This is not my kitchen.

Two months ago, I married a man who has two children from a previous marriage, and moved into his house. The house has a beautiful kitchen, with cabinets full of undiscovered cooking gadgets. I brought a few of my own gadgets when I moved in, but since the cupboards were already pretty full, I tried to limit what I brought along. Each time I follow a recipe that requires some specialized item, I have to wonder whether or not I'll have what's recommended, or if I will have to figure out a different approach.

Today, I was trying to figure out to do with the chicken that was going on day four in the refrigerator. It needed to be made into something for dinner tonight. The question was, what?

Chicken satay with peanut sauce sounded good for some reason, and after sifting through cookbooks for a recipe, I found myself in need of a food processor to make an onion/garlic paste to use as a marinade for the chicken skewers. I delved into the floor to ceiling length cabinet that houses large kitchen gadgets, to see what my options were. A salad spinner sat precariously on top of my mandolin. A panini/waffle iron that looked shiny and expensive sat on the shelf below. The third shelf housed various bases, with a mish mash of clear plastic bowls wedged between them. One of the food processors looked large and complicated, the other was small, and appeared to be a good thirty years old. Its base was a discolored shade of cream, with mysterious drips dried onto its sides. A bowl that looked to be a match was nearby, and after a little hunting, I found the lid and blade. After wiping everything down, I loaded it up with my ingredients, which I thought might have been a mistake before doing a test run. However, when I locked the base, bowl and lid together and pushed the power switch, a perfect whirr met my ears, and I watched my paste come together. After adding enough soy sauce to achieve the right consistency, I blended the paste one more time, before pouring it over my chicken skewers.

When I cook in this kitchen, I sometimes feel a little like a kid who has snuck into her grandmother's closet to try on her fancy dresses from long ago. At the back of my mind, I fear that in the middle of some enterprise, my step-children, or their mother, might pop into the kitchen and ask, "What are you doing with that?!" But, it's also fun playing dress up in someone else's kitchen.