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Kitchen Rants Whatever

Planning a New Kitchen

It’s been awfully quiet here for some time. I know it has been awfully quiet here before, but this time there’s actually a reason. My cooking adventures have come to a halt for the time being. I do cook every now and then, but when I do, it’s more or less out of necessity than out of true inspiration.

But don’t worry, everything is fine. The reason I’m never in the right mood to cook up something really inspirational is because we’re moving. Yes, you’ve heard right. Peter and I started looking for apartments in Düsseldorf in June and we actually got lucky very fast. For some reason when it comes to apartments, the third one’s always the charm with me. Or at least it has been that way for the only three times I actually had to find one.

We’re insanely happy with what we found and we sealed the deal after we came back from Kraków. Did I mention we bought the place? So naturally I’m still freaking out about that from time to time, but most of time I’m just looking forward to finally moving there. We already brought most of our books over, plus some shelves and a new big dining table we got from IKEA.

Well, anyway that’s why it’s been so quiet here. I don’t really have the energy to make anything special for dinner these days, since all I can think of is how awesome life is going to be once we are at the new place, which – have I told you this? – has a 40 square meter roof terrace, by the way. If you hate me right now, I’d totally understand.

Now of course there’s a kitchen to plan. In Germany kitchen’s are not a part of an apartment. Sometimes you are lucky and you’ll get an apartment or house with a nice kitchen already built in. Sometimes you’re not so lucky and the kitchen is really ugly or there’s no kitchen at all. Although I can’t decide which is worse… a really ugly kitchen or none at all?

Well, we have none at all. So after going to three different kitchen stores and have someone plan a kitchen and tell us how much it’s going to cost and one crazy trip to Osnabrück about which I will write no more, because I just don’t have the words to properly write about it, we finally settled on what we want to have and who we want to do it. So the deal goes to…. my uncle, who happens to be a cabinetmaker and therefore we get all the customized furniture we need.

There are so many ways to plan a kitchen. I know it’s modern these days to put the oven a bit higher so that you don’t need to crouch down to get anything out. But alas, we’ll have nothing of that. We’re just having a U-shaped kitchen with a beautiful wooden countertop and no freaking kitchen cupboards hanging on any wall. I hate these things. Plus, I’m very accident prone, so I know if some cupboard hangs at forehead level, I’m just going to hit my forehead there again and again, and does that hurt or not?

I don’t know how long it’s going to be until I can dive head first into my first kitchen adventures in the new kitchen and I’m trying to steer my thoughts away from how much it’s going to cost, because I like to stick to happy thoughts these days. But I’m sure it’s going to be great and then – naturally – I’m going to take pictures right away to make you all even more jealous. Because that’s the kind of nice girl that I am.

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Whatever

A Menu for Hope III

Lebkuchen

For the third time now, Pim of Chez Pim is organizing the fundraising campaign A Menu for Hope. This year’s donation go to the UN World Food Programme, helping to provide hunger relief for needy people worldwide.

For every US$10 you can „buy“ a virtual lottery ticket for one of the many wonderful prizes, food bloggers around the world are providing. These include Food and wine tastings, shopping tours, cook books and more.

You can make your donations here. Please read Pim’s instructions on how to sign up for a specific price first.

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Whatever

Hello and Goodbye!

So, did you by any chance notice that I got a new camera? The sudden appearance of not-so-bad food pictures might have given you a clue.

Yes, we finally went insane and bought a Nikon D70s and fumbled around happily for a week, getting to know all those little buttons and switches before they could team up and drive us insane. Then something broke and the camera didn’t like the memory card, so we had to bring it back to the store.

Since they don’t make this model anymore they couldn’t just exchange the camera and send us home with a new one. Apparently we were lucky enough to get one of the last ones in Cologne. Instead they had to send it in to get fixed. And we’re stuck with my old and seriously bad FinePix again.

I can say though that the Nikon D70s is a damn fine thing. I still feel intimidated by all the options, but I think I understood some bits and for someone as camera unexperienced as me that means a lot.