder:

Grommets are hard

I finished the first of the two curtains; the grommets were by far the hardest part. I would manage to force one on there and all my grip strength would be spent. Nathan had to do most of them (pliers wouldn't work because it would make marks in the plastic). I'll post pics tomorrow when it's daylight.

Curtains!

Things are more or less back to normal (kitchen fully usable, travel done for several months) so I get to sew again! Curtains for the back room. Grommets. Good stuff!

Fava beans, leeks and "green garlic"

These are three of the items from the first four CSA shares that I have never cooked with before. But leeks go well with steamed broccoli and mushrooms, apparently. I'm not so down with this mild garlic business; garlic is like a woman with strong opinions who loves to share them -- muzzling her is immoral. There's also some other stuff I've never heard of and can't remember the name of...

I also need to boil the artichokes at some point. And steam broccoli. I get sick of salad really fast, though.

Hot stuff

Now that we have a kitchen, it's too hot to cook indoors. 93 today, so we'll be grilling dinner.

Happily coinciding with the completion of the kitchen is the start of our CSA season. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture; you pay a farm at the beginning of the year for your whole spring-summer-fall's worth of produce, and the farm has cash for its expenses. This particular farm has been doing this for 14 years, and there's a waiting list every year, so it's gotta be good.

This means we're getting all kind of crazy vegetables that I have no idea what to do with. Fortunately the woman at the farm sends out an email each week with cooking instructions and recipes.

Tonight I'm making something with leeks and broccoli, to go with the grass-fed steak from the Menlo Park farmers market

The home stretch! (no, for realz!)

Yesterday our stove arrived, and today James installed allll the pulls. So we can actually get stuff out of all our wonderful drawers and cabinets. The very last step (I think) is the microwave over the stove, which is supposed to come Thursday. Woo, stove!

Now we're cooking with gas!

Gas in little canisters from REI, that is. There's still no range in our kitchen, but Nathan bought a new one last night, I'm told. I'm in Illannoy visiting family, which is why my fans are left to clamor for new pics.

Last week, in between trips to Florida (ie swamp) and Chicagoland (ie tundra) I did a lot of cooking on the camp stove in the backyard. Fortunately, it wasn't snowing there, like it was at the time here.