What Does Your Kitchen Say About You?

Hey, Sylvia.

You ready to get going this week?

Oh, absolutely

That's great because I have a story for you

Well, I hope so.

That's the name in our podcast.

Well, here's the story we're talking about kitchens,

which is my friend has a friend with a disco ball in his kitchen

In the kitchen

Yeah.

Apparently it's hanging right in the middle of the kitchen over the island

Why would anybody put a disco ball in the kitchen?

Well, don't you dance like… I guess it's 1999 in the kitchen.

Well, you know, actually I was taught to dance in the kitchen

by my dad, but personally I think that's taking it a tad bit too far

I don't think so.

I think it's fine.

If we had space, I might do it myself.

like you just wanna be an ABBA dancing queen

Absolutely.

Well, on that note, speaking of Dancing Queen, welcome to Family Tree Food Stories.

I'm Nancy May

And I'm Sylvia France

And thank you for being here.

We're glad that you're listening

This is the last of the six In the Evidence series

And if you haven't figured it out already, we are Kitchen Sleuths.

Every week, a piece of history, a little bit of mystery, and some problem that we're trying to solve

- Sylvia France: And everything we've looked at this season ends up in the same room.

My rolling pins are in the cabinet

And well, I've got more than, ah, seven or eight, , cast iron pans in our drawers

Not the 14 you're hoarding?

No, those are other things.

And I also have the syrup cake card that is in my mother's Betty Crocker cookbook

So, this week the mystery is what is our kitchen all about?

Follow us at Podcast.FamilyTreeFoodAndStories.com

or find us on Facebook also at Family Tree Food and Stories

And if you take a moment, or really only 30 seconds, to share it with your friends and give us a review.

Because really that's how you can help us and how everybody else finds us

Hey, hello to Cindy Miller in Wagoner, Oklahoma, and our new friends in Honolulu, Hawaii

Cheers.

Well, I've got a drink for us as we start the fall season, Sylvia.

I'm pouring mulled cider with a little bit of cinnamon and some clove, and since we are in Florida,

a splash of St. Pete spiced rum, which I have found to be delicious.

So if you are so inclined to join me

I am definitely so inclined, especially being in St. Petersburg

Let's get this ball rolling or podcast rolling

Glasses up

to our kitchens and where they came from.

To the kitchen.

We love them can I start with the word itself, kitchen?

Sure, go right ahead

Kitchen goes back to Latin, coquere, to cook, and from that, coquina, the place where food is cooked

Coquina.

Interesting

And the minute I saw that word, I was back at Coquina Beach in Bradenton.

I spent a many of an afternoon there

Ooh, I've heard about that one.

Is that the shell beach that everybody talks about?

Well, one of them.

I assumed they were connected.

And

Oh, they're not related at all.

Coquina, the shell, comes from the Spanish for cockle

So that's a different route altogether

Another Latin word altogether, concha, shell

So you were wrong.

Ha ha.

Completely again but cook and kitchen are from the same word

And they don't sound anything alike

- Sylvia France: They drifted so far apart, the dictionaries make a point of saying so.

Both come from coquere

. Nancy May: So the word reached the English language very early.

The Romans passed it to the Germanic tribes, and then it turned

into sicine, I think that's how it's pronounced, in Old English

Why so early?

Well, one linguist explained that the Germanic tribe moved around

and didn't have kitchens, so they didn't have a word for one either apparently

And for most of history, people wanted the kitchen as far from the house as they could get it

Well, I'm presuming it was fire and not because they didn't wanna cook.

Actually, it was fire and smoke.

In the ancient world, cooking was often done outdoors or in a separate

space because an open flame inside could burn the house down

And then in medieval Europe, it moved inside because it had to

A fire in the center of the room was your only heat and only light source.

You cooked where you lived because that's where the fire was

Until the chimney moved to the wall

And as soon as people could afford it, they pushed

the kitchens away again, back wings and in separate buildings.

And the Victorians put the kitchen in the basement.

My dad said they had a kitchen in their basement growing up in Brooklyn, New York

basements, and also back rooms so the heat and the smell and the mess stayed away from the family

So how did it get from the basement to the middle of the house?

