New guest room!

Right now our guest room consists of some bland curtains, a blah-ish lamp and some leftover office furniture. When our house-swappers were here, there was inflatable bed, too. The only exciting piece (and it is pretty darn exciting, if you ask me) is the bedside table that Nathan and I (mostly Nathan) made in a woodworking class we took way back before we had kids.

But I have big plans: new curtains, which I started shopping for last week. A new sofa bed, of the same kind Linda and Adam had in their guest room (yes, I slept on it, and it was very comfy). And a color scheme that I plan to base partly on the house we stayed at in the Blue Mountains and partly on the invitation to a million-dollar wedding we went to on Lanai about six years ago -- in short, green and purple. Here's an idea of the colors from the Blue Mountains house:

veggies, veggies, veggies

If you invite me to any kind of potluck event this summer, I shall be bringing a green salad. That's because I get piles of lettuce and other crazy greens (bok choy, arugula, mizuna[?] among them) each week in the CSA box, and I can only eat so many salads. I've also had it with fava beans, and even though almost everything I cook has onions in it, I still can't use them all.

But the CSA also brings lots of the best strawberries ever, wondeful fresh eggs, and yummy stuff we are excited about like carrots and fennel. And those apples that are like eating candy, but are already gone for the spring. And I've lost about 3 pounds since the season started 7 weeks ago, because I'm eating so many more veggies, and not as much other junk :-)

Look who's a cook all of a sudden!

As I write this (on the granite) three pots going on the stove, plus the center burner griddle: squid in tomato sauce, fava beans with bacon, and pasta to go with.

Later tonight I might make a cake from scratch -- just the cake part, cause I made the peanut butter filling and the dark chocolate frosting yesterday.

That, my friends, is now how I roll.

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.