This Old House, Part 8

This photograph of the kitchen gives a better idea of how much stuff is crammed in everywhere. There's a lot of wasted space that collects dust and cobwebs that putting in a few doors would help.

In an ideal scheme of things, we'd move the wall that's on the left about 10 feet out into my garden. The carpenter has suggested moving our refrigerator (that chrome thing on the left) to the place where the cabinet is on the back wall, next to the built-in oven. The entire wall of cabinets would have to be reconfigured, but that's o.k. There is a very narrow area between the sink and the refrigerator, so moving the refrigerator would be really nice.

Currently, a lot of interior space in the back upper cabinets is lost to a lint vent from my dryer and I just found a lint vent that goes out to the roof tucked up in a hall closet that used to hold our heater. (When we switched to central air, that all went up on the roof.)

You can see the microwave sitting on the dryer and the water dispenser. I'd like to move the microwave to a space above the wall oven and get rid of the water dispenser. Now that we've got a filtered water dispenser in the refrigerator, that's an expense in space we no longer need.

Oh, yes. We've already gotten rid of the terrible track lighting you see here. The new fan and light unit on the counter has been installed over the dining room table on the other side of the wall on the right.

This Old House, Part 7

Here's a better look at the useless corner of the kitchen. Underneath all of that clutter is a utility sink, a washer, a dryer, and a microwave oven. That bit of blank wall backs a closet which is accessed from the hallway to the bedrooms, across from the putative dining room which is my home office. If it was deep enough, we could consider putting the washer and dryer behind doors opening on that hallway. I'm not sure Len would go for that. It makes a great deal of sense, though.

On the upper left, you can see the containers we use for storing little used items. Better we should go through them and just get rid of stuff.

This Old House, Part 6

Here's a look at what's being done to the kitchen. This is the partially demolished and partially rebuilt cabinet which will hold the sink. You can see where the upper cabinets used to be. They will be replaced with higher cabinets (they go to the top of the white wall, so I should be able to get one more shelf in each unit--three on the sides and two in the middle. There is now a window to the living room in the center of the wall. I'm still unsure of what the final drawers in the bottom of the cabinet will look like. I was confused when I spoke to the carpenter today. What I do think it means is that I will have less space and I'm not happy abut that.

The whole thing is almost 100 inches long. You'd think that would be plenty of space. Hah!

If you look at the left side, you'll see the clutter going to the utility sink. That's where we may put a stacking washer and dryer. Since the clutter's been put outside, it is so much nicer in that corner. Frankly, taking down all of the storage boxes makes everything feel a lot airier and bigger.

Dinner Party as a Status Symbol?

I love to cook. I really do. I started collecting recipes when I was in high school--I still have the note books. I used to take great pleasure in having friends over to my house for a good meal and conversation which lasted for hours. This goes back to college, where I'd go off campus to borrow my aunt's place to cook. I impressed the hell out of my first boyfriend when I researched and gathered the recipes to do a complete Greek meal, starting with the lemon-egg soup and ending with home made baklava (a sure-fire winner at parties I held for years.) My roommates at the New York apartment I where lived after Hofstra and before Columbia decided that they would clean up after me so I would cook most meals. That was an excellent arrangement, since neither one of them could cook.

Some of my more memorable parties include the chocolate party I gave for painter Michael Whelan when he was in the D.C. area for a gallery opening, the one I gave photographer Corson Hirschfeld the night after he had an exhibit of his hand-colored "Places of Power" open at the National Museum of Natural History which was mostly mezze, the dim sum brunch I did for friends on a challenge, and the night out here in L.A. when screen-writers Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, and Paul Guay wanted to have dinner with Harlan Ellison and I cooked Italian (Marcella Hazen is my kitchen goddess.) That dinner for ten is the closest thing I've had to replicate what I used to do all the time in D.C., except for cooking Thanksgiving dinner, one of my least favorite things in the world.

I did try to do a big Christmas dinner one year. It was our first anniversary (yes, Len and I were married on Christmas) and we had to get Michael to the airport for a trip back east to his father's late that evening. I did invite friends and, although the food was very good, it was a rushed evening and I've vowed never to do it again.

Len's idea of entertaining is to throw hot dogs on the grill and watch TV. That's not entirely fair. He's in love with Rachael Ray, so dinner (at least in winter) will often be something from 30 Minute Meals, which always take at least 90 minutes to make. It's an improvement, but his reason for having friends over is to watch television. Therefore, dinner never takes place on the dining room table, even when friends are present. Except for Thanksgiving.

I hate Thanksgiving because it involves the least imaginative cooking and no one wants to mess with the traditional turkey, stuffing, two kinds of potatoes and all other manner of starchy foods like green bean casserole. Thanksgiving's only redeeming points are baking pies and the fact that people sit around a table and talk to each other for hours. And that the television is turned off once guests arrive. In all the years Len and I have been together, I've never had fewer than 12 people at the Thanksgiving dinner table and I have had as many as 23.

