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Two Very Different Cooperative meals and a MUCH better swim day!

On Wednesday we went to the gym and took our second Swim 101 class…SO much better than last week.  Last Wednesday, the instructor was a sub and she had no patience for 2 people brand new to the class who had never done swimming drills before.  It was pretty intimidating!  This week the normal instructor was back and she was spectacular!  She figured out what level of swimming we were on and tried to teach us some basic things to help us get down our stroke, breathing and body movement through the water rather than throwing us into a bunch of drills of strokes we’ve never heard of.  I definitely felt more comfortable and can’t wait to keep working on it and get up to the point where we can do all the different strokes.  It’s such a great workout and even though you don’t feel it as much while you’re swimming because it is so low impact, afterwards your body is totally exhausted.  My shoulders and legs are feeling nice and sore today!  This weekend we’re going to get to the gym both Saturday and Sunday to spend a day doing some cardio and racquetball as well as a day in the pool.  I also have an appointment with a trainer to set up some weight-training stuff and just get an intro session for free because I’m a new member! Hooray for gym time!

The last couple days, Matt and I have been on the ball working together to make dinners.  After the gym in the evening, it is SO tempting to grab something to eat on the way home, but we had eaten out on Tuesday (delicious Afghani food…review hopefully to come soon!) and we really need to work on saving our eating out expenses.

So, Wednesday night Matt was taking the lead on dinner…before I moved in, he had a fairly steady diet of sausage and baked beans.  Not my idea of a meal I want to eat all the time, but something I’m really familiar with because my dad was also a huge fan of beans and kielbasa, hot dogs, or other sausage in the crock pot.  

Matt seared up some Chicken and Garlic Sausage and threw in a can of baked beans to heat up.  In order to get a little non-protein going on, I threw together a green salad with cucumbers, and used our last ciabbata sandwich roll to make some Texas Toast slices for us. I made a balsamic vinaigrette and used that and a bit of ranch dressing on my salad.  Matt had bleu cheese (this is not at all a shock).  It was yummy and very quick and satisfying after a late workout!

Tuesday was our latest box of CSA produce, and we wanted to put a lot of that to use over the first few days.  Half of the cucumber went into our salad on Wednesday night (the other half is in the fridge at work, waiting for my mid-afternoon snacking this week).  A bulk of the produce was set aside right away for some stock/soup making!! I don’t make homemade stock very often…mostly because I can get pretty good organic, natural, low sodium boxes and stockpile (Matt will enjoy the pun) them when they’re on sale.  But this week bone-in chicken breasts were Buy One Get One Free, and we were getting a lot of basic veggies in our CSA box!

So Wednesday morning, Matt took Santana for her AM walk so I could work on the stock…two chicken breasts (bone-in, skin on), carrots, celery, onion, some herbs and water went into the Crockpot to cook all day.

While Matt was working on his sausage and beans, I strained out the solids, pulled the skin and bones off the chicken, stored the chicken in the fridge and put the stock back in the crock and into the fridge to chill.

This morning was another morning of Matt and Santana outside and me in the kitchen!  It definitely throws off our normal schedule to make things that take some morning prep, but I do enjoy getting some cooking time in first thing in the morning.  

First thing, I skimmed the gorgeous layer of fat off the top of the stock and got rid of it.  Then some peeled and roughly chopped potatoes and onions went into the stock, along with some random herbs and spices.  This went on low heat to cook from about 7am until 2:30pm.  

After that got on the heat, I worked on chopping up some vegetables.  Our original idea was to do a chicken corn chowder, but when I saw all the yummy vegetables in our CSA box, I decided to turn it into a Chicken Confetti Chowder with lots of colorful fun! 

 

I finely diced/chopped some more onions, celery and carrots, along with zucchini and red bell peppers.  Chopping vegetables is extremely relaxing for me…a great start to the day!  These went into a container in the fridge to wait until this afternoon!

   

Matt was working from home today, which was perfect for my plan!  I gave him some detailed instructions:

1. Chop chicken and make sure I didn’t miss any little bones!
2. Use stick blender to blend potatoes and stock until creamy.
3. Add chopped chicken, diced veggies, and 1 can of drained corn to crock pot.
4. Add some boxed stock if there isn’t enough liquid.
5. Cover and let it cook on low until I get home.

