Hey, gang—Chia Mom here, reporting from the little slice of fair-trade, organic, pesticide-free heaven otherwise known as Chez Chia. As always, I’m here to tell you the easiest way to live a healthy life just like the one me and my fabulous family enjoy, with as much belittling detail as possible. Today we’re tackling the task of cleaning your kitchen, something that’s necessary for all of us from time to time, even if you don’t have hired help like me. But with my carefree tips, you’ll look forward to this unpopular task so much, you’ll start to think of cooking as a gigantic nuisance required to get to the good part. Ready? Let’s get clean!
Get those pesky smudges off your stainless steel appliances
Our good friend vinegar is your go-to here. All it takes is a generous supply of unbleached cheesecloth and a bucket of vinegar water (use three parts water to one part vinegar). I like to use an artisan bucket made from hand-buffed reclaimed cedar, but any bucket that’s not made of plastic will do—you know the Chia Mom pledge: no plastic, ever ever ever!
Industrially-produced vinegar is another no-no. Only clean with vinegar made from apples gathered within a three-block radius of your home (if you’re not in the right climate for apples, dwarf wild durians are an acceptable substitute), and fermented using a mer passed down at least generations in your family.
But I also have a top-secret tip for making the smudges go away forever! Ready? My kids just couldn’t be counted on to keep their pesky maws off the fridge doors, so I whipped out the solar-powered belt sander and, in three stages over a few months, just blasted their fingerprints away (make sure you have lots of absorbent drop cloths down when you do this). I also found that now that they have no fingerprints left makes it difficult for them to grab things, so I bought them all many pairs of organic cotton gloves with grippy rubber nubs on the palms. Turns out the gloves keep smudges off appliances even when you don’t do D.I.Y. fingerprint removal surgery, so to save time, just skip that step.
A sacrificial calf really brightens up your oven
To get the baked-on gunk out of your oven, go purchase an unweaned calf from your friendly local cruelty-free farmer. The build a pyre of bricks in front of the oven, lay the calf over it, and swath it in fresh sage and rosemary. (This is a great way to make a dent in that pesky pile of bricks you baked in the sun leftover from building your neighborhood’s communal wood-fired oven.) Take a long, sharp knife (not serrated!) and plunge it into the calf’s still-beating heart, and then light the pyre (for fuel, we like old grape vines best) and shove the whole works into the oven. You’ll probably need some help with this, so call over a few of your undocumented domestic workers. Keep the oven door cracked open a hair for three days, making sure to maintain excellent ventilation the entire time (enlist your kids to fan it manually for a fun family activity). Once the smoldering ceases, open the oven, sweep out the ashes, and feast on a fine meal of roasted veal, knowing the whole time your oven is the shiniest on the block…all without resorting to toxic chemicals.