It's All About the Food

My kitchen is about to be famous

Well, famous at least to Ursinus alumni. The alumni magazine is profiling author Anne Mendelson for the success of her book, Milk, and will photograph her in my kitchen.

How did I get so lucky? Anne is my husband's aunt, and our house is much closer than New York to Ursinus.

Thus, today I have been frantically cleaning my kitchen with a thoroughness usually reserved for Thanksgiving preparation. Clearly, the daily/weekly cleaning wouldn't be enough, not even the monthly, it's-a-rainy-weekend-might-as-well-clean cleaning. The walls and baseboards are scrubbed; the windows windexed; the stone counters oiled. I've evicted two spiders. A bottle of Pedros Oranj Peelz bike degreaser awaits the stove hood.

(No, really, it's much better than 409 or any "kitchen" product. Strips all the moisture out of your hands, of course, but wipe it on, let it sit a moment, scrub it off with a sponge, toothbrush or scrub brush and rinse. It uses orange peel oil, so the whole kitchen smells like a citrus grove when you're done. Or a bike shop.)

Soon, the kitchen should be ready for its close up.

When Anne was discussing the photographs for the article, the reporter from the alumni magazine suggested posing with a "colorful" pot. Which has become a problem in and of itself.

Color isn't really a problem. When we bought our house, I painted all the rooms in the house a nice, neutral white. Then we lived with rooms like white boxes for six years, and I went a little crazy from all that white. As I've repainted, our rooms are combinations of burgundy, sage, moonlight, sterling, cobalt and wheat. The kitchen was renovated into "baby turtle" with lots of wood, stone and stainless steel. Not colorless, but not colorful either.

So I have pulled out every colorful kitchen item in the house. My pots are stainless steel (Farberware), the dishes are white (Corelle) or black, my tablecloths white. This leaves: one red cutting board, some silicone spatulas, a bowl that Anne gave us, some very 90s colored glass bottles, and three pitchers.

Clearly, I need to sell the car and run to Fantes and buy a small set of copper cookware or perhaps Le Creuset. I know, I know, I skipped the whole no-knead bread baked in the cheap Target Le Creuset. It's not that I don't follow the trend, it's that I'm mostly unaware until they've come around two or three times. Also: I'd rather spend the money on new bakeware.

Back to getting ready for the close-up.

Here's one of our shots: