Illogical kitchen habits

[tejon]

Ahem - metal spatulas on the left, silicone on the right, thank you very much

Edited February 23, 2006 by tejon (log)

[Marlene]

No, no, no: the wooden spoons go in the drawer, with the spatulas. Silly rabbit.

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That's where mine are. I have drawer dividers in every drawer and all my spatulas must be together in one slot, my measuring spoons in another, my whisks in another. My husband never gets it right even though you can clearly see what belongs where.

[FistFullaRoux]

Between my control freak psyche and my wife's OCD, it's a wonder anything gets put up at all.

But she puts the sugar underneath the microwave cart. All the way across the kitchen. Boggles me. My hot sauces are only displayed on the counter for looks, I promise.

[maggiethecat]

Well, of course the maple sugar, five spice powder, star anise, dried ginger and Lyle's Golden Syrup belong on the same shelf. Right? The molasses belongs with the candied mimosa and the box of 1000 cocktail parasols, of course. Do not fail to put things back any other way!

Visiting Mixologists: I'm so sorry. The Pastis and Pernod live in the Shaker pantry, sharing shelf space with the rice noodles and dried mushrooms. Wine sits on the sideboard. Spirits share the second-from-the-bottom shelf of the bookcase, along with the food dish of Willow, the small slim kitty. (Ajax the Big Boy gets the lower shelf to himself.) Fortified wines are on the spice shelves.

And the kettle has pride of place far away from the stovetop. Besides, there's not much room for it there, what with the big Lodge frypan, the stockpot, the 42.99 nonstick job from Ikea which is great for a quick omelet...

[andiesenji]

No, no, no: the wooden spoons go in the drawer, with the spatulas. Silly rabbit.

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That's where mine are. I have drawer dividers in every drawer and all my spatulas must be together in one slot, my measuring spoons in another, my whisks in another. My husband never gets it right even though you can clearly see what belongs where.

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It has been many years but I recall my husbands had the same problem. I could never understand why a man, who had a pegboard with each tool shape carefully outlined in paint in the garage, could not understand that kitchen tools also should be stored in an orderly fashion. His method was to throw everything in the "junk" drawer instead of putting the various utensils in the crocks where they belonged. Retrieving a whisk from the drawer when it was intertwined with a meat fork, a narrow spatula and a set of measuring spoons, could be a frustrating experience.

I finally managed to get him to pay attention after I went out to the garage and threw all his tools into an old wooden box and dumped several containers of nails, screws and bolts on top!!!

As the old saying goes, I don't get mad, I get even!

[natasha1270]

Huh, just when I thought I had no "illogical kitchen habits", a memory emerges.

Time: Childhood

Location: Suburban Virginia

Occasion: Crab Feast

I can still hear my mom asking one of us kids to "macerate the garlic". A very specific process. Sadly, my mother is no longer here to remind us but it is still one I follow to this day but ONLY if we are having a crab feast. Perhaps this falls more into the ritual category than any kind of illogical habit but there it is...

To begin:

step 1) Peel one or two garlic cloves

step 2) Place garlic on square of waxed paper with sprinkling of salt and a few peppercorns and fold into little square package (sometimes even further wrapped in a square of tin foil)

step 3) Use crab mallet and smash the hell out of it

step 4) Carefully open garlic, salt, pepper package and dump contents into bowl of vinegar

step 5) Grab a seat by the cooler, dump the crabs on the table and enjoy!

N.

[emsny]

When I come home from work, I often go right into the kitchen, do something messy and only THEN change out of my good clothes into jeans and a polo shirt. Keeps the laundry in business, I suppose.

[Smithy]

Well, now. I thought this was supposed to be a thread about our own illogical habits, not spousal failure to recognize logic. I see I was mistaken. How illogical of me!

The spices go on the turntable on the left-hand side of the cupboard. The herbs go on the right-hand turntable. What's so hard about that? So why is it, I ask you, that the basil is forever hiding on the left, and the pepper blends keep migrating right, and the salts out in front obscure both turntables?

