Scratch Eating

In our house, we believe eating to be one of the great pleasures in life, and "banning" entire food groups to generally just not be very fun, and so "Scratch" eating was born. This lifestyle operates on 2 basic principles: Everything in Moderation & Know What You're Eating. We eat organic, free-range, hormone-free, non-GMO, wild-caught, nitrate-free, and FRESH for as many things as we can. We don't eat anything with soy in it (because it is SO BAD for you!) and we avoid corn-syrup because it is just added unnecessarily to way too many things. Soy and Corn are the 2 most genetically modified (and pestice ridden) foods in the US with over 90% of crops being GMO/round-up ready. Basically, everything we eat is made from scratch. We make it, which means we control the ingredients, and we feel like that's a pretty great principle in eating.




Part of scratch cooking is learning to love your kitchen. This blog is called The Copper Kitchen, because as a metalsmith, metal and especially copper holds a special place in my heart and my kitchen reflects that. From painted walls and copper backsplash to decaled appliances and spraypainting a trashcan, i made my kitchen one of my favorite rooms in the house and I encourage you to do the same!

My kitchen was easily my least favorite room of the house when we bought it. While my kitchen is actually rather large, it is a funny shape of ~6'x 26', and as an addition to the house, features a drop ceiling. I spent ~2 years saving money and remodeling the kitchen to make myself love it, and now i do! We replaced the drop ceiling with embossed metal-look tiles, painted the walls with a parchment finish, replaced the countertops with an "oxidized" laminate, the sink and fixtures with copper, Displayed all my pretty dishes and copper cookware, and added decals to the dishwasher and refrigerator. One of my FAVORITE parts of the remodel was recognizing that we really don't use a microwave and removing it. The extra counter space is sooooo worth it!

More than half of my serveware is displayed on a series of 3 corner baker's racks in the kitchen- the third corner being against the fridge. It really helped to incorporate and utilize the empty space that was half of my oddly shaped kitchen.

We added an embossed copper look back splash behind the stove and the trashcan (which i spraypainted a copper finish with rustoleum paints), and some of my copper cookware stays on the stove continuously, adding to the decor.

I received my kitchenaid mixer as a wedding gift, and at the time had asked for black (which is also less expensive than the newer limited edition metal finishes). Adding metallic vinyl decals for a personal touch was one of the first little touches i did for my kitchen.

My kitchen IS oddly shaped, and finding better uses for space- like adding shelving to this 4 foot wall, helped to unite the 2 halfves of my kitchen