Our biggest design challenge since buying this house has turned out not to be furniture, wall color, curtains, or any of the common challenges we were expecting, but… nooks.

There are three, and I don’t have the slightest clue what do with any of them. The one that baffles me the most is this one:

the dining nook nook

This is in the kitchen, directly across from the breakfast table. Were it located anywhere else in the house, I would slap a door on it and call it a linen closet, problem solved. However, because it’s in the kitchen, and because I don’t want my sheets and comforters smelling like food, I am at a total loss for what to do.

We considered turning it into a bar, but it’s so deep (24″?) and high (I can’t reach the top shelf at all) that a bar seems like a waste of this potentially great storage space—I mentioned before that storage is at a premium.

Furthermore, like all the nooks in this house, the brackets for the shelves aren’t affixed to the wall with screws or nails, but with wood glue, so removing them is out because I don’t want to damage the drywall. Thanks, previous owners, for locking me into your stupid shelving decisions!

Then there’s the coffee and tea nook:

coffee and tea nook

This one, at least, is functional. I hate the bulky, honey-colored, 80s-reminiscent shelf, but I can paint the bracket and replace the shelf with glass, and I’ll be even happier with the overall look once the wall is painted. Moving on!

This nook is in our living room, goes from the floor to halfway up the wall, features the same terrible shelving and irreplaceable brackets, and is just a total eyesore.

the empty nook

Currently I’m using it to store my cookbooks, but that is just temporary.

nook in living room with cookbooks

My friend Sara has suggested that we put a door with a latch on and use it (again) as a liquor cabinet, and that’s the best suggestion I’ve heard yet, but because of the unsual size of it, we’d probably have to custom-fit a door.

If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them! No curtain suggestions, though: a gathered curtain covering a nook never looks good to me, just lazy and cheap.

We’ve been in the house for a month now, have thrown the housewarming party, have assembled the IKEA, and are just finally to the point where we’re not spending every single spare moment of free time (which isn’t already dedicated to Milo) working on the house.

It took us nearly a week just to unpack and put everything away. One of the challenges of living in a 90-year-old house is that there is hardly ever any storage space: the closets are miniscule when compared to today’s walk-ins, and we don’t even have a linen closet, so all of our linens are currently being stored in zipped bags in Milo’s closet or in plastic bins in the basement.

Right now, we’re choosing to see the lack of storage as a good thing: if we don’t have anywhere to put extra stuff, we’re much less tempted to buy extra stuff.

After a few days, our living room went from looking like this:

holy box nightmare

just looking at this picture nearly gives me a panic attack

to looking like this:

It doesn't fit all of our books, but it will do for now.

a million times better

The living room was the first space I started to clean and organize, since it’s the first sight I saw whenever I came home, and living in a cyclone of boxes and effluvia was making me nuts—not to mention the fact that it was really unsafe for 21-month-old Milo to be running around in, no matter how vigilantly we were watching him. Toddlers need for their homes to be safe spaces.

Milo, it turns out, also needs for his home to be a clean space. We brought home a new vacuum cleaner, and he’s convinced that it’s his new toy. He won’t let us put it away, and his word for vacuum (mum-mum) is now one of the top 10 most frequently used words in his vocabulary.

Milo likes the vacuum, a LOT

And of course, after the living room was sorted out, you know where I went next. That’s right: the kitchen.

The first thing to get organized was the spice drawer:

spice drawer

The rest of the kitchen is… coming along. It’s manageable as is, but there a few things that need to be changed sooner than later for me to be happy.

Chiefly: wall color. The entire house was (and for the most part, still is) painted in a Pottery Barn pallette of beiges and burgundies. Fine for some people, but so completely wrong for Matthew and me. We are attracted to bright colors, and when we do the neutrals, we gravitate towards the greys, accented with cool pale blues and greens rather than the browns and reds.

Because we haven’t had the time to paint all of the rooms yet, we haven’t hung any photos or artwork, and that is what is really keeping our house from feeling like our home just yet. Right now, it still has the feeling of a house that is being staged to sell, and we are just living here killing time. I have spent almost a year living in other people’s homes, and now I’m ready to see my giant Death Cab for Cutie & Dismemberment Plan tour poster hanging on the wall, dammit!

I have managed to get some painting done:

Mama loves Milo Bear

Milo’s bedroom has a chair guard, so rather than paint the walls above and below the moulding two different colors, I thought it would be much more fun for him if the bottom half of the wall were chalkboard paint. I love how it turned out. We are planning to have an artist pal come over and do a small permanent painting on one of the walls, to inspire Milo, but for the time being, I’m leaving up this little testament of adoration.

I have a whole other entry in me (about the nooks, oh the nooks), but this is running long as is, so I will leave you with a photo of my best kitchen helper stirring the maple-ginger root vegetables for dinner the other night:

Milo stirs the roots

Reposting the nuggets recipe from a few weeks back. Thank you so much to those of you who commented and said that you made them for your family or yourself and really enjoyed them. They’re so easy, right? I’m probably going to make some for dinner!

