Everybody has seen my evening kitchen before (not to mention my morning kitchen), but I do so love it, at least in these photos. That is: I do love my kitchen, full stop. It is the most fabulous kitchen in terms of . . . you know . . . kitchenness. It is large. Its footprint, i.e. the layout of workspace and appliances, is functional and makes sense. It has tons of storage space (though no pantry, which I would really love). The cabinet boxes are sturdy and well-constructed. The light is good --- it's never super sunny in this kitchen, but in the summer, at least, that is a feature, not a bug. Thanks to whoever knocked out the wall between the kitchen and the old butler's pantry, it is an eat-in kitchen with room for a sizeable table plus this modest Ikea island.
And in photos, it's really aesthetically pleasing. I mean, it is aesthetically pleasing in real life, but it's also a good bit dingier than it appears in photos, even when it's very clean. The paint is wearing off the crappy laminate-covered particleboard cabinet doors. The stove/oven is grungy (again, even when it has been steam-cleaned). The floor has rotted under the fridge, because the previous fridge leaked unnoticed until it was too late. The ventilation hood doesn't work well (and is also gross and hard to clean because the paint is peeling off). We could use some upgrades, truly, which would mostly not count as decorating, but as staving off deterioration and restoring basic functionality. These things bug me on a daily basis. In all honesty, I have to admit that. I spend a lot of time in this kitchen, and I wish some upgrades would happen. I'm not even asking for new countertops, because the 30-year-old laminate is perfectly okay. But . . . well. This is how it is.
In photos it's beautiful, which is why I take photos. And truly, it's lovely to sit in the kitchen after dinner on a summer evening, with the candle lit and the flowers on the table and the good company of the one person whose company I really need day in and day out.
But I am in a bad-ish mood because today's high is 97F, and I have surrendered to the reality that I'm not going to finish this Substack essay I was trying to finish. I've subbed in something else and finished that instead, so everything's fine, but I hate hitting the wall on a project. Declaring defeat: not my style, but sometimes I just have to lump it.
Today:
*walk the dog before it gets too hot
*read Sagas of Icelanders for my Norse lit course
*try to scrape together a poetry submission that the editor of a new magazine has solicited --- I don't have much good that's not already under consideration somewhere. I don't like simultaneous submissions anyway, and generally don't send the same poems to more than one place, but in this case the places where my best stuff is out don't accept simultaneous submissions, so I can't re-submit those poems until I potentially get them back as rejections.
*wash any clothes that need washing for the trip and continue to plan my packing
*make dinner
Last night I made a very good pizza, using this cauliflower crust recipe. I subbed neufchatel cream cheese for the goat cheese (plus some parmesan, plus a scoop of raw-milk whey protein powder for extra protein), and it turned out beautifully. The secret is a) to buy frozen riced cauliflower, and b) to pre-cook it in a little water so that it's soft, then squeeze it in a dish towel to drain off extra water, so that the crust isn't soggy. You press the resulting dough into a parchment-paper-covered sheet pan or onto a parchment-paper-covered pizza pan, making a very thin layer that will cook through thoroughly, and pre-bake for 30 minutes until it's golden brown. THEN you can top it with whatever and bake again until cheese is melted.
I topped ours with leftovers of a salad I had made for Sunday night's dinner --- grape tomatoes, fresh basil, and sweet banana peppers from the garden, jarred artichoke hearts, black olives, and feta --- plus ground chicken browned with Italian sausage spices (Italian spices, garlic powder, fennel seed, red-pepper flakes), topping it all with more feta. Obviously you can do this without meat and put anything you like on top. I wasn't sure what I was going to do, which is why I added some protein powder to the crust mix. It's unflavored and really didn't alter the crust in any way, and I figured: might as well. It's very hard to eat too much protein, and all too easy to eat too little.
The husband gave me that little green glass cruet for either my birthday or Christmas last year, I don't remember which. You can actually have too many of that kind of thing (and I do), but I still love that one. It's just the right size for sweet little chaotic bunches of whatever flowers I happen to pick when I'm outside. And although I dislike the heat, I do love growing summer flowers.
Wearing today (with my still-wet hair):
*Secondhand Not Perfect Linen Leila dress (S/M) in Cinnamon Rose, bought December 2023, last worn June 26. Wears in 2025: 9
*Secondhand Xero Z-Trek sandals, year 1 of wear
Linen dresses, hot summer days. That's how it goes. There's nothing I can say about this dress that I haven't said a million times before. Now I need to take the dog out and put the hot day to work drying my hair.
LATE AFTERNOON UPDATE
I'm about to make dinner in a minute (ground beef + . . . something, basically), but here's how the day has shaken out. It has been a nice day, despite my initial mood.
*two dog walks --- and I'm mindful of the need to walk her again before, or at least take her out, before evening really sets in, because she's been too afraid to go outside after sundown, thank you fireworks.
*finished and posted my last Substack essay for this week
*went through the "Futures" list on our poetry spreadsheet and marked out poems I'd be happy to write about for the rest of the summer, preparatory to having an editorial meeting (I hope tomorrow)
*did some trip packing:
I challenged myself to pack all my clothes and underwear (minus shoes and outerwear) in this one packing cube. Here you see a bottom layer of dresses: Pacific Brooklyn, Marine Blue Fiona, Teal Fiona. So far so good, and aren't these colors nice next to each other? That's the kind of thing you like to see in a travel capsule, even if you aren't going to wear the actual items together (not layering three dresses on this trip, sorry).
I added a second layer, or at least the start of one:
Shown here also: my Iris Blue Sierra, which I think I'll wear on the plane. It won't be so hot here on Friday, and it won't be that hot there when I arrive, so this is a good choice. I typically don't have trouble in the security line wearing this dress --- wearing a fuller-skirted dress, I have been patted down.
Then cardigans/pullovers:
I'll wear the pink silk/rayon cardi on the plane and pack the two warmer items: cashmere cardigan and green wool-blend pullover, my trusty friend for two Norway trips and now Nova Scotia.
At this point, this particular packing cube was kind of full, so to add a pair of leggings in, I've sized up.
Two pairs of leggings. Why not? They fit. Underwear zips into a pocket in the packing cube.
And then the whole thing zips down --- not exactly flat, but definitely more compactly than you might think for this amount of clothing.
And then it fits into my pack, which already has my shoes in the shoe pocket and my outerwear also tucked in.
I still need to pack toiletries and hair items (small), plus my laptop. I'm not sure I'll be able to cram my crossbody bag in, but I might. That wouldn't be the end of the world, really. I think both items would fit together under the seat, but if not, I can put my pack in the overhead bin. Generally it fits very tidily at my feet, though. I am always happy to be able to travel this way: all my belongings with me, and not too many to be overwhelming. I hate feeling that I can't find stuff in my suitcase, or feeling scattered in a hotel room. It's good to travel pretty small, with a tightly planned wardrobe that still provides me plenty of options.
I might tweak all this between now and Friday, but I could just walk out the door with my pack as is (plus the other items mentioned above), and I'd be fine.
Dinner: Middle Eastern ground-beef bowls, using this recipe, which --- as the blogger notes --- can readily be adapted for alternative sources of protein. Chickpeas would honestly be good with these spices, in this kind of presentation, especially if you made a yogurt sauce to accompany them.
Now the husband is out weed-whacking, catching the last daylight and the relative cool of the evening, and I am ruling the world in online Mah Jong.