We were kitchen people. When I was growing up, we would sit at the kitchen table for all our snacks and meals and to socialize. This is where my grandma and mom would hang out, as if waiting for the next customer to make a request from the kitchen.
Our kitchen was small. No open-plan mega-kitchens that everyone seems to want these days. My grandparents lived in a house of less than 1,000 square feet that my grandpa had designed and built back in 1951. Somehow, in her 8×10 kitchen space, my grandma created full breakfasts, delicious lamb dinners, and desserts with meringue 4 inches tall.
I grew up living in apartment-sized kitchens, where my mom would make a mean pot roast and my favorite goulash. Dad would grill on the weekends. We always ate together.
I had two choices for meals: take it or leave it. No special orders and no wasted food. On rare occasions, I would get to eat my TV dinner on a TV tray to watch my favorite TV show. The family turned on the television only when we knew exactly when and what we wanted to watch. No channel surfing was necessary with only 5 channels, and when my dad was around, I was the remote control!
If I wasn’t at the kitchen table, I was outside, or in my room listening to the record player or radio. If anyone was on the couch, they were reading or taking a nap.
Life was unplugged. Life was (mostly) good.
Food was family time, and the kitchen was our place of connection, our social hub, our way of showing love and caring for each other.
Over the years, when I would visit my mom, I knew when I woke up in the morning I would find her at the kitchen table with her coffee. After saying, “Good morning,” her next phrase would always be, “What should we have for dinner?” It was her ministry, her way of blessing us.
One of my life lessons: It’s not the size of the kitchen, but the size of the hearts that occupy it.
Fun fact: Julia Child’s Cambridge kitchen was only 20×14 feet. Counters were 38 inches high to suit her height of 6’3” She had a used restaurant gas stove, and her pots, pans, skillets, and utensils hung on pegboard-covered walls. She installed television lights in the ceiling while taping three different cooking shows there between 1994 and 2001. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History documented every detail before taking it apart and reassembling it for public display. Read more details here.
If Pinterest is your jam, you will enjoy my Cheerful Kitchen board. I have collected some cool and colorful retro kitchen pictures and ideas, like vintage Pyrex collections! I have lots of other creative boards you can check out too.
“Jesus said to them, “Come and eat breakfast.” John 21:12
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