Well, before we get there, you need to tell your Connecticut kitchen story

Ah.

The kitchen that I loved to hate and then loved to love in the end.. It was tiny.

Very, very tiny

we had already talked about there was a lot hanging off the beams

Yeah, there was.

People thought that the cast iron that was hanging off hooks up there, lots of cast iron, was for decoration.

but there was nowhere else to put it.

We also had horse brasses and some dried herbs hanging off those nails as well

Oh, tell me about those herbs

Well, you know, by the end of the season, I'd cut them and bunch them up and tie them with rubber bands and

sometimes ribbons, and hang them off nails that Bob put up in the eaves or the beams.

And by February, Well, the hanging herbs are covered in dust, and you

cannot dust rosemary because it falls apart pretty easily in your hand

So what did you do?

Oh, that was easy.

Taking away the spiderwebs, I kept the lights down very low

Hmm.

Sounds like there's more to that story

Well, it could be romance, but it wasn't.

And then the countertops, well, they were oak, which sounds lovely until you put water on them or anything hot.

And never cast iron because cast iron sitting on there for more than a couple of hours will leave a black stain on the wood

What got the kitchen out of the basement?

Well, I wouldn't say it was cast iron, but maybe it was.

It was the stove first.

For centuries, you cooked in a fireplace with iron pots that hung over the flame

And in 1834, a man named Philo Stewart patented the Oberlin stove.

It was cast iron and small enough to fit in an ordinary house

Not in our house.

But 90,000 of them sold over the next 30 years

And I understand he gave away the patent just like a lot of people do

I know.

Why do they do that?

I don't get it.

But he signed the patent over to Oberlin College in Ohio for five years.

In his own words, he said, "For the love he bore his Savior and for the establishment of the college."

With selling that many, I'm sure they did quite well

I'm gonna guess they did too but then gas and electric came

along, and the electric range turned up at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893

You know, ironically, so did the dishwasher.

A woman named Josephine Cochrane patented in 1886

And a woman invented the dishwasher?

Of course

But ironically, she didn't even wash the dishes.

She was a wealthy hostess in Shelbyville, Illinois, and her service kept chipping her heirloom china

Lordy, lordy.

God forbid.

So to solve that problem, she built a machine to protect them

Yes, with a railway mechanic of all things in a shed behind her house.

Ooh.

Wait a second.

I wanna know what else was happening behind that shed.

She was a lady, we have to assume that she was on good behavior, And hers was the first to use water

pressure instead of scrubbers, which is how every dishwasher still works

So I'm gonna ask this hard question.

Did she get rich?

Absolutely not.

Her husband died and left her $1,500 and a pile of debt, so she

had to sell those dishwashers, can you believe it, door to door

Ooh, so like the Fuller Brush Man in the day but to

homes?

well, too expensive for homes, hotels and restaurants.

at the 1893 fair, she had nine machines running and won the top innovation prize

Wow, nine machines?

Holy cow.

But .. that's also the same fair that the electric stove was introduced

same fare.

She died in 1913 and never saw one in a house.

Her company was actually bought by Hobart which became KitchenAid, and we love our KitchenAid mixers

Absolutely.

My mom had a dishwasher when we were kids, and it wasn't built in.

It was the kind that you roll out and you hook up to the sink.

I think she convinced my dad that she needed one because it was more sanitary for us kids, and we wouldn't get colds.

I love that solution.

it sounds like, you know, she was finding a way to get that

dishwasher so she didn't have to do them by hand, then she didn't have slave labor

.. Nancy May: Yeah, . and then the servants left the house.

Not our servants, 'cause we didn't have any.

Me either.

After the First World War, domestic workers went into the factories.

Middle class women walked into their own kitchen and started doing the work for themselves

And then there was Lillian Gilbreth.

She showed a model kitchen at the Women's Exposition

I understand she was a cheaper-by-the-dozen mother

cheaper by the dozen.

, yeah, 12 kids.

Good thing it wasn't a baker's dozen.

