This thread made we weepy - thank you for stirring up this pot! All the linoleum talk is really taking me back. We moved around alot so my Mommom's kitchen is the one I grew to identify with. She had a tall broom closet by the radiator that I used to crawl up into and nap in. As I grew older, I discovered my Poppop also found his way into the broom closet, for a nip, (followed by a nap!). And the cake plate - it had a non see thru cover so you always had to lift it up to see what kind of poundcake was in there! And Laxsupermom, you reminded me of the magic cookie drawer! When Mommom opened it, there was always cookies, but when I opened it, they were gone! I always thought my Poppop ate all the biscotti, (there was a pull out cutting board - figured that out in my late teens)

I love all of your stories everyone! Keep 'em coming!!! :)

Weepy!! Me, too.

Lavender_lass, I love how you learned to cook. I remember doing it, but not how I learned.

I do remember I learned how to make a perfect martini at 4 years old. a la Bewitched, I guess. Set my future, I guess. I've been a bartender more on the off for 30 years, among other simultaneous careers!

Christine
Formerly C F Muehling

I grew up in a tiny ranch style house with a tiny kitchen to go along with it. I laugh when I think how all five of us fit into that tiny little eat in kitchen. It was typical 70s kitchen with brown cabinets and a 24" brown wall oven (just one). I can't believe my Mom fit a 25 lb turkey in there. Brown refrigerator and no dishwasher. Well, until my Dad finally said go get what you want and a brown kitchen aid was sitting in the middle of the kitchen one day. My Dad worked in commercial buildings so my Mom wanted a new kitchen floor (needed a new floor). Dad brought home industrial flakes (orange and black with gold flecks) and spread it over the floor , then poured a gooey resin material over it to seal the deal. It was THE Ugliest floor in the world. To prove it my Mom used to let me walk all over it with my ice skates on. Did not do one bit of damage. It is gone now - they blew out the back wall and created a very nice kitchen and family room... Now that we are gone and all grown up.

The kitchen I grew up with is the same exact one that my 90 year old mother uses today. It has pine cabinets, built by my uncle (who built the house), painted YELLOW (beckysharp made me smile!) decades ago -- with, to my best knowledge, linoleum countertops. She has maybe 8 feet of counterspace (less with the microwave), the gas range has no landing areas one either side. No dishwasher. Excuse me . . . . she had six dishwashers, her children.

She made countless meals in that kitchen for a large family. And every summer, my Aunts and Uncles from Chicago would send my cousins up to stay with us for weeks (they would come in time to eat the fresh peas, damn them). Every Sunday after mass we would have a huge meal, with roast and potatoes and gravy. I still wonder how she got that on the table at noon after morning services -- especially without a microwave!

Every December my nieces go over and she teaches them how to make the pierogi for Christmas. I have a picture from 2009 of Mom in her kitchen with the pierogi, but I don't think she has lipstick on and she would get ticked off if I posted a picture of her without lipstick!

She has a huge freezer that is always full of cookies, homemade apple pies that are waiting to be baked, TONS of raspberries from her bushes (on her slow days she'll thaw them and make jam). My niece has 7 year old quadruplets, and they always know that there are goodies at Grandma's!

There are days when I stand in amazement in my kitchen. My mom made such great memories and food in her simple set-up. I just hope that my kids have the same thoughts when they reflect back on the kitchens they grew up in.

Once my Dad retired from the military, all 12 of us, yes 12, moved into a 1000 sq' home. I was only in 3rd grade and lived there until I married after college. They finished the basement off to give us additional bedrooms and our 2nd bath.

The kitchen was 1/4 of the 1st floor which was actually quite large in proportion. It had 2 windows that faced West. Until many hot summers passed, we endured the summer heat in that kitchen. We ate in 2 shifts since the dinner table could only accomodate 6 at a time.

My mother's everyday pot for cooking, was a huge thick metal turkey roaster (I hated cleaning that thing every night - oh did I mention no DW). My mother did all the cooking in the house - and the sisters did all the kitchen cleaning (to this day, I try to barely make a mess).

As I got older, I started baking, I'd bake cookies and breads. Trying to keep cookies in the house, I remember once I went on a baking frenzy and baked a large paper grocery sack of cookies - they last a total of 3 days :(

My mother LOVED her kitchen cabinets that were made from solid ash wood. After raising 10 kids in the house, her kitchen cabinets still looked brand new, I guess that attests to going with quality.

Thinking about my childhood kitchen conjures up memories of warmth and peace. 1800 Federal with the kitchen in the NE. White cabinets, burnt orange woodwork and burnt orange plaid wallpaper. Wood stove in the winter and the small kitchen fireplace in the summer months. Overstuffed wing back proportioned just right for flinging your legs over the side in the corner behind the wood stove. Table to seat the five of us because the DR was too cold to eat in (heat) for the cold months and in VT that covers a lot of the calendar! Worn faux brick creamy linoleum. After my father passed away and the house was sold the new owner discovered the most gorgeous cherry strip flooring. The wood stove had a small oven on it that was used for baking bread, Boston baked beans, chili - you name it. If it could simmer all day the better! Definitely the room we all lived in. I can just see my parents sitting at the table grading papers while my sisters and I did homework. Nice and thanks for the trip down memory lane!

Add me to the no dishwasher while growing up club : ) . I remember asking my mother when I was in high school why we couldn't get a dishwasher. She would smile with her after dinner vodka and tonic in hand and say, "I don't need a dishwasher, I have you!"

Becky

So this thread got me thinking about the 3 room apartment I lived in with my parents and brother until we moved to a more modern building when I was 12. I do not remember cabinets except for a hutch like built in and a broom type closet. There was a little cabinet of sorts under the window - it had a weird door and latch. Does anyone remember these? The kitchen was small but had an eating area. I recall the yellow table and vinyl upholstered chairs goimg out and the new modern gray formica table and chairs coming in. Above the table was an iron shelf on which rested a beige radio with tiny little knobs and our bankc which my father filled wiht his loose change nightly. The walls were yellow until my mother hired my cousins' boyfriends all of about 18 years old to paint. Quite a disaster! She sponged on blue paint to correct it. I do not recall my mother cooking although she obviously did because dinner was on the table every night. My father made the coffee in a 2 cup percolator which always needed watching to keep it from spilling over and making a mess on the stove. The kitchen also housed a front load washing machine, our toy box,a kid's record player, and a big white sink where my mother used to wash my hair and declare, "Oh my- Good thing we are washing your hair. All the dirt from your hair is washing away down the drain." I never saw because I dared not peek from under the towel pressed firmly to my eyes to keep the water and soap out. I hope my hair wasn't that dirty! The Christmas my brother got a train set- you guessed it the train table was set up in the kitchen. The set up was huge. My mother was very patient. Warm memories of that kitchen are not so much about cooking but more about the family. OMG just remembered the poor turtle that almost cooked in his little bowl on the stove.

My grandparents had a house built in the 1970s on a lake in Wisconsin. It was very modern with lots of windows, and all the furniture in the house was modern teak. My grandparents were like parents to me - I lived with them sometimes. My grandmother taught me how to bake and how to cook. This time around I ended up going with teak veneer slab doors for my cabinets, entirely inspired by my grandmother's style.