Around 3pm I got a call at work with some minor chaos, because the veggies and chicken nearly overloaded the Crockpot and there was no room for the corn! When I got home I ladled out one small serving of soup and added the can of corn. The important part was getting those veggies (especially the carrots) in there to get cooked through! I tasted, adjusted the seasoning a bit (added some cumin and red pepper)and turned it on high to get it bubbling for an hour or so. It’s currently still cooking, but here’s what it looks like now:

I’m excited for dinner!! My taste test for seasoning was pretty good, and I think I’m topping mine with a few crackers and a tiny bit of parmesan cheese! Can’t wait! Will have updates tomorrow of how wonderful it was :) 

A great giveaway (on a really fun blog!): Tina at Carrots ‘N’ Cake is in the middle of a Pure Bar giveaway, which I am of course really excited about because of my recent cravings for bars during mid-morning snack lull at work!

Another fun fun giveaway over at Nikes and Ponytails—a crazy bunch of goodies that are way too tempting NOT to enter the contest!

Good luck!

Coming soon:

• Guest post on Dori’s blog (finally!)
• Two restaurant reviews!
• A link to Santana’s upcoming review of her birthday toy
• Butternut Squash Ravioli….hopefully 🙂
• Meghann’s Blogger Bake Sale starts on Monday April 6th and I’ll be contributing something wonderfully fun, but I’ve seen the list of others’ contributions and they are tempting!! Definitely mark your calendars so you can get your hands on some great homemade goodies and help Meghann with a wonderful cause!

Me & Food

A Bacon Wrapped Life (previously Lady in Pink)

What started as an outlet for random rambling and general blogging (and a fun surprise from a wonderful boyfriend!) has become primarily a venue for even more enjoyment of food, with a bit of my random life excitement popping in–thus the name change.

Contrary to the beliefs of many friends, I don’t always cook with bacon, cheese, or other random sources of fat (although these are all delicious and often considered!).  I appreciate my increasing ability to cook with lots of different veggies, leave meat out all together sometimes, create healthier versions of old recipes and just generally bring health and wellness intomy life.

All that being said, I love to indulge, to succumb to temptation, to provide temptation, to jump into a giant hypothetical vat of whipped cream and absolutely gorge myself…OK, so this is where all those previously-mentioned misconceptions come from.  Along with my indulging, I also love to exaggerate. 🙂 If I had to identify my “food philosophy,” it would be this: Food makes me happy and I want to use food to make you happy!  I am enthralled not only by the flavors, textures, scents and other sensations of food, but also by the science, history, sociology, psychology of food. Food is a key part of every aspect of life, and in times when more and more people have harmful relationships with the source of nourishment and life and can no longer take enjoyment in the act of eating, I think it is extremely important to recognize and remember the vital role that food plays in our lives.

Indulgence is also not such a stable relationship either, and part of my challenge as a cook and a consumer is to work this indulgence into an overall healthy approach to eating.  My boyfriend, Matt, and I work on this issue together and I am so grateful that we have each other for support and the mental and emotional nourishment that supplements the physical nourishment we get from our food.  We both LOVE to eat, and luckily we both hate mushrooms…it works out nicely.

I recently finished my MA in English, so I’m also just getting past my college mentality towards food–fit in whatever you can, whenever you have time.  I’m currently working as an undergraduate admissions advisor at a small, private, naturual health sciences university.  I love student affairs and am excited to be at this early stage of my professional career with lots of hopeful options down the road.  In this job, I have had the opportunity to expand my advising experience and work with a huge variety of students so far, but I have also been exposed to a community of physicians, students and other faculty/staff members who are very involved in the field of natural health.  This hugely affects my perspective on food at this point in time; in a very short time I have absorbed a ton of amazing information and ideas about whole foods nutrition and overall wellness with an all-vegetarian cafeteria at my fingertips.  When I am at work, it’s very easy for me to push my own boundaries in terms of food knowledge and comfort-levels–something I also plan to be encouraged to do through this blog.  I have been in this job for about 6 months now and I can’t wait to see what else I’ll learn from this healthy community while I’m here!

