A kitchen out of time pt.. 1

We're still living out of suitcases. Our things are in France, have been for months now, but are in storage. We decided to wait until officially closing on the house before we have our things delivered. This we hope will be before Christmas but then again the more time we have to scrape the barrel for closing costs the better!

My nosy neighbor remarked on how I'm always in the kitchen. She has a clear view of it from her back garden. "Madame it's very easy to track you down" she says as she yoo'hoos me from the fence. The kitchen is my sanctuary, a place to gather my thoughts and dream. A place to create and learn and dominate. I always love my kitchen no matter what home I take on. I always make it mine eventually. This is our new kitchen. It's a crazy disorganized mess but I am slowly personalizing it. Everything in the kitchen belonged to the previous owners and most of it was scrapped when I did the big clean but some things were salvaged and kept, maybe not forever but for now. My things will come and then I will truly make it my kitchen.


An old mid century jam jar makes a great candle holder. I found at least a dozen of these old jars in the cupboard. Time capsules with yellowed labels, cerise, cassis, fraise... The oak table had been hiding under a dirty vinyl tablecloth for years. I love that it has a giant drawer in the middle with an old skeleton key. We were very pleased to meet each other this table and I.


I kept a few things like the teapots and some bowls. Any blue and white pottery was kept. I love blue and white pottery. The clock is ours and was bought new because like I mentioned in an earlier post they took the ugly blue plastic clock with them (probably a blessing) and I had no way to tell time.

I love old pitchers, --great for storing utensils. I had to buy a few odd utensils to get through these next few months but I don't want to buy too much since we're going to get all of our things and then I'll have doubles of everything. What to do with it all then?


A salad spinner from another century. I always use these baskets to spin my lettuce. It gives your arm a nice workout.

Unfortunately the built in cupboard will be torn out one day. It's a mess and it's poorly placed. It's painted with lead paint and so we can't really strip it without health risks. I only just cleaned it out because for a while I lost my cleaning mojo. It was such a mess--dead spiders, live spiders and layers of black dust glued on with kitchen grease. It's clean now and painted inside with a fresh white coat.

I did take the paint off of the handles, carefully with mask and gloves. I love that the handles are mismatched!


Mamie's marmite for making pot au feu. I cook just about every meal in this pot. If this thing could speak I'm sure it would have a lot of tales to tell of animated country dinners. I'd like to clean the outside of it but nothing it seems will remove that layer of baked on culinary history.

The gas stove is new. The old one was completely unsalvageable. We bought the most economical model of stove possible because I hope to trade up to a convection oven eventually. You can't bake very well in a gas oven. Everything burns if you turn your back for five minutes. You have to watch your cookies like a good t.v. show!