From "The 1950s Kitchen Gets an Update/With today’s wellness kitchens, it’s farewell to the pantry with shelf-stabilized foods, and hail to the composter" (NYT).
I clicked on this article because I wanted to see photos of 1950s kitchens and how they might be thoughtfully renovated, but "1950s Kitchen" just refers to the homeowner's lifestyle, which used to involve more processed and shelf-stable food. So, get rid of the extra shelving and do something to help people with the problem of fresh food going bad. Then there's the idea of treating food like endless self-improvement — and not only for your body but for your mind.
Well, the truth is, I'd like a kitchen oriented to the assembling of fresh wholesome food, but I know from experience — I remodeled the kitchen, once, 30 years ago — that remodeling a kitchen is not a wellness experience. Whatever you can do with the new kitchen after it's done, what you have to do to get there is not calming or rewarding or social or meditative.
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Good God, the upper reaches of our society, our intellectual betters, have way too much money and way too much time to waste.
Minimalism in moderation is a meditative gourmet.
Whatever you can do with the new kitchen after it's done, what you have to do to get there is not calming or rewarding or social or meditative.
That's exactly what Hannibal Lector said.
I don't know how NYT readers can consume this type of drivel and then believe the news pages are serious journalism.
This makes me miss our old friend Chip Ahoy. He was creative with all the indoor and patio growing.
My dentist had a TV mounted where the patient could watch it. He had it tuned to thee HDTV channel. I pointed out the similarity between pulling teeth and remodeling kitchens. He didn't think that was very damn funny.
"1950s kitchen" evokes the Nixon-Khrushchev kitchen debate - maybe just for me
I’m pretty sure all of the components that go into making a wellness kitchen aren’t good for the environment. Which is fine, that’s how things are built now. But it does make this just performative.
A large pantry adjacent to the kitchen stocked with "shelf-stable food" is man's gift to himself.
In the 1970s the big kitchen design decision was whether the appliances would be Avocado, Harvest Gold, or Coppertone. We in the appliance trade called these colors snot green, piss yellow, or shit brown.
Do they still sell those dishwashers with the two hoses you have to pull out of the thing and connect to the faucet every time you want to run it?
Althouse said...
"I remodeled the kitchen, once, 30 years ago — that remodeling a kitchen is not a wellness experience."
How could anyone do something so vicious?
"It was easy, my dear. You forget that I spent two years as a building contractor"
@Wince
LOL
Builders are a nasty greedy bunch.
Rare or impossible to find a good one.
Find a collection of good sub-contractors, and do it yourself.
A lot of work - but acting as your own contractor has benefits.
Agree. Remodeling is hell.
What is this fascination with calming, with passivity? Isn't stimulation superior? Isn't passivity akin to satisfied smugness, to repletion?
I dunno about youse guys, but I don't want anyone else with me when I am cutting and dicing up stuff. Not only do they get in the way, but they start talking to me and they are not concentrating on what they are doing, they look away, and WHAP, there goes a slice of finger.
Builders are a nasty greedy bunch.
Sorry you had a bad experience with a builder. The bad apples don't give the rest a bad name on their own though. It also takes people who are willing to engage in unfair sweeping generalizations to accomplish that.
Going through a building project is stressful and expensive for most people, especially if they don't have much experience with the process. Keeping people happy in that situation can be challenging.
People who need lawyers are also often going through a stressful and expensive time and don't have much experience with the process. You often hear things like, lawyers are a nasty greedy bunch.
There are nasty, greedy people in every walk of life.
You could find people who say Buddhist monks are a nasty, greedy bunch.
"I dunno about youse guys, but I don't want anyone else with me when I am cutting and dicing up stuff."
It seems like something done fakely by Tiktokkers and by Meghan Markle on that show "With Love, Meghan."
Said Lorena to John Bobbit, with a notably green penis machismo.
It a poor craftsman whom blames tools. Residential contractors tend to suck because the best work commercial. The same is true for residential vs commercial real estate brokers. It's because no sane man wants to do business with a housewife.