But she studied her own footsteps making a cake , and she called her layout Circular Routing

20 years later, the University of Illinois named it the work triangle sink, stove,

refrigerator, and it was built for one cook working alone in the kitchen

And we still use that theory today.

And it's also why two people bump into each other almost in every American kitchen.

It was made for one

and the year Gilbreth showed that kitchen was actually in 1929

The year your Omaha house was built, I believe

Originally, yes, with a butler's pantry

I love some of those old butler's pantries.

They're beautiful but that was a room for servants to stage the food

Yes, it was built the same year the servants were leaving.

By the time I lived there, it was an eat-in kitchen, which I loved, And we had

white oak milled flooring to fix the floor under the linoleum that we pulled up.

There was only, like, two inches

Oh, no.

the oak floors.

It was such a sin

Yeah, well, linoleum's hot now again, but

No, not, no, I'm not, I'm not that one in there

I agree and then after the war, kitchens became a showpiece for everybody

Yes, a sign of wealth.

Matching cabinets, colored appliances, and every tool hidden behind a door

as I remember the term was marigold yellow and cornflower blue and what else?

Avocado green were the three main colors.

my house was the avocado green, the one I grew up in

Well, we had marigold yellow but there was also an exception.

It was Julia Child's kitchen

Her kitchen is in the Smithsonian now

That was quite an effort to pull that one out, but the real one is there from her house in

Cambridge when everybody else was hiding their pots and pans, ,- I'm gonna say this in Julia's voice.

, She made sure that every one of them hung on the wall just on the pegboards.

. Sylvia France: And I understand with outlines as well

yes.

She laid all the pans out on the floor on the pegboard as they were creating the kitchen the way she wanted them,

and her husband Paul drew around each one with a thick black marker , so

anybody in her kitchen could put them back exactly where they belonged

And what about the ones with the same shape but a different color?

well, that was a solution of Paul's.

He stuck little Polaroid pictures on the pegboards to make sure

the right pan and the right pot got back in the exact same spot

Sounds pretty smart to me and I understand her counters

were two inches higher than standard because she was over six feet tall

I think she was somewhere around 6'2" or 6'3", but yes, very tall.

And in 1978, - she wrote that her kitchen was the beating heart and social center of her household

After the break, somebody will cut a hole in my wall

And I know somebody who's punched a hole in other walls, but after this break

So Sylvia, that hole in your wall tell me about it

Well, it was actually an opening.

- From the '50s on, the walls start coming down until the kitchen and the living room are one room.

My East Cobb house was about halfway there

And 1988 colonial style is what I think it was

Yes, they called it five, four, and the door.

. Five windows across the top, four across the bottom, and there are thousands of them around the Atlanta area.

Except somebody before me had cut an opening from the kitchen into the formal dining room, which I loved

Oh, so I guess it was something that you didn't mind

Oh, not at all.

I did lose some cabinet space, but I got a light, and it was perfect

for entertaining because I could go between the two tables in my house

sounds like something Julia Galbraith might come up with.

But I understand there's a story about an IKEA table that you had too

Yes, that was our eating kitchen and I could go from four to eight in about 10 seconds flat.

I put it together myself.

That was a crowning achievement

With IKEA instructions, I get it.

And I designed my kitchen, at least my new one

so what did you change from all the other kitchens that you had over the years?

Well, it didn't have a lot of kitchens, but the last one we had for 30 years.

And this one, I wouldn't call it a fix, it's just a shift.

There's a big island about 10 feet long, a sink that faces out, and that way if I'm cleaning up or we've got

guests, I can still be part of the conversation no matter where anybody is

So where do all the people sit?

Well, they can sit at the dining room table, which is off to the side.

But one of our first finds in Florida was in Micanopy, four old iron and leather stools that are just fabulous.

They kind of look like cowboy stools, and they're the first seats that anybody ever takes in our house

Well, when I was at your kitchen, I noticed there were no upper cabinets

Yeah, I don't know where that came from, but I absolutely hate upper

cabinets, especially when your kitchen is kind of part of your living space.

I don't wanna feel like I'm living in a utility room.