COMPLETE CHANGE OF TOPIC: Another key thing about my life is my wonderfully adorable dog, Santana.  She’s a beagle-chihuahua mix who was a graduation present from my roommate when we finished our undergraduate work.  Santana moved with me from KY to central NY, and while I was in graduate school she helped me get through the rough patch of readjusting, making new friends in a completely different program and school and dealing with a crazy crazy grad student schedule…sometimes I’d be home all day reading and writing, sometimes I’d be gone from 8am until 2am the following morning and she was as flexible as a puppy could be–and always excited to see me when I got home! I was questioning my choices a lot and finding it hard to make time for relaxation and enjoyable activities, not to mention eating right and generally watching out for my health.  I can’t really explain how vital Santana was to getting through those 2 years.  She moved to Seattle with Matt and me and the three months before she got here were brutal (while I was here early doing some job-hunting).  She is a trouble-maker, and I sort of love her for it.  She fits us, and we love her so much we let her start her own blog. Originally this was Matt’s idea, but yeah, I am that kind of puppy mom…deal with it and just enjoy how adorable she is.  The blog does a great job of portraying her very anthropomorphized personality!  Ok, I’m done raving about her for now, but I figured it was important to me and thus to the blog. I may even include some puppy-friendly recipes at times!

There’s a lot more “about me” that I could ramble about; as an English student, one of my biggest flaws was editing things down!  This blog will likely change as my life continues to shift, but my goal is to be constantly encouraged by the presence of the blog world to continue my quest for healthiness in my happily bacon-wrapped life.

One last important note: I love lists! Love them! If it can be said in a list, say it in a list! Here’s a summary about me and my food, in list form:

• A lot of the recipes I use or create are chock-full of indulgence.
• Every once in a while I have the energy to try to clean up around the edges and make something on the fancy side.
• More and more I celebrate new veggie options and other healthy additions to my food life.
• Always I want a delicious and enjoyable experience in the kitchen and at the table–if I don’t like it, I don’t cook it.
• Exception to the note above: If I really like you, I’ll cook whatever you want! Maybe not that extreme, but I love to feed the people I care about, and the act of cooking for them is just as important as eating the finished product. 

I am excited to dive into the wonderful blogging community and hope that you can find some yummy recipes and fun randomness along the way.  I love feedback and new ideas, so bring on the comments! And the bacon!

Some Past Food and Some Future Fun

***UPDATE: I fixed my giveaway links, which I had COMPLETELY messed up this morning! Plus, soup and quesadilla picture added below! Sorry for my Friday morning absentmindedness!***

First, a couple more contests to note:
– Yet another Mix My Granola Giveaway. I keep noting these because I LOVE the idea for this product/service/website. Even if you aren’t going to enter the contest, look at all the options they have for mix-ins…so many choices!! So fun! Check out  Healthy and Sane for Elina’s Mix My Granola Giveaway!
– Bridget at Yogurt and Berries is giving away some chocolate goodies!! A great way to stay sane if I’ve ever seen one!

I don’t have any new recipes from this week, because we grabbed food on Wednesday and last night we took our leftovers from Monday and turned them into a casserole. There isn’t really a recipe for this…I literally took everything we had leftover, stirred it all together in a casserole dish and baked it for about an hour or so. The beets tinted everything this really pretty pink/red color and the French bread got nice and crunchy. I didn’t use all of the leftover gravy because there was a lot, but I put in just enough to coat everything and keep it moist. I was really pleased because it mellowed out a lot-not a lot of lemon flavor at all. It was a very comforting bowl of dinner and we used up all our leftovers! Hooray! No pictures 🙁

I do have a meal we made a few weeks ago that turned out really yummy and a nice warming dinner during the cold spell we just got over! Plus, I just realized I never posted it, even though I took pictures!

When I was growing up, we had tomato soup (Campbell’s) and grilled cheese all the time. I have known this meal as long as I can remember, and it was probably one of the first things I could make by myself. I went through a lot of grilled cheese and tomato soup stages growing up. No dipping the sandwich, dipping the sandwich before every bite, crushing Ritz crackers into the soup before eating the sandwich, finishing the sandwich before touching the crackers, the soup could only be mixed with milk, the soup could only be made with water, when I started cooking I had to use exactly half milk and half water, Ritz crackers were not good enough and I needed oyster crackers…I’m sure there are some I’m forgetting. I was pretty obsessive about things like this…I would decide there was a “right” way to make or eat it, and I had to do it that way for a while, until I decided there was a new “right” way. When I was little I didn’t want crusts on my grilled cheese (which I think is a pretty common kid request), and I remember babysitting my younger cousin and being really annoyed that he would want me to cut off his grilled cheese crusts! Except that by then I loved the crusts, so after I’d cut them off his sandwich I would dip them in my soup and eat them myself…think grilled cheese sticks instead of sandwiches. One way or another, grilled cheese and tomato soup has always been one of the most satisfying things for me when it’s cold out, and I assumed that everyone identified with this meal in some way.

