No, not going there–I’m talking about kitchens, people!  Recently my family moved into a bigger apartment so everyone could have their own defined space (in our previous apartment Beverly shared her room with the office), including a ‘man-loft’ upstairs for my husband.  In addition to extra rooms we now have a larger kitchen and it got me to thinking about kitchen sizes vs. the ability to still throw down and put out a fabulous meal.

Kitchens come in all sizes, from the mini-fridge and hot pot in your college dorm room to the massive indoor-outdoor kitchens complete with a patio wood-burning pizza oven that I’ve seen in celebrity kitchen specials on TV.  I remember college friends creating very interesting dishes with a package of ramen noodles, condiment packages swiped from the dining hall and maybe sandwich meat bought at the corner deli.  As a freshman without a car I even created pasta masterpieces in the microwave with butter, milk and packaged pasta bought on my monthly bus trip to the grocery store.  When I was in graduate school I lived in a studio apartment with a small kitchen that had an ancient, electric push-button stove.  Seriously, instead of knobs on the front of the stove there were buttons on the back that you would push for the desired heat level—it was bizarre!  But it was just enough kitchen to feed myself so it worked for me.

My last apartment, which we moved into after arriving in NJ and living in a good-sized apartment in Missouri, had a galley kitchen.  This was certainly the smallest I’d ever encountered in the 12 years (not counting college) living on my own.  We had way more kitchen stuff than this kitchen could hold.  We had to buy a pantry to place in the dining room to hold all the things a pantry in a larger kitchen would have.  Then piled on top of that pantry were the gadgets and serving pieces that the cabinets couldn’t hold.  Counter space was at a minimum, making multi-dish efforts difficult for me; at one point I was rolling dough on the dining room table! My sister, on the other hand, has hosted Thanksgiving with her galley kitchen.  I seriously don’t know how she did it.  She occasionally posts meals she makes for herself and her fiancée on her Facebook page and I look at them like, you did that in your little kitchen??  Guess I should have been calling her for tips…

 We lived in our apartment for 4 years and eventually I learned to adapt, making one-pot meals or putting what I could in the refrigerator instead of leaving it on the counter.  But now we’re in a bigger kitchen with an actual pantry. That was one of my most exciting moments when we initially toured the apartment—no more external pantry cabinet! Now 3 weeks in and the pantry’s stocked, all appliances are in their proper place and I’m getting ready for farmer’s market season and all of the wonderful meals that are to come.  Still aiming for the massive, double-stove, huge island kitchen though…

(By the way, the pantry cabinet became Beverly’s new bookshelf.  Took the doors off and repainted it…just like new!)