Some of my fondest memories are of times spent at my grandparent's house. Their kitchen was deplorable by GW standards. It was a one butt kitchen, with 29 butts traipsing through it every Sunday afternoon for dinner at 4:00. The stove, one of those amazing oven above, and oven below, with gas burners that pulled out in the middle, was in almost constant use. Directly across the narrow aisle was the fridge, expertly covered in woodgrain contact paper by my mother. The stove had no landing space, it was a wall to the right, and the back door to the left. The entrance to the garage was just beyond it to the right, as well. We all came in through the garage, and so had to walk straight through her work zone. I never heard her complain. And oh, did the food in there smell GOOD. My favorite was her Sloppy Joes. Pure YUM.

The cupboards were old . . .plywood painted with a faux graining technique. Tall uppers that went to the ceiling. Lowers with wood drawers that jammed, stuck and squeeked when you opened them. The counters were so full of clutter you could hardly use them. The old farmhouse kitchen woodwork was all painted bright orange, to match the orange, white and green flowered wallpaper that was peeling at the corners, having covered the multiple layers of paper underneath. The flooring was vinyl, and it was worn to the wood below. I remember the family all kicking in and surprising my grandparents with things like new flooring, new paint in the LR, and doing the work while they were gone. : )

There was no dishwasher, but that made everyone work together. I can still picture my mom and aunts (and Aunt Pat with a towel draped over her shoulder), helping out in there, and laughing so hard that they'd have to stop and wipe the tears from their eyes. And try not to pee their pants.

I remember Grandad going out to putter in the garage, and giving Gramma a loving swat on the backside and a quick smootch as he walked past her as she hummed through her kitchen tasks. He was a whistler. She hummed. Seems like she was always baking wonderful cookies and humming some unrecognizable tune. Oh, and they'd bicker and grumble at each other too, but in a completely lovable way. Grandad couldn't hear well, or sometimes pretended not to. And he seemed to time bringing in his empty dish from the living room with the gurgling of the drain after the dishpan had been emptied. But they'd go out for pie and coffee, taking me along-yahoo!, and hold hands over the diner's table. Over 50 years of marriage and it made a strong impression on me.

My favorite job was sitting on the cement stoop just outside the back door and helping shuck fresh corn on the cob that she'd picked up at a nearby farm stand. The cobs, as well as the watermelon rinds, would be tossed in the neighbor's fields that surrounded the house after dinner.

In the summers, meals would be outside in the screen house that Grandad built especially for our big extended family to enjoy together. It was nothing fancy. A cement slab, chipboard walls, a roof, and screens all around. But it was so much cooler in there than the house. Sometimes grandad would sleep out there on the hottest nights of the summer,too. After the meal, some of us would play lawn jarts, bocce ball, or a game of cards. And laugh. Always there was laughter.

At thanksgiving and Christmas, a big piece of plastic sectioned off the back part of the garage. There was a metal barrel stove out there, which the men would stoke to keep that end of the garage warm enough to use some picnic tables that were set up in there for the holiday meals. Any other time, that was the spot the uncles and cousins fixed up vehicles, welded, sandblasted, woodworked, planned their next fishing trip or reminisced about earlier ones, all with free use of the tools that grandad had hung on the pegboard over the workbench and outlined with permanent marker so that things got put back.

It's good to stop and remember that it doesn't take a beautiful house to make good memories, but rather, people enjoying one another's presence.

The house I grew up in was a 50's California ranch house with a galley kitchen in the front of the house. Nothing special, but we did have a Frigidaire Flair range with the pullout burners. Sometime in the late 60's - early 70's my dad "antiqued" the cabinets in avocado green with a kit. And I remember my mother being excited about the dishwasher in when we moved in in 1962.

The kitchen that stands out to me though was my grandparent's. They built the house in the mid 40's and my mother is now living there. I have fond memories of waking up early, while Grandpa was still eating breakfast and him dishing out some of his "mush" into my bowl. I also remember helping my grandmother make a lemon chiffon cake in that kitchen. The original blue and yellow tile counters are still in place. My grandmother had special metal lined drawers put in to hold flour and sugar. The design element that I have taken is the corner sink with windows that look at the yard. There are shelves above the range that hold blue willow serving pieces. Over the years the only things that have changed have been the flooring, which is currently vinyl in a white and blue dot pattern, the wallpaper, the refrigerator, and the range, which is probably from the 60's. My mother is planning to pull up the wall to wall carpeting that was installed in the rest of the house in the 60's and refinishing the wood floors. I am encouraging her to install marmoleum in the kitchen and "service porch", because I am sure that is what was there originally. Actually, the next time I go visit I think that I will take some pictures of the kitchen and post them here to get some ideas for the flooring.

Riverhouse...you'd written:

There was a little cabinet of sorts under the window - it had a weird door and latch. Does anyone remember these?

Those little cabs were for storing potatoes and onions. Because the cab was in an outside wall, it kept most things cool, but not chilled.

My earliest memories of my parent's kitchen was in a Brooklyn 3 family house. The kitchen was actually the largest room in the house. There were no actual built-in cabs - they were all free-standing, including a work table and an old stove. When my sister was born we'd gotten a Thor washing machine to wash diapers.

After that apartment, we moved to a large apartment house. Since my parents' didn't own the apartment, we sort of had to settle for what was there. In 1956 when we moved in, the apartment house was almost 30 years old and everything was original except for the fridge. The cabs were painted and had spring latches which never stayed latched. My mother was adventurous, though, and was determined to wallpaper the kitchen when pre-pasted wallpaper first came out. It actually looked wonderful as opposed to the usual shiny paint. That's how I learned how to wallpaper, too.

We also had a hutch-like cabinet which had painted-over glass panes.

My mother was never a big cook. For holidays we went to an aunt's house. My mother did, however, use one of those rotisserie broiler units which burned everything. Steaks, burgers and chicken were equally inedible. She was a decent baker, though, and I still love to make her apple crumb cake.

Helene

Wonderful thread. The thing I, remember about my mom's kitchen was the big oak round table with claw feet. My mom, was a great cook, but every sunday we had roast beef, and mashed potatoes. Maybe that is why I, do not make roast to often now. Her kitchen was small but she seem to have everything she needed. Years later we, gave my mom, a dish washer, but she, just stored things in it and set flower's on the top. Said she could do dishes faster herself.

Built in 1964. Woodgrain laminate cabinets that all led to the same inner compartment that was about 10' wide; no drawers above them. White, gold-lame Formica countertop, with matching table I still have. Surprisingly upscale stainless-steel appliances considering this was a new builder's home - cooktop with thick cast-iron grates, dual-ring burners, and one thermastatically-controlled burner (what ever happened to these?). Oven, also stainless, 30" wide with delayed start/stop option, illuminated controls, rotisserie, and separate broiler. Linoliem tile floor. No dishwasher when it was built, but one of the cabinet doors immediately removed to make room for one. The first dishwasher installed inexplicably had a control knob at the very bottom; it lasted only a few years, replaced by a top-of-the-line Hobart-made Kitchenaid, which was excellent. That was later replaced by one of those old Maytags where the glasses went on the bottom rack and the big plates and pans on the top. Fridge was way to small, especially the (non-frost-free) freezer - frozen food much less popular back then. Nice layout. I used to sit on the lower cabinet doors when I was a kid and swing back and forth. I also used the horizontal door handles as bottle openers. I don't know how either lasted.

