This post is part of my “I’m __ and this is my kitchen” series of posts, in which fabulous home cooks dish a little about their cooking lives and their kitchens.  The goal is to get inspiration, ideas and insights from other regular people about shopping, planning, cooking and kitchen organization.  See more here.

I shouldn’t have to introduce this person because, in my opinion, everybody should already know the name Brandie Kajino, but just in case you haven’t had the good fortune to be familiar with my fellow Evernote Ambassador’s blog Spoon and Saucer, let me fill you in!  Brandie is a food blogger, a professional organizer, a wife and mom, and the Evernote Ambassador for Organization.  She is also witty, hilarious, and waging a war in favor of eating real food, which is something we can all get behind.  You can find her at spoonandsaucer.com.

Name: Brandie
Age: 40

Location: Vancouver, WA (across the river from Portlandia… yes that one)

Occupation/Pasttimes?: 
I love to knit, read, shop for antiques, and nap on Sundays

Do you follow a specific diet or food philosophy?
I am gluten-free, and so are most in my house. I’m mostly plant-based during the day, with dinner and eating out is less strict. Basically, I try to make great choices 80% of the time, so I can eat ice cream on the weekends.

How do you plan for meals?
I use Evernote, and I plan them by the week. Sometimes I even pitch that out the window and make breakfast for dinner. I have a secondary freezer that I use like a pantry, with meats, frozen produce and nuts. Honestly though? I like to improvise quite a bit.

How many people do you cook for?
3 (including me)

Does your family cook with you?  If so, who does what?
Not really. My husband does sometimes, but my 12 year old son isn’t that into it (yet). I’m the main cook, which is totally fine by me. It’s my zen place (with the exception being the very occasional cooking disasters).

How often and where do you get your food?
I shop 1-2x per week. I shop at three places mainly: Costco (LOVE it), and the local places Chuck’s Produce and New Seasons Market. Once in a while I go to WinCo.

Describe your kitchen.  What’s your favorite thing about it?
My kitchen is pretty cottage-y. The cupboards are painted white, and we have mostly stainless steel appliances, outside my pathetic stove (which hopefully will be replaced this year!) Our countertops are old. Really.really.old. I have two windows, which make it quite bright in the daytime, making artificial lighting pretty unnecessary most days.

How do you organize your kitchen?
This is always a work in progress. I keep the things I use the most close, and the extra pantry supplies around the corner in my small non-perishable pantry. I clean it out about every year (and it’s really overdue right now!)
I don’t over-organize and drive myself (and others) crazy. I keep things handy as much as possible.

If you could change one thing about your kitchen, what would it be?
A new stove! My oven light doesn’t even work. *le sigh*

What ingredients do you always have on hand?
I have a fair amount of beans, oats, whole grains, pasta, garbanzo beans, and canned tuna. I’m also always ready to bake with assorted gluten-free flours, butter and chocolate. Lots of chocolate.
I also keep a fair amount of eggs in the house, Japanese sauces, mayo, pickles, anchioves and nuts.
I also have a variety of nut oils, and assorted salts.

What ingredient is in your pantry that you’re not sure how long has been there?
Japanese noodles. We have some pushed to the back that seem a little suspicious.

Favorite dish to make?
Granola and spaghetti carbonara. Was I supposed to pick one?

If you could instantly master any dish on earth, what would it be?
A tart. For some reason it intimidates me!

What’s your biggest struggle in the kitchen?
Soup. Dear lord I need to be better. I’m getting there, but improvising in this way is pretty sucky.

Favorite tips?
Use the freezer as a pantry.
There can never be too much bacon.
The slow cooker is your friend, and is a real food dream tool.

Name 3 absolutely necessary pieces of kitchen equipment
My chef knife, cutting board, and the food processor.

Do you listen to music while you cook and if so, what’s usually on the playlist?
Not really. I usually listen to NPR News.

Anything else you’d like to share?
I wish more people would get in the kitchen and make something simple. I think it’s a shame that a lot of people don’t even know how to make scrambled eggs. It’s so much easier than people think, if they’d just try it. Have courage and get in there!

There’s an event coming up next week that’s really a pretty big deal.  It’s the Evernote Trunk Conference 2013 and I am super excited to be going.  There will be amazing talks, great tips to learn from all the awesome users who show up to meet and share with others, and of course, the fabulous rockstars behind the software.  I’m also super geeked to see some of the other Evernote Ambassadors, who are the icing on my green elephant-y cake.

I’ve mentioned Evernote a fair bit here before—it is the digital engine that fuels my kitchen organization and…well, the rest of my life.  I’ve talked about 15 ways to get recipes (or anything) into Evernote, how to use it to digitally search your physical cookbooks, and why you should be using the companion app, Evernote Food.  But now, with Evernote Trunk just a few days away, I’m gonna take a cue from the fabulous Jenni Lathrop and Daniel Hendrick, among others, and list 10 ways that Evernote made my life better.

 

10 Ways Evernote Has Improved My Life

1. All of my recipes and cooking notes are in one location, instead of five different websites, three binders, a bunch of loose cards and a stack of a couple dozen old magazines I think I’ll look through again but really won’t.

2. If important mail comes in, I can scan it and toss it.  No more piles of things cluttering up my kitchen counters and table.

3. Shared notebooks make it easier to collaborate with other people, both personally and professionally.  My office uses Evernote Business, so we can easily access shared meeting notes and project information.  My husband and I have a shared notebook with things like scanned bills, info from our dogs’ vets, travel notes, and general household information.

4. With premium, I can toss in files and they’re searchable.  I don’t have to spend a lot of time opening one file after another to figure out if it’s the one I need.

5. Livescribe.  I can take real notes!  On real paper!  With a real pen!  And still have it all saved digitally into Evernote.

