Last day of Kitchen Keeping, and there's a lot we didn't get to, but next month is all about Harvest, so we'll return to canning, preserving, and stocking up for the winter.
Here's one last element of Kitchen Keeping for us: bring the outside in. We made a resolution a long time ago to always keep flowers on the kitchen table. Sometimes this is just a small grocery-store bouquet; sometimes it's a flowering herb plant. It brightens up our kitchen and makes us feel finished, settled and snug in a way that a clean kitchen alone cannot.
This arrangement was one of our favorites - bells of Ireland, miniature sunflowers, and a couple gorgeous lilies. Try using arrangements of fresh squash or late vegetables too.
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I've always wanted to have flowers on the table on a regular basis but I've been hesitating because I don't think I could afford to do this all the time. Does anyone have any suggestions for inexpensive or long-lasting flowers that I can use?
A nice bowl or pedestal cake stand of apples always looks nice, especially this time of year.
You can get very inexpensive grocery store flowers like the long-lasting alstroemeria or Peruvian lilies for as little as $3. You can cut those stalks to various heights and arrange them in a narrow vase - when they open they're beautiful. Sunflowers also last a long time. Or put a flowering plant or geranium on the table.
Other ideas?
Orchids last weeks--the plain little purple ones were $6 a bunch at the flower stand near my old office, and sometimes it would be 3-4 WEEKS before I'd need a new bunch. I used the big green ones (sorry, I'm blanking on the names) at my wedding, and recently I bought a stem of them--it was $12, but last 2.5 weeks and looked wonderful.
I've been putting flowers on my table for a while now, started with the Farmer's market b/c one of the vendors there sells really cheap stems. So if you market is still open I would check there, but also grocery flowers work great, like Faith said Altroemeria's will last for a while, you will get sick of them before they die.
Thanks everyone for the great tips! I can't wait to go to the store and see what I can find :)
We grow our own herbs and flowers on the balcony from seed, but I purchased a bunch of Gerber daisies at TJ's and floated them in bowls...beautiful!
I don't know if you live near any trees, but I sometimes just arrange interesting small branches of leaves that I find.
We try to keep a few flowers in the kitchen at all times. Recently we've stuck with fresh herbs, though, because we like to be able to pluck and cook 'em!