Oh, almost forgot.... the built-in panel phone, like this one except with a touch-tone pushbutton dialing. It was flush with the surrounding wall, with only the handset (and a normally hidden stretch cord), the keypad, and a frame giving away its presense at all. Ours was wallpapered to match the surrounding wall, making it even more invisible. I can't tell you how cool this looked in the late '60s/early '70s.

Here is a link that might be useful: Western Electric panel phone

Our kitchen was pink including pink wall oven and stovetop, and then later changed to brown. The formica had pink and grey boomerangs. It was about 12x12, with cabs along two walls, so wall oven on one end, stove in the middle, corner, then sink in the middle, then fridge; still a popular layout. In the other corner we had a family table with hollow metal legs filled with vitamins. My mother was a reliable cook. We had plain meals but plenty to eat without fail.

I'm feeling younger this morning after reading everyone's memories. Thanks for the smile!

I grew up in what I consider two great kitchens. The first b/c of the few memories that I have of that space (until I was 5). The second b/c of th memories and b/c it was a pretty stellar kitchen with some very modern amenities for the day. Like an appliance lift for my mom's stand mixer that would fold back down into the island and very defined work spaces, etc. This was in 1981.

But today for some reason, I really want to talk about my Mammoma's kitchen (paternal grandmother). When I was seven we moved to my dad's family farm to the house my parents just built. It was on one side of a pond with grand hundred year old cypress trees while my grandparent's house was on the other side of the pond.

My Mammoma was a grand southern lady whose life revolved around taking care of her family. Which was closely followed by Garden Club and DAR. Lunch (which we called dinner and dinner was called supper) was promptly served everyday at noon. This meal fed everyone in the family (except us kids when in school ofcourse). Certain meals were certain days but always fish on Fridays (not just during Lent). And this wasn't catfish. This was bass or perch. The creme de la creme of fried fish with homemade hushpuppies, freshly cut fries, slaw, and sliced lemons and onions. HEAVEN! Okay, I think I am having fish for lunch. Seafood Gumbo every Christmas Eve that I can still taste. They would torture us every year by cleaning the kitchen after the meal before letting us open our presents but that was my Mam.

Her kitchen was an amazing space with yellow cabinets, white formica countertops, double ovens, a very early Kitchenaide DW, and a refrigerator with a bottom mount freezer (odd for the day). The kitchen was seperated from th breakfast area on one end by a built in desk on one side and a pony wall on the other. Both spaces had blue and white wallpaper. The desk had see through shelves on the top where she displayed her Sleepy Eye pottery. She had a yellow painted ladder back chair by the desk for those phone calls about GC or DAR that could get extremely long. In the breakfast area there was a hutch and two corner china cabinets that held more Sleepy Eye and other crockery. The kitchen looked over the "back porch" which was a large room with a huge fireplace. The breakfast area also had french doors that opened onto this space. In one corner of the kitchen tucked in behind the double ovens, she had a pie safe where she kept all of her cookies and crackers. I am tearing up; I miss my Mam.

The one thing though that I couldn't let go from her kitchen was her cast iron dutch oven (like makeithome and her cookie jar). I ate so many meals out of that pot that there was no way it was going to anyone else. I have it now and use it almost daily. She was a very special lady and so was my Grandfather who took care of her like a queen. I miss them so much. Thanks for letting me share.

Shannon

I have LOVED reading about all of your childhood kitchens so far. Some of them you have all described so well, I feel like I am there!

Just awesome.

My mom's first house was built in 1950s and my parents bought it in the 70s. It had carpeted kitchen floor, mustard yellow appliances, dark plywood cabinets. No DW! It was a tiny kitchen and she made amazing meals out of there.

Then they bought a brand new house built in 1980. It had a U shaped kitchen with a large pantry. The cabinets were dark and the uppers blocked the view to the dining area. The house was not well designed and you could not sit at the counter and have anyone sitting at the dining chair at the same time. They crammed too much into the space. The kitchen counters were poorly utilized. So in a very large kitchen, my guess is 15x10 or more, it did not live big. Even though the kitchen was poorly designed, it was such a huge improvement from her tiny 1950s kitchen, my mom loved it.

My mother was very short, less than 5 ft. My dad made my mom a little platform in front of the sink so she could stand on the platform to work. This helped her tremendously with the ergonomic. Even so, having grown up in Asia, she often find it more comfortable to sit on the floor to do more time consuming tedius work, ie kneading dough, making potsticker by hand... You try doing that on the floor!

I wonder what influence the kitchen I grew up in has had
on my own life. My sisters have amazing kitchens. One
has only the best wolf appliances, the other have fantastic
wood cabs and my brother a non cook has his wife lead the
way. My own is practical but pretty.

My parents have lived in the same home since 1974.

The kitchen is adorable. Tiny and I think had my mom
really thought about it she might expand but she is
not a kitchen person. A cook yes, but not a big kitchen
person. Her kitchen is all about the food.

Updates over the years have mostly been on appliances,
floor and counter.... but sadly the same floor plan.
Boring but that is the way it goes. I doubt she would ever
replace her cabinets. She has come to love the built
in custom look from the 1970s painted solid wood that
seems to live forever.

I wish I had a good picture. There is a swinging door,
one wall has a large double sink with built in runnels.
The other wall the cooking area, a 3rd wall a work counter
and the fourth all the storage.
She has a tiny walk in pantry that has a 2nd frig and pot
and pan storage. I swear even the dog bowl is still in the
pantry but this has been the 8th dog in the home's
history.

Combine these three pictures and this is similar
to what mom and dad STILL have. Of course slightly
more updated but not much.

{{gwi:1798816}}

And years ago she used to have this hardware...
but our appliances were that wretched over too ripe avacado.
My mother might still have sandals like those below.
SCARY!!!!
{{gwi:1798819}}

My childhood kitchen still exists unchanged today except for updating of the refrigerator and stove. The appliances have always been white. Mom isn't really into decorating and hasn't felt the need to change things since she updated the kitchen in the late fifties. She briefly considered appliances in harvest gold or avocado green during the seventies, but stuck with white.

The floor is green linoleum--the real thing. The cabinets are birch with black hardware. The walls are covered with yellow laminate-like sheeting material. The countertops and the custom eat-in table that extends from the corner wall are covered with green formica. The little chip on the formica table occurred when my brother hit me with a metal spatula and it skidded off of my head and landed on the table. The formica-top table is where my dad would roll out pie dough and homemade noodles; and where my brother and I did homework; and where we decorated Easter eggs; and where I learned to draw; and where we sat to trim large amounts of fresh green beans for my mom at 25 cents per hour.

The sink is an extra large double-bowl white cast iron sink. Each bowl is as big as many of today's largest and deepest single bowl sinks. One of the bowls always holds a dish draining rack. The draining rack was only removed to create extra working space when my parents would clean, blanch, and freeze large amounts of vegetables. The ceiling is covered with some sort of plastic-y white tiles.

Every surface is easily wiped down for cleaning-- from the ceiling, to the walls, to the floors.

