Food52 | Barbara Sallick
I'll Never Look at My Kitchen the Same Way Again
I don’t think any of us ever imagined such long stretches of time in our homes. We are a peripatetic lot: We dash to the office, jump on the next flight, race to the market, take off to sporting events and create elaborate visits with friends and family. None of these, nor countless other activities, left too much time to stop and think about our homes, how they functioned, how they looked and, most especially, how we truly wanted to live in them!
Today, months into self-isolation and social distancing, home is on our mind 24/7. By now, we’re done with the housekeeping drill: we've cleaned out the clothes and toy closets, made multiple trips to Goodwill, tossed expired spices, reorganized pantries and jotted down lists of future projects. When it comes to the next step, though—re-imagining our actual lifestyles (because I’d like to think we’ve been given an opportunity to)—the kitchen assumes tremendous significance.
So, how will our kitchens change? For some, that could mean buying (and, I hope, actually using) more advanced tools and appliances—ones that are more intuitive, perhaps even voice-activated, that cut down prep time, or maybe do the cooking for you. But I prefer to think about how to transform a kitchen into a hub for communing, in a true modern sense: the swirling nucleus of the household, the pivotal place where important conversations happen, homework is done, celebratory moments are created, food experiments and preparations are explored.
For many of us, me included, the kitchen has emerged from the grab-and-go-on-my-way-to-somewhere-else spot in the house—an attractive and high-functioning pass-through—to a space where creativity and conversation prevail. The question then is: what can we add or subtract to improve this mindful equation?
