Kitchen-y

[mrissa]

I really miss the times when I would spend all day in the kitchen because we were having people over and I wanted to make something elaborate. Often those days would result in other kitchen tasks being done along the way -- a whole head of cauliflower being cleaned and chopped for later use, for example, as long as I was in the kitchen and wielding the knife, or a batch of entirely gratuitous muffins for the next day's breakfast, or a batch of cookies in case the main dessert was not somebody's cup of tea. (Nobody should ever have to suffer mediocre dessert. This is a rule of life. It is also, however, what a good stash of sorbet and ice cream in the freezer is for.)

So...I'm doing some of that today. Not the extra side tasks, and my choices of food have been somewhat influenced by what needs the least help. But the cream pie for with porphyrin's homemade gooseberry preserves is in the fridge, and there has been substantial progress on other fronts. I bought organic cream from a local dairy instead of the usual paper carton kind, for whipping and putting in the pie, and we have an abundance of whipped cream, since I wasn't sure how the volumes would translate. The top of the bottle was clotted solid. It's really lovely cream, and I hope it makes really lovely cream pie. (If it doesn't, hey, we'll have well-adorned peaches or hot cocoa or whatever with the remainder. I don't really have the time or energy to make Guinness gingerbread just to properly set off the cream I've already whipped; we'll have to get more cream once I've made Guinness gingerbread, I guess. Or pumpkin bread. Or both. I love fall so much.)

The rest of the menu is beef stew, broccoli diablo, and biscuits. I've already harvested and cleaned the herbs, prepped the aliums, and done the root veg from a kitchen chair. I'm trying to take frequent breaks. I can already tell tonight's PT is going to be a beast, but I don't care, I need to do this. I'll head down and do some more prep in a few minutes, probably start the stew pot going so it can have a good long simmer.

I'm trying to be careful and not fall on my sword knife, but it's fall here, people, and there's only so much I can do to keep out of the kitchen, vertigo notwithstanding. Not standing with vertigo. Whichever.

Comments

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

When I made beef stew the other week (crockpot) I didn't bother browning the beef first. I always have in the past so I was curious to see if there really was much difference. Nope ... though pre-browned onions might have been nicer. One less potentially hazardous step to do.

I was trying to think whether making stew in a crockpot might be easier for you. Advantages: no stirring. You start it earlier so you're not having to do three things at once. Disadvantages: You then have to do all that chopping and cuting earlier. The pot part is heavy and would break, possibly into shards, if dropped. Probably no advantages overall. (And quite likely something you've already thought out and with better information.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I've made crockpot stew before, and this was the right way to do it for how I wanted it to taste and when I was able to do things today. Early is generally better than late for me -- morning person! -- but today we had plans just when I would have wanted to get the stew going if I was to do it in the crockpot.

Also, I'm not eating by myself, so there's no reason for me to carry the crockpot anywhere at any time in the process, not even as far as the sink.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Oh, right. I was thinking of my tiny kitchen, where the first step is to wrestle it out of a corner cupboard, and letting another person do it involves backing all the way out of the kitchen first. It's possible to do real cooking in this kitchen, which makes it a big improvement over our last one, but it does take some finagling.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

You had such a nice kitchen in Phoenix.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Yup. Lots of space. Then in the Netherlands we had one that was beautiful but not very functional. Now we have one that is functional but not at all pretty. (You can say that about a lot of modern stuff in Taiwan.)