For the day.

Here yah are, Jilly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pEJQMsmyiA

Thank you! I skipped ahead to the kitchen segment and pantry tour, no other food showing.

What an amazing house! And love her accent. Will watch in full tomorrow. :)

lolol

My pantries have always been staged, but I would never show them off and say "this is where we keep all our food," twice, when it is so comically untrue.

LOL never heard of Krusteaz ? What am I missing?

LOL she looks like she’s wiping away a tear. Because she’s hungry.

Cmon, Mtn, no Krusteaz in your past?

I was going to say it may be regional, but I grew up in PA, which is where Pal is from, and I live in New England, where Sue is from. I don't even recall seeing it! But, YUM

PS Literal LOL Sue

Krusteaz also makes a pretty good cookie mix, and a biscuit mix.

SueB where I live sweet cornbread is an abomination! If you use a mix, the ONLY one is Martha White’s Cotton Country:

As to the pantry photos, either they don’t cook or they don’t eat.

This is what I grew up with…

Yes, me too! The corn and the blueberry.

I would be disowned if any of my relatives saw that in my pantry. Of course, most of them make cornbread from scratch; I am the lazy one 😎

The Krusteaz blueberry muffin mix is ok, but if you’re using a mix for baked goods King Arthur is the best. Even though I make most of my scones myself I keep a stock of theirYuletide and Eggnog scone mixes from November through January to whip up to take to a party or as a treat for the neighbors.

I’ve never had Krusteaz, but have seen it in stores. I only use Jiffy or Martha White mix for cornbread casserole, otherwise cornbread is always homemade. It’s so easy and so much better.

I agree, homemade cornbread is easy and soooo much better! My grandmother taught me how to make it. : ) I have not seen Krusteaz cornbread mix in my store, but I have seen their muffin mixes.

I do add about a tablespoon of sugar to my cornbread, but it does not come out sweet tasting. Yes, in my area, the jiffy cornbread is considered too sweet.

I grew up on the Jiffy too ... it is still very inexpensive but wasn't it like $0.15 when we were kids? I don't care for the krusteaz mixes, they are too sweet.

I use box mixes for pumpkin bread and gingerbread -- but I make banana from scratch. I would make brownies from scratch if I had a great recipe but I havent found one that beats a box mix.

Tina, I add tbsp of sugar, too, except when I’m making it for cornbread dressing.

@Jilly, I'm surprised you don't use the Texas favorite.

Fun, I’ve never seen that! Will look for it when I’m going to make my casserole.

Good heavens, at this point, I open the pantry door, back up and just toss the stuff in there!

Organizing my pantry is on my to-do list for August.

The only "staging" will be to get the expired items off the shelves.

@Funkyart I felt the same as you about brownies. Could never get that chewy texture a box mix provides. Until, that is, I came across this recipe. It's adapted from Cooks Illustrated who set out to make a recipe that rivaled box mixes. It's really good.

Homemade Brownies Like a Box Mix

My DH doesn't love them because he prefers a more cake like texture. I'm not sure where in his upbringing things went wrong ;-)

We once did a bake off when having friends for dinner to finally determine which were better. Mine won hands down!

I'm not sure where in his upbringing things went wrong LOL

Lunch Lady brownie recipe is good. I don't recall (without looking it up) where my brownie recipe comes from, but it is yummy! They are also iced.

I had never heard of Krusteaz before I did a Diet and Nutrition/Fitness thing with a trainer I knew who was into it.

I did it because I had gained a little bit of weight and I did not have a great diet when I was busy, and besides that we lived for about 4 years without a functional kitchen.

We had to keep a food diary, but part of it was we also had to do a food recall verbally where we would say what he ate yesterday, and what we had had for dinner two days ago, recall without referring to anything.

Well there was one guy who ate a family-sized bag of Swedish Fish. (This is apparently 327 pieces)

I found out that I had a very ambivalent attitude about food compared to a lot of people, sometimes I could remember what I ate, sometimes I couldn't. Although I am adventurous and I love good food, apparently I don't care about it all that much.

But one guy when doing the recall would recall in great detail what he ate and how he prepared it and he often made things with lots of carbohydrates and casseroles and had crusts on them and he would just go into raptures about what he ate (none of which I would able to have been able to eat more than about a 2" square piece of, and didn't sound appealing). Krusteaz was a common ingredient.

It turned out that the most Fit person in the group was a woman who was technically overweight and had a BMI that was too high but her endurance level was very high.

I started about 8 lbs overweight which is not just a little for someone my size, and I lost 20 lbs rapidly, and I continued to lose weight after that. I lost the most weight and I lost the most % of weight. I think because I don't care that much about eating and I cut out some junk.

Most people stayed about the same but became more fit.

The guy who cooked with the Krusteaz gained weight. I think it made him even more focused on it.

I just remembered it because of the name, which sounded so bad to me, because where I grew up to say something was "crusty" meant that it was crusty like a scab or kind of dirty. (It was Wonderbread country. Hardly anybody ate good bread.) I still don't think I could make stuff with it.

jsk, now I want to try your recipe. It seems so funny to have the box mix that taste likes homemade trope turned on it's head.

Ok, Pal, that explains it. You did not strike me as a fan of Krusteaze. Agree it is a terrible name.

I always thought it was a bizarre name for a food brand. For the record, I have never bought it. But I remember kind of laughing the first time I saw it in the store. Crusties?? Eww.

Always thought it was a different name but here's the explanation. Now it makes sense!

Oh no, i got it, but it is still a bad name in my book!

Yeah - we grew up with Jiffy mixes as well. Never heard or saw Krusteaz it seems, until relatively recently - maybe a decade or so...?

