> I want to cook for an hour without being alone.
Exactly my thoughts reading this. I would guess this author does not cook. Or has not done so in a closed isolating kitchen while family or friends chat happily just around a wall out of earshot.
Exactly my thoughts reading this. I would guess this author does not cook. Or has not done so in a closed isolating kitchen while family or friends chat happily just around a wall out of earshot.
I believe you are correct:
Nothing is more maddening than trying to read or watch television in the tall-ceilinged living room with someone banging pots and pans or using the food processor 10 feet away in the open kitchen.
I was scratching my head while reading the article because my wife and I are looking to do the opposite and tear down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. I happen to be the cook and for the same reasons as the GP, I enjoy being able to talk and converse while I'm cooking. I'm not interested in so-called "chef kitchens" to impress people, however I've put a lot of thought into optimizing the space I have. Small is good when there's only 1 cook. But that's a separate issue from the socializing aspect while cooking.
Otherwise, they are under my feet because they want to be near me and talk to me and get my attention. I can't just close the kitchen door and ignore a toddler. This happens much more than in our previous open-kitchen apartment, because they could get my attention from the couch or living room floor while I was cooking.
Because cooking has turned into something social somehow, people don’t want to be isolated in the kitchen any more.
But in the past, someone walking into the kitchen while you were cooking would probably have been akin to them walking in on you in the toilet (“What!? No, I don’t want them to see the dinner until it’s actually done!”).
This comment boggles the mind. I would wager that probably for thousands of years, cooking has been a communal (if perhaps gendered, good riddance) affair, and only with the advent of the unemployed housewife of the 50s suddenly the kitchen is seen as this private affair.
But i guess i'm the wrong person to be commenting, because generally i'm no fan of all this extreme individualism :)
Depends on how far in the past, and where.
In the USSR, kitchen has always been the place where people would end up spending a long time talking about whatever.
There is even a phrase "kitchen conversations", which would mean talking politics (without regard to what the Party says).
And, of course, the Kitchen was the social hub in the communal flats (living with roommates, Soviet-style). There usually would be no common area in a communal flat other than the kitchen.
Exactly the opposite. People with open floor plans don't cook every day, otherwise their home will smell like a cheap restaurant, unless they got used to it.
My parents have an open plan, i don't. My home smells fresh every day (except kitchen) despite cooking every day, their house, smells like food in every corner because the smell impregnates in every material(especially in the winter) and is very hard to get it out.
Because it's a distinct minority that I've ever encountered who proclaims: "drat, is that freshly baked bread and pastries, how disgusting! and freshly ground coffee, ewww, can't stand that, and stir fry that we love, absolute vomit! citruses, again!?"
what are people doing that food smells are listed as a negative connotation?