Grr.

Andie, I notice you did mention EX-spouses. When you got even, you did so with a vengeance.

[JAZ]

I leave my tea kettle on the stove at all times. It provides me solace and caffienated beverages. During the summer, I make one gallon of tea, per day, and that often runs out. At night, before bed most nights, I consume at least on swell bodum tea pot full of World Peace Tea (aromatic, non caffeinated, custom blended in DC somewhere-I love the stuff). I love my kettle. It stays on the stove.

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I never meant that keeping a kettle on the stove is illogical for everyone -- if I made tea every day, or even a few times a week, it would make some sense. It's just that I've been doing it all this time only because it's what I grew up seeing.

So, Brooks, you can keep your kettle on the stove.

[maggiethecat]

When I come home from work, I often go right into the kitchen, do something messy and only THEN change out of my good clothes into jeans and a polo shirt. Keeps the laundry in business, I suppose.

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You and my husband! Why not fry chicken and splatter the silk Ferragamo tie, then change into the eight year old Land's End paunch protector?

[etalanian]

I'm fairly anal about where everything goes in the kitchen and dining room cupboards, although absolutely NOTHING gets organized in our house if it doesn't have to do with cooking or serving food.

The heatproof silicone spatulas go in the container on the counter next to the stove. The rubber spatulas go in the container on the island, next to the container with the large whisks. The small whisks go in a container on the large kitchen windowsill, along with the odd-shaped whisks. The serving utensils go in the antique pitcher on the same sill. The tongs go in the drawer with the oven mitts. All of the pastry utensils go into the top drawer next to the large fridge, except the dough scoops, which are kept in a drawer under the marble slab; the pastry bags and tubes, which live in the drawer under the scoops; and the pastry cutters, which are kept in the drawer next to the scoops.

Now, why is it so hard for my husband to put things where they belong????

Eileen

[racheld]

I finally managed to get him to pay attention after I went out to the garage and threw all his tools into an old wooden box and dumped several containers of nails, screws and bolts on top!!!

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Andie, you are the Goddess of kitchen teachings. Rule on.

There are several utensil drawers---one for whisks and spatulas and grabbers and bench scrapers. Another holds all the Chinese utensils, the strainers and wok brushes and those cute bamboo-and-chickenwire dippers, plus two egg turners, the Rolls Royce of a can opener (hand-held) and a baggie of assorted colors of twisties which came off everything from bread to the morning paper.

They live where they live.

I wash all dishes, including all the ones going into the dishwasher, with Dawn apple, a brush, and water too hot to touch, thus the heavy yellow gloves. I just cooked "for the public" for so long, scalding water and antibacterial EVERYTHING are just part of our kitchen. And I load the DW pretty much the same way every time. I'm known to be grumpily ungrateful (only when I'm alone, muttering to myself) for help that puts glasses in the bowl slots and vice versa, or unrinsed dishes ANYWHERE.

The two battered-but-sterile flappy acrylic cutting "boards" are used several times a day, scrubbed between each use with above brush/soap/hot water, stood on edge on a towel, returned to their slip-in place behind several standing platters on a shelf. I have a lovely maple one, a Corning one like frosted glass, and several of the little wooden paddles-on-a-lanyard things lurking about, but the two old gray scarred ones are the ones which get the use.

On the back of my huge old black six-burner is a silver-spray-painted door from an ancient parlor stove; the courtly shepherd has been proffering the same rose to the same farm beauty for probably a hundred years. It serves no purpose; it rocks a little on the knobby decoration on the bottom, it needs a good scrubbing right this minute, but there it is, greeting me each time I enter the kitchen. The paint was already in place when I found it years ago at a yard sale---rust seeps through, adding to the relief, and it's charmingly ugly.

