My New Kitchen

Well, I haven’t done much cooking in the past few weeks, but I think I have a pretty good excuse for that. After the craziness of packing and leaving Washington, Andrew and I spent a week with my parents, during which we enjoyed my Mom’s wonderful cooking, and now we’re in our new apartment at last. This, of course, means that we are currently dealing with the craziness of unpacking, an at times seemingly insurmountable task (there’s nothing like moving to make you sit back and wonder, How did I ever get so much stuff?), so cooking still has not occurred. My kitchen is basically set up, though, and I think it’s worth talking a little about that.

First of all, we love this new apartment. It’s in an old building with lots of character—beautiful, dark wood doors, ornate moulding around the light fixtures, a clawfoot bathtub—, and it’s all in excellent condition. It’s a little bigger than our last place, and it’s divided in such a way that makes it seem much bigger. I love the kitchen as well, but it is significantly smaller than the kitchen in our last apartment. Now, you might ask, wouldn’t someone who cooks as much as I do have a hard time with a small kitchen? Well, we’ll see what I say once I actually start attempting to produce meals out of this room, but for the moment, I’m feeling pretty good about the situation.

While this kitchen is small, it is not short on storage space. You can see in the pictures that cupboards line the walls, both above and below the counters. These manage to contain plenty, but the real jewel of this little kitchen lies behind that door that you can see at the end of the room in the above picture. Now, behold what’s inside.

I have a pantry! This means that non-refrigerated food items do not have to take up space in the cupboards, because I have a whole closet for them. It’s a little colder in there as well, which is excellent for keeping foods fresher. I’m also using the upper shelves to store some extra items that didn’t fit in the cupboards, and the floor to store my kitchen electrics (food processor, blender, etc.).

The kitchen has been recently renovated, so it looks fresh and clean. Check out the frosted glass cabinets we have on one side of the room.

I like the effect of the lights reflecting off of the dishes in the cupboard. And look inside:

Looks kind of cool, doesn’t it? The appliances are also fairly new and in excellent condition. The oven has a ceramic top, which will be a change. The big advantage of these is that they’re very easy to clean—no digging around under electric elements, or scrubbing around the claws of a gas stove. It also looks pretty sleek.

Now, for the main disadvantage of this kitchen: workspace. There is very little of it. See the little square of counter in this picture?

That’s basically the only area I have to work in. In my last kitchen, I had a huge island to work on, so this will be a change, but one I feel confident I can adjust to. After all, think of all the great food blogs that come out of small city kitchens. The bloggers of Smitten Kitchen, TheJulie/Julia Project, and The Amateur Gourmet, have all spoken at one time or another about their less-than-ideal kitchens, but they all make it work, and they’re some of the best. So if these bloggers can do what they do out of their kitchens, I certainly can too!