I’m the youngest of seven. We were a big farm family so lots of meat, potatoes, garden vegetables, and fresh milk. We had a wood cook stove but rarely did we do more than keep a stew or soup at a slow simmer. Most of the cooking was done on our electric oven. We had a yellow glass cookie jar that always had cookies, a never ending supply! I don’t know if it’s genetics or the food I grew up consuming, but I never get sick. (Let me touch wood on that one.) I don’t get colds or the flu. I work in a hospital and I’m one of the few who never got COVID-19. I’m 56 now and take zero medication. I also still live in the farmhouse I grew up in and the kitchen has never been remodeled. Although we had to remove the heavy cast iron wood cook stove because it was threatening to crash through the floor into the basement.
My grandmother had a chrome & vinyl telephone chair with a pull out step stool in her kitchen. If the rotary phone rang, she could sit on the chair and talk while watching what was in progress on the stove or in the oven. It served double duty as a ladder to the higher cabinets where she kept all of her best linens, baking pans and more. I miss that chair.
I think I know exactly what the chair looked like. Did it have a red, yellow or pine green seat cover? I have the step stool from my mom's kitchen and even the way it squeaks as you push it across the floor is a nice sound memory.
Our kitchen was simple growing up, but I do remember my Grandmother’s electric skillet and she made some amazing burgers in that wonder, I have way too many gadgets 😂 thank you Marissa
Our kitchen was very small. There were 6 of us crowded around a table. Mother made goulash often. We would eat that with white bread and dill pickles. We never had dessert. Still don’t. Always canned veggies never fresh.
I grew up in a small modest newly built house in the late 1950s and 1960s . Our kitchen, the heart of our home, had turquoise appliances and cabinets, a stainless steel sink with a garbage disposal, located below the kitchen window. The kitchen table had turquoise chairs. A light sparkly linoleum floor that required waxing. Formica counters. A stove top percolator always on the electric stove. A refrigerator/freezer that had to be manually defrosted, a dreaded task. When I remember the kitchen I think of my wonderful mother, always cooking or cleaning up the kitchen. We had a black wall rotary phone in the kitchen. There was a kitchen door that led to a small porch where the milkman left milk in a metal cooler. Fond memories. But glad for improved appliances and surfaces that evolved for our modern day kitchens.
Yes, so glad things have evolved. Just not having to wax the floor alone is a win. What a classic kitchen with its turquoise chairs! Was there wallpaper?
No wallpaper in that kitchen. But our next house, during my high school and college years was larger, had a mural with French cafe scene on the kitchen wall next to table. Chairs were cushioned and burnt orange. Appliances were bronzy brown. First dishwasher for us in this house and where we got first microwave. Tall built in mirror and glass shelves over kitchen double sink. A console of built in shelving with small drop down desk with planter on top as a divider next to formal dining room. Different type of linoleum with no waxing. Later my parents installed a kitchen specific carpet for floor warmth on top of cold slab floor.
I grew up in Boston the fifties, watching my mother and grandmother bake bread together. They proved it in a covered bowl behind the stove. It was always the same kind of bread, and it was really good just out of the oven. But American as I was, I wished my mom would buy Wonder Bread, like everyone else.
Classic! We always want what we can't have. People today like to make fun of the processed foods of the mid 20th c, but they were considered amazing time-savers and fun, to boot.
Disgusting ... but I was obsessed with the hand-cranked meat grinder my mother would attach to the counter. It was like a real-world Play-Doh tool for grownups. I loved to help turn the crank and would beg for freshly ground raw meat to eat!?! Can't wait to buy this book xo
My memory includes my Dad & only brother teaching me to cook. My older sister was not interested in cooking, so when my Mother went to school & then into her job, I became the Cook. I got to cook on a Flair, that fabulous electric range with the retractable cooktop, elevated oven and DeLorean-style cantilevered oven door.
No dishwasher though.
Every year the regional Electric Co-Op sponsored a cooking contest. I won Third Place with some sort of hot dog dish. The details escape me except that in rehearsal at home no one could finish it.
The fridge was a vintage era single door, tiny freezer with room for 4 ice cube trays. How I turned out meal after meal for 7 people every night from the age of 11 to 18 is still amazing. Least favorite: squirrel and hogshead. I graduated high school in 1974 & ours was a fairly typical kitchen.
Oh, thank you for sharing all of that. The Flair is a true classic. I always wondered if people who owned always retracted it? That you cooked every night for 7 people from 11 to 18 is amazing. Did you choose to cook the squirrel and hogshead, or was that just what there was that night to cook?
