Lately I’ve tried to change the scenery, to write and do other non-cooking tasks outside the kitchen. Why? Certainly it cuts down snacking. Working elsewhere puts baguettes and Nutella out of reach, and keeps me from drifting toward the what’s-for-dinner zone. But other rooms must be dull, because I am still glued here, with a messy bun that redefines messy bun. I am peering in the oven or upright at the stove, with one ear to the phone, two hands in a bowl and a lightly breaded keyboard.

Greg certainly benefits from my base. The other day I was about to throw steak over arugula for lunch – but decided to save the steak for dinner. Instead I grabbed a few linen-shaded eggs, a fresh gift from a brave chicken-raising neighbor, and they took a star turn on the salad – poached – with parmesan, pepper, and mustard vinaigrette.

The next night we had roast chicken, and I’d planned a little spinach-ricotta souffle on the side. When I found more arugula than spinach, it became arugula-ricotta souffle, vividly green and equally good. You can mess around in the kitchen; you can mix and match and literally think on your feet. You can teach tired old tools brand new tricks.

Like the cheese shaver, which loves butter. Who knew?

If you like to play with your food, do as you please: add that vanilla, take out onions, toss the recipe, make your fine-rib shirt an apron. It is, after all, your kitchen. Late afternoon in my kitchen, light barges through panes above the sink, rays strong enough to blind the cook, but I like it.

I like the gleaming faucet. I like stirring in bright shadows. I don’t mind squinting or pushing back hair or tripping on Cleo, in dreams on the floor. I am always in the kitchen, a room where I taste honey, correct sauce, know the answers. Anyone can triumph there, or fight, or get engaged, or take a call that stops you cold; in the kitchen, you may fill the teapot and go on. A reporter once asked my favorite teacher, a chef, do you eat your mistakes? He looked stunned. “No,” he smiled, “we fix them.”

We’ve worked in the trenches together for so long.  How long? Let’s take a look.

Good times, and not always pretty.  But – look past the scars. This kitchen helper was more than just useful, more than burnt batting – a mitt with real oomph.  Sure, he’d run into a burning oven for you. But he could also be tender…

…bashful even.

And the talent! Always with the clowning in the kitchen.

There was The Manatee…

…the Jumbo Jet…

..and of course, The Diving Orca.  After the Broiler Grab Incident of ’99, that one was never the same.

If I had my druthers, he’d never go to that big Bed Bath in the sky.  But…it’s time.

I salute you too, my friend.  I will warmly remember you forever.

Or at least until trash day.

We emphatically said no to a chemically enhanced patina, but now we’re impatient to dull the mirror finish. I’m just going to import a bunch of elderly French cafe dwellers to smoke, drink and age the thing.

Ron the Metal Artist said that every time you touch copper you create patina – and since we’re not so big on shiny, there was a lot of palming and rubbing after that. He also mentioned we could alter the texture ourselves with all kinds of tools – swell idea, Ron! Now you can pretty regularly drive by and see three nutjobs attacking a range hood with, respectively, a whisk, a lemon zester and a Scotch Brite.

Why is the finished kitchen in rare form?

Well, everything had been cleared out for the installation, and the photos were taken right after that. It’s rare to see nothing in the kitchen – no peaches rolling off the counter, no dog treats in the corner, not even a blue teapot on the stove. All I left out was the holy trinity of two rolling pins and Bluey, my long German knife.

My friend Joel is always accusing me of Martha-ing up by not showing the uglies, but…wait a minute…

There. You’ve got my cell phone cord in this one. Would Martha show you that?

What.

What?

Like I’m the only one trying to build a better Stouffer’s French Bread pizza.  Is it just a vain attempt to gourmet-ify and recapture the seemingly weightless bliss of my college snacking days, only to find I created one with more calories?   Could I be the only one who wants that?

I think not.

Anyway, my idea of existentialicious – something delicious in the moment, but never seen again - is the best way to describe last night’s dinner.

Chicken, potatoes, asparagus – but the picture doesn’t tell the whole story.

The chicken was lightly floured, then crisped in olive oil with salt and pepper. We’d had some olive-feta salad from the fancy organic “olive bar” the day before, and when the chicken was nicely browned, I threw in the master stroke – leftover vinegar-feta-pepper mixture from the bottom of the container. Leftover liquid, people – never throw it out. As planned, the chicken sizzled with a giant Opa! sound, and then in a blinding oregano cloud I squeezed a lemon, tossed and fired a few seconds, and served.

Oh, my. I’m sure we can all agree that Tuesday night dinner is never a sure thing, but paired with bacony mashed potatoes and steamed local asparagus, it was. Crisp and peppered, tangy and biting, a river of lemon feta soaking under potatoes – I can use all the adjectives I want, but I’ll never see it again.

I’m bad that way. As an apprentice, they’d say “make the soup!” and I’d make the soup, chopping this carrot or that mushroom, and they’d say “make that soup again!” and aghast, I couldn’t.

