"That's all gab disemboweling."

Up until Friday evening, my kitchen had been disemboweled... for three weeks. It was in various stages of undress/uselessness (no oven for three weeks, no sink and dishwasher for much of it.) It was annoying and borderline stressful (I like cooking... and not having to rinse my cup out in the bathroom sink.) It began with replacing a dishwasher which didn't need replacing and elevated (spiraled?) into a full-on remodeling project.

My dad was replacing the built-in dishwasher and found a flaw in the shelf. While trying to peel up the corner of Formica counter, a jagged piece of vivid orange history came off.

Thus began the Epic Re-tiling of 2008 (aka ERT 08).

It was a long and arduous process (in which I was only fleetingly involved), and the kitchen is much brighter now. And the oven is back in place! To celebrate, I went a bit nuts with cooking and baking on Sunday. I wanted to try out some recipes from the new Jamie Oliver cookbook I got a few weeks ago, so I cooked up a storm. I started off by making some banana bread, then angel food cake and strawberry sauce. For dinner, I made baked panco-encrusted rainbow trout, beet root salad, and rice. I really love to cook, but can get stressed out when I do... though I can bake for hours without any real stress... how very odd. Anyway, it got a little worse when my parents called to say they were going to be 15 minutes later than they thought, as with fish, 15 minutes is sort of a big deal.

But, there wasn't much need to worry, as it came out really well if I do say so myself. My mom was the only one who really liked the beet root salad, but I'm glad I tried it - definitely satisfied my curiosity. In any case, it was quite pretty. Yay aesthetics.

Next I want to try something with leeks. And pancetta. Bring on the delicious challenge!