My Kitchen on a Cooking Day

Here’s a thing that happens to me most weeks: I get a free Saturday or a free Sunday, I look at my running list of pending recipes and half-drafted blog posts, and something in my brain goes “yes, all of them, today.” It’s very easy to fold a couple of extra projects into the regular Sunday prep for the week, and it’s honestly kind of fun to make something a little ambitious for a Saturday dinner when, for once, we’ve got the time.

The day I shot these photos, for the record, I was elbow-deep in a big batch of chili crisp and a tray of individual zucchini gratins (both of which have their own posts, because of course they do). So what you’re looking at isn’t a staged “isn’t my kitchen tidy” fantasy. This is the real thing, mid-project, on an actual cooking day.

And I’ll be straight with you: it gets chaotic.

The deal with Zach

Zach and I have a standing agreement, and it’s one of the better ones we’ve made: I cook the meals, he cleans up and does the dishes. On the mornings he makes biscuits and breakfast (a man of many talents), the deal flips and I clean. Simple, fair, tested over years.

Here’s the wrinkle. My ADHD means my post-cooking kitchen situation can be, let’s say, daunting. On a regular Tuesday-dinner night, no problem; he’s on tap, and the mess is a normal-human amount of mess. But a full project day, the kind where I’ve got three things going and a fourth soaking, can leave behind something closer to a weather event. We’ve (ahem) had words about this over the years.

So we amended the agreement, and I think it’s the reason we stopped having those words. Regular dinner, Zach cleans. But if I’m in project-mode, for the blog or the holidays or anything beyond our normal routine, I step it up: I clean as I go, and I don’t hand him a kitchen that looks like a hurricane came through and specifically targeted the cutting boards. It’s the fair thing. He didn’t sign up to be the cleanup crew for my hobby.

The funny part is that the agreement didn’t just save Zach’s sanity; it made me a better cook. Knowing I’m on the hook for my own mess forces me to be organized about how I batch, how I stage, and how I work. Constraints are good for me. Who knew.

How I actually set up (steal any of this)

If there’s a useful part to this post, it’s here. My cooking-day setup is basically one long exercise in future-me not hating present-me.

Everything I’m using comes out first. Before I turn on a single burner, every ingredient I plan to use that day is out on the counter where I can see it. Anything I’m not using gets pushed back into the corner by the bread bin, out of the splash zone and out of my way. If it’s not in the game, it’s on the bench.

The prep station lives under the laptop. I keep my laptop up on the raised bar so I can follow a recipe or a video without craning my neck or gumming up the screen with garlicky fingers. Directly below it is my main cutting board, on a towel (the towel keeps it from sliding and catches the inevitable). That’s where the actual knife work happens.

There’s a second cutting board by the range. This one’s the unsung hero. It’s for two jobs: quick cuts of things that need to go straight into a hot pan, and, just as importantly, as a landing pad for spoons, spatulas, whisks, and every other utensil that would otherwise smear sauce directly onto my counter. A dedicated spoon-rest zone sounds like a small thing. It’s not a small thing.

None of this is revolutionary. It’s just mise en place with the volume turned up for a person whose brain needs the guardrails. But it’s the difference between a fun cooking day and a day that ends with me standing in the wreckage wondering where it all went wrong.

The someday list

Now for the fun part, the part where I get to dream. Because as much as I love this kitchen, there’s a running list of things I’d change when the time (and the budget) is right. Consider this a small preview of a future Creek House project.

• Move the microwave and put in a real range hood. A proper, professional hood. The current setup’s fine; a real hood is a want, not a need, but oh, how I want it.
• Tile behind the range. Right now it’s painted wall back there, and painted wall doesn’t love being splattered with chili oil. Tile wipes clean. Tile forgives.
• Replace the lower cupboards with drawers. Yes, all of them. Yes, really. If you’ve ever gotten on your knees to excavate a stockpot from the dark cave at the back of a lower cabinet, you already understand. Drawers pull the whole world out to meet you. Drawers are civilization.
• Lose the raised bar. That tall bar area is the bane of my existence; it’s so high I genuinely can’t find chairs that work at it. I’d much rather have one continuous, same-level counter and regular-height stools, so the people I love can actually sit at a comfortable height and keep me company while I cook. That’s the whole dream, really: a kitchen you can hang out in.

We’ll get there. Someday. That’s how the Creek House goes: one project at a time, in the order the house and the budget allow.

The part I’m not showing you

Here’s the honest truth about honesty: these are the four photos you get today. I’m being real with you, but I’m not baring my entire soul. I’m not going to turn around and show you the sink full of dishes, the pots and pans, the other cutting board, and the open dishwasher mid-load. A little mystery is good for a relationship, including the one between a food blogger and her readers.

But I did hold up my end of the deal with Zach before I called it a day. I loaded the dishwasher with my project dishes, swapped out the trash and recycling bags, and carried my bowl of peels, trimmings, and cuttings out to Millicent, my food recycler (yes, she has a name; yes, that’s a whole other post). The kitchen I left behind wasn’t a hurricane. It was just a kitchen that had a big day.

And that, hurricane narrowly avoided, is what goes on behind the blog on a cooking day.

P.S. The bread bin corner is where good ingredients go to wait their turn. It’s not a junk drawer. I’ll die on this hill even as I watch a stray onion roll behind it.

P.P.S. If you’re also a project-cooker with an ADHD brain: the clean-as-you-go thing isn’t natural for me either. I have to decide to do it, every single time. Some days I win. The days I don’t, Zach’s very gracious about it, which is its own kind of love.