This doesn’t happen very often in baking, but it happens constantly at the stove, where you trade precision for a moment’s pleasure at the table. You’d be hard-pressed to recreate a dish made with leftover oils and bits of cheese, but so what? One mid-week existentialicious is better than any Saturday menu…

…because you never saw it coming, and it tastes like something else – surprise!

Yesterday the new kitchen officially became my kitchen. We had drawn every detail, every door and knob and pull, but it took months of living to make it mine. I would like to say it was the perfect batch of brownies or the waft of blueberry pie, but it was a pool of dirty water.

After breakfast I put a bowl in the dishwasher and noticed a haze at the bottom, a still white pond. Ugh. Had the disposal backed up? The drain hose, or something in the filter? We were late to drive Josie, and then get some coffee, but I was already on the floor.

Greg came in with keys. “Do you want me to take her?”

I can’t open jars, but drains are all mine.

“Yeah, go ahead – I’ve got it,” and looked at the water. It was Sunday morning. I wanted that coffee.

Some may recall that I’ve had a dark dishwasher hour before, one in which a simple odor brought me eye level with a headless rodent. Well, I thought, it couldn’t be any worse, so I took off my watch and my ring, reached in and started bailing. Hmm. I’d done a lot of baking the day before, but apparently very little rinsing. The overflow was loaded with soaked bits, and though I checked for ears and tails, I found only floating cake.

Sweet little soggers, I hummed, at least you’re not mammals.

After rifling the manual with slimy thumbs - “You may need a plumber!” – I plunged my hand and pulled out the filter, nothing, and then the fine mesh thing, nothing. No clog, no creatures, no coffee. I threw a button-pressing fit and sat back on my knees, disgusted. Water rushed. I’d unwittingly cracked the drain cycle code – success, caffeine, no plumbers!

Greg returned. “I’m a genius,” I said.

“Really.”

“And there was nothing big in there! Nothing…you know.” I washed my hands, beamed at the sink.

“Good.”

“Yes, great! Let’s get coffee.”

It is good when the smallest things work out, remarkably good. You know, I could bake cookies and scramble eggs and scrub pans all day, but the kitchen wasn’t stamped until my hands were truly dirty. The day our white marble counter went in the installer warned against hot pans and sharp knives and lemon peels, and I told him that is what I want. Breaking in a new kitchen is hard – but every scuff is something tasty, and the scrapes are yours to heal.

Found!

By Greg. Grrrr.

Not too tall, not too short, real wood, comfy bistro lines. These are restaurant stools and they were Greg’s choice. Though I liked them from the start, I pushed several other versions under his nose and he, of course, stuck by his guns.

I am now forced to say – in print, yet again – that he made the right choice.

Yes they are just chairs, for pete’s sake.

But I’ve seen kitchen bars where no one wants to sit – and we certainly didn’t want that to happen. We want to see ours occupied by happy snackers, breakfasters and sippers, so it was important to find inviting seating – bar stools that feel like a bar or a bistro, somewhere you might sit with bacon quiche and cheesy onion soup.

Or drink a little red wine while someone makes your steak. There’s a lot of “raised seating” out there these days, and much of it is pretty awful. It was either classic or ultramodern. For us, classic usually fits.

Once the bar gets the copper treatment and we bang it up a bit, I’m pretty sure it will be quite delightful. I will sit under the new green glass lights, lean on the bar with a little tea and sugared almonds, and settle in to read…

…why, look what I’m reading up there!

You probably think I want everyone to move to Lawrence, Kansas.

But I don’t.

See, I wasn’t the first to spread the word, and now many, many more people live here.

Too many. We’ve seen bumper stickers that read “Welcome to Lawrence. Now get out.”

Oh, that is not very friendly. I’m sorry about that, newcomers.

No, really…welcome! Join us at Sylas & Maddy’s for some nice cold ice cream.

Right now there is pistachio almond. In the summer, they’ll have fresh peach.

Stroll Mass Street. Shop the galleries. Feel nicely bohemian, even if you are not.

If you have a long afternoon, ask the guys at Free State Glass if you can watch them work.

They are pretty laid-back dudes and will probably say yes.

You must be a laid-back dude to be a glass-blower. It is a requirement.

So laid-back that they let us hang around while they spun hot bits of glass into three new lamps – kitchen pendants, and the last fixtures to go up at the new old house.

The hot glass looked red, and then pink – but like magic, the finished lamps would cool down to a beautiful brown-streaked green, as we’d requested.

Blowing glass is the wildest thing.

Above, a lamp begins to cool down and the color slowly changes from smoking-hot red to green-streaked outside, white inside. While he spins the still-warm lamp, a cleaver helps build up the top.

Did you know? The National Endowment for the Arts ranks Lawrence in the top 12 U.S. cities with the largest percentage of working artists.

That is a lot of artists. And you know, not all of them are so great.

But some of them really are artists – and do things mere mortals can’t do.

Like form liquid into light.

they started out red, but cooled to green – three new lamps hang in our kitchen.

And that is a useful, beautiful, very bright art.