There were 2 kitchens, one up stairs and one in the basement. The basement kitchen is where the work really took place. It had a 6’ square table large enough to rollout filo dough, multiple pies, and have 7 loves of bread needed and set aside to rise. The stove down there was ancient from my grandmothers 1890’s kitchen when she was first a bride. Lit with a match and with 5 large burners and large oven on the side ( all in cream and bright green). I was already sent over to help her and I loved my time together. There was a whole cabinet of canned tomatoes, peaches, and peppers that I remember along with bins for the 25 pounds of flout and sugar my grandmother kept. The floors were concrete and easily swept and hosed down. It is still my ideal of what a kitchen should be like.
The up stairs kitchen was for reheating and for serving in the dining room. We ate and cooked breakfast in that kitchen but that was about it. The stove was much larger but alway spotlessly clean. The sink was long it’s a drying track attached, and there was reminding of an old ice box t=currently used as a pantry with the electric refrigerator used up stairs. I loved that kitchen and it’s yellow and Chrome table.
I grew up in Rochester NY. My Grand mothers house was at the edge of town in those days when built but became in the city by the time i was little. Simple appliances, no dishwasher, or garbage disposal, along with no small appliances at all, no mixer and a hand cranked egg beater.
Yeesh, just now thinking briefly about the kitchen in my childhood home brought up enough emotional material for a lifetime of psychoanalysis. What a rich subject for a book. For you to write. And us to read! xo
YES! Pine green. I've gone down an online rabbit hole trying to pick up a vintage one. As a little girl, it was the perfect perch in the kitchen to watch my grandmother cook and bake by memory - only occasionally going to her little wooden recipe box, stuffed with scribbled on index cards. And I loved answering the mustard yellow rotary phone from up there with its long, floor-sweeping spiral cord.
Can only speak about my kitchen in Mumbai which had these bright blue subway-esque tiles near the counters. We had a free standing gas hob where mum would cook and a small bathroom where we left the bigger utensils for our maid who would come wash them twice a day. The sink was for us to wash dishes not the maid and the classism I unconsciously was a part of now angers me. My favourite gadget there was grandpa’s mini camper stove. He used to lay newspapers on the ground and then put his camper stove on there and then make me freshly fried Boomla (lizard fish), a delicacy we had only in the monsoon season.
Thank you for your recollections. So much is packed into our memories..and a lot comes out when we unfold them. And yes, that sounds unnecessarily pretentious, so forgive me.
We had a gas range but two full sized electric wall ovens. And a U shaped work area which was great. I also have a U shaped work area, but a duel fueled free standing oven - gas range with an electric oven. Love it!
I love my gas range with electric oven too. I had a gas stove and gas oven combo before and that was stoooopid. So hard to keep a steady heat in the gas range. The spikes in heat would invariably burn my cookies. (Note that **I** didn't burn my cookies...the oven did. Me? Blameless....!!!)
I remember moving into our new house when I was about 8. It had a new microwave and an a hardback microwave book of recipes. Microwaves were new. The only cookbooks we had were old and from garage sales. I was immediately fascinated with this new book and all the color pictures. I went right to the dessert section to start trying out recipes. This came as a shock to my mother. She was unnerved by both this new device that had radiation and my devotion to it. I didn’t cook. But suddenly I wanted to make floating islands in this strange little box.
I would definitely buy and read this book - the modernization of the kitchen does reflect a significant cultural shift. This reminds me a bit of Bill Bryson’s “At Home” and the history of our homes and how they are configured. Kitchens at one time were set apart and in wealthy homes, families didn’t “go” there except to give instructions and yet even then they represented a Mecca of comfort and good smells. The kitchen of today is a gathering place. In our house the kitchen is contiguous with the family room and we cook, bake, and socialize together. Fascinating to think about how the efficiencies of appliances has facilitated the “cook” participating in the greater gathering and not relegated to sweating over the stove. In lots of homes, men are the kitchen captains - impt to highlight as well
Our kitchen, remodeled in the 60’s by my dad, had a “wall-hung” refrigerator/freezer. It looked like beautiful European modern cabinets, 3 across. And the entire galley space was gray with pink accents. I have never been in another kitchen like it and we all loved how efficient it was. I never learned to cook anything but popcorn there and as the youngest in the family was in charge of keeping all lower shelves in order. Great memories.
I’m the youngest of seven. We were a big farm family so lots of meat, potatoes, garden vegetables, and fresh milk. We had a wood cook stove but rarely did we do more than keep a stew or soup at a slow simmer. Most of the cooking was done on our electric oven. We had a yellow glass cookie jar that always had cookies, a never ending supply! I don’t know if it’s genetics or the food I grew up consuming, but I never get sick. (Let me touch wood on that one.) I don’t get colds or the flu. I work in a hospital and I’m one of the few who never got COVID-19. I’m 56 now and take zero medication. I also still live in the farmhouse I grew up in and the kitchen has never been remodeled. Although we had to remove the heavy cast iron wood cook stove because it was threatening to crash through the floor into the basement.
