What's in Your Kitchen?

This reminds me of the old Hee-Haw show..."Grandpa, what's for dinner?"

I've been tagged by coffeemama from Our Blue Castle to play along.


1. How many meals does most of your family eat at home each week? HOw many are in your family?

18 meals; six people. Hubby runs the before and afterschool care program (as well as teaching), so he eats breakfast and lunch and after school snack at his school~oftentimes skipping lunch.


2. How many cookbooks do you own?

20-25

3. How often do you refer to a cookbook each week?
Almost never


4. Do you collect recipes from other sources? If so, what are some of your favorite sources

Rarely. I don't do well with loose paper scraps, (The paper mess is a hangup of mine). They tend to pile up, never to be used, only to be thrown away. If I file them away, they are out of site and out of mind, and I rarely refer back to them again. I *DO* like being able to go online (to cooks.com) to find any special recipe that I want to use. I DO buy a cookbook if I am in another country, of that country's typical dishes.

5. How do you store those recipes?

I have a bunch of my Granny's recipes in a small binder that I made in early marriage. I also have a shoebox of favorites from early marriage and Boston that I finally got out of the tiny cabinet above the fridge. It had been stored there for 13 years (as I said, out of site, out of mind) without ever looking into it for our old favorites (for example: spoon bread).

6. When you cook, do you follow the recipe pretty closely, or do you use recipes primarily to give you ideas?

Yes and no. For baking, I follow it pretty much to the T. Hubby and I both cook from memory, possibly adding our own ideas and flair to a given dish.

7. Is there a particular ethnic style or flavor that predominates in your cooking? If so, what is it?
Hubby loves to use chiles for spice in almost anything he cooks. My favorite addition is oregano, cilantro, or soy sauce. So, Mediterranean, Mexican, then Asian would be our most common themes.

8. What's your favorite kitchen task related to meal planning and preparation? (eating the finished product does not count)

Chopping and sauteing the onions; Serving up our food in bowls to be taken to the table.

9. What's your least favorite part?

Preparing the lettuce for a salad.

10. Do you plan menus before you shop?

Rarely.

11. What are your three favorite kitchen tools or appliances?

kitchen shears; cappuccino maker; milk foaming whipper :-)


12. If you could buy one new thing for your kitchen, money was no object, and space not an issue, what would you most like to have?

A deep freezer

13. Since money and space probably are objects, what are you most likely to buy next?

We need to replace our broken Capresso coffee maker. We are making due with a nice (but for camping) stovetop percolater until summer.


14. Do you have a separate freezer for storage?

No, no room.

15. Grocery shop alone or with others?

Both. Most often, though, I tend to take one or two children with me to help make the trip go faster. We divide up the grocery list and meet back at the check-out line.

16. How many meatless main dish meals do you fix in a week?

I'd prefer all of them, but hubby likes his meat. We eat a lot of cheese, though!
Probably about ten.

17. If you have a decorating theme in your kitchen, what is it? Favorite kitchen colors?

honey-oak wood tones; a free-standing double hutch-type cabinet that mimics the design of an old Hoosier cabinet. Old, red-handled kitchen tools, barn-red enamelware and pans; dk. red and white food and tea tins, small decorative pitchers, coffee signs and old grinders, and a few red chile ristras. Favortie colors: Barn red, with accents of yellow-gold and dk. coffee brown. White applicances.

18. What's the first thing you ever learned to cook, and how old were you?

Cheese biscuits in fifth grade. I was ten.

19. How did you learn to cook?

I helped mom a little bit starting around ten. We had a cooking unit at school around that age, as well. Took home-ec. my Freshman year in high school, but mostly, Mom did almost everything.

20. Tag two other people to play.

Leslie at Abiding
Katie at CM, Children and Lots of Grace