Naked Kitchen

When we went on vacation, we stayed in cabins with kitchens. The kitchens had dishes and pots and silverware and towels and dishsoap. But no foil. No cling-wrap. No wax paper. No Tupperware. And none of my specially set-aside garbage. [gasp]

Until that first night at the family reunion, I didn't realize how much I rely on junk that most people toss in the trash. Where do you put leftovers? In an old peanut butter jar, right? Oh. No old peanut butter jars in my vacation cupboards.

When you make a big batch of food that needs to be stored until the next meal, doesn't it go in an old ice-cream pail? What happens when there's no old ice-cream pail?

When you nuke something and don't want it to spatter all over the inside of the microwave, what do you cover it with? Some people use paper towels or wax paper. I use a dinner plate. We also use plates as "lids" on bowls of leftovers in the fridge. But when you have only 4 plates for 6 people, you've gotta watch to ensure you've got plates to eat off of.

So what's another option as a leftover lid? Obviously, a plastic bag that you picked up in the produce dept, the bag which transported your lettuce or your tomatoes home. Or an old bread bag. But in a naked kitchen that you're borrowing for the week, there is no stash of old bread bags, no stash of old sandwich bags, no stash of little glass jars to shake-shake-shake up your flour and liquid for a white sauce.

I found a reprieve when we discovered that the clean coffee mugs were covered with sandwich bags. That enabled us to get through the first day until we made it to the grocery store and brought home [ta da!] lettuce bags and apple bags! As we progressed through the week, I built up my stash of Good Garbage, and thus began to function better in my little vacation kitchen.

And then came the day to leave. I was compelled to [gasp] throw all that perfectly decent garbage into the trash! (Fear not. Although it was traumatic, I managed to live through the waste of all that helpful garbage.)