Thank you for sharing that! The wood stove comment made me giggle. What kind of cookies were in the jar?
My grandmother had a chrome & vinyl telephone chair with a pull out step stool in her kitchen. If the rotary phone rang, she could sit on the chair and talk while watching what was in progress on the stove or in the oven. It served double duty as a ladder to the higher cabinets where she kept all of her best linens, baking pans and more. I miss that chair.
I think I know exactly what the chair looked like. Did it have a red, yellow or pine green seat cover? I have the step stool from my mom's kitchen and even the way it squeaks as you push it across the floor is a nice sound memory.
Our kitchen was simple growing up, but I do remember my Grandmother’s electric skillet and she made some amazing burgers in that wonder, I have way too many gadgets 😂 thank you Marissa
I got an electric skillet when we re-did our kitchen. I really love it. I'm going to try burgers in it.
If you could only keep three gadgets, which would they be?
Our kitchen was very small. There were 6 of us crowded around a table. Mother made goulash often. We would eat that with white bread and dill pickles. We never had dessert. Still don’t. Always canned veggies never fresh.
I grew up in a small modest newly built house in the late 1950s and 1960s . Our kitchen, the heart of our home, had turquoise appliances and cabinets, a stainless steel sink with a garbage disposal, located below the kitchen window. The kitchen table had turquoise chairs. A light sparkly linoleum floor that required waxing. Formica counters. A stove top percolator always on the electric stove. A refrigerator/freezer that had to be manually defrosted, a dreaded task. When I remember the kitchen I think of my wonderful mother, always cooking or cleaning up the kitchen. We had a black wall rotary phone in the kitchen. There was a kitchen door that led to a small porch where the milkman left milk in a metal cooler. Fond memories. But glad for improved appliances and surfaces that evolved for our modern day kitchens.
Yes, so glad things have evolved. Just not having to wax the floor alone is a win. What a classic kitchen with its turquoise chairs! Was there wallpaper?
No wallpaper in that kitchen. But our next house, during my high school and college years was larger, had a mural with French cafe scene on the kitchen wall next to table. Chairs were cushioned and burnt orange. Appliances were bronzy brown. First dishwasher for us in this house and where we got first microwave. Tall built in mirror and glass shelves over kitchen double sink. A console of built in shelving with small drop down desk with planter on top as a divider next to formal dining room. Different type of linoleum with no waxing. Later my parents installed a kitchen specific carpet for floor warmth on top of cold slab floor.
I grew up in Boston the fifties, watching my mother and grandmother bake bread together. They proved it in a covered bowl behind the stove. It was always the same kind of bread, and it was really good just out of the oven. But American as I was, I wished my mom would buy Wonder Bread, like everyone else.
Classic! We always want what we can't have. People today like to make fun of the processed foods of the mid 20th c, but they were considered amazing time-savers and fun, to boot.
Disgusting ... but I was obsessed with the hand-cranked meat grinder my mother would attach to the counter. It was like a real-world Play-Doh tool for grownups. I loved to help turn the crank and would beg for freshly ground raw meat to eat!?! Can't wait to buy this book xo
You have never told me that before. I now see you in a whole, new, zombie-like light.
My memory includes my Dad & only brother teaching me to cook. My older sister was not interested in cooking, so when my Mother went to school & then into her job, I became the Cook. I got to cook on a Flair, that fabulous electric range with the retractable cooktop, elevated oven and DeLorean-style cantilevered oven door.
No dishwasher though.
Every year the regional Electric Co-Op sponsored a cooking contest. I won Third Place with some sort of hot dog dish. The details escape me except that in rehearsal at home no one could finish it.
The fridge was a vintage era single door, tiny freezer with room for 4 ice cube trays. How I turned out meal after meal for 7 people every night from the age of 11 to 18 is still amazing. Least favorite: squirrel and hogshead. I graduated high school in 1974 & ours was a fairly typical kitchen.
Oh, thank you for sharing all of that. The Flair is a true classic. I always wondered if people who owned always retracted it? That you cooked every night for 7 people from 11 to 18 is amazing. Did you choose to cook the squirrel and hogshead, or was that just what there was that night to cook?
