Blues In My Kitchen

When I first saw the real estate picture of the kitchen in this 1935 cottage, something about it whispered,

"You could be so content here."

It was narrow but I've always loved galley kitchens. 

Here is the listing photo:

My heart did sink at the black appliances, but they could be replaced with white ones eventually. 

I knew the first thing I would do would be to take down the curtains.

That done, the windows let in the morning sunshine, especially after RH and our son discovered hinges at the top of the big one outside that let them open it up to clean the inside section too.

Plants flourish in this window. Small pots of herbs can go there next winter.

We won't be doing any kitchen renovation here, had enough of that during the five month kitchen build at our old house.

But the cabinets in this small kitchen soon filled up, even with us bringing in two cabinets of our own.

I kept looking at that blank wall in the kitchen and turned to Pinterest for inspiration.

RH and his brother took it from there and built beautiful open shelves with plate grooves and a stainless steel rod to hold my pots and pans.

I don't mean they went out and bought shelving and corbels at Home Depot, not at those prices. They made every shelf and corbel themselves.

Instant space in my cupboards!

And a place to display the old pieces of Blue Willow my parents found for me in a church thrift store many decades ago.

Odds and ends of Blue Willow that I've ignored in recent years because blues were no longer in my kitchen or dining room color scheme. All brought out when unpacking and now I'm in love with Blue Willow again.

How does that happen? It's not as if Blue Willow is taking the blogging world by storm. Have you ever gone back to a first love?

We hung the heavy 1800s Staffordshire Blue Willow platter, our first good antique purchased as newlyweds, over the microwave.

Under it are treasured photos of my maternal grandfather in his butcher shop and my father, an excellent cook.

There already were two old blue and white flower pots at the sink.

A little blue near the coffee pot.

And blues in my wedding china, Copeland-Spode Blue Bird.

Now blues reign in my kitchen!

But kitchens are for cooking and what I like best to cook are the old Southern recipes.

I confess that I love fried chicken, potato salad, chicken salad, tomato aspic, poundcake, caramel cake, the food my mother and aunts used to make, the kind of food I saw women bring to countless Dinners on the Ground at church in my youth.

Even though I have French cookbooks, Italian cookbooks, etc., it is the old ones from the USA that I turn to over and over again. Like Eugene Walter's American Cooking: Southern Style above and James Beard: Delights and Prejudices, below.

All of James Beard's cookbooks are favorites of mine. I believe he was one of the best cooking teachers there ever was. He had the heart of a teacher.

And like me, he preferred electric stoves to gas ranges, unusual for a chef.

Someday I hope to replace this black stove with a white one.

Our son installed a pretty white Bosc dishwasher before we moved in and this last week RH bought me a white fridge! Not an impulse buy, the old fridge had issues--for one thing, no water in the door and too small for a Britt pitcher inside so we were buying three or four cases of water bottles a week.

Two down, one to go!

That's my kitchen, folks. I love it so much! It is a cheerful place to cook.

Thank you so very much for visiting me!

Want to know what I think about you all? Just read the message on this sweet new tea towel my future daughter-in-law gave me...

That's you, and you, and you!

P.S. Now I can bring back in the ugly black electric can opener, the dish drainers, the Kleenex box, the calendar--those things that would never be caught dead in a blogger's camera lens.

I'm giving you fair warning as of now though, my friends, they'll probably show up in my kitchen posts from now on. You bloggers work way too hard!