The window over the sink looks out over the yard where many neighborhood kickball games took place. The door leads out to the side porch where, on hot summer days, we'd sit on the glider behind the shade of the grapevine arbor, or recline on the wooden floor to play checkers or board games. Life moved slowly in those days.

Oh dreamweaver, I totally agree about life moving slowly back then. While typing earlier about my grandmother's kitchen it made me remember those long summer days when in the evening after supper when we would go out on the pier and help my granddaddy feed the fish (barefooted of course) and would feel the cool grass between your toes while listening to the frogs chirp. Oh those were the days. Some evenings we would all pile up in the back of the pick-up truck while the adults rode in the front for an evening ride around the farm on the turnrows. Really special memories. No worries and never stressed about what the next day was going to bring.

My mom was a terrible cook...often trying truly dismal recipes from magazines and the backs of cans. Green beans with Campbells cream of mushroom soup and canned onion rings crumbled on top was a frequent side dish at "fancy" dinners. I think in rebellion, one of my brothers went to the Culinary Institute of America and my sister and I are both avid self-taught cooks. The first things I ever cooked were learned in my first little apartment from my two new cookbooks...Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking I and Joy of Cooking. As a result, I can turn a whole chicken into a stuffed, boneless ballotine in 45 minutes flat and make the most fabulous croquembouche, but am still iffy about scrambling an egg.

But I digress. My childhood kitchen was a small, dark, L-shaped room with a big white four burner, two oven range, wall cabinets stuffed with canned goods, and a long table-height countertop for the "kids" to eat lunch and breakfast at. The only cool things about it related not to the cooking done there, but the things my dad built in to the kitchen in 1948.(He was a carpenter and built our whole house). We had a thick butcherblock recessed into the countertop, with a tilt-open waste receptacle below and a built in slots for knives. A perfectly balanced working lazy susan in the corner, a tin-lined bread drawer and a series of little tilt out drawers up against the back of the stove at the end of the eating counter. They stored his cartons of cigarettes, matches and lots of stuff children didn't want to eat and tried to hide!

My Nana and Granpa rented the first floor of a duplex in Arlington, MA. One of my favorite meals that Nana made was hamburgers and Franco-American spaghetti. Nana would make little burgers and then broil them. Much to my Italian mother's chagrin, we kids loved that canned spaghetti!

There was a large cabinet that housed a monsterous one bowl sink with drainboard, a free standing gas range with no counters nearby and the frige was tucked into a back corner. There was a retractable clothes line that hung across the back of the kitchen where the dish towels and nylon stockings would be drying. The only work surface was a small chrome kitchen table that was pushed against the wall. On the wall above the table was a little niche with open shelves that held a Blessed Virgin planter, a picture of the Pope, and salt and pepper shakers that looked like monks. My favorite memories are sitting around that table having tea and cookies with my Nana and my aunt on nights when I got to sleepover. You walked into the dining room thru the butler's pantry, that had a counter where the bread box sat with a box on cookies on top :) My Nana baked pies, and Irish bread but not cookies. She come over from Ireland in the early 1900's and she always used a paring knife to peel potatoes because a peeler wasted too much of the potato.
We moved a lot while I was growing up and when we finally settled my parents built a house and my Mom got the kitchen of her dreams. On one wall was a broom closet, a large pantry, the refrig and bar area, the rest was l-shaped with the double range on the short leg and the sink and dw on the longer leg. We had a big table in the middle, that my sister has in her kitchen now. On the other wall was a tv and no one was supposed to talk during the news when my Dad was home~we couldn't wait for the commercials... The decor was vintage 70's, dark wood cabinets, harvest gold applinces, tan formica and the soffits were these harvest gold plastic panels framed in more dark wood. On the floor was vinyl flooring with a pebbled tan and brown brick pattern. My mom loved to cook and passed that on to her daughters and granddaughters. Mom has an amazing knack for storing things, her refrigerator is the eighth wonder of the world, she could feed an army on a moments notice with what she has on hand.
Mom has had several kitchens since then and the size or ammenities have varied; but Mom has made each special.
Thanks, makeithome,for starting this wonderful thread!
Jeannie

I can barely remember our first kitchen; we moved when I was 6. I just remember the basic layout, and the range said T-H-E-R-M-A-D-O-R. I actually remember being able to read that long word!

I have a better recall of Granny's kitchen. The floor was tiny mosaic tile, and the counter tops were pale blue tile. I remember pestering her when she was 'fixing' strawberries, with hopes of getting a few (I always did). Off the kitchen was a real greenhouse- what a magical place that was! I can still remember the plants and the lush smell. Every time we visited, she would make cuttings for us, and put them in a sand-filled bench. On the next visit, they would be fully rooted, and we would pot them up to take home. Nothing fancier then impatients or wax begonias, but they were treasures to us, and cultivated (pun intended) a life-long love of plants and gardening. Granny was a wonderful cook, but always managed to burn the rolls. It became a long-standing family joke. One other thing Granny did was buy damaged cans without labels because they were cheap. We were allowed to pick one out to bring home, and it was quite the guessing game to try to get something yummy. The Holy Grail was of course a can of fruit cocktail!

When I was 6, we moved to a 'new' 200 y/o house, and re-doing the kitchen was Mom's life work, or so it would seem. It was an ell off of the main Cape Cod style house, and I would guess it was at least 16'X20'. She had new cabinets and counter tops made. The cabinets were a colonial blue, and the counters a biscuit color of the new matte Formica that had just come out. Mom collected antiques, so we had an old kitchen table in the center, and a Hoosier cabinet on one wall. Mom was an OK cook, but my sister got me interested in cooking more than anyone. On Saturday, Mom would relinquish the kitchen to us kids, with my sister supervising. I love cooking more with each passing year.

In what would have been the original kitchen of that old house, there was a massive fireplace made of huge blocks of granite. It still had the adjacent beehive oven for baking bread, and all of the houses' 4 fireplaces still had their original cranes for hanging a cooking pot on. The floorboards were huge, hand-hewn from native hardwoods, and face nailed with hand-forged nails. The owner and builder was a whaling captain, so as the floorboards shrank, he pounded rope into the spaces to keep the New England winter out. That was a fascinating old house!

Thanks for letting everyone share their memories of kitchens modest and grand- I love reading all of your stories!

Jay

I could not wait to get home to read the posts added to this thread today.

Blubird- Thank you for telling me what that little cupboard was for. My mother did not store potatoes there; I seem to remember cleaning supplies and pesticide. This was before the days of latching to keep little ones out of the poison. My brother and I survived our youth despite the poisons within our reach.

I love how everyone's memories are varied but also express a common thread.

I wonder what memories my daughters have about our kitchen and what memories are being created now for my grands. I have two kitchens- one in the "wood house" as the grands call our main home- not sure why they named it the wood house- and the riverhouse which we have recently remodeled. I am very conscious of creating memories and maintaining traditions with the grands like having chocolate pudding for them when they visit. A tradition my mother started with me and continued with my kids. They are old enough now- 9, 6, 5, 1 to look forward to the pudding and also cooking or baking goodies with me. It is a good feeling. It is interesting how there are threads that bind one generation to another. Wonderful, isn't it?

Yes, the common threads.