Nuggets
makes 16-20 or 2-4 servings

dry mix:

1 cup vital wheat gluten
1/2 cup whole wheat flour or chickpea flour
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic or garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon paprika (Hungarian paprika is especially nice)
1/4-1/2 teaspoon salt
dash freshly ground black pepper
up to 1 teaspoon additional dried herbs & spices of your choosing

wet mix:

1 1/3 cup water
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce

breading:

1/4 cup cornmeal
1/4 cup panko or breadcrumbs
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
dash each salt and pepper

Preheat your oven to 350. Generously oil a cooking sheet. Mix the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Mix the wet ingredients in a liquid measuring cup or small bowl. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and use a wooden spoon to stir until all the liquid is absorbed. There is no need to knead the dough.

In a bowl, combine the breading ingredients.

Break off a piece of the dough, form it into a nuggety shape, coat it in breading, and transfer it to the oiled cooking sheet. Repeat with the rest of the dough. When you’re done forming the nuggets, you might want to spray the top with olive oil, but if you don’t have an oil mister, it’s not necessary. You can save any remaining nugget breading for next time.

Bake for 12-15 minutes, flip the nuggets, and bake for another 5-8 minutes. Serve warm with your favorite dipping sauce. Milo likes marinara or ketchup, but we’ve also done barbecue sauce and agave mustard. Yum.

So we begin the slow task of re-adding the recipes to the site that were lost. I’m starting with my Christmas recipes: two of my all-time favorite cookie recipes for filling up stockings on Christmas Eve, and my recipe for mulled wine, which is a permanent fixture in my kitchen for the week leading up to Christmas. Is it any surprise that Christmas is my favorite time of year when I’m ladling out two glasses of warm wine for myself every night?

Did I mention that I made a mix tape for you listen to while you baked cookies?

Roll Out Gingerbread Boys
makes 2 or 3 dozen, depending on cookie cutter size

My mom has been making gingerbread men for Christmas gifts since before I was even born. It was actually a bit of a cottage industry for her when I was a kid, so you could be sure that on any given weekend after November 1, my house would be filled with the smell of gingerbread. I started making these cookies at Christmas as a tribute to her wonderful gingerbread men.

1/4 cup Earth Balance shortening or coconut oil
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
3/4 cup molasses
1/3 cup cold water
3 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Cream together shortening, brown sugar, and molasses. Stir in water and set aside. Sift together flour, baking soda, salt, and spices in a large bowl. Mix flour mixture slowly into molasses mixture.

Divide dough into two portions and wrap each portion with wax paper or parchment and chill for at least two hours. Take out one portion, keeping the other portion cool until you roll it out.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out each portion to 1/2-inch thickness. Cut with medium-sized, floured gingerbread cookie cutters.

On greased baking sheets, bake at 375 degrees for 10-12 minutes. Cool completely on wire racks before decorating. Store decorated cookies in an airtight container with sheets of wax paper between the layers.

The Best Christmas Cookies
makes about 3 dozen

I veganized a recipe that I found in an old cookie book. This is the cookie recipe everyone asks for, so I thought I’d put it online for easy reference. I make these as small cookies but I am thinking about trying to make a couple of giant ones this year. If you get around to it before I do, let me know how they turn out!

1/2 cup Earth Balance spread
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup cane sugar
1 egg replacer (I use a flax egg)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 cup organic oats
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup raisins or dried cranberries
1/2 cup flake coconut
1/2 cup slivered or chopped almonds
1/2 cup chopped pecans
sea salt for dusting (optional)

Cream together Earth Balance, sugars, egg replacer, and vanilla. Add flour, oats, baking powder, and salt, and mix well. Stir in raisins, coconut, almonds, and pecans. Drop by teaspoon onto greased baking sheets and flatten slightly with a fork. Optional (you might want to skip if you’re making these for kids): sprinkle by hand a few granules of sea salt on top of each cookie. Bake at 325 for 12-15 minutes. Transfer from baking sheets to cooling racks immediately upon removing from oven. These are best when they’re still warm. Store in an airtight container with a piece of bread to keep them soft.

Crockpot Mulled Wine

If you’re expecting guests, you’re probably going to want to double this recipe.

1 1/2 liters of red wine
1 medium orange or large lemon
2-3 cinnamon sticks
2 tablespoons whole cloves
1 whole nutmeg (You don’t buy ground anymore, right? You always grate your own nutmeg? Oh, good, what a relief.)
3/4 cup sugar (Any vegan sugar will work here.)

Pour bottle or bottles of wine into a large crockpot and set on low. Cut your citrus fruit in half and squeeze directly into the wine, then add the squeezed fruit rind to the pot. Add cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.

Cover and simmer wine for at least 20 minutes, then add the sugar. Stir in well. Simmer for another 10 minutes, or until sugar is dissolved.

Strain the wine and serve immediately. Return leftover strained wine to the crockpot and keep on low.

I have to tell you, this post has made me heartbreakingly nostalgic for the Christmas season. Admittedly, it doesn’t take much, since I’m such a Christmas freak that I celebrate from the day after Thanksgiving until the day before Valentine’s Day every year.

Today I reinstalled WordPress and managed to erase my entire blog in the process. Whoops.

For the first half hour, I totally panicked. All of my hard work! Years of entries!

Then I got a tiny bit of perspective and remembered that this is just the latest incarnation of a web presence that has spanned fourteen years; that I had willingly and intentionally deleted entire websites at the touch of button a dozen times before; that pressing the reset button is a good thing for us creative types.

Then I immediately went over to Google and used the cache to rescue all of my recipes. I will be posting those back up here as individual entries over the course of the next couple of days so that you can have them. Thanks for your patience during this time!