There were 2 kitchens, one up stairs and one in the basement. The basement kitchen is where the work really took place. It had a 6’ square table large enough to rollout filo dough, multiple pies, and have 7 loves of bread needed and set aside to rise. The stove down there was ancient from my grandmothers 1890’s kitchen when she was first a bride. Lit with a match and with 5 large burners and large oven on the side ( all in cream and bright green). I was already sent over to help her and I loved my time together. There was a whole cabinet of canned tomatoes, peaches, and peppers that I remember along with bins for the 25 pounds of flout and sugar my grandmother kept. The floors were concrete and easily swept and hosed down. It is still my ideal of what a kitchen should be like.
The up stairs kitchen was for reheating and for serving in the dining room. We ate and cooked breakfast in that kitchen but that was about it. The stove was much larger but alway spotlessly clean. The sink was long it’s a drying track attached, and there was reminding of an old ice box t=currently used as a pantry with the electric refrigerator used up stairs. I loved that kitchen and it’s yellow and Chrome table.
Wow. What incredible memories of two incredible kitchens. Where did you grow up? Also: I still wish I could hose down my floor.
I grew up in Rochester NY. My Grand mothers house was at the edge of town in those days when built but became in the city by the time i was little. Simple appliances, no dishwasher, or garbage disposal, along with no small appliances at all, no mixer and a hand cranked egg beater.
Yeesh, just now thinking briefly about the kitchen in my childhood home brought up enough emotional material for a lifetime of psychoanalysis. What a rich subject for a book. For you to write. And us to read! xo
Thank you. The kitchen really is the storehouse of SO much.
ps: I hope someday soon a publisher will agree with you!
YES! Pine green. I've gone down an online rabbit hole trying to pick up a vintage one. As a little girl, it was the perfect perch in the kitchen to watch my grandmother cook and bake by memory - only occasionally going to her little wooden recipe box, stuffed with scribbled on index cards. And I loved answering the mustard yellow rotary phone from up there with its long, floor-sweeping spiral cord.
Can only speak about my kitchen in Mumbai which had these bright blue subway-esque tiles near the counters. We had a free standing gas hob where mum would cook and a small bathroom where we left the bigger utensils for our maid who would come wash them twice a day. The sink was for us to wash dishes not the maid and the classism I unconsciously was a part of now angers me. My favourite gadget there was grandpa’s mini camper stove. He used to lay newspapers on the ground and then put his camper stove on there and then make me freshly fried Boomla (lizard fish), a delicacy we had only in the monsoon season.
Thank you for your recollections. So much is packed into our memories..and a lot comes out when we unfold them. And yes, that sounds unnecessarily pretentious, so forgive me.
What is lizard fish like?
We had a gas range but two full sized electric wall ovens. And a U shaped work area which was great. I also have a U shaped work area, but a duel fueled free standing oven - gas range with an electric oven. Love it!
I love my gas range with electric oven too. I had a gas stove and gas oven combo before and that was stoooopid. So hard to keep a steady heat in the gas range. The spikes in heat would invariably burn my cookies. (Note that **I** didn't burn my cookies...the oven did. Me? Blameless....!!!)
I remember moving into our new house when I was about 8. It had a new microwave and an a hardback microwave book of recipes. Microwaves were new. The only cookbooks we had were old and from garage sales. I was immediately fascinated with this new book and all the color pictures. I went right to the dessert section to start trying out recipes. This came as a shock to my mother. She was unnerved by both this new device that had radiation and my devotion to it. I didn’t cook. But suddenly I wanted to make floating islands in this strange little box.
oh, this is gold. i love this. not just that it got you cooking but that you made floating islands in it. I'm going to try to find a recipe.
I would definitely buy and read this book - the modernization of the kitchen does reflect a significant cultural shift. This reminds me a bit of Bill Bryson’s “At Home” and the history of our homes and how they are configured. Kitchens at one time were set apart and in wealthy homes, families didn’t “go” there except to give instructions and yet even then they represented a Mecca of comfort and good smells. The kitchen of today is a gathering place. In our house the kitchen is contiguous with the family room and we cook, bake, and socialize together. Fascinating to think about how the efficiencies of appliances has facilitated the “cook” participating in the greater gathering and not relegated to sweating over the stove. In lots of homes, men are the kitchen captains - impt to highlight as well
Yes, totally agree. Such good points you make. Bill Bryson's "At Home" is such a good book and great inspiration.
Our kitchen, remodeled in the 60’s by my dad, had a “wall-hung” refrigerator/freezer. It looked like beautiful European modern cabinets, 3 across. And the entire galley space was gray with pink accents. I have never been in another kitchen like it and we all loved how efficient it was. I never learned to cook anything but popcorn there and as the youngest in the family was in charge of keeping all lower shelves in order. Great memories.
It sounds like a stunning space. Grey and pink accents! Love. Also love that as the youngest your job was to keep lower shelves in order!