Isn't it interesting how many of the kitchens we loved the most were ugly? How few were "classic" white? How they were "the heart of the home" without living-room grade finishes or open concept layouts or $1100 nickel pendants or 8' islands for homework?

I often wonder if the movement to traditional kitchens is an attempt to recreate a past that never existed, or if the people who grow up in them will look back on them as fondly.

Laxsupermom,

I lived in Viet Nam as a child and can tell you about the kitchen we had there.

We rented half of a large old city house near the edge of Cholon (Chinese city) in Saigon. By large I mean not only in rooms (maybe 18+), but the height of the rooms was nearly 16 feet, with similar scale for the floorplan. My parents, a young, adventurous couple out to see the world, had taken a job (my Dad is a civil engineer) with a US company contracted to design roads shortly after the French departed. My parents believed in traveling light so we took no furniture or household belongings with us from the US to VN. Kind of like moving house with nothing - not even dishes or sheets. Part of the reason was that they had been warned that political instability might mean emergency evacuation, leaving everything behind. (Didn't happen, we left on schedule, years later.)

So we fetched up in this palatial-scale house with nothing to put in it but odds and ends found in local markets or bought used from other expats. I'm sure there must have been beautiful antique Asian and European things to be had, but my Mother wasn't interested in it. She said she had a houseful of family antiques in storage at home and she wanted to just have temp stuff there. The upshot was that most of the rooms stayed completely empty for the entire time we were lived there. She designed some western-style furniture (easy chairs, ottomans, a small breakfast table and matching chairs, and several end tables) and had them custom made by local cabinet makers. My sister and I have those pieces in our houses now. My Mom's taste was strictly MCM (it was the mid-50s, after all) so that's probably why she didn't choose antiques from the shops.

But the kitchen wasn't really her domain. Those spaces belonged, first and just for a short while to Hong (sadly I don't recall more of her name), and afterward to Nguyen Thi Cuc. "Cookie" as she was called, made our meals. We ate almost entirely a vaguely western-style cuisine such as could be cobbled together from local ingredients, without benefit of access to a PX for such child-friendly things as ketchup or breakfast cereal. (Plenty of that stuff made it to the black market but my parents were pretty set against black-market trading.)

The kitchen was in a separate building behind the house, beyond a paved, open courtyard with a big star apple tree in the middle. The kitchen had no windows, but then it also had no doors, just walls on three sides. The walls were quite high, but didn't meet the roof, except on pillars and at the corners. The space between the walls and roof was covered with a metal grate in order to let the smoke out.

The overall design was a double galley plan with deep tiled counters running along the two long sides. There was a single cold water-tap above an enormous (more than a meter long) tiled basin. All the hot water for washing up was boiled on the "stove". The stove occupied probably eight or nine feet of the other counter top. It was fueled by several individually-fired charcoal braziers set into the counter in a line. These burned continuously from morning till night. The counters which weren't occupied by the sink and stove works was where the food was prepped and plated. There was a big cupboard for plates and kitchen tackle along the short wall, but everything had to be freshly washed just before it was used for sanitary reasons, even if it had been stored clean. Not only washed, but boiled since Saigon city water was considered unpotable. All of our drinking and cooking water, including toothbrushing water, was first boiled for 20 minutes, treated with iodine or chlorox and then stored in recycled Scotch bottles. Lord only knows where my nearly tee-totaling parents acquired the dozens of liquor bottles we used to store our water!

Which brings me to the refrigerator where many bottles of water were kept. This appliance, much-marveled about locally and often surreptiously displayed by Cookie to visiting street vendors, was not in the kitch, not in the adjacent pantries, but actually over in main house, tucked behind the arching sweep of the double curved staircase that rose from the main hall to the second floor. Reason: it was one of the few places in the house with an electrical outlet. The kitchen had none and was lit only by kerosene and hissing butane lamps.

Food stuff was kept in two places. Day to day needs were dispensed daily by my Mother from the locked pantry in the back of the house. The locking may have been anti-theft devices (not from Cookie but from the endless parade of people streaming in and out of the back of the house offering food and other stuff for sale), but was also for a safe-storage place where rats and mice, snakes (who were hunting the rats and mice), mongooses (who were hunting the snakes) and an innumerable variety of food-destroying bugs couldn't get at it. A large portion of the food was kept upstairs in my parents bedroom, The only part of the house with an air conditioner, and therefore relative dryness.

My Mother went daily to the local open air market to purchase the food for us. If she wanted a chicken, she selected one clucking about in a cage and it would be slaughtered and bled on the spot. Meat was more problematic since in the food market there was no refrigeration and most raw meat was displayed uncovered (but covered with attendant flies). It needed very short storage and immediate, high heat prep. (After a brief dip in clorox-water.) Dinner meat dishes were often cooked before noon, and then refrigerated until the evening. Rice and noodles were bought from vendors with bags or baskets of it on display. What you chose would be weighed and then wrapped in used newspaper and handed to you. All fresh fruit and vegetables and eggs were washed immediately on arrival at home in nearly boiling water and soaked for 15 mins in a very stiff dose of clorox and water and then rinsed again with potable, boiled, water. There was little canned food to choose from (and obviously no frozen food), so everything was made from scratch, except breads and cakes which were purchased from a bakery. There was no reliably pasteurized milk (except canned evap.) and only imported European tinned butter and Indian bottled ghee. For fats there was lard or bottled oils of unpredictable provenance. Sugar was available in cloth sacs or unwrapped hard brown cones. I don't recall eating much fish or shellfish at home, probably because of the distance from the coast. We did eat it when on the shore, though.

Looking back at this it seems an over-attention to sanitary issues: boiling and soaking everything in clorox. Millions of Vietnamese lived around us, and probably none made such a fetish of food sanitization. Yet for foreigners with no previous exposure the local diseases (only some of which could be vaccinated against) it was the customary thing to do if you didn't buy your food from military suppliers. I remember my Mother confiding in me that she was glad my Grandmother (her Mother) wasn't alive to know that her granddaughters drank no milk from age 5 onward when we decamped for Saigon. Still, my Mother managed to feed her family three completely home-prepared from scratch meals every day for years in a place where almost everything was strange compared to what she had experienced thus far. She didn't cook them of course, just organized them, which was a major undertaking all of its own.

I remember the somewhat mysterious darkness of that kitchen, sometimes cool, but more often too-warm from the cooking fires. And Cookie's endless quiet patience with a lonely little girl with too much time on her hands. She spoke only Vietnamese and I spoke only English, and later French, but I felt very comfortable with her. I have often wondered what path her life took after we left in 1959 - and hoped her association with us brought her no harm. When we left she took on the care of our two kitties.

L

My childhood kitchen, in a NYC prewar apartment building built in 1927 by the Blum brothers, was definitely traditional. Originally, I'm sure it would have been beautiful, especially before a previous tenant painted over everything (including both of the kitchen's eight-light doors), but the design was pretty poor. And every time my mother called the painters, my sister, father, and I begged for a different color, and a flatter finish! I didn't love the kitchen because it was ugly, I loved it despite the fact that it was ugly!

I think living in NYC was meant to make up for all of that, the narrowness and the paint! And we all of us were very lucky that my mother was willing to give up her kitchen to her mother; it wouldn't have been pretty having the two of them duking it out day after day in that long, narrow kitchen. But because the apt was rent control, my parents weren't willing to put any money into redesign or new surfaces, no matter how much it would have improved the daily cooking and eating experience!

