Wordless Wednesday: Inside

63°f/16°C, clear.

Since the house is mostly tidied up, I thought I better take photos!

The log room:

The kitchen:

Tried out a panoramic view:

The living room:

I know, lots of stuff.  Some of it is "just visiting" and will move on to a booth. But most of it stays. No minimalist here! For years I couldn't have pretty things because we couldn't afford them. Now I can, and I love it. The grandkids love it too.

As for after we are gone, the boys know to just call an auction company or estate agent.  One good thing: we have little storage, no basement or attic, so what you see is pretty much what we have. And very little of it is plastic. Most has some resale value, at least.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Around the Kitchen: April Food Blog

59°f/15°C, clear after a stormy evening.

I took a few photos that I meant to use for the April food blog, but then forgot to write it, but here they are anyway. I mostly forgot to take photos or keep a record in April. It was a busy month.

This is our Berkey water filter. It will filter a gallon and a half or more at a time. We love it..our well water, while plentiful, has a taste we don't like. The Berkey takes care of that.

A friend gave me this delightful wire half-basket, perfect for storing fruit.

Larry dates our eggs so we don't accidentally leave some in the fridge too long. Our hens are laying 6-8 eggs a day so it's important to know which ones need to be used first. 

Asparagus! Our season is almost over sadly, but we have had many meals from our scattered plants this year.

A pretty gift from another friend.

And just because I like soft lighting, I added this little jug lamp to my kitchen. It makes me smile.

 

I have written before about canning "marinated salad", but I don't think I have shown a photo of how it looks in the jar. So pretty. And tasty! Layers of cucumbers, onions, and red and yellow tomatoes in a pickling solution. The recipe called for cherry tomatoes but I had slicing tomatoes that needed to be used. I just chop this up and mix with pasta and dressing, maybe some shredded carrots and chopped celery and have a quick pasta salad. Delicious.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Small Things

Coffee time,

In the cupboard,

flowers in the window, 

and tea time.

It's the little things, the small moments, the fleeting glance that make the everyday something special.


Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

How One Thing Leads to Another: Ball Pitchers

When I was a child we had a cream-colored ball-shaped pitcher that we used for making Kool-aid. It had an ice lip to prevent the ice cubes from plopping into your cup, and the drink was also so icy cold in that pitcher on hot summer days.

Mom kept the pitcher on a high shelf in her kitchen, and after she passed away all of us wanted it. I can't remember who ended up with it after she passed away, but by that time I'd found one just like it and kept it on a high shelf in my kitchen, where it made me smile every time I saw it.

That one pitcher led to the purchase of a small red creamer because I like the homey shape. I used it daily for a while; then it too went up on the high shelf. Many years later I got into the antiques and vintage resale business, and in scouting auctions, flea markets, etc for stock I found a larger red ball pitcher. It too went up on the shelf. I soon found more in yellow, green and blue. There was even a pink one that apparently flew out of the back of my husband's truck in a tote that wasn't tied down properly. That one just plain disappeared.

The collection continued to grow: I found a small green one when we were on vacation in Oregon last summer, and two stained pale yellow ones from a friend's resale group. Another green one was an eBay find, and made an adventurous journey from the wilds of northern Montana through blizzard conditions to the seller's mailbox, and eventually to me. We shared many messages back and forth during the saga.

The latest addition came from a Facebook friend. He saw a photo of my collection in a vintage kitchen group I belong to, and thought I needed a cobalt blue cream pitcher, so he sent me one as a gift. It has found its place on the shelf of ball pitchers, a shelf that contains many stories now, and always makes me smile.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Why I Love My Kitchen

We've been working on the kitchen here and there over the last couple months and while we're nowhere near finished, it is beginning to come together.

I love being in my kitchen. I smile just looking at it these days.

We have not done any major upgrades--no new appliances or cabinets.

All we've done, really, is paint and move things around. The biggest change came with the removal of the old wood cookstove, a hard decision but one I can see was right every time I walk in the room.

We still have to replace the countertop tile, and we need to finish painting this big guy. The door, at least, is stripped and ready to hang as soon as I buy more paint and get it on.

One of my favorite corners is my little desk. I pay bills here, look up recipes, and work on small projects.

This desk is right beside another favorite place, the cupboard where I keep my prettiest glass.

Yes, I love my kitchen. 

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Reclaiming the Kitchen

It was a wild year, 2014. We steamrolled through it, getting done what we could as far as housekeeping and kept promising ourselves that we’d take a few days and clean house. Really, we would. Just as soon as we had some free time. Which, of course, never materialized.

So now in early 2015 we are playing catch-up. The kitchen, that hub of the house, suffered most from the neglect. The cabinets were a mess, inside and out. A sharp drop in temperature to near zero brought an unwelcome invasion into the nether regions of those cabinets—mice! We waged war and drove back the enemy, but the field of battle needed a thorough cleaning after that. Add in the work on the roof last month and the debris that fell from above to the tops of everything (because with no attic, that dust and grit ended up inside. Yuck.).

