What do you do in your kitchen?
- Thread starter Mad Cook
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The friendliest place on the web for anyone that enjoys cooking.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
Cooking Goddess
Chef Extraordinaire
Bet your neighbors love the entertainment...and I ain't talkin' you playing in a band.
Mad Cook, funny you should ask. Just told Himself yesterday that I would like to build our next home too (so far, three for three) and it would have an at least 20x40 kitchen with a work center, dining area, and sitting/entertainment area. Off that room we could have small satellite rooms for sleeping, bath, and household duties (laundry, etc). The kitchen IS the center of our home, even if it isn't in the middle.
I too do more than cooking in the kitchen. When we first moved to this house the work half (L-shaped counter/cabinet/appliance area) needed more space for "stuff". Himself had built floor-to-ceiling shelves as a divider in our second apartment; I put those against the wall across from my work area and loaded them up with books and antique kitchen items (that I still use) and planted two rocking chairs in front of them. THAT was where all my guests would head when they came over to our home. Had to use those rockers in our sunroom when we added it on to our house. *sigh* I watch a counter top TV while I cook or wash pots and pans and such. I do mending, reading, coupon and recipe cutting, and interneting all at either the kitchen table or my little red work table. I've loved my kitchen no matter what house we've been in.
Gravy Queen
Head Chef
I swan round in my silk dressing gown cooking of course !
My kitchen is my haven. Always found cooking relaxing .
When we have fambo gatherings everyone ends up in the kitchen.
My kitchen is my haven. Always found cooking relaxing .
When we have fambo gatherings everyone ends up in the kitchen.
Oldvine
Sous Chef
Our kitchen is used for cooking, eating, gathering, gossiping, drinking and if I'm lucky cleaning up the aftermath. I have seen show place kitchens that are rarely used except for the compactor being used for disposable plates and food packages.
Andy M.
Certified Pretend Chef
We have a SRO kitchen with a couple of stools on the far side of an Ell counter. Everyone seems to gravitate to the stools. We hang there for chat, drinks, breakfast, whatever. My grandson watches everything I do with laser focus from a stool or sitting on the counter.
Claire
Master Chef
In most houses I've owned/rented, the kitchen was where everyone gathered when I had company, so entertaining would be the non-cooking answer. When we were looking for a new home, I told the RE agent that kitchen was important to me. We were looking for an old house with personality and history behind it. He showed us houses that had been rehabbed with kitchens that looked like someone got confused and put the living room/formal dining room cabinetry in the kitchen. In other words, show kitchens that weren't actually meant for cooking. That and industrial kitchens that looked like the kitchen of a cafeteria or restaurant. He almost apologetically showed us this house, with sagging open shelves, a 1973 stove, a fridge under the staircase. I was in love. It looked like an early 1900s farm kitchen. Uneven wooden floors. Crappy counters (you could see where someone had laid their cigarettes on the counters and burned them). The deal maker was a dining room that looks like it is out of a FLW home, lower ceilings, a stone sideboard. Over the dozen years we've owned it, we've had the plaid kitchen wallpaper replaced with paint and a great new kind of tile backsplash, the 70s stove replaced, the sagging wooden shelves replaced with glass ones, the drawer "boxes" replaced, and we painted the beadboard siding and cabinets. I think I managed to retain the country kitchen (and yes, my company still tends to sit at the kitchen table). I didn't want anything that looked industrial, and it is well over 100 years old. But ... my husband's "have to have" dining room is really where guests just want to stay (we bought mission style furniture to go with the walls). But still, we use that kitchen every day for other things besides cooking.
jabbur
Master Chef
Some of the show kitchens I'd be afraid to cook in! They are way to fancy for me. While we don't necessarily "hang out" in the kitchen, lots of stuff happens at the kitchen table. Our kitchen and family room are basically one room but the family room is 2 steps lower than the kitchen. They layout of mine is great but if I were to change one thing I'd add a bar to the one end of the counter. Sometimes DH talks about getting an island on wheels for the middle but I tend to nix that idea. I like the open floor. When we entertain, we set up the food on the kitchen table and folks can wander between family room and kitchen and still be a part of it all. I don't need a tv in the kitchen since the one in the family room is easily seen anywhere in the kitchen too. I'm ready to do some remodeling in there but finances are preventing it at the moment. We're too busy paying for a wedding.
