A PEEK IN MY KITCHEN...
Ten things I love most about my kitchen, six things I'd do differently and a new splash of color! Plus: our first monthly cooking class is on this weekend!
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Hello!
TGIF! It’s been a week! I’ll spare you the details (thunderstorms, state testing, deadlines!) and the pace of things plans to continue right into the weekend—when I hope, I’ll see some of you Sunday at my live cooking class!
Still, I can’t blame anyone but myself. Right when I am getting things back in order— finally making dentist appointments, writing thank you notes, catching my breath—I throw a wrench into things by making the impulsive decision that something in my house needs updating. Usually, it involves paint.
My decorating MO is not impulsive by many people’s standards—we’ve been working on parts of our house since we bought it as a weekend project 14 summers ago (when I was 12 weeks pregnant with my daughter, who is now 13!). Mostly, we’ve taken it slow, room by room, year by year, with whatever spare days/dollars we can spare. Nearly every inch of the inside has been torn to the studs and rebuilt, but there are still projects: I’d like a front porch, and we need all new siding. We’re dreaming about a pergola (or covered patio for three-season hangouts), and it’s time to redo the first-floor bathroom again. But, the room I spend the most time in is the kitchen, and regardless of whatever is going on, it gets the brunt of my attention year by year. It is constantly evolving.
Our kitchen was the first part of the house we tackled when we set out to rework our little village cottage as a fun little project with my eye and my husband’s skills. The truth is, it’s a wonder we bought this house at all, given the state of the kitchen when we first walked through this small, 1,200-square-foot cottage—a tiny, railroad-style galley kitchen with low ceilings, a single (small!) window, and a deck oven. I wish I had a before picture, but maybe these details will illuminate the vibe: brown shag carpet and nearly zero light. To call it unremarkable would be generous. But the house had good bones and that cozy family feeling (to our knowledge, we are the third family ever to own this house, despite being built in the late 1800s), so we bought it.
At the time, András and I agreed that we’d update the kitchen someday, way down the line—when we had more time and bigger budgets. First, though, we’d pull up carpets everywhere, vault the attic ceilings, and lay down wood floors to make the essentials: two bedrooms, one for us and a nursery for the baby (for months, we slept on a mattress in what is now our dining room floor). We planned to live with the existing kitchen for a few years and then figure out our next move.
One day, many months into owning the house and still chipping away at it on weekends, András was upstate, working on construction with his dad, who’d flown over from Hungary to help. I was in the city nursing our newborn in our apartment when he called with news: “We made a few changes on the first floor. I hope you like it; I think you’ll be happier cooking this way.”
It was a few weeks before I could get back up to the house with baby Greta in person and see what he’d done—a total and complete overhaul: Andras and his dad had removed six walls and turned what was once four rooms (a mud room, a walk-in pantry, a cedar coat closet, and a small galley kitchen) into one much larger, airy kitchen. He raised the ceilings, added skylights (with the help of my dad!), and six windows across the side and corner of the house, plus two big ones over what would one day be my sink—light, bright, airy.
András doesn’t do anything halfway. With the entire area pulled down to the studs, he gave me three weeks to design a kitchen while caring for an infant and editing my first book. Easy, right?
This is how things have gone around here for over a decade—every time he has a few spare days and the energy to get started, he moves on it; I make flash, fire-drill decisions between child-rearing and book writing, and somehow it all gets done.
Back then, I knew nothing—absolutely nothing—about designing a kitchen. Even though I’d worked in many professional ones—from the kitchen at Cafe Boulud to the studio kitchens at Food Network, and having cooked in the kitchens of celebrities and other elite clients—I couldn’t describe what my dream kitchen might look like. What details did it have? What colors? And features?
I knew I loved and craved an airy white-on-white kitchen with pieces of natural wood here or there (Wood + White was the header I gave my primitive, pre-interior apps mock-up I made by cutting and pasting images into a Word doc!!). I turned to magazines and Pinterest and made some snap decisions: for the floor, we’d lay grey tile (affordable and available) on the diagonal, and for the walls, Subway tiles. They were everywhere and answered the call for white walls without elaborate planning. We laid them on the wall together, with a now six-month-old Greta in a Baby Bjorn on my front, reaching out with her tiny hands to press in the final tiles.
We made open shelves out of floors of our 300-year-old Dutch barn, which could no longer support human weight, but made sturdy and handsome shelves (too heavy for floating shelves—they’d need brackets—a compromise I learned to live with). András hacked some IKEA cabinetry and put in a giant oak butcher block counter, which I protested heavily (I’d envisioned stone) but have ended up loving—you can put hot food directly on them and cut on them like a cutting board; they’re durable and timeless.
And then, just in time to photograph my second book, Feast, in our house, András fashioned me a quick island of more barn wood and Carrara marble in a classic, simple design. We plopped it, unanchored, into the center of our kitchen. There, I’ve spent thousands of hours writing recipes, making pancakes, scooping cookies with my kids, rolling strudel, planting flowers, making videos, and shooting images for my books and now this newsletter. I have lived well into every corner of this kitchen, but especially the island.
