Fridays of Intestinal Fortitude: Where the Magic Happens

Note: Fridays of Intestinal Fortitude is a weekly(ish) feature about food, food and more FOOD. No, I am not an expert, but I do enjoy talking about food prep, cooking food, eating food and making sweet love to food.  Okay, maybe not the "sweet love" part. After all, this is not meant to be an homage to 9 1/2 Weeks.

Recipe Index can be found here. 
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Brain Bytes:
1. Two of my photography loves are insect/arachnid photography and food photography (I often wonder what my kids will remember from their childhood what with me photographing our dinners AND herds of spiders and bugs!)  As such, I really enjoyed this video titled "A Picture-Perfect Quarter Pounder" which shows the process of photographing, you guessed it, a McDonald's Quarter Pounder.

2. Recently, I "discovered" Melissa's Alosha's Kitchen and then, I promptly trolled through a good portion of her archives. There is some yummy stuff there folks!  In particular, I cannot wait to try out her recipes for Blueberry Lemon Bread and her Breakfast Sandwiches.  Melissa's site was quite a find for me because so many of her recipes were easily adaptable to my food needs.  Also, she provides recipes of things we will actually eat whereas, many food blogs simply don't feature the type of food that Manoj and I eat.  Manoj doesn't eat salads or soups and he cannot eat pasta.  We also don't really do beef or pork.  And I don't bake (but I am trying!).  So...... this often limits me when it comes to reading food blogs because it feels like food porn -- reading and drooling over luscious things I cannot have.

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A few weeks ago, I Instagrammed a snap of our kitchen:

Where the Magic Happens

Mostly, I really love my kitchen.  I am very comfortable with the dimensions and how everything is set up -- for me, it is a perfect Kitchen Work Triangle.   Some of my very favorite memories from this house will be the ones of all of us in the kitchen while I am cooking.  Also, I really appreciate that I have more than enough cabinet space -- I actually have quite a few nearly empty shelves!  Furthermore, to the left of the photo, just out of camera range are even more cabinets -- a pantry, 3 cabinets and a built-in desk area. Honestly, there isn't much I would change in my kitchen.  Except........

1. I hate, loathe, despise the counter tops - they are a yellow laminate that absorbs stains if I even think about turmeric, red fruits, coffee, or wine.   Or beets.  BEETS.  Those counter tops are the ugly cousin to our Jackson Pollack Tribute Carpet and I would love to burn both in effigy.

2. I am really over the double oven - I rarely use 2 ovens at once and would prefer to have a microwave in that space above the oven.  Although the oven is original to the house, I still cannot justify getting rid of it yet because it actually works and I have a difficult time wasting money buying a new oven to replace an old oven that already functions just fine.


3. I am also done with the florescent lighting.  Need I say more?


Frankly, those are my three chief complaints about my kitchen.  How lucky am I?  I am a little iffy on the paint color, but that is such an easy change equivalent to a bucket of paint and a day's worth of work.  And I would not even want to get rid of the small refrigerator because I have found that 18 cubic feet is just the right space for us -- any more space and I would start hoarding food.  Also, having a small fridge keeps me honest about food spoilage since I clean the fridge every week.  Which gives me ample time to force-feed Team Chaos slightly expired containers of yogurt.  Winning!