Favorite Room

Ok, my favorite room is….. the kitchen. The heart of our house. Currently I have been measuring and re-measuring and planning a new layout so when we have the time and money (years away), I’ll be ready to meet with a designer and review my plans, needs and must haves. Until then, life goes on.

I cook, bake and keep it clean. My kitchen is large so I have counter space and room for almost all my kitchen accessories. I spend a lot of time in this room. Someday it’ll be nice and cozy and I’ll never want to leave. In the meantime, it is a happy place.

The bulletin board has various projects attached to it made by our children. Their artwork also decorates our windows and my Country Kitchen sign. Our sun catchers hang from 2 of the windows. From our windows we can see our side yard and lower pond and the back yard and upper pond. We watch deer year round from these windows. Hummingbirds flutter by from late spring until early fall. And on one Fathers day, we watched a bear walk up the side of our yard and disappear into the woods. We have not had another bear sighting in our yard or field since.

We eat together daily in our kitchen. We study, work on homework and projects, we talk and chat over tea or hot cocoa. I plan menus and pour over cookbooks and magazines. We cook and bake. I love to bake. I am not sure how my passion started or when, but I believe the force behind it was my mother. No doubt about that. First of all, she is a wonderful cook/baker. When we were younger, she would occasionally make homemade cinnamon rolls. I can smell, see and almost taste them. They were big, fluffy and oooh so good. She has the ability to take ingredients (usually whatever she had available) and make something delicious out of it. I hope one day I can become a confident cook like her. Some day. After all, I do have goals.

I used to write recipes on recipe cards and keep them in files. My little boxes of treasure. Looking back now, I wonder if I really thought I’d use them. What was I thinking? I recently decided that there was NO way I could ever make every recipe I have written down or cut out and saved. Besides, how many apple pie recipes do I really need? Yes, the dessert category was my largest collection. (Refer to first post). So slowly, I have gone through these recipe boxes and thrown out hundreds of recipes. I have placed limits on my recipe clipping habit. If I don’t make the recipe within a month, it goes into the recycle bin. I have yet to enforce that. I laugh when I find that I have torn the same page from a magazine twice. However, I am down to a half-full box and 2 binders. I am almost there and then my recipe collection will be under control. I have recipe cards from my great-aunt that are part of my family history. These I keep. She had beautiful handwriting and she noted what family member the recipe was from. I have 2 very special items in my kitchen. Two of my great-grandmothers bread boards. I use the large one all the time. I only wish I had one of her aprons!

So when I do try new recipes and we like it, I have a binder that I put the recipe in. It is appropriately call “Approved Recipes”. As an after-thought, since I started this binder collection years ago, I now note when I made the recipe and if it was for a special occasion. I’m creating a little family history of my own.

I write in my cookbooks like some people write in their Bibles (I cannot yet bring myself to do that – in time). I enjoy making new dishes for my family. Seeing and hearing their reactions. Even at their young age (5 and 8), they will grab a cookbook and look through it and pick out a recipe to make. It’s ideal as we have special dinners whenever we want. They set the table with table clothes, napkins, china and wine glasses and candles. In the winter, it is very cozy as the evenings are dark at dinner time. When the guys build a roaring fire, we move the table into our front room (perhaps to become our dining room). Candle lit dinner by the fire. Good food. Good company. Isn’t that why people gather in the kitchen anyway?