Though we use only the handy-dandy sleek white electric kettle, the teakettle of a decade sits serenely on the right-back burner. It's a pineapple, with a jaunty topknot of jagged green, a nifty handle should I ever need to lift the lid. It's bright and cheery, and I will not relegate it to a dark cupboard.

Chris' Dad has done the cooking at their house for quite a few years, and has quite a few rituals---he makes the weekly pot of oatmeal on Monday morning, and carves out a block from the tupperware each morning to microwave.

And speaking of...their microwave door MUST stand ajar, despite its being a little off-kilter and apt to swing out and grope at unwary passersby, especially those with hot pots and pans just removed from the stove. You may close the door and set the timer and heat in it, but if it's empty, the door is NOT to be shut. Every visit brings the same lecture, verbatim, that the thing that wears appliances out is the opening and shutting of the door, breaking of the latches, etc., and woe betide anyone who closes the door and walks away. Must work, though; the thing was a dinosaur the first time I ever went to visit, and we're approaching our 20th anniversary. It'll be peeping away bright and early tomorrow, heralding the perfect temp of the oatmeal clods.

And everyone knows Ketchup and 57 go upside down in the fridge door.

Edited February 23, 2006 by racheld (log)

[tejon]

And everyone knows Ketchup and 57 go upside down in the fridge door.

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Now that just goes without saying.

[ChefCrash]

And everyone knows Ketchup and 57 go upside down in the fridge door.

I stopped eating peanut butter because my ex insisted on storing oily, organic peanut butter this way. I like Jiff..chunky, like she was.

[Lori in PA]

Reading this made me realize one illogical habit I have -- I store my microplane nutmeg grater ACROSS the kitchen from the nutmegs, and that's the only thing I use it for!

[racheld]

Reading this made me realize one illogical habit I have -- I store my microplane nutmeg grater ACROSS the kitchen from the nutmegs, and that's the only thing I use it for!

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And I'm sure the little grater is properly appreciative to be away from those pesky rough hooligans. Nutmegs are the schoolyard bullies, the Lollipop Guild of the spice world. They sneak out past curfew, they gossip and lie, and they just can't. be. trusted.

Quite a few spoilages, over-seasonings and boilovers in a quite normal kitchen can be traced to those lurky nutmegs. They sit there, giggling behind their hands, as we spill, drop, pour laboriously-made stock right down the drain, and have unspeakable encounters with blistering pothandles and mandolines.

Keep that little grater safely away from those jinxes. And don't turn your back.

[detlefchef]

I own a small restaurant, which is the single most illogical kitchen habit anyone can have.

[cakewalk]

I'm leaving our kettle right where it is, on the back left burner on top of the home-made heat tamer, and I'm adopting an air of moral superiority about it. It's not going in the closet.

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Here, here.

I have more room on the stove than I do in my cupboards, that's for sure. And anyway I do use it every morning to boil water for my French press coffee. And it looks nice. So there.

You want illogic? I have two separate sets of dishes and two sets of pots & pans and two sets of cutlery. I use them for different types of foods, and never the twain shall meet. Now that's illogic.

[I_call_the_duck]

Oh you guys....the teakettle on the stove is essential! Think of it as set decoration for your home. Nice things just have to be deliberately placed some places to get the maximum visual benefits and break up the monotony. Think of it....a bare stovetop is boring and unstimulating. But a stovetop with a shiny or brightly coloured item strategically placed off to one corner directs your peripheral vision to pick up on other shiny or bright things around the room, making your view of the room that much more pleasing. Notice you'll never see a bare stove in a home magazine.... that would be so.... so.... "average!" 

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Speaking of set decoration, have you noticed that in almost every single movie or TV show there is this tea kettle on the stove? I think it’s interesting that the set designers choose this model regardless of the owner's economic status, because this baby costs around $100.

Update: my tea kettle is still on the stove.