So I do have two open shelves, though, that we got from Peanut Sawmill

I understand that he kinda has an old-time one.

Can you describe it?

Ah, he's got a fabulous old-time mill.

The saw, it's not a band saw, it's a big circular saw that's probably about five feet in diameter.

It's huge, and it's the kind that leaves the saw marks on the wood.

I absolutely love that rustic look

And of course you picked the wood yourself

I did.

Pina told me that the wood has a heart and how to find it, so I chose the boards with the biggest heart, and I had them

cut in half later on to make two shelves and then left them raw so we can always see where the heart of the wood is.

In my kitchen, of course

Well, I know I changed the name from Your Pantry to The Scullery

I never heard that term before.

I think that was a Martha term used quite frequently, so . But the scullery or the pantry was my idea.

, And that's where the coffee maker lives, the toaster.

Because I don't want any of that stuff on my counter.

They always make a mess

what else is in there?

Well, it sounds like I'm a real clean freak, and I'm not.

But back there, there are cans, there are flours, there are baking things.

Oh, let me see.

. There's a working slop sink, and it is a slop sink.

That's where the sourdough gets cleaned out, the dog food, and yes, my sourdough starter, of course

, Sylvia France: And my guess, Bob hides his stash of candy and nuts

Yes.

Don't want those in the kitchen either.

It's usually where I can find him on an afternoon.

He's snacking away trying to find something, but every gadget he brings home is also there, including the

Cherry Bounce, the two varieties, one with bourbon and one made with scotch that are in the back fridge.

And yes, he made me try them the other day

So which one do you like better so far?

Oh, the scotch.

we also fill our kitchens with the things that mean something to us

And for the cook it's quite often a sanctuary

And we can't forget the junk drawer, which most kitchens have

No, I think you can't have a kitchen without a junk drawer.

I think it's actually a requisite.

And I accidentally have three in our island.

Things get swept in there and Bob hates it

I can only imagine what's in there

Pens, pocket knife, um, incense, , an incense burner holder,

tractor keys, a couple of , plaster knives, and my kitchen condoms

Oh, no.

I hope you don't use those for soft pickles

No.

Good catch though.

There are these little mesh things that go over the drain, 'cause I absolutely hate cleaning the gunk out of the drain.

You know, the little thing that's the stopper?

Yeah, disgusting.

. I typically ask Bob to de-ick the sink.

Now I can do it myself with kitchen condoms.

Well, , mine has every baking gadget I own, including

the lame for my sourdough, a lighter, and of course dental floss

D- dental floss?

Not for your teeth

No, that's for cutting my cinnamon rolls.

You slide it under the log and pull it, and it makes the cleanest cut so you can still see the cinnamon rings in my rolls

Mint or not?

cinnamon rolls and mint?

I don't think so

Okay.

But of course, we're coming into the holiday times and Christmas, though.

That's where the kitchen gets to show off

Every year

So every year we do a Christmas party where Well, we say it's our gift to friends and other family members

where we cook the meal and they can just sit and enjoy and relax and be treated to a dinner that somebody else makes.

We get the biggest turkey we can find.

We typically buy it on sale around Thanksgiving time.

I stuff it with oranges, apples, onions, carrots, celery, and rosemary.

Because, you know, the old idea of stuffing with bread people don't do anymore.

And sometimes bacon over the top.

My mother-in-law actually taught me that trick

You also told me something about a guest carving it

Yes.

I will never carve the turkey, and Bob will never carve the turkey.

.. We always invite a guest to do it.

And in Connecticut, that was our neighbor, Keith Sessler

So why do you do that?

Well, honestly, it was kind of my idea.

'Cause the minute somebody picks up a knife, the whole room, first of all, relaxes 'cause they're either about

to be served or, well, they're gonna back up into another part of the room.

But.

It becomes a participatory action or part of the party, and everybody

has a role, - and I think it makes a guest feel like part of the family

I could not agree more.

I like putting people to work, and I like it when people put me to work.

first time I was ever in your house, before this podcast, you made lemon chicken for me and my cousin

At dinner parties, I don't typically make the same thing twice,

and I experimented, and I don't test it first, including you guys.

