Kitchen clean-up

Today I have been experimenting with some different foods and recipes in the kitchen.  At the same time, I've been nibbling on spoonfuls of one delicious food or another, grabbing a quick bit of a muffin, eating a few grapes -- basically grazing like a deer in a meadow.  These kinds of days are fun.  They are unscheduled.  They are free-form.  They are creative.  They also make a mess as I tend to dirty a lot of utensils and pans and serving plates.

When I was younger, I would be all gung-ho about cooking up multiple things on a single day and it was always fun.  Fun, that is, until it was all done and I had to do all the clean-up.  Oh, I hated that.  Seeing a mound of dishes and pans and spoons and spatulas all waiting for me after a lot of cooking, well, it was sometimes maddeningly disheartening.  I hated all that clean-up.  Who wouldn't?  As I finished the final recipe I was making on one of these long cooking days, that pile always mocked me, always laughed at me, always dared me to stay enthused about my day in the kitchen.

Then one day, I just decided to do "clean as you go".  At first, I hated disturbing my cooking momentum with constant stops to clean a pan or a mixing bowl.  But it didn't take long for me to feel differently.  These days, as soon as a single pan or plate or spoon is done being used, it's cleaned right away.  Often those things are done while cookie doughs or cake batters are in the mixer so that I get the satisfaction of multi-tasking, or perhaps while a tray of cookies is in the oven.  So now when I finish of day cooking multiple foods and tons of cookware and dishes are being used, the clean-up is already done.  There is never a pile of unwashed dishes ready to break my good mood.  

One might ask, why don't I just use a dishwasher?  I prefer to wash the dishes by hand for many reasons.  I won't go into all the reasons at this time, but let me mention one that may seem unexpectedly unusual.  I love the feeling of the hot water on my hands as I wash the dishes on chilly autumn mornings and cold winter days.  Admittedly, this reason doesn't hold up in summer, but for every other season where the temps are frigid, cold, or even mild, there something about soaking my hands in hot soapy water that I find to be a nice perk of choosing to do all my dishes by hand.  

Have a great week, everyone!  And remember to take the time to enjoy some good food.