Several months ago I realized that Matt had NEVER had tomato soup! I was absolutely shocked…how did you go 23 years without ever having Campbell’s tomato soup and grilled cheese? This was nuts! I quickly taught him the ways…with both Campbell’s and also some more organic, boxed brands perked up with fresh basil from our summer herb box and a few other variations. Matt has always loved grilled cheese (what’s not to love?) and he has really enjoyed pairing it with tomato soup, although he is not a fan of the Campbell’s condensed soup…maybe you have to get hooked on that when you’re little enough to not have a sense of what makes a soup “good”?

So we had a few leftover flour tortillas and cheddar cheese from our taco party, a box of Pacific Natural Foods Tomato Soup from Ken’s Market, and a variety of canned goods (I always stock up on tomatoes, beans, etc. when they are on sale). So we made a new grilled cheese and tomato soup variation! Cheese quesadillas (sprayed with cooking spray and cooked in a frying pan) and Mexican tomato soup (1 box PNF soup + 1 can black beans + 1 can diced tomatoes w/ green chilies + some red pepper for spice).

Delicious and SO easy! This obviously made a ton of soup, but I had it for lunch the next two days at work. I am always blown away by how many meals we can get out a few canned goods and some basic ingredients…it makes my thrifty side smile. Think how cheap that is per meal compared to if we had eaten out each time instead of eating that meal! I’d say the entire meal cost less than $10 and we got 2 dinners and 2 lunches out of it! Crazy!

 

Some other fun that will be coming up and I’ll have more info about:
– Blogger Bake Sale, hosted by Meghann. I’m planning to contribute something to go up for sale, so keep an eye out for more info about that! If you’re interested, contact Meghann for more info! 
– Guest post on Dori’s blog
– All new design for this blog!
– A side job doing some editing that will result in a good chunk of income, but will most likely make me super busy for a few weeks and result in a little less posting until it’s finished. Hopefully it will also result in lots to post about once I am finished with the editing!
– We’re getting artichokes in our next CSA box and I have never worked with them before! Excitement and/or chaos should be forthcoming!
– Both Dori and Santana have birthdays TOMORROW, 3/21!!! Happy Birthdays!!!

Schvester interview!

Yay for boyfriends with fun sisters!  Dori interviewed me for a bloggy thing! She also interviewed Santana…I suggest you read that one…it’s very insightful into the mind of an adorable puppy.  Here are Dori’s questions to me:

• You’re trapped on the same island as me and my three foods, but you’re on the other side, where food is abundant. However, it’s boring. Luckily, you were allowed to take 3 books with you. What books would you take?

1. Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife. Did you see this one coming?? I initially read this because my aunt had it and I was stuck at her house for a couple weeks…I read it in one day. It is unbelievable. I don’t think I’ve ever talked to anyone who has read this and not loved it. The storyline plays to my romantic side and the idea of fated love versus constructed love and the consequences of believing in either is something that really appeals to me. The characters that Niffenegger creates, especially in Henry and Clare, are not particularly “good” people in the sense that fictional characters sometimes embody…they have major flaws, participate in not-so-nice activities, and are extremely rough around the edges, to say the least. And yet, you love them. The first time I read it, I was absolutely absorbed. The second time, I knew where it was going and that only made it better…I could more fully appreciate details, dialogue and confusing scenarios of Henry’s time traveling, and cried just as much towards the end of the novel. Amazing.

