Need a recipe? CookThink it
Cookthink is a new site that is a kind of Google for recipes, not just a recipe site but a place where you can enter ingredients and dishes and it serves up possible recipes. So if you have potatoes, capers, rosemary and parmesan on hand you can plug them in and get a bunch of recipes that use those ingredients.
From a kitchen design point of view, sites like this foreshadow the end of cookbooks in the kitchen. With a simple Internet access point (laptop, PDA, iPhone, computer, etc.) in the kitchen and a big database of recipes you can, theoretically, have access to an entire bookstore’s worth of cookbooks that are smart enough to serve up recipes that you need without resorting to endless index searches in actual books.
I love cookbooks and own dozens but I often need to find things the way CookThink works. Pretty cool.
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My favorite kitchen
When I was 21 and got my first place of my own (no roommates!) it was a kitchen so small I could sit at the tiny table and reach everything. It was equipped with a motley collection of kitchen stuff that I inherited from the previous tenant who was moving back to France. I still have a few of those thrift shop utensils and I wouldn’t trade them for anything from Willams Sonoma (well, maybe a 3 quart copper saucier…).
When I bought my first house and the kitchen, on the second floor (it was a two-family up and down), had a deck that backed into a wooded hillside. The first thing I bought was a charcoal grill (no gas for this guy) and that first summer every meal we ate had something grilled in it.
Years later, a downtown loft with stainless appliances, big views and concrete counters- I was single and finally happy in that state.
Today a white kitchen with green marble counters that belongs to a woman I’m happy being around, where I can cook for everyone who passes through- or just the two of us. Either way we’re laughing our way through every meal.
Kitchens are about living, not about money or status. Enjoy them all.
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Kitchen Planning: What is in your kitchen cabinets?
One great exercise when you are considering a new kitchen is taking a good hard look at what you have in your kitchen cabinets. It will help you prioritize your storage needs, find workarounds for lousy storage solutions, uncover potential hidden costs and make your next kitchen a real improvement on your current one.
Here’s how to do this design exercise (be forewarned, this a project but it will pay off!):
- Cupboard by cupboard and drawer by drawer, take everything out and lay it on a towel in front of the cabinet. You can do one cabinet at a time.
- Photograph the stuff laid out on the towel or counter. This will be useful later when you’re determining your storage requirements.
- Go through the stuff and separate out anything you have not used in the last 18 months (this saves those things you only use on once-a-year occasions like holidays). Set these things aside.
- Note the storage things that bug you- having to remove stacks of bowls to get a particular one, digging in the back for hard to reach items, heavy items down low that they painful require bending and lifting, etc. Keep notes. This is where you start to plan your ideal storage requirements like using big drawers for bowels, vertical tray cabinets for baking trays and cutting boards, hanging storage for pots and pans and utensils, etc.
- Do the same for food storage. Organize the dry goods you remove by type (starches like rice and pasta, herbs and spices, canned goods, baking materials, etc.). You’ll want to plan storage that consolidates these items in logical work groups. Then you can specify pantry cabinets for these groups, in locations where you work with them.
- Untangle junk drawers. Everyone has at least one and they are a functional part of any kitchen- a catch-all for odd items or rarely used tools and gadgets. Clean them out and look for patterns in what you actually use and what is simply stuffed in there ‘just in case you need it’.
- Think about cookbooks, knives, visibility, wines and liquors, small appliance storage, etc., and apply this approach to determining how you will store them.
This will be a full weekend project depending on how much stuff you have. The end result should be a wishlist of storage needs that your kitchen designer can use when specifying cabinets and locations for various items. It is also a great time to get rid of stuff that is no longer useful to you, old, out of date, etc. Throw out and donate now.
Finally, this inventory may alert you to things you’re going to want that you were not planning on. Getting a nice high end range? You can’t use those old Revere pans on a big flame- better budget for an upgrade. You may also discover that your lifestyle has changed, a critical thing to know when designing a new kitchen. Maybe you entertain more- or less, cook different foods, go out more, have kids or the kids are gone, etc. This is going to mean a different approach to your new kitchen, one that will help you get everything you need without breaking the budget.
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