And I was tired of my cabinets. They have been the same color since the early 1990’s, I guess, whenever forest green was the “in” color. The color still looked fine in my kitchen but I was ready for a change.

Then there was the big pantry cabinet. It’s a beast of a thing, holding a huge amount of food, utensils, bowls, etc. But it was a disaster area. Fortunately the mice could not get in there, but we’d been just piling stuff in willy-nilly (I like that word—I wonder what its origins are?) and the result was a threat to life and limb every time the doors were opened. In frustration the other day I threw everything out. Not literally of course! But shelf by shelf I sorted, rearranged and downsized the contents of that big cupboard.

Earlier on I had done the same with my china cabinet (I should call it my glass cabinet!),

and then moved on to the sifter cabinet.

Today I tackled the refrigerator and solved, I think, the mystery of the water that kept appearing on the bottom shelf. A gas refrigerator operates a bit differently than electric ones, and this one is not self-defrosting. After looking deep inside, I found a little catch cup full of ice, and from it was dripping a steady drip-drip-drip of water. I called the manufacturer, talked to a nice young man named Eric and together we  figured out a solution to the problem. Fingers crossed that it’s really fixed! It’s nice to be able to call a company and have a human answer the phone—and be the same person who can fix the problem. Since I was head first in there anyway I went ahead and cleaned out the fridge, a fairly scary place.

There is, however, one change still coming (after the cabinet doors are back on, the one thing left to do to the cabinets).The wood cookstove left today and we have another pantry cupboard to move in, which will mean more rearranging of stuff.

Right now everything that was stored on and in the old stove is all over the kitchen so I’m still dealing with that clutter until this last step is finished. But the end is in sight.

I am loving my kitchen again. I can actually find things! And get things out without worrying about something else falling on me. Cooking is so much easier that I find myself doing more of these days.

It’s a good feeling to reclaim my kitchen; and when spring and all its additional work comes along, I’ll enjoy the work even more.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

A Snow Kind of Day

It wasn't a big snow but it sure was a pretty one. I've missed the whiteness this winter, so I was happy to see today's little covering.

The bird feeders have been very busy with visitors all day and I was glad we stocked up on seed this week.

I spent this quiet day working in the kitchen. It's been a mess all week as we emptied out the cabinets and painted them inside. Truthfully, I would love to have new cabinets, but with a new roof last week it's not in the budget. My cabinets are the same ones my first husband and I built in 1975, and they're rustic--and that's an understatement. But they're sturdy and they work and we don't usually replace things unless they're broke (or leaking, like the roof!).

So in the process of emptying them out and getting them ready for paint, I've done a lot of sorting. I had, if you can believe it, about 20 muffin tins in there. Why? I have no idea, except that I got them at auctions and thought I'd just keep them. And lids without pots--I sorted those a couple years ago and got rid of a lot of spare lids then. I know I did not keep any extras, so where did these come from? No clue, but they're on their way out. There were lots of other duplicates, things I've never used and never will, you know the kind of stuff.

Right now all the doors are off the cabinets; Larry is sanding them in preparation for re-staining. We will paint the frames the same color we used inside the cabinets, and I think I'm going to put white pulls on them just for a different look. 40 years with the same ol' same ol' has gotten, well, old.

And that project spun right into cleaning out the big pantry cupboard. I pulled out all the food and started looking at dates, organizing as I put it all back. There was no out-of-date food in there but there was a lot of duplicate and triplicate items--like 3 boxes of rice, about 6 different kinds of pasta, 2 boxes of grits, 3 of baking powder, 3 cans of spray olive oil...I guess I'd think I was out of something and just buy another!

The herbs were another matter. I found jars of oregano and other herbs I'd dried (and labeled, thankfully) in 2010. I now have lots of empty jars for this year's harvest, but I will be more circumspect about how much I put away. Two people can only use so much basil, after all.

Even with all this work, the kitchen is still a mess because I now have a pile of stuff to dispose of (anyone need a muffin tin or two or three??) and the trash can is overflowing. But it's a work in progress and by this time next week I hope we are finished with the cabinets and ready to move on to some needed work in the bathroom. One thing at a time, right?


Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Breaking Up Christmas, and the New Sideboard

Well, it's officially over, at least at my house. I took down the tree today along with all the inside decorations and some of the ones on the porch. I hate to see it go, but it's time. I took some last photos last night and this morning, just so I could look back and remember how it was.

This last photo shows my new joy: a big ol' sideboard--or buffet, if you prefer to call it that. I am so in love with this thing! I have space for linens and silver, serving dishes and wineglasses, and a lovely big top for display. When our former oak table and chairs went home with one of our sons, the kitchen opened up and I have so much space now--enough space to add this piece.

After taking down the tree I started rearranging in the kitchen, and I am almost done, at least with this part.

And inside the drawers, look at all this space! I guess most people already have space for these kinds of things but in our small house with few closets, space for non-essentials is a luxury (although to me, pretty things are a necessity!).  I'd like to get some kind or organizers for the side cupboards so the glass isn't so piled up, but it's still better than the way I had it stored before.

Still more to do but it's been fun getting this piece integrated into my kitchen!

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.