I love, love, love, love, love, love, love my new kitchen. It is not ginormous or anything, but it is a workable size*. It has a dishwasher, which means I can cook whatever I want without worrying about Jeff griping about the dishes. It has plenty of counter space. It has room for all my pots and pans and plates and glasses etc. It's pretty much perfect.

It was the first thing I unpacked when we moved in, but the cookbooks were in the last room to get unpacked. So we christened our new kitchen with food I could cook from memory- steak fajitas using a skirt steak rubbed with an improvised spice rub and served with the Avogadro's number guacamole from Trader Joe's, just because the name cracks me up.

Then a "I'll use every serving piece I want, because I can" meal of roast butterflied chicken, with mustard and butter smeared under its skin and sliced potatoes roasted underneath it, based on what I could remember of a recent episode of America's Test Kitchen, with creamed spinach on the side. (That is three serving plates for two people, for those keeping track. Sinful.)

Tonight is barbeque shrimp with a baguette from BreadBar- we are right next to La Brea Bakery, but I was running errands over near Bread Bar this morning so I thought I'd check them out.

Next up is a meal with the most prep dishes I can think up, probably. To abuse the dishwashing luxury some more.

*read as "a trillion sizes bigger than any kitchen I have had in my adult life"