cbread

Kitchens are totally personal. My last kitchen prior had a smallish enameled cast iron sink and ridiculous teeny counters and I utterly hated it. The sink was a dish breaker. Too hard, too small, too shallow... After gnashing my teeth about that setup for a couple of years I made enough counter and enough sink a priority when I got the chance to plan a rebuild. For me, a big stainless steel sink was a must. I was able to create a 22" wide by 36" long by 12" deep sink. My girlfriend is very very short but is OK with the depth of the sink. I can wash my biggest wok and my biggest plastic cutting boards in it. (Yes, plastic... Go ahead. Make fun, but they work fine for me.) My counters are 30" deep so working space is ample. The cabinet boxes are standard 24" depth boxes. I had them installed 6" out from the wall. I didn't want drawers any deeper than 24" so was win / win for me. I go with a single bowl sink. Any time we want a separate compartment for rinsing or whatever, we toss a rubbermaid tub in. I'd never permanently devote the working volume of a large sink to get a second bowl unless I could sacrifice 4 1/2 or more counter space to the sink alone and that makes no sense for a kitchen my size. I got really lucky and found a wonderful stainless fabricator, who does a ton of restaurant fabrication, who made up a one piece integral stainless sink and counter for the cabinets that are on the "sink side" of the U that makes up the shape of my new kitchen. The sink is on one side of the U. The bottom of the U is around 7' (give or take, I can't remember exactly) of butcher block counter for general kneading and is my warm feeling day to day work area. The opposite side of the U from the sink has a 48" slide in stovetop with stainless counters on either side. It would be worth while to price out multiple suppliers on stainless fabrication. The price and feature differences are larger than I would have guessed, and the best price I got turned out to be from the best fabricator, who added features I hadn't even thought I could ask for without breaking the bank. Integral sink and counter means no leaks ever. None of the working surfaces are dish breakers. The stainless handles wet items and really hot items, and the maple butcher block is great for general work, bread making, and almost all my prep work. I got a commercial faucet and sprayer from a restaurant supply house. I don't trust the Swiss army knife pull out sprayers - one tool doing multiple tasks. They are trying to make one tool do multiple things, and that usually means it does none well. The sprayer is great. I would not want to be without one. The old kitchen floor had a 12" x 12" checkerboard pattern of gray and white tiling. There was no way to keep the white clean; we were thrilled to be rid of that floor. Now we have natural earth tone floor of slates 16" square. I am one more who urges you to take the blather from sales people with more than a large grain of salt. They don't know what will make you happy, and they are under pressure to sell what they or their distributors most need to get rid of. I had the chance to have a real pantry, which took the storage pressure off the kitchen, so I was able to rid myself of upper cabinets entirely. In a kitchen with a lot of window area, there would have been scant wall space to put top cabs anyway.

I have a cooking only kitchen. When I was designing it, I didn't want a lot of traffic coming through the kitchen. I put my dining space maybe 20 feet away. So much for my plan; friends gather in the kitchen, just like everyone says. Kinda ruins my plan, but regardless I'm still happy I excluded a dining table from the kitchen area. Once some hot food is moving towards the table, I can usually shoo the herd of friends out and attend to ongoing cooking. I'm not good at multitasking cooking multiple items when people are talking to me and I need some quiet to do any complex cooking task. Also I did not want to create the typical New England kitchen with seven doors heading every which way - making counter space impossible. Every door takes away valuable potential counter space. My kitchen has just the single connection to the rest of the house and a passage to the pantry. The passage to the pantry has a door to the porch, but traffic to the porch has not been an problem.

My spice jars: www.sunburstbottle.com/specials-tab?search=VSQ190 lay flat in a shallow drawer and since they are square, they don't roll over and my labels stay facing up whare I can read them.

A couple of quick responses in no particular order.... Rubber feet - yes - wouldn't have a board without them, since they keep the bottom of a board dry. The grooves on the boards in the fancy kitchen stores seem to just waste expensive acreage to me. I've never wanted them. I just want the flat side with no grooves. And I like a very large board; I send bits of whatever I am cutting great distances. I want a board that has room for my sloppiness. I don't care about the second side since I take good care of the first. I never soak a cutting board. I scrape the board clean down to utterly fresh wood. No waxes, "preservatives" or other gop on cutting boards. A corollary of that is that I am very careful not to get water into the board.

I see it just the other way round. On electric, who cares since the heat is hitting just from the bottom so clad doesn't offer any benefit. With gas, and especially a stove with big powerful burners, clad extending all the way up the sides keeps the sides from getting burnt by flames heating up the sides.The even response of better pans makes a big difference in how much you have to babysit pans. I got some heavy clad pans and can just about ignore them. They are considerably more forgiving. It lets me turn my attention to other items and get more done with my limited attention.