I don't use any mixes now either - haven't in ages. The amount of time it takes to measure ingredients adds only a few minutes to the total cooking time, IMPE.

My go to for a mix has always been Jiffy, I have gotten Krusteaz since I love their Belgian Waffle mix and pancake mix, but no one seemed to like the Krusteaz corn bread any better than the Jiffy, so why spend more.

However, I was at Ace Hardware a few weeks ago and was looking at outdoor griddles and they had some Lodge Skillet Cornbread mixes. I got the Sweet Spot mix and everyone loved it. I just ordered the 4 flavor variety pack and will have a taste test night at my house, make some chili or ham and beans and have 5 different cornbreads to try with the meal. (I'll make the Jiffy and the 4 lodge varieties.)

I love doing taste test nights. Just did a rib night - tried a couple of different cooking methods and a couple of different BBQ sauces from Farmgirls Canning. Made Country Pork Ribs and Boneless Beef Ribs.

Pork Ribs that were pressure cooked in apple juice then finished in a low slow oven with peach BBQ sauce were the top winner for the pork. Sous Vide Beef Ribs finished in the oven with a Brown Sugar Bourbon BBQ sauce was the winning Beef dish.

West Coast here and Krusteaz mixes have been on the shelves for as long as I can remember. But I don’t think I’ve ever used one. All the cornbread mixes and most recipes are too sweet.

The mixes are too much like cake.

Real cornbread, especially baked in an iron skillet, is bliss.

So the woman in the video, do they do cornbread in Ireland?

That's why we always buy Corn-Kits. It's not sweet or cake-like in texture. Add an egg and milk and mix just to moisten. Pour into a cast iron pan that has been heated with about a tablespoon of oil so that the mixture sizzles when it hits the pan, then bake until golden.

Was introduced to Krusteaze after moving to Ca,. years ago, but only its pancake mix. I was sold. Grew up with Jiffy cornbread mix. Oh! And I recall a spoonbresd mix. Loved it, but don’t remember the brand. Never seen any here…no surprise. Any southerners have one?

That top drawer is entirely full of ramen noodles.

Q: She keeps a houseplant, herbs, alive in a pantry? I don't see a grow light...

@martinica I have lived in the south all my life, but have never had spoonbread! I'll have to look that up. I've never used a mix for cornbread. My grandmother and mom always made cornbread (not from a mix) and my grandmother had the very. best. cornbread!! She taught me how to make it. Surprise, surprise, my grandmother did not have a recipe. She was one of those who would add a dab of this and a bit of that. She was a wonderful cook. So I just eyeball the ingredients, I don't measure. I make cornbread the way she did, but mine never just quite as good as hers. (And yes, I only make cornbread in an iron skillet.)

She keeps a houseplant, herbs, alive in a pantry?

No of course not.

I don't expect her to show a messy pantry with visually cacophonous tacky random packaging. I would not either. And of course not if I were being filmed.

But then just say, "this is our pantry" and discuss the design.

" I don't expect her to show a messy pantry with visually cacophonous tacky random packaging. "

Other than the "messy", though, why not? She created a stage set, and not even a realistic stage set, it's dumb, and I think it's pretentious and insecure on her part. Clean it up, organize it, sure. But it should probably be fairly clean and organized anyway, it's where you keep food.

Not that I want to see house tours of people's messy houses, but there is something to be said for the designers out there who don't live in a photo shoot, or rather, don't pretend that they do.

Alex Papachritidis "It's a bit of a mess"

--------

"You can see the cat has..."

"the dogs have kind of..."

Luke Edward Hall's bedside table

To be fair, I once viewed an unstaged, occupied house for sale where the primary suite closet only held scrubs, jeans and white tee shirts and the kitchen cabinets only had bowls. I don't remember the pantry, but I suspect it was equally bare. The homeowner's two-year-old child and nanny were home during the viewing.

I think there truly are people who don't cook and don't snack and thus, store very few ingredients.

Okay, to be honest this is what my kitchen drawers look like every day: but it's not staged with plants or designer-y looking things or the labels of the knives showing or anything. The narrow drawer pictures I took because of someone in the kitchen forum saying all 12" drawers are completely useless and they should redesign the whole (existing) cabinets to put in wider drawers. I didn't take these to show off in this thread.

If she does keep all of her food there, I would not be accepting any dinner invitations from her. I like her house, but for me, it is more important to have kitchen items (ingredients, utensils) close at hand rather than hidden away. Her kitchen looks extremely inefficient, and I would never want to cook there - maybe she does not want to either - that's the way it looks to me.

I do find her house aesthetically pleasing, even with a bit more brown than I like, but she seems more focused on style instead of function.

It is just silly. My point is not about how she styled her pantry, i just LOL'ed when she said, more than once "this is where we keep all our food." She should have just said; here's our pantry and gone on. We all know it is staged, and that's ok.

My pantries are staged (I won't post them again) and I don't use ugly wire shelves and my stuff is neat and organized. My kitchen drawers and cabinets are all very neat, and, on top of it, they are all labelled (to make it more likely that my cleaning people and family return things to where they belong).

I am all for organization and I do love a well organized kitchen, but something I saw this week was an interior decorated fridge. There was actual art hung on the fridge wall. Gold accessories, etc. My fridge although clean and organized and filled with items I need for every cooking will never have art hung in it.

And yes! She should have moved on with it.

If she does keep all of her food there, I would not be accepting any dinner invitations from her.

Ha! If she has a dinner party, you can be sure it's catered so it might actually be delicious.

mtn, to be fair -- she said that's where they keep all their food. She didn't say all their food was in there. Maybe it's all piled in the cars in the garage....