Steve Kroll
Wine Guy
My kitchen isn't overly elaborate, just functional and good-sized. In addition to using it for cooking, it's where all the wine gets made and bottled.
I'm looking forward to the day when daughter has moved out and I can also roam freely about the house in boxer shorts.
I'm looking forward to the day when daughter has moved out and I can also roam freely about the house in boxer shorts.
I am blessed with what I have. If I didn't have a kitchen as nice as what I have, I would still enjoy the kitchen. I had a very small kitchen for 16 years, and I was still able to do everything I wanted to in it. When we built this house about 17 years ago, the kitchen and the garage were the main focus. They still are, along with the deck for cooking out and relaxing. I never met a kitchen I didn't like. As for the question on this thread...it's a little personal!
I grew up hanging out in the kitchen, it was where everyone ended up at family gatherings and darned if I didn't marry into a family that does the same. Many of my favorite memories include a dining table.
He's just being honest and cracking me up.
My kitchen is too small to do anything but cooking, making cocktails, and feeding the cat.
I would love to have a nice big kitchen. I have had that in the past and I really enjoy having company while I cook.
I would love to have a nice big kitchen. I have had that in the past and I really enjoy having company while I cook.
If you are ever in Colorado, stop by and we can cook together.
I've always said, it would be interesting to hear everything a table can tell us about what has been spoken around/above it. I can imagine it could be quite enlightening, embarrassing and heartwarming.
So, what do we do in our kitchen? Mostly cook and visit with family and friends. No TV, no computer. I've never been much of a TV-watcher, so that's not something I feel is needed in the kitchen. Glenn watches even less television than I, as did Buck. End even though I've had a computer for nearly 13 years, I don't seem to need it in the kitchen.
Having said that, our kitchen is very, very cooking-friendly and very...friendly. Guess that's part of the reason folks congregate there when they're here. Plus, our living areas are quite open, with the living room, dining room and kitchen flowing flawlessly into each other. There really aren't any walls separating them, just support "posts" at the necessary strategic places.
The kitchen has good lighting, plenty of counters and more than ample room to move around in. We hosted Christmas dinner for the whole family, more than 12 guests, and there were plenty of "helpers" in the kitchen but no mishaps and enough elbow room to suit everyone.
The only real non-kitchen functions that are performed in the kitchen are occasionally we will sit at the table and write out checks for a bill or two, address an envelope, etc., along with (about 3 times per year) the making of a batch of homemade laundry detergent. Oh, I almost forgot, that's where I give Glenn his haircuts, too.
I really love our kitchen and appreciate it after having spent so many years in the kitchen of the home Buck and I shared before he died. That kitchen needed serious help. I always said that it was one step above a campfire. Still, I never seemed to be hampered and always was able to end up with more than acceptable culinary delights.
I remember most vividly moving from the "kids" table to the "adult" table...it wasn't for the food, it was for the conversation. One Aunt was surprised that "a child" could carry on intelligent conversation with her elders.
jabbur
Master Chef
I am blessed with what I have. If I didn't have a kitchen as nice as what I have, I would still enjoy the kitchen. I had a very small kitchen for 16 years, and I was still able to do everything I wanted to in it. When we built this house about 17 years ago, the kitchen and the garage were the main focus. They still are, along with the deck for cooking out and relaxing. I never met a kitchen I didn't like. As for the question on this thread...it's a little personal!
I bet if you saw the kitchen in my son's last college apt. you'd change that statement. It was too small to cook in! The oven could only fit a 12" pizza pan. The burners were so close together you could really only use one at a time. There was no counter space. The width of the galley kitchen was double sink wide. If you opened a drawer, you couldn't get to the sink. It was really teeny tiny and they had 3 people living there.
