Kitchen Facts

I have been tagged by the lovely Suffering Summer to list 8 random facts about my kitchen. Sounded like fun because most of the action in my house happens in the the kitchen!

1. When we bought this house more than 2 years ago, one of the more attractive points was the pantry in the kitchen. At the old place, all I had was a cabinet with slide out shelves and it was barely enough room for 4 people. Baby food took up one entire shelf and canned goods took up another, that left one shelf for boxed items, like cereal and spaghetti.. The new pantry is a lovely nook in the kitchen, not quite in the kitchen, not quite out of the kitchen. It is in the short foyer where the backdoor is and in the next step, you're in the kitchen. It has floor to ceiling shelves and the shelves are more than 6 feet long, stretching behind the wall where I keep items that aren't used as often. It's also a favorite of the girls to climb and give me a heart attack. So we added a latch to lock the sliding doors, but is only effective if we remember to keep the doors shut as you can see Youngest demonstrating here!
2. We have 2 refrigerators in our kitchen. One side-by-side that came with the house, and a normal fridge that we use to keep frozen items and extra milk. I like to buy my meat in bulk and then cook or separate into smaller containers. The blue containers are cooked ground beef, perfect for one meal of tacos or spaghetti, the pink containers hold 2 uncooked chicken breasts each, the orange containers hold portioned cubed steak. I also make large batches of meatballs for quick meals of meatball subs, or swedish meatball dinners. The two zippy bags on the top shelf hold the meatballs. The popsicles you see, those are actually Hubby's! He loves popsicles and will eat 7 or 8 in one sitting while watching TV. Behind the popsicles are frozen chopped peppers and pureed pumpkin from the garden.
   
3. I LOVE vintage glassware. I scour yardsales, flea markets, and thrift stores for them! I am especially fond of the flowered kind, but any vintage pattern will do. I've gotten Hubby hooked and he will bring home a glass or two when he goes to thrift stores without me. I love when company comes for dinner and I get to set the table with all the different glasses and I have fun explaining which glass used to have sour cream, peanut butter, or dried salted beef. The top row, middle red, white and blue flower glass and middle row orange flower glass were for sour cream and the middle row, small tulip glass used to hold pimento cheese.
   
4. I have an electric, flat top stove. I love my flat top stove! It makes for easy clean ups! I used to have one of those electric coil stoves and I hated that it was so hard to clean with the food falling in between the coils and becoming cooked-on globs of yuck! Then using foil to cover the "dish" under the coils was so unsightly. For those of you who swear by gas stoves, my electric flat top stove does just fine and I can even can my jams and pickles on it with no trouble!
5. I have a small, red, 50s dinette table in the kitchen. You'd never know it was there because it is covered with stuff. It has become the dumping grounds for anything that enters the house through the kitchen. I hate that it is covered and complain about it all the time. I clean it and within 2 hours, it is covered again with new stuff! The longest it stays clear is when we have a party and it becomes a buffet table.
6. We have a cool, vintage, turquoise clock on the kitchen wall. I don't know how vintage it is, since it runs on battery power, but it looks vintage anyway! Someday we'd like to re-model the kitchen into a 50's style kitchen, but that will have to wait. Meanwhile, who says we can't shop for vintage glasses and clocks?
   
7. We have a larger red, 50s dinette table in the dining room off the kitchen. It used to belong to Hubby's grandmother. My Mother-in-law told me she changed Hubby's diaper on that table! I loved when we had his family over for dinner once and his Aunt said the table looked familiar. Father-in-law said, "It should, it was Mama's." Aunt got all misty-eyed and said, "there were lots of good meals and conversations around this table!"
8. I have a window above my sink, which normally would be great, except previous owners added a sun room. So now my kitchen window looks right into the sun room. Perfect when the kids are in there playing and I can keep an eye on them, but usually there is no one in there except the cats doing their business in the litterbox.

That was fun! Makes me appreciate my kitchen even more, knowing I am making memories for my children to look back on! Feel free to participate in this meme, and let me know if you do it so I can check out your post.