Welcome to my kitchen. You may have wondered what my kitchen looks like when you peruse the recipes here. Well, this is the kitchen where everything is prepared. My kitchen is tiny, so tiny that the refrigerator door and oven door cannot be opened at the same time. I have very little storage. I had to improvise.
Luckily, my good friend, who was a wedding coordinator, had wooden crates she had painted and decorated. The bride didn’t want them, and she didn’t want them, but I saw a lot of storage possibilities. My dining area has become part of my kitchen, almost into my living room.
The Tiny Kitchen Crates
These crates hold my vintage Organdie Vernonware dishes. These dishes are older than I am. I think they look lovely in their yellow crate. These are the same dishes that make up the logo of The Good Plate.
I keep my most frequently used spices in preserve jars in this crate. The famous Nesco Roaster that brings us the holiday turkey, ham, ribs, and other tasty foods sits beside it. Here is a list of recipes for the Nesco electric roaster.
What’s on the Counters?
The new GoWise 12 1/2-quart rotisserie air-fryer toaster oven is absolutely amazing. I can cook a lot of things I would typically do in the oven without turning my kitchen into an inferno for the rest of the day. The air fryer was later joined by a 6-quart Instant Pot.
The Prep area with my KitchenAid mixer and my Braun food processor, plus a plethora of cutting boards, is where everything happens. That’s why there are so many cutting boards. My prep bowls are in the cupboard above, and a drawer under the counter has a lot of kitchen tools, including my bench scraper. Note the upside-down bowl over the food processor. That is the bowl I use to hold vegetable ends, potato peels, egg shells, and other organics before I put them in a bio-degradable bag for the organics trash bin.
If you are an appliance and you live on the counter, you must be critical and frequently used. My Instant Pot does a lot of jobs, and the Nesco vacuum sealer is great for keeping foods safe in the freezer plus preparing them for the sous vide immersion cooker. Yes, that’s Mexican sugar – it has a little molasses which gives it a slight caramel flavor that I find superior to conventional white sugar. The Instant Pot was replaced with a larger version and moved to live with the air fryer.
Her Most High Royal Empress of All the Toritudes, Chloe, and her housemate, Nurse Nottina
The Breakfast crate is where the coffee, French press, espresso pot, and other dry goods canisters are kept. We also have a small kitchen island where we keep cooking wine and the Margarita Ville blender.
Because our dachshund is a voracious eater, we let the girls eat on the table. They were here hoping I would feed them while I took pictures. It’s also the cabinet where we keep the cat food. That’s Chloe hoping I’ll open the drawer for her. I didn’t.
My Penzey’s collection. I want to keep them away from heat and light, so they live on these shelves we just installed two days ago.
And finally, a shot of my kitchen sink where you can see just how tiny my kitchen is.
My kitchen window has what we call “the plant hospital” where plants go before they are put outside. The basil and the chives like the window so much, they have a permanent plate. I also keep small utensils on the shelf within easy reach when I’m prepping or cooking food.
My refrigerator has cheat sheets for the Instant Pot, the air fryer, and the sous vide. I also have my monthly menu so I can see what I’m supposed to be making.
It’s not a perfect kitchen, but I like my neighborhood, so I’m staying and just have to be creative.