What's Cooking?

What's Cooking?

 

It's time again for Tuesday 4 hosted by Anne from Cottage by the sea. Published each week in memory of Toni Taddeo, it's original author.We keep Toni Taddeo's original idea alive here with 4 questions each week to get you blogging, visiting and  learning about yourself and other bloggers.   The more people join in, the merrier and the better it gets. We are always looking for topics, subjects and ideas so feel free to chime in if you have idea.

Could we discuss cooking and kitchens today?

1.How did you learn to cook? I really don't remember cooking in the kitchen with my mom, though I'm sure I watched her, and must have learned some things. My memory is terrible. I definitely learned through cookbooks and later cooking shows/videos, etc. We didn't live near grandparents or a lot of our family. I did learn to can from friends. 

2. Do you have a favorite cookbook? A church cook book I put together years ago as a youth group fundraiser was always a favorite. I have a few others that I really like, some because the insides are beautiful. I joke that I love to "read" cookbooks, and if there aren't photos, I'm not interested. haha. I also get a lot of my recipes online, whether ones I see on IG, FB or Pinterest. 

This is where my recipe books and printed recipes live. I have more recipes than I'll ever make. Haha!! I need to find a way to organize them better. I also want to find an easy way to have recipes for my girls to pass down. I think if I had to write them all I wouldn't enjoy it or finish it. I'm thinking of a way to create a digital book that can combine both written (and scanned) and typed recipes. If anyone has ideas, I'd love to hear them. 

3.What is your cooking specialty? Are we talking recipe or like, baking, cooking, grilling. I think I'm a good cook and I think I can do most things well. Of course there's some flops, but that's okay. People seem to LOVE my clam chowder, lasagna and some desserts. I'm not good at "winging" it with a recipe...I need to follow an actual recipe, at least at first. You can find several recipes under my "from my kitchen" tab. 

4. Is your kitchen well suited for you and if not how would you improve it? Yes, I LOVE my kitchen. I say this because in 2022 we finished our addition and it has a new kitchen. Our other kitchen served me well too, but I was excited for more space and an island to gather around. I truly believe that any kitchen can suit me because it's what I make it to be, and my perspective. I think of the various kitchens I've had (5 now), and I think I really enjoyed each one. I kind of wish I had photos of each one. I found a few photos...the only one I couldn't find was of our very first apartment, which we weren't in for long, like maybe a few weeks. 

We lived in one apartment before this, for a few weeks...lol, it had bugs. This kitchen was tiny, but I actually was really proud of it. I was trying to find a photo of the pantry but I can't seem to find it. 

After our apartment, we moved into a single wide trailer. It had a smallish but open kitchen and the pantry was also the laundry area. My fridge was a pea green, but you know, I liked it. I added pretty wallpaper. 

From there we moved into our first stick built home, an inexpensive builders grade, but we could afford it, we literally wrote out our whole budget to show the company we could make the payments...we were considered high risk at the time. Above is the only picture I could find, I know I have more, but not enough time to go down a rabbit trail looking. I think at some point I had stenciled apples above the window and the door that went to the garage. 

I found this photo of it on a real estate site when it was for sale a year or so ago..obviously repainted, but those are the original cabinets and the floor we installed after we remodeled. I didn't have a pantry, so we bought a cabinet and some shelves to put in the garage to use. 

In 2008 we moved into the first phase of our new home that we built (yes, we, mostly my hubby and friends). This was the kitchen (we thought eventually it would be a utility room but it's currently still a kitchen). I was wanting bright colors, so I went with green and yellow...My family looks back and can't figure out what I was thinking. Haha. 

In 2021 we had a water loss on that wall that is cut out. We had to tear part of the wall out and the floor. We decided to repaint, and it worked out because we were putting down floors in the new part of the house so we just used the same flooring. We also added backsplash to it finally. It was a very workable and nice kitchen for the 14 years I used it. 

This is the pantry area..just some simple shelves (someday we hope to put other ones there. 

This is is it complete after we had to redo from water loss. My daughter, her friend and another friend who lives with us ,uses this kitchen mostly as theirs.

This is the new kitchen right after we moved to that side. After a lot of years I finally get to enjoy it. We starte this phase of our house in 2010, and finally finished it in 2022. 

I know that was a lot of photos, but I went down a rabbit trail. haha.

With Joy Unquenchable,

Kirstin

Kirstin