lunch for 10, etc.

Well, first of all, lunch for ten. This was seven student teachers, Ruth (who is on sabbatical this semester but is still involved, since four of my teachers are her students), and the principal of Spring Valley High/Middle School.

I got up at five to start cooking. Made a carrot cake (with cream cheese frosting), spinach lasagne, and the greek salad from FC #79. Also got things set up to feed that many, this time in the dining room. The kitchen, in serious transition mode (more on this later), is a little crowded at the moment. Anyway, I got everything ready with only moments to spare.

This school principal is very nice. She is young and very accessible. She actually listened to the questions the students asked and answered them lucidly and completely. I liked her a lot. What a great resource, only a mile from here.

I did face a dishes crisis, though. In recent years we've had these festivals at Ruth's house, but last spring I had the kids here for one of them. Served taco twist, and went to the SV drugstore at the last minute and found, amazingly, really nice pasta-sized bowls for $1 each. Bought a dozen. I used them again for the first meeting this spring (I guess Ruth and I met our students on campus fall semester), taco twist again, but I couldn't think of something for this meeting that I could serve in bowls. The dish crisis is ongoing, but has been exacerbated by the breaking of one and chipping of another of our Dansk dinner plates, getting us down to four decent ones. We do have two sets of nice china (12 of everything), but that has to be hand washed, and so it is used only for special holiday meals. What to do. On Monday I went to the drugstore again, and in their tiny housewares department they had a set of dishes with blue bands around the outside. Not at all bad. And what I liked was that they had mugs and no saucers. How terrible it is to buy dishes and be stuck with saucers. Anyway, the set was $14.99. Hard to beat that. So I had enough plates by using the four new ones, the four good ones, and Ruth ate from the chipped one and I ate from an odd white one. I wish I could find two more sets of the ones I bought in SV, but they had just the one. I'll keep my eyes open in cheap places, though. It'd be nice to have a big set of dishwashable dishes. Isn't this interesting?

Anyway, everyone left at 1:30, and Ruth and I teed off at 2, playing a quick nine holes. I was exhausted after that. Seven hours of cooking and two hours of walking on the golf course had my feet and legs ultra tired, I can tell you.

Monday was a particularly good day. Nice weather. I helped Charlie work on cabinets, but I also got the lettuce bed weeded out and spaded, ready to plant. It was too windy for the teeny lettuce seeds, but I should be able to plant today. I did a whole bunch of other wonderful stuff, some outside and inside, none of which I remember, since that was Monday, and it's Thursday already.

Anyway, the great thing is that the island in the middle of the kitchen is being built! About half of it is installed, and the next big piece is in the garage and will be ready to come inside within the hour. These are cabinet shells so far. A few shelves, but since most things will be big and little drawers, they will not be fully functional for a week or so, until the drawer pulls are shipped here and the drawers are made. Anyway, this is incredibly wonderful progress. Finished cherry drawer fronts and doors are a long way off (have to save up again, since we've now depleted the entire building fund with this project and the floor -- to be put in in just a few weeks now), but once the drawers themselves are in, I can begin figuring out where things will go. And I will have a huge new surface to work on. I'm already using the temporary countertop on the north end. The very north end of the island is a little lower than the rest and will be a huge maple breadboard (not cutting board) baking area. With a view, of course. I am wildly excited about all of this. The bottom part of the pantry (north wall) and the broom closet (ditto) went in a couple of weeks ago. The top part of the pantry is next. Here are some photos, but it's hard to get the idea of it all from them.

But first: Caution! These images are too big, so don't click on them.

What's left of the Easter eggs Ben and I made. This is what I see when I open the fridge. Kind of hard to eat the little fellows (only two left), but I'll have to do it soon.


And the first island piece to go in. This photo gives an idea of the footprint of the island; it doesn't look big in this picture, but it is indeed big:


Note garlic-growing book in the foreground (which reminds me, I need to go take the winter mulch off the garlic).

Of course Puss has to explore every new space.


Here's the second piece in. Charlie put a slab of melamine board over this yesterday and I was able to use it while I was cooking. You can see that the north end is lower, for baking.

This is the proto-pantry and broom closet. The rest of the pantry will go where the hanging pans are. I'll lose all that nice hanging stuff, but I'll have room for food. The hanging stuff has always been temporary. My goal is to have everything in cabinets, and the absolute minimum on countertops. The microwave will go inside a cabinet, too, as will the bag sealer.


Charlie has just gone across the road to get our neighbor, Jim French, to help move in the big piece that is now finished. I helped move in the other two island pieces (Jim helped get in the pantry and broom closet), and believe me, it was not a bit fun.

As soon as this next thing happens (in a few minutes, I believe), I'll post a couple of more photos.

One more note: the Martys' cat, Kako, is no more. He got sick, then sicker, and by the time it was discovered what was wrong with him (blockage), he was so weak he was likely not to survive the (very expensive) surgery. He left his body (with the aid of the vet) yesterday early evening. Bye, Kako.