Becky

This is a great thread! Last night I went to sleep thinking about the various kitchens of my childhood . . . sweet dreams!

Our family (mom, dad, and me) moved five times while I was growing up. Ironically perhaps, my mom's first kitchen was her largest. We lived there from the time I was born until I was 10 (except for a year when we lived with Gramps). It was also the best kitchen as far as layout, functionality, and storage space. The house was a brick 3-bedroom ranch built about 1952. It was an L kitchen, maybe 12 x 16. Big single sink under the window where my mom would wash my hair. I think the floor was sheet vinyl (it had a sort of red brick pattern on it). Stove was a GE with push buttons. Fridge was the usual top freezer. It was an eat-in kitchen with a blond wood-like formica table with chrome legs, and the chairs were a pebbly material (vinyl maybe, but not shiny) that weren't comfortable in the summer when I wore shorts (used to sit on a towel sometimes so they wouldn't make funny marks on my legs). I remember helping mom make cakes in that kitchen with her old Kitchen Aid stand mixer. Of course, the best part was licking the beaters afterwards, lol! Interestingly, mom still says this was her favorite house even though her others were larger and had more modern amenities (like a DW).

My grandmothers' kitchens also strongly influenced me. My paternal grandma's kitchen was a super tiny U. Sink to the left, stove in front of you, and frige on the right. No more than 2 to 3 steps from sink to fridge. Yet she managed to cook great meals and can a bounty of food from her garden in that tiny space. She was an extremely organized person and would set me a task at the kitchen table (just beyond the kitchen) to help her (there wasn't enough room for both of us to stand in the kitchen space. My favorite meal was roasted rabbit (they raised them), parsley potatoes, red cabbage, and sponge cake and berries for dessert. I learned from her that the size of your kitchen doesn't matter when it comes to making delicious meals. But because she was also a rather stern woman, I learned to be more easy going and forgiving when cooking with my sons.

But the very best kitchen was my maternal grandmother's. Grams took care of me when my mom went back to work when I was not quite a year old and took care of me after school from kindergarten through part of second grade until she got sick and passed away. Her kitchen was a walk-through U with the kitchen table at the far end (no dining room). The stove and fridge were on one wall and the sink was opposite. Grams was always in the kitchen, wearing a dress (Grams didn't own a pair of slacks since Gramps didn't think it proper), support hose, "grandma shoes", and an apron. She had knick-knack shelves at the end of a short penninsula and kept some of her salt and pepper shaker collection on them. I loved helping her dust them and decide which ones should be displayed there. Grams made me strawberry preserves sandwiches (I didn't like peanut butter) and made sure I had at least one big strawberry in my sandwich. My other favorite lunch was Campbell's chicken noodle soup. Then after lunch we would sit at the kitchen table and play Go Fish or Old Maid. I was an amazingly lucky little girl since I almost always won those card games. :) After Grams died, we moved in with Gramps for a year to take care of him and the house and just to keep him company, I think. The kitchen just wasn't the same without Grams, and for the first few months I remember crying occasionally when I would sit down to dinner.

I learned to cook in my parents' last house in MI. Mom didn't really like to cook; her meals were okay but bland. When I was in high school, we made a deal that one of us would cook dinner and the other would clean up. I hated doing dishes so I started cooking dinner. Mom and dad were great sports about letting me try new recipes and experiment with my own.

Thanks to Makeithome for starting this thread and to everyone else for participating. I've really enjoyed reading everyone's memories. It has also reminded me that although I may hate my kitchen, hopefully my family will remember the great food and good times we've had there.

My grandmothers kitchen had white cabinets and a big white sink and a gas range on one side. There was a very large table in the middle of the room. The other wall had some anitques such as a desk and glass case. At the end was a pantry over half the size of the kitchen and a walk down cold seller. She also had a formal dining room but that was only used for special holidays. Grandma was the best cook and baker in the world. People from all around the state would hire her to make their wedding cakes.
My family moved around a bit but the house we were in the longest also had white cabinets, white sink and a big table in the middle of the room. The range was on a wall all by it's self with a metal shelf stand next to it. We had a small formal dining area but almost never used it. My mom was not much of a cook and almost never baked. She liked canned vegetables. There is nothing more disgusting than canned peas. As a child I would always have a sweater or jacket with pockets on the back of my chair to put the peas in.

Ah, this is a fun thread!

My dear Nana was never a cook. She had an all white kitchen and a fantastically large Amana Radar Range. There was an island in the middle with a range with a grill (with which she made hockey puck steaks on). Nana is a master of making hard boiled eggs, though.
My Grandmother's kitchen was well lived and worked in. Colonial Blue cabinets, white tile counters, a butcherblock topped island, black appliances, wood floors, large dining table. I loved watching her cook there. She is someone that used to be very at home in the kitchen. Everything was homemade and fresh, never frozen.

The earliest kitchen of my mother's that I remember was in FL. Tiny, but efficient with Saltillo tile floors, dark cabinets, wall ovens and a Jenn-Air cooktop (I thought it was SO COOL that the air vented down instead of up). We cooked a lot of "kiddie-friendly-cooking" things in that kitchen: sopapillas, pancakes, sketti. Fun kitchen.

The one that I spent the most time in and have the most memories of was the last one that my parents had together. It, too, was small but efficient. It was an L with a built-up island (desk on one side and range on the other side, so the partition there was high). The island walls and desk were a speckled yellow Formica. It had a mix of yellow metal upper and lower cabinets with a flat-paneled dark wood for the pantries and the refrigerator door (a Sub-Zero, bottom freezer. Again, I thought that was SO COOL). The counters were stainless with a stainless single sink. The range in the island was a yellow Chambers. I LOVED that kitchen so much. My sister and I went back while the new family was renovating and about cried when we saw that they gutted that kitchen. End of an era, as they say.

My parents home is a big ranch style house with the tiniest u-shaped kitchen imaginable. It is virtually unchanged from when I was growing up, with the same large yellow tiles and the same 60 year old brown gas stove top, with the pilot lights.It is truly a one person only kitchen. As long as I can remember, my mother dreamed of remodeling the kitchen, but was always thwarted by the "what ifs": what if we moved that wall? then where would we put the oven then? etc. I swore I would remodel my kitchen as soon as I could afford it, so I could enjoy it as long as possible.

My grandmother had an amazingly large kitchen, in a tiny one bedroom beach house. It had one large open beam room for the kitchen, living and dining areas. She was ahead of her time due to necessity of space and location, she had a compost/waste canister on the counter (racoons), with first class appliances like a microwave (an Amana Radar-range) and the most beautiful side by side refrigerator with gold and olive panels with a beautiful Japanese drawing on it.

The thing I remember most fondly, was the wooden horse rope swing she hung from a beam in center of the living room. My brother and I could play on that for hours!

Funny, I never really thought about it until writing this, but my remodel definitely leans towards that kitchen. Wow!