6. I use Skitch to take screenshots for documentation and help guides in my regular job, and all of those get saved to Evernote, so I can easily access them over and over again.

7. Evernote Food means I can not only plan where I want to eat when I travel places, but I can take pictures of my dining experiences there and keep track of not just what I ate but where.

8. Re-organizing is really easy.  My productivity style changes on a regular basis; I’m always looking for newer, better ways to organize my life.  If I need to change my system in Evernote, doing so is really, really easy thanks to bulk editing.

9. When I redid my pantry, I took an image note of the space and then marked it up in Skitch.  I kept a list of all the items I wanted to build or buy in Evernote, along with links and prices.  I did the same thing for my garden beds, and I’ll be doing it for every room renovation I eventually do, too.

10. Evernote’s user community is amazingly dedicated and awesome.  Every time I talk to someone, whether a beginner or another Ambassador, I learn great new ideas.  They are the best help guide ever made.

 

And that last reason is what makes me the most excited for the conference–I can’t wait to meet up with people and learn some great new tips and tricks, and share my own.  If you’re coming to this year’s conference, come find me!

 

Check out my Evernote Recipe Notebook

Get Started with Evernote

My Getting Organized with Evernote workshop notebook

I know.  You’re stressed.  You’re frustrated.  You’re angry and doggone-it, you’re hungry.  The holidays are coming up and just the thought of all that planning and preparation and pie–ok, maybe not the pie–are making you fret.  Well stop biting those nails and tearing out that hair.  We are here to help.  By we, I mean Evernote and me.  We are here to help you survive the holidays.

That’s why Evernote has launched a full slate of events, tips and plans aimed at helping you navigate these busy, bustling times.  First up?  A test-run Holiday Potluck with yours truly!  (Me.  It’s me.) Continue reading →

[frame align=”left”][/frame]Saturday was a glorious day.  We joined together in the holy name of burgers to celebrate the second Evernote cookalong.  And oh, what a cookalong it was.  Full of juicy, grilled deliciousness, smothered in cheese and various toppings, served on golden buns.

Let’s see…the burgers themselves were turkey-feta, and ground brisket and pork.  The toppings ranged from the classic cheese, tomato and lettuce to homemade double-dipped onion rings to…poutine.  Yes, poutine.  Our friends Jeff and Ruth are Canadian and well…they bought fresh cheese curds from Zingermans.  Which made Jeff think he could also get gravy and fries.  By that, I mean, he realized he could bring things to my house and I would make gravy and fries.  Because I would.  And I did.  And then he topped the fries with the gravy.  And topped the gravy with the cheese curds.  And topped his burger with the poutine.

He topped his burger with the poutine.  Well, I guess Sunday was Canada Day.  Continue reading →

[frame align=”left”][/frame]So…what are you doing this Saturday?  If you answered, “Grilling burgers for the Evernote Burger Cookalong, of course,” then congratulations!  You’ve won the prize…of delicious flavor!

Seriously, you should join in.  I mean, after all, the Fourth of July is next week.  You have a cookout planned.  Your best friends are coming, your family, maybe even your boss, probably even a potential new girlfriend/boyfriend (if your glass is half-full) or a potential new ex-girlfriend/ex-boyfriend (if your glass is half-empty).  Anyway, that’s a lot of people that you’re gonna wanna “Wow!” with your burger prowess.  So consider Saturday a dry-run and try out a new recipe or two, or five.  I mean, the options are endless.  Beef burgers, turkey burgers, chicken burgers, veggie burgers, black bean burgers, tempeh burgers…and don’t even get me started on toppings!  This conversation will quickly turn into a scene with Bubba from Forrest Gump (“Shrimp cocktail…shrimp salad…shrimp pasta…”).

So do yourself a favor.  RSVP for the cookalong.  Pull out your best burger recipe.  Make it, eat it, and share it on Facebook or Twitter (hashtag #evernotecookalong) using Evernote or Evernote Food –and maybe you’ll inspire another burger-lover, find a great new recipe yourself…even win a prize!

But at the very least….dude.  Burgers.

[frame align=”left”][/frame]

Today is the first Evernote Cookalong...and that means crêpe-a-palooza at our house.  My friend Brian came over and the two of us made a few different batches of crêpes so that we could wrap ourselves in their warm, delicious folds.

First, we made a batch of savory crepes, which we called “green crêpes and ham.”  We used my standard crêpe recipe (below) and filled them with sautéed asparagus (from my in-laws’ family farm!), zucchini, hot Italian pork sausage from the inestimable Biercamp here in town, and then topped it with a cheesy, creamy brie sauce.  (Literally, the sauce was just cream and melted brie cheese.)  They were…out of this world.

We sat and ate those for a while and watched Lilo and Stitch (“This is your badness level.  It’s unusually high for someone your size.”) before heading back to the kitchen for Round 2: Crêpe Boogaloo.  This time we went simple, classic, light.  We made another batch of the crêpe batter, but added a tablespoon of vanilla bean paste.  The filling was just fresh sliced strawberries sprinkled with grated lemon zest, powdered sugar and whipped cream.

I’ll just say that again for you: warm crêpes with fresh sliced strawberries sprinkled with grated lemon zest, powdered sugar and whipped cream.  Just let that ooze into your bones for a second.  Oh yeah.  Can you feel the love tonight?

The day is not over yet..I may yet make one more batch of crêpes (we’ll see).  I’m thinking I have plenty of good dark chocolate, leftover cream, graham cracker and chocolate marshmallows…s’more crêpes anyone?

Updated:

Ok, I couldn’t help myself.  I had a little bit of batter left and the idea of a s’more crêpe was just so appealing...