Tuesday 4 - Kitchens

 This week's Tuesday 4 is asking about kitchens. Join me if you like.

1.  They say the kitchen is the heart of the home...tell us about YOUR kitchen. What is your favorite part of your kitchen? 

Our kitchen is a fairly typical suburban kitchen. It has the original 30-year-old oak cabinets, Formica countertops, and vinyl floor. It also has the original built-in microwave from 1989. The microwave still works but is very weak, so we have a countertop model that we use. The rest of the appliances are about 15+ years old. We turned our dining room into an office, so this is also where we eat.

Our 31-year-old microwave.

I'm not in love with any of it, but I'd say my favorite part is the window over the sink. We have positioned bird feeders right outside of it, so there's usually a good show being put on by the birds. I am also happy with the dishwasher because it gets things much cleaner than our old one did. I don't know if it's the machine or the water difference, but it's a pleasure to unload clean dishes instead of ones that have to be rinsed or rewashed.

That doesn't present a very warm, cozy feeling that is often associated with kitchens, does it? We are not food-centric here either with cooking or eating so that might be part of the reason.

 2.  If money were no object, what would be your "dream kitchen"? That's a hard one because my mind needs parameters to imagine something and money is always an object. So I'm not sure what my dream kitchen is but I can tell you what we are going to do when we redo our kitchen in the near future. (BTW, the near future is a relative term because we started the process last January and are still waiting for construction to begin. Supply chain problems and a boom in construction have been the major reasons for this.)

Unlike what you see on HGTV, we are going to keep the same basic layout and we are not adding an island. However, we are closing off one door and widening another to help the general flow. We are also taking down the cabinets over the peninsula because they totally block the view of our table. Presently when working at the counter, it is difficult to talk to anyone sitting at the table is. I am also looking forward to full extension drawers because it's difficult to see what's in the back of any of the drawers we currently have. We're getting better lights and a more durable countertop. In case you haven't noticed, we are very much driven by function. Luckily we have someone who is helping make sure that it looks decent, too. :) 

I guess my dream kitchen would have a wall oven and microwave built-in, but in the space we have, that's not going to work.  

tvline.com

3.  Tell us about a favorite memory from your kitchen, or from a kitchen in your past, perhaps your mother's kitchen or your grandma's kitchen? So many memories of the kitchen I grew up with, but I'll share just one. We usually had supper around 5 pm when my father got home from work. Afterward, my parents would retire to the living room to watch the evening news while my sisters and I did the dishes. While we wouldn't have admitted it at the time, we enjoyed our time together. We spent much of the time singing songs occasionally with simple harmonies. I regularly sing many of these songs today. There was also a fair amount of bugging my oldest sister. I knew just what would drive her crazy like singing MaryAnn's version of "I Want To Be Loved by You" from Gilligan's Island. Also, one of my favorite ways to goof off, while supposedly was drying dishes, was to soak the labels off of cans, tear them into pieces and put them together like a jigsaw puzzle on the front of the cabinets. When they were wet, they stuck well. When you're young, you will do anything to avoid work not always thinking through that it's still going to be there after you're done playing. 

While good, these beans were
 not as good as Dee's.

4.  If you could invite anyone in the world (either past or present) to come to visit with you in your kitchen, who would it be, and why? Once again, this is a question that needs parameters. Of course, I would love to sit down again with long-gone relatives(my mother and grandmothers come first to mind) or many of the world's movers and shakers from the past. My brain is about to explode with the possibilities.

But being the ever practical one, I'd say that I'd like Dee to visit my kitchen. She worked for a while helping my mother after finishing her regular job as a cook. She is a wonderful cook especially with the country cooking that I grew up with. First up would be her ham salad for lunch and then chicken and dumplings for supper with beans simmering for tomorrow.  

That's it for today's Tuesday 4, so until next time...