Anne's Kitchen

Last night our book club met at Anne's house, an amazingly preserved Queen Ann style house with many of the original features, including woodwork and cabinets in the kitchen, a pedestal sink in the bathroom, pocket doors that still work, and a carved screen above an archway between the living room and adjacent sitting area. Recently updated kitchens look very similar to one another, but hers has a very special appearance.



I've posted many, many photos of kitchens, and I have just been tagging them to make them viewable at the same time. To see them all, click on the label "KITCHENS" at the bottom of this post or in the sidebar.

Arny and Tracy's Kitchen in Galway

The house that Arny and Tracy are renting for this year in Galway has a beautiful kitchen, which gets the slanting late-afternoon winter sun. (The latitude is 53 north, so it really slants!) I helped cook one dinner there for the four of us and four guests. I used a dish towel for an apron, but all other needed objects were available. Tracy worked out a very nice spice shelf and populated it with lots of spice, as shown.

While I'm talking about the house, here's a photo of the front.



The front of the house is nearly identical to the houses of the neighbors; the gardens are all different, however. Here's the back garden in the very slanty light of a morning. The wall at the back faces a rather busy street, but it requires a mile of driving to get there unless you want to try climbing over. The neighborhood is amazingly protected!





We came back yesterday, but I'll be posting several more times to cover our very busy trip. So far, posts on my other blogs are:

• Irish Politics
• Misty Ireland
• Irish Castles
• Irish Walls
• Ireland
• Jewish Ireland

Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving dinner is served --




The chefs:


Lenny making gravy.


Aparna whipping cream to top the pies. Foreground: spinach ready to saute.


Larry carving the turkey.


Elaine cleaning up.


The girls playing.

Lunch in Torres Torres: Guest Post by Arny

Arny writes about lunch in a Spanish village:
On Thursday we went to see our friends Adolfo and Fran's place in Torres Torres, where Adolfo grew up. They have spectacularly restored his grandparents' house, which is about 100 years old.

Our mutual friend Ramon picked us up at 12:30 and drove us the 35 miles to the village, pointing out some interesting old buildings and the high-rises of a resort community up the coast a ways from Valencia. Torres Torres is named after two old towers, now in ruins, that sit above the village. I don't know why it's not Dos Torres, but I like Torres Torres better, and it won't get confused with the Lord of the Rings. Both Adolfo and Fran were eager to show us their house, which took 3+ years to renovate.

Here is a picture of Adolfo and Tracy, and part of Ramon, in the kitchen. There is Spanish walnut paneling in front of almost all the appliances and there's an American walnut door because the Spanish walnut can't be made into such a tall (3.5 meter) door.


While Fran made the salad, we walked with Adolfo to pick up the main course, an authentic paella (with chicken and rabbit), from a woman who has been making it for over 40 years. She has a special room with maybe a dozen places that she can cook over a wood fire. There were only 3 going Thursday, but at peak times she does 100 a day.

On the way back, I couldn't resist buying a huge bag of little oranges for 3 Euro. There was a representative bag hanging from the front door of a place a few doors down from Adolfo and Fran's. Ramon showed me that you needed to push the iron door open, take one of the bags on the floor of the entryway, and put the money in the mailbox. We were behind Adolfo on the walk back. He was amused when he saw the oranges, because A. they were from trees owned by the woman who made the paella and B. because he would have given me oranges from his own trees.



The meal was extremely good, and as we were finishing, Adolfo's aunt came by with and for dessert. She brought a very nice apple cake, and Fran brought out a pie-like thing that was basically a whole baked pumpkin.

Shipboard Dining

Ecuadorian Barbecue Lunch on the National Geographic Islander

The Head Chef on the Islander

Islander Kitchen

Lunch Buffet, Islander

Food on the National Geographic Islander was mainly very good -- the dinners, with table service, offered much less choice than lunch and breakfast buffets, and thus I enjoyed them less. The kitchen and dining room staff were all very helpful. The last night, we learned that the pastry chef is also a singer -- the kitchen staff performed skits, and he sang to us.

During the week we spent on land, we took a couple of cruises. Here's the lunch and the small kitchen of the SeaFinch, a very nice boat that took us for a quite pleasant cruise:

Lunch onboard the Eclipse

Note: we drank coke with our lunch.

Galley of the Eclipse where they actually cooked our food

For pictures of some of the wildlife we saw today, see: Santa Fe Island.

The Kitchen at the Morikami Museum

The museum displays change from time to time. Today there were several rooms from a typical Japanese house, such as this kitchen. Note that visitors are told to open the refrigerator and cupboard doors to see (behind plastic shields) the contents that might be present in a Japanese house.


For more photos of this museum see The Morikami Gardens.