Category Archives: Kitchen Table
NaNoWriMo – What’s your Go To writing food?
NaNoWriMo is a time for gorging yourself on a diet of words, characters, plots, twists and turns. It can be a huge challenge, an uphill struggle that pushes your abilities and stamina to the limit. I wonder how many fellow Wrimo’s have given much thought about how to fuel their word engines, other than gulping down coffee, nicotine, candied delights, choccy cake (personal favourite) and copious amounts of alcohol.
My question to you, dear blog reader, is this:
What food gets you through your writing marathon?
Whether that be creative writing, NaNo or blogging, surely everyone has a Go To food to feed their words? When the clocks change in the UK, and the sun barely shifts above the horizon (usually shrouded in mist or bathed in grey drizzle) I find my attitude toward food changes. Out come the recipe books as my winter stomach searches for heart warming chow to put an invisible glow around my shivering body.
Kitchen Table Project – Pumpkin Pie & Desperation!
Following the surprising response from my first Kitchen Table Project I thought I’d continue this strange subject with a couple more pics of my kitchen table. But before I do I’d like to invite you, dear blog reader, to post photo’s of your kitchen table and share a story or two of what the “stuff” on it says about you.
Think of it as telling a story without having to think about plots and characters and all that malarkey.
So what do you need to do?
Simply post a photo of your kitchen table, share your thoughts about it, then link it to this post.
If there’s any success I’ll see about running a weekly post for folk to share tales of their kitchen table adventures!
Pumpkin Pie. Mmmm. Yummy right?
Um. No.
I’ve had pumpkin pie before and it was heavenly. However I made a slight error and forgot to blend the ingredients. Even though the taste was spot on the texture was quite awful! The pumpkin was still quite stringy and chewy but soft and squishy on the next bite. And yes, that is a pre-made pastry case bought from the store! I pride myself on being a pretty good cook but when it comes to things like pies I don’t have much luck with pastry.
Before you ask, the burger didn’t go in the pie either. That is in fact a shiny new apparently indestructible dog chew toy for our lovely dog Tilly the Ninja who can chew through titanium given enough time. We also made pumpkin soup, and although I tried a spoonful it wasn’t what I expected and certainly not as good as my chunky minty pea and ham soup. I’m drooling just thinking about it.
Try to ignore the dirty tea towel! A few minutes before I took this photo, our beautiful dog Ben decided that a mug of tea that had been sat unsupped on the table for far too long was up for grabs. He bounced onto the chair and started lapping away. Given his enthusiasm for tea, and his wide tongue, he made quite a mess. Needless to say I had to mop it up and make another for the hard worker.
Oh, and ignore the plea for help too! That’s just a joke and in no circumstances was anyone forced to work hard for their presentation under the threat of: “No more tea till you’ve rehearsed your speech!”
So that’s it for today, our kitchen table awaits its next adventure!
What tales does your kitchen table have to tell?
Post photos of your kitchen table and link back to this post!
The Kitchen Table Project – What does your kitchen table say about you?
Recently I’ve become fascinated by our kitchen table. It’s an ever-changing world of cups, plates, leaflets, technology and general “stuff” but it also has a story to tell. Every day there’s something new and interesting spread across it. And it doesn’t just change day by day but hour by hour, even moment to moment, depending on who’s around and what they’re doing.
Everyone takes photos of their lives, kids, pets, birthdays, weddings, good times and bad. We store them on our hard drives, stuck them to our fridges and send them to our friends. To some degree we tend to measure our passage through time by recording our lives with the simple snapshot.
One day, not too long ago, I thought it would be pretty cool capture what many believe to be the heart of the home, the humble kitchen. Camera in hand, held above our kitchen table, I captured the photo below.
Now this may seem a little mundane but look closely and you will see the story emerge. There’s a plate and pots of jam (or jelly I think you Yankie Doodle Dandies call it!) and that morning we’d baked Jus Roll Croissants, the tinned variety you find in the supermarket chiller. Simply twist and out they pop, stick em in the oven and hey-ho presto yummy croissants!
As you can see there’s a laptop on the table, always in residence, ready for a quick internet browse, email, game of Bejewelled or Facebook update. Those keys are mine by the way, if you can, zoom in on the key ring! There’s a mobile phone, some shopping on the floor, as yet unpacked, and a pair of legs. Not sure who they belong to!
What you don’t see is the hustle and bustle going on around me as I take this photo, but the things on the table remind me of that moment.
Take a look at this shot taken a few days later.
First thing I noticed was the shiny glint in Tilly’s eye at the bottom. Our lovely ninja is fascinated by the little light on the front of my Nokia N8. We’ve got a Sudoku game on the go, empty glasses and a presentation project being edited. The fruit bowl is empty!
Our kitchen table is a feast of conversation, from heated debates to raucous laughter, not to mention good food! Of all the rooms in the house, the kitchen is my favourite place to be. I enjoy watching the TV but you can’t have a good catch up when you’re all staring at the goggle box can you? Our kitchen table is a serious multi-purpose tool, used by everyone and neglected by none.
In our ever changing, hectic 24/7 lifestyles it’s nice to know there is always one constant – the kitchen table. It’s always ready to accept anything we care to throw at it, on it, under it (in the case of sniffing dogs) and around it. Laughter, study, games, arguments, you name it, the kitchen table is there to help us on our journey through life. Never underestimate the importance of your kitchen table!
So there it is, our kitchen table, the first of many snapshots of my kitchen life.
