I’m travelling in the USA for a week or so visiting family – so here’s a short blog on my summer kitchen. I might blog on that when the dust settles.  It’s been a lot of family in a week.

I am blessed when it comes to space, equipment, gadgets and these days – time – for baking.  The upside of being married to one’s general contractor (aka the Davinator) is that he builds you one of these – a second kitchen.

It’s an American thing, I think to have a second or ‘summer’ or ‘working’  kitchen, often in the basement (also much more common in America).  Before air conditioning was ubiquitous, having a kitchen in the basement was life saver during a hot summer. Year round, all the hard work happened in the summer kitchen and the ‘upstairs’ kitchen always looked nice. Like this…

 

The working kitchen can look like a bomb went off in it and no one will be the wiser.

But my ‘summer kitchen’ was inspired by Mrs F, the mother of an Italian-American guy I dated in college.  She had the best ‘summer’ kitchen I’ve seen.  I went out with Al the first time because he was good looking and he drove a blue Trans-am with the big bird painted on the hood  (1979 folks)(Did you know there are blogs on those Trans-am birds  ) . I kept on going out with him because I loved  his very Italian-American mother.  She was a great cook as well and had a big kitchen in the basement.

Mrs F never did anything more complicated than make coffee and assemble food (maybe warm it up)  in the upstairs kitchen. Of course, it was always spotless. Think kitchen showroom.

Mrs F made perfect Italian coffee in one of these, BTW.  She was a coffee snob in 1979.  So far ahead of trend.  All the rest of us were drinking Maxwell House if feeling fancy and Sanka if you were at your grandmother’s.  Well at least at my grandmother’s.   I adored Mrs F and she taught me a lot about good Italian food. What happened to Al you ask? Well basically he was a nutter and I had to break up with him the hard way.

The Davinator built me my ‘summer’ kitchen.  It’s got oodles of storage, more counter space, a deep sink, an enormous oven, my KitchenAid disappears beneath the counter and oh so much more.  I’ve got room for stuff that gets used infrequently – like the Millenium Falcon cake pan, the 50 different Christmas cookie cutters,  20 round cake pans of different sizes and functions, loaf pans galore, tart pans big small and miniature.  I could go on.  Well, a marble rolling pin, an ordinary rolling pin and a special long dowel rolling pin for pasta.  A gazillion mixing bowls.  All my speciality baking ingredients.  Okay, I’m going to stop now.

It’s on the northeast corner of the house so it stays cool but I baked plenty before I had the summer kitchen.   It’s a luxury but it really enables complex stuff like sourdough bread and fancy decorating.  It’s a space that inspires me.

What inspires you?