I recently built an outdoor kitchen with a wood-fired pizza oven. My green-thumbed daughter-in-law is planting an herb garden right beside it, as soon as the Arizona desert cools off a bit. Winter gardens down here can be fantastic. I'm not sure what all the upcoming pizza feasts will do for my physical wellness, but my mental wellness will be off the charts.
Another NYT article seeking a topic where none exists.
"Bob Boyd said...
Builders are a nasty greedy bunch.
Sorry you had a bad experience with a builder. The bad apples don't give the rest a bad name on their own though. It also takes people who are willing to engage in unfair sweeping generalizations to accomplish that."
Wild guess, Bob is in the trade and has a cabinet guy, a tile man, a plumber, and electrician he can count on, and can do an entire kitchen with cabinets, appliances, plumbing and floor in a normal work week. Just like other competent contractors.
Probably do a bath remo in 3 days.
A residential contractor's job is to make other men's wives squeal with delight.
"Bob Boyd said...
A residential contractor's job is to make other men's wives squeal with delight."
And resist offers of sex in exchange for upgrades
Mostly
It's delicate and lonely work, like oral sex, but somebody's got to do it.
My last comment got moderated.
I’m five weeks into my kitchen reno and wow am I over it. I have none of those dumb things that break. I do have a second sink so someone else can wash dishes while I cook. Haven’t explained that to my someone else yet.
I've been so poor that I had no kitchen and had to cook on a hotplate in my bathroom and wash the dishes in the tub. It wasn't that different from having a proper kitchen. I mean, I had a toaster oven as well and two hotplate tops. Boiling water to have my baths on the other had was a bit of a pain.
My wife and I just started ours before the covid panic hit. Took years. Our sub had detonated our old kitchen then the virus. Appliances on constant backorder (all were US made), same with flooring. We had the Amish do our cabinets as we're in South Central PA, and they came through in spades and are fantastic. So we lived with an electric stove (which we were upgrading to propane, which is another hell story during covid), a sink held up by 2 x 4s, and a fridge in the dining room for around 2 years. It was frustrating and annoying, but we made it, and are still married.
Howard - Residential and commercial real estate brokers aren't even in the same business. Scarcely the same species in my experience.
Just get a Boos Block. You can't break those things. You can be alone or share cooking. Restaurants use the metal ones: I like wood. The 3×8 is great. Wooden with a strong metal shelf near the botton. They come with magic oil. I rigged up a grow light under mine and had cooking herbs all winter. If you're lazy, get a timer for shutting on and off the light. I did need to build a chickenwire surround about half a foot in. Damn cats. Plus a dog who loved basil. We have no upper shelves, just pantry. I bought all high-end IKEA stuff. $2000 for a kitchen's-worth of shelves; 2,O00 for a fridge and country sink/faucet and a stove new but a bit scratch-and dent, invisible, and I can lift the whole thing off the wall brackets and pack it up in a day. All you need is a screwgun, a good studfinder and allen wrenches. Best to know where your electric runs. No contractors, and all the feet can be leveled.
I hang a picture of Julia Childs and Jacques Pepin's hands over my Boos Block. It's touching.
If you don't want to build the shelves, IKEA have very good servicemen. I used to do install and dismantle, so it's just fun for me. Oh yeah, I paid $129 for the stove hood. But the whole thing was done in two days and cost about 4500 with all appliances. I'm allergic to contractors.
If you can, quietly run all grey water to the gardens outside. Plants love soapy water from a washing machine and sinks and baths. Kitchen sink water attracts animals, so you would have to cap that end off with a screw-on plastic small grid and keep it clean. Plants really love soapy water, especially non-scented, non-colored, and no phosphorus.
Don't do this with toilet water. Whole Earth Catalogue has advice, from before when hippies became a pain in the ass.
"A residential contractor's job is to make other men's wives squeal with delight."
LOL. things that never happen.
What do women want? A kitchen planner or a wedding planner will tell them what they want.
