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A Functional Kitchen

m.wallace — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 00:54:07 +0000

I spent some distraction-time today musing over how we use our kitchen, and what we would like to have:

1-2 surfaces for rolling-out dough, etc
2-3 surfaces for working/general prep
Breakfast area: coffee+cereal+microwave storage (near refrigerator for milk/yogurt, and near silverware & bowls) ..likely involves bar stools..
Wine stocked near bar &/or dinner-prep/working area. We presently have a built-in rack on the right of all our upper cabinets. Not a bad idea or location.
All appliance doors don’t interact/hide/interfere with prep/cooking. Presently, the oven & dishwasher doors interact/nearly overlap, leaving someone inevitably stuck in the corner!
Sink, trash & compost holder nearby, near enough to working areas. Some of the gallery images show a full 3′ marble counter with a sink in the middle. I suppose I still need to get used to the idea of a sink in the middle of the kitchen, not along a wall facing outside.
I personally like built-in ovens, 1960-style! I especially don’t like oven-heat radiating through the whole room/house. Ovens these days.. CHEAP!
A ‘small appliance’ rail above work-areas, below upper cabinets. We presently “store” coffee & tea on either the counter or the window sill.. so why not have a window-sill without a window! It’ll allow greater work-surface depth too.
Slate floors! ..wait, are those functional?
Standings-mats near work-areas
Kid-accessible kid-friendly dishes. And with that, maybe this means the microwave shouldn’t be above the stove-top!
Not sure what to do with larger small-appliances: blender, processor, mixer..
Also not sure what to do with pots to avoid the teflon getting scratched up..

That’s all I came up with for now, I’m sure I’m forgetting things like volume of storage for food & dishes, etc. And I’m not demanding these, just dreaming

Recipe Manager of my Dreams

m.wallace — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 20:39:24 +0000

There’s got to be a million crappy software recipe managers out there. My major concern is that each website now has it’s own version (from foodnetwork & epicurious to kraft!) –how UNinteroperable are these?! The best I get is to physically print-out the recipies. How helpful / futuristic is that? Not at all.

Gourmet to the rescue! This wonderful piece of software is only available for Linux right now, but with a little linux server in the house, what’s the problem?! Somewhere between running VNC to running an X-windows app over ssh (yes, in Mac!) I aim to have this app at the heart of my kitchen-future.. especially with this years promise of cheap android tablets!), as well as Gourmet’s ability to IMPORT webpages (with images!) and export them to a standard format, be it PDF to recipe-XML. (XML would then allow a web-app to be built, btw!)

Today, there’s a happy Mark.

Stoichiometry meets Proverbs 27

m.wallace — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:31:21 +0000

Ok, so I forgot to turn off the faucet to the shower all the way today & every second there was a big sploosh. I’d say 10millilitres. So, I was wondering just how much water I’d have to pay for were it not turned off. This is a all for STOICH! It’s really easy: put everything in 2 rows. Make sure the qualifiers match top & bottom, multiply the quantities in-row & divide the top & bottom. Since the “ml, sec, hr” cancel out, that left me with Litres on the top & days on the bottom.

10	ml	3600	sec	1	L	24	hr	=864000	=864	L/
1	sec	1	hr	1000	ml	1	day	=1000		day

But seriously? 864? That’s a LOT! (To put in perspective, it’s .864 cubic meters too) And since I’m being charged by the 1000 gallons, after 4 straight days, I’m in the next higher payment bracket. Something to check for on vacations certainly!