When a “little flood” isn’t so little…

I guess when life throws you curve balls, you can get upset or you can just blog about it and move on! So I’m going to give it a try.

Last Saturday after the store closed, I was working in our home kitchen prepping ice cream bases and pork to be pulled for our holiday weekend. Every time I stepped down, my sock got wet. I don’t live in a pristine world, so at first I assumed there was just water on the floor. Then I stepped again and looked down to see water oozing up from between the floor boards. Not good. I opened the under sink cabinet doors and saw water pooled in a plastic tub, about 3” deep, plus lots of wet items.

Since I’m a plumber (or not), I started looking around and found the culprit - the garbage disposal. Somehow the bottom was leaking, and not just a little. When the water was on, it was pouring out. I tried to think back to when I last knew it was dry and what all we had run water-wise since that time. Again, not good. Pretty sure it had only been a day’s worth of water since I’m relatively confident we would have noticed it sooner if it had been longer.

My husband thought we could handle it ourselves. We could not. So a week later we have fans, dehumidifiers and all of our lower cabinets have been removed. Yikes!

A friend had a much worse kitchen flood a few years ago and she has been talking me through it. She mentioned that it was harder than she had expected seeing her kitchen get torn out. I felt that last night. In a weird way, a kitchen for a cook is an extremely personal space. You know where everything is, even that weird kitchen item you use once every three years. It is your “laboratory” of sorts. There are memories. It’s a comfortable space where I do one of my most important jobs - nourishing the people I love. We had our kitchen redone about 20 years ago with some money I received from my grandma, who was a huge kitchen influence on me. So much thought went in to the redesign when we did it. It was done when our life was totally different. Pre-children for us, in the middle of our dairy goat era. Out with the old cabinets that we’d painted white to cover up the weird orange-gold standard 1960’s stain. Out with the white cabinets, after discovering that white is a very stupid color to have when you live on a farm. It was beautiful. Thoughtfully created. Modern. Perfect.

And last night I watched those cabinets march out my front door and on to a truck. Weird emotions. And that’s just the beginning of the emotional adjustments.

We are lucky to have a secondary kitchen in our garage thanks to our commercial kitchen area. While this is helpful, it’s not my familiar territory and it still has to be used for its other purposes. So we have kitchen items strewn across those work tables and the next step for us is figuring out how to manage that, because we have chickens that need processing next week. This is very much stretching my brain power to figure out how to make things work so we don’t have to eat out or buy junk for the next month as we wait for things to be “normal” again.

My goal is to make good meals using the fewest amount of dishes possible (no dishwasher, of course). Our lunch yesterday fit that bill. I made a sheet pan dinner of BBQ chicken, potatoes and broccoli. It felt good to have real food and not a lot of clean up. I’ll give you a kind-of recipe, but I baked it in our commercial oven, which cooks like you’re standing in front of the gates of Hades, so I’m not 100% on the timings.😉

I’ll try to keep you updated on our journey. I’m going to do some brainstorming today as I prep for a grocery store trip to help figure out some other easy meals that aren’t heavy on carbs and use few dishes. I’ll share what I find - and I’m very open to ideas! Chad has suggested crock pot meals or Instant Pot meals, which are great ideas. I’m thinking more pre-cut or frozen produce since I have a more limited space to work. We’ll make it through, and I’m excited to see how the kitchen looks when it’s all done. It’s a chance to fix some of those “bugs” that have arisen in my perfect system over the years and get us set up for another 20+ years of happy meal making.

BBQ Sheet Pan Chicken Dinner

3 T Grill Seasoning, divided

2 T Sweet and Smokey Seasoning

8 chicken drumsticks, thigh or boneless thighs

1.5 lbs Yukon gold potatoes, cut into 1” cubes

1.5 lbs broccoli crowns

4 T olive oil, divided

BBQ sauce

Preheat oven to 425. Line a baking sheet with foil. In a large bowl or on the baking sheet, toss the potatoes with 2 T Grill Seasoning and 2 T olive oil. Spread on lined baking sheet and place in oven for 15-20 minutes.

In a large bowl, toss chicken with the Sweet and Smokey Seasoning and 1 tablespoon olive oil. In another large bowl, toss broccoli with remaining 1 tablespoon oil and 1 tablespoon Grill Seasoning.

When potatoes are softened, place seasoned chicken on top of the potatoes and place broccoli around the chicken. Bake for another 20 minutes until broccoli is browned and tender and chicken registers 165 degrees on a meat thermometer. Remove from over and spoon BBQ on chicken cuts if desired. Place back in oven for 3-5 minutes, using broil setting if desired.