2. William Shakespeare, Hamlet. My absolute favorite Shakespeare (probably because my favorite high school teacher loved it). I’ve read it many times, have several copies, and memorized a sonnet or two in high school (only bits remain). If I could bring it as a set and only count it as one book, I’d also bring John Updike’s Gertrude and Claudius, also recommended to me by Mrs. Miller, my AP English teacher. A prequel of sorts to Hamlet, this is Updike’s imagining of the love affair of Hamlet’s mother and uncle…I love stuff like this and I really enjoyed the combination of these two together. So we’ll just pretend that’s one book 🙂

3. Billy Collins, Picnic, Lightning. I would need a book of poetry, and I decided on this one simply because it has this poem, my favorite:

Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes

(I would include the text here, but wordpress is annoying and I don’t have my computer with Live Writer on it)

• On this island, you are allowed to bring one photograph. What picture would you bring and why?

This one:

It makes me smile. A lot.

• You escaped from the island and are back in the Seattles. It is the last day of the world and you can go to any restaurant in Seattle. Where would you go and what would you order (it must be an item currently on their menu)?

Sooo tough. I think I’d have to say Red Mill‘s Double Bacon Deluxe with Cheese. There are probably a TON of places I could go and get an expensive fancy meal or something, but Red Mill is so amazing that they sometimes run out of beef because people love it so much!! When you order, you can see the grill in the back, and a stack of bacon ready to go on burgers, at least two feet tall. I’ve tried some other sandwiches there, but the burgers that come with the special Red Mill sauce are the best…Matt likes the Bleu Cheese burger (blech). I’d also need fries, onion rings, and a root beer!

(I stole this picture from their website…here is where I give them whatever credit they need to get for that to be OK)

• What is your favorite meal to cook? What is your least favorite?

After lots and lots of thought about this, I decided my most favorite to cook (right now, anyway) is Stir Fry! We do this at least every other week and I love it for a few reasons: a) I can use veggies from our CSA or others we find at the grocery store and I really enjoy the chopping and combining of vegetables. One of the most satisfying things for me is a nice pile of almost perfectly sliced or diced produce! b) It gives me a reason to order extra rice when we go out to dinner…leftover rice makes better fried rice…it has a little more starch and cold rice will have a nicer texture when it’s fried. c) I can play with the ingredients and make a completely different dish from one week to the next (one of my favorite things about cooking)– different veggies, add some peanuts (or a little peanut butter to change the sauce!), switch out the rice for noodles and make lo mein…so many possibilities. d) I get a huge amount of satisfaction from lining all my ingredients up, chopped, mixed, ready to go in the sizzling hot pan (I need a new wok!!)…and once everything is chopped the entire meal will come together in less than 15 minutes!

I’ve also been thinking lots about my least favorite meal to cook…I don’t think I have one. If I don’t like to cook something, I don’t make it. Period. If I am craving something I don’t enjoy cooking (or don’t feel like cooking right then), we make something else or go out. Cooking for me is really about enjoying the act of it. Ironically, considering my most favorite meal to cook, I do HATE cooking rice itself. I need a rice cooker…desperately. We’ve taken to using boil-in-a-bag four minute rice…I follow recipes, instructions on packages, cook books, the internet, everything I can find…my rice either overcooks, burns, turns to mush, doesn’t absorb any water and stays completely uncooked…something inevitably goes wrong and the rice is practically inedible. This is the case mostly for the times when I am just making plain, basic, straightforward rice. If it’s in a casserole or something like that, I can make it work usually. It’s horrible…it frustrates me to no end, and I just can’t figure out. So I’ve sort of given up on it for now. Once we have a kitchen with room for a rice-cooker, that is definitely on my kitchen list!

• What is your favorite ingredient? What makes it so special?

Matt and I had to have a conversation about what actually counts as an ingredient.

Matt took “ingredient” to mean something more specific: spices, seasonings, flour, etc. If this is the case, I’d say cumin. My favorite spice by far. Strong and smoky, but it blends nicely with other flavors. I use it a lot….probably way too much.

