Saturday, April 6, 2013

Kitchen Remodel, Week Six: Green is the Color of Spring


In anticipation of the arrival of cupboards later this week, we got some color in the kitchen.  The walls were painted the same green as our old kitchen because I love that murky, yellowy green shade. The ceiling is the same pale khaki color as the ceilings in the rest of the house.

We also have a door to the new powder room. Tiny! Here's James Builder demonstrating its diminutive proportions. 


I've been reading food and cooking books during the kitchen remodel to buoy my spirits while cooking in a toaster oven.  But my current book is grim when it comes to food.  It sure makes me count my blessings!

Independent People secured Halldór Laxness his Nobel Prize, but his characters do not eat well.  Bjartur of Summerhouses and his family are early 20th Century "crofters" -- subsistence sheep farmers who live in a sod house in Iceland, with the sheep on the ground floor and the family huddled in the upper level.

With the cadences and vocabulary of Icelandic epic poetry, Independent People reads like a cross between J. R. R. Tolkien and Thomas Hardy.  The semi-literate characters starve through the winter and spring until they can grow a few meager vegetables in the home field and sell their scrawny sheep in the fall.


Other than a few batches of doughnuts or pancakes for celebrations, the only cooking described in the book was when the first wife -- about ready to give birth alone in the hut while her husband was lost in a blizzard -- killed and butchered a ewe, salted down the meat, and then gorged herself on a pot of offal stew.  The cognate, while false, is apt.




Independent People counts as one of my choices for the 2013 European Reading Challenge.  At just under 490 pages, it also counts as one of my Chunkster Challenge books.




WEEKEND COOKING


12 comments :

  1. The remodel is looking good. You must glad to have a new powder room.

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  2. Looks like things are falling into place!

    Grim is an understated description of Independent People! It's been over 10 years since I read it, but very bleak images still come to mind.

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  3. LOVE that green! And I'm looking forward to seeing your new cabinets. Things are coming along nicely in your kitchen redo. Makes me want to move ahead with updating our master bath.

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  4. I love the green and the khaki together! It looks like you're going to have great lighting!

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  5. It's always such a jolt to see that someone else I know read Independent People. Like JoAnn, I read it quite a long time ago but that bleak landscape and existence have remained with me.

    Love the colors!!

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  6. It's wonderful to find a colour you like so much, and that works for you so well, that you use it to redecorate!

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  7. So glad to see that you're getting a new kitchen. The green is fun - reminds me of historical houses (they all used very deep colors on the walls).

    And as for that book - wow. It sounds like quite an experience.

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  8. Wow, I can't believe it's already Week Six! (Although to you I'm sure it feels like Month Six.)

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  9. Independent People sounds challenging. Of course, I'm reading about the potato famine in Ireland, so I guess it's relative.

    Remodel looks good--we did our last 10 years ago, and I'm not ready for that kind of displacement again, but the ends justify the inconvenience.

    Have a good week!

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  10. Love that colour of green. will make for a comfortable room.

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  11. I also love the green. May you never cook any awful stew there!
    :-)

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  12. How exciting to be remodeling your kitchen!

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