There are lots of appropriate ways to sharpen a blade. Belt grinders are not necessarily bad. A water cooled very fine grit belt on a slack belt grinder - used with care and discretion - works just fine as does a traditional whetstone. Clumsy use of powered sharpening takes off too much material and needlessly uses up the life of a knife. One very good way to strop is to use a buffing wheel with a fine compound. Buffing wheels have to be used very carefully since they can grab and throw a blade with astonishing force. The grabbing happens so fast that there is no chance to respond. Some custom knife makers use a NYC telephone book under their belt as protection from flying blades. Regardless, the best edges I have ever produced wire from a buffing wheel.

No data here, but I would argue that the flavor quality of "seasoned while cooking" is different from and superior to that of food seasoned at the table. I'm just an amateur home cook with no training and no high ambition, but just watching Food Network cooks seasoning as they cook has been a revelation. The food is just plain hands down better. Seasoning at the table can't repair failure in the kitchen. I am operating now on the premise that in general, the earlier one seasons, the better. Sorry I can't help with your specific need for quantitative information, but I have come to the conclusion - for me - that seasoning at the table isn't even worth consideration.

Maybe the lemon is pure theater. Sort of a garnish that makes people think they are getting something unique and special.

I can't believe it has been a year since I started this topic. I am pleased to report that there have been some improvements at my nemesis market. I know, it is the market it always has been, but I'm guessing they have been watching too much business march off to their competitors and decided to start addressing a couple of the worst failings. I want to be positive for this posting, so here are main the good things I have noticed: some fresh herbs are appearing. They stock a bit larger variety of some lines of foods. I see a modest move into some higher end foods - not the uberprice stuff, but better, more interesting. A good start. I don't feel quite so negative when I shop there and I am less inclined to shop elsewhere out of sheer angry spite. If they continue in this direction, they will grab back even more of my business.

I use the biggest plastic board I could get from a restaurant supply store and then add nine rubber feet - three rows of three rubber feet each, so the board won't trap a puddle underneath it. The feet are the little round ones with a very short screw so as not to stick out the top of the board. Size is 18x24" . I don't see the point of little boards if I have the space. I might get a slightly bigger board if I found it. I had my countertop built 30" deep, so I wouldn't run out of room. My plastic restaurant cutting board isn't a bit stylish, but I'm very happy with it. If you want a oil or wax based surface treatment to rub into a board, you might try the salad bowl glop I make. Take mineral oil, easily found at the supermarket as a food grade home remedy. Warm maybe half the final volume you want of mineral oil in a double boiler. Melt shreds of beeswax into the hot mineral oil. I do it by eye and couldn't give you a ratio for beeswax to mineral oil, but I can tell you how to get it how you want it. Take a piece of paper towel and dip it into the mix and treat a salad bowl or your cutting board. As you add bees wax the mix will begin to become too stiff to easily spread as it rapidly cools on contact with the wood surface. Stop adding beeswax at that point, and add back just a little more mineral oil. You should have a great mix. I usually make a quary or so and keep it an old metal coffee can. It will last forever. Should you want a fancy wood board like the ones on the food network, you can get the one used on the food network. As far as I can tell from their website, http://ozarkwest.com makes the gorgeous wood end grain boards on the food network shows. At least the photos are the best looking boards I've seen. If I ever decide I need a really beautiful wood board, that will probably be my pick.

Croutons! The store bought variety are execrable. And home made are so easy. If I go to a "good" restaurant that offers a store bought crouton, it goes waaaay down the list to junk food restaurant in my rating.

8 to 12 hours, give or take.

I agree. I've found in an area supermarket a really useful and really cheap non stick pan with high rounded sides, something of a blend between a frypan, a sauteuse, and a wok. They have a very thick aluminum body so they heat evenly. What with the high walls, they are a bit clownish looking, but so easy to work in that I bought a second as a spare. At the price, it seemed stupid not to get the second, since they are rarely on the shelf. Usually, thinner pans are all that I can find.

I'd argue that sometimes the most efficient tool for the job is not the most elegant tool available, but instead the tool that happens to be in your hand at the moment. You have a tong in hand? Then yes, it may be best to use the tong to stir the pot with it next. Inelegant, but the time wasted putting one tool down and picking up another it time lost. Were a spoon in hand, I would make the exact same argument. Some tools beg to multitask. Thinking multiple steps ahead might have a cook pick up a tool that can be used for more than one upcoming tasks in a row.None of the above is to deny that frequently, the best tool for the next task is not in the tool your hand. I'm not a fan of driving screws with a hammer.

A note on corner cabinets trapped in dead corners. I see others feel much the same as I do. They hate them. I hate them. The solution I came to in my own kitchen is radical enough I'm not sure I would recommend it to others, but for fun, I present my solution here; I just leave my corner cabinets empty. It utterly violates the demand for spatial efficiency, but I just hate the clumsy workarounds that purport to make corner cabs into good storage. I have never missed the space, not a single time. That has to be seen in the context that I am blessed with a kitchen I was able to design from scratch. I had room for a real pantry and have tons of storage space. It has been several years before I came close to filling my pantry to near capacity, so I doubt I offer up my kitchen as typical and mu solution to corner cabs as a good solution for others.