So, as I said above, I used to take great pleasure in having people over for dinner or to come to my place when I make a party. The point is, I enjoy cooking for my friends who appreciate what I've done. I don't waste my time cooking for people I don't like. Cooking has always been one of my hobbies. I have deflected any suggestions that I turn to catering as a profession because I've already turned one hobby (photography) into a business. I am considering opening a bed and breakfast artists' retreat someday, though.

Today's New York Times had a terrifying article entitled "Dinner at the Foodies': Purslane and Anxiety" by Katherine Wheelock. First off: what the hell is purslane and why do I need it? (It's an herb from India, said to be Gandhi's favorite, and is used in salads raw or as a cooked vegetable. It looks a little like one of the succulents I've got potted in the garden.) The gist of the article is that dinner parties are becoming a status symbol like a good car or a great lawn, which aren't things to be had in Manhattan. Some people in New York are going nuts giving dinner parties, jumping on the latest trends and traveling hours to get just the right ingredients, or trying to avoid looking like they are responding to a trend instead of being on the cutting edge of new trends. One woman, in the midst of a divorce, talked about throwing a first birthday party for her child and ordering pizza and then having her husband go out and buy $1000 worth of food to serve. There is apparently a one-upsmanship competition going on among foodies in New York. I knew there was a good reason I didn't want to live there any more.

Very few people I know are particularly competent or interested in the kitchen. What does the well-educated woman make for dinner? Reservations. I'm good at that, but I was raised in the time when girls took home ec, not shop. I was raised in a kitchen where one grandmother made pasta by hand (when I think of her I smell flour and eggs) and the other could make a translucent strudel pastry stretched across the dining room table (I have her mother's Hoosier kitchen cabinet with an enamel top in my kitchen for a prep area.) Dining out, except for Sunday breakfast after church, was a rare occasion, reserved for The Little Venice restaurant in Binghamton (some 60 miles away) although the women in my family were excellent Italian cooks. The nearest pizza place was Molinari's in Oneonta (30 miles away), so we made pizza at home. I learned by watching and reading. I firmly believe that anyone who likes food can learn to cook if they are curious, know how to read, have a decent set of taste buds, and a sense of adventure.

I probably have four or five women friends out here who are as good or better than I am in the kitchen: Laurie, Suzenna, Karen, Gillian, and Suzanne. I've recently made friends with someone who writes about food for a living, Tory (connect to her blog on the right.) Karen's taking up baking as her third career (she was a second-career trademark attorney) and she's turning out fabulous breads. Laurie and Suzenna are phenomenal cooks and make a party's food, no matter how complicated, look totally effortless. Either one of them could be a professional caterer. Laurie works as an editor for the same company that produces Gourmet and Bon Apettite. Suzenna has a cookbook and food magazine collection which puts my considerable library to shame. (I've often said that my goal is to have as many cookbooks as Phyllis Richman had in her office at the Washington Post.) We've met many interesting people at Suzenna's house on those Sunday evenings when she does her dinner parties. While I do find Laurie and Suzenna's skills admirable, I know that I would have nothing to be embarrassed about when they come to my house, if left to my own devices.

O.K., so I do like to show off in the kitchen but remember: I only cook for people I like. I'm hoping that the remodel will make working in the kitchen easier so I spend more time there. I'd like to have people over for dinner and conversation, without the television on. If I intimidate some of the people in our circle of acquaintances, that's not really the intention (unless its a new way of counting coup, in which case I'll make notches in my new counter.)

If you don't think you can compete with me in the kitchen, you can reciprocate for dinner by taking me out to a good restaurant. I'd be happy to suggest one.

This Old House, Part 5

Our carpenter finally returned to work on Saturday. His idea of "first thing in the morning" is a lot later than mine. Ditto on Sunday, when I drove to Malibu for a swap meet of horse tack and such, and got back two hours later (at almost noon) after which he showed up. He's a very nice man, but clearly, time challenged.

I now have my window between the kitchen and the living room. I took advantage of it last night to work on part of our meal while everyone else was watching television--and I could watch while I worked. Hooray. Everyone who came by last night loves the way it looks. I think that's stressing Len even more. I wanted the window to be a few inches bigger by making the bottom lower. Len didn't want the top of the faucet to be visible from the other side. I could have gotten at least another inch or two, because the frame closes the space, but I'll live.

Problems right now include the fact that there is no water pressure for the cold water and the spray nozzle must have an air bubble or something because it isn't working with the cold water although it will with the hot.

The carpenter has suggested we could gain a lot more space by purchasing a stacking washer and dryer and tucking them into the spot where we now have a utility sink, which I've never found particularly useful. Our current units are almost 15 years old (when Len and I were first married, we took the laundry out to be done every week and then he reluctantly moved on to the pay laundry when we were up to about $60/week for the wash), so replacing them wouldn't be out of line. I went to look at stacking units and it will set us back something along the same order as our refrigerator did. We can probably afford it.

If we do that, the next thing will be moving the refrigerator and redoing the wall that's on the north end of the kitchen with cabinets and possibly counter space. It would be nice to have enough storage and work-space in that room. The new lighting has been enough to make me quite cheerful even if the rest of the place isn't done yet.