My New Kitchen

Because I can't bore the world (my four fab followers - hahahah, actually only 3 because I followed me too!) with diet talk ALL the time, I decided today I would talk about my new kitchen. First let me say that I've never had anything really brand new before. Big things, that is... of course I have new clothes and shoes (although for the past couple of years I've even been buying those at thrift stores...), but I've never had a new home or car or appliances... till this summer!

My kitchen is the place where I spend the most time, and my kitchen was inconvenient. It was okay... it had everything I needed, but the bottom cupboards had top shelves that were only half as wide as the bottom, and I had to walk all the way around my U-shaped cupboards to open the sliding doors to our porch, and the dishwasher didn't clean the items on the top shelf very well so I always had to rewash them, and we removed most of the upper cupboards when we moved into the house as they blocked the light and view so most of my kitchen was stored in the basement...

So this was the year we hired a local cabinet maker (Jack Zeeman, All-Star Woodworking) to build us what WE wanted... and he did. And it was good. Then we went to Sears in Nelson and Barry helped us choose our appliances. And he did. And it was a bit of a hit and miss with a few things, but eventually we got it all worked out and it was good. (The stove he told me to buy wasn't what I wanted and he found the one stove on Earth that had all the features I'd requested and managed to get it for me, even though it wasn't available through Sears Canada). The delivery was made on the day that we'd asked them to, and except for a broken piece on the fridge, everything was perfect. Getting the dishwasher to work was trial and error, with 3 visits from the technician, but it's good now and we're happy.

This is my old kitchen... nice, bright and really not too bad.

An eerily empty space...

And this is my new kitchen!!! I LOVE MY NEW KITCHEN!!!!!
The opening where there used to be counter is one of my favorite features. It really brightens up the room and makes it seem bigger. Also, because we moved the dishwasher to next to the sink, we weren't able to install a double sink, so we got a single with a drain board. I wish I'd been able to find an old porcelain one, but oh well... stainless steel is fine, and if I do find an old one I'll just buy it!  On the island we installed a tiny vegetable sink and have had some issues finding a faucet that fits it without spraying out onto the counter. We eventually just drilled a hole in the counter top and moved the faucet back a few inches.

 Note that GORGEOUS stove!!!  It's a Whirlpool and had the very specific features I wanted - two ovens, both self-clean, convection in the bottom oven, a warming zone, black top (instead of grey, speckled, or white) and only 4 knobs... the rest is push button and smooth for easier wiping. There is one silly feature - if I want to set the time I have to hold the up or down arrow key as the numbers go by... it takes a while if I have to change several hours, and our power goes off pretty regularly around here, so I have to do it a lot. I also haven't figured out the benefit of the convection. Maybe it's not working right, but it doesn't speed up the cooking process at all.

You can see in the  photo below that my ceiling needs painting. A winter project. It will get done. Also, where there used to be cupboards, there's now a wonderful florescent light bar that totally brightens up my work space, and we raised the back of the counter so you can't see a mess when you sit down to supper!

So, the fridge is a  30" GE Profile french door with the bottom pull-out freezer. I love everything about it - especially how quiet it is compared to my 10 or 20 year old fridges that I've owned before. There's not as much space in the freezer as was in my old top door freezer, but it was always a mess and I tend to keep most of my stuff in the basement now. The only thing I use every day is frozen fruit for my smoothies, so they have to be up here. Then I also have things like ice cubes, a chunk of ginger, an opened can of orange juice concentrate and some food processed basil with oil that I made the other day.

We had some troubles getting the dishwasher to work, but it does now and I love it! We use it almost every day.

And because I promised myself I would track my food every day, here goes:
Breakfast - coffee with whipping cream, small yogurt
Lunch - homemade cream of celery soup, fruit smoothie
Snack - small handful of seeds, nuts and raisins
Supper - pork stir fry and salad (too big a portion, but everything except the white rice was healthy and within my diet limits)
TONS of water today, and a walk through the woods and back along the beach with Jane after work. I might have a little glass of wine tonight, but no snack.