My Dear Grandparents Kitchen...my other home. My Grandfather was a Naval Commander in the South Pacific during WWII. He reported directly to Nimitz. He was known to have "luck" ( or some may say skill) at poker. I am sure on the ships he had plenty of time to hone his skill. He won $3000 in a poker game and wired it to my Grandmother with a note " This is the down payment for our house". They built an adorable little brick house on the water in Connecticut. "Adorable" because it was very small. Somehow it felt big. Nana was a wonderful Officer's wife - always entertaining and cooking. The kitchen was ridiculously small- galley style. One row of White painted cabinets with a sink. The "Ice Box" was stand alone and so was the range on the other wall. Someone posted kitchens through the decades and hers was definitely the 1040"S kitchen. We used to eat in the dining room at the kids table and watch the seagulls fly around. I remember watching my Nana make so many wonderful meals. A special treat for the kids was to pop Jiffy-pop on the stove and eat it in the living room. ( Could not eat in the living room in my parents house.)Grandpa used to make grits. He was from the south. Grandpa also made sure his house had a "fall out shelter". We used to hide in there and play for hours. When my dear Grandparents passed away my Dad had to sell the house. He was giving everything away until I talked him out of it because a vacant house doesn't sell. I "staged" the house. It had the original kitchen and bathroom. ( Nana had a wonderful classic sense of design. )The bathroom could be out of a magazine today. The house sold at the Realtors open house to an agent. Dad did not want to see if other beds would come in. It was very traumatic for him to have to sell his parents home. I really miss that little house. I drove buy it a few weeks ago and it looks like nothing has been done to it. I would love to see the inside.

Wonderful thread. I grew up first 7 years in the house where my father had been born. It was a single story bungalow in East LA with a celler and a tool shed under the house. The kitchen overlooked the driveway and the vegetable garden. It was a yellow linoleum with painted white cabinets. Soapstone counters and sink. The walk in pantry off the kitchen had a long counter of some kind of formica--that is where the meals were prepared. My Irish immigrant grandmother routinely rolled out pastry for pies there and had a built-in clothesline devoted to drying her homemade ravioli and pastas. The refrig had a fan built in the top and I had a step stool for helping at sink and counter. It was radio flyer red. When my mother was gone, my grandmother let me roller skate on the linoleum. There was a wringer washer in the corner of the kitchen that got rolled to the center of the room and plugged into the light fixture on the ceiling. The fungible canary in the brass stand was always named "Clancey." I learned to bake and cook from my grandmother who was the bomb in the kitchen. Her adage: eat what is in season, grow your fruits and vegies and never eat a chicken unless you saw it in its feathers and you had chased it down. She could hold a chicken and tell how much it weighed by the size of the breast in her hand.
Our house from 7--17 was a ranch in burbs with an eating nook filled with a round yellow formica top table and six vinyl/chrome chairs in red and yellow. Yellow ceramic tile, an O'Keefe & Merit range and drawers for lower cabinets. My 5'11" mother had the counters made 42 inches off the ground and at 5'2" i still needed a stool to do dishes. The wallpaper had Dutch girls with milk cans--delft blue with red hats and yellow milk pails. The phone was on a shelf over one of the chairs. The family seating was orchestrated because the "inside" chairs were under the phone shelf for the short ones and had no room for exits. In the nook was a metal door that opened to a milkbox where the milkman could deliver cold from outside. My Dad made morning coffee, breakfasts and lunches and my anorexic mother fretted daily about what to cook for dinner. Shopped every day. Dinner was exactly at 6pm daily and the three kids had "KP" which rotated weekly with somebody having sweep the kitchen and set the table, another doing dishes and cleaning the range and the third had "pots and pans."

I grew up in Ulster County NY on a 3 acre property on a small river seven miles from a small city. The house was built of solid stone by a sort of "visionary" Italian immigrant ca. 1935-38. It took a few years to craft this really amazing stone cape cod/adirondack lodge-style place. It was built on a bluff over the river, about 60 feet above the water; the bank down to the river was a precipitous drop. The front of the house faced NW, the kitchen was in the west corner. The house was on three levels, the "downstairs" was and "english basement" IOW fully finished living space with daylight windows all around (the SE facing side was all glass, and opened onto a riverview patio running the full width) The downstairs had a front door of its own, entering through a 8x10 subterranean "cold cellar" a damp bunker-like place where garden tools and trash cans lived. The kitchen was tiny. I do not recall much before the 1966 remodel, except that the countertop was fire-engine red formica edged with a chrome/aluminum banding. No memory of the old fridge or stove, but the cabinets were knotty pine with v-groove boards and battens on the inside. These were later painted various times by my dad. The ceilings had exposed dark beams, and white boards (subflooring) between. The remodeling ushered in a new, brighter look. Off-white formica C/T's, cabinets painted creamy white, and a huge black faux wood cookstove, complete with the high-top (warming ovens) IIRC, they bought this (monstrosity) at Sears. The new fridge was dark brown sunburst finish (toned very dark at the edges) and at some point white vinyl asbestos tile went down (on the whole first floor) replacing the older checkerboard of the same composition. (the ductwork in the laundry room was also covered with corrugated asbestos).
At some point my mom got a portable dishwasher, with a wooden cuttingboard top. It became a tiny wheeled island, and we got a lot more use from it as such than as an appliance.
Between the kitchen and the adjoining breakfast room were three (structural) brick arches. The middle arch was a doorway;I remember one of the others being blinded with one course of brick so the huge range could be backed up to it, the deep arch remained as a niche on the bkfst-rm side. The brickwork, which had been originally painted red was redone with white paint, which did a lot to brighten up the windowless basement room. The rest of "downstairs" was the only full bathroom, a large laundry furnace room, and a full-width dining/family room across the back, with southern exposure and the full-glass wall.
The "upstairs" was a large double-height ceilinged living room, two kids bedrooms, and a stone arched back porch overlooking the river. The whole house featured exposed structural hand-hewn oak and chestnut beams; salvaged, the story went, from pre-revolutionary barns in the area. The "third floor" was my parent's domain; their master bedroom, and a catwalk wrapping three sides of the living room area.

Casey

Wow! I'm so glad I came back to this thread. Everybody has such great stories.

liriodendren, what an incredible childhood! That must have been magical to be in a foreign land and able to watch the locals and soak in the culture. It's funny you mention the language barrier with french thrown in. My vietnamese is only so-so. My parents spoke vietnamese in the house, but insisted that we speak english to better prepare us for school. So my verbal skills aren't that great. I spent a summer in France visiting family there, and spent the whole summer speaking either french or english, because I spoke french so much better than vietnamese.

I love dretutz's "fungible canary". We had many dogs, none of them fungible....all of them buried on the farm where my sister still lives, in the house my parents built in 1954. The kitchen has been spruced up with new appliances and a new floor, but is otherwise unchanged. Photos taken during the latest restoration are below. The floor is cork, the cabinets are maple plywood (almost 60 years old!), the green walls and ceiling are Marlite, the counter is Formica edged with chrome. The last photograph is the view out the front door -- when I was growing up, there was a cherry orchard there -- for now it's alfalfa. So it goes. To me, it still looks great.

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Farmgirlinky.... I had that same green formica, (with the stainless trim) same Maple/plywood cabinets AND... that same back door when I moved into my house in 1983. Boxer... I had the same Yellow oven from your pictures.... They are gone now, though only recently! When it comes to remodelling I move slowly!

