“Faster meals.” That was all I needed to hear to respond to one column reader.
After catching a recent write-up of mine on drawer organizing, a “kitchen coach” e-mailed me and offered to help rearrange my kitchen to make meals faster. What red-blooded women could pass that up?
“You mean I could actually serve dinner before everyone has given up, found a box of cereal and gone to bed?”
“Absolutely,” she assured.
This, of course, assumes I have food in the house.
“Bring it on!” I said.
So in service to you, dear reader, I opened up my kitchen to public scrutiny and humiliation.
This is how dinner usually happens at my house:
I get hungry. The kids get hungry. Somebody asks what’s for dinner. Then everyone looks at me. I look around too. When it’s clear I’m the only hope, I dash to the store, come back huffing, turn on a lot of burners, run a few laps around the island wielding a wooden spoon, and eventually put dinner on the table.
“So what areas of your kitchen aren’t working for you?” asked Mary Collette Rogers, author of “Take Control of Your Kitchen” (Frederick Fell Publishers, $14.95).
“The cook.”
“I mean, are you aware of any weaknesses?”
“The food.”
She pushed up her shirtsleeves and started opening my cupboards and drawers. My fingers found a hole in my sweater and started twisting.
“Your problem,” she said right off, “is your kitchen isn’t set up for smooth meal making.”
“That’s all!” I was relieved. I always thought my problems were much deeper.
“Show me how you make coffee.”
I got the carafe, walked to the sink for water, then walked back to the coffeemaker. Next, I went to the pantry for the coffee, over to the cupboard for a cup, and back to the fridge for milk.
Her eyes darted after me like a spectator at a tennis match.
“Save your steps!” she cried. “Get your workout at the gym!”
My kitchen coach went back to opening cupboards.
“Your cookbooks are over the kitchen desk. That’s good,” she continued. “You can refer to them when you sit down to plan meals and make your grocery list.”
I nodded and twisted at the growing hole in my sweater. Telling this woman – who has actually written meal-planning software – that I rarely plan meals, use cookbooks, or write grocery lists would just be too much disclosure for one day.
“Your pot holders,” she said, moving on. “They’re next to the sink, not next to the oven or stove? Is that convenient for you?”
I twist.
“And your baking things?”
“Baking things?”
“You bake?”
“Not unless I want to hurt someone.”
“Not even muffins?”
“Last time I made muffins, my kids fed them to the birds, who wound up in the ER, where they reported me to wildlife endangerment.”
She made a clucking sound. “You keep this old fish aquarium next to your toaster because … ?”
“They’re the same size?”
“I see the logic.”
And so it went.
Halfway through her inspection, Rogers looked at me, concerned. My eyes must have been twirling pinwheel-style like a cartoon character’s because she asked: “Are you OK, Marni?”
“Fine,” I said, pushing my hand through the sweater hole.
My coach assured me that following her suggestions would enable me to have dinner on the table in no time flat.
“Right,” I said, my arm now dangling through the hole in my sweater. “Now I just need food and a cook.”
Some issues, it seems, even an expert can’t solve.
Marni Jameson is a nationally syndicated columnist who lives in the Denver area. You may contact her through marnijameson.com.
A place for everything
After “kitchen coach” Mary Collette Rogers was done looking over my place, she gave me these recommendations for faster meal preparation:
Work your prime real estate. I knew about the kitchen triangle, the one between the stove, refrigerator and sink, which experts say is the key to good kitchen design. What I didn’t realize was that all the cupboards and drawers within this magic triangle should be stocked with the cooking stuff you use most.
“There’s no food in your triangle,” Rogers observed. We emptied one cupboard that housed corncob dishes, sushi servers and other specialty dishware and moved in cooking essentials (seasonings, oils and vinegar and the like) so I could grab them from the stove.
Use the pantry correctly. Those essential cooking items had been in the pantry, which I learned was all wrong. The pantry is for storing little-used appliances and backup food. We moved the bread machine, electric knife and pitchers into the pantry to free up “prime real estate.”
Create kitchen centers. Think activities – making coffee, setting the table, baking – then organize around them. When Rogers had her way, the coffee maker, cups, filters, coffee, bean grinder, sugar and creamer were all in a space of 4 square feet. I could make coffee in my sleep.
For the table-setting center, Rogers recommended locating silverware, plates and place mats together between the dishwasher and the dining table.
Practice efficiency. Buy square or rectangular plastic storage containers. Round containers waste space. Convert deep, lower cupboard shelves into shelves that roll out. Sharpen or have your knives sharpened regularly. (A sharp knife can cut kitchen prep time in half.) Put cutting boards by kitchen knives, and hot pads by the stove.