I took a very broad view and said, of course, BACON! Bacon has been getting a lot of hype lately with bacon-flavored salt, bacon lollipops, and other crazy novelties. Bacon is amazing. I don’t need to put bacon salt on everything or have it in every meal or anything like that. I do have two cookbooks, both gifts from my friend Bob, that focus on bacon (the fact that he has given me these is really indicative of the roots of our friendship). Everything Tastes Better With Bacon (if you like bacon, you should buy this cookbook simply for the photographs) and Seduced by Bacon. Amazing. I know that when I’m cooking a dish that includes bacon, I can count on that bacon to bring an amazing, rounded, satisfying flavor to the party. If I’m making bacon as a side, I know that I need to hide it from Matt. V and I used to talk about which dishes were becoming my “signatures”…ones that I could make practically in my sleep and that were my fail-safe, go-to dishes for a potluck or a last-minute dinner get together. One of the first on this list was Green Beans with Bacon, which started with a generous amount of bacon, chopped and cooked down to crispy bits, leaving some grease in which to caramelize some sweet onions. The onions met up with garlic and fresh green beans and a bit of broth to simmer until the green beans were cooked through. With a little salt and black pepper at the end and the crunchy bacon thrown back on top, this is simple and delicious. The first time I put it together, it was spur of the moment and without a recipe…I was ridiculously pleased. I’ve also made it for vegetarians, cooking the bacon separately from the onions and green beans (cooked in veggie stock of course). Bacon fans topped theirs with bacon. Given the choice, I use the bacon drippings to cook the onions because it just brings way more flavor to the overall dish, but green beans, onion and garlic have a lot going on by themselves, so it works either way.

• What is your idea of a perfect weekend afternoon when you have NOTHING that needs to get done and are free to spend it however you like?

Easy: Matt + Puppy + Couch + Chinese + Pajamas + NY Times Crossword/Netflix 🙂

______________________________________________________

The rules:

1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.” If a few people want interviews, I will randomly pick one.

2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. (I get to pick the questions).
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

…..
I had planned to include some food pictures from dinner last night, but those will have to wait because we’re off to the gym to get a tour (even though Matt is already a member) and switch over to a joint membership so we can play racquetball and other fun things on a regular basis together!! My hope is to get into a routine of going to the gym and wandering around Pike Place every weekend (especially once the weather actually starts to get nice for real).  Ideally, the 2nd day of the weekend would include taking Santana to the off-leash park and walking around Green Lake! Fun! I can’t wait for Spring/Summer!

Mexi-breakfast-dinner!

I mentioned in my last post that because of my last roommate, I have become spectacular at turning leftovers into something new and this morning I got up early to turn some leftover onions and peppers into the base of a crock pot full of chili (I added some ground beef, a few cans of different types of beans, a can of diced tomatoes, loads of spices, and some garlic and it has been simmering for almost 12 hours now..I can’t wait!).  So, leftovers have been on my mind….

A few weeks ago we made a roasted pork tenderloin with some cheese grits and mashed yams.  The yams and pork were a delicious lunch for me the next day, and a few days later we threw together a bunch of random ingredients to make a dinner neither of us had planned for…a huevos rancheros/huevos motuleños-type dinner with a spicy, cheesy southern twist.  Our cheese grits had solidified in the fridge, so we turned them into adorable cut-out hearts (it was the first cookie-cutter I could find!):

They got pan fried until they were gooey and gorgeously browned.  To go with them I fried up some leftover andouille sausage (from this Cajun Quiche recipe I had used for a knitting party with some co-workers), added some pinto beans and sweet corn to heat through.   I have been adding corn to things as often as possible recently…Matt and I are both in love with the little crunch of sweetness it brings to soups and other creamy things (I’m surprised there was none inside of the grits, actually).

The mix went on the side of the grits, and I topped each plate with two fried eggs with runny yolks (mostly).  Also note that the same pan was used for the grits and the sausage/corn/beans… easy cleanup!

Here’s the finished product:

Both of us were surprised by how quickly this came together and how well all of the thrown-together flavors worked together.  This was one of those nights where we just sort of stand in the kitchen peeking into the fridge and the cupboards, not really sure what to eat…lots of times we’d settle on something like blah sandwiches or something from the freezer, but for whatever reason on this particular night, creativity was our friend and we ended up with a spectacular dinner!  I have been on a kick recently where I crave breakfast burritos, huevos rancheros, and really any other mexican for breakfast.  It’s a somewhat new thing, but apparently it is transforming into a love of mexican-inspired breakfast foods for dinner!

Also, Santana tried to help:

(Also notice the mess that is our kitchen and the many hand towels on the floor…usually while we wash dishes and cook, we manage to spill anything that can be spilled, and towels get dropped to the floor to mop it up…at the end of the night we try to corral all of these towels into the hamper so our kitchen floor is not quite a death trap. If you are visiting, just beware.)