I know I have more, but speaking of OCD, here’s another one…I have a little date stamp and ink pad to stamp all cans with the purchase date. My husband loves to take advantage of 2-for-1 sales. As a result, we may have several cans of tuna or tomatoes, for example, that was purchased at various times. Before I put the cans away, I date-stamp them (and also try putting the older cans in the front. When reaching for a can of _____, I know which one to use first. It comes in handy during my futile attempts to clean out my pantry. Even if some cans now have a “use by” date on them, I still stamp all my cans…

[judiu]

You want illogic? I have two separate sets of dishes and two sets of pots & pans and two sets of cutlery. I use them for different types of foods, and never the twain shall meet. Now that's illogic. 

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Isn't that called keeping Kosher?

[Cleo]

You want illogic? I have two separate sets of dishes and two sets of pots & pans and two sets of cutlery. I use them for different types of foods, and never the twain shall meet. Now that's illogic. 

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Isn't that called keeping Kosher?

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I was just about to say the same thing!

I am also guilty of keeping this teapot on my stove. It was a hand-me-down. But I NEVER make tea. I guess I just fall into the "my mother did it that way" group. Yes, it collects grease and dust just sitting there, and I'm always shuffling it around to the different burners, but I still don't think I'm ready to put it away. I'll give it some thought.

Edited February 23, 2006 by Cleo (log)

[Kouign Aman]

Fun thread!

And I'm sure the little grater is properly appreciative to be away from those pesky rough hooligans.  Nutmegs are the schoolyard bullies, the Lollipop Guild of the spice world.  They sneak out past curfew, they gossip and lie, and they just can't. be. trusted.

Quite a few spoilages, over-seasonings and boilovers in a quite normal kitchen can be traced to those lurky nutmegs.  They sit there, giggling behind their hands, as we spill, drop, pour laboriously-made stock right down the drain, and have unspeakable encounters with blistering pothandles and mandolines.

Keep that little grater safely away from those jinxes.  And don't turn your back.

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Yes Ma'am!

I love that corning teapot. :drool:

Illogical habit - the canister of wooden and plastic spoons etc that eats up our counter but that we never use. We use the ones from the drawer next to the stove.

The bottles of spiced etc vinegars and oils rec'd as gifts. We leave them on the counter in hopes that seeing them will inspire us to use them. Hasnt worked in 5 years.....

The kettle lives on the stove because a) it doesnt store anywhere else well (especially full of water) and b) we use the kettle to cover a burner that's just been turned off, in case the cat decides to jump up onto the stove.

[andiesenji]

Well, now.  I thought this was supposed to be a thread about our own illogical habits, not spousal failure to recognize logic.  I see I was mistaken.  How illogical of me!

The spices go on the turntable on the left-hand side of the cupboard.  The herbs go on the right-hand turntable.  What's so hard about that?  So why is it, I ask you, that the basil is forever hiding on the left, and the pepper blends keep migrating right, and the salts out in front obscure both turntables?

Grr.

Andie, I notice you did mention EX-spouses.  When you got even, you did so with a vengeance.

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I finally decided, after the third failure, that I simply was not cut out for marriage. I was and am too independent, opinionated, want to have things done MY way, in my house, and my motto has always been:

"I may not always be right, but I am never wrong!" It is a very rare man who can cope with this attitude.

[Sugarella]

And I'm sure the little grater is properly appreciative to be away from those pesky rough hooligans.  Nutmegs are the schoolyard bullies, the Lollipop Guild of the spice world.  They sneak out past curfew, they gossip and lie, and they just can't. be. trusted.

Quite a few spoilages, over-seasonings and boilovers in a quite normal kitchen can be traced to those lurky nutmegs.  They sit there, giggling behind their hands, as we spill, drop, pour laboriously-made stock right down the drain, and have unspeakable encounters with blistering pothandles and mandolines.

Keep that little grater safely away from those jinxes.  And don't turn your back.

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This was just...... ooohhhhh!!!!

[andiesenji]

I actually have a lot of illogical kitchen habits but I am not about to admit to all of them. People think I am a bit (or a lot) quirky, but as long as they don't try to reform me, that's okay.