Chez Dowdell's Monday Night Entree: Pan-seared scallops with sauteed peppers and onions, steamed brocolli with cheddar cheese and roasted baby red potatoes

Until last weekend, I forgot that I can cook.  And then, it happened…my kitchen was transformed.  With help from the good folks at Brizo, I became the proud owner of a beautiful new Talo kitchen faucet.  As the Brizo website describes, “Inspired by the bluebell flower’s distinctive silhouette, Talo is Brizo’s first traditional pull-down faucet. This unique form is married to a wealth of advanced features, including a 2-Button, 4-Function spray wand, MagneDock Technology®, and Brizo’s exclusive SmartTouch Technology®, which allows water activation with just a light touch.”  In summary, it’s a pretty awesome addition to my kitchen and it makes me actually want to spend time cooking at home.  What a concept.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the back story, this is the third and final post in my Brizo blog series, where I describe my experience learning about Brizo, starting with my adventures during last fall’s fashion week.  My second blog posed the question, “Is Your Kitchen a Stage?”.  I can now confidently state that my kitchen is indeed a stage with my new Talo faucet playing the star.  Since college, I haven’t been into the whole cooking thing…I know that it is healthier on the body and the wallet, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it on a regular basis.  After a long day at work, the last thing that I want to do is toil away in the kitchen…so I thought.  All of that changed when my kitchen got upgraded by Brizo last week. (Insert Beyonce’s song here)

I’ll let you judge for yourself…would you want to use this kitchen?

Or this kitchen?

Yeah, I would pick the second one too! 

Today, after work, I made it back uptown around 8pm, went to my local grocery store, picked up a few items and proceeded home to create the wonderful meal that you saw at the beginning of this post…having finished cooking and eating by 9:30pm. 

Ok, so the timing wasn’t that great today, but these things take practice!  I’ll get faster with time.  Overall, I’m happy with the meal that I prepared and the amount of money that I saved by cooking at home.  My faucet is a game changer. 

As wonderful as all of this has been, I learned a few things along the way:

1. Not many people really know how to install a faucet.

2. Installing a faucet isn’t that easy.

3. You probably shouldn’t install a faucet by yourself, if you’ve never done it before.

4. It’s a really good idea to find a friend who knows how to install a faucet.

5. Duct tape is an amazing invention.

6. There is such a thing as plumber’s tape…who knew?

7. When installing a faucet, have towels, lots of towels.

With that, I have to give a huge shout out to my friend Ahkilah for lending her time and expertise to my kitchen upgrade project.  Having installed a few faucets previously, she knew exactly what to do throughout the entire process.  The directions included with the faucet weren’t always as clear as day, so her experience definitely paid off.  It was also helpful that Ahkilah could tell me that I needed to obtain two additional accessories for the faucet to conceal the holes in my sink from the previous faucet model.  Thankfully, Jai Massela at Brizo made sure that I received my handy dish butler (stage right) and soap dispenser (stage left) prior to the installation.

Aside from a few pre-existing plumbing issues and the fact that the new faucet came in so many pieces that probably could have been pre-assembled, the installation was fairly smooth.  Ahkilah and I did need to make a quick trip to the hardware store for tape (because of the pre-existing issues) and a pit stop at Starbuck’s for an afternoon energy jolt, but overall the process took less than three hours. 

When it was all said and done, I had a pretty amazing new gadget in my kitchen and a renewed since of purpose for my culinary life.  I will make dinner a lot more often now that cleaning is so much easier with my touch activated, magnetic docking, spray wand faucet.  Fancy technology aside, it’s such a good lookin’ faucet, so guess who’s cookin’ now…me.