Cream colored metal cabinets (painted a cement color at one time, and also white I think), subtle patterned red formica (or whatever they were using in the late 50's early 60's) countertop edged with a stainless strip.

Kitchen table had the same stainless strip, although I don't recall the color of the table itself.
Pull down wood ironing board that was stored in it's own cabinet.

A very contemporary split level house, built in the 60s. When you opened the front door (doorknob in the middle of the door, very au courant) the galley kitchen was in front of you as you crossed the slate foyer. Pale wood slab cabinets with miles of white formica on both sides, fantastic for hopping on and sitting. You could actually sit on one side and prop your feet on the other if your mother was not home. Copper brown appliances, double wall oven, green carpet. At the end of the galley, in front of huge plate glass window, a round white formica table with space-age vinyl bucket chairs that spun around (fast). Eventually replaced with wood captain's chairs - spinning - and chipping the edges of the table - drove mom crazy.

My mom did not particularly enjoy cooking (one of my favorite books when I was a kid was her copy of _The I Hate to Cook Book_ by Peg Bracken), but she served us dinner every single night while working fulltime. I admire the heck out of her for plugging away at it in spite of her true feelings.

Counter sitting is one of life's great pleasures. In our recent kitchen renovation, we had the stone counters reinforced for just this reason!
lynn

When I think childhood kitchens I see my maternal Grandma's kitchen. Old brick house built at the turn of the century or earlier. Closed front porch. Big kitchen with a 6 person kitchen table in the middle. Straight across from the front door was a DEEEEEEEEEP enamel sink with a drainboard to the right. Minimal, minimal counter space. Maybe 6 feet. All of it covered with stuff my entire childhood since Grandma worked at the kitchen table. White enameled uppers. Again, very few. Stove against the wall on the left. Fridge in the corner way to the right. Doorway on the right to a side room which was a closed in porch where Grandma kept her plants and the laundry room. The doorway to this room was the official meter of grandchild development. Each grandchild would visit on their birthday to have their current height marked on the door frame. This kitchen was the heart of the house. Location of baking, Sunday dinners, craft projects, garden projects and weekend coffee and newspaper reading. Grandma always had the crossword out on the table and a pencil sharpened with a knife. The depression had informed her life so she was THRIFTY! Everything was saved and used again. Wrapping paper, bread bags, foil, waxed paper. All flattened and stored in a drawer by the fridge to be reused. There was usually some sort of jelly jar or bud vase on the table in the summer with a single flower or small group from the garden outside. The table was covered in a vinyl cloth. Meals were prepared here. Bread and rolls kneaded here. Peas shelled. Corn shucked. Messes made here. I remember doing any number of crafty things at Grandma's house, on this table. Green linoleum floor.

doggone, that big kitchen table in the middle of the room is exactly what stands out in my mind from my grandma's kitchen. The table was the life of the house and where all happened. I have no idea what the size of that kitchen was but I know that the table fit a lot of people. Unlike me grandma did not mind having a zillion people in there when she worked. Did the women sit at your grandma's table playing Penny Ante in between serving meals?

Actually, my grandma's kitchen was a gathering place but my grandma was the only cook as I recall. It really wasn't a "formal gathering" place. Big extended family meals weren't really her thing but baking and gardening and projects were. It was the "meeting place". I remember EVERY weekend going over in the morning to have coffee and "see mom and dad" with my dad. We'd go over and he'd have coffee and read the paper and they'd catch up on the town news. We'd play and it was really a rotation of my father's siblings and their kids through the morning hours. I remember spending summer days there (I could walk nearly straight down the street from my own house as a child) and grandma and I would do projects. Messy projects with crayons and leaves and waxed paper and the iron, salt/flour "clay", bugs, stickers, stamps, glue, glitter, yarn. We'd make stuff with popsicle sticks and paint. We'd bake and make jello and look at picture books and cut up magazines. All that was allowed in the kitchen but no dogs. Dogs had to stay on the porch. Funny where my grandma laid the rules. :)

My grandmothers had very different kitchens -we made the big car trip to my mother's mother only twice a year but her home and flower garden's were a big influence for me. My grandparents bought their big old home when they got married (one hundred years ago) and never left it. She was born in the 1880's. The kitchen was a huge room in the back of the home. The floors were wood, and the stove sat by itself on the back wall -a monstrous unit -in which she baked the best pies. White painted cabinets with glass doors extended up to the ceiling and covered one entire wall except for the window. A large table with an oil cloth was on another wall next to the door to the big dining room and the rest of the house. The sink and refrigerator sat by the porch door, a big screened cool place covered in vines. She put up all her own preserves and still canned much of their food when I was little.
My father's mother and father lived near us and had a quirky farm house built in the 1700's. (she was born in the early 1900's) The long-before added on kitchen was a dark long very narrow galley that I hardly can remember but in the 50's was decorated with fiesta ware and mexican motif.
My mother was a fabulous cook and interested in decorating. She was ahead of her time in many ways in the mid 50's and had my father pull down walls in both the kitchen and between the LR and DR. She removed another door and wall to a little laundry room off the kitchen (putting the washer in the basement) and built in a desk and bunk - making the kitchen live much larger. She had a small tv mounted high up in the kitchen as part of a peninsula she added. To my later childhood home in the early 60's she gutted the pantry and had a built in stainless steel wall oven w/ss wall tiles added to expand the kitchen, built-in cutting boards and a desk on another wall that was a large shelf to match the counters and supported from the ceiling with chains. Later she designed an addition so the kitchen window became a pass-through over-looking the family room with a big bricked area for the woodstove and TV. (you could watch tv while washing dishes) There were wall mounted speakers for the sound system. The original pass-through door for the milkman remained, along with a built-in ironing board. She still seemed a little ahead of her time after I left home in the very early 70's; her next home she designed with a totally open kitchen-dining room (keeping room).
Mom always planned everything in her homes to suit herself and to function best for her. I guess that is why I care so little about what is "in" but more what I like and what works for me!! I have so enjoyed reading about people's memories!!

when we moved to a mansion we got a large kitchen with a layout that didn't function as well as the small one. But the exhaust worked well.

I spent my summers with my grandmother. My grandmother's home had a modern, custom kitchen -- in 1978. She worked very hard preparing and baking wonderful delicious meals that were all about the presentation. This kitchen had dark brown cabinets with a yellow Formica counter top infused with metallic flakes. A breakfast table slid out from under the counter top where the Amana Radarange Touchmatic lived. My brother and I usually ate french toast here. The Amana also provided the night light in the evenings, and I thought she had *magic* when she used the microwave. There was also a retractable cutting board. Many of the vegetables came directly from her garden and I recall a trip to the butcher for a goose, which she plucked. All of the light switches and outlets were integrated and hidden from view. A door in the kitchen led to the outside. This door had a leather strapped collar adorned with small bells and a larger cow bell on the end. It made such a nice sound each time someone entered the house. I think she got this from a farmer in Switzerland.

Our home growing-up had a mixture of avocado GE appliances and Thermador. My brother and I used to take turns riding the refrigerator door by holding onto the handle as it closed shut. The kitchen was rectangular with the adult table and children's table and chairs that my father made. My thermodynamic drinking bird (remember those) sat on the table.