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I Hate My Kitchen (but Not Sausage & Peppers)

January 15, 2008

I have not been in the mood to cook this week, and the state of my kitchen is not helping. More on that in a minute. I did manage to make the sausage & peppers last night, using hot beef sausage that my butcher makes. It is really good, and I always feel a little naughty when I cook it because it seems so very not kosher. I live on the wild side, people.

Anyway, I was too lazy to chop an onion and since I knew I’d be the only one eating it (I served it to the boys, but they wouldn’t touch it; J. wasn’t home for dinner), I just took the sausage out of the casing (Merrie’s suggestion, and a good one), dumped it in a pan with cut-up green and red peppers, and cooked it until it was done. Oh, it was divine. Next time I’ll take the time to slice up an onion. Now, on to my kitchen mini drama (and really, I do know it is mini).

First, I am in the midst of a mouse detection scheme. We saw evidence of a mouse about 10 days ago — some tiny nibble marks in a bag of garbage waiting to go outside, plus a few droppings in my pots & pans cabinet. Our neighbors have had mice, and I’ve seen some outside, so this was no huge shock to me and really doesn’t bother me much. I used to keep mice (from a pet store!) as pets when I was younger. However, I do not want interloper mice in my house. We have a contract with a pest management company (old house + wood siding = stinging insect heaven), so they have baited and set traps in the basement… all the while, my pots and pans remain mostly emptied out of the cabinet where we saw the droppings. Some are in my dining room, some are in my oven, on the counter, etc. It’s chaotic and makes the kitchen feel messy. We’ll get an update Thursday when the pest guy comes back to check the bait and traps.

In the middle of all this, I started a kitchen project: Again, very old house and nothing is flush or plumb. There’s a gap between our counter back splash and the wall, and the previous owners just slapped enormous quantities of spackle on the space and called it a day. It used to be fairly inconspicuous but it is now starting to crack, crumble, and discolor in several places, and makes the kitchen feel dirty. So I’ve been chipping away at these heavy layers, which is dusty and time consuming. Then when it’s all clean, we’ll seal the gap and caulk it up. It already looks much better, so I’m glad we’re doing it, but it is just adding to my not wanting to be in the kitchen at all right now.

Finally, the light bulb on our microwave went out — the one that illuminates our cook top (the microwave is mounted over the stove). I have to go the hardware store to buy a special replacement bulb, and then I basically have to dismantle the lower half of the microwave to install the new. Until then, I’m basically cooking in the dark. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to replace it tomorrow, before I start the Great Tofu Cooking Experiment of 2008.

Filed under: Beef,Thinking Out Loud

Tags: cooking, dinner, Great Tofu Cooking Experiment, mini