It sounds like we were guinea pigs to me, but how does that go?

Well, not always perfectly, although I think it went pretty well for you guys.

Oh, it was lovely

sometimes it's amazing, and then I can usually never make it again

Can you give me example?

Like what?

Well, the lemon chicken I've got down pretty well now, but bouillabaisse we made for Foodies,

I made that one from scratch over three or four days, and that was Mark Bittman's recipe from The New York Times.

It took me forever to find the ingredients, and then I used a slow cooker in between, so it was just low and slow

So did you ever try that again?

Sounds like a lot of work

It was a lot of work.

But I did try it again, and for some very special guests, the aides that took care of Mom and Dad.

You know, I really wanted to do something nice for them that they probably wouldn't get on their own.

And do you know how hard it is to find a New England lobster in Florida?

I'm sure it is.

You didn't even try Red Lobster

I did try lobster at Red Lobster.

It was three days of chasing around.

I never really found one.

Red Lobster told me, even though they had the live, you know, lobster tanks,

Yes

they couldn't sell the live lobster because it was against the cruelty to animal laws.

Can you believe that?

Well, you should have told them that you were pardoning the lobsters like they do at Thanksgiving, chickens.

My oldest learned to cook actually standing beside me

And now

Well, eventually he took over and made Thanksgiving dinner one year, but he's in Denver, too far away.

But he does have a smoker for brisket, and he makes most of the dinners in his house.

His wife loves his chili

I'd love him too.

He's a good boy.

I did well

yeah, I think you did.

Do you actually trade recipes now?

Oh,.. we do.

He bought a bread machine because he remembers me making bread so I called

him and I did a little Google search on making sourdough in one, and you can.

He just needs the starter

Ah, I did not know that and is he making Cherry Bounce?

Of course he is.

Same as Bob

There's one thing from my mom's kitchen though, speaking of bounce, that I've kept

I would guess, let me see, the bench

Yes.

Well, actually it was my grandmother's bench, but I used to sit on that bench

in our house in Massachusetts and just hang out with Mom while she cooked

That sounds so special

It is.

And I still use that bench, although now it's kind of a catch-all in our kitchen

Does it have the same top?

Well, it doesn't have the cushion on it, but it does have old Indian blanket rugs on the back of it

I, next time I'm there you'll have to show it to me.

I will.

So, , let's wrap this one up.

First, if you keep bumping into somebody in your kitchen, , presumably , the butt bump, it isn't you.

It's a standard layout design for one cook typically working alone

Two, put what you reach for most where you can see it, or grab it in my case.

Julia Child hung every pan on the wall, and Paul drew around each one so it went back in the right place every time

Now my stuff doesn't go back in the right place every time, but

Mine doesn't either.

It's a, a puzzle

Maybe I'll try a pegboard or not.

But three, , look at what came with your house if you didn't design the kitchen yourself or have a new build.

A wall opened up, a room built for something else, chances are it gives you the character that you want, and

most of it you didn't even choose, but I bet you're gonna love it

Four, next time you load the dishwasher, remember

a woman invented it because she didn't want her good china chipped

And five, find the one thing in your kitchen that nobody would know the story about and tell somebody

Glasses up

So to mom or grandma's bench and of course our kitchens

If you know someone who's never really looked at their kitchen, send them this episode

, Nancy May: And send us a story of what's in your kitchen

I love this.

Our next season, we're gonna pick a fight

Yes, a food fight.

No, we're not slamming things against the wall.

Oh, that might be a good idea, Sylvia

How about Oppa?

They do that with glasses in celebration

Yes.

Or spaghetti against the wall.

But who says they got there first, what's in it, and whether we can prove it?

and the side you've always taken might have been started by somebody who's trying to sell something.

You know those marketers

Oh, for sure.

And tell us which fight you want us to settle.

Food fight, that is

Happy cooking and happy experimenting

Now where is that extra dash of St. Pete rum?

You probably drank it all, but I'll bring you a bottle next time I come.

Good.

I'm thirsty.

Bye-bye.

Bye.