"It's because no sane man wants to do business with a housewife."
Spot on observation. I switched my casework business from residential to commercial after the first ten years and never looked back. One job for 2.5m and architects and contractors who know what they or 100 jobs for confused stressed housewives who want to change everything after it is built.
I have never squealed with delight at the sight of a contractor. More like rage. I showered outside on flagstones and a faucet hooked to a tree for a year when we first moved in here -- we had no neighbors then and have 15 acres. The entire back was burned off the house. Drilled it shut and lived in one room, eventually a sitting room/kitchen too. We had to fix the foundation with rebar and cinerblocks and concrete before doing more. I strapped a sink onto my front porch with a hose drilled with holes and a splitter to grow giant hostas as I did dishes, and and dug holes and cobbled together a movable outhouse. My husband used his nearby office and gym. He couldn't see the pleasure of showering outside, let alone using the restroom outside. I loved every minute of it.
Yet I hate camping. It's a quandry. After many contractors screwed me (I knew the ones I used in other places), I happened upon two older guys who were great. We spent six years making this place cherry. Neither could work every day, but they had built power plants, federal buildings, and could do anything. They taught me half of what I know. Since they got too old to work, I'm screwed again. Do it yourself. There are great videos of everything you need.
And I'm a plumber and work with pec, which everyone should be using. A bit more up front, but the leaks and hours you save are amazing. Maybe not in Madison.
"compacting composter"
How does that work? Garbage doesn't break down without moisture and air. Compacting prevents air and water movement.
Compacting prevents air and water movement.
We just had a horrible composting situation in a prominent US city that has mandated such. We were traveling with our dog, and the friends with whom we were staying keep a small, covered bin near their food prep area for food waste that is supposed to be composted. Well, we all got distracted - there may have been wine involved - and then suddenly I realized I heard clanking sounds from the kitchen.
Our dog had managed to open the bin and get into the compost. This was bad enough! But then, in snatching up the bin and taking it outside, I realized that it was crawling with maggots! (Commercial compost can accommodate animal food waste, which was certainly present here; home compost is typically plant waste only.) It was horrifying! And stank to high heaven!
Our dog, especially her head, needed immediate bathing. Our friends were horrified.
I am a big fan of compost. But I will only compost plant materials - no freaking maggots - and I will do it myself, turning and aerating the pile or bin appropriately to promote breakdown. I have raised great vegetables on my home compost, an almost-black, fresh-smelling, crumbly substance, not a gross stinky ooze that you have to wash out of your city-provided bin. Cities that do this are asking for horrendous problems.
“ LOL. things that never happen.”
Sorry it didn’t happen for you, Peach.
“We just had a horrible composting situation in a prominent US city that has mandated such.”
The best place to keep the compost bucket is in the freezer.
I had the singular joy of remodeling a kitchen without guidance or oversight from a vagino-American. The floor is tile, the walls are tile six feet up. Zero wooden cabinets (who needs roach and mouse habitat), triple stainless steel commercial grade restaurant sink with commercial dish sprayer, stainless prep table, heavy duty stainless rolling storage rack. It's basically a small commercial kitchen. I can see everything and it is easy to clean
Jamie--I was very concerned about where the "horrible situation" was going with regard to the dog and the trash compactor. Glad the dog was OK and it was just maggots.
We just remodeled the kitchen in our new home. My lovely bride runs contractors better than Donald J. Trump. There were a few glitches and delays, but it got done and it is wonderful.
The guys who did the cabinets are Amish. They had a driver whose only job was to drive the truck and trailer to the site, and hang around while they did the installation. Great work.
boatbuilder, maybe our guys? Exceptional lacquer paint which won't take a stain. But ours came with the sub, so I never met them.
Oso, your kitchen is a dream kitchen for us chefs, semi-retired or not. I have always had commercial stuff in mine, as much as possible, but there are limitations. My All-Clad pots and pans, though, are better than any restaurant kitchen. They keep me happy ... my toys.
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