Am I dreaming, or there a small number of really good green beans out there in the markets, and a heck of a lot of so so beans? I feel like a few beans, and once in a long while, a whole batch, seem to get perfectly "tender crisp" upon rather short cooking. Those few perfect beans cook up just right without that nasty fibrous material that requires much more cooking to render palatable. 99% of the beans I find in my market demand lots of cooking to subdue the fibers. By the time the fibers are chewable, the rest of the bean is mushy and near ruined. Is my market selling old tough beans? Is there any way to see which beans are good? I really like green beans, but the ones I find are frustrating.

A couple of notes. The mass of brick or stonework you see in the cellar under the fireplaces is most likely there to hold up the mass of the fireplaces and chimney, and not the roof. An overview of the structure in the attic will tell about the roof support system. I can't impress too strongly the critical importance of hiring a "can do" designer for jobs like this. Do yourself a huge favor and steer well clear of the legions of droopy drawers dabblers who deliver structural answers that stopped being correct a century ago. They are the ones who stopped learning about the time they drove their second nail. I'm not sold either by the idea that a kitchen designer is the lead dog for this sort of task. You need a rethinking of the whole plan. The kitchen may be the driving factor that impels you to change things, but it's one part of a larger entity. A kitchen designer could be part of the process, but the whole house, whole site, overview is critical. With good design, you have the opportunity to utterly transform the living experience of your house. A really good designer will see more possibilities than our brief glance here can. You need someone to come on site and see all architectural aspects of the house from footings to roof ridge, it's siting in the land, what views are to be emphasized and suppressed, driveway, walkways, solar orientation, much more... It all matters. Until you have seen all that goes into a good design process, it's hard to see how all encompassing good design has to be to be any good at all.

Even if the chimney supports the roof, however unlikely, it's amazing what can be supported with wood or steel beams. Don't rely on the word of folks who speak of bearing walls etc. being "unremovable". They can usually be dealt with given a dose of creativity and a bit of steel. Some contractors have a far better sense of the possible than most. Chances are very good you can take out part of the chimney. And if you can get access to the attic space, you almost certainly can vent any stove. I use a big fan up in my attic space to vent out a side wall ten feet further away. Works fine.

OK. How about this??? Getting rid of one half of the FP frees up many possibilities.

Brand loyalty might be when you will continue to buy a brand even if there is some alternative brand you know to be superior in quality or flavor. By that definition I'm totally brand disloyal. I do stick with some brands when I believe they have better taste, or are priced better or some combination of the two. Store brands, for the most part, I just don't trust. Blame Sears for that. They cheap down their store brands mercilessly. I bought a couple of their store brand tools once. Never again. The Sears guarantee wasn't worth the annoyance of using cheap tools. I buy Hellmans mayo because I prefer it to any other I have had. At least so far. The moment some other mayo comes along I like better, should the price be tolerable, Hellmans is history.

OK, try this...

That knife was defective if all it ever was subjected to was ordinary usage. If you are unable to find the original retailer, the manufacturer might swap out a new one.

So, the red area's a fireplace? If so I'd agree with the last poster who thinks it might be well got rid of. I like his idea of an eating counter too.

I was too tired and it was too late last night to attend well to detail. Swapping around the stove, sink and frig eliminates the question of practicality... My main points anyway were to unify and simplify the kitchen layout; to define cooking and other spaces better; to eliminate the unfortunate connection to the bathroom; and to allow a better area of contiguous counter tops. The improvement to bathroom and closeting is a bonus. I'm still wondering what the area I have marked with question marks is. More complete information for all spaces depicted by the original poster would help us be helpful. What are all the rooms? What is the space to the bottom right? Where is North? Where are the best views? What views want to be screened?

Hi. Forgive a couple of quick thoughts expressed a bit briefly. I need to get to bed soon so I can't be as diplomatic as I'd like. The "in your imagination" kitchen plan seems chopped up; a door and a stairway cutting into one corner, a big gap in an undefined space leading to a bathroom severing the overall space in half ... I'd be thinking about slightly more radical surgery - something like cutting off the connection to the bathroom and wrapping the kitchen completely into a corner so it could have three and a half walls with contiguous countertop. If you back the kitchen against the bathroom wall, and retain the opened up space you created by removing that closet, you might have a workable kitchen. So, something like the image I've made up quickly here - bright red are two new walls defining the new end to the kitchne and providing for two new closets in logical locations. Blue for new cabs. ??? is a question, what is that, a fireplace? Can it be gotten rid of? Lousy location. Far better that place be countertop. Pink is for space inside new closets. I moved a door for the bathroom to give a more spacious feel. All with not too brutal a set of new construction. Good luck!