nothing fancy: most-used gear in my kitchen

There are many great Houseplants That Can be Used as Christmas Tree Alternatives, and apart from that, they look good as well.

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Every kitchen needs good storage, but not every kitchen has good storage. Some are small and need a lot of hacks to find a spot for everything. Some can be the right size but with not enough cabinet or drawer space. And others are just not using their storage potential fully, like this kitchen in San Rafael, California.

While a family of five (a couple and three daughters) had made some renovations throughout the years to their 1949 mid-century, post-war house in Seattle since they moved in in 2013, there was one room that still desperately needed a facelift: their galley-style kitchen. “It was hardly big enough for two people to move about, let alone a family of five!” says Meghan Price of Maple & Plum, who oversaw the project. “There were areas of wasted space, major lack of storage, and it felt dark and uninviting. The back door and laundry were situated just off the galley kitchen, with tight, limited access to the backyard.”

It may feel like a cliché to say that kitchens are the heart of the home, but there’s an undeniable truth to that statement. Kitchens are where we gather with friends and family and where we whip up delicious meals and refreshing drinks—they’re a central location around which our home lives revolve. 

Every great chef and home cook has to start somewhere! Having your child or children participate in kitchen activities and duties can be wonderful fun and an awesome learning experience for them.

When preparing meals in the kitchen, fats and oils are often used, and grease is typically leftover. Fats, oils, and grease, sometimes referred to as F.O.G., can be a form of pollution if not disposed of properly.

You may like to “put de lime in de coconut” or “pina coladas in the rain”, but these two products (pictured below), while both made from the flesh of the coconut, are NOT the same.

Kitchen renovations are a serious commitment of time, money, and patience. If you’re considering upgrading your outdated, inefficient kitchen or are in the midst of a down-to-the-stud renovation, now is the time to decide what design features will make your life easier. After all, you don’t want or get a re-do anytime soon.  Would an appliance garage clear a cluttered countertop, or would a beverage station come in handy? To narrow down the top features you should consider adding to your kitchen, we tapped Ami McKay, president and principal designer of Vancouver-based PURE Design: Interior Design, Build, & Shoppe Read on for her seven smart suggestions.

ILOVE TO COOK FROM MY GARDEN, but it never occurred to me that any *real* cooks would be stopping by. Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan, cookbook author and proprietor of The Kitchn blog on the giant Apartment Therapy network, and her husband, AT founder Maxwell, were the first bloggers to wish me well online when I left my career to live in my garden in 2008, and I’d said “come by sometime if you’re in the area.” And guess what? The result was a visit filled with great conversation and some of my simple-but-fresh food, including a pizza (my specialty), and now a lovely story and slideshow on Sara Kate’s blog.

I first met Deb Perelman in my former life, when I worked for Martha Stewart. It was late 2007 or early 2008—a millennium ago in internet years—and we’d invited in a group of bloggers we admired to get better acquainted.  Deb sat to my left (and beyond her was Heidi Swanson of 101Cookbooks.com, with the founders of Apartment Therapy and theKitchn.com across the table, and more). I think that gathering is what crystallized my intention to start a website: such an inspiring group.But I digress. If you haven’t visited Smitten Kitchen, prepare to be entertained, educated, and called to action.DEB PERELMAN is a self-taught home cook, and is funny in that self-deprecating way I love (often using the cross-out strikethrough key on her editing dashboard to good effect). On the blog, and in the new cookbook, Deb invites you into her kitchen, and family, teaching you (her Tips section online alone is worth a visit, let alone all her recipes) while tempting you. You always come away hungry…until you get out the ingredients

Besides leaning how, enter to win the new book plus a chef’s knife and tote bag Alana shared with me to celebrate her book launch, the followup to her previous hit, “The Homemade Pantry” in 2012.One recent weekend, when we were teaching back-to-back, daylong cheesemaking classes at my place, I was explaining to the students how Alana Chernila and I ended up in my kitchen together this way, surrounded by all this milk and cream. After all, I’m a gardener, right, not a dairy farmer?Trying to explain Alana’s and my connection, I asked the class:“You know how my A Way to Ga