And it smells wonderful!

I used to enjoy cooking and baking.   Then I didn't.

I remember cooking and baking at my Grandma Greta Ritchie's house.  We lived a couple of miles from her when we lived in Ohio.  She taught me how to make pie crust, how to make pie filling, and how to make potato salad, kind of.  She loved to cook and bake and she passed that love onto me.

When we moved to southern Indiana when I was 12, I spent several summers with her. I always thought it was a special treat to be alone with Grandma, to enjoy her spoiling me, to learn all of her secrets in the kitchen.  She also taught me to sew using her treadle sewing machine.  I had the rhythm down pat on pumping on the treadle to make the needle move.

But after Gary and I were married, I lost the love of cooking and baking.  I still did it, but it was a chore rather than fun.  I remember making heart shaped cakes for one of Megan's classes for Valentine's Day.  The cake batter was poured into  individual heart shaped pans, baking them, then letting them cool, and frosting them  It took me FOREVER, and I never did that again.  Actually I didn't enjoy making much of anything.  I wasn't sure why, but all types of cooking and baking lost its appeal to me over the years.  I would rather go out to eat or buy something at the bakery than make it myself.  Even when the girls were in 4-H, I was a little bit glad when they wanted to go to Grandma's for help with a foods project and use her oven and her expertise.

Here it comes...another reason why I am glad we moved.  I am regaining my love of cooking and baking.

I finally figured it out.

I have more room to work.  There is a long counter space, extra counter space to put things aside if needed, and the little island plus the big island both of which offer more work space or an area to set portions of the product while waiting for the next step.

In the other house there was limited counter space, the table had to be used for more room, and everything from the table had to be elsewhere to make better use of the little bit of available space that I had.

In the new kitchen there are more cabinets with sliding shelves and deeper drawers for the utensils.  When I moved everything into the new kitchen, I was careful to arrange things in a logical, to me, order.  All of the mixing bowls and measuring cups are on the same sliding shelf.  All of the measuring and mixing utensils are in the same drawers.  All of the baking spices and condiments are in the same section of the upper lazy susan.  All of the baking pans are in the same area.  Instead of having to dig deep, move bowls and catch falling lids which may or may not fit storage containers which were mixed in with the mixing bowls, I can just pull out the sliding shelf and voila!  There is what I need.

The dishwasher is handy for loading the dirty dishes and utensils.  Clean up is really easy because I can place the soiled dishes and bowls into the sink when I am finished with them, then rinse, and finally load the dishwasher, run it, and unload it the next morning.  Cleaning up the counters has been easy too.  Just wipe them off with the wash cloth and dry with a towel.  Sprinkling some dry Barkeepers Friend into the sinks and scrubbing them with the sponge keep them clean and stain free also (especially when I work with the many blackberries that were picked this summer).

Switching to a gas stove and over (which is self-cleaning) was a blessing also.  I had grown up 'cooking with gas,' but the old house had an electric stove top and an electric oven. Everything was gas in the new house, and while I thought it would take a while to get used to it, the  transition was really quite easy.  I still start when I hear the gas shoot on during the baking process, but I am getting more used to it.  I like how the food cooks quickly on the top of the stove and how baked products bake in the oven. 

Tonight I made a Blackberry Pie Bars in a 9x13 pan.  I picked the last, for me, blackberries off the bushes.  I didn't have quite the amount that were called for in the recipe so I added blueberries that I had in the fridge.  I made a shortbread crust using the pastry blender (Grandma would be proud of me for that), mixed up the filling, then poured it on the baked crust and topped it with a strudel  mixture.  It smells wonderful, and I hope it tastes just as good!  I used 1/2 sugar and 1/2 Splenda to try to reduce the carbs and sugars for Gary.  I can't eat an entire pan of these bars, so I will take a few to Lindsey when I go to Francesville for my hair cut tomorrow and I know Landon will want to taste them too.  He already told me I made the best blackberry pies!  Of course he and Cooper made one too that was pretty delicious!

Yes, another reason why I am glad we moved.  I seem to remind myself of that every day!