Some time back, I had reason to post a photo of my kitchen, and this is what my kitchen looked like in that photo.
This was the day of the Guga, if y'all remember.
A couple of folks actually commented on how lovely and tidy my kitchen was, and this made me, erm, slightly uncomfortable.
I am not keen on giving anyone a wrong impression of who I really am, you see, and all this talk of my tidy kitchen made me feel I had to own up. Yes, I have to own up to having tidied the island specifically for the photo. All the stuff was actually hiding on the floor when I took the photo.
Well, that's not true, but my kitchen definitely does not look like this normally.
And just because I feel the need to 'fess up; and just because I feel the need to keep things real; and also just because I know my Mum doesn't read my blog and so it's safe to make this admission online, I'm going to show you what my island looked like this evening.
Y'all ready for this?
Here's the island. You can just about see the colour of the worktop.
I wasn't long home from my trip to town, and some of the shopping still had to be put away, but instead of getting that done before beginning other tasks, I decided (as is my wont) to plough into other jobs.
We have vegetable peelings. I decided I'd make soup tomorrow, and I'd steep the Broth mixture overnight, and to pass the time and seeing I had nothing else to do, I thought I'd peel the vegetables, ready for tomorrow's soup.
At the same time as the vegetable peeling, I was whipping cream. It's actually cream and yoghurt, because that's the filling I like in my Pavlovas. You see, I'd made individual Lemon Meringue Tarts yesterday and had loads of the meringue left over, so I made some individual pavlovas. They were sitting in the oven waiting to be eaten, and so I had to prepare the filling.
Oh, now we're back to the soup.
Into tomorrow's soup will go carrots, turnip, onions, leeks, cabbage and kale.
Beside the broth mixture are the washed strawberries.
That's normal, right? Strawberries and broth mixture - they were made to go together.
If I take a photo from this angle, you'd almost be lulled into thinking there was nothing intruding on the pavlova, strawberry and whipped cream. Except there's a wee round, silver thingy edging into the bottom-right of the photo. That's one of these thingumijigs you put at the bottom of the radiator pipe, and it's perfectly normal to have one (or maybe two) of these on the island when you're filling pavlovas and making soup.
The pavlova doesn't look as appetizing from this angle, does it?
On this side of the island, we have another bundle of stuff. Part of the Wee Guy's arsenal. A photo of Sparkle, the Guide Dog we sponsor. (She's not as bonny as Jackson - we've told him that, so he doesn't get jealous. But she is way smarter than he is. I mean waaaaay smarter. We haven't told him that, lest he end up with a complex, needing therapy, and feeling the need to sue those who gave him the aforementioned complex.)
We also have: a juice jug; a tub of Stork; a jar of pie weights; my mobile; Conn Iggulden's Bones of the Hills, the third in his series on the life of Genghis Khan. The series is absorbing and fascinating. Iggulden is a fabulous writer, and here he writes on a fascinating figure from history.
And maybe if I keep talking about Iggulden and about Genghis Khan, you will forget all you saw from my kitchen ...