Happiness is a small house, with a big kitchen." - Alfred Hitchcock
Over the years, our kitchen has been featured in TheKitchn (you can see how our breakfast nook looked when our kids were little), Food Network, all my books, and more recently, Reveal magazine. But in no two photos does it look exactly the same. I’m always adding, taking away, anchoring a new sconce, or showing off a new vase from a friend with flowering branches from the yard. Little tweaks, a graceful evolution as our kids age, and I wise to the balance between form and function (I cook more heavily and more often now, with growing kids ages 12 and 9, than any other time in my history, even when I worked as a private chef in a villa with 20 guests!).
Fourteen years in, this kitchen (or at least parts of it) is ready for a refresh. What I crave most now is a giant, wide island that my kids can pull up to with their homework or with pals, where my lady friends can sit and sip wine while I make dinner and where I can host enormous holiday spreads. Also at the top of my list are drawers that hide my sheet pans, my Kitchen Aid mixer, and ample space for my copious oils, vinegar, and spice collections.
As for the mood, whatever the opposite of white is—I want that. Color? Wood? Texture? Earthiness? Yes, all of that—a bit of Hungary, Mexico, English Cottage, and Upstate New York all rolled into one. Perhaps you can relate?
Alas, we’re back where we started, needing more time and a bigger budget to do anything too significant just yet, but there’s one thing that is always an instant pick-me-up in any room: color: a new rug, a patterned throw pillow, a vibrant piece of art.
A bright yellow lamp or a red clock would be a logical place to start. But, I don’t do logic in matters of decor—I do impulsive, as in quick, paint a wall before I change my mind (and before Andras comes home and talks me out of it!) Paint is easy to fix.
So this week, when the internet was down, and I couldn’t finish my deadlines, I got a wild hair and decided that this was the week to change it up. Between doctor's appointments, school pick-ups, and baking new quick breads to share with all of you, my intern Lucy and I set out to paint on Thursday at 1 PM. When my kids came home from school, half the kitchen had the first coat of paint. Andras came off his commute home from the city as the final coat was drying, just as we sat down to dinner (I don’t recommend painting and cooking in the same kitchen, FYI).
I’m still sitting with the result (one of my kids has strong feelings about it—he asked if we could eat in the dining room from now on; not everyone likes change), but I thrive on change, and life is too short to be precious about our homes. They are meant to be lived in, an expression of ourselves and what brings us joy (ask Ingrid Fetell Lee), and for me right now, that’s playfulness and color.
No one outside of these four humans (Greta, Matyas, Andras, and Lucy!) has seen or knows the new color. But those of you joining me for my cooking class on Sunday will get the first peeks and, hopefully, tell me what you think. I can’t wait to see you there. And as soon as I put my kitchen back together (András is re-finishing 14 years of living off the counters as we speak), I’ll share a pic here, too.
First, here’s a refresher on the details and how to join the class.
This SUNDAY, APRIL 21, at 5 PM EST // 2 PM PST I’m teaching a two-for-one chicken dinner class, where we’ll prepare Oven Baked Chicken with Lemon and Olives to eat with your family on the spot and classic French Chicken Pot-Au-Feu to get ahead for the week (or vise versa, your choice!).
We’ll also be making 2 simple, five-minute sauces to serve with ANY chicken dinner that you’re sure to love and I’ll be answering all your cooking questions.
This class is FREE* for paid subscribers, and costs just $30 for anyone else you wants to come. There’s still time to join in. REGISTER, HERE. Here is the recipe packet you will need for the class, and once you register you can join us live or watch it on-demand any time in the future!
Finally, below, find my list of the ten things I’ll never regret doing in my kitchen and the six things I’ll do better next time (now that I’ve lived a little). Please chime in with yours. I want to know what you love most and least about your kitchen and your biggest challenges or dreams as your kitchens evolve. Do you change it often? Would you never dare to change it because it brings back happy memories of family times? What’s your decorating MO?
I’ll be back next month with my Mexico travel guides, Hungarian comfort food, the focaccia that never fails, and a peek inside our kitchen in Hungary. Until then, come COOK WITH ME, LIVE (in my *new* colorful kitchen!!), this weekend!
See you Sunday!
xx
Sarah
TEN THINGS I LOVE MOST ABOUT MY KITCHEN:
Our coffee maker/coffee/tea-making station: We have this Breville Pro Espresso Machine—a combined birthday/father’s Day gift for my husband (I’m currently living for my mid-day decaf latte with steamed grass-fed milk). There’s also a Smeg tea kettle, a shelf full of special small plates and mugs by Lost Quarry, and right below, a drawer that pulls out all my teas organized by type and style: decaf, herbal, green, and black teas. I’m a sucker for Harney and Sons Paris, White Peach Matcha, and decaf Earl Grey.