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Vegan MoFo

Vegan MoFo Day 2: Reality

Every MoFo, there’s a kitchen tour prompt. Today is that day.

I try to present a halfway decent-looking front on the ‘gram, but in reality, I am a messy bench. So in order to do this year’s kitchen tour, I cleaned up a little. Just a little.

Above: My stove area (+ coffee station), freshly cleaned.

Like, my gas range gets really gross. I think last year, or just sometime in the last year, I made a risotto with a cashew cream that boiled over (this may have even appeared in Instagram stories; I was bored and lonely and posting a ton of cooking videos for a while there) and I am pretty sure I didn’t actually fully clean that up until today.

Above: Kitchen island, decluttered. Mostly.

The island that I do most of my work on–not to mention where the most-loved small appliances live–also houses a bunch of random stuff. You can’t really see, for example, the stack of kimchi containers my partner leaves there for snacking convenience. (He likes it funky.) And I tossed the too-far-gone avocados and discarded bags of stuff before wiping things down and scrubbing the cutting board. Like, if you’re a clean freak or a germophobe, just don’t come to my house, okay? I feel shame about it but also I just want to live my goddamn life.

Above: Pantry. Disaster.

There are plenty of areas that require attention. My pantry is a disorganized mess right now–not even accounting for whatever stuff is currently hosting a moth party, ugh–and it’s super annoying. And the fridge…

Above: My fridge can fuck itself.

The fridge needs to be cleaned out all too frequently and it is my second least favorite household task (my least favorite is scrubbing the bathtub/shower). But that freezer? Fuck my entire life, the freezer is the bane of my existence. There’s too much random shit crammed in there (overripe bananas! ice packs from grocery delivery! half-used bags of frozen vegetables! homemade stuff in plastic containers that falls out when I’m trying to find something and the lid cracks!). But do I clean it out? NEV. ER.

Above: To the right of the sink…stuff.

But there is a kitchen chore I do bother with: the dishes. See? Look. Clean pots! A dishwasher! Plats and bowls in the cupboard!! (Also there’s the carbonator and some paper towels and this week’s tomato haul and oh yeah, the toaster oven.) Sure, there’s presently an army of goddamn fruit flies hovering over it, but I’ll get them. (Does wishing for the death of hundreds of very annoying insects in my food preparation area make me a bad vegan? Please don’t answer that. I’ll accept your unfollows or whatever.)

Above: The most important part.

My kitchen is about 1/3 of the room in which I spend most of my time. There’s a dining table, animal habitats, elliptical (not working right now because of said animals), and a couch facing the TV. I may have mentioned I love TV? So this room is cozy.

Above: SPEED TOUR!!

Categories
Food Blog Vegan MoFo

#VeganMoFo Day 11: The Kitchen Tour: The Movie

vegansneedsauce:

I literally filmed myself giving you a tour of the kitchen. I did not plan to put myself on camera, and I had to find a video-editing app for my phone to stitch the intro in, then I played with some of the settings. (Just be glad I didn’t make like ten 30-second clips and add goofy transitions between each one!)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f9oer7SA54?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=https://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=540&h=304]

This is from last year, but I’m not doing it again.

Categories
Food Blog Vegan MoFo

#VeganMoFo Day 11: The Kitchen Tour: The Movie

I literally filmed myself giving you a tour of the kitchen. I did not plan to put myself on camera, and I had to find a video-editing app for my phone to stitch the intro in, then I played with some of the settings. (Just be glad I didn’t make like ten 30-second clips and add goofy transitions between each one!)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f9oer7SA54?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=https://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=540&h=304]
Categories
Food Blog None Vegan MoFo

#VeganMoFo Day 13: Kitchen tour

Confession: I am a messy, messy person. My kitchen is seldom fully clean. So please, no judgment? I clean deeply before any guest situation (i.e. Thanksgiving), thanks to my clean-freak mom. Here’s a picture of the heart of the space from one of these better times…

That said, I’m really happy with my kitchen. It has a lot of storage, a great layout between the stove, sink, and cutting board.

Since we bought this house, I was able to pick out a stove I love (convection oven, five gas burners), get a large, solid maple cutting board that enjoys a permanent home of the corner of the kitchen island, and collect some fancy tools: clay pot rice cooker, high-speed blender, decent food processor, stand mixer (which I do not use daily, so it lives in the pantry)…

The pantry is a large closet with deep shelves, but moths tend to like it, so we try to store grains, pastas, beans, etc. in water-tight containers. The large pantry also lets us store extra-large amounts of things like expensive olive oil (in a box with a spigot, so we keep refilling a bottle) and super-good pasta.

Finally, the fridge. Ah, it’s always a disaster. Leftovers that overstay their welcome; condiments that expired but we didn’t get around to tossing; fresh herbs just past their prime. But I always find room for each week’s market haul and keep on top of it with a magnetic whiteboard.

Anyway, there you have it: my kitchen, sins and all. It’s where I feel my most creative and in control. It’s where I come to do what needs to be done and where I go to clear my mind at the end of a long workday. If I could change anything, it would be my own messiness–or at least to hire someone to help keep it all in check. And maybe a better faucet. Yeah…